Francis Hindes Groome

“ Sometimes I envy those who are so old that the Curtain will probably fall on them before it does on their Country. If one could save the Race, what a Cause it would be! not for one’s own glory as a member of it, nor even for its glory as a Nation: but because it is the only spot in Europe where Freedom keeps her place. ”

“ I am reminded of a case, long afterwards, where a clergyman had obtained a wealthy living on the condition that the retiring rector should, so long as he lived, receive nearly half the tithes. An aged man at the time the bargain was struck, that rector lived on and on for close upon twenty years; and his successor would ever and again come over to see my father, and ask his “advice.” “What could I advise him?” said my father; “for we live in Suffolk, not Venice, so a bravo is out of the question.” ”

“ There is no understanding FitzGerald till one fully realises that vulgar ambition had absolutely no place in his nature. Your ass in the lion’s skin nowadays is the ass who fain would be lionised; and the modern version of the parable of the talents is too often the man who, untalented, tries to palm off Brummagem counterfeits. ”

“ For this “poor old Lowestoft sea-slang,” as FitzGerald slightingly calls it, illustrates both his strong love of the sea and his own quaint lovable self. One turns over its pages idly, and lights on dozens of entries such as these:—
“Bark.—‘The surf bark from the Nor’ard;’ or, as was otherwise said to me, ‘The sea aint lost his woice from the Nor’ard yet,’—a sign, by the way, that the wind is to come from that quarter. A poetical word such as those whose business is with the sea are apt to use. ”

“ So to Suffolk we will come back, like my father in 1845, in which year he succeeded his father as rector of Monk Soham.
Monk Soham is a straggling parish of 1600 acres and 400 inhabitants. [20] It lies remote to-day, as it lay remote in pre-Reformation times, when it was a cell of St Edmundsbury, whither refractory monks were sent for rustication. Hence its name (the “south village of the monks”) ; and hence, too, the fish-ponds for Lenten fare, in the rectory gardens. Three of them enclose the orchard, which is planted quincunx-wise, with yew hedge and grass-walk all round it. ”

“ At the rectory gatherings on Christmas night Will was one of the principal singers, his chef-d’œuvre “Oh! silver [query p. 29Sylvia] is a charming thing,” and “The Helmingham Wolunteers.” That famous corps was raised by Lord Dysart to repel “Bony’s” threatened invasion; its drummer was John Noble, afterwards the wheelwright in Monk Soham. Once after drill Lord Dysart said to him: “You played that very well, John Noble;” and “I know’t, my lord, I know’t,” was John’s answer—an answer that has passed into a Suffolk proverb, “I know’t, my lord, I know’t, as said John Noble.” ”

“ My earliest recollections of FitzGerald go back to thirty-six years. He and my father were old friends and neighbours—in East Suffolk, where neighbours are few, and fourteen miles counts for nothing. They never were great correspondents, for what they had to say to one another they said mostly by word of mouth. So there were notes, but no letters; and the notes have nearly all perished. In the summer of 1859 we were staying at Aldeburgh, a favourite place with my father, as the home of his forefathers. They were sea-folk ”

“ Perhaps you might see him one day as you pass the Unprotected one’s Grounds, and hear. I have hardly work enough for one Whole Man, as is the case with my Neighbour, who yet is a Female. . . .”
“‘Becky’s,’ Saturday, May 18, ’67. [Ib.]
“. . . Posh is very busy with his Lugger [the ‘Meum and Tuum’] , which will be decked by the middle of next Week. I have just left him: having caught him with a Pot of white paint (some of which was on his Face) , and having made him dine on cold Beef in the Suffolk Hotel Bowling-green, washing all down with two Tankards of Bullard’s Ale. ”

“ Never was there a more perfect gentleman. His courtesy came out even in his rebukes. A lady one day was sitting in a Woodbridge shop, gossiping to a friend about the eccentricities of the Squire of Boulge, when a gentleman, who was sitting with his back to them, turned round, and, gravely bowing, gravely said, “Madam, he is my brother.” They were eccentric, certainly, the FitzGeralds. FitzGerald himself remarked of the family: “We are all mad, but with this difference—I know that I am.” And of that same brother he once wrote to my father:—
Lowestoft: Dec. ”

“ In 1813, after the death of Mr Wyatt, my father took the curacy of Rendlesham, where we lived till the year 1815. The rector of Rendlesham at that time was Dr p. 8Henley, [8] who was also principal of the East India College of Haileybury, so that we lived in the rectory, Dr Henley rarely coming to the parish. That house remains unchanged, as I shall have occasion to tell. Lois Dowsing was our cook, and lived nearly forty years in my father’s service—one of those faithful servants who said little, but cared dearly for us all. ”

“ I declare that it makes me feel ashamed very much to play the Judge on one who stands immeasurably above me in the scale, whose faults are better than so many virtues. Was not this very outbreak that of a great genial Boy among his old Fellows? ”

“ But at present he seems contented to eat Fish here: whether some of the few ‘Stulls’ [113] which Posh brings in, or what his now innumerable friends the Trawlers are always offering. In fact, I think Newson looks to Lowestoft as a Summer Pasture, and is in no hurry to leave it. He lives here well for nothing, except Bread, Cheese, and Tea and Sugar. He has now taken to Cocoa, however, which he calls ‘Cuckoo’ to my hearing; having become enamoured of that Beverage in the Lugger, where it is the order of the day. ”

