Book: Crabbe, (George)

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_The Newspaper_ is, to say truth, of little value, either as throwing
light on the journalism of Crabbe's day, or as a step in his poetic
career. The topics are commonplace, such as the strange admixture of
news, the interference of the newspaper with more useful reading, and
the development of the advertiser's art. It is written in the fluent and
copious vein of mild satire and milder moralising which Crabbe from
earliest youth had so assiduously practised. If a few lines are needed
as a sample, the following will show that the methods of literary
puffing are not so original to-day as might be supposed. After
indicating the tradesman's ingenuity in this respect, the poet adds.--

"These are the arts by which a thousand live,
Where Truth may smile, and Justice may forgive.
But when, amid this rabble-rout, we find
A puffing poet, to his honour blind:
Who slily drops quotations all about
Packet or Post, and points their merit out;
Who advertises what reviewers say,
With sham editions every second day;
Who dares not trust his praises out of sight,
But hurries into fame with all his might;
Although the verse some transient praise obtains,
Contempt is all the anxious poet gains"

_The Newspaper_ seems to have been coldly received by the critics, who
had perhaps been led by _The Village_ to expect something very
different, and Crabbe never returned to the satirical-didactic line.
Indeed, for twenty-two years he published nothing more, although he
wrote continuously, and as regularly committed the bulk of his
manuscript to the domestic fire-place. Meantime he lived a happy country
life at Stathern, studying botany, reading aloud to his wife, and by no
means forgetting the wants of his poor parishioners. He visited
periodically his Dorsetshire livings, introducing his wife on one such
occasion, as he passed through London, to the Burkes. And one day,
seized with an acute attack of the _mal du pays_, he rode sixty miles
to the coast of Lincolnshire that he might once more "dip," as his son
expresses it, "in the waves that washed the beach of Aldeburgh."

In October 1787, Crabbe's household were startled by the news of the
death of his friend and patron the Duke of Rutland, who died at the
Vice-regal Lodge at Dublin, after a short illness, at the early age of
thirty-three. The duke, an open-handed man and renowned for his
extravagant hospitalities, had lived "not wisely but too well." Crabbe
assisted at the funeral at Belvoir, and duly published his discourse
then delivered in handsome quarto. Shortly after, the duchess, anxious
to retain their former chaplain in the neighbourhood, gave Crabbe a
letter to Thurlow, asking him to exchange the two livings in Dorsetshire
for two other, of more value, in the Vale of Belvoir. Crabbe waited on
the Chancellor with the letter, but Thurlow was, or affected to be,
annoyed by the request. It was a thing, he exclaimed with an oath, that
he would not do "for any man in England." However, when the young and
beautiful duchess later appealed to him in person, he relented, and
presented Crabbe to the two livings of Muston in Leicestershire, and
Allington in Lincolnshire, both, within sight of Belvoir Castle, and (as
the crow flies) not much more than a mile apart. To the rectory house of
Muston, Crabbe brought his family in February 1789. His connection with
the two livings was to extend over five and twenty years, but during
thirteen of those years, as will be seen, he was a non-resident. For the
present he remained three years at the small and very retired village of
Muston, about five miles from Grantham. "The house in which Crabbe
lived at Muston," writes Mr. Hutton,[2] "is now pulled down. It is
replaced by one built higher up a slight hill, in a position intended,
says scandal, to prevent any view of Belvoir. Crabbe with all his
ironies had no such resentful feelings; indeed more modern successors of
his have opened what he would have called a 'vista,' and the castle
again crowns the distance as you look southward from the pretty garden."

Crabbe's first three years of residence at Muston were marked by few
incidents. Another son, Edmund, was horn in the autumn of 1790, and a
few weeks later a series of visits were paid by Crabbe, his wife and
elder boy, to their relations at Aldeburgh, Parham, and Beccles, from
which latter town, according to Crabbe's son, they visited Lowestoft,
and were so fortunate as to hear the aged John Wesley preach, on a
memorable occasion when he quoted Anacreon:--

"Oft am I by women told,
Poor Anacreon! thou grow'st old
. . . . .
. . . . .
But this I need not to be told,
'Tis time to _live_, if I grow old."

In 1792 Crabbe preached at the bishop's visitation at Grantham, and his
sermon was so much admired that he was invited to receive into his house
as pupils the sons of the Earl of Bute. This task, however, Crabbe
rightly declined, being diffident as to his scholarship.

