made “Jacky,” she averred, to turn in
his grave. Crabbe seems, however, to have shown
so much good-feeling and forbearance in the matter
that the old lady, after grimly boasting that she
could “screw Crabbe up and down like a fiddle,”
was ultimately friendly, and her share of her brother’s
estate came in due course to Crabbe and his wife.
Moreover, the change of tenancy at the Hall was anything
but satisfactory to the village generally. Mr.
Tovell had been much given to hospitality, and that
of a convivial sort. Such of the neighbours as
were of kindred tastes had been in the habit of “dropping
in” of an evening two or three times a week,
when, if a
quorum was present, a bowl of punch
would be brewed, and sometimes a second and a third.
The substitution for all this of the quiet and decorous
family life of the Crabbes was naturally a hoary blow
and grave discouragement to the village reveller, and
contributed to make Crabbe’s life at starting
far from happy. His pursuits and inclinations,
literary as well as clerical, made such company distasteful;
and his wife, who had borne him seven children in nine
years, and of these had lost four in infancy, had little
strength or heart for miscellaneous company.
But there was compensation for her husband among the
county gentry of the neighbourhood, and notably in
the constant kindness of Dudley North, of Little Glemham
Hall, the same friend who had helped him with money
when twelve years before he had left Aldeburgh, an
almost penniless adventurer, to try his fortune in
London. At Mr. North’s table Crabbe had
once more the opportunity of meeting members of the
Whig party, whom he had known through Burke. On
one such occasion Fox expressed his regret that Crabbe
had ceased to write, and offered his help in revising
any future poem that he might produce. The promise
was not forgotten when ten years later
The Parish
Register was in preparation.
During his first year at Parham, Crabbe does not appear
to have undertaken any fixed clerical duties, and
this interval of leisure allowed him to pay a long
visit to his sister at Aldeburgh, and here he placed
his two elder boys, George and John, at a dame school.
On returning to Parham, he accepted the office of
curate-in-charge at Sweffling, the rector, Rev. Richard
Turner, being resident at his other living of Great
Yarmouth. The curacy of Great Glemham, also within
easy reach, was shortly added. Crabbe was still
residing at Parham Lodge, but the incidents of such
residence remained far from pleasant, and, after four
years there, Crabbe joyfully accepted the offer of
a good house at Great Glemham, placed at his disposal
by his friend Dudley North. Here the family remained
for a further period of four or five years.