English Men of Letters: Crabbe Part 9

"'While reason guides me, I shall walk aright, Nor need a steadier hand, or stronger light; Nor this in dread of awful threats, design'd For the weak spirit and the grov'ling mind; But that, engaged by thoughts and views sublime, I wage free war with grossness and with crime.'

Thus looked he proudly on the vulgar crew, Whom statutes govern, and whom fears subdue."

As motto for this story Crabbe quotes the fine speech of Henry V. on discovering the treachery of Lord Scrope, whose character had hitherto seemed so immaculate. The comparison thus suggested is not as felicitous as in many of Crabbe's citations. Had _In_ _Memoriam_ been then written, a more exact parallel might have been found in Tennyson's warning to the young enthusiast:

"See thou, that countest reason ripe In holding by the law within, Thou fail not in a world of sin, And ev'n for want of such a type."

The story is for the most part admirably told. The unhappy man, reduced to idiocy of a harmless kind, and the common playmate of the village children, is encountered now and then by the once loved maid, who might have made him happy:

"Kindly she chides his boyish flights, while he Will for a moment fix'd and pensive be; And as she trembling speaks, his lively eyes Explore her looks; he listens to her sighs; Charm'd by her voice, th' harmonious sounds invade His clouded mind, and for a time persuade: Like a pleased infant, who has newly caught From the maternal glance a gleam of thought, He stands enrapt, the half-known voice to hear, And starts, half conscious, at the falling tear.

Rarely from town, nor then unwatch'd, he goes, In darker mood, as if to hide his woes; Returning soon, he with impatience seeks His youthful friends, and shouts, and sings, and speaks; Speaks a wild speech with action all as wild-- The children's leader, and himself a child; He spins their top, or at their bidding bends His back, while o'er it leap his laughing friends; Simple and weak, he acts the boy once more, And heedless children call him _Silly Sh.o.r.e_."

In striking contrast to the prevailing tone of the other Tales is the charming story, conceived in a vein of purest comedy, called _The Frank Courtship_. This Tale alone should be a decisive answer to those who have doubted Crabbe's possession of the gift of humour, and on this occasion he has refrained from letting one dark shadow fall across his picture. It tells of one Jonas Kindred, a wealthy puritanic Dissenter of narrowest creed and masterful temper. He has an only daughter, the pride of her parents, and brought up by them in the strictest tenets of the sect. Her father has a widowed and childless sister, with a comfortable fortune, living in some distant town; and in pity of her solitary condition he allows his naturally vivacious daughter to spend the greater part of the year with her aunt. The aunt does not share the prejudices of her brother's household. She likes her game of cards and other social joys, and is quite a leader of fashion in her little town.

To this life and its enjoyments the beautiful and clever Sybil takes very kindly, and unfolds many attractive graces. Once a year the aunt and niece by arrangement spend a few weeks in Sybil's old home. The aunt, with much serpentine wisdom, arranges that she and her niece shall adapt themselves to this very different atmosphere--eschew cards, attend regularly at chapel, and comply with the tone and habits of the family.

The niece, however, is really as good as she is pretty, and her conscience smites her for deceiving her father, of whom she is genuinely fond. She stands before him "pure, pensive, simple, sad,"--yet

"the damsel's heart, When Jonas praised, reproved her for the part; For Sybil, fond of pleasure, gay and light, Had still a secret bias to the right; Vain as she was--and flattery made her vain-- Her simulation gave her bosom pain."

As time wears on, however, this state of things must come to a close.

Jonas is anxious that his daughter shall marry suitably, and he finds among his neighbours an admirable young man, a staunch member of the "persuasion," and well furnished in this world's goods. He calls his daughter home, that she may be at once introduced to her future husband, for the father is as certain as Sir Anthony Absolute himself that daughters should accept what is offered them and ask no questions. Sybil is by no means unwilling to enter the holy state, if the right man can be found. Indeed, she is wearying of the aimless life she lives with her worldly aunt, and the gradual change in her thoughts and hopes is indicated in a pa.s.sage of much delicacy and insight:

"Jonas now ask'd his daughter--and the Aunt, Though loth to lose her, was obliged to grant.-- But would not Sybil to the matron cling, And fear to leave the shelter of her wing?

No! in the young there lives a love of change, And to the easy they prefer the strange!

Then, too, the joys she once pursued with zeal, From whist and visits sprung, she ceased to feel: When with, the matrons Sybil first sat down, To cut for partners and to stake her crown, This to the youthful maid preferment seem'd, Who thought what woman she was then esteem'd; But in few years, when she perceived indeed The real woman to the girl succeed, No longer tricks and honours fill'd her mind, But other feelings, not so well defined; She then reluctant grew, and thought it hard To sit and ponder o'er an ugly card; Rather the nut-tree shade the nymph preferr'd, Pleased with the pensive gloom and evening bird; Thither, from company retired, she took The silent walk, or read the fav'rite book."