“ Posh and I had been sauntering in the Churchyard, and reading the Epitaphs: looking at his own little boy’s Grave—‘Poor little Fellow! He wouldn’t let his Mother go near him—I can’t think why—but kept his little Fingers twisted in my Hair, and wouldn’t let me go; and when Death strook him, as I may say, halloo’d out ‘Daddy!’”
“Lowestoft, Sunday, Aug. 30, ’69.
[‘Letters,’ p. 318.]
“. . . You will see by the enclosed that Posh has had a little better luck than hitherto. One reason for my not going to Woodbridge is, that I think it possible this N.E. wind may blow him hither to tan his nets. ”

“ Not being a short-hand reporter or American interviewer, I am not going to try to reproduce Mr Spalding’s discourse (he must do that himself some day) ; but a letter of his in the ‘East Anglian’ of 8th July 1889 I will reprint:—
The fishing Lugger built at Lowestoft was named the “Meum and Tuum,” commonly called by the fishermen there the “Mum and Tum,” much to Mr FitzGerald’s amusement; and the ship alluded to by Mr Gosse was the pretty schooner of 15 tons, built by Harvey, of Wyvenhoe, and named the “Scandal,” after “the main staple of Woodbridge.” ”

“ Then from the rear, a deep “And you’ve got to tell him about Old Gooseberry, Berry,” a deprecatory “Certainly, my love;” and poor Berry stammered forth, “And I am told, sir, that you said—you said—I had long been old Berry, but now—now you should call me Old Gooseberry.” So FitzGerald had to make up his mind at last to migrate to his own house, Little Grange, which he had bought more than nine years before, and enlarged and made a very pretty place of. “I shall never live in it, but I shall die there,” he once said to a friend. ”

“ There was a vein of strong scorn of all self-indulgence in him, which was very different. He was, of course, very much of a recluse, with a vein of misanthropy towards men in the abstract, joined to a tender-hearted sympathy for the actual men and women around him. He was the very reverse of Carlyle’s description of the sentimental philanthropist, who loves man in the abstract, but is intolerant of ‘Jack and Tom, who have wills of their own.’”
FitzGerald’s charities are probably forgotten, unless by the recipients ”

“ Lusia Kerrich told me they had almost a Plague of Robins at Gelson [Geldestone] : 3 or 4 coming into the Breakfast room every morning; getting under Kerrich’s Legs, &c. And yesterday Posh told me that three came to his Lugger out at Sea; also another very pretty Bird, whose name he didn’t know, but which he caught and caged in the Binnacle, where it was found dead in due time. . . .
“P.S.—Posh (as Cooper, whom I question, tells me) was over 12 miles from Land when the four Robins came aboard: a Bird which he nor Cooper had ever seen to visit a Ship before. ”

“ I wandered through the grounds of Little Grange, hardly changed except that there were now no doves. There was the “Quarterdeck” walk, and there was the Summerhouse, to which Charles Keene used to retire with his bagpipes. I can hear FitzGerald saying to my father, p. 92“Keene has a theory that we open our mouths too much; but whether he bottles up his wind to play the bagpipes, or whether he plays the bagpipes to get rid of his bottled-up wind, I do not know, and I don’t suppose I ever shall know.”
From Little Grange I walked two miles out to Bredfield Hall, FitzGerald’s birthplace. ”

“ Then in 1818 they settled at Earl Soham, my grandfather having become rector of that parish and Monk Soham. His father, Robinson p. 12Groome, the sea-captain, had purchased the advowson of Earl Soham from the Rev. Francis Capper (1735-1818) , whose long tenure [12] of his two conjoint livings was celebrated by the local epigrammatist:—
“Capper, they say, has bought a horse—
The pleasure of it bating—
That man may surely keep a horse
Who keeps a Groome in waiting.” ”

“ But from recollections of my father’s talk—and he loved to talk of the past—I will attempt to write what he himself might have written; no set biography, but just the old household tales.
After the visit to London the family lived a while at Wickham Market, where my father saw the long strings of tumbrils, laden with Waterloo wounded, on their way from Yarmouth to London. ”

“ An excellent man, and a mighty horse-dealer, better versed in horse-flesh than in literature. After a visit from Lord Tennyson, FitzGerald told Grout that Woodbridge should feel itself honoured. John had not quite understood, so presently took a chance of asking my father who that gentleman was Mr FitzGerald had been talking of. ”

“ I am amused to see Newson’s devotion to his younger Friend: he won’t leave him a moment if possible, was the first to see him come in p. 106yesterday, and has just watched him out of sight. He declined having any Bill of Sale on Posh’s Goods for Money lent; old as he is (enough to distrust all Mankind) —has perfect reliance on his Honour, Industry, Skill, and Luck. This is a pretty Sight to me. I tell Newson he has at last found his Master, and become possessed of that troublesome thing: an anxious Regard for some one. ”

“ There was the boy in Monk Soham school who, asked to define an earthquake, said, “It is when the ’arth shug itself, and swallow up the ’arth”; and there was his schoolmate, who said that “America was discovered by British Columbia.” There p. 33was old Mullinger of Earl Soham, who thought it “wrong of fŏoks to go up in a ballune, as that fare [33] so bumptious to the Almighty.” There was the actual balloon, which had gone up somewhere in the West of England, and which came down in (I think) the neighbouring parish of Bedfield. As it floated over Monk Soham, the aeronaut shouted, “Where am I?” ”

“ There was the manufacturer of artificial manures who set up a carriage and crest; and a friend asked my father what the motto would be. “Mente et manu res,” was the ready answer. There was the concert at Ipswich, where the chairman, a very precise young clergyman, announced that “the Rev. Robert Groome will sing (ahem!) ‘Thomas Bowling.’” The song was a failure; my father each time was so sorely tempted to adopt the new version. ”