English Men of Letters: Crabbe Part 4

CHAPTER V

IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

(1792-1805)

On the arrival of the family at Parham, poor Crabbe discovered that even an accession of fortune had its attendant drawbacks. His son, George, records his own recollections (he was then a child of seven years) of the scene that met their view on their alighting at Parham Lodge. "As I got out of the chaise, I remember jumping for very joy, and exclaiming, 'Here we are, here we are--little w.i.l.l.y and all!'"--(his parents'

seventh and youngest child, then only a few weeks old)--"but my spirits sunk into dismay when, on entering the well-known kitchen, all there seemed desolate, dreary, and silent. Mrs. Tovell and her sister-in-law, sitting by the fireside weeping, did not even rise up to welcome my parents, but uttered a few chilling words and wept again. All this appeared to me as inexplicable as forbidding. How little do children dream of the alterations that older people's feelings towards each other undergo, when death has caused a transfer of property! Our arrival in Suffolk was by no means palatable to all my mother's relations."

Mr. Tovell's widow had doubtless her suitable jointure, and probably a modest dower-residence to retire to; but Parham Hall had to be vacated, and Crabbe, having purchased its furniture, at once entered on possession. The mere re-arrangement of the contents caused many heartburnings to the spinster-sister, who had known them under the old _regime_, and the alteration of the hanging of a picture would have made "Jacky," she averred, to turn in his grave. Crabbe seems, however, to have shown so much good-feeling and forbearance in the matter that the old lady, after grimly boasting that she could "screw Crabbe up and down like a fiddle," was ultimately friendly, and her share of her brother's estate came in due course to Crabbe and his wife. Moreover, the change of tenancy at the Hall was anything but satisfactory to the village generally. Mr. Tovell had been much given to hospitality, and that of a convivial sort. Such of the neighbours as were of kindred tastes had been in the habit of "dropping in" of an evening two or three times a week, when, if a _quorum_ was present, a bowl of punch would be brewed, and sometimes a second and a third. The subst.i.tution for all this of the quiet and decorous family life of the Crabbes was naturally a h.o.a.ry blow and grave discouragement to the village reveller, and contributed to make Crabbe's life at starting far from happy. His pursuits and inclinations, literary as well as clerical, made such company distasteful; and his wife, who had borne him seven children in nine years, and of these had lost four in infancy, had little strength or heart for miscellaneous company. But there was compensation for her husband among the county gentry of the neighbourhood, and notably in the constant kindness of Dudley North, of Little Glemham Hall, the same friend who had helped him with money when twelve years before he had left Aldeburgh, an almost penniless adventurer, to try his fortune in London. At Mr. North's table Crabbe had once more the opportunity of meeting members of the Whig party, whom he had known through Burke. On one such occasion Fox expressed his regret that Crabbe had ceased to write, and offered his help in revising any future poem that he might produce. The promise was not forgotten when ten years later _The Parish Register_ was in preparation.

During his first year at Parham, Crabbe does not appear to have undertaken any fixed clerical duties, and this interval of leisure allowed him to pay a long visit to his sister at Aldeburgh, and here he placed his two elder boys, George and John, at a dame school. On returning to Parham, he accepted the office of curate-in-charge at Sweffling, the rector, Rev. Richard Turner, being resident at his other living of Great Yarmouth. The curacy of Great Glemham, also within easy reach, was shortly added. Crabbe was still residing at Parham Lodge, but the incidents of such residence remained far from pleasant, and, after four years there, Crabbe joyfully accepted the offer of a good house at Great Glemham, placed at his disposal by his friend Dudley North. Here the family remained for a further period of four or five years.

A fresh bereavement in his family had made Crabbe additionally anxious for change of scene and a.s.sociations for his wife. In 1796, another child died--their third son, Edmund--in his sixth year. Two children, out of a family of seven, alone remained; and this final blow proved more than the poor mother could bear uninjured. From this time dated "a nervous disorder," which indeed meant a gradual decay of mental power, from which she never recovered; and Crabbe, an ever-devoted husband, tended her with exemplary care till her death in 1813. Southey, writing about Crabbe to his friend, Neville White, in 1808, adds: "It was not long before his wife became deranged, and when all this was told me by one who knew him well, five years ago, he was still almost confined in his own house, anxiously waiting upon this wife in her long and hopeless malady. A sad history! It is no wonder that he gives so melancholy a picture of human life."

Save for Mrs. Crabbe's broken health and increasing melancholy, the four years at Glemham were among the most peaceful and happiest of Crabbe's life. His son grows eloquent over the elegance of the house and the natural beauties of its situation. "A small well-wooded park occupied the whole mouth of the glen, whence, doubtless, the name of the village was derived. In the lowest ground stood the commodious mansion; the approach wound down through a plantation on the eminence in front. The opposite hill rose at the back of it, rich and varied with trees and shrubs scattered irregularly; under this southern hill ran a brook, and on the banks above it were spots of great natural beauty, crowned by whitethorn and oak. Here the purple scented violet perfumed the air, and in one place coloured the ground. On the left of the front in the narrower portion of the glen was the village; on the right, a confined view of richly wooded fields. In fact, the whole parish and neighbourhood resemble a combination of groves, interspersed with fields cultivated like gardens, and intersected with those green dry lanes which tempt the walker in all weathers, especially in the evenings, when in the short gra.s.s of the dry sandy banks lies every few yards a glowworm, and the nightingales are pouring forth their melody in every direction."

