Book: Crabbe, (George)

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"See how the world its veterans rewards--
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards."

For here the expression is faultless, and Pope has educed
an eternally pathetic truth, of universal application.

Even had the gentle remonstrances of the two reviewers never been
expressed, it would seem as if Crabbe had already arrived at somewhat
similar conclusions on his own account. At the time the reviews
appeared, the whole of the twenty-one _Tales_ to be published in August
1812 were already written. Crabbe had perceived that if he was to retain
the admiring public he had won, he must break fresh ground. Aldeburgh
was played out. It had provided abundant material and been an excellent
training-ground for Crabbe's powers. But he had discovered that there
were other fields worth cultivating besides that of the hard lots of the
very poor. He had associated in his later years with a class above
these--not indeed with the "upper ten," save when he dined at Belvoir
Castle, but with classes lying between these two extremes. He had come
to feel more and more the fascination of analysing human character and
motives among his equals. He had a singularly retentive memory, and the
habit of noting and brooding over incidents--specially of "life's little
ironies"--wherever he encountered them. He does not seem to have
possessed much originating power. When, a few years later, his friend
Mrs. Leadbeater inquired of him whether the characters in his various
poems were drawn from life, he replied:--"Yes, I will tell you readily
about my ventures, whom I endeavour to paint as nearly as I could, and
_dare_--for in some cases I dared not.... Thus far you are correct:
there is not one of whom I had not in my mind the original, but I was
obliged in most cases to take them from their real situations, and in
one or two instances even to change their sex, and in many, the
circumstances.... Indeed I do not know that I could paint merely from my
own fancy, and there is no cause why I should. Is there not diversity
enough in society?"




CHAPTER VIII


_TALES_

(1812)

Crabbe's new volume--"Tales. By the Rev. George Crabbe, LL.B."--was
published by Mr. Hatchard of Piccadilly in the summer of 1812. It
received a warm welcome from the poet's admirers, and was reviewed, most
appreciatively, by Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh_ for November. The _Tales_
were twenty-one in number, and to each was prefixed a series, often four
or five, of quotations from Shakespeare, illustrating the incidents in
the Tales, or the character there depicted. Crabbe's knowledge of
Shakespeare must have been in those days, when concordances were not,
very remarkable, for he quotes by no means always from the best known
plays, and he was not a frequenter of the theatre. Crabbe had of late
studied human nature in books as well as in life.

As already remarked, the Tales are often built upon events in his own
family, or else occurring within their knowledge. The second in order of
publication, _The Parting Hour_, arose out of an incident in the life of
the poet's own brother, which is thus related in the notes to the
edition of 1834:

"Mr. Crabbe's fourth brother, William, taking to a sea-faring
life, was made prisoner by the Spaniards. He was
carried to Mexico, where he became a silversmith, married,
and prospered, until his increasing riches attracted a charge
of Protestantism; the consequence of which was much persecution.
He at last was obliged to abandon Mexico, his
property, and his family; and was discovered in the year
1803 by an Aldeburgh sailor on the coast of Honduras,
where again he seems to have found some success in business.
This sailor was the only person he had seen for many a year
who could tell him anything about Aldeburgh and his family,
and great was his perplexity when he was informed that his
eldest brother, George, was a clergyman. 'This cannot be
_our_ George,' said the wanderer, 'he was a _Doctor_! This was
the first, and it was also the last, tidings that ever reached
Mr. Crabbe of his brother William; and upon the Aldeburgh
sailor's story of his casual interview, it is obvious that
he built this tale."

The story as developed by Crabbe is pathetic and picturesque, reminding
us in its central interest of _Enoch Arden_. Allen Booth, the youngest
son of his parents dwelling in a small seaport, falls early in love with
a child schoolfellow, for whom his affection never falters. When grown
up the young man accepts an offer from a prosperous kinsman in the West
Indies to join him in his business. His beloved sees him depart with
many misgivings, though their mutual devotion was never to fade. She
does not see him again for forty years, when he returns, like Arden, to
his "native bay,"

"A worn-out man with wither'd limbs and lame,
His mind oppress'd with woes, and bent with age his frame."

