The short trial of gypsy life was not sufficient to make John Clare forget his troubles of love, and he began to think seriously of his further prospects in life. He would have been but too happy to ask Elizabeth Newton to become his wife; but having seen so much of poverty in the case of his parents, he had a natural dread to start in the same career, with the workhouse for ultimate goal. While thus given up to reflections on his life, there came an offer which appeared to be most acceptable. A fellow labourer of the name of Gordon, who had been once working at a lime-kiln, with good wages, proposed to him to seek the same employment, and to act as a guide and instructor in the matter. John Clare consented, and starting with his friend, in the summer of 1817, the two were lucky enough to find work not far off, near the village of Bridge Casterton, in Rutlandshire. By dint of very severe labour, Clare managed to earn about ten shillings a week, a part of which he carefully hoarded, with the firm intention of attempting a new start in life, by the aid of a little capital.
The first investment of the small sum thus acquired led to rather important results. Having collected a considerable quantity of verses, and safely carried them off from the old hiding-place at Helpston, John Clare resolved to copy a selection, comprising the best of them, into a book, so as to preserve his poetry the more easily. With this purpose in view he went to the next fair at Market Deeping, and after having gone, with some friends, through the usual round of merry-makings, called upon a bookseller and stationer, Mr. Henson, to get the required volume of blank paper. Mr. Henson had no such article in stock, but offered to supply it in a given time, which being agreed on, particulars were asked as to the quantity of paper required, and the way in which it should be ruled and bound. In reply to these questions, John Clare, made talkative by a somewhat large consumption of strong ale, for the first time revealed his secret to a stranger. He told the inquirer that he had been writing poetry for years, and having accumulated a great many verses, intended to copy them into a book for better preservation. The bookseller opened his eyes at the widest. He had never seen a live poet at Market Deeping, yet fancied, somehow or other, that the species was of an outward aspect different from that of the tattered, half-tipsy, undersized farm labourer who was standing before him. Though an active tradesman, willing to oblige people at his shop, Mr. Henson could not help hinting some of these sceptic thoughts to his customer, and feelingly inquired of him whether it was 'real poetry' that he was writing. John Clare affirmed that it was real poetry; further explaining that he wrote most of his verses in the fields, on slips of paper, using the crown of his hat as a desk. This was convincing; for the hat, on being inspected, certainly showed abundant marks of having been employed as a writing-desk, and even bore traces of its occasional use as a camp-stool. Doubts as to John Clare being a poet were now impossible; and Mr. Henson willingly agreed to furnish a book of white paper, strongly bound, fit for the insertion of a vast quantity of original poetry, at the price of eight shillings. When parting, the obliging bookseller begged as a favour to be allowed to inspect one of his customer's poems, promising to keep the matter as secret as possible. The flattering request was promptly acceded to, and in a few days after, there arrived by post at Market Deeping two sonnets by John Clare, which he had recently composed. One of these was called 'The Setting Sun;' and the other 'The Primrose.' Mr. Henson, who was no particular judge of sonnets, thought them very poor specimens of poetical skill, the more so as they were ill-spelt, and without any attempts at punctuation. He threw the poems aside at once, and wrote to the poet that he might have his blank paper book on paying the stipulated eight shillings. So the matter rested for the present.
