Chapter 4

Once more a farm-labourer at Helpston, John Clare was all his own again. Thomson's 'Seasons' never left his pocket; he read the book when going to the fields in the morning, and read it again when eating his humble meal at noonday under a hedge. The evenings he invariably spent in writing verses, on any slips and bits of paper he could lay hold of. Soon he accumulated a considerable quantity of these fugitive pieces of poetry, and wishing to preserve them, yet ashamed to let it be known that he was writing verses, he hid the whole at the bottom of an old cupboard in his bedroom. What made him more timid than ever to confess his doings to either friends or acquaintances, was their entire want of sympathy, manifested to him on more than one occasion. It sometimes happened, on a Sunday, that he would take a walk through the fields, in company with his father and mother, or a neighbour; and seeing something particularly beautiful, an early rose, or a little insect, or the many-hued sky, John Clare would break forth into ecstasies, declaiming, in his own enthusiastic way, on what he deemed the marvellous things upon this marvellous earth. His voice rose; his eyes sparkled; his heart bounded within him in intense love and admiration of this grand, this incomprehensible, this ever-wonderful realm of the Creator which men call the world. But whenever his companions happened to listen to this involuntary outburst of enthusiasm, they broke out in mocking laughter. A rose was to them a rose, and nothing more; an apple they valued higher, as something eatable; and, perhaps, over plum-pudding they would have got enthusiastic, too. As it was, poor John was a constant butt for all the shafts of coarse ridicule; even his own parents, to whom he was attached with the tendered affection, and who fully returned his love, did not spare him. Old Parker Clare shook his head when he heard his son descanting upon the beauties of nature, and reproved him on many occasions for not using his spare time to better purpose than scribbling upon little bits of paper. Parker Clare's whole notion of poetry was confined to the halfpenny ballads which the hawkers sold at fairs, and it struck him, not unnaturally, that the things being so cheap, it could not be a paying business. This important fact he lost no occasion to impress upon his son, though with no result whatever.

While the father was not sparing in his attacks upon John's poetical manifestations, the mother, on her part, was active in the same direction. She had discovered her son's hiding-place of the curious slips of paper which engrossed his nightly attention, and, to make an end of the matter at once, the good woman swept up the whole lot one morning, and threw it in the chimney. Very likely there was in her mind some intuitive perception of the fact that her son's poems 'wanted fire.' John was greatly distressed when he found his verses gone; and more still when he discovered how the destruction happened. To prevent the recurrence of a similar event, he conceived the desperate plan of instilling into his parents a love of poetry. He boldly told them, what he had hitherto not so much as hinted at, that he was writing verses 'such as are found in books,', coupling it with the assertion that he could produce songs and ballads as good as those sold at fairs, so much admired by his father. Parker Clare again shook his head in a doubting mood, expressing a strong disbelief of his offspring's abilities in writing poetry. Thus put upon his mettle, John resolved to do his best to change the scepticism of his father, and having written some verses which he liked, and corrected them over and over again into desirable smoothness, he one evening read them to his astonished parents. But the result was thoroughly disappointing. So far from admiring his son's poetry, Parker Clare expressed his strong conviction that it was mere rubbish, not to be compared to the half-penny songs of the fairs. John was much humbled to hear this; however, he carried within himself a strong belief that his verses were not quite valueless, and therefore resolved upon one more test. Hearing the constant vaunting of the cheap ballads, he made up his mind to try whether his father was really able to distinguish between his own verses and those in print. Accordingly, when he had finished another composition, he committed it to memory, and rehearsed it to his parents in the evening, pretending to read it from the print. Then his father broke out in the delightful exclamation: 'Ah, John, my boy, if thou couldst make such-like verses, that would do.' This was an immense relief to the poor scribbler of poetry. He now saw clearly that his father's want of confidence was in him, the writer, and not in his writings. Henceforth, he made it his regular habit of reciting his own poetry to his parents as if reading it from a book, or printed sheet of paper. The habit, though it was strictly a dishonest proceeding, proved to him not only a real source of pleasure, in hearing his praises from the lips of those he loved most, but it also served him as a fair critical school. Whenever he found his parents laugh at a sentence which he deemed very pathetic, he set himself at once to correct it to a simpler style; whenever they asked him for an explanation of a word, or line, he noted it down as ill-expressed, or obscure; and whenever either his father or mother asked for a repetition of a song which they had heard before, he marked the slip of poetry so honoured as a success. And all these successful slips of paper John Clare placed in a crevice between his bed and the lath-and-plaster wall; a hole so dark and unfathomable as to be beyond the reach of even his sharp-eyed mother, always on the look-out for manuscript poetry to light the fire.

