Edward FitzGerald and Posh

Edward FitzGerald and "Posh",
by James Blyth

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James Blyth
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Title: Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" "Herring Merchants"
Author: James Blyth

Release Date: February 8, 2007 [eBook #20543]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDWARD
FITZGERALD AND "POSH"***

Transcribed from the 1908 John Long edition by David Price, email
[email protected]

EDWARD FITZGERALD AND "POSH" "HERRING MERCHANTS"
INCLUDE A NUMBER OF LETTERS FROM EDWARD
FITZGERALD TO JOSEPH FLETCHER OR "POSH," NOT
HITHERTO PUBLISHED
BY JAMES BLYTH
WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON JOHN LONG NORRIS STREET, HAYMARKET
MCMVIII
Copyright by John Long, 1908 All Rights Reserved
TO W. ALDIS WRIGHT, ESQ., M.A. VICE-MASTER OF TRINITY
COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE I DEDICATE THIS SKETCH WITH
MOST SINCERE THANKS FOR HIS INVALUABLE ASSISTANCE
IN CONNECTION THEREWITH AND FOR HIS PERMISSION TO
PRINT THE LETTERS OF EDWARD FITZGERALD WHICH ARE
NOW PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME
JAS. BLYTH
March, 1908
{"Posh" Fletcher in 1870. Taken for Edward FitzGerald: p0.jpg}

PREFACE
There can be no better foreword to this little sketch of one of the phases
of Edward FitzGerald's life than the following letter, written to Thomas
Carlyle in 1870, which was generously placed at my disposal by Dr.
Aldis Wright while I was giving the sketch its final revision for the
press. The portrait referred to in the letter is no doubt that reproduced
as the photograph of 1870.

"DEAR CARLYLE,
"Your 'Heroes' put me up to sending you one of mine--neither Prince,
Poet, or Man of Letters, but Captain of a Lowestoft Lugger, and
endowed with all the Qualities of Soul and Body to make him Leader
of many more men than he has under him. Being unused to sitting for
his portrait, he looks a little sheepish--and the Man is a Lamb with
Wife, Children, and dumber Animals. But when the proper time
comes--abroad--at sea or on shore--then it is quite another matter. And
I know no one of sounder sense, and grander Manners, in whatever
Company. But I shall not say any more; for I should only set you
against him; and you will see all without my telling you and not be
bored. So least said soonest mended, and I make my bow once more
and remain your
"Humble Reader, "E. FG."
Too much has been made by certain writers, with more credulity than
discretion, of some personal characteristics of a great-hearted man. My
purpose in tendering this sketch to the lovers of FitzGerald is to show
that in many ways he has been calumniated. The man who could write
the letters to his humble friend, which are here printed; the man who
could show such consistent tenderness and delicacy of spirit to his
fisherman partner, and could permit the enthusiasm of his affection to
blind him to the truth, was no sulky misanthrope; but a man whose
heart, whose intensely human heart, was so great as to preponderate
over his magnificent intellect. Edward FitzGerald was a great poet, and
a great philosopher. He was a still greater man.
Therefore, my readers, if, during the perusal of these few letters, you
"in your . . . errand reach the spot"--whether it be at Woodbridge,
Lowestoft, or in that supper-room in town "Where he made one"--". . .
turn down an empty glass" to his memory.
For there is no Saki to do it, either here or with the houris.
JAMES BLYTH

INTRODUCTION
Towards the end of the summer of 1906 I received a letter from Mr. F.
A. Mumby, of the Daily Graphic, asking me if I knew if Joseph
Fletcher, the "Posh" of the "FitzGerald" letters, was still alive. All
about me were veterans of eighty, ay, and ninety! hale and garrulous as
any longshoreman needs be. But it had never occurred to me before that
possibly the man who was Edward FitzGerald's "Image of the Mould
that Man was originally cast in," the east coast fisherman for whom the
great translator considered no praise to be too high, might be within
easy reach.
My first discovery was that to most of the good people of Lowestoft the
name of the man who had honoured the town by his preference was
unknown. A solicitor in good practice, a man who is by way of being
an author himself, asked me (when I named FitzGerald to him) if I
meant that FitzGerald who had, he believed, made a lot of money out
of salt! A schoolmaster had never heard of either FitzGerald or Omar.