Books: Life and Remains of John Clare
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J. L. Cherry >> Life and Remains of John Clare
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15 Produced by Mark Sherwood, Delphine Lettau and Charles Aldarondo
LIFE AND REMAINS
of
JOHN CLARE
The "Northamptonshire Peasant Poet"
INCLUDING:
LETTERS FROM HIS FRIENDS AND CONTEMPORARIES,
EXTRACTS FROM HIS DIARY,
PROSE FRAGMENTS, OLD BALLADS (COLLECTED BY CLARE).
By J.L.CHERRY
"And he sat him down in a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet."
Tennyson.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY BIRKET FOSTER
DEDICATION
To HIS EXCELLENCY, THE LORD-LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND.
MY LORD:
Among the papers which John Clare, the "Peasant Poet" of our county,
left behind him, was one in which he desired that the Editor of his
"Remains" should dedicate them "to Earl Spencer, with the Author's
last wishes."
That memorandum was written in the year 1825, when the poet was
anticipating, to use his own words, a speedy entrance into "the dark
porch of eternity, whence none returns to tell the tale of his
reception."
These melancholy forebodings were not realized, for although in a few
years Clare became dead to the world, he lived on in seclusion to a
patriarchal age. Meanwhile the Earl Spencer to whom he desired that
his "Remains" should be dedicated passed away, and the title
descended first to your lordship's uncle, then to your lordship's
father, and lastly to your lordship. But through all these years the
Earls Spencer were the steadfast and generous friends of the unhappy
Poet, nor did your lordship's bounty cease with his life, but was
continued to his widow.
In dedicating this volume to your lordship, as I now do, I am
complying with the spirit and almost with the very letter of poor
Clare's injunction.
I am, with unfeigned respect,
Your lordship's most obedient servant,
THE EDITOR.
INTRODUCTION
The Editor begs the reader to believe that he under took the
compilation of this volume with diffidence and trepidation, lest by
any defect of judgment he might do aught to diminish the reputation
which John Clare has always enjoyed with the lovers of pastoral
poetry. He trusts that the shortcomings of an unskilful workman will
be forgotten in admiration of the gems for which he has been required
to find a setting.
Shortly after Clare's death his literary "Remains" came into the
possession of Mr. Taylor, of Northampton. The MSS included several
hundreds of hitherto unpublished poems, more than a thousand letters
addressed to Clare by his friends and contemporaries, (among them
Charles Lamb, James Montgomery, Bloomfield, Sir Chas. A. Elton, Hood,
Cary, Allan Cunningham, Mrs. Emmerson, Lord Radstock, &c), diary,
pocket books in which Clare had jotted down passing thoughts and
fancies in prose and verse, a small collection of curious "Old
Ballads" which he says he wrote down on hearing them sung by his
father and mother, and numerous other valuable and interesting
documents.
This volume has been compiled mainly from these manuscripts. The
contents are divided into five sections, namely:--Life and Letters,
Asylum Poems, Miscellaneous Poems, Prose Fragments, Old Ballads.
For much of the information relating to the Poet's earlier years the
Editor is indebted to Mr. Martin's "Life of Clare," and the
narratives of his youthful struggles and sufferings which appeared in
the "Quarterly Review" and other periodicals at the time of the
publication of his first volume. From that time the correspondence
already mentioned became the basis of the biographical sketch, and
was of the greatest value. In the few pages which relate to Clare's
residence at Northampton, the Editor was enabled to write principally
from personal knowledge.
It is almost incumbent upon him to add, that in several important
particulars he dissents from Mr. Martin, but he will not engage in
the ungracious task of criticizing a work to which he is under an
obligation.
While an inmate of the Northampton County Lunatic Asylum, Clare wrote
more than five hundred poems. These were carefully preserved by Mr.
