Personal life
FitzGerald was unobtrusive in person, but during the 1890s, his individuality gradually gained a broad influence in English belles-lettres. Little was known of FitzGerald's character until W. Aldis Wright published his three-volume Letters and Literary Remains in 1889 and the Letters to Fanny Kemble in 1895. These letters reveal FitzGerald as a witty and sympathetic letter writer. George Gissing found them interesting enough to read the three-volume collection twice, in 1890 and 1896.
FitzGerald's emotional life was complex. He was close to many friends, among them William Kenworthy Browne, who was 16 when they met, and who died in a horse-riding accident in 1859. His loss was very difficult for FitzGerald. Later, FitzGerald became close to a fisherman named Joseph Fletcher, with whom he had bought a herring boat. While it appears there are no contemporary sources on the matter, a number of present-day academics and journalists believe FitzGerald to have been a homosexual. With Professor Daniel Karlin writing in his introduction to the 2009 edition of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám that "His [FitzGerald] homoerotic feelings (...) were probably unclear to him, at least in the form conveyed by our word 'gay'", it is unclear whether FitzGerald himself ever identified himself as a homosexual or acknowledged himself to be one.
FitzGerald grew disenchanted with Christianity and eventually ceased to attend church. This drew the attention of the local pastor, who stopped by. FitzGerald reportedly told him that his decision to absent himself was the fruit of long and hard meditation. When the pastor protested, FitzGerald showed him the door and said, "Sir, you might have conceived that a man does not come to my years of life without thinking much of these things. I believe I may say that I have reflected [on] them fully as much as yourself. You need not repeat this visit."
The 1908 book Edward Fitzgerald and "Posh": Herring Merchants (Including letters from E. Fitzgerald to J. Fletcher) recounts the friendship of Fitzgerald with Joseph Fletcher (born June 1838), nicknamed "Posh", who was still living when James Blyth started researching for the book. Posh is also often present in Fitzgerald's letters. Documentary data about the Fitzgerald–Posh partnership are available at the Port of Lowestoft Research Society. Posh died at Mutford Union workhouse, near Lowestoft, on 7 September 1915, at the age of 76.
Fitzgerald was termed "almost vegetarian", as he ate meat only in other people's houses. His biographer Thomas Wright noted that "though never a strict vegetarian, his diet was mainly bread and fruit." Several years before his death, FitzGerald said of his diet, "Tea, pure and simple, with bread-and-butter, is the only meal I do care to join in."
From 1861 onwards, FitzGerald's greatest interest had been in the sea. In June 1863 he bought a yacht, "The Scandal", and in 1867 he became part-owner of a herring lugger, the Meum and Tuum ("mine and thine"). For some years up to 1871, he spent his summers "knocking about somewhere outside of Lowestoft." He was in his own words "an idle fellow, but one whose friendships were more like loves." In 1885 his fame was enhanced by Tennyson's dedication of his Tiresias to FitzGerald's memory, in some reminiscent verses to "Old Fitz."
FitzGerald died in his sleep in 1883 and was buried in the graveyard at St Michael's Church in Boulge, Suffolk.
Visiting Nishapur in 1886, the British artist William Simpson picked up three rose hips from near the tomb of Omar Khayyam and on his return to England gave them to FitzGerald’s publisher, Bernard Quaritch. The seeds in turn were successfully cultivated at Kew and a rose cutting later planted on the author's grave.
