Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, etc., being selections from the Remains of Henry Crabb Robinson/Introduction: Henry Crabb Robinson, by the Editor

by Henry Crabb Robinson, edited by Edith Julia Morley

INTRODUCTION

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

1775-1867

IN the frescoes in the hall at Dr. Williams's Library, Gordon Square, London—the original dining-room of University Hall—Crabb Robinson sits by himself, pen in hand, apparently recalling the many friendships of an exceptionally long life. On the surrounding panels, arranged in four separate groups, are some of the most distinguished of his acquaintances and intimates, English and foreign: among the four-and-thirty thus selected, to name a few of them, are Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Lambs, Blake, Hazlitt, and Landor; Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, Arndt, Tieck, and Schlegel; Madame de Stael, Irving, Dr. Arnold, and Robertson. These figures are representative, but they do not in any sense ezhaust the tale of his literary friends, still less of his literary experiences. The earliest reference to poetry in his Reminiscences is to the publication of John Gilpin {1782), for learning which by heart he was given sixpence. The last entry in his Diary, five days before his death in 1867, concerns Matthew Arnold's essay on the Function of Criticism. Between those dates it is no exaggeration to say that Crabb Robinson read every important work that appeared in English or in German, and that he knew, and often was friendly with, most of their writers.

As a boy he was thrilled by the news that the Bastille had fallen, and his Jacobinism was tempered only by his encounters with French refugees. He sympathized with Horne Tooke, with Hardy and with Thelwall, and was at first an ardent admirer of Godwin, with whom he long remained on friendly terms, though he came to disapprove of both his philosophy and his morals. He lived to be what he called himself in 1832, a "conservative reformer or reforming conservative," while in his old age he read the writings of Gladstone and President Lincoln's inaugural speech.

The boy who saw—he was too far off to hear—John Wesley preach at Colchester in 1790, in 1846 began to be intimate with F.W.Robertson, and was an admirer of Frederick Maurice as well as of Newman. Robinson was a student at the University of Jena in 1800, remaining in Germany for more than five years; he was foreign correspondent of The Times in Altona in 1807, and a life-long friend of Walter as a result. In the following year he was "foreign editor," and in this capacity in 1808 escaped from Corunna only just before the battle. His Diary records in detail contemporary emotions after Trafalgar and Waterloo; in May 1856 he mentions a "peace sermon" after the Crimea, and there is a detailed account of the Prussian victories of 1866.

Machinery riots and rick burning, the massacre at Peterloo, the first spring bed in which he slept, the first steamers, the first railway^[1]—all these things are described and commented upon by this indefatigable diarist; he tells of elections before the Reform Bill, of the long fight for the abolition of slavery, of criminal prosecutions when the death-penalty was inflicted for petty theft, of current prices at various periods, and of social manners and customs. His Remains thus serve as a source for various kinds of investigation.

