POEMS

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BY
JOHN   CLARE

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PUBLISHER’S NOTICE.

The Publisher desires to express his regret that, owing to an oversight, the proofs of the Introduction were not submitted to the Editor, who is in no way responsible for the following

ERRATA (corrected in this etext)

Page xvii., line 6, for “been” read “being”; page xxii., first line, for “Reynerdson” read “Reynardson”; page xxiv., for “tête-á-tête” read “tête-à-tête”; page xxviii., 2nd line, for “compliments.” read “compliments,”; page xxx., line 11, for “Dick Suivelles” read “Dick Swiveller”; page xxxi., in the last line but two, for “to” read “of”; page xxxix., in line 6 of second paragraph for “widey” read “widely.{iii}”

RUGBY: GEORGE E. OVER, 1901

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Printed at The Rugby Press

CONTENTS

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BIOGRAPHY AND COMMENT

In tracing the origin of John Clare it is not necessary to go very far back, reference to his grandfather and grandmother being a sufficient acknowledgement of the claims of genealogy. Following the road at haphazard, trusting himself entirely to the guidance of fortune, and relying for provender upon his skill in drawing from a violin tunes of the battle and the dance, about thirty years before Helpstone heard the first wail of its infant poet, there arrived at the village the vagabond and truculent Parker. Born under a wandering star, this man had footed it through many a country of Europe, careless whether daily necessity required from him an act of bloodshed or the scraping of a harum-scarum reel designed to set frolic in the toes of man and maid. At the time of his reaching Helpstone, a Northamptonshire village, destined to come into prominence because of the lyrics of its chief son, it happened that the children were without a schoolmaster. In his time the adventurer had{x} played many parts. Why should he not add to the list? Effrontery, backed up by an uncertain amount of superficial attainment, won the day, and this fiddling Odysseus obtained the vacant position. Of his boastings, his bowings, his drinkings, there is no need to make history, but his soft tongue demands a moment of attention. We may take it for granted that he picked out the fairest flower among the maids of Helpstone as the target for all the darts at his disposal, each of which, we may be sure, was polished by use. The daughter of the parish clerk was a fortress easy to capture. Depicted by himself, the rascal loomed as a hero; till at last the affair proceeded beyond a mere kiss, and the poor girl pleaded for the offices of a priest in order to save her child from the stain of illegitimacy. However, the schoolmaster proved glib of promises, but fleet of foot, for on the day following his sweetheart’s revelations he was nowhere to be found. In the course of time John Clare’s father was born. In his turn, he grew into the want of a mate, found her, married her, and begot an honour for England.

John Clare was born at Helpstone, on the 13th day of July, 1793, and born into a heritage of handicaps. To say nothing of the fruits of exposure to rough weathers which were ripening in his{xi} father’s system, the boy had the disadvantage of being one of twins, a sister accompanying him into the world. His mother suffered from dropsy, and we may well believe that what life the children sucked from her breast contained elements threatening their future health. Small and frail, the lad had the additional misfortune to open his eyes in the cottage of a pauper, instead of in some abode where his natural weakness could have been nourished by foods giving inward encouragement, and of a sort sure to result in the building up of hearty fibre. Despite all these early rebuffs, John Clare kept hold of life. When still very young he set out full of faith to explore the junction of earth and heaven, for on the horizon he could see the point of their meeting. In this incident, as well as in many another of his childhood, it is easy to detect signs of a spirit triumphantly unfitted for residence in a clay hovel at Helpstone. As luck would have it, a kind of rough-and-ready poetry was not altogether out of the boy’s reach, for his father’s head was stuffed with innumerable odds-and-ends of rhyme, some of which he was in the habit of reciting to his son. Entertainment of the same sort was obtainable from old Granny Bains, a weather-worn cow-herd, to whom the future poet was attracted by her store of{xii} ditties; whose especial cronies were the wind and rain. Under such illiterate tutors little John Clare moved closer and closer to the soul of poetry, musing while he put a limit to the vagrancy of the geese and sheep for which he had been appointed guardian as soon as the main part of his schooling was over. His departure from the scholastic bench took place when his years had reached a very unripe total, for with only seven birthdays entered in his book of life, at an age when a child is usually at the commencement of historical and geographical perplexities, he was turned out into the fields as a wage-earner. Instead of feeling elated at his escape from the scholastic coils of Dame Bullimore, as many a lad would have done, John Clare, being aware of his budding wits, although unable to comprehend the motive force from within, looked round his small district in search of fresh educational territories to be conquered by his brain. Having saved a few pence he made overtures to Mr. James Merrishaw, the schoolmaster of Glinton, and in the duller months of the year, when days were short, he attended certain evening classes, notwithstanding the fact that the journeys involved taxed his boot-leather severely; for Glinton is nearly five miles away from Helpstone. Here he learned well,{xiii} but not altogether wisely, if we may agree that the boy’s struggles with the intricacies of algebra were conspicuous for mis-applied energy. But something more valuable than baffling equations resulted from John Clare’s connection with the sage of Glinton, for Mr. Merrishaw made him free of his books, thus feeding more and more that desire for knowledge which sprang up in him not less rapidly than a mushroom grows in a meadow.