In October of this year Crabbe was again working hard at his
botany--for like the Friar in _Romeo and Juliet_ his time was always
much divided between the counselling of young couples and the "culling
of simples"--when his household received the tidings of the death of
John Tovell of Parham, after a brief illness. It was momentous news to
Crabbe's family, for it involved "good gifts," and many "possibilities."
Crabbe was left executor, and as Mr. Tovell had died without children,
the estate fell to his two sisters, Mrs. Elmy and an elderly spinster
sister residing in Parham. As Mrs. Elmy's share of the estate would come
to her children, and as the unmarried sister died not long after,
leaving her portion in the same direction, Crabbe's anxiety for the
pecuniary future of his family was at an end. He visited Parham on
executor's business, and on his return found that he had made up his
mind "to place a curate at Muston, and to go and reside at Parham,
taking the charge of some church in that neighbourhood."

Crabbe's son, with the admirable frankness that marks his memoir
throughout, does not conceal that this step in his father's life was a
mistake, and that he recognised and regretted it as such on cooler
reflection. The comfortable home of the Tovells at Parham fell somehow,
whether by the will, or by arrangement with Mrs. Elmy, to the disposal
of Crabbe, and he was obviously tempted by its ampler room and pleasant
surroundings. He would be once more among relatives and acquaintances,
and a social circle congenial to himself and his wife. Muston must have
been very dull and lonely, except for those on visiting terms with the
duke and other county magnates. Moreover it is likely that the
relations of Crabbe with his village flock were already--as we know they
were at a later date--somewhat strained. Let it be said once for all
that judged by the standards of clerical obligation current in 1792,
Crabbe was then, and remained all his life, in many important respects,
a diligent parish-priest. Mr. Hutton justly remarks that "the intimate
knowledge of the life of the poor which his poems show proves how
constantly he must have visited, no less than how closely he must have
observed." But the fact remains that though he was kind and helpful to
his flock while among them in sickness and in trouble--their physician
as well as their spiritual adviser--his ideas as to clerical absenteeism
were those of his age, and moreover his preaching to the end of his life
was not of a kind to arouse much interest or zeal. I have had access to
a large packet of his manuscript sermons, preached during his residence
in Suffolk and later, as proved by the endorsements on the cover, at his
various incumbencies in Leicestershire and Wiltshire. They consist of
plain and formal explanations of his text, reinforced by other texts,
entirely orthodox but unrelieved by any resource in the way of
illustration, or by any of those poetic touches which his published
verse shows he had at his command. A sermon lies before me, preached
first at Great Glemham in 1801, and afterwards at Little Glemham,
Sweffling, Muston, and Allington; at Trowbridge in 1820, and again at
Trowbridge in 1830. The preacher probably held his discourses quite as
profitable at one stage in the Church's development as at another. In
this estimate of clerical responsibilities Crabbe seems to have remained
stationary. But meantime the laity had been aroused to expect better
things. The ferment of the Wesley and Whitefield Revival was spreading
slowly but surely even among the remote villages of England. What Crabbe
and the bulk of the parochial clergy called "a sober and rational
conversion" seemed to those who had fallen under the fervid influence of
the great Methodist a savourless and ineffectual formality. The
extravagances of the Movement had indeed travelled everywhere in company
with its worthier fruits. Enthusiasm,--"an excellent good word until it
was ill-sorted,"--found vent in various shapes that were justly feared
and suspected by many of the clergy, even by those to whom "a reasonable
religion" was far from being "so very reasonable as to have nothing to
do with the heart and affections." It was not only the Moderates who saw
its danger. Wesley himself had found it necessary to caution his more
impetuous followers against its eccentricities. And Joseph Butler
preaching at the Rolls Chapel on "the Love of God" thought it well to
explain that in his use of the phrase there was nothing
"enthusiastical." But as one mischievous extreme generates another, the
influence of the prejudice against enthusiasm became disastrous, and the
word came too often to be confounded with any and every form of
religious fervency and earnestness. To the end of his days Crabbe, like
many another, regarded sobriety and moderation in the expression of
religious feeling as not only its chief safeguard but its chief
ornament. It may seem strange that the poetic temperament which Crabbe
certainly possessed never seemed to affect his views of life and human
nature outside the fields of poetic composition. He was notably
indifferent, his son tells us, "to almost all the proper objects of
taste. He had no real love for painting, or music, or architecture, or
for what a painter's eye considers as the beauties of landscape. But he
had a passion for science--the science of the human mind, first; then,
that of nature in general; and lastly that of abstract qualities."

