Books: Life and Remains of John Clare
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J. L. Cherry >> Life and Remains of John Clare
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And now the bickering storm, with sudden start,
In flirting fits of anger carps aloud,
Thee urging to thine end,
Sore wept by troubled skies.
And yet, sublime in grief, thy thoughts delight
To show me visions of most gorgeous dyes,
Haply forgetting now
They but prepare thy shroud;
Thy pencil dashing its excess of shades,
Improvident of wealth, till every bough
Burns with thy mellow touch
Disorderly divine.
Soon must I view thee as a pleasant dream
Droop faintly, and so reckon for thine end,
As sad the winds sink low
In dirges for their queen;
While in the moment of their weary pause,
To cheer thy bankrupt pomp, the willing lark
Starts from his shielding clod,
Snatching sweet scraps of song.
Thy life is waning now, and Silence tries
To mourn, but meets no sympathy in sounds,
As stooping low she bends,
Forming with leaves thy grave;
To sleep inglorious there mid tangled woods,
Till parch-lipped Summer pines in drought away;
Then from thine ivied trance
Awake to glories new.
MAY
Now comes the bonny May, dancing and skipping
Across the stepping-stones of meadow streams,
Bearing no kin to April showers a-weeping,
But constant Sunshine as her servant seems.
Her heart is up--her sweetness, all a-maying,
Streams in her face, like gems on Beauty's breast;
The swains are sighing all, and well-a-daying,
Lovesick and gazing on their lovely guest.
The Sunday paths, to pleasant places leading,
Are graced by couples linking arm in arm,
Sweet smiles enjoying or some book a-reading,
Where Love and Beauty are the constant charm;
For while the bonny May is dancing by,
Beauty delights the ear, and Beauty fills the eye.
Birds sing and build, and Nature scorns alone
On May's young festival to be a widow;
The children, too, have pleasures all their own,
In gathering lady-smocks along the meadow.
The little brook sings loud among the pebbles,
So very loud, that water-flowers, which lie
Where many a silver curdle boils and dribbles,
Dance too with joy as it goes singing by.
Among the pasture mole-hills maidens stoop
To pluck the luscious marjoram for their bosoms;
The greensward's littered o'er with buttercups,
And whitethorns, they are breaking down with blossoms.
'T is Nature's livery for the bonny May,
Who keeps her court, and all have holiday.
Princess of Months (so Nature's choice ordains,)
And Lady of the Summer still she reigns.
In spite of April's youth, who charms in tears,
And rosy June, who wins with blushing face;
July, sweet shepherdess, who wreathes the shears
Of shepherds with her flowers of winning grace;
And sun-tanned August, with her swarthy charms,
The beautiful and rich; and pastoral, gay
September, with her pomp of fields and farms;
And wild November's sybilline array;--
In spite of Beauty's calendar, the Year
Garlands with Beauty's prize the bonny May.
Where'er she goes, fair Nature hath no peer,
And months do love their queen when she's away.
MEMORY
I would not that my memory all should die,
And pass away with every common lot:
I would not that my humble dust should lie
In quite a strange and unfrequented spot,
By all unheeded and by all forgot,
With nothing save the heedless winds to sigh,
And nothing but the dewy morn to weep
About my grave, far hid from the world's eye:
I fain would have some friend to wander nigh
And find a path to where my ashes sleep--
Not the cold heart that merely passes by,
To read who lies beneath, but such as keep
Past memories warm with deeds of other years,
And pay to friendship some few friendly tears.
"The Rural Muse" sold tolerably well for some months, and Mr.
Whittaker told Mr. Emmerson that "he thought they would get off" the
first edition. But the time was rapidly approaching when literary
fame or failure, the constancy or fickleness of friends, the pangs of
poverty or the joys of competence were to be alike matters of
indifference to John Clare. He began to write in a piteous strain to
Mrs. Emmerson, Mr. Taylor, and Dr. Darling, all of whom assured him
of their deep sympathy, and promised assistance. Mrs. Emmerson,
although completely prostrated by repeated and serious attacks of
illness, sent him cheering letters so long as she could hold her pen,
while Mr. Taylor wrote:--
"If you think that you can now come here for the advice of Dr.