The interview between Sybil and the young man is conceived with real skill and humour. The young lady receives her lover, prepared to treat him with gentle mockery and to keep him at a convenient distance. The young lover is not daunted, and plainly warns her against the consequences of such levity. But as the little duel proceeds, each gradually detects the real good that underlies the surface qualities of the other. In spite of his formalism, Sybil discerns that her lover is full of good sense and feeling; and he makes the same discovery with regard to the young lady's _badinage._ And then, after a conflict of wits that seems to terminate without any actual result, the anxious father approaches his child with a final appeal to her sense of filial duty:

"With anger fraught, but willing to persuade, The wrathful father met the smiling maid: 'Sybil,' said he, 'I long, and yet I dread To know thy conduct--hath Josiah fled?

And, grieved and fretted by thy scornful air, For his lost peace, betaken him to prayer?

Couldst then his pure and modest mind distress By vile remarks upon his speech, address, Attire, and voice?'--'All this I must confess.'

'Unhappy child! what labour will it cost To win him back!'--'I do not think him lost.'

'Courts he then (trifler!) insult and disdain?'-- 'No; but from these he courts me to refrain.'

'Then hear me, Sybil: should Josiah leave Thy father's house?'--'My father's child would grieve.'

'That is of grace, and if he come again To speak of love?'--'I might from grief refrain.'

'Then wilt thou, daughter, our design embrace?'-- Can I resist it, if it be of grace?'

'Dear child! in three plain words thy mind express: Wilt thou have this good youth?'--'Dear father! yes.'"

All the characters in the story--the martinet father and his poor crushed wife, as well as the pair of lovers--are indicated with an appreciation of the value of dramatic contrast that might make the little story effective on the stage. One of the Tales in this collection, _The Confidant_, was actually turned into a little drama in blank verse by Charles Lamb, under the changed t.i.tle of _The Wife's Trial: or the Intruding Widow_. The story of Crabbe's _Confidant_ is not pleasant; and Lamb thought well to modify it, so as to diminish the gravity of the secret of which the malicious friend was possessed. There is nothing but what is sweet and attractive in the little comedy of _The Frank Courtship_, and it might well be commended to the dexterous and sympathetic hand of Mr. J.M. Barrie.

CHAPTER IX

VISITING IN LONDON

(1812-1819)

In the margin of FitzGerald's copy of the _Memoir_ an extract is quoted from Crabbe's Diary: "1810, Nov. 7.--Finish Tales. Not happy hour." The poet's comment may have meant something more than that so many of his Tales dealt with sad instances of human frailty. At that moment, and for three years longer, there hung over Crabbe's family life a cloud that never lifted--the hopeless illness of his wife. Two years before, Southey, in answer to a friend who had made some reference to Crabbe and his poetry, writes:

"With Crabbe's poems I have been acquainted for about twenty years, having read them when a schoolboy on their first publication, and, by the help of _Elegant Extracts_, remembered from that time what was best worth remembering.

You rightly compare him to Goldsmith. He is an imitator, or rather an _ant.i.thesizer_ of Goldsmith, if such a word may be coined for the occasion. His merit is precisely the same as Goldsmith's--that of describing things clearly and strikingly; but there is a wide difference between the colouring of the two poets. Goldsmith threw a sunshine over all his pictures, like that of one of our water-colour artists when he paints for ladies--a light and a beauty not to be found in Nature, though not more brilliant or beautiful than what Nature really affords; Crabbe's have a gloom which is also not in Nature--not the shade of a heavy day, of mist, or of clouds, but the dark and overcharged shadows of one who paints by lamplight--whose very lights have a gloominess. In part this is explained by his history."

Southey's letter was written in September 1808, before either _The Borough_ or the _Tales_ was published, which may account for the inadequacy of his criticism on Crabbe's poetry. But the above pa.s.sage throws light upon a period in Crabbe's history to which his son naturally does little more than refer in general and guarded terms. In a subsequent pa.s.sage of the letter already quoted, we are reminded that as early as the year 1803 Mrs. Crabbe's mental derangement was familiarly known to her friends.

