He was a well-made, handsome, pleasant fellow—riding a good horse with the hounds—loving good cheer—enjoying laughter, without being very particular as to the cause of it—a little too much addicted to carousing, but withal an agreeable and useful citizen; and he lived at Parham Lodge, a house that a peer inhabited after him, without making any important alterations in the place.
On Crabbe's first introduction to Parham Lodge he was received with cordiality; but when it was seen that he had fallen in love with the squire's niece, it was only natural that "his presumption" should not at first meet the approval either of Mrs. Tovell or her husband. But the young people plighted troth to each other, and the engagement was recognized by the lady's family. It was years, however, before the wedding bells were set ringing. Crabbe's apprenticeship to Mr. Page finished, he tried ineffectually to raise the funds for a regular course of hospital instruction in London. Returning to Aldborough, he furnished a shop with a few bottles and a pound's worth of drugs, and set up as "an apothecary." Of course it was only amongst the poor of his native town that he obtained patients, the wealthier inhabitants of the borough distrusting the knowledge of a doctor who had not walked the hospitals. In the summer of 1778, however, he was appointed surgeon to the Warwickshire militia, then stationed at Aldborough, and in the following winter, on the Warwickshire militia being moved and replaced by the Norfolk militia, he was appointed surgeon to the latter regiment also. But these posts were only temporary, and conferred but little emolument on their holder. At length poverty drove the poet from his native town. The rest of his career is matter of notoriety. Every reader knows how the young man went to London and only escaped the death of Otway or Chatterton by the generous patronage of Burke, how through Burke's assistance he was ordained, became the Duke of Rutland's chaplain, obtained comfortable church preferment, and for a long span enjoyed an amount of domestic happiness that was as great and richly deserved as his literary reputation.
Crabbe's marriage with Sarah Elmy eventually conferred on him and his children the possession of Parham Lodge, which estate, a few years since, passed from them into the hands of wealthy purchasers. The poet also succeeded to other wealth through the same connection, an old-maid sister of John Tovell leaving him a considerable sum of money. "I can screw Crabbe up and down like an old fiddle," this amiable lady was fond of saying; and during her life she proved that her boast was no empty one. But her will was a handsome apology for all her little tiffs.
CHAPTER XXV.
NUMBER ELEVEN—A HOSPITAL STORY.
"Then, sir," said Mrs. Mallet, "if you'll only not look so frightened, I'll tell you how it was. It is now twenty years ago that I was very unfortunate. I was not more than thirty years of age, but I was old enough to have just lost a good husband and a dear little babe; and then, when I hadn't a sixpence in my pocket, I caught the fever, and had to go to a hospital. I wasn't used to trouble; for although I was nothing better than a poor man's child, I had known all my life nothing but kindness. I never had but one mistress,—my lady, who when she was the most beautiful young lady in all Devonshire, took me out of a village school, and raised me to be her maid; and her maid I was for twelve years—first down in Devonshire, and afterwards up in London, when she married (somewhat against the will of her family) a thorough good gentleman, but a poor one, who after a time took her out to India, where he became a judge, and she a grand lady. My dear mistress would have taken me out to India with her, only she was then too poor to pay for my passage out, and bear the expense of me there, where labour can be got so cheap, and native servants can live on a handful of rice a day. She, sir, is Lady Burridge—the same who gave me the money to start in this house with, and whose carriage you saw yesterday at my door.
"So my mistress went eastward, and I was left behind to marry a young man I had loved for some few years, and who had served during that time as clerk to my lady's husband. I was a young woman, and young women, to the end of the chapter, will think it a brave thing to fall in love. I thought my sweetheart was a handsomer and cleverer man than any other of his station in all London. I wonder how many girls have thought the same of their favourites! I went to church one morning with a fluttering heart and trembling knees, and came out under the porch thinking that all my life would ever afterwards be brighter, and lighter, and sunnier than it had been before. Well! in dancing into that pretty blunder, I wasn't a bigger fool than lots of others.
"And if a good husband is a great blessing (and she must be a paltry woman who can say nay to that), I was born to luck; for my husband was kind, good, and true—his temper was as sweet at home as his manners were abroad—he was hard-working and clever, sober and devout; and—though you may laugh at a woman of my age talking so like a romance—I tell you, sir, that if my life had to come all over again, I'd rather have the mischance of marrying my dear Richard, that the good fortune of wedding a luckier man.