John Clare's labours as a lime-burner at Bridge Casterton were of the most severe kind. He was in the employ of a Mr. Wilders, who exacted great toil from all his men, setting them to work fourteen hours a day, and sometimes all the night long in addition. Nevertheless, Clare felt thoroughly contented in his new position, being delighted with the beautiful scenery in the neighbourhood, and happy, besides, in being able to earn sufficient money to send occasional assistance to his parents. When not engaged at work, he went roaming through the fields far and wide, always with paper and pencil in his pocket, noting down his feelings in verse inspired by the moment. It was the time when his poetical genius began to awaken to full life and consciousness. He began writing verses with great ease and rapidity, often composing half-a-dozen songs in a day; and though much of the poetry thus brought forth was but of an ephemeral kind, and of no great intrinsic value, the exercise, combined with extensive reading of nearly all the old poets, contributed considerably to his development of taste. Sometimes he himself was surprised at the facility with which he committed verses to paper, on the mere spur of the moment. It was on one of these occasions that the thought flashed through his mind of his being endowed with poetical gifts denied to the majority of men. This was a perfectly new view which he took of himself and his powers, and it helped to give him immense confidence. Timid hitherto and entirely distrustful of his own abilities, he now felt himself imbued with strength never known, and under the impulse of this feeling determined to make another attempt to rise from his low condition. The idea occurred to him of printing his verses, and of coming openly before the world as a poet. Each time he had written a new verse with which he was pleased, his confidence grew; though his hopes fell again when he set himself thinking the matter over, and dwelling upon the difficulties in his way. This inward struggle lasted nearly a year, in the course of which there occurred another notable event, which in its consequences grew to be one of the most important of his whole life.
Every Sunday afternoon, the labourers at Mr. Wilder's lime-kiln were in the habit of visiting a small public-house, at the hamlet of Tickencote, called 'the Flower Pot.' Thirsty, like all of their tribe, they spent hours in carousing; while John Clare, after having had his glass or two, went into the fields, and, sitting by a hedge, or lying down under a tree, surveyed the glories of nature, feasting his eyes upon the thousandfold beauties of earth and sky. It was on one of these Sunday afternoons, in the autumn of 1817—Clare now past twenty-four—that he saw for the first time 'Patty,' his future wife. She was walking on a footpath across the fields, while he was lying in the grass not far off, dreaming worlds of beauty and ethereal bliss. Patty stepped right into his ideal realm, and thus, unknown to herself, became part and parcel of it. She was a fair girl of eighteen, slender, with regular features, and pretty blue eyes; but to Clare, at the moment, she seemed far more than fair, slender, and pretty. He watched her across the field, and when she disappeared from sight, John Clare, almost instinctively, climbed to the top of a tree, to discover the direction in which she was going. His courage failed him to follow and address her, though he would have given all he possessed to have one more glance at the sweet face which so suddenly changed his poetical visions into a still more poetical reality. However, the shades of evening were sinking fast; John Clare could not see far even from the top of his tree, to which he clung with a lover's despair, so that the beautiful apparition was soon lost to him. Sleep did not come to his eyes in the following night; and the slow hours of lime-burning the next day only passed on in making projects how he would go to the field near the 'Flower Pot,' and try to meet his sweet love again. He went to the field, but she came not; not the following day, nor the second, nor the whole week. John Clare began to think the fair face which he had seen, and with which he had fallen in love at first sight, was after all, but the vision of a dream.
More than two weeks passed, and John Clare, with his fiddle under his arm, one evening made his way to Stamford, to play at a merry meeting of lime-burners the tunes which the gypsies had taught him. While walking along the road, the vision burst upon him a second time in not to be mistaken reality. There again was the fair damsel he had seen walking, or floating, across the greensward on the Sunday eve; as fair and trim as ever, though this time not in her Sunday dress. John Clare, with much good sense, thought it useless to climb again upon a tree; but summing up courage, followed his vision, and, after a while, addressed her in timid, soft words. What gave him some courage for the moment was, that being on a festive excursion, he had donned his very best garments, including a flowery waistcoat and a hat as yet free from the desk service of poetry. The fair damsel, when thus addressed in the road, smiled upon her interlocutor; there could be no doubt, his words, and, perhaps, his waistcoat and new hat, found favour in her eyes. And not only did she allow him to address her, but permitted him even to accompany her to her father's cottage, some four miles off. Thither accordingly went John Clare, in an ecstacy of delight; feeling as if in heaven and playing merry gypsy-tunes to the winged angels. He wished the four miles were four hundred; and when arrived at the paternal door with his fair companion, and she told him that he must leave her now, it seemed to him as if it had been but a minute since he met her. He looked utterly dejected; but brightened up when she told him that her name was Martha Turner, that her father was a cottage farmer, and that the place where they were standing was called Walkherd Lodge—which perhaps, she whispered, he would find again. It sounded as if the fiddle under his arm was again making music to the bright angels. John Clare was in heaven; but the poor lime-burners at Stamford did not think so, that evening, when they had to dance without a fiddle.
