[94] So I wrote six years since, and now a rose tree does grow over it, a rose tree raised in Kew Gardens from hips brought by William Simpson, the veteran artist traveller, from Omar’s grave at Naishápur, and planted here by my brother members of the Omar Khayyám Club on 7th October 1893 (‘Concerning a Pilgrimage to the Grave of Edward FitzGerald.’ By Edward Clodd Privately printed, 1894).
[98] I append throughout the page of the published letters that comes nearest in date.
[101] Mr Dove was the builder of Little Grange.
[103] His voice was unforgetable. Mr Mowbray Donne quotes in a letter this passage from FitzGerald’s published Letters: “What bothered me in London was—all the Clever People going wrong with such clever Reasons for so doing which I couldn’t confute.” And he adds: “How good that is. I can hear him saying ‘which I couldn’t confute’ with a break on his tone of voice at the end of ‘couldn’t.’ You remember how he used to speak—like a cricket-ball, with a break on it, or like his own favourite image of the wave falling over. A Suffolk wave—that was a point.”
[104] Posh was the nickname of a favourite sailor, the lugger’s skipper, as Bassey was Newson’s. Posser, mentioned presently, was, Mr Spalding thinks, Posh’s brother, at any rate a fisherman and boatman, with whom Mr FitzGerald used to sail in Posh’s absence.
[105] A second-hand boat that Posh bought at Southwold before the building of the “Meum and Tuum.”
[108] This Levi it was, the proprietor of a fish-shop at Lowestoft, that used always to ask FitzGerald of the welfare of his brother John: “And how is the General, bless him?”
“How many times, Mr Levi, must I tell you my brother is no General, and never was in the army?”
“Ah, well, it is my mistake, no doubt. But anyhow, bless him.”
[113] An extra large mackerel.—Sea Words and Phrases.