The number of hands on a herring drifter used to be eleven, which seemed excessive till the labour of hauling nearly two miles of nets by hand is remembered. Now that almost every drifter which goes into the North Sea has a donkey engine to do the hardest work of the hauling the number aboard the dandies is lessened to nine.
This letter to Mrs. Thompson is the first
suggestion that FitzGerald has any idea of ending the partnership, a suggestion which became fully developed in 1870.
But before Posh was hard at it every day, fishing off the Norfolk coast, his “guv’nor” wrote him a note in a much more cheerful strain. Indeed, this is a letter by itself, unlike any other of the writer’s which I have seen, though (as Dr. Aldis Wright says) “FitzGerald never wrote a letter like any one else.” The power of throwing himself “into the picture,” the humour of conscious imitation, were never more brilliantly illustrated than by this hail-fellow-well-met letter, written by the scholar and poet:—
“Markethill, Woodbridge, Wednesday.
“Now then, Posh, here is a letter for you, sooner than you looked for, and moreover you will have to answer it as soon as you can.
“I want you to learn from your friend Dan Fuller what particulars you can about that Lugger we saw at Mutford Bridge. Draft of Water, Length of Keel, What sails and Stores; and what Price; and any other Questions you may think necessary to ask. If the man here who has a notion of buying such a Vessel to make a Yacht of on this river sees any hope of doing so at a reasonable rate, and with a reasonable hope of Success, he will go over next week to look at the Vessel. He of course knows he would have to alter all her inside: but I told him your Opinion that she would do well cutter rigged.
“So now, Poshy, do go down as soon as is convenient, to Dan, and stand him half a pint and don’t tell him what you are come about, but just turn the conversation (in a Salvaging sort of way) to the old Lugger and get me the particulars I ask for. Perhaps Dan’s heart will open—over Half a Pint—as yours has been known to do. And if you write to me as soon as you can what you can learn, why I take my Blessed Oath that I’ll be d---d if I don’t stand you Half a Pint, so help me Bob, the next time I go to Lowestoft. I hope I make myself understood.
“The Elsie is being gutted, and new timbered, and Mr. Silver has bought a new dandy of forty tons, and Ablett Percival” (cf. spelling in other letters) “is to be Captain. I think of going down the river soon to see Captain Newson. I have been on the River To-day and thought that I should have been with you on the way to Yarmouth or Southwold if I had stayed at Lowestoft. Instead of which I have been to the Lawyer here.
“Good-bye, Poshy, and believe me always yours to the last Half Pint.
“E. FG.
“I enclose a paper with my questions marked, to which you can add short answers.”
Dan Fuller was the builder of the Meum and Tuum. His son is still living, and a well-known mechanic in Lowestoft. Mutford Bridge will be better recognised as the bridge at Oulton Broad.
Once again FitzGerald chuckles at the morality of the “salwagers,” and chuckles again at the expansiveness of the East Anglian “half a pint,” which may mean anything between its nominal measure and the full holding capacity of the drinker—which is as vague as “half a pint,” itself.
The Elsie was a yacht which belonged to a syndicate of Woodbridge yachtsmen, of whom Mr. Silver (a Woodbridge friend of FitzGerald’s) was one and Mr. Manby was another. The two friends who went to Mutford Bridge to look at the lugger were (so far as Posh can remember) Mr. Silver and Mr. Cobbold, of Cobbold’s Bank. Posh says that the lugger was a beauty. But nothing came of the visit, and the Woodbridge man did not buy her.
As yet the warning which FitzGerald had given Posh in his sermon had (so far as the letters tell us) served its purpose. But the letters appear to be deceitful in this, and the next chapter must deal with a painful phase of the partnership.