CHAPTER II


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