Even in such a loose piece of biography as this—an essay which has no other aim than to glance in passing at the salient features of Clare’s career—a little space must be spared for mention of the boy’s year of service as factotum at the “Blue Bell” at Helpstone, where he had almost as much leisure as work, because it was here that his hermitical notions and moods of dream increased at an extraordinary rate. Served by travelling pedlars, whose packs let him share in fancy the terror of Red Riding Hood, the adventures of Valentine and Orson, to say no word of Sinbad’s amazements, the small student entered for the first time into the recesses of fairy land, there to lave his hands in its abundant jewels, while making extortionate demands upon the swiftness of genies. Little by little, algebra went to the wall, yielding as much to the boy’s{xiv} spreading passion for Nature’s feast of grass and flowers, as for the limitless enchantments born of imagination, since at this period the list of impulses communicated to him by wayside blossoms, by clouds, by winds, and by the easy ballads of thrushes, daily grew longer. The boy began to appreciate the largeness of God’s school as compared with the limits reigned over by Dame Bullimore and the pedagogue of Glinton; and his increasing sense of hearing enabled him to receive into his understanding fragments of those sermons which are preached by stones. Hunger for expansion lived and lusted in his heart. No better example of this fury of craving could be adduced than the story of how the young poet entered into a combat with circumstances in order that he might obtain a copy of Thomson’s “Seasons.” Mental agony, as well as a superlative degree of hoarding, went to the purchase of that coveted volume, the history of which is fully set forth in Mr. Frederick Martin’s stimulating “Life of John Clare.” During these glowing months the boy of genius had not ceased from utilising every chance scrap of paper for the purpose of jotting down his exercises in rhyme. By means of a forgivable trick he secured the verbal patronage of his father and mother, who could not see any merit in his verses{xv} till he pretended that they were the compositions of others. As poem after poem was written their author stored them in a cranny in the wall, a retreat at last invaded by Mrs. Clare, with the result that she was wont to help the boiling of the kettle by burning underneath it the early pipings of her son.

At this point, the youth in whose story the interest lies being sixteen years old, Cupid, with no loss of his bright qualities after so many centuries of exercise, comes into the recital. To John Clare, who was moving rapidly towards the full worship of all things lovely, Mary Joyce appeared to be nobody less bewildering and enchanting than a stray from heaven; and though he was prevented from wearing her, the dice of Fortune falling adverse from the box, he never ceased to regard her as his ideal. Of the many pathetic incidents of his life not the least touching is the fact that in his years of a broken brain he cherished as a chief delusion the belief that Mary Joyce was indeed his wife. What the feelings of a nature so intense were when the father of his sweetheart intervened as the proverbial slip between the cup and the lip, we can only conjecture, though the tracing of results is easy enough. After leaving the tankards and the horses of the “Blue Bell,” John Clare cast about him for{xvi} some other form of employment. Escaping the pains of stone-cutting and cobbling, he succeeded in becoming a gardener’s apprentice at Burghley Park, the seat of the Marquis of Exeter. Parker Clare began to think that his son was born with an invisible silver spoon in his mouth, while to John eight shillings a week, with lodging free, smacked of the robbers’ cave in the “Arabian Nights.” In reality, this position was altogether undesirable, for the head gardener, not content to degrade himself alone by an excessive swallowing of stimulants, actually devoted his best efforts to make drunkards of his pupils. Unfortunately temptation loomed large at the very moment when Clare was ripe for mischief. Romance was worsted by swipes (the indignity of the episode may be held to excuse the slang); by means of such thin nepenthe, regret for the loss of Mary Joyce grew less and less; and it not infrequently occurred that the new apprentice slept off his potations by the hedge-side, with no better blanket than a mist, and with the damp turf for sole mattress, thus unconsciously taking in a cargo of ague and fever for future unloading. At last Clare, in company with another lad who was anxious to show a clean pair of heels to the abstract and concrete brutalities of his master, fled to Grantham,{xvii} and thence to Newark-upon-Trent, where both the runaways obtained work under a nurseryman. But Clare was homesick; his mother’s face was as a magnet pulling him to the familiar hovel at Helpstone; no longer could he obey that decree of divorce from his native scenes pronounced against him by the impalpable judge and jury of circumstance. One day, after a terrible journey on foot, he burst into the hut of his parents, weeping for joy to gain for his body the residence which his spirit had occupied so long.

No sooner had Clare returned his muscles to the various tasks of a farm labourer than he harked back with a love greater than ever to Thomson’s “Seasons,” reading it as he went to and from his work. The chief part of his leisure he used for the composition of verses, an occupation which served to fix upon him habits of timidity and shyness, especially as he was without a single sympathiser. Because of his strange manners, his fits of abstraction as well as of uttered enthusiasm, his appetite for solitude, the neighbours passed from mere mockery to whispers of a mind diseased, and even of a nature beset by the black ministers of magic. The fact that about this time his mother, for the purposes of fuel, made a clean sweep of his poetic accumulations did{xviii} its share to loosen his moral control; and when his attempts at gaining encouragement from Mr. Thomas Porter, and patronage from Lord Milton, to whom the parish clerk of Helpstone displayed the rustic poet, failed, he betook himself, this time of his own accord, to the drunken company of the worst livers in the village. Much of Clare’s future misery proceeded from this lapse. Before bad example had done its utmost to ruin him, Providence, in the somewhat unusual disguise of a recruiting sergeant, came to the rescue. John’s period of military service was brief, for after being instructed at Oundle in the goose-step—that foundation of a glorious career under arms—the corps of which he was a member was disbanded, and he was enabled once more to assume the civilian smock at Helpstone. For all booty he had a second-rate copy of “Paradise Lost” and “The Tempest.” A matter of more importance, however, was the fact that he had departed from the pernicious influence of the roysterers who were leading him to destruction. A number of small adventures were not slow to follow his short intimacy with the clothes and tools of war, what with his trial of a gipsy’s life, and his courting of several girls, one of whom, Elizabeth Newton by name, drove him into a fit of melancholy by playing{xix} the part of a jilt. In this state of mind nothing could have suited him better than change of scene, and his departure to Bridge Casterton, there to learn the details of a lime-burner’s trade, happened at a moment fortunate for heart and head alike. It was while he resided in this neighbourhood that he confided to Mr. Henson, a bookseller of Market Deeping, the fact of his colloquy with the Muse, following the avowal by a display of his powers. This confession was the germ of a wide circulation.

