Chapter 2

POVERTY IN LONDON

(1780-1781)

Crabbe had no acquaintances of his own in London, and the only introduction he carried with him was to an old friend of Miss Elmy's, a Mrs. Burcham, married to a linen-draper in Cornhill. In order to be near these friendly persons he took lodgings, close to the Royal Exchange, in the house of a hairdresser, a Mr. Vickery, at whose suggestion, no doubt, he provided himself with "a fashionable tie-wig". Crabbe at once began preparations for his literary campaign, by correcting such verse as he had brought with him, completing "two dramas and a variety of prose essays," and generally improving himself by a course of study and practice in composition. As in the old Woodbridge days, he made some congenial acquaintances at a little club that met at a neighbouring coffee-house, which included a Mr. Bonnycastle and a Mr. Reuben Burrow, both mathematicians of repute, who rose to fill important positions in their day. These recreations he diversified with country excursions, during which he read Horace and Ovid, or searched the woods around London for plants and insects.

From his first arrival in town Crabbe kept a diary or journal, addressed to his "Mira" at Parham, and we owe to it a detailed account of his earlier struggles, three months of the journal having survived and fallen into his son's hands after the poet's death. Crabbe had arrived in London in April, and by the end of the month we learn from the journal that he was engaged upon a work in prose, "A Plan for the Examination of our Moral and Religious Opinions," and also on a poetical "Epistle to Prince William Henry," afterwards William IV., who had only the year before entered the navy as midshipman, but had already seen some service under Rodney. The next day's entry in the diary tells how he was not neglecting other possible chances of an honest livelihood. He had answered an advertisement in the _Daily Advertiser_ for "an amanuensis, of grammatical education, and endued with a genius capable of making improvements in the writings of a gentleman not well versed in the English language." Two days later he called for a reply, only to find that the gentleman was suited. The same day's entry also records how he had sent his poem (probably the ode to the young Sailor-Prince) to Mr. Dodsley. Only a day later he writes. "Judging it best to have two strings to the bow, and fearing Mr. Dodsley's will snap, I have finished another little work from that awkward-titled piece, 'The Foes of Mankind': have run it on to three hundred and fifty lines, and given it a still more odd name, 'An Epistle from the Devil.' To-morrow I hope to transcribe it fair, and send it by Monday."

"Mr. Dodsley's reply just received: 'Mr. Dodsley presents his compliments to the gentleman who favoured him with the enclosed poem, which he has returned, as he apprehends the sale of it would probably not enable him to give any consideration. He does not mean to insinuate a want of merit in the poem, but rather a want of attention in the public.'"

All this was sufficiently discouraging, and the next day's record is one of even worse omen. The poet thanks Heaven that his spirits are not affected by Mr. Dodsley's refusal, and that he is already preparing another poem for another bookseller, Mr. Becket. He adds, however: "I find myself under the disagreeable necessity of vending or pawning some of my more useless articles: accordingly have put into a paper such as cost about two or three guineas, and, being silver, have not greatly lessened in their value. The conscientious pawnbroker allowed me--'he _thought_ he _might'_--half a guinea for them. I took it very readily, being determined to call for them very soon, and then, if I afterwards wanted, carry them to some less voracious animal of the kind."

The entries during the next six weeks continue of the same tenor. Mr. Becket, for whose approval were sent "Poetical Epistles, with a preface by the learned Martinus Scriblerus" (he was still harping on the string of the Augustans), proved no more responsive than Dodsley, "'Twas a very pretty thing, but, sir, these little pieces the town do not regard." By May 16th he had "sold his wardrobe, pawned his watch, was in debt to his landlord, and finally at some loss how to eat a week longer." Two days later he had pawned his surgical instruments--redeemed and repawned his watch on more favourable terms--and was rejoiced to find himself still the possessor of ten shillings. He remained stout of heart--his faith in Providence still his strong comfort--and the Vickery family, though he must have been constantly in their debt, were unfailingly kind and hospitable. He was also appealing to the possible patrons of literature among the leading statesmen of the hour. On May 21 we learn that he was preparing "a book" (which of his many ventures of the hour, is uncertain), and with it a letter for the Prime Minister, Lord North, whose relative, Dudley North, had started him on his journey to London. When, after a fortnight's suspense, this request for assistance had been refused, he writes yet more urgently to Lord Shelburne (at that time out of office) complaining bitterly of North's hardness of heart, and appealing on this occasion to his hoped-for patron both in prose and verse--