Darling I shall be very happy to see you, and any one who may attend
you." The attacks of melancholy from which he had suffered
occasionally for many years became more frequent and more intense,
his language grew wild and incoherent, and at length he failed to
recognize his own wife and children and became the subject of all
kinds of hallucinations. There were times when he was perfectly
rational, and he returned to work in his garden or in his little
study with a zest which filled his family and neighbours with eager
anticipations of his recovery, but every succeeding attack of his
mental malady was more severe than that which preceded it. Of all
that followed little need be said, for it is too painful to be dwelt
upon, and the story of Clare's life hurries therefore to its close.
His lunacy having been duly certified, Mr. Taylor and other of
Clare's old friends in London charged themselves with the
responsibility of removing him to the private asylum of Dr. Allen at
High Beech, in Epping Forest. Mr. Taylor sending a trustworthy person
to Northborough to accompany him to London and take care of him on
the road. This was in June or July, 1837, and Clare remained under
Mr. Allen's care for four years. Allan Cunningham, Mr. S. C. Hall,
and others of Clare's literary friends energetically appealed to the
public on behalf of the unhappy bard. Mr. Hall in the "Book of Gems"
for 1838 wrote:--
"It is not yet too late: although he has given indications of a brain
breaking up, a very envied celebrity may be obtained by some wealthy
and good Samaritan who would rescue him from the Cave of Despair,"
adding, "Strawberry Hill might be gladly sacrificed for the fame of
having saved Chatterton."
This appeal brought Mr. Hall a letter from the Marquis of
Northampton, whose name is now for the first time associated with
that of the poet. The Marquis informed Mr. Hall that he was not one
of Clare's exceeding admirers, but he was struck and shocked by what
that gentleman had said about "our county poet," and thought it would
be "a disgrace to the county," to which Clare was "a credit," if he
were left in a state of poverty. The county was neither very wealthy
nor very literary, but his lordship thought that a collection of
Clare's poems might be published by subscription, and if that
suggestion were adopted he would take ten or twenty copies, or he
would give a donation of money, if direct assistance of that kind
were preferred. Mr. Hall says in his "Memories,":--
"The plan was not carried out, and if the Marquis gave any aid of any
kind to the peasant-poet the world, and I verily believe the poet
himself, remained in ignorance of the amount."
AT HIGH BEECH ASYLUM
All that was possible was done for Clare at the house of Dr. Allen,
one of the early reformers of the treatment of lunatics. He was kept
pretty constantly employed in the garden, and soon grew stout and
robust. After a time he was allowed to stroll beyond the grounds of
the asylum and to ramble about the forest. He was perfectly harmless,
and would sometimes carry on a conversation in a rational manner,
always, however, losing himself in the end in absolute nonsense. In
March, 1841, he wrote a long and intelligible letter to Mrs. Clare,
almost the only peculiarity in which is that every word is begun with
a capital letter. There is no doubt that at this time he was
possessed with the idea that he had two wives--Patty, whom he called
his second wife, and his life-long ideal, Mary Joyce. In the letter
just referred to he begins "My dear wife Patty," and in a postscript
says, "Give my love to the dear boy who wrote to me, and to her who
is never forgotten." He wrote verses which he told Dr. Allen were for
his wife Mary, and that he intended to take them to her. He made
several unsuccessful attempts to escape in the early part of 1841,
but in July of that year he contrived to evade both watchers and
pursuers, and reached Peterborough after being four days and three
nights on the road in a penniless condition, and being so near to
dying of starvation that he was compelled to eat grass like the
beasts of the field. The day after his return to Northborough he
wrote what he called an account of his journey, prefacing the
narrative by this remark, "Returned home out of Essex and found no
Mary." Mr. Martin gives this extraordinary document in his "Life of
Clare." It is a weird, pathetic and pitiful story, "a tragedy all too
deep for tears." Having finished the journal of his escape he
addressed it with a letter to "Mary Clare, Glinton." In this letter
he says:--
"I am not so lonely as I was in Essex, for here I can see Glinton
Church, and feeling that my Mary is safe, if not happy I am
gratified. Though my home is no home to me, my hopes are not entirely
hopeless while even the memory of Mary lives so near to me. God bless
you, my dear Mary! Give my love to our dear beautiful family and to
your mother, and believe me, as ever I have been and ever shall be,
my dearest Mary, your affectionate husband, John Clare." Truly,
"Love's not Time's fool: though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom."
AT NORTHAMPTON
Clare remained for a short time at Northborough, and was then removed
under medical advice to the County Lunatic Asylum at Northampton, of
which establishment he continued an inmate until his death in 1864.