Having gained the surreptitious approval of his verses by his parents, John Clare began to be moved by a slight and almost unconscious feeling of ambition. Hitherto he had written poetry solely for the sake of pleasing himself, but he now was stirred by anxiety to discover what value others set upon his writings. The crevice in his bed-room, jealously guarded since his mother's grand _auto-da-fé_, and as yet undiscovered by the watchful maternal eye, contained a few dozen songs and ballads, descriptive of favourite trees, and flowers, and bits of scenery, and, after long brooding within himself, John resolved upon showing these pieces to an acquaintance. The person selected for this confidence was one Thomas Porter, a middle-aged man, living at a lonely cottage at Ashton Green, about a mile from Helpston. He was one of those individuals, described, in a class, as 'having seen better days;' besides, a lover of books, of flowers, and of solitary rambles. Their tastes coinciding so far, John Clare and Thomas Porter had become tolerably intimate friends, the former making it a point to visit, almost every Sunday, the little cottage at Ashton Green. Having wound his courage up to the point, John at last, with much secret fear and trembling, showed to his friend the best specimens of his poetry, asking for his opinion on the same. Mr. Thomas Porter, though a very good-natured man, was somewhat formal in his habits, scrutinizing, with visible astonishment, the little pieces of paper--blue, red, white, and yellow, having served the manifold purposes of the baker and tallow chandler before being helpful to poetry--which were submitted to his judgment. Seeing his young friend's disappointed look at the examination, he promised to give his opinion about the poetry in a week, namely, on the following Sunday. The week seemed a long one to John Clare, and he was almost trembling with excitement when again approaching the door of the small cottage of Ashton Green. He trembled still more at the first question of Mr. Thomas Porter:--'Do you know grammar?' It was useless for John to profess that he did know so much as the meaning of the word grammar; or whether it signified a person or a thing. Then Mr. Thomas Porter began to frown. 'You cannot write poetry before you know grammar!' he sternly exclaimed, handing the many-coloured slips of paper back to his poor friend. John Clare was humiliated beyond measure: he felt like one having committed a dreadful, unpardonable crime. Because the sense of the words was not at all clear to him, he was the deeper impressed with the consciousness of the heinous misdeed of having written verses without knowing grammar. So he resolved to know grammar, even should he perish in the attempt.

To ask Mr. Thomas Porter by what means he could get to know grammar, he had not the courage: the ground was burning under his feet in the little cottage at Ashton Green. John Clare, therefore, took his farewell without seeking further information, and hurried off to the house of a lad with whom he had been at Mr. Merrishaw's school. Did he know where or what grammar was? Yes, the lad knew; he had plunged into grammar at Mr. Merrishaw's, instead of into algebra and the pure sciences. But he could not tell how to learn grammar, except through one very difficult work, bound in leather, and called 'The Critical Spelling-book.' To get this wonderful book now became the all-absorbing thought of John Clare. Penny after penny was hoarded by immense exertions, and the greatest frugality, approaching to a want of the necessaries of life. The two shillings for the 'Critical Spelling-book' were saved at length, and John once more made his way to the Stamford bookseller, as eager as when in quest of Thomson's 'Seasons.' He was lucky enough to get 'Lowe's Critical Spelling-book' at once; but, having got it, underwent a fearful disappointment. Reading it under the hedge on the roadside, in his anxiety to possess the contents; reading it at his noonday meal; and reading it again at the evening fireside--the more he read it, the less could he understand it. Algebra and the pure sciences had puzzled him infinitely less than this awful grammar. Worthy Mr. Lowe's 'Critical Spelling-book,' happily forgotten by the present generation, instilled knowledge on the good old plan of making it as dark and mysterious as possible. There was, first, a long preface of twenty-two pages, in which Mr. Lowe deprecated all other spelling-books whatever, especially those of his very dear friends and fellow-teachers, Mr. Dixon, author of the 'English Instructor;' Mr. Kirkby, the learned writer of the 'Guide to the English Tongue;' Mr. Newberry, creator of the 'Circle of the Sciences;' Mr. Palairet, the famous compiler of the 'New English Spelling-book;' and Mr. Pardon, author of 'Spelling New-Modelled.' Having gone through the painful task of deprecating his friends, with the annexed modest statement that the 'Critical Spelling-book' would be found superior to any other work of the kind, past, present, or future, Mr. Lowe proceeded to give his own rules, distinguished 'by the greatest simplicity. Through the first chapter, treating of 'monosyllables,' John Clare made his way, with some trouble; but the second, entering the field of 'polysyllables,' brought him to a stop. Read as he might, poor John could not understand the ever-changing value of 'oxytones,' 'penacutes,' 'ternacutes,' 'quartacutes,' and 'quintacutes,' and was still more bewildered when he found that even after having got through all these hard words, there was a still harder tail at the end of them, in the shape of 'exceptions from the spelling-book--sounds of letters and syllables, some of which are more simple, and may conveniently be learnt by a single direction, others more complex, and may better be explained by being cast into phrases.' Finding it absolutely impossible to get over the oxytones, he shrunk back from the quartacutes and quintacutes as beyond the reach of an ordinary human being, and gave up the study in despair. He next put 'Lowe's Critical Spelling-book' into the old cupboard where his mother used to look after his poems--for culinary purposes. But the good housewife never burnt the 'Critical Spelling-book;' it being, probably, too tough for her, in all its hide-bound solidity. As for John Clare, he entirely failed in learning grammar and spelling, remaining ignorant of the sister arts to the end of his days.