W. F. Knight, of Birmingham, a gentleman who for many years held a
responsible office in that institution, and was a kind-hearted friend
of the unhappy bard. From this pile of manuscripts the Editor has
selected those which appear under the title of Asylum Poems. The
selection was a pleasing, mournful task. Again and again it happened
that a poem would open with a bright, musical stanza giving promise
of a finished work not unworthy of Clare's genius at its best. This
would be followed by others in which, to quote a line from the
"Village Minstrel," were "Half-vacant thoughts and rhymes of careless
form." Then came deeper obscurity, and at last incoherent nonsense.
Of those which are printed, scarcely one was found in a state in
which it could be submitted to the public without more or less of
revision and correction.
The Miscellaneous Poems are chiefly fugitive pieces collected from
magazines and annuals. One or two, referred to in the correspondence
with James Montgomery, have been reprinted from the "Rural Muse," and
there are a few which, like the Asylum Poems, have not been published
before. "Maying; or, Love and Flowers," to which the Editor presumes
specially to direct attention, is one of these.
The Prose Fragments are of minor literary importance, but they help
to a knowledge and an understanding of the man. The Old Ballads have
an interest of their own, apart from their association with Clare.
The majority are no doubt what they purport to be, but in two or
three instances Clare's hand is discernible.
J. L. C.
Havelock-place, Hanley,
December, 1872.
CONTENTS
LIFE, LETTERS, ETC.
ASYLUM POEMS:
'T is Spring, My Love, 't is Spring
Love of Nature
The Invitation
To the Lark
Graves of Infants
Bonny Lassie O!
Phoebe of the Scottish Glen
Maid of the Wilderness
Mary Bateman
When Shall We Meet Again?
The Lover's Invitation
Nature's Darling
I'll Dream Upon the Days to Come
To Isobel
The Shepherd's Daughter
Lassie, I Love Thee
The Gipsy Lass
At the Foot of Clifford Hill
To My Wife--A Valentine
My True Love is a Sailor
The Sailor's Return
Birds, Why Are Ye Silent?
Meet Me Tonight
Young Jenny
Adieu
My Bonny Alice and Her Pitcher
The Maiden I Love
To Jenny Lind
Little Trotty Wagtail
The Forest Maid
Bonnny Mary O!
Love's Emblem
The Morning Walk
To Miss C....
I Pluck Summer Blossoms
The March Nosegay
Left Alone
To Mary
The Nightingale
The Dying Child
Mary
Clock-a Clay
Spring
Evening
The Swallow
Jockey and Jenny
The Face I Love So Dearly
The Beanfield
Where She Told Her Love
Milking O' the Kye
A Lover's Vows
The Fall of the Year
Autumn
Early Love
Evening
A Valentine
To Liberty
Approach of Winter
Mary Dove
Spring's Nosegay
The Lost One
The Tell-Tale Flowers
The Skylark
Poets Love Nature--A Fragment
Home Yearnings
My Schoolboy Days
Love Lives Beyond the Tomb
My Early Home
Mary Appleby
Among the Green Bushes
To Jane
The Old Year
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:
Maying; or, A Love of Flowers
Two Sonnets to Mary
The Vanities of Life
March
The Old Man's Lament
Spring Flowers
Poem on Death
The Wanton Chloe
The Old Shepherd
To a Rosebud in Humble Life
The Triumphs of Time
To John Milton
The Birds and St. Valentine
Farewell and Defiance to Love
The Gipsy's Song
Peggy Band
To a Brook
PROSE FRAGMENTS:
A Confession of Faith
Essay on Popularity
Scraps for an Essay on Criticism and Fashion
Scraps for an Essay on Criticism
OLD SONGS AND BALLADS:
Adieu to My False Love Forever
O Silly Love! O Cunning Love!
Nobody Cometh to Woo
Fare Thee Well
Mary Neele
Love Scorned By Pride
Betrayed
The Maiden's Welcome
The False Knight's Tragedy
Love's Riddle
The Banks of Ivory
GLOSSARY
Bedlam cowslip: the paigle, or larger kind of cowslip.
Bents: tall, coarse, rushy stems of grass.
Blea: high, exposed.
Bleb: a bubble, a small drop.
