English Men of Letters: Crabbe Part 8

For here the expression is faultless, and Pope has educed an eternally pathetic truth, of universal application.

Even had the gentle remonstrances of the two reviewers never been expressed, it would seem as if Crabbe had already arrived at somewhat similar conclusions on his own account. At the time the reviews appeared, the whole of the twenty-one _Tales_ to be published in August 1812 were already written. Crabbe had perceived that if he was to retain the admiring public he had won, he must break fresh ground. Aldeburgh was played out. It had provided abundant material and been an excellent training-ground for Crabbe's powers. But he had discovered that there were other fields worth cultivating besides that of the hard lots of the very poor. He had a.s.sociated in his later years with a cla.s.s above these--not indeed with the "upper ten," save when he dined at Belvoir Castle, but with cla.s.ses lying between these two extremes. He had come to feel more and more the fascination of a.n.a.lysing human character and motives among his equals. He had a singularly retentive memory, and the habit of noting and brooding over incidents--specially of "life's little ironies"--wherever he encountered them. He does not seem to have possessed much originating power. When, a few years later, his friend Mrs. Leadbeater inquired of him whether the characters in his various poems were drawn from life, he replied:--"Yes, I will tell you readily about my ventures, whom I endeavour to paint as nearly as I could, and _dare_--for in some cases I dared not.... Thus far you are correct: there is not one of whom I had not in my mind the original, but I was obliged in most cases to take them from their real situations, and in one or two instances even to change their s.e.x, and in many, the circ.u.mstances.... Indeed I do not know that I could paint merely from my own fancy, and there is no cause why I should. Is there not diversity enough in society?"

CHAPTER VIII

_TALES_

(1812)

Crabbe's new volume--"Tales. By the Rev. George Crabbe, LL.B."--was published by Mr. Hatchard of Piccadilly in the summer of 1812. It received a warm welcome from the poet's admirers, and was reviewed, most appreciatively, by Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh_ for November. The _Tales_ were twenty-one in number, and to each was prefixed a series, often four or five, of quotations from Shakespeare, ill.u.s.trating the incidents in the Tales, or the character there depicted. Crabbe's knowledge of Shakespeare must have been in those days, when concordances were not, very remarkable, for he quotes by no means always from the best known plays, and he was not a frequenter of the theatre. Crabbe had of late studied human nature in books as well as in life.

As already remarked, the Tales are often built upon events in his own family, or else occurring within their knowledge. The second in order of publication, _The Parting Hour_, arose out of an incident in the life of the poet's own brother, which is thus related in the notes to the edition of 1834:

"Mr. Crabbe's fourth brother, William, taking to a sea-faring life, was made prisoner by the Spaniards. He was carried to Mexico, where he became a silversmith, married, and prospered, until his increasing riches attracted a charge of Protestantism; the consequence of which was much persecution.

He at last was obliged to abandon Mexico, his property, and his family; and was discovered in the year 1803 by an Aldeburgh sailor on the coast of Honduras, where again he seems to have found some success in business.

This sailor was the only person he had seen for many a year who could tell him anything about Aldeburgh and his family, and great was his perplexity when he was informed that his eldest brother, George, was a clergyman. 'This cannot be _our_ George,' said the wanderer, 'he was a _Doctor_! This was the first, and it was also the last, tidings that ever reached Mr. Crabbe of his brother William; and upon the Aldeburgh sailor's story of his casual interview, it is obvious that he built this tale."

The story as developed by Crabbe is pathetic and picturesque, reminding us in its central interest of _Enoch Arden_. Allen Booth, the youngest son of his parents dwelling in a small seaport, falls early in love with a child schoolfellow, for whom his affection never falters. When grown up the young man accepts an offer from a prosperous kinsman in the West Indies to join him in his business. His beloved sees him depart with many misgivings, though their mutual devotion was never to fade. She does not see him again for forty years, when he returns, like Arden, to his "native bay,"

"A worn-out man with wither'd limbs and lame, His mind oppress'd with woes, and bent with age his frame."

He finds his old love, who had been faithful to her engagement for ten years, and then (believing Allen to be dead) had married. She is now a widow, with grown-up children scattered through the world, and is alone. Allen then tells his sad story. The s.h.i.+p in which he sailed from England had been taken by the Spaniards, and he had been carried a slave to the West Indies, where he worked in a silver mine, improved his position under a kind master, and finally married a Spanish girl, hopeless of ever returning to England though still unforgetful of his old love. He acc.u.mulates money, and, like Crabbe's brother, incurs the envy of his Roman Catholic neighbours. He is denounced as a heretic, who would doubtless bring up his children in the accursed English faith. On his refusal to become a Catholic he is expelled the country, as the condition of his life being spared:

"His wife, his children, weeping in his sight, All urging him to flee, he fled, and cursed his flight."

