returned to his home at Aldeburgh, hoping soon to repair to London and
there continue his medical studies. But he found the domestic situation
much changed for the worse. His mother (who, as we have seen, was
several years older than her husband) was an invalid, and his father's
habits and temper were not improving with time. He was by nature
imperious, and had always (it would seem) been liable to intemperance of
another kind. Moreover, a contested election for the Borough in 1774 had
brought with it its familiar temptations to protracted debauch--and it
is significant that in 1775 he vacated the office of churchwarden that
he had held for many years. George, to whom his father was not as a rule
unkind, did not shrink from once more assisting him among the
butter-tubs on Slaughden Quay. Poetry seems to have been for a while
laid aside, the failure of his first venture having perhaps discouraged
him. Some slight amount of practice in his profession fell to his share.
An entry in the Minute Book of the Aldeburgh Board of Guardians of
September 17, 1775, orders "that Mr. George Crabbe, Junr., shall be
employed to cure the boy Howard of the itch, and that whenever any of
the poor shall have occasion for a surgeon, the overseers shall apply to
him for that purpose." But these very opportunities perhaps only served
to show George Crabbe how poorly he was equipped for his calling as
surgeon, and after a period not specified means were found for sending
him to London, where he lodged with a family from Aldeburgh who were in
business in Whitechapel. How and where he then obtained instruction or
practice in his calling does not appear, though there is a gruesome
story, recorded by his son, how a baby-subject for dissection was one
day found in his cupboard by his landlady, who was hardly to be
persuaded that it was not a lately lost infant of her own. In any case,
within a year Crabbe's scanty means were exhausted, and he was once more
in Aldeburgh, and assistant to an apothecary of the name of Maskill.
This gentleman seems to have found Aldeburgh hopeless, for in a few