Part 3

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.

WHAT IS LIFE?

And what is Life?--An hour-glass on the run, A mist retreating from the morning sun, A busy, bustling, still repeated dream.-- Its length?--A minute’s pause, a moment’s thought. And happiness?--A bubble on the stream, That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

What is vain Hope?--The puffing gale of morn, That robs each flow’ret of its gem,--and dies; A cobweb hiding disappointment’s thorn, Which stings more keenly through the thin disguise.

--And thou, O Trouble?--nothing can suppose (And sure the Power of Wisdom only knows), What need requireth thee: So free and liberal as thy bounty flows, Some necessary cause must surely be. But disappointments, pains, and every woe Devoted wretches feel, The universal plagues of life below, Are mysteries still ’neath Fate’s unbroken seal.

And what is Death? is still the cause unfound? That dark, mysterious name of horrid sound?-- A long and lingering sleep, the weary crave. And Peace? where can its happiness abound?-- 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. ’Tis but a trial all must undergo; To teach unthankful mortals how to prize That happiness vain man’s denied to know, Until he’s call’d to claim it in the skies.

ADDRESS TO PLENTY

IN WINTER

O thou Bliss! to riches known, Stranger to the poor alone; Giving most where none’s requir’d, Leaving none where most’s desir’d; Who, sworn friend to miser, keeps Adding to his useless heaps Gifts on gifts, profusely stor’d, Till thousands swell the mouldy hoard: While poor, shatter’d Poverty, To advantage seen in me, With his rags, his wants, and pain, Waking pity but in vain, Bowing, cringing at thy side, Begs his mite, and is denied. O, thou blessing! let not me Tell, as vain, my wants to thee; Thou, by name of Plenty stil’d Fortune’s heir, her favourite child. ’Tis a maxim--hunger feed, Give the needy when they need; He, whom all profess to serve, The same maxim did observe: Their obedience here, how well, Modern times will plainly tell. Hear my wants, nor deem me bold, Not without occasion told: Hear one wish; nor fail to give; Use me well, and bid me live.

’Tis not great, what I solicit: Was it more, thou couldst not miss it: Now the cutting Winter’s come, ’Tis but just to find a home, In some shelter, dry and warm, That will shield me from the storm. Toiling in the naked fields, Where no bush a shelter yields, Needy Labour dithering stands, Beats and blows his numbing hands; And upon the crumping snows Stamps, in vain, to warm his toes. Leaves are fled, that once had power To resist a summer shower; And the wind so piercing blows, Winnowing small the drifting snows, The summer shade of loaded bough Would vainly boast a shelter now: Piercing snows so searching fall, They sift a passage through them all. Though all’s vain to keep him warm, Poverty must brave the storm. Friendship none, its aid to lend: Health alone his only friend; Granting leave to live in pain, Giving strength to toil in vain; To be, while winter’s horrors last, The sport of every pelting blast.

Oh, sad sons of Poverty! Victims doom’d to misery; Who can paint what pain prevails O’er that heart which Want assails? Modest Shame the pain conceals: No one knows, but he who feels. O thou charm which Plenty crowns: Fortune! smile, now Winter frowns: Cast around a pitying eye! Feed the hungry, ere they die. Think, oh! think upon the poor, Nor against them shut thy door: Freely let thy bounty flow, On the sons of Want and Woe.