Clock-a-clay: the ladybird.
Daffies: daffodils.
Dithering: trembling, shivering.
Hing: preterite of hang.
Ladysmock: the cardamine pratensis.
Pink: the chaffinch.
Pooty: the girdled snail shell.
Ramping: coarse and large.
Rawky: misty, foggy.
Rig: the ridge of a roof.
Sueing: a murmuring, melancholy sound.
Swaly: wasteful.
Sweltered: over-heated by the sun.
Twitchy: made of twitch grass.
Water-Hob: the marsh marigold.
LIFE, LETTERS, ETC.
HELPSTONE
John Clare, son of Parker and Ann Clare, commonly called "the
Northamptonshire Peasant Poet," was born at Helpstone, near
Peterborough, on the 13th of July, 1793. The lowliness of his lot
lends some countenance to the saying of "Melancholy" Burton, that
"poverty is the Muses' patrimony." He was the elder of twins, and was
so small an infant that his mother used to say of him that "John
might have been put into a pint pot." Privation and toil disabled his
father at a comparatively early age, and he became a pauper,
receiving from the parish an allowance of five shillings a week. His
mother was of feeble constitution and was afflicted with dropsy.
Clare inherited the low vitality of his parents, and until he reached
middle age was subject to depressing ailments which more than once
threatened his life, but after that time the failure of his mental
powers caused him to be placed in circumstances favourable to bodily
health, and in his old age he presented the outward aspect of a
sturdy yeoman.
Having endowed Clare with high poetic sensibility, Nature
capriciously placed him amid scenes but little calculated to call
forth rapturous praises of her charms. "Helpstone," wrote an old
friend of the poet, lately deceased, "lies between six and seven
miles NNW of Peterborough, on the Syston and Peterborough branch of
the Midland Railway, the station being about half a mile from the
town. A not unpicturesque country lies about it, though its beauty is
somewhat of the Dutch character; far-stretching distances, level
meadows, intersected with grey willows and sedgy dikes, frequent
spires, substantial watermills, and farm houses of white stone, and
cottages of white stone also. Southward, a belt of wood, with a
gentle rise beyond, redeems it from absolute flatness. Entering the
town by the road from the east you come to a cross, standing in the
midst of four ways. Before you, and to the left, stretches the town,
consisting of wide streets or roadways, with irregular buildings on
either side, interspersed with gardens now lovely with profuse blooms
of laburnum and lilac."
The cottage in which John Clare was born is in the main street
running south. The views of it which illustrate his poems are not
very accurate. They represent it as standing alone, when it is in
fact, and evidently always has been, a cluster of two if not of three
tenements. There are three occupations now. It is on the west side of
the street, and is thatched. In the illustration to the second volume
of "The Village Minstrel" (1821), an open stream runs before the door
which is crossed by a plank. Modern sanitary regulations have done
away with this, if it ever existed and was not a fancy of the artist.
LOCAL ATTACHMENTS
Clare, whose local attachments were intense, bewails in indignant
verse the demolition of the Green:--
Ye injur'd fields, ye once were gay,
When Nature's hand displayed
Long waving rows of willows grey
And clumps of hawthorn shade;
But now, alas! your hawthorn bowers
All desolate we see!
The spoiler's axe their shade devours,
And cuts down every tree.
Not trees alone have owned their force,
Whole woods beneath them bowed,
They turned the winding rivulet's course,
And all thy pastures plough'd.
Clare also wrote in the "Village Minstrel" in the following candid
and artless strain, "a sort of defiant parody on the Highland poets",
of the natural features of his native place:--
Swamps of wild rush-beds and sloughs' squashy traces,
Grounds of rough fallows with thistle and weed.
Flats and low valleys of kingcups and daisies,
Sweetest of subjects are ye for my reed:
Ye commons left free in the rude rags of nature,
Ye brown heaths beclothed in furze as ye be,
My wild eye in rapture adores every feature,
Ye are dear as this heart in my bosom to me.