They present, nevertheless, a formidable task to the investigator. Dr. Sadler's edition of the Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence—the only one hitherto available—confessedly does not include more than a twenty-fifth or thirtieth part of the whole. From 1811 to 1867 there is a detailed daily journal; from 1790 to 1843 there are four huge volumes of Reminiscences, averaging 450 folio pages; there are 32 volumes of correspondence, each containing some 160 letters—for the most part to or from himself—many of them very long. These range over Robinson's whole life, some of them being family letters of earlier date. In addition there are 28 volumes containing Journals of Tours, and various volumes and bundles of miscellanea. We know from the Diary that, nevertheless, much time was spent by Robinson towards the end of his life in the destruction of papers and of letters which he thought would prove valueless to posterity. It cannot be claimed that everything which is preserved merits publication. Inevitably, much in so detailed a Diary must for us who come after be unprofitable reading. People of importance in their day, or events and discussions which once loomed large, have ceased to be interesting. We do not want to know exactly where Robinson visited and dined on every one of 365 days every year. The part he took as a young man in debates, or later on in law-suits as a practising barrister, or in discussions throughout his life; his services as mediator between his friends, or as adviser and guide to all and sundry; his errors, real and imaginary, of omission and commission—some of this indubitably could be spared vrith advantage. But the man who emerges from this mass of material is, nevertheless, a lovable personality—no Boswell certainly, but one who possessed a genuine gift for characterization, an instinct for friendship, and the power to stamp himself and his experience with extraordinary vividness on his pages. This is no mere prosy raconteur, unable to distinguish between small things and great; no shorthand reporter taking indiscriminate notes of what passes before his eyes. The man has a mind of his own; he has critical ability and the power to estimate the worth of new works, prose or poetry, good as well as bad. In 1820 he was already hailing Keats as a great poet; he at once recognized the value of Macaulay's history; long before he knew the name of their author he, like the rest of the world, was devouring the Waverley Novels, but, unlike most people, with an instinctive preference for the more successful of them. Kenilworth and Ivanhoe, for example, are recognized as definitely inferior to the Heart of Midlothian and Rob Roy. But, above all, it is as the admirer and missionary of Wordsworth among English men of letters that Crabb Robinson is best remembered, and to him and his readings and quotations in early days Wordsworth owed a large proportion of his first audience, fit though few. Moreover, as his German friends recognized, Crabb, for so he was always called by his intimates in later life, was one of the earliest to popularize German literature and to introduce German philosophy into England. The man who, as a student at Jena, had been introduced to Goethe, had heard Schelling lecture upon Methodology, and had successfully impersonated^[2] Fichte, never ceased to acclaim, to read, and to write about the first-named, never forgot to sing the praises of Kant, to magnify the Schlegels, and to spread the gospel of transcendentalism. Mme. de Staël owed to him most of the information which resulted in her De l'Allemagne: she summoned him to Berlin in 1804—the letter is extant—that he might help her to acquire some notion of German philosophy, and cheerfully acknowledged: "Si vous avez un moment de loisir pour m'écrire quelque chose sur Kant vous augmenteriez mes richesses morales car je n'entends rien qu'à travers vos idées." Later on she told the Duke of Weimar: "J'ai voulu connaître la philosophie allemande; j'ai frappé à la porte de tout le monde, Robinson seul me I'a ouverte."

Remembering these friendships and these achievements, reading as we may in his Diary and letters of Robinson's innumerable acts of kindness, many of which involved not only trouble and self-sacrifice, but also the power to give valuable help in business and in family difficulties, we may as soon believe in Macaulay's strange theory of the "inspired idiot," as in H. C. R.'s own estimate of his character, ability, and influence. He is curiously detached in his self-criticism, as also in his judgments on the criticisms passed upon him by other people. His parents had been known in their youth as "the handsome couple." Their youngest son cherished no illusions about his own personal appearance. Thus he comments upon Strutt's portrait of him in 1820: "It has merit and is in some respects a good likeness, but it caricatures my peculiarities... As I dislike my own external appearance, I was not pleased with this representation of myself... I am... offended by the unpleasant expression which, though not uglier than my own, is ugly in a different way." Similarly when, in 1829, Goethe sends him to one Schmeller, to have a portrait taken, he describes this as being "a head in crayons, frightfully ugly, and very like," or when he sits to Ewing for his bust, this "has great merit, for it is a strong likeness without being disgusting." The account of H. C. R.'s ugliness is confirmed from less prejudiced sources, and may therefore be credited. Thus Bagehot writes of him in his admirable essay (Literary Studies, vol. ii): "His face was pleasing from its animation, its kindness, and its shrewdness, but the nose was one of the most slovenly which nature had ever turned out, and the chin of excessive length, with portentous power of extension... Mr. Robinson... made a very able use of the chin at a conversational crisis, and just at the point of a story pushed it out, and then very slowly drew it in again, so that you always knew when to laugh, and the oddity of the gesture helped you in laughing." Again, Miss Fenwick, Wordsworth's friend, whites to Henry Taylor, January 26, 1839, that there was "a series of ugliness in quick succession, one look more ugly than the one which preceded it, particularly when he is asleep. He is always asleep when he is not talking .. On which occasions little Willy [Wordsworth's grandson] contemplates him with great interest and often inquires 'What kind of face has Mr. Robinson?' 'A very nice face' is the constant answer; then a different look comes, and another inquiry of, 'What kind of a face was that?' 'A nice face too.' What an odd idea he must have of nice faces."