He finds his old love, who had been faithful to her engagement for ten
years, and then (believing Allen to be dead) had married. She is now a
widow, with grown-up children scattered through the world, and is
alone. Allen then tells his sad story. The ship in which he sailed from
England had been taken by the Spaniards, and he had been carried a slave
to the West Indies, where he worked in a silver mine, improved his
position under a kind master, and finally married a Spanish girl,
hopeless of ever returning to England though still unforgetful of his
old love. He accumulates money, and, like Crabbe's brother, incurs the
envy of his Roman Catholic neighbours. He is denounced as a heretic, who
would doubtless bring up his children in the accursed English faith. On
his refusal to become a Catholic he is expelled the country, as the
condition of his life being spared:

"His wife, his children, weeping in his sight,
All urging him to flee, he fled, and cursed his flight."

After many adventures he falls in with a ship bound for England, but
again his return is delayed. He is impressed (it was war-time), and
fights for his country; loses a limb, is again left upon a foreign shore
where his education finds him occupation as a clerk; and finally, broken
with age and toil, finds his way back to England, where the faithful
friend of his youth takes care of him and nurses him to the end. The
situation at the close is very touching--for the joy of re-union is
clouded by the real love he feels for the Spanish wife and children from
whom he had been torn, and who are continually present to him in his
dreams.

Nor is the treatment inadequate. It is at once discernible how much
Crabbe had already gained by the necessity for concentration upon the
development of a story instead of on the mere analysis of character. The
style, moreover, has clarified and gained in dignity: there are few, if
any, relapses into the homelier style on which the parodist could try
his hand. Had the author of _Enoch Arden_ treated the same theme in
blank-verse, the workmanship would have been finer, but he could hardly
have sounded a truer note of unexaggerated pathos.

The same may be said of the beautiful tale of _The Lover's Journey_.
Here again is the product of an experience belonging to Crabbe's
personal history. In his early Aldeburgh days, when he was engaged to
Sarah Elmy with but faint hope of ever being able to marry, it was one
of the rare alleviations of his distressed condition to walk over from
Aldeburgh to Beccles (some twenty miles distant), where his betrothed
was occasionally a visitor to her mother and sisters. "It was in his
walks," writes the son, "between Aldeburgh and Beccles that Mr. Crabbe
passed through the very scenery described in the first part of _The
Lover's Journey_; while near Beccles, in another direction, he found the
contrast of rich vegetation introduced in the latter part of that tale;
nor have I any doubt that the _disappointment_ of the story figures out
something that, on one of these visits, befell himself, and the feelings
with which he received it.

"Gone to a friend, she tells me;--I commend
Her purpose: means she to a female friend?"

"For truth compels me to say, that he was by no means free from the less
amiable sign of a strong attachment--jealousy." The story is of the
slightest--an incident rather than a story. The lover, joyous and
buoyant, traverses the dreary coast scenery of Suffolk, and because he
is happy, finds beauty and charm in the commonest and most familiar
sights and sounds of nature: every single hedge-row blossom, every group
of children at their play. The poem is indeed an illustration of
Coleridge's lines in his ode _Dejection_:

"O Lady, we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live,--
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud."

All along the road to his beloved's house, nature wears this
"wedding-garment." On his arrival, however, the sun fades suddenly from
the landscape. The lady is from home: gone to visit a friend a few miles
distant, not so far but that her lover can follow,--but the slight, real
or imaginary, probably the latter, comes as such a rebuff, that during
the "little more--how far away!" that he travels, the country, though
now richer and lovelier, seems to him (as once to Hamlet) a mere
"pestilent congregation of vapours." But in the end he finds his
mistress and learns that she had gone on duty, not for pleasure,--and
they return happy again, and so happy indeed, that he has neither eyes
nor thoughts for any of nature's fertilities or barrennesses--only for
the dear one at his side.

I have already had occasion to quote a few lines from this beautiful
poem, to show Crabbe's minute observation--in his time so rare--of
flowers and birds and all that makes the charm of rural scenery--but I
must quote some more:

"'Various as beauteous, Nature, is thy face,'
Exclaim'd Orlando: 'all that grows has grace:
All are appropriate--bog, and marsh, and fen,
Are only poor to undiscerning men;
Here may the nice and curious eye explore
How Nature's hand adorns the rushy moor,
Here the rare moss in secret shade is found,
Here the sweet myrtle of the shaking ground;
Beauties are these that from the view retire,
But well repay th' attention they require;
For these my Laura will her home forsake,
And all the pleasures they afford, partake.'"