"Ah! Shelburne, blest with all that's good or great, T' adorn a rich or save a sinking state, If public Ills engross not all thy care, Let private Woe assail a patriot's ear, Pity confined, but not less warm, impart, And unresisted win thy noble heart"--

with much more in the same vein of innocent flattery. But once again Crabbe was doomed to disappointment. He had already, it would seem, appealed to Lord Chancellor Thurlow, with no better success. Crabbe felt these successive repulses very keenly, but it is not necessary to tax North, Shelburne, and Thurlow with exceptional hardness of heart. London was as full of needy literary adventurers as it had been in the days of _The Dunciad_, and men holding the position of these ministers and ex-ministers were probably receiving similar applications every week of their lives.

During three days in June, Crabbe's attention is diverted from his own distresses by the Lord George Gordon Riots, of which his journal from June 8th contains some interesting particulars. He was himself an eye-witness of some of the most disgraceful excesses of the mob, the burning of the governor of Newgate's house, and the setting at liberty of the prisoners. He also saw Lord George himself, "a lively-looking young man in appearance," drawn in his coach by the mob towards the residence of Alderman Bull, "bowing as he passed along."

At this point the diary ends, or in any case the concluding portion was never seen by the poet's son. And yet at the date when it closed, Crabbe was nearer to at least the semblance of a success than he had yet approached. He had at length found a publisher willing to print, and apparently at his own risk, "_The Candidate_--a Poetical Epistle to the Authors of the _Monthly Review,"_ that journal being the chief organ of literary criticism at the time. The idea of this attempt to propitiate the critics in advance, with a view to other poetic efforts in the future, was not felicitous. The publisher, "H. Payne, opposite Marlborough House, Pall Mall," had pledged himself that the author should receive some share of the profits, however small; but even if he had not become bankrupt immediately after its publication, it is unlikely that Crabbe would have profited by a single penny. It was indeed a very ill-advised attempt, even as regards the reviewers addressed. The very tone adopted, that of deprecation of criticism, would be in their view a proof of weakness, and as such they accepted it. Nor had the poem any better chance with the general reader. Its rhetoric and versification were only one more of the interminable echoes of the manner of Pope. It had no organic unity. The wearisome note of plea for indulgence had to be relieved at intervals by such irrelevant episodes as compliments to the absent "Mira," and to Wolfe, who "conquered as he fell"--twenty years or so before. The critics of the _Monthly Review_, far from being mollified by the poet's appeal, received the poem with the cruel but perfectly just remark that it had "that material defect, the want of a proper subject."

An allegorical episode may be cited as a sample of the general style of this effusion. The poet relates how the Genius of Poetry (like, but how unlike, her who was seen by Burns in vision) appeared to him with counsel how best to hit the taste of the town:--

"Be not too eager in the arduous chase; Who pants for triumph seldom wins the race: Venture not all, but wisely hoard thy worth, And let thy labours one by one go forth Some happier scrap capricious wits may find On a fair day, and be profusely kind; Which, buried in the rubbish of a throng, Had pleased as little as a new-year's song, Or lover's verse, that cloyed with nauseous sweet, Or birthday ode, that ran on ill-paired feet. Merit not always--Fortune Feeds the bard, And as the whim inclines bestows reward None without wit, nor with it numbers gain; To please is hard, but none shall please in vain As a coy mistress is the humoured town, Loth every lover with success to crown; He who would win must every effort try, Sail in the mode, and to the fashion fly; Must gay or grave to every humour dress, And watch the lucky Moment of Success; That caught, no more his eager hopes are crost; But vain are Wit and Love, when that is lost"

Crabbe's son and biographer remarks with justice that the time of his father's arrival in London was "not unfavourable for a new Candidate in Poetry. The giants, Swift and Pope, had passed away, leaving each in his department examples never to be excelled; but the style of each had been so long imitated by inferior persons that the world was not unlikely to welcome some one who should strike into a newer path. The strong and powerful satirist Churchill, the classic Gray, and the inimitable Goldsmith had also departed; and more recently still, Chatterton had paid the bitter penalty of his imprudence under circumstances which must surely have rather disposed the patrons of talent to watch the next opportunity that might offer itself of encouraging genius 'by poverty depressed.' The stupendous Johnson, unrivalled in general literature, had from an early period withdrawn himself from poetry. Cowper, destined to fill so large a space in the public eye somewhat later, had not as yet appeared as an author; and as for Burns, he was still unknown beyond the obscure circle of his fellow-villagers."

