English Men of Letters: Crabbe

by Alfred Ainger

"Our haughty life is crowned with darkness,
Like London with its own black wreath,
On which with thee, O Crabbe, forth looking,
I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath."

Between Samuel Hoare's hospitable roof and the Hummums in Covent Garden Crabbe seems to have alternated, according as his engagements in town required.

But although living, as the Diary shows, in daily intercourse with the literary and artistic world, tasting delights which were absolutely new to him, Crabbe never forgot either his humble friends in Wiltshire, or the claims of his own art. He kept in touch with Trowbridge, where his son John was in charge, and sends instructions from time to time as to poor pensioners and others who were not to be neglected in the weekly ministrations. At the same time, he seems rarely to have omitted the self-imposed task of adding daily to the pile of manuscript on which he was at work—the collection of stories to be subsequently issued as Tales of the Hall. Crabbe had resolved, in the face of whatever distractions, to write if possible a fixed amount every day. More than once in the Diary occur such entries as: "My thirty lines done; but not well, I fear." "Thirty lines to-day, but not yesterday—must work up." This anticipation of a method made famous later in the century by Anthony Trollope may account (as also in Trollope's case) for certain marked inequalities in the merit of the work thus turned out. At odd times and in odd places were these verses sometimes composed. On a certain Sunday morning in July 1817, after going to church at St. James's, Piccadilly (or was it the Chapel Royal?), Crabbe wandered eastward and found inspiration in the most unexpected quarter: "Write some lines in the solitude of Somerset House, not fifty yards from the Thames on one side, and the Strand on the other; but as quiet as the sands of Arabia. I am not quite in good humour with this day; but, happily, I cannot say why."

The last mysterious sentence is one of many scattered through, the Diary, which, aided by dashes and omission-marks by the editorial son, point to certain sentimentalisms in which Crabbe was still indulging, even in the vortex of fashionable gaieties. We gather throughout that the ladies he met interested him quite as much, or even more, than the distinguished men of letters, and there are allusions besides to other charmers at a distance. The following entry immediately precedes that of the Sunday just quoted:—

"14th.—Some more intimate conversation this morning with
Mr. and Mrs. Moore. They mean to go to Trowbridge. He
is going to Paris, but will not stay long. Mrs. Spencer's
album. Agree to dine at Curzon Street. A welcome letter
from ——. This makes the day more cheerful. Suppose it
were so. Well, 'tis not! Go to Mr. Rogers, and take a farewell
visit to Highbury. Miss Rogers. Promise to go when ——.
Return early. Dine there, and purpose to see Mr.
Moore and Mr. Rogers in the morning when they set out for
Calais."

On the whole, however, Crabbe may have found, when these fascinating experiences were over, that there had been safety in a multitude. For he seems to have been equally charmed with Rogers's sister, and William Spencer's daughter, and the Countess of Bessborough, and a certain Mrs. Wilson,—and, like Miss Snevellicci's papa, to have "loved them every one."

Meanwhile Crabbe was working steadily, while in London, at his new poems. Though his minimum output was thirty lines a day, he often produced more, and on one occasion he records eighty lines as the fruit of a day's labour. During the year 1818 he was still at work, and in September of that year he writes to Mary Leadbeater that his verses "are not yet entirely ready, but do not want much that he can give them." He was evidently correcting and perfecting to the best of his ability, and (as I believe) profiting by the intellectual stimulus of his visit to London, as well as by the higher standards of versification that he had met with, even in writers inferior to himself. The six weeks in London had given him advantages he had never enjoyed before. In his early days under Burke's roof he had learned much from Burke himself, and from Johnson and Fox, but he was then only a promising beginner. Now, thirty-five years later, he met Rogers, Wordsworth, Campbell, Moore, as social equals, and having, like them, won a public for himself. When his next volumes appeared, the workmanship proved, as of old, unequal, but here and there Crabbe showed a musical ear, and an individuality of touch of a different order from anything he had achieved before. Mr. Courthope and other critics hold that there are passages in Crabbe's earliest poems, such as The Village, which have a metrical charm he never afterwards attained. But I strongly suspect that in such passages Crabbe had owed much to the revising hand of Burke, Johnson, and Fox.