And then follows a masterly description of a gipsy encampment on which
the lover suddenly comes in his travels. Crabbe's treatment of peasant
life has often been compared to that of divers painters--the Dutch
school, Hogarth, Wilkie, and others--and the following curiously
suggests Frederick Walker's fine drawing, _The Vagrants_:

"Again, the country was enclosed, a wide
And sandy road has banks on either side;
Where, lo! a hollow on the left appear'd,
And there a gipsy tribe their tent had rear'd;
'Twas open spread, to catch the morning sun,
And they had now their early meal begun,
When two brown boys just left their grassy seat,
The early Trav'ller with their prayers to greet:
While yet Orlando held his pence in hand,
He saw their sister on her duty stand;
Some twelve years old, demure, affected, sly,
Prepared the force of early powers to try;
Sudden a look of languor he descries,
And well-feigned apprehension in her eyes;
Train'd but yet savage in her speaking face,
He mark'd the features of her vagrant race;
When a light laugh and roguish leer express'd
The vice implanted in her youthful breast:
Forth from the tent her elder brother came,
Who seem'd offended, yet forbore to blame
The young designer, but could only trace
The looks of pity in the Trav'ller's face:
Within, the Father, who from fences nigh
Had brought the fuel for the fire's supply,
Watch'd now the feeble blaze, and stood dejected by.
On ragged rug, just borrowed from the bed,
And by the hand of coarse indulgence fed,
In dirty patchwork negligently dress'd,
Reclined the Wife, an infant at her breast;
In her wild face some touch of grace remain'd,
Of vigour palsied and of beauty stain'd;
Her bloodshot eyes on her unheeding mate
Were wrathful turn'd, and seem'd her wants to state,
Cursing his tardy aid--her Mother there
With gipsy-state engross'd the only chair;
Solemn and dull her look; with such she stands,
And reads the milk-maid's fortune in her hands,
Tracing the lines of life; assumed through years,
Each feature now the steady falsehood wears.
With hard and savage eye she views the food,
And grudging pinches their intruding brood;
Last in the group, the worn-out Grandsire sits
Neglected, lost, and living but by fits:
Useless, despised, his worthless labours done,
And half protected by the vicious Son,
Who half supports him; he with heavy glance
Views the young ruffians who around him dance;
And, by the sadness in his face, appears
To trace the progress of their future years:
Through what strange course of misery, vice, deceit,
Must wildly wander each unpractised cheat!
What shame and grief, what punishment and pain,
Sport of fierce passions, must each child sustain--
Ere they like him approach their latter end,
Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend!

But this Orlando felt not; 'Rogues,' said he,
'Doubtless they are, but merry rogues they be;
They wander round the land, and be it true
They break the laws--then let the laws pursue
The wanton idlers; for the life they live,
Acquit I cannot, but I can forgive.'
This said, a portion from his purse was thrown,
And every heart seem'd happy like his own."

_The Patron_, one of the most carefully elaborated of the Tales, is on
an old and familiar theme. The scorn that "patient merit of the unworthy
takes"; the misery of the courtier doomed "in suing long to bide";--the
ills that assail the scholar's life,

"Toil, envy, want, the Patron and the jail,"

are standing subjects for the moralist and the satirist. In Crabbe's
poem we have the story of a young man, the son of a "Borough-burgess,"
who, showing some real promise as a poet, and having been able to render
the local Squire some service by his verses at election time, is invited
in return to pay a visit of some weeks at the Squire's country-seat. The
Squire has vaguely undertaken to find some congenial post for the young
scholar, whose ideas and ambitions are much in advance of those
entertained for him in his home. The young man has a most agreeable time
with his new friends. He lives for the while with every refinement about
him, and the Squire's daughter, a young lady of the type of Lady Clara
Vere de Vere, evidently enjoys the opportunity of breaking a country
heart for pastime, "ere she goes to town." For after a while the family
leave for their mansion in London, the Squire at parting once more
impressing on his young guest that he will not forget him. After waiting
a reasonable time, the young poet repairs to London and seeks to obtain
an interview with his Patron. After many unsuccessful trials, and
rebuffs at the door from the servants, a letter is at last sent out to
him from their master, coolly advising him to abjure all dreams of a
literary life and offering him a humble post in the Custom House. The
young man, in bitterness of heart, tries the work for a short time; and
then, his health and spirits having utterly failed, he returns to his
parents' home to die, the father thanking God, as he moves away from his
son's grave, that no other of his children has tastes and talents above
his position:

"'There lies my Boy,' he cried, 'of care bereft,
And, Heaven be praised, I've not a genius left:
No one among ye, sons! is doomed to live
On high-raised hopes of what the Great may give.'"

