Chapter 9

"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.

I wake, and fall asleep again, The same delights in visions rise; There's nothing can appear more plain Than those rose cheeks and those bright eyes. I wake again, and all alone Sits Darkness on his ebon throne.

All silent runs the silver Trent, The cobweb veils are all wet through, A silver bead's on every bent, On every leaf a bleb of dew. I sighed, the moon it shone so clear: Was Mary Bateman walking here?

WHEN SHALL WE MEET AGAIN?

How many times Spring blossoms meek Have faded on the land Since last I kissed that pretty cheek, Caressed that happy hand. Eight time the green's been painted white With daisies in the grass Since I looked on thy eyes so bright, And pressed my bonny lass.

The ground lark sung about the farms, The blackbird in the wood, When fast locked in each other's arms By hedgerow thorn we stood. It was a pleasant Sabbath day, The sun shone bright and round, His light through dark oaks passed, and lay Like gold upon the ground.

How beautiful the blackbird sung, And answered soft the thrush; And sweet the pearl-like dew-drops hung Upon the white thorn bush. O happy day, eight years ago! We parted without pain: The blackbird sings, primroses blow; When shall we meet again?

THE LOVER'S INVITATION

Now the wheat is in the ear, and the rose is on the brere, And bluecaps so divinely blue, with poppies of bright scarlet hue, Maiden, at the close o' eve, wilt thou, dear, thy cottage leave, And walk with one that loves thee?

When the even's tiny tears bead upon the grassy spears, And the spider's lace is wet with its pinhead blebs of dew, Wilt thou lay thy work aside and walk by brooklets dim descried, Where I delight to love thee?

While thy footfall lightly press'd tramples by the skylark's nest, And the cockle's streaky eyes mark the snug place where it lies, Mary, put thy work away, and walk at dewy close o' day With me to kiss and love thee.

There's something in the time so sweet, when lovers in the evening meet, The air so still, the sky so mild, like slumbers of the cradled child, The moon looks over fields of love, among the ivy sleeps the dove: To see thee is to love thee.

NATURE'S DARLING

Sweet comes the morning In Nature's adorning, And bright shines the dew on the buds of the thorn, Where Mary Ann rambles Through the sloe trees and brambles; She's sweeter than wild flowers that open at morn; She's a rose in the dew; She's pure and she's true; She's as gay as the poppy that grows in the corn.

Her eyes they are bright, Her bosom's snow white, And her voice is like songs of the birds in the grove. She's handsome and bonny, And fairer than any, And her person and actions are Nature's and love. She has the bloom of all roses, She's the breath of sweet posies, She's as pure as the brood in the nest of the dove.

Of Earth's fairest daughters, Voiced like falling waters, She walks down the meadows, than blossoms more fair. O her bosom right fair is, And her rose cheek so rare is, And parted and lovely her glossy black hair. Her bosom's soft whiteness! The sun in its brightness Has never been seen so bewilderingly fair.

The dewy grass glitters, The house swallow twitters, And through the sky floats in its visions of bliss; The lark soars on high, On cowslips dews lie, And the last days of Summer are nothing like this. When Mary Ann rambles Through hedgerows and brambles, The soft gales of Spring are the seasons of bliss.

I'LL DREAM UPON THE DAYS TO COME

I'll lay me down on the green sward, Mid yellowcups and speedwell blue, And pay the world no more regard, But be to Nature leal and true. Who break the peace of hapless man But they who Truth and Nature wrong? I'll hear no more of evil's plan, But live with Nature and her song.

Where Nature's lights and shades are green, Where Nature's place is strewn with flowers. Where strife and care are never seen, There I'll retire to happy hours, And stretch my body on the green, And sleep among the flowers in bloom, By eyes of malice seldom seen, And dream upon the days to come.

I'll lay me by the forest green, I'll lay me on the pleasant grass; My life shall pass away unseen; I'll be no more the man I was. The tawny bee upon the flower, The butterfly upon the leaf, Like them I'll live my happy hour, A life of sunshine, bright and brief.

In greenwood hedges, close at hand, Build, brood, and sing the little birds, The happiest things in the green land, While sweetly feed the lowing herds, While softly bleat the roving sheep. Upon the green grass will I lie, A Summer's day, to think and sleep. Or see the clouds sail down the sky.

TO ISABEL