In the spring of 1819 Crabbe was again in town, visiting at Holland House, and dining at the Thatched House with the "Literary Society," of which he had been elected a member, and which to-day still dines and prospers. He was then preparing for the publication of his new Tales, from the famous house in Albemarle Street. Two years before, in 1817, on the strength doubtless of Rogers's strong recommendation, Murray had made a very liberal offer for the new poems, and the copyright of all Crabbe's previous works. For these, together, Murray had offered three thousand pounds. Strangely enough, Rogers was at first dissatisfied with the offer, holding that the sum should be paid for the new volumes alone. He and a friend (possibly Campbell), who had conducted the negotiation, accordingly went off to the house of Longman to see if they could not get better terms. To their great discomfiture the Longmans only offered £1000 for the privilege that Murray had valued at three times the amount; and Crabbe and his friends were placed in a difficult position. A letter of Moore to John Murray many years afterwards, when Crabbe's Memoir was in preparation, tells the sequel of the story, and it may well be given in his words:

"In this crisis it was that Mr. Rogers and myself, anxious
to relieve our poor friend from his suspense, called upon
you, as you must well remember, in Albemarle Street; and
seldom have I watched a countenance with more solicitude, or heard words that gave me much more pleasure than
when, on the subject being mentioned, you said 'Oh! yes.
I have heard from Mr. Crabbe, and look upon the matter as
all settled.' I was rather pressed, I remember, for time that
morning, having an appointment on some business of my
own, but Mr. Rogers insisted that I should accompany him
to Crabbe's lodgings, and enjoy the pleasure of seeing him
relieved from his suspense. We found him sitting in his
room, alone, and expecting the worst; but soon dissipated
all his fears by the agreeable intelligence which we brought.
"When he received the bills for £3000, we earnestly advised
that he should, without delay, deposit them in some safe hands;
but no—he must take them with him to Trowbridge, and show
them to his son John. They would hardly believe in his
good luck, at home, if they did not see the bills. On his
way down to Trowbridge, a friend at Salisbury, at whose
house he rested (Mr. Everett, the banker), seeing that he
carried these bills loosely in his waistcoat pocket, requested
to be allowed to take charge of them for him: but with
equal ill success. 'There was no fear,' he said, 'of his losing
them, and he must show them to his son John.'"

It was matter of common knowledge in the literary world of Crabbe's day that John Murray did not on this occasion make a very prudent bargain, and that in fact he lost heavily by his venture. No doubt his offer was based upon the remarkable success of Crabbe's two preceding poems. The Borough had passed through six editions in the same number of years, and the Tales reached a fifth edition within two years of publication. But for changes in progress in the poetic taste of the time, Murray might safely have anticipated a continuance of Crabbe's popularity. But seven years had elapsed since the appearance of the Tales, and in these seven years much had happened. Byron had given to the world one by one the four cantos of Childe Harold, as well as other poems rich in splendid rhetoric and a lyric versatility far beyond Crabbe's reach. Wordsworth's two volumes in 1815 contained by far the most important and representative of his poems, and these were slowly but surely winning him a public of his own, intellectual and thoughtful if not as yet numerous. John Keats had made two appearances, in 1817 and 1818, and the year following the publication of Crabbe's Tales of the Hall was to add to them the Odes and other poems constituting the priceless volume of 1820—Lamia and other Poems. Again, for the lovers of fiction—whom, as I have said, Crabbe had attracted quite as strongly as the lovers of verse—Walter Scott had produced five or six of his finest novels, and was adding to the circle of his admirers daily. By the side of this fascinating prose, and still more fascinating metrical versatility, Crabbe's resolute and plodding couplets might often seem tame and wearisome. Indeed, at this juncture, the rhymed heroic couplet, as a vehicle for the poetry of imagination, was tottering to its fall, though it lingered for many years as the orthodox form for university prize poems, and for occasional didactic or satirical effusions. Crabbe, very wisely, remained faithful to the metre. For his purpose, and with his subjects and special gifts, none probably would have served him better. For narrative largely blended with the analytical and the epigrammatic method neither the stanza nor blank-verse (had he ever mastered it) would have sufficed. But in Crabbe's last published volumes it was not only the metre that was to seem flat and monotonous in the presence of new proofs of the boundless capabilities of verse. The reader would not make much progress in these volumes without discovering that the depressing incidents of life, its disasters and distresses, were still Crabbe's prevailing theme. John Murray in the same season published Rogers's Human Life and Crabbe's Tales of the Hall. The publisher sent Crabbe a copy of the former, and he acknowledged it in a few lines as follows: