the worsted stockings' is the title hit off for him
by Horace Smith, and has about the same degree of truth as most smart
sayings of the kind. The 'worsted stockings' at least are
characteristic. Crabbe's son and biographer indicates some of the
surroundings of his father's early life in a description of the uncle, a
Mr. Tovell, with whom the poet's wife, the Mira of his Journal, passed
her youth. He was a sturdy yeoman, living in an old house with a moat, a
rookery, and fishponds. The hall was paved with black and white marble,
and the staircase was of black oak, slippery as ice, with a chiming
clock and a barrel-organ on the landing-places. The handsome
drawing-room and dining-rooms were only used on grand occasions, such as
the visit of a neighbouring peer. Mrs. Tovell jealously reserved for
herself the duty of scrubbing these state apartments, and sent any
servant to the right-about who dared to lay unhallowed hands upon them.
The family sat habitually in the old-fashioned kitchen, by a huge open
chimney, where the blaze of a whole pollard sometimes eclipsed the
feeble glimmer of the single candle in an iron candlestick, intended to
illuminate Mrs. Tovell's labours with the needle. Masters and servants,
with any travelling tinker or ratcatcher, all dined together, and the
nature of their meals has been described by Crabbe himself:--

But when the men beside their station took,
The maidens with them, and with these the cook;
When one huge wooden bowl before them stood,
Filled with huge balls of farinaceous food;
With bacon, mass saline, where never lean
Beneath the brown and bristly rind was seen;
When from a single horn the party drew
Their copious draughts of heavy ale and new;

then, the poet goes on to intimate, squeamish persons might feel a
little uncomfortable. After dinner followed a nap of precisely one hour.
Then bottles appeared on the table, and neighbouring farmers, with faces
rosy with brandy, drifted in for a chat. One of these heroes never went
to bed sober, but scandalised all teetotallers by retaining all his
powers and coursing after he was ninety. Bowl after bowl of punch was
emptied, and the conversation took so convivial a character that Crabbe
generally found it expedient to withdraw, though his son, who records
these performances, was held to be too young to be injured, and the
servants were too familiar for their presence to be a restraint.

It was in this