LIFE AT BELVOIR CASTLE AND AT MUSTON
(1783-1792)
"The sudden popularity of The Village" writes Crabbe's son and biographer, "must have produced, after the numberless slights and disappointments already mentioned, and even after the tolerable success of The Library, about as strong a revulsion in my father's mind as a ducal chaplaincy in his circumstances; but there was no change in his temper or manners. The successful author continued as modest as the rejected candidate for publication had been patient and long-suffering." The biographer might have remarked as no less strange that the success of The Village failed, for the moment at least, to convince Crabbe where his true strength lay. When he again published a poem, two years later, he reverted to the old Popian topics and methods in a by no means successful didactic satire on newspapers. Meantime the occasional visits of the Duke of Rutland and his family to London brought the chaplain again in touch with the Burkes and the friends he had first made through them, notably with Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was also able to visit the theatre occasionally, and fell under the spell, not only of Mrs. Siddons, but of Mrs. Jordan (in the character of Sir Harry Wildair). It was now decided that as a nobleman's chaplain it would be well for him to have a university degree, and to this end his name was entered on the boards of Trinity College, Cambridge, through the good offices of Bishop Watson of Llandaff, with a view to his obtaining a degree without residence. This was in 1783, but almost immediately afterwards he received an LL.B. degree from the Archbishop of Canterbury. This was obtained for Crabbe in order that he might hold two small livings in Dorsetshire, Frome St. Quintin and Evershot, to which he had just been presented by Thurlow. It was on this occasion that the Chancellor made his memorable comparison of Crabbe to Parson Adams, no doubt pointing to a certain rusticity, and possibly provincial accent, from which Crabbe seems never to have been wholly free. This promotion seems to have interfered very little with Crabbe's residence at Belvoir or in London. A curate was doubtless placed in one or other of the parsonage-houses in Dorsetshire at such modest stipend as was then usual—often not more than thirty pounds a year—and the rector would content himself with a periodical flying visit to receive tithe, or inquire into any parish grievances that may have reached his ear. As incidents of this kind will be not infrequent during the twenty years that follow in Crabbe's clerical career, it may be well to intimate at once that no peculiar blame attaches to him in the matter. He but "partook of the frailty of his times." During these latter years of the eighteenth century, as for long before and after, pluralism in the Church was rather the rule than the exception, and in consequence non-residence was recognised as inevitable, and hardly matter for comment. The two Dorsetshire livings were of small value, and as Crabbe was now looking forward to his marriage with the faithful Miss Elmy, he could not have afforded to reside. He may not, however, have thought it politic to decline the first preferment offered by so important a dispenser of patronage as the Lord Chancellor.
Events, however, were at hand, which helped to determine Crabbe's immediate future. Early in 1784 the Duke of Rutland became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The appointment had been made some time before, and it had been decided that Crabbe was not to be on the Castle staff. His son expresses no surprise at this decision, and makes of it no grievance. The duke and the chaplain parted excellent friends. Crabbe and his wife were to remain at Belvoir as long as it suited their convenience, and the duke undertook that he would not forget him as regarded future preferment. On the strength of these offers, Crabbe and Miss Elmy wore married in December 1783, in the parish church of Beccles, where Miss Elmy's mother resided, and a few weeks later took up their abode in the rooms assigned them at Belvoir Castle.
As Miss Elmy had lived for many years with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. John Tovell, at Parham, and moreover as this rural inland village played a considerable part in the development of Crabbe's poetical faculty, it may be well to quote his son's graphic account of the domestic circumstances of Miss Elmy's relatives. Mr. Tovell was, like Mr. Hathaway, "a substantial yeoman," for he owned an estate of some eight hundred a year, to some share of which, as the Tovells had lost their only child, Miss Elmy would certainly in due course succeed. The Tovells' house at Parham, which has been long ago pulled down, and rebuilt as Paritam Lodge, on very different lines, was of ample size, with its moat, so common a feature of the homestead in the eastern counties, "rookery, dove-cot, and fish-ponds"; but the surroundings were those of the ordinary farmhouse, for Mr. Tovell himself cultivated part of his estate.
"The drawing-room, a corresponding dining-parlour, and a handsome sleeping apartment upstairs, were all tabooed ground, and made use of on great and solemn occasions only—such as rent-days, and an occasional visit with which Mr. Tovell was honoured by a neighbouring peer. At all other times the family and their visitors lived entirely in the old-fashioned kitchen along with the servants. My great-uncle occupied an armchair, or, in attacks of gout, a couch on one side of a large open chimney.... At a very early hour in the morning the alarum called the maids, and their mistress also; and if the former were tardy, a louder alarum, and more formidable, was heard chiding their delay—not that scolding was peculiar to any occasion; it regularly ran on through all the day, like bells on harness, inspiriting the work, whether it were done well or ill." In the annotated volume of the son's memoir which belonged to Edward FitzGerald, the writer added the following detail as to his great-aunt's temper and methods:—"A wench whom Mrs. Tovell had pursued with something weightier than invective—a ladle, I think—whimpered out 'If an angel from Hiv'n were to come mawther'" (Suffolk for girl) "'to missus, she wouldn't give no satisfaction.'"
George Crabbe the younger, who gives this graphic account of the ménage at Parham, was naturally anxious to claim for his mother, who so long formed one of this queer household, a degree of refinement superior to that of her surroundings. After describing the daily dinner-party in the kitchen—master, mistress, servants, with an occasional "travelling rat-catcher or tinker"—he skilfully points out that his mother's feelings must have resembled those of the boarding-school miss in his father's "Widow's Tale" when subjected to a like experience:—
"But when the men beside their station took,
The maidens with them, and with these the cook;
When one huge wooden bowl before them stood,
Filled with huge balls of farinaceous food;
With bacon, mass saline! where never lean
Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen:
When from a single horn the party drew
Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new;
When the coarse cloth she saw, with many a stain,
Soiled by rude hands who cut and came again—
She could not breathe, but with a heavy sigh,
Reined the fair neck, and shut th' offended eye;
She minced the sanguine flesh in frustums fine,
And wondered much to see the creatures dine!"
The home of the Tovells has long disappeared, and it must not therefore be confused with the more remarkable "moated grange" in Parham, originally the mansion of the Willoughbys, though now a farmhouse, boasting a fine Tudor gateway and other fragments of fifteenth and sixteenth century work. An engraving of the Hall and moat, after Stanfield, forms an illustration to the third volume of the 1834 edition of Crabbe.
When Crabbe began The Village, it was clearly intended to be, like The Borough later, a picture of Aldeburgh and its inhabitants. Yet not only Parham, but the country about Belvoir crept in before the poem was completed. If the passage in Book I. beginning:—