And now we are arrived at a fresh, and, as far as matrimony is concerned, a final love. Clare being now twenty-four years of age, it was high time for him to nurse an established affection, and he was lucky to win the heart of Martha Turner, the “Patty” of several poems to be found in the collected works of the poet. To him Martha was another waif from the skies, even though she tortured her poetical admirer by the time-honoured practice of appearing to waver between two suitors. The conduct of this episode was made up of petty events prosaic enough to the onlooker, but sufficiently lethal for the parties most interested. Tiffs, sour looks from parents, despairs, showers, rainbows, were the constituents of Clare’s courtship. A flat and always fortunate wooing would doubtless have{xx} been hostile to poetry. Because of his longing to supply two mouths with the necessaries of life, and because it was clearly proved that Cupid would not even be able to munch a satisfactory portion of crust if the lovers founded their faith solely on the wage of a lime-burner, Clare conceived the idea of publishing a volume of song, his mind appointing Mr. Henson, of Market Deeping, a comrade for his project. A month devoted to the base uses of the treadmill would not have cost the poet more labour than did the composition of his prospectus, three hundred copies of which the bookseller agreed to print, as well as a specimen sonnet, for one pound. But this trap for subscribers was baited with too much candour. If ever a poet met with a crushing response to his first appeal for a hearing, surely John Clare was that man. Seven patrons came forward, more, we may guess, in kindness than in hope of literary luxury. Clare, of course, experienced the superlatives of disgust; and when the printer of the artless prospectus wrote to inform him that the adventure must drop unless fifteen pounds appeared to back it up, he could not withhold himself from replying in a strain to the last degree impolitic. To add to his griefs, a rather wide gulf was at this time yawning between Martha Turner and himself,{xxi} the bridging of which was a feat of engineering extremely hard to accomplish. Moreover, and here is an illustration of the proverb that it never rains but it pours, the owner of the limekilns discharged his lyrical servant on the score of his inattention to business. The whole neighbourhood being somewhat scandalised at what was considered presumption, for labourers of Clare’s type were not required to assert themselves in prose, much less in poetry, the disappointed lime-burner, with a heart given up to aching, returned once more to Helpstone, where he would have starved but for parochial relief. So genius sat down to eat the parish loaf.

However tightly twisted the rosebud may be, windy and sunny fingers will unpack it at last. At the very moment when Clare was reading himself as the peculiar prey of disaster, he was destined to behold the bright back of the cloud which had confronted him with such ominous persistence. By strange approaches the news of Clare’s devotion to and production of poetry arrived at Mr. Drury, a bookseller who was on the point of taking over a business at Stamford from Mr. Thompson, of that town. In company with a friend, Mr. Drury proceeded to Helpstone, interviewed the astonished poet, glanced through some rhymed samples, and{xxii} finally declared his intention to publish a volume at his own risk, hearing which intelligence Clare once more rose heavenward in the balloon of hope, forgetting how certain it was that impediments to free flight would make themselves manifest. Owing to the offices of Mr. Drury, Clare became acquainted with Mr. Gilchrist, of Stamford, a gentlemen with an Oxford education and a grocer’s shop, who played the part of a true friend to the poet, if we except his action in making public some verses of Clare’s which had more wine than inspiration in them. It has been contended that Mr. Gilchrist filled the post of patron with a want of reserve which made Clare feel his position acutely; for the eating of humble-pie has never been a really popular amusement. Be this as it may, lovers of “Poems descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery” have a great deal for which to thank Mr. Gilchrist. After promising Clare to undertake the publication of his first book, Mr. Drury experienced a few bad hours. To begin with, the ill-spelt, rope-tied, unpunctuated mass of manuscript entrusted to him by its author had a most unpromising aspect. He tested it as best he could, but, as the glow of the adventure had already faded a little, found no particular reasons for comfort. In this strait he enlisted the acumen of an{xxiii} acquaintance, a clergyman, whose name was, somewhat appropriately, Twopenny, in order to see how the verses might strike a contemporary. The prophetic Twopenny, with brutal candour, described Clare’s bundle of reeds to be so much twaddle. When Mr. Drury delivered this oracle, the grief of the poet was such that the bookseller was shocked. Had it not been for the anguish of the singer, it is quite possible that the bookseller of Stamford would have departed, with decent circuity, from his bargain; as it was, he determined to procure yet another opinion. He happened to be a relative of Mr. John Taylor, the London publisher, to whom he despatched the uncouth manuscript in question. Mr. Taylor’s were not as Mr. Twopenny’s eyes. He knew diamonds when he saw them, even though a polisher had not exerted his craft upon them.

