All were grizzled, most were over seventy if wrinkled skin and white hair may be taken as signs of age. And all knew Posh, and (oh! shame to the “educated
classes!”) all remembered Edward FitzGerald. The poet, the lovable, cultured gentleman they knew nothing of. Had they known of his incomparable paraphrase of the Persian poet, of his scholarship, his intimacy with Thackeray, Tennyson, Carlyle, the famous Thompson, Master of Trinity, they would have recked nothing at all. But they remembered FitzGerald, who has been called by their superiors an eccentric, miserly hermit. They remembered him, I say, as a man whose heart was in the right place, as a man who never turned a deaf ear to a tale of trouble.
“Ah!” said one of them. “He was a good gennleman, was old Fitz.” (They all spoke of him as “old Fitz.” They thought of him as a “mate”—as one who knew the sea and her moods, and would put up with her vagaries even as they must do. His shade in their memories was the shade of a friend, and a friend whom they respected and loved.) “That was a good day for
Posh when he come acrost him. Posh! I reckon you’ll find him at Bill Harrison’s if he bain’t on the market.”
“Posh” was no fancy name of the poet’s for Joseph Fletcher, but the actual proper cognomen by which the man has been known on the coast since he was a lad. Most east coast fishermen have a nickname which supersedes their registered name, and “Posh” (or now “old Posh”) was Joseph Fletcher’s.
Bill Harrison’s is a cosy little beerhouse in the lower North Town. It is called Bill Harrison’s because Bill Harrison was once its landlord. Poor Bill has left house and life for years. But the house is still “Bill Harrison’s.”
Here I found Posh. At that time, little more than a year ago, I wrote of him as “a hale, stoutly-built man of over the middle height, his round, ruddy, clean-shaven face encircled by the fringe of iron-grey whiskers running round from ear to ear beneath
the chin. His broad shoulders were held square, his back straight, his head poised firm and alert on a splendid column of neck.”
Alas! The description would fit Posh but poorly now.
“Yes,” said he. “I was Mr. FitzGerald’s partner. But I can’t stop to mardle along o’ ye now. I’ll meet ye when an’ where ye like.”