“. . . I have seen no more of Fletcher since I wrote, though he called once when I was out. . . . I only hope he has taken no desperate step. I hope so for his Family’s sake, including Father and Mother. People here have asked me if he is not going to give up the business, &c. Yet there is Greatness about the Man. I believe his want of Conscience in some particulars is to be referred to his Salwaging Ethics; and your Cromwells, Cæsars, and Napoleons have not been more scrupulous. But I shall part Company with him if I can do so without Injury to his Family. If not I must let him go on under some ‘Surveillance’: he must wish to get rid of me also, and (I believe, though he says not) of the Boat, if he could better himself.”
Posh’s story is that after the letter of December 31st, 1873, FitzGerald tried to find him. He went to his father’s house, and (says Posh, which we are at liberty to doubt) “cried like a child.” He sent Posh a paper of conditions which must be agreed to if he, Posh, were to continue to have the use of the Meum and Tuum and the Henrietta. The last one was (Posh says, with a roar of indignation), “that the said Joseph Fletcher the younger shall be a teetotaller!”
“Lor’!” says Posh, “how my father did swear at him when I told him o’ that!”
No doubt he did. And no doubt in the presence of FitzGerald the “slim” old Lowestoft longshoreman raised his mighty voice in wrath and indignation that he should have begotten a son to disgrace him so cruelly! FitzGerald was too open a man, too honest-hearted, too straightforward to understand that a father could encourage his son insidiously, and swear at him, FitzGerald,
at the same time as he deprecated that son’s conduct. But FitzGerald’s eyes, long closed by kindness, were partly open at last. He would not go on without some better guarantee of conduct, some better security that the boats’ debts would be paid. On January 19th, 1874, he wrote to Posh (and the handwriting of the letter suggests disturbance of mind) from Woodbridge:—
“I forgot to say, Fletcher, that I shall pay for any work done to my two Boats, in case that you get another Boat to employ the Nets in. That you should get such another Boat, is, I am quite sure, the best plan for you and for me also. As I wrote you before, I shall make over to you all my Right to the Nets on condition that you use them, or change them for others to be used, in the Herring Fishing, in any other Boat which you may buy or hire. I certainly shall not let you have the use of my Boats, unless under some conditions, none of which which [sic] you seemed resolved to submit to. It will save all trouble if you take the offer I have made you, and the sooner it is settled the better.
“Edward FitzGerald.”
But Posh “worn’t a goin’ ta hev his faa’er put oover him, nor he worn’t a goin’ ta take no pledge. Did ye iver hear o’ sich a thing?”
So in due course, on the 17th February, 1874, Mr. W. T. Balls, of Lowestoft, sold by auction the “Lugger Meum and Tuum” (she had been converted into a dandy-rigged craft about 1872) “and the Henrietta by direction of Edward FitzGerald as mortgagee.”
So Mr. Balls writes me. But he has no letters from FitzGerald, and was kind enough to look up the valuation and sale transactions in his books at my request.