English Men of Letters: Crabbe Part 12

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 a.n.a.lytical 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. h.o.a.re a few years since I sent him one day the present of a blackc.o.c.k, 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. h.o.a.re 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.

In the autumn of 1831 he was visiting his faithful and devoted friends, the Samuel h.o.a.res, at their residence in Clifton. The house was apparently in Princes Buildings, or in the Paragon, for the poet describes accurately the scene that meets the eye from the back-windows of those pleasant streets:--

"I have to thank my friends for one of the most beautiful as well as comfortable rooms you could desire. I look from my window upon the Avon and its wooded and rocky bounds--the trees yet green. A vessel is sailing down, and here comes a steamer (Irish, I suppose). I have in view the end of the Cliff to the right, and on my left a wide and varied prospect over Bristol, as far as the eye can reach, and at present the novelty makes it very interesting. Clifton was always a favourite place with me. I have more strength and more spirits since my arrival at this place, and do not despair of giving a good account of my excursion on my return."

It is noteworthy that Crabbe, who as a young man witnessed the Lord George Gordon Riots of 1780, should, fifty years later, have been in Bristol during the disgraceful Reform Bill Rising of 1831, which, through the cowardice or connivance of the government of the day, went on unchecked to work such disastrous results to life and property. On October the 26th he writes to his son:--

"I have been with Mrs. h.o.a.re at Bristol, where all appears still. Should anything arise to alarm, you may rely upon our care to avoid danger. Sir Charles Wetherell, to be sure, is not popular, nor is the Bishop, but I trust that both will be safe from violence--abuse they will not mind. The Bishop seems a good-humoured man, and, except by the populace, is greatly admired."

A few days later, however, he has to record that his views of the situation were not to be fulfilled. He writes:--

"Bristol, I suppose, never in the most turbulent times of old, witnessed such outrage. Queen's Square is but half standing; half is a smoking ruin. As you may be apprehensive for my safety, it is right to let you know that my friends and I are undisturbed, except by our fears for the progress of this mob-government, which is already somewhat broken into parties, who wander stupidly about, or sleep wherever they fall wearied with their work and their indulgence. The military are now in considerable force, and many men are sworn in as constables; many volunteers are met in Clifton Churchyard, with white round one arm to distinguish them, some with guns and the rest with bludgeons. The Mayor's house has been destroyed; the Bishop's palace plundered, but whether burned or not I do not know. This morning a party of soldiers attacked the crowd in the Square; some lives were lost, and the mob dispersed, whether to meet again is doubtful. It has been a dreadful time, but we may reasonably hope it is now over. People are frightened certainly, and no wonder, for it is evident these poor wretches would plunder to the extent of their power. Attempts were made to burn the Cathedral, but failed. Many lives were lost. To attempt any other subject now would be fruitless. We can think, speak, and write only of our fears, hopes, or troubles. I would have gone to Bristol to-day, but Mrs. h.o.a.re was unwilling that I should. She thought, and perhaps rightly, that clergymen were marked objects. I therefore only went half-way, and of course could learn but little. All now is quiet and well."

In the former of these last quoted letters Crabbe refers sadly to the pain of parting from his old Hampstead friends,--a parting which he felt might well be the last. His antic.i.p.ation was to be fulfilled. He left Clifton in November, and went direct to his son George, at Pucklechurch.

He was able to preach twice for his son, who congratulated the old man on the power of his voice, and other encouraging signs of vigour. "I will venture a good sum, sir," he said "that you will be a.s.sisting me ten years hence." "Ten weeks" was Crabbe's answer, and the implied prediction was fulfilled almost to the day. After a fortnight at Pucklechurch, Crabbe returned to his own home at Trowbridge. Early in January he reported himself as more and more subject to drowsiness, which he accepted as sign of increasing weakness. Later in the month he was prostrated by a severe cold. Other complications supervened, and it soon became apparent that he could not rally. After a few days of much suffering, and pious resignation, he pa.s.sed away on the third of February 1832, with his two sons and his faithful nurse by his side. The death of the rector was followed by every token of general affection and esteem. The past asperities of religious and political controversy had long ceased, and it was felt that the whole parish had lost a devout teacher and a generous friend. All he had written in _The Borough_ and elsewhere as to the eccentricities of certain forms of dissent was forgotten, and all the Nonconformist ministers of the place and neighbourhood followed him to the grave. A committee was speedily formed to erect a monument over his grave in the chancel. The sculptor chosen produced a group of a type then common. "A figure representing the dying poet, casting his eyes on the sacred volume; two celestial beings, one looking on as if awaiting his departure." Underneath was inscribed, after the usual words telling his age, and period of his work at Trowbridge, the following not exaggerated tribute:--

"Born in humble life, he made himself what he was.