If the defects here indicated help to explain some of those in his
poetry, they may also throw light on a certain lack of imagination in
Crabbe's dealings with his fellow-men in general and with his
parishioners in particular. His temperament was somewhat tactless and
masterful, and he could never easily place himself at the stand-point of
those who differed from him. The use of his imagination was mainly
confined to the hours in his study; and while there, if he had his
"_beaux moments_," he had also his "_mauvais quarts d'heure_."

Perhaps if he had brought a little imagination to bear upon his
relations with Muston and Allington, Crabbe would not have deserted his
people so soon after coming among them. The stop made him many enemies.
For here was no case of a poor curate accepting, for his family's sake,
a more lucrative post. Crabbe was leaving the Vale of Belvoir because an
accession of fortune had befallen the family, and it was pleasanter to
live in his native county and in a better house. So, at least, his
action was interpreted at the time, and Crabbe's son takes no very
different view. "Though tastes and affections, as well as worldly
interests, prompted this return to native scenes and early
acquaintances, it was a step reluctantly taken, and I believe, sincerely
repented of. The beginning was ominous. As we were slowly quitting the
place preceded by our furniture, a stranger, though one who knew my
father's circumstances, called out in an impressive tone, 'You are
wrong, you are wrong!'" The sound, he afterwards admitted, found an echo
in his own conscience, and during the whole journey seemed to ring in
his ears "like a supernatural voice."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: See a pleasant paper on Crabbe at Muston and Allington by
the Rev. W.H. Hutton of St John's College, Oxford, in the _Cornhill
Magazine_ for June 1901.]




CHAPTER V


IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

(1792-1805)

On the arrival of the family at Parham, poor Crabbe discovered that even
an accession of fortune had its attendant drawbacks. His son, George,
records his own recollections (he was then a child of seven years) of
the scene that met their view on their alighting at Parham Lodge. "As I
got out of the chaise, I remember jumping for very joy, and exclaiming,
'Here we are, here we are--little Willy and all!'"--(his parents'
seventh and youngest child, then only a few weeks old)--"but my spirits
sunk into dismay when, on entering the well-known kitchen, all there
seemed desolate, dreary, and silent. Mrs. Tovell and her sister-in-law,
sitting by the fireside weeping, did not even rise up to welcome my
parents, but uttered a few chilling words and wept again. All this
appeared to me as inexplicable as forbidding. How little do children
dream of the alterations that older people's feelings towards each other
undergo, when death has caused a transfer of property! Our arrival in
Suffolk was by no means palatable to all my mother's relations."

Mr. Tovell's widow had doubtless her suitable jointure, and probably a
modest dower-residence to retire to; but Parham Hall had to be vacated,
and Crabbe, having purchased its furniture, at once entered on
possession. The mere re-arrangement of the contents caused many
heartburnings to the spinster-sister, who had known them under the old
_regime_, and the alteration of the hanging of a picture would have made
"Jacky," she averred, to turn in his grave. Crabbe seems, however, to
have shown so much good-feeling and forbearance in the matter that the
old lady, after grimly boasting that she could "screw Crabbe up and down
like a fiddle," was ultimately friendly, and her share of her brother's
estate came in due course to Crabbe and his wife. Moreover, the change
of tenancy at the Hall was anything but satisfactory to the village
generally. Mr. Tovell had been much given to hospitality, and that of a
convivial sort. Such of the neighbours as were of kindred tastes had
been in the habit of "dropping in" of an evening two or three times a
week, when, if a _quorum_ was present, a bowl of punch would be brewed,
and sometimes a second and a third. The substitution for all this of the
quiet and decorous family life of the Crabbes was naturally a hoary blow
and grave discouragement to the village reveller, and contributed to
make Crabbe's life at starting far from happy. His pursuits and
inclinations, literary as well as clerical, made such company
distasteful; and his wife, who had borne him seven children in nine
years, and of these had lost four in infancy, had little strength or
heart for miscellaneous company. But there was compensation for her
husband among the county gentry of the neighbourhood, and notably in the
constant kindness of Dudley North, of Little Glemham Hall, the same
friend who had helped him with money when twelve years before he had
left Aldeburgh, an almost penniless adventurer, to try his fortune in
London. At Mr. North's table Crabbe had once more the opportunity of
meeting members of the Whig party, whom he had known through Burke. On
one such occasion Fox expressed his regret that Crabbe had ceased to
write, and offered his help in revising any future poem that he might
produce. The promise was not forgotten when ten years later _The Parish
Register_ was in preparation.

