FRIENDSHIP WITH BURKE

(1781-1783)

Thus far I have followed the guidance of Crabbe's son and biographer,
but there is much that is confused and incomplete in his narrative. The
story of Crabbe's life, as told by the son, leaves us in much doubt as
to the order of events in 1780-1781. The memorable letter to Burke was,
as we have seen, without a date. The omission is not strange, for the
letter was written by Crabbe in great anguish of mind, and was left by
his own hand at Burke's door. The son, though he evidently obtained from
his father most of the information he was afterwards to use, never
extracted this date from him. He tells us that up to the time of his
undertaking the Biography, he did not even know that the original of the
letter was in existence. He also tells us that until he and his brother
saw the letter they had little idea of the extreme poverty and anxiety
which their father had experienced during his time in London. Obviously
Crabbe himself had been reticent on the subject even with his own
family. From the midsummer of 1780, when the "Journal to Mira" comes to
an end, to the February or March of the following year, there is a blank
in the Biography which the son was unable to fill. At the time the
fragment of Diary closes, Crabbe was apparently at the very end of his
resources. He had pawned all his personal property, his books and his
surgical implements, and was still in debt. He had begged assistance
from many of the leading statesmen of the hour without success. How did
he contrive to exist between June 1780 and the early months of 1781?

The problem might never have been solved for us had it not been for the
accidental publication, four years after the Biography appeared, of a