Before proceeding to describe the effect made on the public by the appearance of “Poems descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery,” it will be necessary to revert for a moment to the affairs of love. No sooner was the first quarrel between the sweethearts swept away by the broom of reconciliation than the flame of passion, burning to a conquering height, made a bonfire out of the broken materials of virtue. This disaster was followed by fresh bickerings.{xxiv} Martha Turner found it impossible to be for ever displaying a cheerful front. Her tears, her reproaches, her simple tricks to make Clare jealous, resulted in a serious breach. Clare, listening far too readily to glib and evil persuasions from within, appears to have convinced himself that he was the injured party; whereupon he began to wound Martha by flirting outrageously with Betty Sell, the daughter of a Southorp labourer. This inglorious behaviour received a sudden check, just after the publication of Clare’s book, by reason of a letter from Martha Turner, in which she spoke of her coming motherhood, and implored the author of her shame to cleanse her in so far as he was able. Truth to tell, Clare was by this time wellnigh assured that Betty was his favourite, but he had the manliness to follow the right star, and on the 16th of March, 1820, was united to Martha at Great Casterton Church. A month after the wedding Anna Maria Clare was born to him. As this marriage would hardly have been possible but for the stir occasioned by the poems, we may now give a short history of the events immediately following their issue.

Although the art of preliminary puffing was as yet in swaddling clothes, so to speak, Mr. Taylor contrived to interest a large number of his acquaintances, some{xxv} of whom had access to the columns of certain periodicals. Moreover, Mr. Gilchrist’s magazine article had proved a useful forerunner. The book itself was born into a golden clime. The reading world happening to be sick of Metropolitan and modish fare, Clare’s birds and mayblossoms came as a tonic to all who were desirous of a change. The triumph of the country over the town was of the completest sort; customers poured into Mr. Taylor’s shop in their anxiety to purchase copies of the labourer’s poems; for once the critics and the public were agreed. Journals of fine stature joined with insignificant prints in praising Clare to the skies, and when this new writer actually succeeded in carrying the defences of the “Quarterly,” it was allowed on all sides that lion-hunters were in luck’s way. Clare was fortunate in some of his advertisers. Rossini and Madame Vestris brought him into further prominence by means of a musical setting and of recitations at Covent Garden. Genius in hobnailed boots and a smock-frock shouldered aside the more usual figures of literary London. While all this was taking place in Fleet Street, as well as in the aristocratic sections of the capital, rumours of Clare’s amazing success reached the county residences in the neighbourhood{xxvi} of Helpstone. General Birch Reynardson gave him to eat with his lackeys, and Viscount Milton flung seventeen guineas into his lap with as much feeling as he might have thrown seventeen crumbs to a cur. In great contrast to blue-blooded vulgarity of this stamp was the Marquis of Exeter’s treatment of the poet, although a more liberal display of tact upon his part would have enabled Clare to leave his mansion with a heart given over completely to joy and gratitude. Friends of Clare are not likely to forget the generosity of the Marquis. An annuity of fifteen guineas for life was indeed a handsome backing of the Muse. Because of this gift Anna Maria Clare was born in wedlock; without it her parents would not have been able to marry as soon as they did. Foolish folk spared the poet none of the customary agonies. He was pestered by inquisitive visitors; collectors of autographs bullied him for his signature, and the owners of albums plagued him to encourage them in their whim. Some persons of the goody-goody type improved the shining hour by sending him an assortment of tracts, the fate of which is wrapped in impenetrable mystery. Clare was a simple child of nature, certainly, but we may almost take it for granted that he left these precious effusions undigested.{xxvii}

The news that Clare was about to trust his bones to London almost paralysed his rustic intimates. Generations of romancers had made strange impressions upon the provincial mind. Particularly full of odious vaticinations was James Burridge, an old farm labourer whose head was stuffed to the bursting point with stories horrifying enough to make Clare’s flesh creep. According to this authority, London thoroughly deserved the doubtful compliment of being compared with Babylon. He declared that there were trap-doors in the streets, down which wayfarers flopped into cauldrons of boiling water amid the plaudits of ministering cut-throats! Clare quailed, his parents wept, and his wife approached within measurable distance of hysterics. But even the prospect of being cooked in this casual manner did not suffice to deter the poet from visiting Mr. Taylor, of Fleet Street. That he set some value upon the legends of James Burridge is proved by his adoption of a small device to baffle the trapdoor operators. Believing safety to be resident in a smock-frock and in boots the soles of which sustained grinning rows of hobnails, he set forth upon his journey thus attired. He was not long in regretting his precautions, for he soon perceived that his costume evoked from onlookers merry comments{xxviii} and derisive glances. In the end, Mr. Taylor supplied him with an overcoat which covered the defects of his attire. Whatever the heat of theatre or drawing-room, whether among lords or commoners, John Clare clung to this garment with the courage of despair. What his agonies were, because of his raiment, when driven into a corner by a countess for a tête-à-tête, we can do no more than dimly conjecture. In the course of this visit Clare was introduced to Admiral Lord Radstock, who took a great fancy to him and remained a firm friend, and to Mrs. Emmerson, a lady who, seeing that her purse and sympathies were always ready to alleviate the mischances of young poets and artists, might be described as a female Maecenas. To this rather gushing and sentimental patroness of the arts Clare from time to time addressed letters which were not devoid of the elements of wildness and Platonic passion. At last his emphasis became so absurd that Mrs. Emmerson requested him to send back her portrait. Had a jug of cold water been poured down the poet’s neck he could not have been more cooled than he was by this piece of diplomacy. The shrine was despoiled. The picture was despatched by the next carrier; and doubtless Martha, who must have hated the sight of Mrs. Emmerson’s{xxix} face, congratulated herself in secret. There is no need to say more about Clare’s first visit to London, if we except mention of the fact that the mighty city’s chief effect upon him was to fill his breast with yearning for the oaks and rivulets round about his native village. A week in the Metropolis had been more than enough for the countryman. As he rumbled homeward in the coach, he had dreams of unsullied waters and unsmoked rainbows; and he counted over his country joys as a miser adds up the total of his various coins. At the top of his treasures stood his wife and baby, for, with all his Platonic declensions from the state most comfortable to Martha, he was an affectionate husband and father. About this time several hearty friends strove with might and main to secure a competence for the poet. A sum of four hundred and twenty pounds was the result of their earnestness; but when it is remembered that Earl Fitzwilliam and Clare’s publishers were between them responsible for no less than two hundred of this amount, the harvest of solicitation is not notable for bounteousness. Dr. Bell—a friend of the right complexion—extracted an annual ten pounds from Earl Spencer, so that, what with this gift, the Marquis of Exeter’s donation, and the fund, the genius of Helpstone was possessed of{xxx} an income of forty-five pounds per annum. Clare felt a very mendicant throughout all these transactions, and even went so far as to disavow them in letters despatched to his noble helpers. Had it not been for the persuasions of Mr. Gilchrist and the amusing invectives of Dr. Bell, he would have kicked with greater persistence against the pricks of charity.

