The mother cried for joy when her John again entered the little cottage;
but the father welcomed him with a melancholy smile. John himself, though
with a little mortified vanity, felt rather pleased than otherwise. His
good sense told him that this journey to Wisbeach had been but a fool's
errand, and that, in order to rise in the world, he had to look into
other directions than to a lawyer's office. He therefore fell back with a
strong feeling of contentment into his old occupation, holding the
plough, carting manure to the field, and studying algebra. In the latter
favourite labour he was much assisted by a young friend, whose
acquaintance he had made at Glinton school, named John Turnill, the son
of a small farmer. The latter, having a little more money at his command
than his humble companion, was able to purchase the necessary books, as
well as a modest allowance of paper and pencils, the gift of which threw
John Clare into ecstasies of delight. With Master Turnill, the attachment
to mathematics and algebra was a real love, though it was otherwise with
Clare, who pursued these studies solely out of ambition, and with a hope
of raising himself in the world. The desire to improve his position
became stronger than ever after his return from Wisbeach. The sneers of
the people who met him during the journey had sunk deep into his
sensitive mind, and he determined to make a struggle for a better
position. How far mathematics and the pure sciences would help him on the
road he did not trouble himself to consider; he only had a vague notion
that they would lead him to be a 'scholar.' So he toiled with great
energy through the algebraic and mathematical handbooks purchased by
friend Turnill, often getting so warm on the subject as to neglect his
dinner-hour, in brown studies over the _plus_ and _minus_, squares,
cubes, and conic sections. Every evening that he could possibly spare he
walked over to Turnill's house, near Elton, regardless of wind, rain, and
snow, and regardless even of the reproaches of his kind parents, who
began to be afraid of his continued dabbling in the occult arts. However,
little John stuck to his algebra, and it was nearly two years before he
discovered that he was as little fit to be a mathematician as a lawyer's
clerk.
Meanwhile, and before the algebraic studies came to an end, there
occurred a somewhat favourable change in the circumstances of John Clare.
Among the few well-to-do inhabitants of Helpston was a person named
Francis Gregory, who owned a small public-house, under the sign of the
'Blue Bell,' and rented, besides, a few acres of land. Francis Gregory, a
most kind and amiable man, was unmarried, and kept house with his old
mother, a female servant, and a lad, the latter half groom and half
gardener. This situation, a yearly 'hiring,' being vacant, it was offered
to John, and eagerly accepted, on the understanding that he should have
sufficient time of his own to continue his studies. It was a promise
abundantly kept, for John Clare had never more leisure, and, perhaps, was
never happier in his life than during the year that he stayed at the
'Blue Bell.' Mr. Francis Gregory, suffering under constant illness,
treated the pale little boy, who was always hanging over his books, more
like a son than a servant, and this feeling was fully shared by Mr.
Gregory's mother. John's chief labours were to attend to a horse and a
couple of cows, and occasionally to do some light work in the garden or
the potato field; and as these occupations seldom filled more than part
of the day or the week, he had all the rest of the time to himself. A
characteristic part of Clare's nature began to reveal itself now. While
he had little leisure to himself, and much hard work, he was not averse
to the society of friends and companions, either, as in the case of
Turnill, for study, or, as with others, for recreation; but as soon as he
found himself, to a certain extent, his own master, he forsook the
company of his former acquaintances, and began to lead a sort of hermit's
life. He took long strolls into the woods, along the meres, and to other
lonely places, and got into the habit of remaining whole hours at some
favourite spot, lying flat on the ground, with his face toward the sky.