According to his own account H. C. R. was indolent, lacked concentration, and was a poor lawyer who was incapable of mastering legal theory, though he often obtained deserved credit by his speeches. He declared himself never to have remedied the defects of his early education, to have a smattering of many subjects as a result of much desultory reading, but to have no profound knowledge of any one of them. Nor had he literary ability, and he could not write except in a pedestrian way; "Sir," he would reiterate, "I have no literary talent. I cannot write. I never could write anything, and I never would write anything." "I never knew any law, sir, but I knew the practice." "I am nothing, and never was anything, not even a lawyer." "You see that my memory is quite gone; though that is an absurd way of talking, for I never had any." He had wasted his life, and there was an end of it. The only talent he had ever possessed was for speaking, and even that he had often abused by unduly monopolizing the conversation.

There is, further, a delightful comment when he was going through the papers left by his friend Hamond, whose suicide at the end of 1819 was a great grief to him. "I was interested in a paragraph about myself—not of indiscriminate eulogy, though of friendly appreciation. The unfavourable features of my character are all truly given, and except the epithet ingenious, which I disclaim, the other qualities are not given me without foundation." Here is the passage in question: "March 1816. Paris. Miss Williams…called H. C. R. an interesting man. Now, he is a kind-hearted, gay, ingenious, animated, well-read man, with a good taste in morals, but he is far from being an interesting man…His manners are too coarse—he has too little ambition, too much vanity and garrulity." An ordinary individual, we imagine, would scarcely accept such a description of himself as "friendly appreciation," "truly given" if only the one intellectual quality ascribed to him were eliminated.^[3] Robinson has too frequently been taken at his own valuation, but it is certain that his self-depreciation and extraordinary modesty do him scant justice. W. S. Landor wrote of him early in their acquaintance, in 1831: "He was a barrister, and notwithstanding, both honest and modest—a character I never heard of before," and this genuine humility is apparent in his estimates of himself. To take two examples as typical of many. His Diary is written in a simple, unassuming, direct style which at first may lead the unwary to ignore this narrative power and unusual gift for reporting conversation, and thereby revealing the character of the speakers. He does not understand Blake; he thinks him indubitably mad. But H. C. R.'s account of his interviews with Blake are the most revealing contemporary interpretations we possess of the mystic poet-painter and his personality. Many people have written well of Lamb, whose lovable self is an inspiration to his critics. But who has said more in a single sentence than H. C. R. has included in the following comment: "Lamb, who needs very little indulgence for himself, is very indulgent towards others"? (June 15, 1815). What force of judgment there is in all his criticisms, and some of these are adverse, on the character of Wordsworth, whom he worshipped this side idolatry as much as any; how well he depicts Coleridge in those "innings-for-one that he called conversation." These character sketches—and the Diary bristles with them, great men and small, poets, statesmen, revolutionaries, criminals in the dock, lawyers on circuit, judges on the bench, chance acquaintances picked up on the road—these are not mere lucky flukes. "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance," and there is the genuine art, which conceals itself, in H. C. R.'s achievements. The statement that he "never could write anything" is abundantly disproved on his own evidence.

Similarly with the assertion that he never had any memory. There is no need to go to the testimony of Professor de Morgan^[4] or of Bagehot, the friends of his last years, when he might well be excused had his faculties failed him. But once more his oft-repeated complaint is incontrovertibly contradicted by his own writings—even by the least interesting of these, the journals of his tours, or by the reminiscences of his experiences as boy and man. No doubt the daily journal helped him with the latter, but even the Diary^[5] was not always filled up day by day; sometimes a week's doings were inserted in the small hours after a long day in the courts, and the Diary is frequently supplemented thirty years later by incidents it was not considered fitting to include—even in cipher—at the time of their occurrence. To get a complete picture it is often necessary to consult both the first draft and the later, the very much later, working-up.

Crabb Robinson's chief gift was, however, for conversation. Essentially a "clubbable" man, he was, and felt himself to be, pre-eminently at home at the Athenæum, of which he was one of the earliest members and where much of his time was passed, especially as he grew older. But everywhere his sociability and genius for getting on with all sorts and conditions of men and women stood him in good stead. An excellent whist player, he frequented Lamb's parties; he played chess with Mrs. Barbauld, and regaled her and the Aikens with the poems of Wordsworth—which they did not invariably appreciate—or of Southey, or even of the free-thinking, wicked Lord Byron. He was equally at home in Unitarian and Dissenting circles, in the Anglican atmosphere of Rydal Mount or Fox How, or with Roman Catholic O'Connell or Quillinan. He was profoundly interested in religious speculation, but the essentials of his own creed, as expounded in more than one place in his Diary and letters, he worked out for himself. It was, above all, a tolerant creed, as might be expected from so tolerant a man. Nothing, for instance, more repelled him than the conception of eternal damnation for unbelievers, and there is a long letter on this subject to his friend Richmond, then on the point of being ordained minister in the Episcopalian Church of America.