O native endearments! I would not forsake ye,
I would not forsake ye for sweetest of scenes:
For sweetest of gardens that Nature could make me
I would not forsake ye, dear valleys and greens:
Though Nature ne'er dropped ye a cloud-resting mountain,
Nor waterfalls tumble their music so free,
Had Nature denied ye a bush, tree, or fountain,
Ye still had been loved as an Eden by me.
And long, my dear valleys, long, long may ye flourish,
Though rush-beds and thistles make most of your pride!
May showers never fail the green's daisies to nourish,
Nor suns dry the fountain that rills by its side!
Your skies may be gloomy, and misty your mornings,
Your flat swampy valleys unwholesome may be,
Still, refuse of Nature, without her adornings
Ye are dear as this heart in my bosom to me.
That the poet's attachment to his native place was deeprooted and
unaffected was proved by the difficulty which he found in tearing
himself from it in after years, and it is more than probable that the
violence which, for the sake of others, he then did to his sensitive
nature aggravated his constitutional melancholy and contributed to
the ultimate overthrow of his reason.
GRANNY BAINS
Clare's opportunities for learning the elements of knowledge were in
keeping with his humble station. Parker Clare, out of his miserable
and fluctuating earnings as a day labourer, paid for his child's
schooling until he was seven years of age, when he was set to watch
sheep and geese on the village heath. Here he made the acquaintance
of "Granny Bains," of whom Mr. Martin, quoting, doubtless, from
Clare's manuscript autobiography, says:--
"Having spent almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold,
storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the
signs of foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her
acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive
memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never
knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within
her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. To
John, old Granny Bains soon took a great liking, he being a devout
listener, ready to sit at her feet for hours and hours while she was
warbling her little ditties, alternately merry and plaintive. But
though often disturbed in the enjoyment of these delightful
recitations, they nevertheless sank deep into John Clare's mind,
until he found himself repeating all day long the songs he had heard,
and even in his dreams kept humming:--
There sat two ravens upon a tree,
Heigh down, derry O!
There sat two ravens upon a tree,
As deep in love as he and she.
It was thus that the admiration of poetry first awoke in Parker
Clare's son, roused by the songs of Granny Bains, the cowherd of
Helpstone."
SUMMER LABOURS, WINTER STUDY
From watching cows and geese, the boy was in due course promoted to
the rank of team-leader, and was also set to assist his father in the
threshing barn. "John," his father used to say, "was weak but
willing," and the good man made his son a flail proportioned to his
strength. Exposure in the ill-drained fields round Helpstone brought
on an attack of tertiary ague, from which the boy had scarcely
rallied when he was again sent into the fields. Favourable weather
having set in, he recovered his health, and was able that summer to
make occasionally a few pence by working overtime. These savings were
religiously devoted to schooling, and in the following winter, he
being then in his tenth year, he attended an evening school at the
neighbouring village of Glinton. John soon became a favourite of the
master, Mr. James Merrishaw, and was allowed the run of his little
library. His passion for learning rapidly developed itself, and he
eagerly devoured every book that came in his way, his reading ranging
from "Robinson Crusoe" to "Bonnycastle's Arithmetic" and "Ward's
Algebra." He refers to this in later life when he thus speaks of the
"Village Minstrel":--
And oft, with books, spare hours he would beguile,
And blunder oft with joy round Crusoe's lonely isle.
John pursued his studies for two or three winters under the guidance
of the good-natured Merrishaw, and at the end of that time an
unsuccessful effort was made to obtain for him a situation as clerk
in the office of a solicitor at Wisbeach. After this failure he
returned contentedly to the fields, and about this time found a new
friend in the son of a small farmer named Turnill. The two youths
read together, Turnill assisting Clare with books and writing
materials. He now began to "snatch a fearful joy" by scribbling on
scraps of paper his unpolished rhymes. "When he was fourteen or
fifteen," to use his mother's own words, "he would show me a piece of
paper, printed sometimes on one side and scrawled all over on the
other, and he would say, 'Mother, this is worth silver and gold,' and
I used to say to him, 'Ay, boy, it looks as if it wur,' but I thought
he was only wasting his time." John deposited a bundle of these
fragments in a chink in the cottage wall, whence "they were duly and
daily subtracted by his mother to boil the morning's kettle," but we
do not find that he was greatly disturbed by the loss, for being
sympathetically asked on one occasion whether he had not kept copies
of his earliest poems he replied that he had not, and that they were
very likely good for nothing.