As soon as the harvest was over, Clare made an end of labouring in the fields. He was under agreement to hand over another volume of poetry to Messrs. Taylor and Hessey for publication early in 1821. It was now his earnest endeavour to fulfil his share of the bargain, and he bared his forehead to inspiration. Clare always felt himself cheated and empty of ideas when shut up within four walls. The Muse would not follow him to his fireside, but she would frolic with him the live-long day in the open air, filling him with buoyancy, kissing his lips, and smoothing out his wrinkles. Seated inside an old oak, whose heart had gradually passed into the atmosphere, Clare was wont to pour his soul in song, and so fruitful were the hints of his unseen companion that he soon had a great collection of new verses. All that he approved he desired to publish, but Mr. Taylor spoke a few strong words in{xxxi} favour of weeding, suggesting to Clare that he should play the part of Herod toward some of the children of his imagination. A deadlock ensued. For a time the poet was adamant, the publishers marble. In this difficulty Clare bethought himself of Mr. Gilchrist as an excellent agent for the casting of oil on the troubled waters. This gentleman, however, was thick in a squabble of his own, and when Clare appeared unsympathetic he displayed a spirit very much huffed. At last the tension between poet and publishers became less, with the result that in the middle of September “The Village Minstrel” was ready for purchasers. The two volumes were handsomely presented; the type was beautiful, and a couple of steel engravings made a brave show. Despite the attractions of genius, despite the various ornaments, “The Village Minstrel” met with rather an icy greeting. Among the several explanations of this coldness put forward by the publishers and by certain friends, the likeliest is that the season of issue was not wisely chosen. In this year such gods of the pen as Scott, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, and Lamb distributed joy to many a reader, so that poor John Clare naturally ran a great risk of being overlooked. It was now proved how dangerous had been the heat of his first welcome.{xxxii} Superlatives had been done to death; the lion-hunters had exhausted their treacly compliments, and were now eagerly scanning the literary horizon in the hope of seeing approach a fresh victim. Moreover, some injudicious persons had descanted more upon Clare’s poverty than upon his remarkable powers. It was the general opinion, as Mr. Martin points out in his biography, that a really capable poet should be able to support himself. If he did not succeed in so doing, then he was but a dabbler while pretending to be a priest. The logic was of the sort to shrink from scrutiny, but it contented the shallow sufficiently well. To my thinking, the charge of twelve shillings for these two volumes was a factor in the neglect which overtook them. Be this as it may, a collection of verse containing some exquisite and lovely pieces, and marking in some respects an advance upon the forerunning book, fell upon the stony patch of indifference, there to remain while verse of fifty times less merit enjoyed a vogue out of proportion to its worth. In a word, Clare’s second luck was the exact opposite of his first. In days saddened by the reflection that he had failed to hold by the glory which he obtained at his first venture, it was balm to Clare to know that Robert Bloomfield at{xxxiii} least warmly approved of what lukewarm triflers failed to appreciate.

In the summer of 1821, not long after the meteoric appearance at Helpstone of a minor poet, who presented Clare with a sonnet and a one-pound note in a glorious burst of bounty and condescension, Mr. John Taylor passed a few hours in the little Northamptonshire village. Under the guidance of Clare he reviewed many of the spots which the poet had celebrated in song, and, in some cases, he was amazed to find how Clare had compelled dull localities to yield strains both abundant and beautiful. But to gather roses in a desert is child’s play for a genius. Upon taking leave, Mr. Taylor invited Clare to spend a few weeks in Fleet Street. Luckily the poet decided to avail himself of this offer, for about this time he was far too frequent a visitor at the “Blue Bell,” where he had his corner reserved, and passed for the chief of the assembly. This meant more than sufficient exercise for the gullet. The bad habit contracted at Burghley Hall was strengthened at these sittings, and Clare, deplorably unstable in some mental particulars, approached nearer and nearer to that abyss which has engulfed so many great wits. The winter being over, Clare departed for London. He was something of a bolt from the{xxxiv} blue to Mr. Taylor, but that gentleman was not slow in welcoming his client, though he looked askance at the gay pocket handkerchief in which was contained the whole of his friend’s luggage. As the publisher was very busy, he delivered Clare into the keeping of Thomas Hood, who, in turn, handed him over to the head porter of the firm. The poet was not long in finding his way to the house of Mrs. Emmerson, whose hospitality was as frank and unstinted as ever. Here Clare met Mr. Rippingille, a young artist with a dash of Dick Swiveller in him, who had a strong appetite for noisy pranks. In company with this unreflective spirit the peasant from the Midlands attended some very dubious functions, penetrating to quarters of the Metropolis which were famous for the topmost achievements of rascality, where he ran riot among various intoxicants. After besieging a certain beauteous actress with all the languishing glances at their command, these foolish comrades would pledge her in pale ale till, like Byron, they seemed to walk upon the ceiling. Thus were buttresses added to Clare’s unfortunate predilection. Those who revel by gaslight are not fond of returning home before midnight, and Clare was no exception to the rule. But the hours of his choice were not grateful to Mr. Taylor, whose sense of the fitness of things was{xxxv} offended by his visitor’s conduct. Therefore, Thomas Hood was deputed to inform Clare that he was vexing his host, an intimation which resulted in the poet carrying his handkerchief full of belongings to Mrs. Emmerson’s house, where his manners did not improve. Under the accomplished tuition of Mr. Rippingille he found how easy the descent of Avernus was. His next move was to Chiswick, where the Rev. H. T. Cary entertained him. His stay here was brief, owing to an amusing episode. Strangely enough Clare was ignorant of the fact that his elderly host had a young and handsome wife. In the belief that he was doing homage to the charms of one of Mr. Cary’s grown-up daughters, he addressed several poems, which were not without the quality of ardour, to the wife of the translator’s bosom. After this, although his explanation was accepted and understood, Clare thought he had better depart from Chiswick. During this stay in London the Northamptonshire poet was introduced to William Gifford and Charles Lamb, the latter of whom, if report may be trusted, was guilty of a rather coarse jape at his expense. Not long after this, Clare returned to Helpstone. It is worthy to note that, whereas his first visit to London had only accentuated his country raptures, the village minstrel now{xxxvi} actually pined for the fatted calves, the theatres, the glitter, and the merry companions of the city. The taint of Rippingille was upon him. Reaction came in time; the meadows captured him again; but this small piece of history is significant of much.