All this is quite true, but it was not for such facile cleverness as _The Candidate_ that the lovers of poetry were impatient. Up to this point Crabbe shows himself wholly unsuspicious of this fact. It had not occurred to him that it was possible for him safely to trust his own instincts. And yet there is a stray entry in his diary which seems to show how (in obedience to his visionary instructor) he was trying experiments in more hopeful directions. On the twelfth, of May he intimates to his Mira that he has dreams of success in something different, something more human than had yet engaged his thoughts. "For the first time in my life that I recollect," he writes, "I have written three or four stanzas that so far touched me in the reading them as to take off the consideration that they were things of my own fancy." Thus far there was nothing in what he had printed--in _Inebriety_ or _The Candidate_--that could possibly have touched his heart or that of his readers. And it may well have been that he was now turning for fresh themes to those real sorrows, those genuine, if homely, human interests of which he had already so intimate an experience.

However that may have been, the combined coldness of his reviewers and failure of his bookseller must have brought Crabbe within as near an approach to despair as his healthy nature allowed. His distress was now extreme; he was incurring debts with little hope of paying them, and creditors wore pressing. Forty years later he told Walter Scott and Lockhart how "during many months when he was toiling in early life in London he hardly over tasted butcher-meat except on a Sunday, when he dined usually with a tradesman's family, and thought their leg of mutton, baked in the pan, the perfection of luxury." And it was only after some more weary months, when at last "want stared him in the face, and a gaol seemed the only immediate refuge for his head," that he resolved, as a last resort, to lay his case once more before some public man of eminence and character. "Impelled" (to use his own words) "by some propitious influence, he fixed in some happy moment upon Edmund Burke--one of the first of Englishmen, and in the capacity and energy of his mind, one of the greatest of human beings."

It was in one of the early months of 1781 (the exact date seems to be undiscoverable) that Crabbe addressed his letter, with specimens of his poetry, to Burke at his London residence. The letter has been preserved, and runs as follows:--

"Sir,--I am sensible that I need even your talents to apologise for the freedom I now take; but I have a plea which, however simply urged, will, with, a mind like yours, sir, procure me pardon. I am one of those outcasts on the world who are without a friend, without employment, and without bread.

"Pardon me a short preface. I had a partial father who gave me a better education than his broken fortune would have allowed; and a better than was necessary, as he could give me that only. I was designed for the profession of physic, but not having wherewithal to complete the requisite studies, the design but served to convince me of a parent's affection, and the error it had occasioned. In April last I came to London with three pounds, and flattered myself this would be sufficient to supply me with the common necessaries of life till my abilities should procure me more; of these I had the highest opinion, and a poetical vanity contributed to my delusion. I knew little of the world, and had read books only: I wrote, and fancied perfection in my compositions; when I wanted bread they promised me affluence, and soothed me with dreams of reputation, whilst my appearance subjected me to contempt.

"Time, reflection, and want have shown me my mistake. I see my trifles in that which I think the true light; and whilst I deem them such, have yet the opinion that holds them superior to the common run of poetical publications.

"I had some knowledge of the late Mr. Nassau, the brother of Lord Rochford; in consequence of which I asked his Lordship's permission to inscribe my little work to him. Knowing it to be free from all political allusions and personal abuse, it was no very material point to me to whom it was dedicated. His Lordship thought it none to him, and obligingly consented to my request.

"I was told that a subscription would be the more profitable method for me, and, therefore, endeavoured to circulate copies of the enclosed Proposals.

"I am afraid, sir, I disgust you with this very dull narration, but believe me punished in the misery that occasions it. You will conclude that during this time I must have been at more expense than I could afford. Indeed the most parsimonious could not have avoided it. The printer deceived me, and my little business has had every delay. The people with whom I live perceive my situation, and find me to be indigent and without friends. About ten days since I was compelled to give a note for seven pounds, to avoid an arrest for about double that sum which I owe. I wrote to every friend I had, but my friends are poor likewise: the time of payment approached, and I ventured to represent my case to Lord Rochford. I begged to be credited for this sum till I received it of my subscribers, which I believe will be within one month: but to this letter I had no reply, and I have probably offended by my importunity. Having used every honest means in vain, I yesterday confessed my inability, and obtained with much entreaty and as the greatest favour a week's forbearance, when I am positively told that I must, pay the money or prepare for a prison.