While he was yet in his early youth an important and, in some
respects, a favourable change took place in the nature of his daily
occupation. Among the few well-to-do inhabitants of Helpstone was a
person named Francis Gregory, who owned a small public-house, under
the sign of the Blue Bell, and rented besides a few acres of land.
Francis Gregory, a most kind and amiable man, was unmarried, and kept
house with his old mother, a female servant, and a lad, the latter
half groom and half gardener. This situation, a yearly hiring, being
vacant, it was offered to John, and eagerly accepted, on the
understanding that he should have sufficient time of his own to
continue his studies. It was a promise abundantly kept, for John
Clare had never more leisure, and perhaps was never happier in his
life than during the year that he stayed at the Blue Bell. Mr.
Francis Gregory, suffering under constant illness, treated the pale
little boy, who was always hanging over his books, more like a son
than a servant, and this feeling was fully shared by Mr. Gregory's
mother. John's chief labours were to attend to a horse and a couple
of cows, and occasionally to do some light work in the garden or the
potato field; and as these occupations seldom filled more than part
of the day or the week, he had all the rest of the time to himself. A
characteristic part of Clare's nature began to reveal itself now.
While he had little leisure to himself, and much hard work, he was
not averse to the society of friends and companions either, as in the
case of Turnill, for study, or, as with others, for recreation; but
as soon as he found himself to a certain extent his own master he
forsook the company of his former acquaintances, and began to lead a
sort of hermit's life. He took long strolls into the woods, along the
meres, and to other lonely places, and got into the habit of
remaining whole hours at some favourite spot, lying flat on the
ground with his face towards the sky. "The flickering shadows of the
sun, the rustling of the leaves on the trees, the sailing of the
fitful clouds over the horizon, and the golden blaze of the sun at
morn and eventide were to him spectacles of which his eye never
tired, with which his heart never got satiated." (Martin.)
HIS EARLIEST RHYMES
The age at which Clare's poetic fancies first wrought themselves into
verse cannot be definitely fixed. We know from his steadfast friend
and first editor, the late Mr. John Taylor, publisher to the London
University, that his fondness for poetry found expression before even
he had learnt to read. He was tired one day with looking at the
pictures in a volume of poems, which he used to say he thought was
Pomfret's, when his father read him one piece in the book to amuse
him. This thrilled him with a delight of which he often afterwards
spoke, but though he distinctly recollected the vivid pleasure which
the recital gave him he could never recall either the incidents or
the language. It may almost be taken for granted that so soon as
Clare could write he began to rhyme. The Editor of this volume has
before him the book in which the boy set down his arithmetical and
geometrical exercises while a pupil of Mr. Merrishaw, and in this
book are scribbled in pencil a few undecipherable lines commencing,
"Good morning to ye, ballad-singing thrush." He was thirteen years
old when an incident occurred which gave a powerful impulse to his
dawning genius. A companion had shown him Thomson's "Seasons," and he
was seized with an irrepressible desire to possess a copy. He
ascertained that the book might be bought at Stamford for
eighteenpence, and he entreated his father to give him the money. The
poor man pleaded all too truthfully his poverty, but his mother, by
great exertions, contrived to scrape together sevenpence, and the
deficiency was made up by loans from friends in the village. Next
Sunday, John rose long before the dawn and walked to Stamford, a
distance of seven miles, to buy a copy of the "Seasons," ignorant or
forgetful of the fact that business was suspended on that day. After
waiting for three or four hours before the shop to which he had been
directed, he learnt from a passer-by that it would not be re-opened
until the following morning, and he returned to Helpstone with a
heavy heart. Next day he repeated his journey and bore off the
much-coveted volume in triumph. He read as he walked back to
Helpstone, but meeting with many interruptions clambered over the
wall surrounding Burghley Park, and throwing himself on the grass
read the volume through twice over before rising. It was a fine
spring morning, and under the influence of the poems, the singing of
birds, and the bright sunshine, he composed "The Morning Walk." This
was soon followed by "The Evening Walk," and some other minor
pieces.
