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. ”

“ The woods how gloomy in a winter’s morn!
The crows and ravens even cease to croak,
The little birds sit chittering on the thorn,
The pies scarce chatter when they leave the oak,
Startled from slumber by the woodman’s stroke;
The milk-maid’s song is drown’d in gloomy care,{50}
And while the village chimneys curl their smoke,
She milks, and blows, and hastens to be there;
And nature all seems sad, and dying in despair.
The quirking rabbit scarcely leaves her hole,
But rolls in torpid slumbers all the day ”

“ 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!
{120}
A WORLD FOR LOVE
OH, the world is all too rude for thee, with much ado and care ”

“ To think of pleasures we must meet no more.
Now from the pasture milking-maidens come,
With each a swain to bear the burden home,
Who often coax them on their pleasant way
To soodle longer out in love’s delay;
While on a mole-hill, or a resting stile,{57}
The simple rustics try their arts the while
With glegging smiles, and hopes and fears between,
Snatching a kiss to open what they mean:
And all the utmost that their tongues can do,
The honey’d words which nature learns to woo,
The wild-flower sweets of language, “love” and “dear,”
With warmest utterings meet each maiden’s ear ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Absorbed as in some vagrant summer dream;
Who now, in gestures wild,
Starts dancing to his shadow on the wall,
Feeling self-gratified,
Nor fearing human thrall.
Or thread the sunny valley laced with streams,
Or forests rude, and the o’ershadow’d brims
Of simple pond, where idle shepherd dreams,
Stretching his listless limbs;
Or trace hay-scented meadows, smooth and long
Where joy’s wild impulse swims
In one continued song.
I love at early morn, from new mown swath,
To see the startled frog his route pursue ”

“ Betray the plainer what she strives to hide.
The amorous swain sees through the feign’d disguise,
Discerns the fondness she at first denies,
And with all passions love and truth can move
Urges more strong the simpering maid to love;
More freely using toying ways to win—
Tokens that echo from the soul within—
Her soft hand nipping, that with ardour burns,
And, timid, gentlier presses its returns ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Well-pleas’d from the chill prospect to retire,
To seek his corner chair, and warm snug cottage fire.
And soon as dusky even hovers round,
And the white frost ’gins crizzle pond and brook,
The little family are glimpsing round,
And from the door dart many a wistful look;
The supper’s ready stewing on the hook:
And every foot that clampers down the street
Is for the coming father’s step mistook;
O’erjoy’d are they when he their eyes doth meet,
Bent ’neath his load, snow-clad, as white as any sheet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When, heedless then to all the rest may say,
The beckoning lover nods the maid away,
And at a distance many an hour they seem
In jealous whisperings o’er their pleasing theme;
While children round them teasing sports prolong,
To twirl the top, or bounce the hoop along,{60}
Or shout across the street their “one catch all,”
Or prog the hous’d bee from the cotter’s wall.
Now at the parish cottage wall’d with dirt,
Where all the cumber-grounds of life resort,
From the low door that bows two props between,
Some feeble tottering dame surveys the scene ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So winter’s ragged power affects all nature through.
What different changes winter’s frowns supply:
The clown no more a loitering hour beguiles,
Nor gaping tracks the clouds along the sky,
As when buds blossom, and the warm sun smiles,
And “Lawrence wages bids” on hills and stiles;
Banks, stiles, and flowers, and skies, no longer charm;
Deep drifting snow each summer-seat defiles ”

“ 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. ”

“ No where at all, save heaven, and the grave.
Then what is Life?—When stripp’d of its disguise,
A thing to be desir’d it cannot be;
Since every thing that meets our foolish eyes
Gives proof sufficient of its vanity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That makes me love thee dearly.{33}
Thou wilderness, so rudely gay;
Oft as I seek thy plain,
Oft as I wend my steps away,
And meet my joys again,
And brush the weaving branches by
Of briars and thorns so matty;
So oft Reflection warms a sigh,—
Here first I meet my Patty.
{34}
PATTY OF THE VALE
WHERE lonesome woodlands close surrounding
Mark the spot a solitude,
And nature’s uncheck’d scenes abounding
Form a prospect wild and rude,
A cottage cheers the spot so glooming,
Hid in the hollow of the dale,
Where, in youth and beauty blooming
Lives sweet Patty of the Vale. ”

“ Uncouth-brimm’d hat, and weather-beaten cloak,
’Neath the wild shelter of a knotty oak,
Along the greensward uniforming pricks
Her pliant bending hazel’s arching sticks;
While round-topt bush or briar-entangled hedge,
Where flag-leaves spring beneath, or ramping sedge,
Keep off the bothering bustle of the wind,
And give the best retreat she hopes to find. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And everything inspired by thee grow beautifully good.
And there to make a cot unknown to any care and pain,
And there to shut the door alone on singing wind and rain—
Far, far away from all the world, more rude than rain or wind,
Oh who could wish a sweeter home, or better place to find?
Than thus to love and live with thee, thou beautiful delight!
Than thus to live and love with thee the summer day and night!
The Earth itself, where thou hadst rest, would surely smile to see
Herself grow Eden once again, possest of Love and thee.
{122}
SONG
O THE voice of woman’s love! ”

“ And the rose and woodbine they
Wait again the smiles of day.
’Neath the willow’s wavy boughs,
Dolly, singing, milks hers cows;
While the brook, as bubbling by,
Joins in murmuring melody.
Dick and Dob, with jostling joll,
Homeward drag the rumbling roll;
Whilom Ralph, for Doll to wait,
Lolls him o’er the pasture gate.
Swains to fold their sheep begin;
Dogs loud barking drive them in. ”

“ 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 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. ”