By the force of his genius, He broke through the obscurity of his birth Yet never ceased to feel for the Less fortunate; Entering (as his work can testify) into The sorrows and deprivations Of the poorest of his parishioners; And so discharging the duties of his station as a Minister and a magistrate, As to acquire the respect and esteem Of all his neighbours.

As a writer, he is well described by a great Contemporary, as 'Nature's sternest painter yet her best.'"

A fresh edition of Crabbe's complete works was at once arranged for by John Murray, to be edited by George Crabbe, the son, who was also to furnish the prefatory memoir. The edition appeared in 1834, in eight volumes. An engraving by Finden from Phillips's portrait of the poet was prefixed to the last volume, and each volume contained frontispieces and vignettes from drawings by Clarkson Stanfield of scenery or buildings connected with Crabbe's various residences in Suffolk and the Yale of Belvoir. The volumes were ably edited; the editor's notes, together with, quotations from Crabbe's earliest critics in the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, were interesting and informing, and the ill.u.s.trations happily chosen. But it is not so easy to acquiesce in an editorial decision on a more important matter. The eighth volume is occupied by a selection from the Tales left in ma.n.u.script by Crabbe, to which reference has already been made. The son, whose criticisms of his father are generally sound, evidently had misgivings concerning these from the first. In a prefatory note to this volume, the brothers (writing as executors) confess these misgivings. They were startled on reading the new poems in print at the manifest need of revision and correction before they could be given to the world. They delicately hint that the meaning is often obscure, and the "images left imperfect." This criticism is absolutely just, but unfortunately some less well-judging persons though "of the highest eminence in literature" had advised the contrary. So "second thoughts prevailed," instead of those "third thoughts which are a riper first," and the Tales, or a selection from them, were printed. They have certainly not added to Crabbe's reputation. There are occasional touches of his old and best pathos, as in the story of Rachel; and in _The Ancient Mansion_ there are brief descriptions of rural nature under the varying aspects of the seasons, which exhibit all Crabbe's old and close observation of detail, such as:--

"And then the wintry winds begin to blow, Then fall the flaky stars of gathering snow, When on the thorn the ripening sloe, yet blue, Takes the bright varnish of the morning dew; The aged moss grows brittle on the pale, The dry boughs splinter in the windy gale."

But there is much in these last Tales that is trivial and tedious, and it must be said that their publication has chiefly served to deter many readers from the pursuit of what is best and most rewardful in the study of Crabbe. To what extent the new edition served to revive any flagging interest in the poet cannot perhaps be estimated. The edition must have been large, for during many years past no book of the kind has been more prominent in second-hand catalogues. As we have seen, the popularity of Crabbe was already on the wane, and the appearance of the two volumes of Tennyson, in 1842, must farther have served to divert attention from poetry so widely different. Workmanship so casual and imperfect as Crabbe's had now to contend with such consummate art and diction as that of _The Miller's Daughter_ and _Dora_.

As has been more than once remarked, these stories belong to the category of fiction as well as of poetry, and the duration of their power to attract was affected not only by the appearance of greater poets, but of prose story-tellers with equal knowledge of the human heart, and with other gifts to which Crabbe could make no claim. His knowledge and observation of human nature were not perhaps inferior to Jane Austen's, but he could never have matched her in prose fiction. He certainly was not deficient in humour, but it was not his dominant gift, as it was hers. Again, his knowledge of the life and social ways of the cla.s.s to which he nominally belonged, does not seem to have been intimate. Crabbe could not have written prose fiction with any approximation to the manners of real life. His characters would have certainly _thou'ed_ and _thee'ed_ one another as they do in his verse, and a clergyman would always have been addressed as "Reverend Sir!"

Surely, it will be argued, all this is sufficient to account for the entire disappearance of Crabbe from the list of poets whom every educated lover of poetry is expected to appreciate. Yet the fact remains, as FitzGerald quotes from Sir Leslie Stephen, that "with all its short-and long-comings, Crabbe's better work leaves its mark on the reader's mind and memory as only the work of genius can," and almost all English poets and critics of mark, during his time and after it, have agreed in recognising the same fact. We know what was thought of him by Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, and Tennyson. Critics differing as widely in other matters as Macaulay, John Henry Newman, Mr. Swinburne, and Dr. Gore, have found in Crabbe an insight into the springs of character, and a tragic power of dealing with them, of a rare kind. No doubt Crabbe demands something of his readers. He asks from them a corresponding interest in human nature. He asks for a kindred habit of observation, and a kindred patience. The present generation of poetry-readers cares mainly for style. While this remains the habit of the town, Crabbe will have to wait for any popular revival. But he is not so dead as the world thinks. He has his constant readers still, but they talk little of their poet. "They give Heaven thanks, and make no boast of it." These are they to whom the "unruly wills and affections"

of their kind are eternally interesting, even when studied through the medium of a uniform and monotonous metre.