But now, when his latest book was at last in print, and attracting general attention, the end of Crabbe's long watching was not far off. In the summer of 1813 Mrs. Crabbe had rallied so far as to express a wish to see London again, and the father and mother and two sons spent nearly three months in rooms in a hotel. Crabbe was able to visit Dudley North, and other of his old friends, and to enter to some extent into the gaieties of the town, but also, as always, taking advantage of the return to London to visit and help the poor and distressed, not unmindful of his own want and misery in the great city thirty years before. The family returned to Muston in September, and towards the close of the month Mrs. Crabbe was released from her long disease. On the north wall of the chancel of Muston Church, close to the altar, is a plain marble slab recording that not far away lie the remains of "Sarah, wife of the Rev. George Crabbe, late Rector of this Parish."

Within _two_ days of the wife's death Crabbe fell ill of a serious malady, worn out as he was with long anxiety and grief. He was for a few days in danger of his life, and so well aware of his condition that he desired that his wife's grave "might not be closed till it was seen whether he should recover." He rallied, however, and returned to the duties of his parish, and to a life of still deeper loneliness. But his old friends at Belvoir Castle once more came to his deliverance. Within a short time the Duke offered him the living of Trowbridge in Wiltshire, a small manufacturing town, on the line (as we should describe it today) between Bath and Salisbury. The value of the preferment was not as great as that of the joint livings of Muston and Allington, so that poor Crabbe was once more doomed to be a pluralist, and to accept, also at the Duke's hands, the vicarage of Croxton Kerrial, near Belvoir Castle, where, however, he never resided.

And now the time came for Crabbe's final move, and rector of Trowbridge he was to remain for the rest of his life. He was glad to leave Muston, which now had for him the saddest of a.s.sociations. He had never been happy there, for reasons we have seen. What Crabbe's son calls "diversity of religious sentiment" had produced "a coolness in some of his parishioners, which he felt the more painfully because, whatever might be their difference of opinion, he was ever ready to help and oblige them all by medical and other aid to the utmost extent of his power." So that in leaving Muston he was not, as was evident, leaving many to lament his departure. Indeed, malignity was so active in one quarter that the bells of the parish church were rung to welcome Crabbe's successor before Crabbe and his sons had quitted the house!

For other reasons, perhaps, Crabbe prepared to leave his two livings with a sense of relief. His wife's death had cast a permanent shadow over the landscape. The neighbouring gentry were kindly disposed, but probably not wholly sympathetic. It is clear that there was a certain rusticity about Crabbe; and his politics, such as they were, had been formed in a different school from that of the county families. A busy country town was likely to furnish interests and distractions of a different kind. But before finally quitting the neighbourhood he visited a sister at Aldeburgh, and, his son writes, 'one day was given to a solitary ramble among the scenery of bygone years--Parham and the woods of Glemham, then in the first blossom of May. He did not return until night; and in his note-book I find the following brief record of this mournful visit:

"Yes, I behold again the place, The seat of joy, the source of pain; It brings in view the form and face That I must never see again.

The night-bird's song that sweetly floats On this soft gloom--this balmy air-- Brings to the mind her sweeter notes That I again must never hear.

Lo! yonder shines that window's light, My guide, my token, heretofore; And now again it shines as bright, When those dear eyes can shine no more.

Then hurry from this place away!

It gives not now the bliss it gave; For Death has made its charm his prey, And joy is buried in her grave."

In family relationships, and indeed all others, Crabbe's tenderness was never wanting, and the verse that follows was found long afterwards written on a paper in which his wife's wedding-ring, nearly worn through before she died, was wrapped:

"The ring so worn, as you behold, So thin, so pale, is yet of gold: The pa.s.sion such it was to prove; Worn with life's cares, love yet was love."

Crabbe was inducted to the living of Trowbridge on the 3rd of June 1814, and preached his first sermon two days later. His two sons followed him, as soon as their existing engagements allowed them to leave Leicestershire. The younger, John, who married in 1816, became his father's curate, and the elder, who married a year later, became curate at Pucklechurch, not many miles distant. As Crabbe's old cheerfulness gradually returned he found much congenial society in the better educated cla.s.ses about him. His reputation as a poet was daily spreading. The _Tales_ pa.s.sed from edition to edition, and brought him many admirers and sympathisers. The "busy, populous clothing town," as he described Trowbridge to a friend, provided him with intelligent neighbours of a cla.s.s different from any he had yet been thrown with.

And yet once more, as his son has to admit, he failed to secure the allegiance of the church-going parishioners. His immediate predecessor, a curate in charge, had been one of those in whom a more pa.s.sionate missionary zeal had been stirred by the Methodist movement--"endeared to the more serious inhabitants by warm zeal and a powerful talent for preaching extempore." The parishioners had made urgent appeal to the n.o.ble patron to appoint this man to the benefice, and the Duke's disregard of their pet.i.tion had produced much bitterness in the parish.