At the age of sixteen, if we may trust the account given by his early
friend Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, in the "London Magazine" for January,
1820, Clare composed the following sonnet "To a Primrose":--
Welcome, pale primrose, starting up between
Dead matted leaves of oak and ash, that strew
The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through,
'Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green!
How much thy presence beautifies the ground!
How sweet thy modest, unaffected pride
Glows on the sunny bank and wood's warm side!
And where thy fairy flowers in groups are found
The schoolboy roams enchantedly along,
Plucking the fairest with a rude delight,
While the meek shepherd stops his simple song,
To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight,
O'erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring
The welcome news of sweet returning Spring.
As we have traced the poet's history down to his sixteenth year, the
next incident of importance may be anticipated: of course he fell in
love, and the object of his first and purest affection was Mary
Joyce, daughter of a farmer at Glinton. Little is known of this
episode excepting that the maiden was very beautiful, that after a
few months of blissful intercourse their frequent meetings came to
the knowledge of Mary's father, who sternly forbad their continuance,
and that although "Patty," Clare's future wife, was the theme of some
pretty verses, Mary Joyce was always Clare's ideal of love and
beauty, and when thirty years afterwards, he lost his reason, among
the first indications of the approaching calamity was his declaration
that Mary, who had then long been in her grave, had passed his
window. While under the influence of this delusion he wrote the poem
entitled "First Love's Recollections," of which the following are the
first two stanzas:--
First love will with the heart remain
When all its hopes are bye,
As frail rose-blossoms still retain
Their fragrance when they die;
And joy's first dreams will haunt the mind
With shades from whence they sprung,
As summer leaves the stems behind
On which spring's blossoms hung.
Mary! I dare not call thee dear,
I've lost that right so long;
Yet once again I vex thine ear
With memory's idle song.
Had time and change not blotted out
The love of former days,
Thou wert the last that I should doubt
Of pleasing with my praise.
Clare's engagement at the Blue Bell having terminated, a stone mason
of Market Deeping offered to teach him his craft on payment of a
premium which, though a very moderate sum, was far beyond the means
of Parker Clare. A shoemaker in the village next offered to take him
as an apprentice, on condition that Clare found his own tools, but
the youth's aversion to the trade was too great to be overcome.
After that his father applied to the head gardener at Burghley Park,
who engaged Clare on the terms of a three years' apprenticeship,
with eight shillings per week for the first year and an advance of
one shilling per week in each succeeding year. The engagement was
considered by Clare's father and mother to be a very fortunate and
promising one, but it proved to be in a high degree prejudicial to
his welfare. He was thrown into the society of a set of coarse-
minded, intemperate fellows who insisted on his accompanying them in
their frequent and forbidden visits to public houses in the
neighbourhood. Mr. Martin informs us that it was the custom at
Burghley to lock up at night all the workmen and apprentices
employed under the head gardener, to prevent them from robbing the
orchards, and that they regularly made their escape through a
window. On several occasions Clare was overcome by drink and slept
in the open air, with consequences to his delicate frame which may
easily be imagined. It would appear that the head gardener set the
example of habitual drunkenness to his subordinates, and that he
was, moreover, of brutal disposition, which will account for the
circumstance of the flight of Clare from Burghley Park, after he had
been there nearly a year. Accompanied by a fellow-apprentice he
walked to Grantham, a distance of twenty-two miles, and thence to
Newark, where the youths obtained employment under a nurseryman. But
Clare very shortly became homesick, and he returned to his parents
in a state of complete destitution.
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