the night of the disaster—a night when the roads could not be distinguished from the shoals, so broken into tossing white horses was the whole offing—but I believe he slunk down the stairs of the Oxford that night, and left the old beach man still expressing his delighted wonder.
Perhaps FitzGerald thought that Posh would be as excited as the old beach man.
“Mr. Berry” (as every one knows who knows anything about FitzGerald) was the landlord of the house on Markethill, Woodbridge, where the poet lodged. (By the way, he was, so far as I know, no relation of my Bill Berry.) A sum of £50 was due to Dan Fuller on the planking being completed, and FitzGerald was anxious to let Posh have the money as soon as it was needed. He “remembered his debts” even before they became due.
I have already stated that Hunt was a boat-builder at Aldeburgh, and that FitzGerald had, at first, wished Posh to employ
him to build the Mum Tum, as the Meum and Tuum was fated to be called.
The kindly jovial relations between the “guv’nor” and his partner could not be better indicated than by the name FitzGerald gives himself at the close, just before he once more signs his name in full. Well, perhaps the legal luminary of Lowestoft would justify his inquiry if Edward FitzGerald was the man who made a lot of money out of salt by saying, “Well, he called himself a herring-merchant.”
The schoolmaster who had never heard of either FitzGerald or Omar Khayyám would (according to the nature of the breed) sniff and say “What? A herring-merchant and a tent-maker! My boys are the sons of gentlemen. I can’t be expected to know anything about tradesfolk of that class.”
But Posh has a sense of humour, and he says, “Ah! He used to laugh about that, the guv’nor did. He’d catch hold o’ my jersey, so” (here Posh pinches up a fold of
his blue woollen jersey), “and say, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear, Poshy! Two F’s in the firm. FitzGerald and Fletcher, herring salesmen—when Poshy catches any, which isn’t as often as it might be, you know, Poshy!’ And then he’d laugh. Oh, he was a jolly kind-hearted man if ever there was one.”
And then Posh’s eyes will grow moist sometimes, I think perhaps with the thought that he might—ah, well! It’s too late now.