The flickering shadows of the sun; the rustling of the leaves on the
trees; the sailing of the fitful clouds over the horizon, and the golden
blaze of the sky at morn and eventide, were to him spectacles of which
his eye never tired, with which his heart never got satiated. And as he
grew more and more the constant worshipper of nature, in any of her
aspects, so his mind gradually became indifferent to almost all other
objects. What men did, what they had done, or what they were going to do,
he did not seem to care for, or had the least curiosity to know. In the
midst of these solitary rambles from his 'Blue Bell' home, the news was
brought of some extraordinary discoveries at Castor, his mother's native
village. It was news which, one might have thought, would fire the
imagination of any man gifted with the most ordinary understanding. In a
part of the township of Castor called Dormanton Fields, the greater part
of the vast ruins of Durobrivae were discovered: temples and arches
crumbled into dust; many-coloured tiles and brickwork; urns and antique
earthen vessels; and coins, with, the images of many emperors--so
numerous that it looked as if they had been sown there. To reconstruct
the ancient Roman city, to people it anew with the conquerors of the
world, was a task at once undertaken by zealous antiquarians; yet Clare,
though he heard the matter mentioned by numerous visitors to the 'Blue
Bell,' and had plenty of time for investigation, took so little interest
in it as not even to attempt a walk to the city of ruins, on the borders
of which he was feeding his cattle. Now, as up to a late period of his
life, a bunch of sweet violets was worth to John Clare more than all the
ruins of antiquity.
While at the 'Blue Bell' John gradually dropped his algebra and
mathematics, and began to read ghost-stories. The reason of his leaving
the 'sciences called pure' was the discovery that the further he
proceeded on the road the more he saw his utter incapacity to
understand and to master the subjects. His friend and guide, John
Turnill,--subsequently promoted to a post in the excise--was equally
unable to throw light into the darkness of _plus_ and _minus_, and after
a few last convulsive struggles to get through the 'known quantities'
into the unknown regions of _x_, _y_, and _z_, he gave it up as a
hopeless effort. The spare hours henceforth were devoted to studies of a
very different kind, namely, fairy tales and ghost stories. Under the
roof of the 'Blue Bell' no other literature was within his reach, and he
was quite content to draw temporary nourishment from it. Scarcely any
books but these highly spiced ones, stuffed in the pack of travelling
pedlars, ever found their way to Helpston. There was 'Little Red
Riding-hood,' 'Valentine and Orson,' 'Sinbad the Sailor,' 'The Seven
Sleepers,' 'Mother Shipton,' 'Johnny Armstrong,' 'Old Nixon's Prophecy,'
and a whole host of similar 'sensation' stories, printed on coarse paper,
with a flaming picture on the title-page. John Clare scarcely knew that
there were any other books than these and the few he had seen at Glinton
school in existence; he had never heard of Shakespeare and Milton,
Thompson and Cowper, Spenser and Dryden; and, therefore, with the natural
eagerness of the young mind just awoke to its day dreams, eagerly plunged
into the new realm of fancy. The effect soon made itself felt upon the
ardent reader, fresh from his undigested algebraic studies. He saw ghosts
and hobgoblins wherever he went, and after a time began to look upon
himself as a sort of enchanted prince in a world of magic. He had no
doubt whatever about the literal truth of the stories he read; the
thought of their being mere pictures of the imagination not entering his
mind for a moment. It was natural, therefore, that he should come to the
conclusion that, as the earth had been, so it was still peopled with
fairies, dwarfs, and giants, with whom it would be his fate to come into
contact some time or other. So he buckled his armour tight, ready to do
battle with the visible and invisible world.
Opportunity came before long. Among his regular duties at the 'Blue Bell'
was that of fetching once a week flour from Maxey, a village some three
miles north of Helpston, near the Welland river. The road to Maxey was a
very lonely one, part of it a narrow footpath along the mere, and the
superstition of the neighbourhood connected strange tales of horror and
weird fancy with the locality. In the long days of summer, John Clare,
who had to start on his errand to the mill late in the afternoon, managed
to get home before dark, thus avoiding unpleasant meetings; but when the
autumn came, the sun set before he left Maxey, and then the ghosts were
upon him. They always attacked him half way between the two villages, in
a low swampy spot, overhung by the heavy mist of the fens. Poor John
battled hard, but the spirits nearly always got the upper hand. They
pulled his hair, pinched his legs, twisted his nose, and played other
tricks with him, until he sank to the ground in sheer exhaustion.