After seeing his sweet companion disappear behind the garden-gate; after hearing the door of the house open and shut, and watching the movement of the lights within the house for an hour or two, John Clare at last turned his back upon Walkherd Lodge, and went the way he came. The road he trotted along, with his feet on good Rutlandshire soil, but his head still somewhat in the clouds, got gradually more and more narrow, till it ended at a broad ditch, with, a dungheap on the one side and a haystack on the other. It was now that John perceived for the first time that he had lost his way. While walking along with Martha Turner, he no more thought of marking the road than of solving riddles in algebra, and, besides a faint consciousness that he was coming somewhere from the east and going to the west, he was utterly lost in his topography. However, under the circumstances, it seemed no great matter to John to lose his way, and rather pleasant than otherwise to sleep in a haystack within a mile of the dwelling of Martha Turner. On the haystack, accordingly, he sat down with great inward satisfaction, and, the moon having just risen, pencil and paper were got out of the pocket, by the help of which, in less than half an hour, another love-song was finished. But though the day was warm and comfortable, John felt too restless to sleep. So he cleared the ditch before him with one jump, and pursued the journey further inland, where lights appeared to be glimmering in the distance. Onward he trotted and leaped, over hedges and drains, across ploughed fields, through underwood and meadows, around stone-quarries and chalk-pits. At last, after a wild race of four or five hours, he sank down from sheer exhaustion. There was soft, mossy grass under his feet, and a sheltering tree above, and he thought it best to stop where he was and to compose himself to sleep. The heavy eyelids sank without further bidding, and for several hours his soul took flight into the land of dreams. When he awoke, the moon was still shining, but not far above the western horizon. Looking around, he perceived something bright and glittering near him, similar to the bare track beaten by the sheep in hot weather. To follow this path was his immediate resolve, as sure to lead to some human habitation, if only a shepherd's hut. He was just going to rise, but still on the ground, when one of his feet slipped a short distance, in the direction of the silvery line, and he heard the clear splash of water under him. At the same moment, the last rays of the moon disappeared from above the horizon. John Clare shuddered as if the hand of death was upon him. Creeping cautiously towards the neighbouring tree, and clasping both his arms around it, he awaited daybreak in this position. At length, after hours which seemed endless, the burning clouds appeared in the east. He once more looked around him, and found that he was lying on the brink of a deep canal, close to the River Gwash. One turn of the body in its restless dreams; one step towards the tempting silvery road of night, would have made an end for ever of all the troubles, the love and life and poetry, of poor John Clare.
ATTEMPTS TO GET UP A PROSPECTUS.
Soon after his first meeting with Martha Turner, at the beginning of October, 1817, John Clare left Bridge Casterton, hand went to Pickworth, a village four miles off, in a northerly direction, where he found employment in another lime-kiln, belonging to a Mr. Clerk. The reason he quitted his old master was that the latter lowered his wages from nine to seven shillings per week, which reduction John Clare would not submit to. Though content, throughout his life, to live in the humblest way, he had two strong reasons, at this moment, for wishing to earn moderately good wages, so as to be able to save some money. The first was that he had set his heart on having a new suit of clothes, including an olive-green coat. As young maidens sigh for a lover, and as children long for sweetmeats, so John Clare had set his heart for years on having an olive-green coat. For this wonderful garment he was 'measured' soon after returning from Oundle and martial glory, under the agreement, carefully stipulated with the master tailor, that it was to be delivered only on cash payment. But he had never yet been able to raise the necessary fifty shillings, although the olive-green coat was dearer to his heart than ever before. However, there was one still dearer object, for the carrying out of which he wanted to save money, namely, the attempt to get some of his verses printed. His chief impulse, in this respect, was not-so much literary vanity, but a strong desire to get the judgment of the world on his own secret labours. As yet, though with an intuitive perception of the intrinsic worth of his poetry, he had no real faith in himself. The intimation of Thomas Porter, respecting the necessity of grammar, still weighed heavily upon his mind, and the cold reception which his verses met with at the hands of the bookseller of Market Deeping greatly contributed to weaken the belief in the value of his writings. Nevertheless, the old spirit of faith urging him again and again, he had more than once renewed his communications with Mr. Henson, and repeated visits to Market Deeping at last produced a sort of treaty between bookseller and poet. Mr. Henson agreed to print, for the sum of one pound, three hundred prospectuses, inviting subscribers for a small collection of 'Original Trifles by John Clare.' The price of the volume was to be three shillings and sixpence, 'in boards;' and Mr. Henson promised that, as soon as one hundred subscribers had given in their names, he would begin to print the book, at his own risk. This treaty, the result of several interviews, and much anxiety on the part of John Clare, was settled between the interested parties in the month of December, 1817.
