[Footnote 2: See a pleasant paper on Crabbe at Muston and Allington by
the Rev. W.H. Hutton of St John's College, Oxford, in the _Cornhill
Magazine_ for June 1901.]




CHAPTER V


IN SUFFOLK AGAIN

(1792-1805)

On the arrival of the family at Parham, poor Crabbe discovered that even
an accession of fortune had its attendant drawbacks. His son, George,
records his own recollections (he was then a child of seven years) of
the scene that met their view on their alighting at Parham Lodge. "As I
got out of the chaise, I remember jumping for very joy, and exclaiming,
'Here we are, here we are--little Willy and all!'"--(his parents'
seventh and youngest child, then only a few weeks old)--"but my spirits
sunk into dismay when, on entering the well-known kitchen, all there
seemed desolate, dreary, and silent. Mrs. Tovell and her sister-in-law,
sitting by the fireside weeping, did not even rise up to welcome my
parents, but uttered a few chilling words and wept again. All this
appeared to me as inexplicable as forbidding. How little do children
dream of the alterations that older people's feelings towards each other
undergo, when death has caused a transfer of property! Our arrival in
Suffolk was by no means palatable to all my mother's relations."