Crabb Robinson's acquaintances were of every social class and of very various capacity. Though he dearly loved a "lion," there was nothing of the intellectual snob about him, and he mixed freely with all kinds of people. As a young man he loved dancing—though he did not approve of waltzing^[6] when he first came across it at Frankfort in 1800. When he was old he often paid anonymously the cost of an end-of-term dance for the men of University Hall. He was a great walker, who seems to have thought nothing of a thirty-five mile expedition, and in late middle life he could still tire out youngsters of half his age. No doubt connected with this physical energy were the high spirits which distinguished him. All his friends comment upon his exuberant gaiety and light-heartedness: Mrs. Clarkson^[7] says of him, when he is close on seventy, that he is "as much a boy as ever." Wordsworth, just before H. C. R. goes on his long Italian tour in 1829, calls him "a healthy creature" who talks of coming again in seven years as others would of seven days. He himself confesses: "I have through life had animal spirits in a high degree." Dr. Sadler's choice of a motto for the Diary is thus peculiarly appropriate:

A Man he seems of cheerful yesterdays
And confident to-morrows; with a face
Not worldly-minded, for it bears too much
Of Nature's impress—gaiety and health.
Freedom and hope; but keen withal, and shrewd.
His gestures note—and, hark! his tones of voice
Are all vivacious as his mien and looks.

The Excursion, Bk. VII.

This vivacity, combined with much practice in private and in public, helped him to shine in conversation as well as in more formal speaking. When he was past ninety, standing up to deliver it, he made a long and vigorous speech on the subject of the election of a professor of Logic at University College, London, speaking, he says, "with more passion than propriety," the sort of comment with which his readers become very familiar while perusing the Diary. But it was in private that he excelled as a talker and as a listener, and his gifts in these respects were cordially recognized by all with whom he came in contact. "The elements of conversational power in H. C. R.," says De Morgan, "were a quick and witty grasp of meaning, a wide knowledge of letters and of men-of-letters, a sufficient but not too exacting perception of the relevant, and an extraordinary power of memory." He had, too, an enormous repertory of anecdotes, and, if we may believe the rather sharp (but affectionately admiring) account of Bagehot, in his old age his pet stories did duty rather too often. There is, however, no doubt of his mastery of the art of conversation, and it was partly for this reason that his company was so eagerly sought. As a young man and in middle life he was constantly invited out: in his old age his breakfast-parties were institutions. He complains that he neglects necessary work for desultory amusement and unprofitable talk, that his days are spent to no purpose, and that he gets through nothing of importance. But in this, as in so many of his self-reproaches, there is little substance. Literally he added to the gaiety of nations—by what he was, as well as by what he said. He was, in addition, an admirable man of business, and, in spite of his assertions to the contrary, a competent and successful barrister with a sound practice. He was a voracious reader—of law, history, philosophy, theology, novels, travels, and poetry—and he wrote detailed summaries and criticisms of much that he read. He travelled a great deal at home and abroad, and he left no individual and no object of interest unvisited. He was never too tired or busy to do someone a good turn, whether it were to visit a homesick child at school, to accompany rather dull acquaintances to the exhibition, to look after the business-matters of a widow, to collect money for someone who was in need, to introduce the many young foreigners who were commended to his notice, to distribute prospectuses of Coleridge's lectures, invest Wordsworth's savings or lend him a carpet-bag^[8] for his travels, or conclude terms for him with a publisher or comfort him in family afflictions.

