refrained from speaking with his children. After relating in full his
early struggles as an imperfectly qualified country doctor, and his
subsequent fortunes in London up to the day of his appeal to Burke,
Crabbe proceeds--"It will perhaps be asked how I could live near twelve
months a stranger in London; and coming without money, it is not to be
supposed I was immediately credited. It is not; my support arose from
another source. In the very early part of my life I contracted some
acquaintance, which afterwards became a serious connection, with the
niece of a Suffolk gentleman of large fortune. Her mother lives with her
three daughters at Beccles; her income is but the interest of fifteen
hundred pounds, which at her decease is to be divided betwixt her
children. The brother makes her annual income about a hundred pounds; he
is a rigid economist, and though I have the pleasure of his approbation,
I have not the good fortune to obtain more, nor from a prudent man could
I perhaps expect so much. But from the family at Beccles I have every
mark of their attention, and every proof of their disinterested regard.
They have from time to time supplied me with such sums as they could
possibly spare, and that they have not done more arose from my
concealing the severity of my situation, for I would not involve in my
errors or misfortunes a very generous and very happy family by which I
am received with unaffected sincerity, and where I am treated as a son
by a mother who can have no prudential reason to rejoice that her
daughter has formed such a connection. It is this family I lately
visited, and by which I am pressed to return, for they know the
necessity there is for me to live with the utmost frugality, and
hopeless of my succeeding in town, they invite me to partake of their
little fortune, and as I cannot mend my prospects, to avoid making them
worse." The letter ends with an earnest appeal to Burke to help him to
any honest occupation that may enable him to live without being a burden
on the slender resources of Miss Elmy's family. Crabbe is full of