“. . . I only left Lowestoft partly to avoid a Volunteer Camp there which filled the Town and People with Bustle: and partly that my Captain might see his Wife: who cannot last very much longer I think: scarcely through the Autumn, surely. She goes about, nurses her children, etc., but grows visibly thinner, weaker and more ailing.”
The “claim made by your yawl” refers to a claim for salvage made by the company of beach men (of which Posh was a member) owning a yawl. FitzGerald (as has been seen before) always took a humorous interest
in the doings of the “sea pirates,” yclept beach men or “salwagers,” and he doubtless enjoyed his little chuckle at Posh’s expense.
The builders were at work on Little Grange, which FitzGerald predicted he would never live in but would die in. However, he falsified both predictions, for he lived in the house ten years and died in Norfolk.
Mr. Durrant was still in default. I doubt if FitzGerald ever got those flowers. They were plants, Posh tells me, which FitzGerald wished to plant out at Little Grange.
I can find no record of the principal, the Martinmas or Autumn, fishing of 1868. But in the spring of 1869 the Meum and Tuum went to the “West Fishing” for mackerel, even as a large number of our modern steam drifters go now, to the indignation of the pious fishermen of Penzance, Newlyn, and St. Ives. These good fellows
of the west have, I think, some reason to complain that it is unfair that they should suffer for righteousness’ sake. Looking at the point in dispute impartially, it does seem hard that the men of the locality should see Easterlings bringing in good catches of fish as the result of what the Cornishmen regard as a desecration of “the Lord’s Day.” The religious sentiment which prevents the western and southern men from putting off on Sunday is genuine and sincere enough. The Scotch herring boats, which come in their thousands to Yarmouth and Lowestoft for the autumn fishing, are always in harbour from Saturday night to Monday morning, though the local boats fish all days and nights. But by keeping in harbour the Scotchmen offend the sensibilities of no one, whereas there is much bitterness caused in the west by the refusal of the Easterlings to fall in with local custom.
On March 1st, 1869, FitzGerald wrote to