During his first year at Parham, Crabbe does not appear to have
undertaken any fixed clerical duties, and this interval of leisure
allowed him to pay a long visit to his sister at Aldeburgh, and here he
placed his two elder boys, George and John, at a dame school. On
returning to Parham, he accepted the office of curate-in-charge at
Sweffling, the rector, Rev. Richard Turner, being resident at his other
living of Great Yarmouth. The curacy of Great Glemham, also within easy
reach, was shortly added. Crabbe was still residing at Parham Lodge, but
the incidents of such residence remained far from pleasant, and, after
four years there, Crabbe joyfully accepted the offer of a good house at
Great Glemham, placed at his disposal by his friend Dudley North. Here
the family remained for a further period of four or five years.

A fresh bereavement in his family had made Crabbe additionally anxious
for change of scene and associations for his wife. In 1796, another
child died--their third son, Edmund--in his sixth year. Two children,
out of a family of seven, alone remained; and this final blow proved
more than the poor mother could bear uninjured. From this time dated "a
nervous disorder," which indeed meant a gradual decay of mental power,
from which she never recovered; and Crabbe, an ever-devoted husband,
tended her with exemplary care till her death in 1813. Southey, writing
about Crabbe to his friend, Neville White, in 1808, adds: "It was not
long before his wife became deranged, and when all this was told me by
one who knew him well, five years ago, he was still almost confined in
his own house, anxiously waiting upon this wife in her long and hopeless
malady. A sad history! It is no wonder that he gives so melancholy a
picture of human life."

Save for Mrs. Crabbe's broken health and increasing melancholy, the four
years at Glemham were among the most peaceful and happiest of Crabbe's
life. His son grows eloquent over the elegance of the house and the
natural beauties of its situation. "A small well-wooded park occupied
the whole mouth of the glen, whence, doubtless, the name of the village
was derived. In the lowest ground stood the commodious mansion; the
approach wound down through a plantation on the eminence in front. The
opposite hill rose at the back of it, rich and varied with trees and
shrubs scattered irregularly; under this southern hill ran a brook, and
on the banks above it were spots of great natural beauty, crowned by
whitethorn and oak. Here the purple scented violet perfumed the air, and
in one place coloured the ground. On the left of the front in the
narrower portion of the glen was the village; on the right, a confined
view of richly wooded fields. In fact, the whole parish and
neighbourhood resemble a combination of groves, interspersed with fields
cultivated like gardens, and intersected with those green dry lanes
which tempt the walker in all weathers, especially in the evenings, when
in the short grass of the dry sandy banks lies every few yards a
glowworm, and the nightingales are pouring forth their melody in every
direction."

It was not, therefore, for lack of acquaintance with the more idyllic
side of English country-life that Crabbe, when he once more addressed
the public in verse, turned to the less sunny memories of his youth for
inspiration. It was not till some years after the appearance of _The
Parish Register_ and _The Borough_ that the pleasant paths of inland
Suffolk and of the Vale of Belvoir formed the background to his studies
in human character.

Meantime Crabbe was perpetually writing, and as constantly destroying
what he wrote. His small flock at Great and Little Glemham employed part
of his time; the education of his two sons, who were now withdrawn from
school, occupied some more; and a wife in failing health was certainly
not neglected. But the busy husband and father found time to teach
himself something of French and Italian, and read aloud to his family of
an evening as many books of travel and of fiction as his friends would
keep him supplied with. He was preparing at the same time a treatise on
botany, which was never to see the light; and during "one or two of his
winters in Suffolk," his son relates, "he gave most of his evening hours
to the writing of novels, and he brought not less than three such works
to a conclusion. The first was entitled 'The Widow Grey,' but I
recollect nothing of it except that the principal character was a
benevolent humorist, a Dr. Allison. The next was called 'Reginald
Glanshaw, or the Man who commanded Success,' a portrait of an assuming,
over-bearing, ambitious mind, rendered interesting by some generous
virtues, and gradually wearing down into idiotism. I cannot help
thinking that this Glanshaw was drawn with very extraordinary power; but
the story was not well managed in the details I forget the title of his
third novel; but I clearly remember that it opened with a description of
a wretched room, similar to some that are presented in his poetry, and
that on my mother's telling him frankly that she thought the effect very
inferior to that of the corresponding pieces in verse, he paused in his
reading, and after some reflection, said, 'Your remark is just.'"

Mrs. Crabbe's remark was probably very just. Although her husband had
many qualifications for writing prose fiction--insight into and
appreciation of character, combined with much tragic force and a real
gift for description--there is reason to think that he would have been
stilted and artificial in dialogue, and altogether wanting in lightness
of hand. Crabbe acquiesced in his wife's decision, and the novels were
cremated without a murmur. A somewhat similar fate attended a set of
Tales in Verse which, in the year 1799, Crabbe was about to offer to Mr.
Hatchard, the publisher, when he wisely took the opinion of his rector
at Sweffling, then resident at Yarmouth, the Rev. Richard Turner[3].
This gentleman, whose opinion Crabbe greatly valued, advised _revision_,
and Crabbe accepted the verdict as the reverse of encouraging. The Tales
were never published, and Crabbe again deferred his reappearance in
print for a period of eight years. Meantime he applied himself to the
leisurely composition of the _Parish Register_, which extended, together
with that of some shorter poems, over the period just named.

In the last years of the eighteenth century there was a sudden awakening
among the bishops to the growing abuse of non-residence and pluralities
on the part of the clergy. One prelate of distinction devoted his
triennial charge to the subject, and a general "stiffening" of episcopal
good nature set in all round. The Bishop of Lincoln addressed Crabbe,
with others of his delinquent clergy, and intimated to him very
distinctly the duty of returning to those few sheep in the wilderness at
Muston and Allington. Crabbe, in much distress, applied to his friend
Dudley North to use influence on his behalf to obtain extension of
leave. But the bishop, Dr. Pretyman (Pitt's tutor and friend--better
known by the name he afterwards adopted of Tomlins) would not yield, and
it was probably owing to pressure from some different quarter that
Crabbe succeeded in obtaining leave of absence for four years longer.
Dudley North would fain have solved the problem by giving Crabbe one or
more of the livings in his own gift in Suffolk, but none of adequate
value was vacant at the time. Meanwhile, the house rented by Crabbe,
Great Glemham Hall, was sold over Crabbe's head, by family arrangements
in the North family, and he made his last move while in Suffolk, by
taking a house in the neighbouring village of Rendham, where he remained
during his last four years. Crabbe was looking forward to his elder
son's going up to Cambridge in 1803, and this formed an additional
reason for wishing to remain as long as might be in the eastern
counties.

The writing of poetry seems to have gone on apace. _The Parish Register_
was all but completed while at Rendham, and _The Borough_ was also
begun. After so long an abstinence from the glory of print, Crabbe at
last found the required stimulus to ambition in the need of some further
income for his two sons' education. But during the last winter of his
residence at Rendham (1804-1805), Crabbe produced a poem, in stanzas, of
very different character and calibre from anything he had yet written,
and as to the origin of which one must go back to some previous
incidents in Crabbe's history. His son is always lax as to dates, and
often just at those periods when they would be the most welcome. It may
be inferred, however, that at some date between 1790 and 1792 Crabbe
suffered from serious derangements of his digestion, attended by sudden
and acute attacks of vertigo. The passage in the memoir as to the exact
period is more than usually vague. The writer is dealing with the year
1800, and he proceeds:

"My father, now about his forty-sixth year, was much
more stout and healthy than when I first remember him.
Soon after that early period he became subject to vertigoes,
which he thought indicative of a tendency to apoplexy; and
was occasionally bled rather profusely, which only increased
the symptoms. When he preached his first sermon at Muston
in the year 1789 my mother foreboded, as she afterwards told
us, that he would preach very few more: but it was on one
of his early journeys into Suffolk, in passing through Ipswich,
that he had the most alarming attack."

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