Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

by John Clare

Turnill, we toiled together all the day,
And lived like hermits from the boys at play;
We read and walked together round the fields,
Not for the beauty that the journey yields—
But muddied fish, and bragged oer what we caught,
And talked about the few old books we bought.
Though low in price you knew their value well,
And I thought nothing could their worth excel;
And then we talked of what we wished to buy,
And knowledge always kept our pockets dry.
We went the nearest ways, and hummed a song,
And snatched the pea pods as we went along,
And often stooped for hunger on the way
To eat the sour grass in the meadow hay.

One of these "few old books" was Thomson's "Seasons", which gave a direction to the poetic instincts of Clare, already manifesting themselves in scribbled verses in his exercise-books.

Read, mark, learn as Clare might, no opportunity came for him to enter a profession. "After I had done with going to school it was proposed that I should be bound apprentice to a shoemaker, but I rather disliked this bondage. I whimpered and turned a sullen eye on every persuasion, till they gave me my will. A neighbour then offered to learn me his trade—to be a stone mason,—but I disliked this too…. I was then sent for to drive the plough at Woodcroft Castle of Oliver Cromwell memory; though Mrs. Bellairs the mistress was a kind-hearted woman, and though the place was a very good one for living, my mind was set against it from the first;… one of the disagreeable things was getting up so early in the morning … and another was getting wetshod … every morning and night—for in wet weather the moat used to overflow the cause-way that led to the porch, and as there was but one way to the house we were obliged to wade up to the knees to get in and out…. I staid here one month, and then on coming home to my parents they could not persuade me to return. They now gave up all hopes of doing any good with me and fancied that I should make nothing but a soldier; but luckily in this dilemma a next-door neighbour at the Blue Bell, Francis Gregory, wanted me to drive plough, and as I suited him, he made proposals to hire me for a year—which as it had my consent my parents readily agreed to." There he spent a year in light work with plenty of leisure for his books and his long reveries in lonely favourite places. His imagination grew intensely, and in his weekly errand to a flour-mill at Maxey ghosts rose out of a swamp and harried him till he dropped. This stage was hardly ended when one day on his road he saw a young girl named Mary Joyce, with whom he instantly fell in love. This crisis occurred when Clare was almost sixteen: the fate of John Clare hung in the balance for six months. Then Mary's father, disturbed principally by the chance that his daughter might be seen talking to this erratic youngster, put an end to their meetings. From this time, with intervals of tranquillity, Clare was to suffer the slow torture of remorse, until at length deliberately yielding himself up to his amazing imagination he held conversation with Mary, John Clare's Mary, his first wife Mary—as though she had not lived unwed, and had not been in her grave for years.

But this was not yet; and we must return to the boy Clare, now terminating his year's hiring at the Blue Bell. It was time for him to take up some trade in good earnest; accordingly, in an evil hour disguised as a fortunate one, he was apprenticed to the head gardener at Burghley Park. The head gardener was in practice a sot and a slave-driver. After much drunken wild bravado, not remarkable in the lad Clare considering his companions and traditions, there came the impulse to escape; with the result that Clare and a companion were shortly afterwards working in a nursery garden at Newark-upon-Trent. Both the nursery garden and "the silver Trent" are met again in the poems composed in his asylum days; but for the time being they meant little to him, and he suddenly departed through the snow. Arrived home at Helpston, he lost some time in finding farm work and in writing verses: sharing a loft at night with a fellow-labourer, he would rise at all hours to note down new ideas. It was not unnatural in the fellow-labourer to request him to "go and do his poeting elsewhere." Clare was already producing work of value, none the less. Nothing could be kept from his neighbours, who looked askance on his ways of thinking, and writing: while a candid friend to whom he showed his manuscripts directed his notice to the study of grammar. Troubled by these ill omens, he comforted himself in the often intoxicated friendship of the bad men of the village, who under the mellowing influences of old ale roared applause as he recited his ballads. This life was soon interrupted.

"When the country was chin-deep," Clare tells us, "in the fears of invasion, and every mouth was filled with the terror which Buonaparte had spread in other countries, a national scheme was set on foot to raise a raw army of volunteers: and to make the matter plausible a letter was circulated said to be written by the Prince Regent. I forget how many were demanded from our parish, but remember the panic which it created was very great. No great name rises in the world without creating a crowd of little mimics that glitter in borrowed rays; and no great lie was ever yet put in circulation without a herd of little lies multiplying by instinct, as it were and crowding under its wings. The papers that were circulated assured the people of England that the French were on the eve of invading it and that it was deemed necessary by the Regent that an army from eighteen to forty-five should be raised immediately. This was the great lie, and then the little lies were soon at its heels; which assured the people of Helpston that the French had invaded and got to London. And some of these little lies had the impudence to swear that the French had even reached Northampton. The people were at their doors in the evening to talk over the rebellion of '45 when the rebels reached Derby, and even listened at intervals to fancy they heard the French rebels at Northampton, knocking it down with their cannon. I never gave much credit to popular stories of any sort, so I felt no concern at these stories; though I could not say much for my valour if the tale had proved true. We had a crossgrained sort of choice left us, which was to be found, to be drawn, and go for nothing—or take on as volunteers for the bounty of two guineas. I accepted the latter and went with a neighbour's son, W. Clarke, to Peterborough to be sworn on and prepared to join the regiment at Oundle. The morning we left home our mothers parted with us as if we were going to Botany Bay, and people got at their doors to bid us farewell and greet us with a Job's comfort 'that they doubted we should see Helpston no more.' I confess I wished myself out of the matter. When we got to Oundle, the place of quartering, we were drawn out into the field, and a more motley multitude of lawless fellows was never seen in Oundle before—and hardly out of it. There were 1,300 of us. We were drawn up into a line and sorted out into companies. I was one of the shortest and therefore my station is evident. I was in that mixed multitude called the battalion, which they nicknamed 'bum-tools' for what reason I cannot tell; the light company was called 'light-bobs,' and the grenadiers 'bacon-bolters' … who felt as great an enmity against each other as ever they all felt against the French."

