Edward FitzGerald and Posh | Page 6

and fishermen of the east coast. But Posh seems
to have come to him as something new. How it happened it is
impossible to guess. Posh has no idea. He has a more or less

contemptuous appreciation of FitzGerald's great affection for him. But
he cannot help any one to get to the root of the question why FitzGerald
should have singled him out and set him above all other living men, as,
for a brief period of exaltation, he certainly did.
From the first meeting to the inevitable disillusionment FitzGerald
delighted in the company of the illiterate fisherman. Whether he took
his protege cruising with him on the Scandal, or sat with him in his
favourite corner of the kitchen of the old Suffolk Inn at Lowestoft, or
played "all-fours" with him, or sat and "mardled" with him and his wife
in the little cottage (8 Strand Cottages, Lowestoft) where Posh reared
his brood, FitzGerald was fond even to jealousy of his new friend. The
least disrespect shown to Posh by any one less appreciative of his
merits FitzGerald would treat as an insult personal to himself. On one
occasion when he was walking with Posh on the pier some stranger
hazarded a casual word or two to the fisherman. "Mr. Fletcher is my
guest," said FitzGerald at once, and drew away his "guest" by the arm.
It must have been soon after their first meeting that FitzGerald wrote to
Fletcher senior, Posh's father:--
"MARKETHILL, WOODBRIDGE, "March 1.
"MR. FLETCHER,
"Your little boy Posh came here yesterday, and is going to-morrow
with Newson to Felixtow Ferry, for a day or two.
"In case he is wanted at Lowestoft to attend a Summons, or for any
other purpose, please to write him a line, directing to him at
"Thomas Newson's, "Pilot, "Felixtow Ferry, "Ipswich.
"Yours truly, "EDWARD FITZGERALD."
{11 Market Hill, Woodbridge (showing tablet outside FitzGerald's old
rooms): p36.jpg}

At this time Posh was earning his living as the proprietor of a longshore
"punt," or beach lugger. In those days there were good catches of fish
to be made inshore, and it was not unusual for a good day's long-lining
(for cod, haddock, etc.) to bring in seven or eight pounds. Shrimps and
soles fell victims to the longshoremen's trawls, and altogether there
were a hundred fish to be caught to one in these days. Moreover, before
steam made coast traffic independent of wind, the sand-banks outside
the roads were a great source of profit to the beach men, who went off
in their long yawls to such craft as "missed stays" coming through a
"gat," or managed to run aground on one of the sand-banks in some
way or other. The methods of the beach men were sometimes rather
questionable, and Colonel Leathes, of Herringfleet Hall, tells a tale of a
French brig, named the Confiance en Dieu, which took the ground on
the Newcome Sand off Lowestoft about the year 1850. The weather
was perfectly calm, but a company of beach men boarded her and got
her off, and so established a claim for salvage. As a result she was kept
nine weeks in port, and her skipper, the owner, had to pay 1200 pounds
to get clear.
All things considered, it is probable that a Lowestoft longshoreman, in
the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century, could make a very
good living of it, and even now, now when poverty has fallen on the
beach, no beach man, unspoilt by the curse of visitors' tips, would bow
his head to any man as his superior.
FitzGerald always took a humorous delight in the business of
"salwaging" (as the men call it), and in his Sea Words and Phrases
along the Suffolk Coast (No. II), he defines "Rattlin' Sam" as follows:
"A term of endearment, I suppose, used by Salwagers for a nasty shoal
off the Corton coast." In the same publication (I) he defines
"saltwagin." "So pronounced (if not solwagin') from, perhaps, an
indistinct implication of salt (water) and wages. Salvaging, of course."
Posh tells how his "guv'nor" would clap him on the back and laugh
heartily over a "salwagin'" story. "You sea pirates!" he would say. "You
sea pirates!"
In the spring of 1866 FitzGerald stayed at 12 Marine Terrace,

Lowestoft, in March and April, and passed most of his time with Posh.
In the evenings he would sit and smoke a pipe, or play "all-fours." In
the day he liked to go to sea with Posh in the latter's punt, the Little
Wonder. The Scandal was not launched that year till June, and although
he "got perished with the N.E. wind" (Two Suffolk Friends, p. 101), he
revelled in the rough work.
{12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft: p39.jpg}
He must have been a quaint spectacle to the Lowestoft fishermen,