Crabbe, who is nothing if not incisive in the drawing of his moral, and
lays on his colours with no sparing hand, represents the heartless
Patron and his family as hearing the sad tidings with quite amazing
_sang-froid_:

"Meantime the news through various channels spread,
The youth, once favour'd with such praise, was dead:
'Emma,' the Lady cried, 'my words attend,
Your siren-smiles have kill'd your humble friend;
The hope you raised can now delude no more,
Nor charms, that once inspired, can now restore'

Faint was the flush of anger and of shame,
That o'er the cheek of conscious beauty came:
'You censure not,' said she, 'the sun's bright rays,
When fools imprudent dare the dangerous gaze;
And should a stripling look till he were blind,
You would not justly call the light unkind;
But is he dead? and am I to suppose
The power of poison in such looks as those?'
She spoke, and pointing to the mirror, cast
A pleased gay glance, and curtsied as she pass'd.

My Lord, to whom the poet's fate was told,
Was much affected, for a man so cold:
'Dead!' said his lordship, 'run distracted, mad!
Upon my soul I'm sorry for the lad;
And now, no doubt, th' obliging world will say
That my harsh usage help'd him on his way:
What! I suppose, I should have nursed his muse,
And with champagne have brighten'd up his views,
Then had he made me famed my whole life long,
And stunn'd my ears with gratitude and song.
Still should the father hear that I regret
Our joint misfortune--Yes! I'll not forget.'"

The story, though it has no precise prototype in Crabbe's own history,
is clearly the fruit of his experience of life at Belvoir Castle,
combined with the sad recollection of his sufferings when only a few
years before he, a young man with the consciousness of talent, was
rolling butter-tubs on Slaughden Quay.

Much of the Tale is admirably and forcibly written, but again it may be
said that it is powerful fiction rather than poetry--and indeed into
such matters poetry can hardly enter. It displays the fine observation
of Miss Austen, clothed in effective couplets of the school of Johnson
and Churchill. Yet every now and then the true poet comes to the
surface. The essence of a dank and misty day in late autumn has never
been seized with more perfect truth than in these lines:

"Cold grew the foggy morn, the day was brief,
Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf;
The dew dwelt ever on the herb; the woods
Roar'd with strong blasts, with mighty showers the floods:
All green was vanish'd, save of pine and yew,
That still displayed their melancholy hue;
Save the green holly with its berries red,
And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread."

The scheme of these detached Tales had served to develop one special
side of Crabbe's talent. The analysis of human character, with its
strength and weakness (but specially the latter), finds fuller exercise
as the poet has to trace its effects upon the earthly fortunes of the
persons portrayed. The Tale entitled _The Gentleman Farmer_ is a
striking illustration in point. Jeffrey in his review of the _Tales_ in
the _Edinburgh_ supplies, as usual, a short abstract of the story, not
without due insight into its moral. But a profounder student of human
nature than Jeffrey has, in our own day, cited the Tale as worthy even
to illustrate a memorable teaching of St. Paul. The Bishop of Worcester,
better known as Canon Gore to the thousands who listened to the
discourse in Westminster Abbey, finds in this story a perfect
illustration of what moral freedom is, and what it is often erroneously
supposed to be:

"It is of great practical importance that we should get a
just idea of what our freedom consists in. There are men
who, under the impulse of a purely materialist science, declare
the sense of moral freedom to be an illusion. This is of course
a gross error. But what has largely played into the hands of
this error is the exaggerated idea of human freedom which is
ordinarily current, an idea which can only be held by ignoring
our true and necessary dependence and limitation. It is this
that we need to have brought home to us. There is an admirable
story among George Crabbe's _Tales_ called 'The Gentleman
Farmer.' The hero starts in life resolved that he will
not put up with any bondage. The orthodox clergyman,
the orthodox physician, and orthodox matrimony--all these
alike represent social bondage in different forms, and he will
have none of them So he starts on a career of 'unchartered
freedom'

'To prove that _he alone was king of him,_'

and the last scene of all represents him the weak slave of
his mistress, a quack doctor, and a revivalist--'which things
are an allegory.'"