After many adventures he falls in with a s.h.i.+p bound for England, but again his return is delayed. He is impressed (it was war-time), and fights for his country; loses a limb, is again left upon a foreign sh.o.r.e where his education finds him occupation as a clerk; and finally, broken with age and toil, finds his way back to England, where the faithful friend of his youth takes care of him and nurses him to the end. The situation at the close is very touching--for the joy of re-union is clouded by the real love he feels for the Spanish wife and children from whom he had been torn, and who are continually present to him in his dreams.

Nor is the treatment inadequate. It is at once discernible how much Crabbe had already gained by the necessity for concentration upon the development of a story instead of on the mere a.n.a.lysis of character. The style, moreover, has clarified and gained in dignity: there are few, if any, relapses into the homelier style on which the parodist could try his hand. Had the author of _Enoch Arden_ treated the same theme in blank-verse, the workmans.h.i.+p would have been finer, but he could hardly have sounded a truer note of unexaggerated pathos.

The same may be said of the beautiful tale of _The Lover's Journey_.

Here again is the product of an experience belonging to Crabbe's personal history. In his early Aldeburgh days, when he was engaged to Sarah Elmy with but faint hope of ever being able to marry, it was one of the rare alleviations of his distressed condition to walk over from Aldeburgh to Beccles (some twenty miles distant), where his betrothed was occasionally a visitor to her mother and sisters. "It was in his walks," writes the son, "between Aldeburgh and Beccles that Mr. Crabbe pa.s.sed through the very scenery described in the first part of _The Lover's Journey_; while near Beccles, in another direction, he found the contrast of rich vegetation introduced in the latter part of that tale; nor have I any doubt that the _disappointment_ of the story figures out something that, on one of these visits, befell himself, and the feelings with which he received it.

"Gone to a friend, she tells me;--I commend Her purpose: means she to a female friend?"

"For truth compels me to say, that he was by no means free from the less amiable sign of a strong attachment--jealousy." The story is of the slightest--an incident rather than a story. The lover, joyous and buoyant, traverses the dreary coast scenery of Suffolk, and because he is happy, finds beauty and charm in the commonest and most familiar sights and sounds of nature: every single hedge-row blossom, every group of children at their play. The poem is indeed an ill.u.s.tration of Coleridge's lines in his ode _Dejection_:

"O Lady, we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live,-- Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud."

All along the road to his beloved's house, nature wears this "wedding-garment." On his arrival, however, the sun fades suddenly from the landscape. The lady is from home: gone to visit a friend a few miles distant, not so far but that her lover can follow,--but the slight, real or imaginary, probably the latter, comes as such a rebuff, that during the "little more--how far away!" that he travels, the country, though now richer and lovelier, seems to him (as once to Hamlet) a mere "pestilent congregation of vapours." But in the end he finds his mistress and learns that she had gone on duty, not for pleasure,--and they return happy again, and so happy indeed, that he has neither eyes nor thoughts for any of nature's fertilities or barrennesses--only for the dear one at his side.

I have already had occasion to quote a few lines from this beautiful poem, to show Crabbe's minute observation--in his time so rare--of flowers and birds and all that makes the charm of rural scenery--but I must quote some more:

"'Various as beauteous, Nature, is thy face,'

Exclaim'd Orlando: 'all that grows has grace: All are appropriate--bog, and marsh, and fen, Are only poor to undiscerning men; Here may the nice and curious eye explore How Nature's hand adorns the rushy moor, Here the rare moss in secret shade is found, Here the sweet myrtle of the shaking ground; Beauties are these that from the view retire, But well repay th' attention they require; For these my Laura will her home forsake, And all the pleasures they afford, partake.'"

And then follows a masterly description of a gipsy encampment on which the lover suddenly comes in his travels. Crabbe's treatment of peasant life has often been compared to that of divers painters--the Dutch school, Hogarth, Wilkie, and others--and the following curiously suggests Frederick Walker's fine drawing, _The Vagrants_:

"Again, the country was enclosed, a wide And sandy road has banks on either side; Where, lo! a hollow on the left appear'd, And there a gipsy tribe their tent had rear'd; 'Twas open spread, to catch the morning sun, And they had now their early meal begun, When two brown boys just left their gra.s.sy seat, The early Trav'ller with their prayers to greet: While yet Orlando held his pence in hand, He saw their sister on her duty stand; Some twelve years old, demure, affected, sly, Prepared the force of early powers to try; Sudden a look of languor he descries, And well-feigned apprehension in her eyes; Train'd but yet savage in her speaking face, He mark'd the features of her vagrant race; When a light laugh and roguish leer express'd The vice implanted in her youthful breast: Forth from the tent her elder brother came, Who seem'd offended, yet forbore to blame The young designer, but could only trace The looks of pity in the Trav'ller's face: Within, the Father, who from fences nigh Had brought the fuel for the fire's supply, Watch'd now the feeble blaze, and stood dejected by.