"You will guess the purpose of so long an introduction. I appeal to you, sir, as a good and, let me add, a great man. I have no other pretensions to your favour than that I am an unhappy one. It is not easy to support the thoughts of confinement; and I am coward enough to dread such an end to my suspense. Can you, sir, in any degree aid me with propriety? Will you ask any demonstrations of my veracity? I have imposed upon myself, but I have been guilty of no other imposition Let me, if possible, interest your compassion. I know those of rank and fortune are teased with frequent petitions, and are compelled to refuse the requests even of those whom they know to be in distress; it is, therefore, with a distant hope I ventured to solicit such favour: but you will forgive me, sir, if you do not think proper to relieve. It is impossible that sentiments like yours can proceed from any but a humane and generous heart.

"I will call upon you, sir, to-morrow, and if I have not the happiness to obtain credit with you, I must submit to my fate. My existence is a pain to myself, and every one near and dear to me are distressed in my distresses. My connections, once the source of happiness, now embitter the reverse of my fortune, and I have only to hope a speedy end to a life so unpromisingly begun: in which (though it ought not to be boasted of) I can reap some consolation from looking to the end of it. I am, sir, with, the greatest respect, your obedient and most humble servant, GEORGE CRABBE."

The letter is undated, but, as we shall see, must have been written in February or March of 1781. Crabbe delivered it with his own hands at Burke's house in Charles Street, St. James's, and (as he long after told Walter Scott) paced up and down Westminster Bridge all night in an agony of suspense.

This suspense was not of long duration Crabbe made his threatened call, and anxiety was speedily at an end. He had sent with his letter specimens of his verse still in manuscript. Whether Burke had had time to do more than glance at them--for they had been in his hands but a few hours--is uncertain. But it may well have been that the tone as well as the substance of Crabbe's letter struck the great statesman as something apart from the usual strain of the literary pretender. During Burke's first years in London, when he himself lived by literature and saw much of the lives and ways of poets and pamphleteers, he must have gained some experience that served him later in good stead. There was a flavour of truthfulness in Crabbe's story that could hardly be delusive, and a strain of modesty blended with courage that would at once appeal to Burke's generous nature. Again, Burke was not a poet (save in the glowing periods of his prose), but he had read widely in the poets, and had himself been possessed at one stage of his youth "with the _furor poeticus_." At this special juncture he had indeed little leisure for such matters. He had lost his seat for Bristol in the preceding year, but had speedily found another at Malton--a pocket-borough of Lord Rockingham's,--and, at the moment of Crabbe's appeal, was again actively opposing the policy of the King and Lord North. But he yet found time for an act of kindness that was to have no inconsiderable influence on English literature. The result of the interview was that Crabbe's immediate necessities were relieved by a gift of money, and by the assurance that Burke would do all in his power to further Crabbe's literary aims. What particular poems or fragments of poetry had been first sent to Burke is uncertain; but among those submitted to his judgment were specimens of the poems to be henceforth known as the _The Library_ and _The Village._ Crabbe afterwards learned that the lines which first convinced Burke that a new and genuine poet had arisen were the following from _The Village,_ in which the author told of his resolution to leave the home of his birth and try his fortune in the city of wits and scholars--

"As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand And wait for favouring winds to leave the land; While still for flight the ready wing is spread: So waited I the favouring hour, and fled; Fled from those shores where guilt and famine reign, And cried, 'Ah! hapless they who still remain-- Who still remain to hear the ocean roar; Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore; Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; When the sad tenant weeps from door to door, And begs a poor protection from the poor!"

Burke might well have been impressed by such a passage. In some other specimens of Crabbe's verse, submitted at the same time to his judgment, the note of a very different school was dominant. But here for the moment appears a fresher key and a later model. In the lines just quoted the feeling and the cadence of _The Traveller_ and _The Deserted Village_ are unmistakable. But if they suggest comparison with the exquisite passage in the latter beginning--

"And as the hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from which it first she flew,"

they also suggest a contrast. Burke's experienced eye would detect that if there was something in Crabbe's more Pope-like couplets that was not found in Pope, so there was something here more poignant than even in Goldsmith.

