THE PATRON OF CRABBE 



Crabbe entered the household at the Castle, and while there 

 he won the friendship both of the Duke and Duchess. No 

 change has ever been more startling than that which gave 

 the Suffolk gauger's boy a position in one of the stateliest 

 homes of England. For the old Belvoir, though not so im- 

 posing a pile as the present Castle, was essentially the home 

 of a great prince, and at the end of the eighteenth century 

 there was far more state and ceremony in the daily routine 

 than is the custom in our less elaborate age. On the whole, 

 Crabbe seems to have been happy in what to him must have 

 been strange surroundings, though the irritable pride of the 

 poet, combined with the tetchiness of his class, made him a 

 somewhat trying inmate at times. He resented as slights the 

 indifference and ignorance of unlettered persons of all ranks, 

 and while he was loved and honoured by the Manners family, 

 there is evidence in his letters that his position chafed him at 

 times, and that he was glad to exchange the splendours of 

 Belvoir for the simpler joys of a home of his own. It is no 

 slight honour to the memory of both patron and poet that 

 the former took no offence and the latter showed no resent- 

 ment when the tie between them was broken. No doubt the 

 discipline of his life as chaplain of a great house had been 

 invaluable to the poet, for he needed the school of courtesy 

 and tact to which fortune had sent him. He there gained, 

 too, an experience and an insight into character different 

 from any that had been possible to the hopeless tenant of 

 a Grub Street attic, or the scarcely less despairing position of 

 a curate without hope of preferment. For to adopt means 

 which, though questionable, commended themselves to many 

 who have left their mark was impossible to a character so 

 fine in all essentials as was that of George Crabbe. 



I have lingered thus with the poet, though he may seem to 

 have little to do with the main subject of this volume, be- 

 cause his letters open to us the inner life of the Duke, and 

 unfold the best side of the character of the Duchess. They 

 also give us an insight into the attitude of the Duke towards 

 the pack he had inherited. It must be remembered that the 

 Duke and the poet were exactly of an age. At the time the 



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