10. She Is Gone

In August 1813 Crabbe made his first visit to London for nearly thirty years, accompanied by Sarah and his sons. He went to the coffee-house and the theatre and met old friends. “I had hoped something from novelty and even hurry,” he wrote later, but Sarah’s health did not improve and by September the family was back in Muston.

On September 21st 1813 Sarah Crabbe died. Crabbe wrote, “She has been dying these ten years … She is gone. I cannot weigh sorrows in a balance or make comparison between different kinds of affliction, nor do I judge whether I should have suffered most to have parted with my poor Sally, as I did part …or to have seen her pass away with all her faculties, feelings, senses as acute and awake as my own …The mind was veiled, clouded and by degrees lost. Then too were the affections wrecked: no, I was no more than another … My dear Sally! When did I last see you, hear you, converse with you? Alas, I know not. You have left me; long, long left me!” (!)

Sarah Crabbe was buried at Muston and her memorial can be seen on the left-hand wall of the chancel of St John the Baptist.

However difficult Crabbe’s married life had been, his grief for ‘poor Sally’ was extreme. His sister-in-law concluded: ‘Never was there a better husband, except that he was too indulgent.’ His son  reports that two days after Sarah Crabbe’s death ‘anxiety and sorrow brought on an alarming illness … he appeared regardless of life, and desired … that my mother’s grave might not be closed  till it was seen whether he should recover.'(2

References
(1) Letters, Letter to Mrs Althea Lewis, 25th Oct. 1813.
(2) Life p. 202