A more excited time than that which now followed, Clare had never seen in his life. He was in love over head and ears, and had to pay frequent visits to his mistress at Walkherd Lodge; he had to think of saving money for his long-desired olive-green coat—more than ever desired now for presentation at the Lodge; and, last not least, he had to work overtime to get the one pound sterling required for the printing of the three hundred prospectuses. In short, he had to labour harder than ever, in order to gain more money; and, yet, at the same time, required more leisure than ever, both for writing verses and love-making. To reconcile these opposite wants, he took to night-work, in addition to daily labour, risking his health and almost his life to gain a few shillings and to have an occasional glimpse at his sweet mistress. His love prospects did not appear to be very promising, at first. As for Martha Turner herself, she rather encouraged than otherwise the attentions of the young lime-burner; her parents, however, were strongly and energetically opposed to the courtship. Dignified cottage-farmers, renting their half-a-dozen acres of land, with a cow on the common, and a pig or two, they thought their pretty daughter might look higher in the world than to a mere lime-burner with nine shillings a week. Besides, there was another lover in the wind, of decidedly better prospects, who had already gained the ear of the parents, and was backed by all their influence. It was a young shoemaker from Stamford, with a shop of his own; a townsman dressed in spotless broadcloth on all his visits to Walkherd Lodge, and of manners considered aristocratic. Martha herself wavered slightly between the shoemaker and the lime-burner; the former was not only well-dressed but good-looking, to neither of which externals John Clare could lay any pretensions. The only advantage possessed by him over his rival was that he pleaded his cause with all the zeal and ardour of a man deeply enamoured, and this, as always, so here, carried the day finally. There was some languid indifference in the addresses of the loving shoemaker, to punish which Martha Turner threw herself into the arms of John Clare. So far, things were looking prosperous at the Pickworth lime-kiln, during the first months of 1818.
Meanwhile, the poetical aspirations of John Clare had made little progress. Mr. Henson, of Market Deeping, insisted that the poet should write his own prospectus, or 'Invitation to Subscribers,' and Clare trembled at the bare idea of undertaking such a formidable work. Easy as it was to him to compose scores of verses every day, in the intervals of the hardest manual labour, he had never attempted, in his whole life, to write a single line in prose, and therefore could not bring himself, by any exertion, to go through the new task. Day after day he tormented his head to find words how to begin the required prospectus, but invariably with the same negative result. Often it happened that, when trying to write down the first line of the 'Invitation,' his thoughts involuntarily lost themselves in rhyme, till finally, instead of the desired 'Address to the Public,' there stood on paper, much to his own surprise, an address to the primrose or the nightingale. Thus, one morning, when going to his work, in deep thoughts of poetry, prospectuses, love, and lime-burning, the reflection escaped his lips, 'What is life?' and, as if driven by inspiration, he instantly sat down in a field, and, on a scrap of coarse paper, wrote the first two verses of the poem, subsequently published under the same title. Clare's poetical genius threatened to master even his own will.