Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 12.djvu/434

 CRABBE, GEORGE (1754–1832), poet, was born at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, 24 Dec. 1754. His father, George Crabbe, had been a village schoolmaster and parish clerk in Norfolk, and afterwards settled in his native town, Aldeburgh, where he married a widow named Loddock. He had by her six children, of whom George was the eldest, and rose through inferior offices to be ‘saltmaster,’ i.e. collector of salt duties. He was a man of great physical strength, imperious character, and strong passions; he had remarkable powers of calculation, and came to be for many years the ‘factotum of Aldeburgh.’ Robert, his second son, became a glazier. John, the third, was in command of a slave ship, when the slaves rose and sent him adrift with his crew in an open boat, nothing more being ever heard of them; the fourth, William, went to sea, was taken prisoner by the Spaniards, and settled in Mexico, where he married and prospered. He was forced by religious persecution to abandon his family and property, and was last heard of in 1803 on the coast of Honduras. His story is turned to account in Crabbe's ‘Parting Hour’ (‘Tales’ No. 2). There were two daughters, one of whom married a Mr. Sparkes, and died in 1827; the other's death in infancy threw her father into fits of gloomy misery, which strongly impressed her brother's imagination. George Crabbe, the son, was brought up at Aldeburgh amid scenery and characters afterwards most vividly described in his writings. He was chiefly self-educated. His father took in ‘Martin's Philosophical Magazine’ for the sake of the mathematical part, and handed over the poems to the son. Crabbe's bookish tastes induced his father to send him to school at Bungay, and afterwards to a school kept by Richard Haddon, a good mathematician, at Stowmarket. He was taken home and set to work for a time in a warehouse on the quay of Slaughden (described in his poems) till in 1768 he was bound apprentice to a village doctor at Wickham Brook, near Bury St. Edmunds, who employed him as errand boy and farm labourer. In 1771 he was transferred to Mr. Page, a surgeon at Woodbridge. Here he joined a small village club; one of its members introduced him to Sarah Elmy, then residing with her uncle, a substantial yeoman, at Parham, near Framlingham. Crabbe fell in love; his love was returned; and love led to poetry. He contributed verses to ‘Wheble's Magazine’ for 1772; won a prize for a poem on ‘Hope;’ celebrated ‘Mira,’ and planned epic poems and tragedies. He published anonymously at Ipswich in 1774 a didactic poem called ‘Inebriety,’ showing a close study of Pope and some satirical power. He tried vainly at Miss Elmy's bidding to learn the flute, and was at the same time acquiring a taste for botany. At the end of 1775 Crabbe returned to Aldeburgh. He was forced to set to work again in the repulsive duties of the warehouse. His father had acquired a love of the tavern in canvassing for the whig candidate at Aldeburgh during a contested election in 1774. He was now so violent as to be a terror to his meek wife, and had painful scenes with his son. The younger Crabbe continued his medical studies energetically in spite of these distractions, and the father sent him to London to ‘pick up a little surgical knowledge.’ He returned to Aldeburgh and became assistant to a surgeon named Maskill, and, upon Maskill's leaving the town, set up in practice for himself. His profits were small. His patients argued that a man who gathered plants in the ditches, presumably for medical purposes, could sell his drugs cheaply. The Warwickshire militia, quartered in the town in 1778, brought him some practice, and he was patronised by their colonel, H. S. Conway [q. v.] The Norfolk militia succeeded, and brought another gleam of prosperity. His engagement to Miss Elmy continued; it was approved by his parents and tolerated by her relations; but his practice fell off; his health was bad; Miss Elmy prudently declined to marry upon nothing, and Crabbe finally resolved to try his chances in literature. He borrowed five pounds from Mr. Dudley North, ‘brother to the candidate for Aldeburgh,’ and after paying his bill sailed to London with a box of surgical instruments, three pounds in cash, and some manuscripts. Crabbe took lodgings in the city 24 April 1780, near a friend of Miss Elmy's, wife of a linendraper in Cornhill. He bought a fashionable tie-wig from his landlord, Mr. Vickery, a hairdresser, and tried to dispose of his manuscripts. A poem called ‘The Candidate’ was published early in 1780. It was addressed to the ‘Authors of the Monthly Review,’ and received a cold notice in the number for September. The failure of the publisher deprived him of a small anticipated gain. He applied by letter vainly to Lord North, Lord Shelburne, and Thurlow. A cold letter from the last provoked a strong remonstrance in verse, which was unanswered. (William Cowper had a curiously similar passage with Thurlow two years later [see ].) From the others he heard nothing. A journal addressed to Miss Elmy from 21 April to 11 June 1780 gives a vivid description of his difficulties. At last, in the beginning of 1781, he wrote a letter to Burke, describing his