Then, again, in Crabbe there was a "lay" element, which had probably not been found in his predecessor, and he might occasionally be seen "at a concert, a ball, or even a play." And finally, not long after his arrival, he took the unpopular side in an election for the representation of the county. The candidate he supported was strongly opposed by the "manufacturing interest," and Crabbe became the object of intense dislike at the time of the election, so much so that a violent mob attempted to prevent his leaving his house to go to the poll.

However, Crabbe showed the utmost courage during the excitement, and his other fine qualities of sterling worth and kindness of heart ultimately made their way; and in the sixteen years that followed, Crabbe took still firmer hold of the affection of the worthier part of his parishioners.

Crabbe's son thought good to devote several pages of his _Memoir_ to the question why his father, having now no unmarried son to be his companion, should not have taken such a sensible step as to marry again.

For the old man, if he deserved to be so called at the age of sixty-two, was still very susceptible to the charms of female society, and indeed not wholly free from the habit of philandering--a habit which occasionally "inspired feelings of no ordinary warmth" in the fair objects of "his vain devotion." One such incident all but ended in a permanent engagement. A MS. quotation from the poet's Diary, copied in the margin of FitzGerald's volume, may possibly refer to this occasion.

Under date of September 22 occurs this entry: "Sidmouth. Miss Ridout.

Declaration. Acceptance." But under October 5 is written the ominous word, "Mr. Ridout." And later: "Dec. 12. Charlotte's picture returned."

A tragedy (or was it a comedy?) seems written in these few words. Edward FitzGerald adds to this his own note: "Miss Ridout I remember--an elegant spinster; friend of my mother's. About 1825 she had been at Sidmouth, and known Crabbe." The son quotes some very ardent verses belonging to this period, but not a.s.signable to any particular charmer, such as one set beginning:

"And wilt thou never smile again; Thy cruel purpose never shaken?

Hast thou no feeling for my pain, Refused, disdain'd, despised, forsaken?"

The son indicates these amiable foibles in a filial tone and in apologetic terms, but the "liberal shepherds" sometimes spoke more frankly. An old squire remarked to a friend in reference to this subject, "D--mme, sir! the very first time Crabbe dined at my house he made love to my sister!" And a lady is known to have complained that on a similar occasion Crabbe had exhibited so much warmth of manner that she "felt quite frightened." His son entirely supports the same view as to his father's almost demonstratively affectionate manner towards ladies who interested him, and who, perhaps owing to his rising repute as an author, showed a corresponding interest in the elderly poet.

Crabbe himself admits "the soft impeachment." In a letter to his newly found correspondent, Mrs. Leadbeater (granddaughter of Burke's old schoolmaster, Richard Shackleton), he confesses that women were more to him than men:

"I'm alone now; and since my removing into a busy town among the mult.i.tude, the loneliness is but more apparent and more melancholy. But this is only at certain times; and then I have, though at considerable distances, six female friends, unknown to each other, but all dear, very dear, to me. With them I do not much a.s.sociate; not as deserting, and much less disliking, the male part of society, but as being unfit for it; not hardy nor grave, not knowing enough, nor sufficiently acquainted with the everyday concerns of men. But my beloved creatures have minds with which I can better a.s.similate.

Think of you, I must; and of me, I must entreat that you would not be unmindful."

Nothing, however, was destined to come of these various flirtations or _tendresses_. The new duties at Trowbridge, with their multiplying calls upon his attention and sympathies, must soon have filled his time and attention when at work in his market town, with its flourishing woollen manufactures. And Crabbe was now to have opened to him new sources of interest in the neighbourhood. His growing reputation soon made him a welcome guest in many houses to which his mere position as vicar of Trowbridge might not have admitted him. Trowbridge was only a score or so of miles from Bath, and there were many n.o.blemen's and gentlemen's seats in the country round. In this same county of Wilts, and not very far away, at his vicarage of Bremhill, was William Lisle Bowles, the graceful poet whose sonnets five-and-twenty years before had first roused to poetic utterance the young Coleridge and Charles Lamb when at Christ's Hospital. Through Bowles, Crabbe was introduced to the n.o.ble family at Bowood, where the third Marquis of Lansdowne delighted to welcome those distinguished in literature and the arts. Within these splendid walls Crabbe first made the acquaintance of Rogers, which soon ripened into an intimacy not without effect, I think, upon the remaining efforts of Crabbe as a poet. One immediate result was that Crabbe yielded to Rogers's strong advice to him to visit London, and take his place among the literary society of the day. This visit was paid in the summer of 1817, when Crabbe stayed in London from the middle of June to the end of July.