As soon as he was once more in possession of his best self, Clare began to face his troubles—most of which sprang from insufficient means at this time—with as much courage as he could summon. He was rather slow in being convinced that he could not derive a steady income from the composition of poetry; but when this truth was driven home his mind at once became agile in devising numberless plans for the betterment of his state, for he suffered from a torturing anxiety when he remembered for how many his fate had appointed him the bread-winner. He was now fighting hand to hand with poverty, valorous in behalf of his aged mother, his wife, and his little children, who enjoyed the fruits of whatsoever victories were gained far more than did their defender—since he secretly starved himself in order to increase the tale of loaves presided over by Patty. In the year 1823, worn out by his failures to extract a supporting flow of guineas from either poetry or agriculture, he fell very ill, just after the shock occasioned by the death of Mr. Gilchrist. His{xxxvii} recovery was of the slowest, and it was not till he was put by Mr. Taylor under the care of Dr. Darling, in London, that the poet mended in a manner to satisfy his friends. It was during this third visit to the Metropolis that Clare came in contact with De Quincey, Coleridge, William Hazlitt, and Allan Cunningham, to mention only four of the prominent men whom Mr. Taylor delighted to make members of his evening parties. Clare found his imaginary portraits to be very deceptive, especially so in the case of De Quincey. The bulk and dull appearance of Coleridge also surprised, as well as disappointed, him, for he had pictured the great man in a guise completely opposite to reality. There is little need to say that in Mr. Taylor’s house nothing of a bacchanalian tinge was likely to occur; but even the moderate pleasures of the publisher’s entertainments threatened to destroy the good brought about by the skill and care of Dr. Darling, and therefore Clare was induced to return to Helpstone, where he once more renewed his search for employment, encountered thoughtless snubs from the high and mighty of the district, and gradually approached the line which separates mental health from mental disease. He was for ever engaged in keeping the wolf from the door. He did not eat a due share of what his means{xxxviii} supplied, denying himself from day to day with a rigidity which could not fail to injure both body and brain. At the end of the year 1825, after working in the cornfields throughout the harvest, Clare turned to the composition of poetry, and produced “The Shepherd’s Calendar,” a volume in which he used the file to excellent purpose. Already bruised and wounded by the rough edges of life, the poet found an additional hardship in the fact that Mr. Taylor long delayed to publish this third book of verse; for to make both ends meet was now a miracle beyond his accomplishing. Although several editors of those elegant annuals which were then so much in favour had asked Clare to assist in making their sugary volumes attractive, they were by no means quick to send him the money he had earned. He had only his annuity and a few shillings gained by doing odd jobs for the farmers of the neighbourhood. At this juncture Patty bore him a third child.

