Little is known of Clare's manner of life for the next four or five years, excepting that he continued to work as a farm labourer whenever work could be found, that he tried camp life with some gipsies, and speedily had his romantic ideas of its attractiveness rudely dispelled, that he had a love passage or two with girls of the village and that he accumulated a large number of poems of varying degrees of excellence.
In 1817 he obtained employment as a lime burner at Bridge Casterton, in the neighbouring county of Rutland, where he earned about ten shillings per week. The labour was very severe, but Clare was contented, and during his stay at Bridge Casterton several of the best among his earlier poems were produced. It was probably this period of his life which he had in his mind when he said:—
I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.
In the course of this year 1817 Clare fell in love with Martha Turner, the daughter of a cottage farmer living at a place called Walkherd Lodge, and this is the maiden who after the lapse of three or four years became his wife. "She was a fair girl of eighteen, slender, with regular features, and pretty blue eyes." Clare entered into this new engagement with passionate ardour, but the courtship ultimately took a more prosaic turn, and having once done so, there was little in the worthy but illiterate and matter-of-fact "Patty" to elevate the connection into the region of poetry. In his correspondence Clare more than once hints at want of sympathy on the part of those of his own household, and at one time domestic differences, for which there is reason to think he was mainly responsible, and which occurred when he was mentally in a very morbid condition, caused him to contemplate suicide. It is due, however, to the memory of "Patty" to say that Clare's latest volume of poems ("The Rural Muse," 1835) contains an address "To P * *" which is honourable to the constancy of both parties. It is as follows:—
Fair was thy bloom when first I met
Thy summer's maiden-blossom;
And thou art fair and lovely yet,
And dearer to my bosom.
O thou wert once a wilding flower,
All garden flowers excelling,
And still I bless the happy hour
That led me to thy dwelling.
Though nursed by field, and brook, and wood,
And wild in every feature,
Spring ne'er unsealed a fairer bud,
Nor found a blossom sweeter.
Of all the flowers the spring hath met,
And it has met with many,
Thou art to me the fairest yet,
And loveliest of any.
Though ripening summers round thee bring
Buds to thy swelling bosom,
That wait the cheering smiles of spring
To ripen into blossom.
These buds shall added blessings be,
To make our loves sincerer,
For as their flowers resemble thee
They'll make thy memory dearer.
And though thy bloom shall pass away,
By winter overtaken,
Thoughts of the past will charms display,
And many joys awaken.
When time shall every sweet remove,
And blight thee on my bosom,
Let beauty fade!—to me, my love,
Thou'lt ne'er be out of blossom!
THE POET TO THE PUBLIC
Although Clare's engagement to Martha Turner added to his perplexities, it was really the immediate moving cause of his determination to be up and doing. He resolved at length to publish a collection of his poems, and consulted Mr. Henson, a printer, of Market Deeping, on the subject. Mr. Henson offered to print three hundred copies of a prospectus for a sovereign, but he firmly declined the invitation of the poet to draw up that document. Clare resolutely set to work to save the money for the printer, and soon succeeded; but then there was the difficulty with regard to the composition of the address to the public. He could write poetry; that he knew; he had done so already, and he felt plenty more within; but prose he had never yet attempted, and the task was a really grievous one. This is his own account of his trouble, given in the introduction to the "Village Minstrel:"—