It was not, therefore, for lack of acquaintance with the more idyllic side of English country-life that Crabbe, when he once more addressed the public in verse, turned to the less sunny memories of his youth for inspiration. It was not till some years after the appearance of _The Parish Register_ and _The Borough_ that the pleasant paths of inland Suffolk and of the Vale of Belvoir formed the background to his studies in human character.

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 ent.i.tled 'The Widow Grey,' but I recollect nothing of it except that the princ.i.p.al character was a benevolent humorist, a Dr. Allison. The next was called 'Reginald Glanshaw, or the Man who commanded Success,' a portrait of an a.s.suming, 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 t.i.tle 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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sengers" (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 a.s.sisted 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 const.i.tution 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 cla.s.sed 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 n.o.bly 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 G.o.d addressed, In grateful praise or humble prayer; And if His Word was not my jest-- (Dread thought!) it never was my care."

The misfortunes of the unhappy man proceed apace, and blow follows blow.

He is unthankful for his blessings, and Heaven's vengeance descends on him. His wife proves faithless, and he kills her betrayer, once his trusted friend. The wretched woman pines and dies, and the two children take some infectious disease and quickly follow. The sufferer turns to his wealth and his ambitions to drug his memory. But "walking in pride,"

he is to be still further "abased." The "Watcher and the Holy One" that visited Nebuchadnezzar come to Sir Eustace in vision and p.r.o.nounce his fate:

"Full be his cup, with evil fraught-- Demons his guides, and death his doom."

Two fiends of darkness are told off to tempt him. One, presumably the Spirit of Gambling, robs him of his wealth, while the Spirit of Mania takes from him his reason, and drags him through a h.e.l.l of horriblest imaginings. And it is at this point that what has been called the "dream-scenery" of the opium-eater is reproduced in a series of very remarkable stanzas:

Upon that boundless plain, below, The setting sun's last rays were shed, And gave a mild and sober glow, Where all were still, asleep, or dead; Vast ruins in the midst were spread, Pillars and pediments sublime, Where the grey moss had form'd a bed, And clothed the crumbling spoils of time.

"There was I fix'd, I know not how, Condemn'd for untold years to stay: Yet years were not;--one dreadful _Now_ Endured no change of night or day; The same mild evening's sleepy ray Shone softly-solemn and serene, And all that time I gazed away, The setting sun's sad rays were seen.

"At length a moment's sleep stole on,-- Again came my commission'd foes; Again through sea and land we're gone, No peace, no respite, no repose: Above the dark broad sea we rose, We ran through bleak and frozen land; I had no strength their strength t' oppose, An infant in a giant's hand.

"They placed me where those streamers play, Those nimble beams of brilliant light; It would the stoutest heart dismay, To see, to feel, that dreadful sight: So swift, so pure, so cold, so bright, They pierced my frame with icy wound; And all that half-year's polar night, Those dancing streamers wrapp'd me round

"Slowly that darkness pa.s.s'd away, When down, upon the earth I fell,-- Some hurried sleep was mine by day; But, soon as toll'd the evening bell, They forced me on, where ever dwell Far-distant men in cities fair, Cities of whom no travellers tell, Nor feet but mine were wanderers there

"Their watchmen stare, and stand aghast, As on we hurry through the dark; The watch-light blinks as we go past, The watch-dog shrinks and fears to bark; The watch-tower's bell sounds shrill; and, hark!

The free wind blows--we've left the town-- A wide sepulchral ground I mark, And on a tombstone place me down.

"What monuments of mighty dead!

What tombs of various kind are found!

And stones erect their shadows shed On humble graves, with wickers bound; Some risen fresh, above the ground, Some level with the native clay: What sleeping millions wait the sound, 'Arise, ye dead, and come away!'

Alas! they stay not for that call; Spare me this woe! ye demons, spare!-- They come! the shrouded shadows all,-- 'Tis more than mortal brain can bear; Rustling they rise, they sternly glare At man upheld by vital breath; Who, led by wicked fiends, should dare To join the shadowy troops of death!"

For about fifteen stanzas this power of wild imaginings is sustained, and, it must be admitted, at a high level as regards diction. The reader will note first how the impetuous flow of those visionary recollections generates a style in the main so lofty and so strong. The poetic diction of the eighteenth century, against which Wordsworth made his famous protest, is entirely absent. Then again, the eight-line stanza is something quite different from a mere aggregate of quatrains arranged in pairs. The lines are knit together; sonnet-fas.h.i.+on, by the device of interlacing the rhymes, the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh lines rhyming. And it is singularly effective for its purpose, that of avoiding the suggestion of a mere ballad-measure, and carrying on the descriptive action with as little interruption as might be.

The similarity of the illusions, here attributed to insanity, to those described by De Quincey as the result of opium, is too marked to be accidental. In the concluding pages of his _Confessions_, De Quincey writes: "The sense of s.p.a.ce, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive ... This disturbed me very much less than the vast expansion of time. Sometimes I seemed to have lived for seventy or a hundred years in one night."

Compare Crabbe's sufferer:--

"There was I fix'd, I know not how, Condemn'd for untold years to stay Yet years were not;--one dreadful _Now_ Endured no change of night or day."

Again, the rapid transition from one distant land to another, from the Pole to the Tropics, is common to both experiences. The "ill-favoured ones" who are charged with Sir Eustace's expiation fix him at one moment

"--on the trembling ball That crowns the steeple's quiv'ring spire"

just as the Opium-Fiend fixes De Quincey for centuries at the summit of PaG.o.das. Sir Eustace is accused of sins he had never committed:--

"Harmless I was: yet hunted down For treasons to my soul unfit; I've been pursued through many a town For crimes that petty knaves commit."