Poems

by John Clare

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.