On ragged rug, just borrowed from the bed, And by the hand of coa.r.s.e indulgence fed, In dirty patchwork negligently dress'd, Reclined the Wife, an infant at her breast; In her wild face some touch of grace remain'd, Of vigour palsied and of beauty stain'd; Her bloodshot eyes on her unheeding mate Were wrathful turn'd, and seem'd her wants to state, Cursing his tardy aid--her Mother there With gipsy-state engross'd the only chair; Solemn and dull her look; with such she stands, And reads the milk-maid's fortune in her hands, Tracing the lines of life; a.s.sumed through years, Each feature now the steady falsehood wears.

With hard and savage eye she views the food, And grudging pinches their intruding brood; Last in the group, the worn-out Grandsire sits Neglected, lost, and living but by fits: Useless, despised, his worthless labours done, And half protected by the vicious Son, Who half supports him; he with heavy glance Views the young ruffians who around him dance; And, by the sadness in his face, appears To trace the progress of their future years: Through what strange course of misery, vice, deceit, Must wildly wander each unpractised cheat!

What shame and grief, what punishment and pain, Sport of fierce pa.s.sions, must each child sustain-- Ere they like him approach their latter end, Without a hope, a comfort, or a friend!

But this Orlando felt not; 'Rogues,' said he, 'Doubtless they are, but merry rogues they be; They wander round the land, and be it true They break the laws--then let the laws pursue The wanton idlers; for the life they live, Acquit I cannot, but I can forgive.'

This said, a portion from his purse was thrown, And every heart seem'd happy like his own."

_The Patron_, one of the most carefully elaborated of the Tales, is on an old and familiar theme. The scorn that "patient merit of the unworthy takes"; the misery of the courtier doomed "in suing long to bide";--the ills that a.s.sail the scholar's life,

"Toil, envy, want, the Patron and the jail,"

are standing subjects for the moralist and the satirist. In Crabbe's poem we have the story of a young man, the son of a "Borough-burgess,"

who, showing some real promise as a poet, and having been able to render the local Squire some service by his verses at election time, is invited in return to pay a visit of some weeks at the Squire's country-seat. The Squire has vaguely undertaken to find some congenial post for the young scholar, whose ideas and ambitions are much in advance of those entertained for him in his home. The young man has a most agreeable time with his new friends. He lives for the while with every refinement about him, and the Squire's daughter, a young lady of the type of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, evidently enjoys the opportunity of breaking a country heart for pastime, "ere she goes to town." For after a while the family leave for their mansion in London, the Squire at parting once more impressing on his young guest that he will not forget him. After waiting a reasonable time, the young poet repairs to London and seeks to obtain an interview with his Patron. After many unsuccessful trials, and rebuffs at the door from the servants, a letter is at last sent out to him from their master, coolly advising him to abjure all dreams of a literary life and offering him a humble post in the Custom House. The young man, in bitterness of heart, tries the work for a short time; and then, his health and spirits having utterly failed, he returns to his parents' home to die, the father thanking G.o.d, as he moves away from his son's grave, that no other of his children has tastes and talents above his position:

"'There lies my Boy,' he cried, 'of care bereft, And, Heaven be praised, I've not a genius left: No one among ye, sons! is doomed to live On high-raised hopes of what the Great may give.'"

Crabbe, who is nothing if not incisive in the drawing of his moral, and lays on his colours with no sparing hand, represents the heartless Patron and his family as hearing the sad tidings with quite amazing _sang-froid_:

"Meantime the news through various channels spread, The youth, once favour'd with such praise, was dead: 'Emma,' the Lady cried, 'my words attend, Your siren-smiles have kill'd your humble friend; The hope you raised can now delude no more, Nor charms, that once inspired, can now restore'

Faint was the flush of anger and of shame, That o'er the cheek of conscious beauty came: 'You censure not,' said she, 'the sun's bright rays, When fools imprudent dare the dangerous gaze; And should a stripling look till he were blind, You would not justly call the light unkind; But is he dead? and am I to suppose The power of poison in such looks as those?'

She spoke, and pointing to the mirror, cast A pleased gay glance, and curtsied as she pa.s.s'd.

My Lord, to whom the poet's fate was told, Was much affected, for a man so cold: 'Dead!' said his lords.h.i.+p, 'run distracted, mad!

Upon my soul I'm sorry for the lad; And now, no doubt, th' obliging world will say That my harsh usage help'd him on his way: What! I suppose, I should have nursed his muse, And with champagne have brighten'd up his views, Then had he made me famed my whole life long, And stunn'd my ears with grat.i.tude and song.

Still should the father hear that I regret Our joint misfortune--Yes! I'll not forget.'"