The quotation shows that Crabbe, neglected by the readers of poetry
to-day, is still cherished by the psychologist and divine. It is to the
"graver mind" rather than to the "lighter heart" that he oftenest
appeals. Newman, to mention no small names, found Crabbe's pathos and
fidelity to Human Nature even more attractive to him in advanced years
than in youth. There is indeed much in common between Crabbe's treatment
of life and its problems, and Newman's. Both may be called "stern"
portrayers of human nature, not only as intended in Byron's famous line,
but in Wordsworth's use of the epithet when he invoked Duty as the
"stern Daughter of the voice of God." A kindred lesson to that drawn by
Canon Gore from _The Gentleman Farmer_ is taught in the yet grimmer Tale
of _Edward Shore_. The story, as summarised by Jeffrey, is as follows:

"The hero is a young man of aspiring genius and enthusiastic
temper with an ardent love of virtue, but no settled
principles either of conduct or opinion. He first conceives an
attachment for an amiable girl, who is captivated with his
conversation; but, being too poor to marry, soon comes to
spend more of his time in the family of an elderly sceptic of
his acquaintance, who had recently married a young wife, and
placed unbounded confidence in her virtue, and the honour of
his friend. In a moment of temptation they abuse this
confidence. The husband renounces him with dignified composure;
and he falls at once from the romantic pride of his
virtue. He then seeks the company of the dissipated and
gay, and ruins his health and fortune without regaining his
tranquillity. When in gaol and miserable, he is relieved by
an unknown hand, and traces the benefaction to the friend
whose former kindness he had so ill repaid. This humiliation
falls upon his proud spirit and shattered nerves with an
overwhelming force, and his reason fails beneath it. He is
for some time a raving maniac, and then falls into a state of
gay and compassionable imbecility, which is described with
inimitable beauty in the close of this story."

Jeffrey's abstract is fairly accurate, save in one particular. Edward
Shore can hardly be said to feel an "ardent love of virtue." Rather is
he perfectly confident of his respectability, and bitterly contemptuous
of those who maintain the necessity of religion to control men's unruly
passions. His own lofty conceptions of the dignity of human nature are
sufficient for himself:

"'While reason guides me, I shall walk aright,
Nor need a steadier hand, or stronger light;
Nor this in dread of awful threats, design'd
For the weak spirit and the grov'ling mind;
But that, engaged by thoughts and views sublime,
I wage free war with grossness and with crime.'
Thus looked he proudly on the vulgar crew,
Whom statutes govern, and whom fears subdue."

As motto for this story Crabbe quotes the fine speech of Henry V. on
discovering the treachery of Lord Scrope, whose character had hitherto
seemed so immaculate. The comparison thus suggested is not as felicitous
as in many of Crabbe's citations. Had _In_ _Memoriam_ been then
written, a more exact parallel might have been found in Tennyson's
warning to the young enthusiast:

"See thou, that countest reason ripe
In holding by the law within,
Thou fail not in a world of sin,
And ev'n for want of such a type."

The story is for the most part admirably told. The unhappy man, reduced
to idiocy of a harmless kind, and the common playmate of the village
children, is encountered now and then by the once loved maid, who might
have made him happy:

"Kindly she chides his boyish flights, while he
Will for a moment fix'd and pensive be;
And as she trembling speaks, his lively eyes
Explore her looks; he listens to her sighs;
Charm'd by her voice, th' harmonious sounds invade
His clouded mind, and for a time persuade:
Like a pleased infant, who has newly caught
From the maternal glance a gleam of thought,
He stands enrapt, the half-known voice to hear,
And starts, half conscious, at the falling tear.

Rarely from town, nor then unwatch'd, he goes,
In darker mood, as if to hide his woes;
Returning soon, he with impatience seeks
His youthful friends, and shouts, and sings, and speaks;
Speaks a wild speech with action all as wild--
The children's leader, and himself a child;
He spins their top, or at their bidding bends
His back, while o'er it leap his laughing friends;
Simple and weak, he acts the boy once more,
And heedless children call him _Silly Shore_."

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