English Men of Letters: Crabbe

by Alfred Ainger

"To hide in rant the heart-ache of the night."'"

There is pathos in the recollection that just ten years later when Scott lay in his study at Abbotsford—the strength of that noble mind slowly ebbing away—the very passage in The Borough just quoted was one of those he asked to have read to him. It is the graphic and touching account in Letter XII. of the "Strolling Players," and as the description of their struggles and their squalor fell afresh upon his ear, his own excursions into matters theatrical recurred to him, and he murmured smiling, "Ah! Terry won't like that! Terry won't like that!!"

The same year Crabbe was invited to spend Christmas at his old home, Belvoir Castle, but felt unable to face the fatigue in wintry weather. Meantime, among other occupations at home, he was finding time to write verse copiously. Twenty-one manuscript volumes were left behind him at his death. He seems to have said little about it at home, for his son tells us that in the last year of his father's life he learned for the first time that another volume of Tales was all but ready for the press. "There are in my recess at home," he writes to George, "where they have been long undisturbed, another series of such stories, in number and quantity sufficient for another octavo volume; and as I suppose they are much like the former in execution, and sufficiently different in events and characters, they may hereafter, in peaceable times, be worth something to you." A selection from those formed the Posthumous Poems, first given to the world in the edition of 1834. The Tales of the Hall, it may be supposed, had not quite justified the publisher's expectations. John Murray had sought to revive interest in the whole bulk of Crabbe's poetry, of which he now possessed the copyright, by commissioning Richard Westall, R.A., to produce a series of illustrations of the poems, thirty-one in number, engravings of which were sold in sets at two guineas. The original drawings, in delicate water-colour, in the present Mr. John Murray's possession, are sufficiently grim. The engravings, lacking the relief of colour, are even more so, and a rapid survey of the entire series amply shows how largely in Crabbe's subjects bulks the element of human misery. Crabbe was much flattered by this new tribute to his reputation, and dwells on it in one of his letters to Mrs. Leadbeater.

A letter written from Mrs. Hoare's house at Hampstead in June 1825 presents an agreeable picture of his holiday enjoyments:--

"My time passes I cannot tell how pleasantly when the
pain leaves me. To-day I read one of my long stories to my
friends and Mrs. Joanna Baillie and her sister. It was a task;
but they encouraged me, and were, or seemed, gratified. I
rhyme at Hampstead with a great deal of facility, for nothing
interrupts me but kind calls to something pleasant; and
though all this makes parting painful, it will, I hope, make
me resolute to enter upon my duties diligently when I return.
I am too much indulged. Except a return of pain, and that
not severe, I have good health; and if my walks are not so
long, they are more frequent. I have seen many things and
many people; have seen Mr. Southey and Mr. Wordsworth;
have been some days with Mr. Rogers, and at last have been
at the Athenaeum, and purpose to visit the Royal Institution.
I have been to Richmond in a steamboat; seen also the
picture-galleries and some other exhibitions; but I passed one
Sunday in London with discontent, doing no duty myself, nor
listening to another; and I hope my uneasiness proceeded not
merely from breaking a habit. We had a dinner social and
pleasant, if the hours before it had been rightly spent; but I
would not willingly pass another Sunday in the same manner.
I have my home with my friends here (Mrs. Hoare's), and
exchange it with reluctance for the Hummums occasionally.
Such is the state of the garden here, in which I walk and read,
that, in a morning like this, the smell of the flowers is
fragrant beyond anything I ever perceived before. It is
what I can suppose may be in Persia or other oriental
countries—a Paradisiacal sweetness. I am told that I or my
verses, or perhaps both, have abuse in a boot of Mr. Colburn's
publishing, called The Spirit of the Times. I believe I felt
something indignant; but my engraved seal dropped out of
the socket and was lost, and I perceived this moved me much
more than the Spirit of Mr. Hazlitt."

The reference is, of course, to Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age, then lately published In reviewing the poetry of his day Hazlitt has a chapter devoted to Campbell and Crabbe. The criticism on the latter is little more than a greatly over-drawn picture of Crabbe's choice of vice and misery for his subjects, and ignores entirely any other side of his genius, ending with the remark that he would long be "a thorn in the side of English poetry." Crabbe was wise in not attaching too much importance to Hazlitt's attack.

Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes, mentioned in the letter just cited, saw much of Crabbe during his visits to Hampstead. A letter from Joanna to the younger George speaks, as do all his friends, of his growing kindliness and courtesy, but notes how often, in the matter of judging his fellow-creatures, his head and his heart were in antagonism. While at times Joanna was surprised and provoked by the charitable allowances the old parson made for the unworthy, at other times she noted also that she would hear him, when acts of others were the subject of praise, suggesting, "in a low voice as to himself," the possible mixture of less generous motives. The analytical method was clearly dominant in Crabbe always, and not merely when he wrote his poetry, and is itself the clue to much in his treatment of human nature.

Of Crabbe's simplicity and unworldliness in other matters Miss Baillie furnishes an amusing instance. She writes:—

"While he was staying with Mrs. Hoare a few years since
I sent him one day the present of a blackcock, and a message
with it that Mr. Crabbe should look at the bird before it was
delivered to the cook, or something to that purpose. He
looked at the bird as desired, and then went to Mrs. Hoare in
some perplexity to ask whether he ought not to have it
stuffed, instead of eating it. She could not, in her own house, tell him that it was simply intended for the larder, and he
was at the trouble and expense of having it stuffed, lest I
should think proper respect had not been put upon my
present."

Altogether the picture presented in these last years of Crabbe's personality is that of a pious and benevolent old man, endearing himself to old and new friends, and with manners somewhat formal and overdone, representing perhaps what in his humbler Aldeburgh days he had imagined to be those of the upper circles, rather than what he had found them to be in his prosperous later days in London.