During the whole of that time the charge made by the authorities of
the Asylum for his maintenance was paid either by Earl Fitzwilliam or
by his son, the Hon. G. W. Fitzwilliam. It is to the credit of the
managers of the institution that although the amount paid on his
behalf was that usually charged for patients of the humbler classes,
Clare was always treated in every respect as a "gentleman patient."
He had his favourite window corner in the common sitting room,
commanding a view of Northampton and the valley of the Nen, and books
and writing materials were provided for him. Unless the Editor's
memory is at fault, he was always addressed deferentially as "Mr.
Clare," both by the officers of the Asylum and the townspeople; and
when Her Majesty passed through Northampton, in 1844, in her progress
to Burleigh, a seat was specially reserved for the poet near one of
the triumphal arches. There was something very nearly akin to
tenderness in the kindly sympathy which was shown for him, and his
most whimsical utterances were listened to with gravity, lest he
should feel hurt or annoyed. He was classified in the Asylum books
among the "harmless," and for several years was allowed to walk in
the fields or go into the town at his own pleasure. His favourite
resting place at Northampton was a niche under the roof of the
spacious portico of All Saints' Church, and here he would sometimes
sit for hours, musing, watching the children at play, or jotting down
passing thoughts in his pocket note-book.
THE APPROACHING END
In course of time it was found expedient not to allow him to wander
beyond the Asylum grounds. He wrote occasionally to his son Charles,
but appears never to have been visited by either relatives or
friends. The neglect of his wife and children is inexplicable. It was
no doubt while smarting under this treatment that he penned the lines
given below, of which an eloquent critic has said that "in their
sublime sadness and incoherence they sum up, with marvellous effect,
the one great misfortune of the poet's life--his mental isolation--
his inability to make his deepest character and thoughts intelligible
to others. They read like the wail of a nature cut off from all
access to other minds, concentrated at its own centre, and conscious
of the impassable gulf which separates it from universal humanity:"--
I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me, like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am--I live--though I am toss'd
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise.
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that's dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange--nay, they are stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod--
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept--
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.
Clare's physical powers slowly declined, and at length he had to be
wheeled about the Asylum grounds in a Bath chair. As he felt his end
approaching he would frequently say "I have lived too long," or "I
want to go home." Until within three days of his death he managed to
reach his favourite seat in the window, but was then seized with
paralysis, and on the afternoon of the 20th of May, 1864, without a
struggle or a sigh his spirit passed away. He was taken home.
In accordance with Clare's own wish, his remains were interred in the
churchyard at Helpstone, by the side of those of his father and
mother, under the shade of a sycamore tree. The expenses of the
funeral were paid by the Hon. G. W. Fitzwilliam. Two or three years
afterwards a coped monument of Ketton stone was erected over Clare's
remains. It bears this inscription:--
"Sacred to the Memory of John Clare, the Northamptonshire Peasant
Poet. Born July 13, 1793. Died May 20th, 1864. A Poet is born, not
made."
In 1869, another memorial was erected in the principal street of
Helpstone. The style is Early English, and it bears suitable
inscriptions from Clare's Works.
CONCLUSION
In looking back upon such a life as Clare's, so prominent are the
human interests which confront us, that those of poetry, as one of
the fine arts, are not unlikely to sink for a time completely out of
sight. The long and painful strain upon our sympathy to which we are
subject as we read the story is such perhaps as the life of no other
English poet puts upon us. The spell of the great moral problems by
which the lives of so many of our poets seem to have been more or
less surrounded makes itself felt in every step of Clare's career. We
are tempted to speak in almost fatalistic language of the disastrous
gift of the poetic faculty, and to find in that the source of all
Clare's woe. The well-known lines--
We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness--
ring in our ears, and we remember that these are the words of a poet
endowed with a well-balanced mind, and who knew far less than Clare
the experience of
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills.
In Clare's case we are tempted to say that the Genius of Poetry laid
her fearful hand upon a nature too weak to bear her gifts and at the
same time to master the untoward circumstances in which his lot was
cast. But too well does poor Clare's history illustrate that
interpretation of the myth which pictures Great Pan secretly busy
among the reeds and fashioning, with sinister thought, the fatal pipe
which shall "make a poet out of a man." And yet it may be doubted
whether, on the whole, Clare's lot in life, and that of the wife and
family who were dependent upon him, was aggravated by the poetic
genius which we are thus trying to make the scapegoat for his
misfortunes. It may be that the publicity acquired by the
Northamptonshire Peasant Poet simply brings to the surface the
average life of the English agricultural labourer in the person of
one who was more than usually sensitive to suffering. Unhappily there
is too good reason to believe that the privations to which Clare and
his household were subject cannot be looked upon as exceptional in
the class of society to which both husband and wife belonged,
although they naturally acquire a deeper shade from the prospect of
competency and comfort which Clare's gifts seemed to promise. In this
light, while the miseries of the poet are none the less real and
claim none the less of our sympathy, the moral problem of Clare's
woes belongs rather to humanity at large than to poets in particular.
We are at liberty to hope, then, that the world is all the richer,
and that Clare's lot was none the harder, by reason of that
dispensation of Providence which has given to English literature such
a volume as "The Rural Muse." How many are there who not only fail,
as Clare failed, to rise above their circumstances, but who, in
addition, leave nothing behind them to enrich posterity! We are
indeed the richer for Clare, but with what travail of soul to himself
only true poets can know.
ASYLUM POEMS
'TIS SPRING, MY LOVE, 'TIS SPRING
'T is Spring, my love, 'tis Spring,
And the birds begin to sing:
If 'twas Winter, left alone with you,
Your bonny form and face
Would make a Summer place,
And be the finest flower that ever grew.
'T is Spring, my love, 'tis Spring,
And the hazel catkins hing,
While the snowdrop has its little blebs of dew;
But that's not so white within
As your bosom's hidden skin--
That sweetest of all flowers that ever grew.
The sun arose from bed,
All strewn with roses red,
But the brightest and the loveliest crimson place
Is not so fresh and fair,
Or so sweet beyond compare,
As thy blushing, ever smiling, happy face.
I love Spring's early flowers,
And their bloom in its first hours,
But they never half so bright or lovely seem
As the blithe and happy grace
Of my darling's blushing face,
And the happiness of love's young dream.
LOVE OF NATURE
I love thee, Nature, with a boundless love!
The calm of earth, the storm of roaring woods!
The winds breathe happiness where'er I rove!
There's life's own music in the swelling floods!
My heart is in the thunder-melting clouds,
The snow-cap't mountain, and the rolling sea!
And hear ye not the voice where darkness shrouds
The heavens? There lives happiness for me!
My pulse beats calmer while His lightnings play!
My eye, with earth's delusions waxing dim,
Clears with the brightness of eternal day!
The elements crash round me! It is He!
Calmly I hear His voice and never start.
From Eve's posterity I stand quite free,
Nor feel her curses rankle round my heart.
Love is not here. Hope is, and at His voice--
The rolling thunder and the roaring sea--
My pulses leap, and with the hills rejoice;
Then strife and turmoil are at end for me.
No matter where life's ocean leads me on,
For Nature is my mother, and I rest,
When tempests trouble and the sun is gone,
Like to a weary child upon her breast.
THE INVITATION
Come hither, my dear one, my choice one, and rare one,
And let us be walking the meadows so fair,
Where on pilewort and daisies the eye fondly gazes,
And the wind plays so sweet in thy bonny brown hair.
Come with thy maiden eye, lay silks and satins by;
Come in thy russet or grey cotton gown;
Come to the meads, dear, where flags, sedge, and reeds appear,
Rustling to soft winds and bowing low down.
Come with thy parted hair, bright eyes, and forehead bare;
Come to the whitethorn that grows in the lane;
To banks of primroses, where sweetness reposes,
Come, love, and let us be happy again.
Come where the violet flowers, come where the morning showers
Pearl on the primrose and speedwell so blue;
Come to that clearest brook that ever runs round the nook
Where you and I pledged our first love so true.
TO THE LARK
Bird of the morn,
When roseate clouds begin
To show the opening dawn
Thou gladly sing'st it in,
And o'er the sweet green fields and happy vales
Thy pleasant song is heard, mixed with the morning gales.
Bird of the morn,
What time the ruddy sun
Smiles on the pleasant corn
Thy singing is begun,
Heartfelt and cheering over labourers' toil,
Who chop in coppice wild and delve the russet soil.
Bird of the sun,
How dear to man art thou!
When morning has begun
To gild the mountain's brow,
How beautiful it is to see thee soar so blest,
Winnowing thy russet wings above thy twitchy nest.