The story, though it has no precise prototype in Crabbe's own history, is clearly the fruit of his experience of life at Belvoir Castle, combined with the sad recollection of his sufferings when only a few years before he, a young man with the consciousness of talent, was rolling b.u.t.ter-tubs on Slaughden Quay.

Much of the Tale is admirably and forcibly written, but again it may be said that it is powerful fiction rather than poetry--and indeed into such matters poetry can hardly enter. It displays the fine observation of Miss Austen, clothed in effective couplets of the school of Johnson and Churchill. Yet every now and then the true poet comes to the surface. The essence of a dank and misty day in late autumn has never been seized with more perfect truth than in these lines:

"Cold grew the foggy morn, the day was brief, Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf; The dew dwelt ever on the herb; the woods Roar'd with strong blasts, with mighty showers the floods: All green was vanish'd, save of pine and yew, That still displayed their melancholy hue; Save the green holly with its berries red, And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread."

The scheme of these detached Tales had served to develop one special side of Crabbe's talent. The a.n.a.lysis of human character, with its strength and weakness (but specially the latter), finds fuller exercise as the poet has to trace its effects upon the earthly fortunes of the persons portrayed. The Tale ent.i.tled _The Gentleman Farmer_ is a striking ill.u.s.tration in point. Jeffrey in his review of the _Tales_ in the _Edinburgh_ supplies, as usual, a short abstract of the story, not without due insight into its moral. But a profounder student of human nature than Jeffrey has, in our own day, cited the Tale as worthy even to ill.u.s.trate a memorable teaching of St. Paul. The Bishop of Worcester, better known as Canon Gore to the thousands who listened to the discourse in Westminster Abbey, finds in this story a perfect ill.u.s.tration of what moral freedom is, and what it is often erroneously supposed to be:

"It is of great practical importance that we should get a just idea of what our freedom consists in. There are men who, under the impulse of a purely materialist science, declare the sense of moral freedom to be an illusion. This is of course a gross error. But what has largely played into the hands of this error is the exaggerated idea of human freedom which is ordinarily current, an idea which can only be held by ignoring our true and necessary dependence and limitation. It is this that we need to have brought home to us. There is an admirable story among George Crabbe's _Tales_ called 'The Gentleman Farmer.' The hero starts in life resolved that he will not put up with any bondage. The orthodox clergyman, the orthodox physician, and orthodox matrimony--all these alike represent social bondage in different forms, and he will have none of them So he starts on a career of 'unchartered freedom'

'To prove that _he alone was king of him,_'

and the last scene of all represents him the weak slave of his mistress, a quack doctor, and a revivalist--'which things are an allegory.'"

The quotation shows that Crabbe, neglected by the readers of poetry to-day, is still cherished by the psychologist and divine. It is to the "graver mind" rather than to the "lighter heart" that he oftenest appeals. Newman, to mention no small names, found Crabbe's pathos and fidelity to Human Nature even more attractive to him in advanced years than in youth. There is indeed much in common between Crabbe's treatment of life and its problems, and Newman's. Both may be called "stern"

portrayers of human nature, not only as intended in Byron's famous line, but in Wordsworth's use of the epithet when he invoked Duty as the "stern Daughter of the voice of G.o.d." A kindred lesson to that drawn by Canon Gore from _The Gentleman Farmer_ is taught in the yet grimmer Tale of _Edward Sh.o.r.e_. The story, as summarised by Jeffrey, is as follows:

"The hero is a young man of aspiring genius and enthusiastic temper with an ardent love of virtue, but no settled principles either of conduct or opinion. He first conceives an attachment for an amiable girl, who is captivated with his conversation; but, being too poor to marry, soon comes to spend more of his time in the family of an elderly sceptic of his acquaintance, who had recently married a young wife, and placed unbounded confidence in her virtue, and the honour of his friend. In a moment of temptation they abuse this confidence. The husband renounces him with dignified composure; and he falls at once from the romantic pride of his virtue. He then seeks the company of the dissipated and gay, and ruins his health and fortune without regaining his tranquillity. When in gaol and miserable, he is relieved by an unknown hand, and traces the benefaction to the friend whose former kindness he had so ill repaid. This humiliation falls upon his proud spirit and shattered nerves with an overwhelming force, and his reason fails beneath it. He is for some time a raving maniac, and then falls into a state of gay and compa.s.sionable imbecility, which is described with inimitable beauty in the close of this story."

Jeffrey's abstract is fairly accurate, save in one particular. Edward Sh.o.r.e can hardly be said to feel an "ardent love of virtue." Rather is he perfectly confident of his respectability, and bitterly contemptuous of those who maintain the necessity of religion to control men's unruly pa.s.sions. His own lofty conceptions of the dignity of human nature are sufficient for himself: