to
know much about hosses when I showed him over my stables."

From my bedroom window I could see FitzGerald's old lodgings over
Berry's, where he sojourned from 1860 till 1873. The cause of his
leaving them is only half told in Mr Aldis Wright's edition of the
Letters (p. 365, footnote). Mr Berry, a small man, had taken to himself
a second wife, a buxom widow weighing fourteen stone; and she, being very
genteel, could not brook the idea of keeping a lodger. So one day--I
have heard FitzGerald tell the story--came a timid rap at the door of his
sitting-room, a deep "Now, Berry, be firm," and a mild "Yes, my dear;"
and Berry appeared on the threshold. Hesitatingly he explained that "Mrs
Berry, you know, sir--really extremely sorry--but not been used, sir,"
&c., &c. 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. Both predictions were
falsified, for he did live there nearly ten years, and his death took
place at Merton, in Norfolk.

{Little Grange: p91.jpg}

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, "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. It is a stately old Jacobean mansion, though sadly
beplastered, for surely its natural colour is red-brick, like that of the
outbuildings. Among these I came upon an old, old labourer, who
"remembered Mr Edward well. Why, he'd often come up, he would, and sit
on that there bench by the canal, nivver sayin' nothin'. But he took on
wonnerful, that he did, if ivver they touched any of the owd trees.