In 1828 Clare went to London again at the invitation of Mrs. Emmerson, and it was then that he discovered how completely the “Shepherd’s Calendar” had failed to stir the interest of the public. It was during this visit that Mr. Taylor, doubtless believing the open-air exercise would be most beneficial to the poet, suggested to Clare the advisability{xxxix} of his attempting to dispose of his works by carrying them from house to house in Northamptonshire and the adjoining counties. Allan Cunningham was furious at the idea, but in the end Clare embraced it, though it had been better for him had he held the same opinion as his friend, for the adventure was prolific of more kicks than halfpence. The history of this part of Clare’s career makes very sad reading. Hungry and footsore he tramped from rebuff to rebuff, pondering misery and dreading the workhouse. But though the record of his travels is, for the most part, a document of disaster, there are a few proofs of kindliness contained in its pages. For example, when he returned to Helpstone from Boston, where certain of the leading inhabitants had done their best to render him extremely uncomfortable, he found ten sovereigns in his wallet. A few young men had treated him as Joseph treated his brethren. For three months after his experiences at Boston, Clare was exceedingly ill, and it looked as if there was to be no ebbing of that tide of misfortune which had flowed in his direction for so long. Better luck, however, was in store. Clare got some regular work to do, and was thus prevented from poring over foolscap. Little by little he reduced his debts; his body throve in the sunshine of content; and he was able{xl} to comfort himself with the belief that, after all, he would escape the degradation of becoming a pauper. Unfortunately a hard winter followed the summer and autumn during which he had been so happy, and illness once more caused him to renew acquaintance with those bitter familiars of his—want and despair. About this time he chanced to have a conversation with Earl Fitzwilliam, with the result that his patron promised to build him a cottage somewhere near Helpstone. The exact place decided upon by his lordship was Northborough, a hamlet three miles distant from Helpstone. This situation was chosen in a spirit of kindness, the earl believing that the many natural beauties to be found almost at the door of the cottage would please the eye as well as stimulate the genius of the poet. But the prospect of being severed from the bleak surroundings of his native place filled Clare with sensations of terror acute enough to make a severe effect upon his mind. For days before the final wrench came he strode about the lanes and fields, outwardly exhibiting symptoms of a deranged intellect; but when the hour for departure struck he allowed himself to be led to his new home as placidly as a tired horse to the pasture. So far from proving a blessing to Clare, the cottage at Northborough was the{xli} immediate cause of fresh perplexities. Expenditure was necessary to furnish it and to keep it in repair; debts were quickly piled one upon the other; among strangers it was harder to obtain employment than it had been at Helpstone; and in the January of 1833 Patty bore her seventh child. At the thought that he could scarcely provide his dear ones with bread enough to keep body and soul together, Clare, shortly after hearing the news of his boy’s birth, rushed out into the fields to give his sorrow vent. Late in the evening his eldest daughter found him lying insensible on an embankment. A month of bed followed this collapse. In the spring, although his vital forces were now sufficient to carry him in search of the early flowers, he showed no inclination to leave the little room where he kept his books and papers. The irresistible magnets of former years—blossoms, birds, greenery and sunshine—had all lost their pulling power. Clare himself perceived that he was in danger of ceasing to be his own master, and accordingly wrote to Mr. Taylor begging him to secure Dr. Darling’s help. In reply, his old publisher invited him to London. But the poet neither had money in his purse nor a single chance of raising the amount necessary to defray the costs of the journey. Messrs. Whittaker & Co., who were responsible{xlii} for the appearance of the “Rural Muse,” declined to send him even a small sum on account, so that he was tied fast to Northborough, where his mental malady had everything in its favour. Had it not been for the untiring exertions of Dr. Smith, of Peterborough, who mingled poetry and pills in his advice to patients, thus obtaining a goodly list of subscribers, it is doubtful whether the “Rural Muse” would have made its appearance before Clare was overcome by permanent imbecility. In the summer of 1835 this beautiful collection of rustic reeds was put forward as a candidate for the affection of those professing a love for music and wholesomeness in verse. The reception accorded to the book proved conclusively what important parts fashion and hypocrisy play in the concerns of the lyre. Clare was out of vogue; he was a stale lion; the parasites upon genius could no longer hope to gain a temporary notoriety by displaying his peculiarities in their saloons. The idea of reading poetry for the sake of poetry appears never to have occurred to the members of a society as ponderable, in the matter of intellect, as thistledown, and as variable as the sheen of an opal. It is a moot point whether or no the reviewers wrote notices of the “Rural Muse.” If they did their duty, the editors certainly did not back{xliii} them up by granting space for the criticisms, for scarcely a paragraph of commendation saw the light. If Clare did not fall among thieves, he at least fell among blind bats. Literary England blotted her own escutcheon in this respect, but Scotland was saved from a similar disgrace by a noble outburst of praise for the poet, and scorn for his frigid countrymen, from the pen of Professor Wilson, in the course of which he adjured the Southrons to hold their tongues about the fate of Burns. Let them remember Bloomfield. Had he but known all the evil circumstances which were combining to push John Clare in the direction of a lunatic asylum, his retort would have been strengthened to a degree melancholy to contemplate.

Mental derangement advanced upon Clare with rapidity. In the spring of 1836 there was a brief period when the flowers made him a clear-minded partaker of their magic, but the improvement was not maintained, and little by little the condition of the poet became more widley known, till at last it reached the ears of several patrons. These advised his immediate removal to the asylum at Northampton, a plan to which Patty refused her consent, for she still had hopes that if her husband were allowed to range at his will and seek a cure from the pharmacy{xliv} of nature, he would beat the disease. But Patty’s love only delayed the inevitable. Clare, it is true, escaped from the control suggested by Earl Fitzwilliam, who endeavoured to place the poet at Northampton, where a weekly dole from the nobleman’s purse would secure for the patient some additional comforts; but he had nowhither to fly from the severe benefactions of the friends of former days. Mr. John Taylor and others, willing to heed now that the catastrophe to which their silence had contributed was come by its full dimensions, clubbed together and sent Clare to Dr. Allen’s private lunatic asylum in Epping Forest, where all the resources of a humane treatment were brought to bear upon his case. He wrote a great quantity of verse, some of which was of real worth; tended the flowers in the garden beds; wandered about the woods hour after hour, smoking, musing, or conversing with some companion. In the middle of July, 1841, he escaped, and eventually reached Werrington, a hamlet lying beyond Peterborough. His chief food had been grass; blood was trickling from his feet when Patty took the wanderer into her arms on the roadside at Werrington. After a day’s rest at Northborough, the poet asked for pen and ink. When these were supplied he commenced to write his Odyssey. It is{xlv} almost safe to say that no more extraordinary a document belongs to the personal history of any genius born within our boundaries. It is of a character to draw tears from the unsympathetic; your Scrooge, your Quilp, could scarcely withstand its pathos. Well might Christopher North request us to be done with our comments upon Scotland’s usage of Burns!