FRESH ATTEMPTS TO RISE IN THE WORLD, INCLUDING A SHORT MILITARY CAREER.

The failure of his attempt to learn grammar, and the firm belief in the words of Mr. Thomas Porter that grammar was indispensable to poetry, for some time preyed upon the mind of John Clare. He lost all his pleasure in scribbling verses, either at home or in the fields, careless even of the praise which his parents had got into the habit of bestowing upon his pretended readings from the poets. This lasted for nearly a year, at the end of which time his own hopefulness, coupled with the natural buoyancy of youth, drove him again to his old pursuits. His spirits were raised additionally by the encouragement of a new friend, the parish-clerk of Helpston. The rumour had spread by this time that John was 'a scholar,' and was 'writing bits of books on paper,' and though the _vox populi_ of Helpston thought not the better of John for this acquirement, but rather condemned him as a practically useless creature, the parish-clerk, being teacher also of the Sunday-school, and, as such, representative of learning in the village, held it to be his duty to take notice of and patronize the young man. He went so far as to call upon Clare, now and then, with much condescension, and having glanced, in a lofty sort of way, at the rainbowed slips of paper, already submitted, with such unhappy results, to the judgment of Master Porter, he promised to 'do something' for his young friend and pupil. The something, after a time, turned out to be an introduction to Lord Milton, eldest son of the Earl Fitzwilliam, with whom the worthy Sunday-school teacher professed to be on very intimate terms. John Clare, at first, was very unwilling to thrust himself upon the notice of any such high-born personage; but the united persuasion of his parents and the obliging new friend broke his reluctance. A day was fixed, accordingly, for the visit to the noble lord, residing at Milton Park, half way between Helpston and Peterborough. After infinite trouble of dressing, the memorable waistcoat, with cotton gloves, and white necktie, which had made the journey to Wisbeach, being again put into requisition, John Clare and his patron started one fine morning for Milton Park. The stately porter at the lodge, after some parley, allowed them to pass, and they reached the mansion without further misadventure. His lordship was at home, said the tall footman in the hall; and his lordship would see them immediately, he reported, after having delivered the message of the two strangers. Trusting the 'immediate,' John Clare and his friend waited patiently one hour, two hours, three hours; they saw the sun culminate, and saw the sun set, and still waited with becoming quietness. At last, when it was quite dark, the news came that his lordship could not see them this day, but would be glad to meet them some other time. Thereupon John Clare and the Sunday-school teacher left Milton Park and went back to Helpston, slightly sad, and very hungry.

To John Clare this first attempt to gain high patronage was profoundly discouraging; but not so to the worthy parish-clerk, whose experience of the world was somewhat larger. The latter induced his young friend to make another trial to meet Lord Milton, and, the thing being better planned, they were successful this time--as far, at least, as the mere meeting was concerned. Having discovered that the noble lord was in the habit of occasionally visiting some outlying farms, the shrewd clerk waylaid his lordship, and, together with his young friend, burst upon him like an apparition. Breaking out into glowing praise of John Clare, which made the latter blush like a maiden, the parish-clerk finished by pulling from his pocket a bit of antique pottery, unearthed somewhere in the grounds between Helpston Heath and Castor. Lord Milton smiled, and handing the bearer some loose cash, accepted the gift, not forgetting to state that he would remember the young man thus favourably introduced to his notice. John Clare instinctively comprehended the meaning of all this, and went home and made a silent vow never more to seek patronage in cotton gloves, with a white necktie, and never more to trust his grandiloquent friend and patron, the parish-clerk.