Crabbe's son reflected with just pride that there must have been something in his father's manners and bearing that at the outset invited Burke's confidence and made intimacy at once possible, although Crabbe's previous associates had been so different from the educated gentry of London. In telling of his now-found poet a few days afterwards to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Burke said that he had "the mind and feelings of a gentleman." And he acted boldly on this assurance by at once placing Crabbe on the footing of a friend, and admitting him to his family circle. "He was invited to Beaconsfield," Crabbe wrote in his short autobiographical sketch, "the seat of his protector, and was there placed in a convenient apartment, supplied with books for his information and amusement, and made a member of a family whom it was honour as well as pleasure to become in any degree associated with." The time thus spent was profitable to Crabbe in other ways than by enlarging his knowledge and ideas, and laying the foundation of many valued friendships. He devoted himself in earnest to complete his unfinished poems and revise others under Burke's judicious criticism. The poem he first published, _The Library_, he himself tells us, was written partly in his presence and submitted as a whole to his judgment. Crabbe elsewhere indicates clearly what were the weak points of his art, and what tendencies Burke found it most necessary he should counteract. Writing his reminiscences in the third person years later, he naively admitted that "Mr. Crabbe had sometimes the satisfaction of hearing, when the verses were bad, that the thoughts deserved better; and that if he had the common faults of inexperienced writers, he had frequently the merit of thinking for himself." The first clause of this sentence might be applied to Crabbe's poetry to the very end of his days. Of his later and far maturer poems, when he had ceased to polish, it is too true that the thoughts are often better than their treatment. His latest publisher, John Murray, used to say that in conversation Crabbe often "said uncommon things in so common a way" that they passed unnoticed. The remark applies equally to much of Crabbe's poetry. But at least, if this incongruity is to exist, it is on the more hopeful side. The characteristic of so much poetry of our own day is that the manner is uncommon, and the commonness resides in the matter.

When Crabbe had completed his revisions to his own satisfaction and his adviser's, Burke suggested the publication of _The Library_ and _The Village_, and the former poem was laid before Mr. Dodsley, who only a few months before had refused a poem from the same hand. But circumstances were now changed, and Burke's recommendation and support were all-sufficient. Dodsley was all politeness, and though he declined to incur any risk--this was doubtless borne by Burke--he promised his best endeavours to make the poem a success. _The Library_ was published, anonymously, in June 1781. The _Monthly_ and the _Critical Reviews_ awarded it a certain amount of faint praise, but the success with the general public seems only to have been slight.

When Burke selected this poem to lay before Dodsley, he had already read portions of _The Village,_ and it seems strange that he should have given _The Library_ precedence, for the other was in every respect the more remarkable. But Burke, a conservative in this as in other matters, probably thought that a new poet desiring to be heard would be wiser in not at once quitting the old paths. The readers of poetry still had a taste for didactic epigram varied by a certain amount of florid rhetoric. And there was little beyond this in Crabbe's moralisings on the respective functions of theology, history, poetry, and the rest, as represented on the shelves of a library, and on the blessings of literature to the heart when wearied with business and the cares of life. Crabbe's verses on such topics are by no means ineffective. He had caught perfectly the trick of the school so soon to pass away. He is as fluent and copious--as skilful in spreading a truism over a dozen well-sounding lines--as any of his predecessors. There is little new in the way of ideas. Crabbe had as yet no wide insight into books and authors, and he was forced to deal largely in generalities. But he showed that he had already some idea of style; and if, when he had so little to say, he could say it with so much semblance of power, it was certain that when he had observed and thought for himself he would go further and make a deeper mark. The heroic couplet controlled him to the end of his life, and there is no doubt that it was not merely timidity that made him confine himself to the old beaten track. Crabbe's thoughts ran very much in antithesis, and the couplet suited this tendency. But it had its serious limitations. Southey's touching stanzas--

"My days among the dead are passed,"

though the ideas embodied are no more novel than Crabbe's, are worth scores of such lines as these--

"With awe, around these silent walks I tread; These are the lasting mansions of the dead: 'The dead!' methinks a thousand tongues reply; 'These are the tombs of such as cannot die! Crowned with eternal fame, they sit sublime, And laugh at all the little strife of Time'"