The friendship with Posh, the fisherman, at Lowestoft and at Woodbridge, lasted over many years. Fitzgerald had a herring-lugger built for him, which he called the Meum and Tuum, and in which they had many a sail together. Benson, speaking of their first meeting, says:—
“In the same year [1864] came another great friendship. He made the acquaintance of a stalwart sailor named Joseph Fletcher, commonly called Posh. It was at Lowestoft that he was found, where Fitzgerald used, as he wrote in 1850, ‘to wander about the shore at night longing for some fellow to accost me who might give some promise of filling up a very vacant place in my heart.’ Posh had seen the melancholy figure wandering about, and years after, when Fitz used to ask him why he had not been merciful enough to speak to him, Posh would reply that he had not thought it becoming. Posh was, in Fitzgerald’s own words, ‘a man of the finest Saxon type, with a complexion, vif, mâle et flamboyant, blue eyes, a nose less than Roman, more than Greek, and strictly auburn hair that woman might sigh to possess.’ He was too, according to Fitz, ‘a man of simplicity of soul, justice of thought, tenderness of nature, a gentleman of Nature’s grandest type.’ Fitz became deeply devoted to this big-handed, soft-hearted, grave fellow, then 24 years of age.”
Ibid, ch. iii.
FOOTNOTES
[1] This curious oracle seems purposely to confuse the singular and plural.
[2] Digression in praise of the political administration of the Pisistratidæ.
[3] “For the two men lived together, and had their possessions in common.” Iamblichus, de Vita Pythagoræ bk. i. ch. 33.
[4] “For now we see by means of a mirror darkly (lit. enigmatically); but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
[5] Seen within the flower we call Larkspur.