Carlyle applied to him as a matter of course when he wanted advice about the German novels he was to translate. But it was equally of course that a hundred-and-one nonentities should ask him for every variety of assistance, and that none should ever be sent away unsatisfied. He gave money, and gave it very freely and very wisely, but his generosity was shown in a thousand ways that troubled him much more than mere almsgiving.^[9] Friends and acquaintances unanimously turned to him when they were in need, and their testimony in his favour is overwhelming. Like Carlyle (April 29, 1825), they knew by repeated experience his readiness to oblige, and made no scruple of applying to him in any and every emergency. "I am a man," he once told Bagehot, "to whom a great number of persons entertain the very strongest objection." We can well believe that this was true, for he had his weaknesses, his crotchets, and his prejudices like other people. He could be prosy and dull and self-assertive. His society manners were not always above reproach; for instance, even as a young man he frequently fell asleep in company when he did not find it amusing, or when there was music which he could not appreciate. His views on politics, too, were very pronounced, and he was unable to brook contradiction on certain matters both political and literary. Above all, he had character, personality, mind; and such a man was unlikely, considering the number of his acquaintances and the variety of his pursuits, to pass through life without making enemies. But he had a genius for friendship, and social gifts which have outlasted him. Not only do his Diary and the other jottings-down of his leisure moments revivify the men whom he knew and loved. They create for him new friends in his readers, who owe to him what is almost a personal acquaintance with many they had otherwise vainly wished to know in their habit as they lived. And "old Crabb" himself moves among his comrades, still, as in a society which has long since passed away, active, vivacious, sympathetic, understanding, and intensely alive, cheering them by his^[10] buoyant spirit."

1. "We hear of some astonishing inventions by means of steam, by which carriages are to be impelled on the public roads to the exclusion of horses."—Thomas Robinson to H. C. R., Nov. 22, 1829. On June 10, 1833, H. C. R. travelled by rail from Liverpool to Manchester and back. On July 4 he wrote a detailed description of his experiences to his brother Thomas.
2. See Sadler, vol. i, p. 106: Visit to Würzburg, 1804.
3. Cf. Diary, June 16, 1820: "M. does not know how liberally I feel on such matters, and I daresay he feels greatly embarrassed by what need not trouble him. His unfavourable opinion of me was founded on my talking too much—he considered me as one of the men who hunt merely after talent without having a sincere pursuit of either truth or taste. This he wrote in 1812 — but in 1816 he wrote, after coming to town, that he was convinced that I was not a clever man — the word ' clever ' he had struck out, and softened his remark by substituting the word first-rate. I know myself not to be even a second or third-rate man — I also know that I have neither the wit nor [a] great deal of humour which in 1812 he thought I had."
4. Professor of Mathematics at University College, London. For his account of H. C. R. see the Appendix to Dr. Sadler's edition of the Diary, etc.
5. Since the above lines were written I have come across some dozens of small pocket-books in which the events were jotted down which were afterwards elaborated in the Diary. In these pocket-books H. C. R. also kept rough accounts and made other notes which might prove interesting to economists and others. I have not yet examined them at all carefully.
6. He describes it in a letter to his brother as "rolling or turning, though the rolling is not horizontal, but perpendicular. Yet Werter, after describing his first waltz with Charlotte, says—and I say so too—'I felt that were I married, my wife should waltz (or roll) with no one but myself.' Judge: The man places the palms of his hands gently against the sides of his partner, not far from the arm-pits. His partner does the same, and instantly with as much velocity as possible they turn round and at the same time gradually glide round the room."
7. The wife of the abolitionist. She had been a kind of elder sister to him from his boyhood onwards.
8. My dear Friend,

   Pray meet me at Mr. Aders' on Wednesday to Breakfast. I shall be obliged by the loan of your Carpet Bag, which you were kind enough to offer.

   Ever yours,
   W. Wordsworth.

   Monday [June 16? 1828].
   12 Bryanston [St.].

9. You are the benevolent friend of all, adding to the value of every good office by the judgement which directs it."—Flaxman to H. C. R. Feb. 11, 1819.

   "It is difficult to have less claim than myself to your services, but we have a sort of instinct that tells on whom we may venture to rely when we stand in need of a kind office."—Miss H. M. Williams {minor authoress') to H. C. R. Mch. 25, 1819.

10. Wordsworth: Dedication to H. C. R. of the "Memorials of an Italian Tour." There he refers also to:

    "... kindnesses that never ceased to flow,
    And prompt self-sacrifice to which I owe
    Far more than any heart but mine can know."