The rest is soon told. Clare, though quite harmless, was not allowed to pass free among the country sights and sounds. For some reason or other he was haled to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he remained for twenty-two years, neglected alike by kindred, by friends, and by the educated mob which had once made an idol of him. At the Asylum he was treated with unvarying mildness by the authorities, who refused to regulate the comforts of the poet by the eleven shillings a week supplied by Earl Fitzwilliam. That their natures were not subservient to coinage they proved by placing Clare—poor, eleven-shillings-a-week John Clare—among private patients in the best ward.

The end came in 1864, and on the 25th of May in that year the mortal remnant of John Clare, peasant and poet, was interred at Helpstone. When Earl Fitzwilliam was asked for a grant of the few pounds necessary for the burial of the poet in the churchyard{xlvi} so beloved by him during his lifetime, he responded by suggesting that the funeral should be that of a pauper at Northampton. However, a few friends of the right heart prevented this disgrace, and the body rested where the soul had marked out for it a spot of greenery and quietude.

That some of Clare’s poems belong of right to the excellent things of this earth admits of no dispute. A worshipper of Nature, by whom he was surely appointed to be one of her chief historians, he revelled in her manifestations, whether they showed in the higher heaven of blue or in the lower heaven of green. He was, if the phrases may pass muster, a gossip of the rainbow, a crony of the flowers. His heart was not less slow than that of Wordsworth to leap up with joy when he beheld standing across the sky, its feet treading the horizon, the most splendid triumphal arch ever devised; and though it was not granted him to render homage to his mistress in such large accents as those which fell from the lips of his great brother in song, he paid for her love and favours in music far from perishable, as may be noted by all who will read the pieces that have been selected for this volume from the “Rural Muse.” Who passes by any one of these poems because he early finds a flaw, does so at his own{xlvii} danger, for each of them belongs, as I venture to assert, so indubitably to the particular treasures of pastoral poetry that I doubt whether the contradiction of our greatest critics could frighten me from the attitude of admiration. To influences other than those of the countryside, Clare remained unimpressionable. To be in London was to long for Helpstone, the commons and pools of which were more precious to the poet than all the glories of Westminster Abbey, and the expanses of the artificial lakes. While he sojourned in the Metropolis the right spark would not fall from heaven, but as soon as he wandered once more among the scenes so long familiar to him, the Muse was his unfailing companion. Brooks glided in his songs; birds and clouds and leafage were foundations without which he had been well-nigh powerless. He understood, and was content with, his limits; and so perfectly did he accomplish his duty as Nature’s cherished amanuensis, that it is no hard task for a man with an ounce of imagination in his being to hear the trickle of streams, and to fancy his study carpeted with grass, while reading John Clare’s poems within four walls. As this volume of selections is designed for the purpose of attracting readers to a poet whose appreciative receipts from his posterity are sadly deficient in{xlviii} quantity, the publisher has thought well to ask from me the tale of Clare’s life, rather than my views of the poet’s work and its effect upon his successors in the production of poetry dealing almost exclusively with the vowels and consonants in Nature’s mighty alphabet. Enough has been said to prove the writer no half-hearted advocate; and if these few pages serve to increase the number of Clare’s friends, he will be more than satisfied, happy in the thought that he has been the means of introducing readers to poetry as gentle as it is healing, as simple as it is sincere. Touching its wholesomeness, how could it fail to delight in this respect when the chief of its constituent parts were the large and lovely expressions of Nature’s handicraft? John Clare’s gift fell upon him direct from the skies. It came clean; and clean he kept it from the beginning to the end of his stewardship.

Norman Gale.

{xlix}

{1}

WHAT IS LIFE?

{3}

ADDRESS TO PLENTY

IN WINTER

{14}

NOON

{17}

THE UNIVERSAL EPITAPH

{18}

THE HARVEST MORNING

{22}

ON AN INFANT’S GRAVE

{23}

TO AN APRIL DAISY

{25}

SUMMER EVENING

{32}

PATTY

{34}

PATTY OF THE VALE

{36}

MY LOVE, THOU ART A NOSEGAY SWEET

{37}

THE MEETING

{39}

EFFUSION

{42}

BALLAD

{44}

SONG

{45}

THE GIPSY’S CAMP

{47}

TO THE CLOUDS

{48}

THE WOODMAN

DEDICATED TO THE REV. J. KNOWLES HOLLAND.

{55}

RURAL EVENING

{61}

RUSTIC FISHING

{65}

JUNE

{70}

DECEMBER

{76}

THE APPROACH OF SPRING

{82}

TO THE RURAL MUSE.

{89}

SUMMER IMAGES

{99}

AUTUMN

{105}

THE VANITIES OF LIFE

{112}

THOUGHTS IN A CHURCH-YARD

{114}

THE NIGHTINGALE’S NEST

{118}

TO P****

{120}

A WORLD FOR LOVE

{122}

SONG

{123}

LOVE

{125}

DECAY

{129}

PASTORAL FANCIES

{132}

THE AUTUMN ROBIN

{138}

A SPRING MORNING

{139}

THE CRAB-TREE

{140}

WINTER

{141}

OLD POESY

{142}

’TIS SPRING, MY LOVE, ’TIS SPRING

{144}

GRAVES OF INFANTS

{145}

HOME YEARNINGS

{147}

LOVE LIVES BEYOND THE TOMB

{149}

MY EARLY HOME

{150}

THE TELL-TALE FLOWERS

{154}

TO JOHN MILTON

{157}

I AM! YET WHAT I AM

{159} 

{206} 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF JOHN CLARE
By C. Ernest Smith

{162}