A Trowbridge friend wrote to Crabbe's son, after his father's death, "When I called on him, soon after his arrival, I remarked that his house and garden were pleasant and secluded: he replied that he preferred walking in the streets, and observing the faces of the pa.s.sers-by, to the finest natural scenes." There is a poignant line in _Maud_, where the distracted lover dwells on "the faces that one meets." It was not by the "sweet records, promises as sweet," that these two observers of life were impressed, but rather by vicious records and hopeless outlooks. It was such countenances that Crabbe looked for, and speculated on, for in such, he found food for that pity and terror he most loved to awaken.

The starting-point of Crabbe's desire to portray village-life truly was a certain indignation he felt at the then still-surviving conventions of the Pastoral Poets. We have lately watched, in the literature of our own day, a somewhat similar reaction against sentimental pictures of country-life. The feebler members of a family of novelists, which some one wittily labelled as the "kail-yard school," so irritated a young Scottish journalist, the late Mr. George Douglas, that he resolved to provide what he conceived might be a useful corrective for the public mind. To counteract the half-truths of the opposite school, he wrote a tale of singular power and promise, _The House with the Green Shutters_. Like all reactions, it erred in the violence of its colouring. If intended as a true picture of the normal state of a small Scottish provincial town and its society, it may have been as false in its own direction as the kail-yarders had been in theirs. But for Mr.

Douglas's untimely death--a real loss to literature--he would doubtless have shown in future fictions that the pendulum had ceased to swing, and would have given us more artistic, because completer, pictures of human life. With Crabbe the force of his primal bias never ceased to act until his life's end. The leaven of protest against the sentimentalists never quite worked itself out in him, although, no doubt, in some of the later tales and portrayals of character, the sun was oftener allowed to shine out from behind the clouds

We must not forget this when we are inclined to accept without question Byron's famous eulogium. A poet is not the "best" painter of Nature, merely because he chooses one aspect of human character and human fortunes rather than another. If he must not conceal the sterner side, equally is he bound to remember the sunnier and more serene. If a poet is to deal justly with the life of the rich or poor, he must take into fullest account, and give equal prominence to, the homes where happiness abides. He must remember that though there is a skeleton in every cupboard, it must not be dragged out for a purpose, nor treated as if it were the sole inhabitant. He must deal with the happinesses of life and not only with its miseries; with its harmonies and not only its dislocations. He must remember the thousand homes in which is to be found the quiet and faithful discharge of duty, inspired at once and illumined by the family affections, and not forget that in such as these the strength of a country lies. Crabbe is often spoken of as our first great realist in the poetry and fiction of the last century, and the word is often used as if it meant chiefly plain-speaking as to the sordid aspects of life. But he is the truest realist who does not suppress any side of that which may be seen, if looked for. Although Murillo threw into fullest relief the grimy feet of his beggar-boys which so offended Mr. Ruskin, still what eternally attracts us to his canvas is not the soiled feet but the "sweet boy-faces" that "laugh amid the Seville grapes." It was because Crabbe too often laid greater stress on the ugliness than on the beauty of things, that he fails to that extent to be the full and adequate painter and poet of humble life.

He was a dispeller of many illusions. He could not give us the joy that Goldsmith, Cowper, and William Barnes have given, but he discharged a function no less valuable than theirs, and with an individuality that has given him a high and enduring place in the poetry of the nineteenth century.

There can be no question that within the last twenty or thirty years there has been a marked revival of interest in the poetry of Crabbe. To the influence of Edward FitzGerald's fascinating personality this revival may be partly, but is not wholly, due. It may be of the nature of a reaction against certain canons of taste too long blindly followed.

It may be that, like the Queen in _Hamlet_, we are beginning to crave for "more matter and less art"; or that, like the Lady of Shalott, we are growing "half-sick of shadows," and long for a closer touch with the real joys and sorrows of common people. Whatever be the cause, there can be no reason to regret the fact, or to doubt that in these days of "art for art's sake," the influence of Crabbe's verse is at once of a bracing and a sobering kind.