Bird of the Summer's day,
How oft I stand to hear
Thee sing thy airy lay,
With music wild and clear,
Till thou becom'st a speck upon the sky,
Small as the clods that crumble where I lie.
Thou bird of happiest song,
The Spring and Summer too
Are thine, the months along,
The woods and vales to view.
If climes were evergreen thy song would be
The sunny music of eternal glee.
GRAVES OF INFANTS
Infants' gravemounds are steps of angels, where
Earth's brightest gems of innocence repose.
God is their parent, so they need no tear;
He takes them to his bosom from earth's woes,
A bud their lifetime and a flower their close.
Their spirits are the Iris of the skies,
Needing no prayers; a sunset's happy close.
Gone are the bright rays of their soft blue eyes;
Flowers weep in dew-drops o'er them, and the gale gently sighs.
Their lives were nothing but a sunny shower,
Melting on flowers as tears melt from the eye.
Each death
Was tolled on flowers as Summer gales went by.
They bowed and trembled, yet they heaved no sigh,
And the sun smiled to show the end was well.
Infants have nought to weep for ere they die;
All prayers are needless, beads they need not tell,
White flowers their mourners are, Nature their passing bell.
BONNIE LASSIE O!
O the evening's for the fair, bonny lassie O!
To meet the cooler air and join an angel there,
With the dark dishevelled hair,
Bonny lassie O!
The bloom's on the brere, bonny lassie O!
Oak apples on the tree; and wilt thou gang to see
The shed I've made for thee,
Bonny lassie O!
'T is agen the running brook, bonny lassie O!
In a grassy nook hard by, with a little patch of sky,
And a bush to keep us dry,
Bonny lassie O!
There's the daisy all the year, bonny lassie O!
There's the king-cup bright as gold, and the speedwell never cold,
And the arum leaves unrolled,
Bonny lassie O!
O meet me at the shed, bonny lassie O!
With the woodbine peeping in, and the roses like thy skin
Blushing, thy praise to win,
Bonny lassie O!
I will meet thee there at e'en, bonny lassie O!
When the bee sips in the beau, and grey willow branches lean,
And the moonbeam looks between,
Bonny lassie O!
PHOEBE OF THE SCOTTISH GLEN
Agen I'll take my idle pen
And sing my bonny mountain maid--
Sweet Phoebe of the Scottish glen,
Nor of her censure feel afraid.
I'll charm her ear with beauty's praise,
And please her eye with songs agen--
The ballads of our early days--
To Phoebe of the Scottish glen.
There never was a fairer thing
All Scotland's glens and mountains through.
The siller gowans of the Spring,
Besprent with pearls of mountain dew,
The maiden blush upon the brere,
Far distant from the haunts of men,
Are nothing half so sweet or dear
As Phoebe of the Scottish glen.
How handsome is her naked foot,
Moist with the pearls of Summer dew:
The siller daisy's nothing to 't,
Nor hawthorn flowers so white to view,
She's sweeter than the blooming brere,
That blossoms far away from men:
No flower in Scotland's half so dear
As Phoebe of the Scottish glen.
MAID OF THE WILDERNESS
Maid of the wilderness,
Sweet in thy rural dress,
Fond thy rich lips I press
Under this tree.
Morning her health bestows,
Sprinkles dews on the rose,
That by the bramble grows:
Maid happy be.
Womanhood round thee glows,
Wander with me.
The restharrow blooming,
The sun just a-coming,
Grass and bushes illuming,
And the spreading oak tree;
Come hither, sweet Nelly,
* * *
The morning is loosing
Its incense for thee.
The pea-leaf has dews on;
Love wander with me.
We'll walk by the river,
And love more than ever;
There's nought shall dissever
My fondness from thee.
Soft ripples the water,
Flags rustle like laughter,
And fish follow after;
Leaves drop from the tree.
Nelly, Beauty's own daughter,
Love, wander with me.
MARY BATEMAN
My love she wears a cotton plaid,
A bonnet of the straw;
Her cheeks are leaves of roses spread,
Her lips are like the haw.
In truth she is as sweet a maid
As true love ever saw.
Her curls are ever in my eyes,
As nets by Cupid flung;
Her voice will oft my sleep surprise,
More sweet than ballad sung.
O Mary Bateman's curling hair!
I wake, and there is nothing there.
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