Hills and dales no more are seen In their dress of pleasing green; Summer’s robes are all thrown by, For the clothing of the sky; Snows on snows in heaps combine, Hillocks, rais’d as mountains, shine, And at distance rising proud, Each appears a fleecy cloud. Plenty! now thy gifts bestow; Exit bid to every woe: Take me in, shut out the blast, Make the doors and windows fast; Place me in some corner, where, Lolling in an elbow chair, Happy, blest to my desire, I may find a rouzing fire; While in chimney-corner nigh, Coal or wood, a fresh supply, Ready stands for laying on, Soon as t’other’s burnt and gone. Now and then, as taste decreed In a book a page I’d read; And, inquiry to amuse, Peep at something in the news; See who’s married, and who’s dead, And who, through bankrupt, beg their bread: While on hob, or table nigh, Just to drink before I’m dry, A pitcher at my side should stand, With the barrel nigh at hand, Always ready as I will’d, When ’twas empty, to be fill’d; And, to be possess’d of all, A corner cupboard in the wall, With store of victuals lin’d complete, That when hungry I might eat. Then would I, in Plenty’s lap, For the first time take a nap; Falling back in easy lair, Sweetly slumbering in my chair; With no reflective thoughts to wake Pains that cause my heart to ache, Of contracted debts, long made, In no prospect to be paid; And, to Want, sad news severe, Of provisions getting dear: While the Winter, shocking sight, Constant freezes day and night, Deep and deeper falls the snow, Labour’s slack, and wages low. These, and more, the poor can tell, Known, alas, by them too well, Plenty! oh, if blest by thee, Never more should trouble me. Hours and weeks will sweetly glide, Soft and smooth as flows the tide, Where no stones or choaking grass Force a curve ere it can pass: And as happy, and as blest, As beasts drop them down to rest, When in pastures, at their will, They have roam’d and eat their fill; Soft as nights in summer creep, So should I then fall asleep; While sweet visions of delight, So enchanting to the sight, Sweetly swimming o’er my eyes, Would sink me into extacies. Nor would pleasure’s dream once more, As they oft have done before, Cause be to create a pain, When I woke, to find them vain: Bitter past, the present sweet, Would my happiness complete. Oh; how easy should I lie, With the fire up-blazing high, (Summer’s artificial bloom,) That like an oven keeps the room, Or lovely May, as mild and warm: While, without, the raging storm Is roaring in the chimney-top, In no likelihood to drop; And the witchen-branches nigh, O’er my snug box towering high, That sweet shelter’d stands beneath, In convulsive eddies wreathe. Then while, tyrant-like, the storm Takes delight in doing harm. Down before him crushing all, Till his weapons useless fall; And as in oppression proud Peal his howlings long and loud, While the clouds, with horrid sweep, Give (as suits a tyrant’s trade) The sun a minute’s leave to peep, To smile upon the ruin’s made; And to make complete the blast, While the hail comes hard and fast, Rattling loud against the glass; And the snowy sleets, that pass, Driving up in heaps remain Close adhering to the pane, Stop the light and spread a gloom, Suiting sleep, around the room:-- Oh, how blest ’mid these alarms, I should bask in Fortune’s arms, Who, defying every frown, Hugs me on her drowny breast, Bids my head lie easy down, And on Winter’s ruins rest. So upon the troubled sea, Emblematic simile, Birds are known to sit secure, While the billows roar and rave, Slumbering in their safety sure, Rock’d to sleep upon the wave. So would I still slumber on, Till hour-telling clocks had gone, And, from the contracted day, One or more had click’d away. Then with sitting wearied out, I for change’s sake, no doubt, Just might wish to leave my seat, And, to exercise my feet, Make a journey to the door, Put my nose out, but no more: There to village taste agree; Mark how times are like to be; How the weather’s getting on; Peep in ruts where carts have gone; Or, by stones, a sturdy stroke, View the hole the boys have broke, Crizzling, still inclin’d to freeze;-- And the rime upon the trees. Then to pause on ills to come, Just look upward on the gloom; See fresh storms approaching fast, View them busy in the air, Boiling up the brewing blast, Still fresh horrors scheming there. Black and dismal, rising high, From the north they fright the eye: Pregnant with a thousand storms, Huddled in their icy arms, Heavy hovering as they come, Some as mountains seem--and some Jagg’d as craggy rocks appear Dismally advancing near: Fancy, at the cumbrous sight, Chills and shudders with affright, Fearing lest the air, in vain, Strive her station to maintain, And wearied, yeilding to the skies, The world beneath in ruin lies. So may Fancy think and feign; Fancy oft imagines vain: Nature’s laws, by wisdom penn’d, Mortals cannot comprehend; Power almighty Being gave, Endless Mercy stoops to save; Causes, hid from mortals’ sight, Prove “whatever is, is right.”

Then to look again below, Labour’s former life I’d view, Who, still beating through the snow, Spite of storms their toils pursue, Forc’d out by sad Necessity That sad fiend that forces me. Troubles, then no more my own, Which I but too long had known, Might create a care, a pain; Then I’d seek my joys again: Pile the fire up, fetch a drink, Then sit down again and think; Pause on all my sorrows past, Think how many a bitter blast, When it snow’d, and hail’d, and blew, I have toil’d and batter’d through. Then to ease reflective pain, To my sports I’d fall again, Till the clock had counted ten; When I’d seek my downy bed, Easy, happy, and well fed.