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 His small flock at Great and Little Glemham employed part of his time; the education of his two sons, who were now withdrawn from school, occupied some more; and a wife in failing health was certainly not neglected.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."
This account of matters is rather mixed. The "early period" pointed to by young Crabbe is that at which he himself first had distinct recollection of his father, and his doings. Putting that age at six years old, the year would be 1791; and it may be inferred that as the whole family paid a visit of many months to Suffolk in the year 1790, it was during that visit that he had the decisive attack in the streets of Ipswich. The account may be continued in the son's own words:—
"Having left my mother at the inn, he walked into the
town alone, and suddenly staggered in the street, and fell.
He was lifted up by the passengers" (probably from the stagecoach
from which they had just alighted), "and overheard
some one say significantly, 'Let the gentleman alone, he will
be better by and by'; for his fall was attributed to the
bottle. He was assisted to his room, and the late Dr. Clubbe
was sent for, who, after a little examination, saw through the
case with great judgment. 'There is nothing the matter with
your head,' he observed, 'nor any apoplectic tendency; let
the digestive organs bear the whole blame: you must take
opiates.' From that time his health began to amend rapidly,
and his constitution was renovated; a rare effect of opium,
for that drug almost always inflicts some partial injury, even
when it is necessary; but to him it was only salutary—and
to a constant but slightly increasing dose of it may be attributed
his long and generally healthy life."
The son makes no reference to any possible effects of this "slightly increasing dose" upon his father's intellect or imagination. And the ordinary reader who knows the poet mainly through his sober couplets may well be surprised to hear that their author was ever addicted to the opium-habit; still more, that his imagination ever owed anything to its stimulus. But in FitzGerald's copy there is a MS. note, not signed "G.C.," and therefore FitzGerald's own. It runs thus: "It" (the opium) "probably influenced his dreams, for better or worse" To this FitzGerald significantly adds, "see also the World of Dreams, and Sir Eustace Grey."
As Crabbe is practically unknown to the readers of the present day, Sir Eustace Grey will be hardly even a name to them. For it lies, with two or three other noticeable poems, quite out of the familiar track of his narrative verse. In the first place it is in stanzas, and what Browning would have classed as a "Dramatic Lyric." The subject is as follows: The scene "a Madhouse," and the persons a Visitor, a Physician, and a Patient. The visitor has been shown over the establishment, and is on the point of departing weary and depressed at the sight of so much misery, when the physician begs him to stay as they come in sight of the "cell" of a specially interesting patient, Sir Eustace Grey, late of Greyling Hall. Sir Eustace greets them as they approach, plunges at once into monologue, and relates (with occasional warnings from the doctor against over-excitement) the sad story of his misfortunes and consequent loss of reason. He begins with a description of his happier days:—
"Some twenty years, I think, are gone
(Time flies, I know not how, away),
The sun upon no happier shone
Nor prouder man, than Eustace Grey.
Ask where you would, and all would say,
The man admired and praised of all,
By rich and poor, by grave and gay,
Was the young lord of Greyling Hall.
"Yes! I had youth and rosy health,
Was nobly formed, as man might be; For sickness, then, of all my wealth,
I never gave a single fee:
The ladies fair, the maidens free.
Were all accustomed then to say,
Who would a handsome figure see,
Should look upon Sir Eustace Grey.
"My lady I—She was all we love;
All praise, to speak her worth, is faint;
Her manners show'd the yielding dove,
Her morals, the seraphic saint:
She never breathed nor looked complaint;
No equal upon earth had she:
Now, what is this fair thing I paint?
Alas! as all that live shall be.
"There were two cherub-things beside,
A gracious girl, a glorious boy;
Yet more to swell my fall-blown pride,
To varnish higher my fading joy,
Pleasures were ours without alloy,
Nay, Paradise,—till my frail Eve
Our bliss was tempted to destroy—
Deceived, and fated to deceive.
"But I deserved;—for all that time
When I was loved, admired, caressed,
There was within each secret crime,
Unfelt, uncancelled, unconfessed:
I never then my God addressed,
In grateful praise or humble prayer;
And if His Word was not my jest—
(Dread thought!) it never was my care."