In 1813 he read among other things the "Eikon Basilike," and turned his hand to odd jobs as they presented themselves. His life appears to have been comfortable and a little dull for a year or two; flirtation, verse-making, ambitions and his violin took their turns amiably enough! At length he went to work in a lime-kiln several miles from Helpston, and wrote only less poems than he read: one day in the autumn of 1817, he was dreaming yet new verses when he first saw "Patty," his wife-to-be. She was then eighteen years old, and modestly beautiful; for a moment Clare forgot Mary Joyce, and though "the courtship ultimately took a more prosaic turn," there is no denying the fact that he was in love with "Patty" Turner, the daughter of the small farmer who held Walkherd Lodge. In the case of Clare, poetry was more than ever as time went on autobiography; and it is noteworthy that among the many love lyrics addressed to Mary Joyce there are not wanting affectionate tributes to his faithful wife Patty.

Maid of Walkherd, meet again,
By the wilding in the glen….

And I would go to Patty's cot
And Patty came to me;
Each knew the other's very thought
Under the hawthorn tree….
And I'll be true for Patty's sake
And she'll be true for mine;
And I this little ballad make,
To be her valentine.

Not long after seeing Patty, Clare was informed by the owner of the lime-kiln that his wages would now be seven shillings a week, instead of nine. He therefore left this master and found similar work in the village of Pickworth, where being presented with a shoemaker's bill for £3, he entered into negotiations with a Market Deeping bookseller regarding "Proposals for publishing by subscription a Collection of Original Trifles on Miscellaneous Subjects, Religious and Moral, in verse, by John Clare, of Helpstone." Three hundred proposals were printed, with a specimen sonnet well chosen to intrigue the religious and moral; and yet the tale of intending subscribers stood adamantly at seven. On the face of it, then, Clare had lost one pound; had worn himself out with distributing his prospectuses; and further had been discharged from the lime-kiln for doing so in working hours. His ambitions, indeed, set all employers and acquaintances against him; and he found himself at the age of twenty-five compelled to ask for parish relief. In this extremity, even the idea of enlisting once more crossed his brain; then, that of travelling to Yorkshire for employment: and at last, the prospectus which had done him so much damage turned benefactor. With a few friends Clare was drinking success to his goose-chase when there appeared two "real gentlemen" from Stamford. One of these, a bookseller named Drury, had chanced on the prospectus, and wished to see more of Clare's poetry. Soon afterwards, he promised to publish a selection, with corrections; and communicated with his relative, John Taylor, who with his partner Hessey managed the well-known publishing business in Fleet Street. While this new prospect was opening upon Clare, he succeeded in obtaining work once more, near the home of Patty; their love-making proceeded, despite the usual thunderstorms, and the dangerous rivalry of a certain dark lady named Betty Sell. The bookseller Drury, though his appearance was in such critical days timely for Clare, was not a paragon of virtue. Without Clare's knowing it, he acquired the legal copyright of the poems, probably by the expedient of dispensing money at convenient times—a specious philanthropy, as will be shown. At the same time he allowed Clare to open a book account, which proved at length to be no special advantage. And further, with striking astuteness, he found constant difficulty in returning originals. In a note written some ten years later, Clare regrets that "Ned Drury has got my early vol. of MSS. I lent it him at first, but like all my other MSS. elsewhere I could never get it again…. He has copies of all my MSS. except those written for the 'Shepherd's Calendar.'" Nevertheless, through Drury, Clare was enabled to meet his publisher Taylor and his influential friend of the Quarterly, Octavius Gilchrist, before the end of 1819.

By 1818, there is no doubt, Clare had read very deeply, and even had some idea of the classical authors through translations. It is certain that he knew the great English writers, probable that he possessed their works. What appears to be a list of books which he was anxious to sell in his hardest times includes some curious titles, with some familiar ones. There are Cobb's Poems, Fawke's Poems, Broom's, Mrs. Hoole's, and so on; there are also Cowley's Works—Folio, Warton's "Milton," Waller, and a Life of Chatterton; nor can he have been devoid of miscellaneous learning after the perusal of Watson's "Electricity," Aristotle's Works, Gasse's "Voyages," "Nature Display'd," and the European Magazine ("fine heads and plates"). His handwriting at this time was bold and hasty; his opinions, to judge from his uncompromising notes to Drury respecting the text of the poems, almost cynical and decidedly his own. Tact was essential if you would patronize Clare: you might broaden his opinions, but you dared not assail them. Thus the friendly Gilchrist, a high churchman, hardly set eyes on Clare before condemning Clare's esteem for a dissenting minister, a Mr. Holland, who understood the poet and the poetry: it was some time before Gilchrist set eyes on Clare again.