The failure of all his attempts to raise himself from his low condition, drove John Clare into a desponding mood. Weak in body, and suffering under continuous ill-health, his work as a farm-labourer brought him scarce sufficient remuneration to procure the coarsest food and the scantiest clothing, while it left him without any means whatever to assist his parents in their great distress, so that they had to continue recipients of meagre parish relief. Throughout, Clare had an innate consciousness of being born to a freer and loftier existence, and thus deeply felt the burthen of being condemned to the fiercest struggle with poverty and misery. The bitter feeling engendered by this thought he surmounted, most frequently, by flying into his favourite realm of poetry; but often enough the moral strength failed him for the task, and he sank back in utter hopelessness. More and more was this the case at this period. He was now verging upon manhood, and with it came, as nobler aspirations, so baser passions and desires. To these he fell a prey as soon as he threw aside his slips of paper and pencil, in consequence of Thomas Porter's sharp rebuke, and the utter failure to master 'Lowe's Critical Spelling-book.' For many months after, he neither read, nor made the slightest attempt to write verses, and the idle hours threw him again into evil company, similar to that from which he had escaped at Burghley Park. There were, among the labourers of Helpston, two brothers of the name of John and James Billings, who lived, unmarried, at a ruinous old cottage, nicknamed Bachelors' Hall. Both were given to poaching, hard drinking, and general rowdyism, and fond, besides, of meeting kindred spirits, of the same turn of mind, at the riotous evening assemblies in their little cottage. Hitherto, John Clare's passion for poetry had kept him constantly at home, the nightly companion of his poor parents; but no sooner had he weaned himself from his verses, when he fled to the Hall. To his ardent temper, there was a great charm in the wild, uproarious meetings which took place every evening, accompanied by as much consumption of ale as the purses of the lawless fraternity would allow. Poaching, to most of them, proved a source of considerable gain, not less than a pleasant excitement, and the money thus freely acquired was as freely spent in drink and debauchery. Though pressingly invited, Clare could not be made to join in the stealing of game; he was too deep a lover of all creatures that God had made, to be able to hurt or destroy even the least of them wilfully. But although unwilling to commit slaughter himself, he was not at all disinclined to share in its fruits, and it was not long before he became the leader at the frequent drinking bouts at Bachelors' Hall. Shy and reserved on ordinary occasions, he was at these meetings the loudest of loud talkers and singers, the fumes of vanity, together with those of alcohol, exerting their combined influence. Reciting his verses to merry companions, he earned warm and enthusiastic applause, and for the first time in his life deemed himself fully and justly appreciated. That this fancied road to fame was, after all, the dreariest road to ruin, poor John Clare did not see, and, perhaps, could scarcely he expected to see.

Fortunately, at this critical period of Clare's life an event occurred which, though it drove him for the moment into company almost worse than that of Bachelors' Hall, at the same time afforded the means for his rescue. It was in the spring of 1812, Clare now in his nineteenth year, that great efforts were made throughout the kingdom to raise the local militia of the various counties, in view of getting, through this source, recruits for the regular army. Veterans, with red noses and flying ribbons on their hats, kept tramping from one end of the country to the other, making every pothouse resound with tales of martial glory, and fearful accounts of 'Bony.' Even into remote Helpston the recruiting sergeant penetrated, taking up his quarters at the 'Blue Bell,' and with much political wisdom honouring the convivial meetings at Bachelors' Hall with occasional visits. John Clare's heart was stirred within him when, for the first time, he heard of golden deeds of valour in the field, and how men became great and famous by killing other men. The eloquent recruiting sergeant rose to his full height when drawing the accustomed figure of 'Bony,' with horns and tail, swallowing a dozen babies at breakfast. John Clare, with other of his fellows at the Bachelors' Hall, got into a holy rage at the crimes of 'Bony,' vowing to enter the list of avenging angels. The veteran with the red nose took his audience at the word, tendering to each of them a neat silver coin, and enlisting them in the regular militia. John was the foremost to take his shilling, and though his heart misgave him a little when thinking the matter over in the cool of the next morning, he had no choice but to take the red-blue-and-white cockade and follow the sergeant. The latter managed to enlist a score of young fellows from Helpston, and the whole village turned out when he marched them off to Peterborough. Old Parker Clare and his wife shed tears on bidding their son farewell, fearing it might be a farewell for ever. As to John, his pride only prevented him from joining in their lamentation, for his mind was by no means easy regarding the consequences of his rash endeavour to become a hero. He deeply felt his own irresolution to commit acts of heroism, even such inferior ones as the killing of small game; and he asked himself with terror how he would fare when put face to face with such great tigers as 'Bony' and his men. The thought was anything but pleasant, and he was relieved from it only by joining the horse-play of his riotous companions, and ransacking the stores of the roadside taverns. Having reached Peterborough, the whole troop of aspirant warriors was taken before a magistrate to swear fidelity to King George the Third, after which Clare and his fellow-men had quarters assigned to them at the various beer-houses of the episcopal city. For a week or longer, their daily business, in the service of King George the Third, was to get drunk, to parade the streets singing and shouting, and to fight with the watchmen of the town. John Clare, thinking the matter over in his daily musings, wondered at the curious road laid down for people who wished to become heroes.