Recovering himself after a while, the fairies then let him alone, and he
staggered home to the 'Blue Bell,' pale and trembling, and like one in a
dream. His good friend and master, Francis Gregory, wondering at the
haggard look of the lad, thought he was going to have another attack of
the tertiary ague, and spoke to his parents; but John, in his silent
mood, said it was nothing, and begged to be left alone. So they let him
have his way, and he continued his weekly errands to Maxey, with the same
result as before. At last, when thoroughly wearied of this repetition of
supernatural terrors, he hit upon an ingenious plan for breaking the
chain connecting him with the invisible world. The plan consisted in
concocting, on his own part, a story of wonders; a story, however, 'with
no ghost in it.' Now a king, and now a prince--in turn a sailor, a
soldier, and a traveller in unknown lands--John himself was always the
hero of his own story, and, of course, always the lucky hero. With his
vast power of imagination, this calling up of a new world of bright
fancies to destroy the lawless apparitions of the air had the desired
effect, and the ghosts troubled John Clare no more on his way to and from
the mill.
Nevertheless, his constant reading of fairy tales, with incessant play on
the imagination and surexcitation of the mind, was not without leaving
its ill effect upon the bodily frame. John sickened and weakened visibly,
and his general appearance became the talk of the village. His long
solitary roamings through the woods and fields, his habits of reading
even when tending the cattle, and his apparent dislike to hold converse
with any one, were things which the poor labourers, young and old, could
not understand; and when, as it happened, people met him on the road to
Maxey in the dark, and heard that he was talking to himself in a loud
excited manner, they set him down as a lunatic. Some few of the coarsest
among the youngsters went so far as to greet him with volleys of abuse
when he happened to come near them, while the old people drew back from
him as in disgust. His sensitive feelings suffered deep under this
treatment of his neighbours, which might have had the worst consequences
but for one great event which suddenly broke in upon him. John Clare fell
in love.
'Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of
sight.'
John Clare's first love--the deepest, noblest, and purest love of his
whole life--was for 'Mary,' the Mary of all his future songs, ballads,
and sonnets. Petrarch himself did not worship his Laura with a more
idealized spirit of affection than John Clare did his Mary. To him; she
was nothing less than an angel, with no other name than that of Mary;
though vulgar mortals called her Mary Joyce, holding her to be the
daughter of a well-to-do farmer at Glinton. John Clare made her
acquaintance--if so it can be called what was the merest dream-life
intercourse--on one of his periodical journeyings to and from the Maxey
mills. She sat on a style weaving herself a garland of flowers, and the
sight so enchanted him that he crouched down at a distance, afraid to
stir and to disturb the beautiful apparition. But she continuing to sit
and to weave her flowers, he drew nearer, and at last found courage to
speak to her. Mary did not reply; but her deep blue eyes smiled upon him,
lifting the humble worshipper of beauty into the seventh heaven of bliss.
And when he met her again, she again smiled; and he sat down at her feet
once more, and opened the long pent-up rivers of his heart. Mute to all
the world around him, he to her for the first time spoke of all he felt,
and dreamt, and hoped. He told her how he loved the trees and flowers,
and the singing nightingales, and the lark rising into the skies, and the
humming insects, and the sailing clouds, and all the grand and beautiful
works of nature. But he never told her that he thought her more beautiful
than ought else in God's great world. This he never said in words, but
his eyes expressed it; and Mary, perhaps, understood the language of his
eyes. Mary always listened attentively, yet seldom said anything. Her
eyes hung upon his lips, and his lips hung upon her eyes, and thus both
worshipped the god of love.
The sweet dream lasted full six months--six glorious sunlit months of
spring and summer. Then the father of Mary Joyce heard of the frequent
meetings of his daughter with John Clare, and though looking upon both as
mere children, he sternly forbid her to see 'the beggar-boy' again. His
heart of well-to-do farmer revolted at the bare idea of his offspring
talking with the son of one who was not even a farm-labourer, but had to
be maintained as a pauper by the parish. Explaining this great fact to
his blue-eyed daughter, he deeply impressed its terrible importance upon
her soft little heart, making her think with a sort of shudder of the
pale boy who told her such pretty stories. Perhaps Mary nevertheless
preserved a lingering fondness for her little lover's memory, for though
many wooed her in after life, she never wedded, and died a spinster. As
for John Clare, he fretted long and deeply, and all his life thought of
Mary Joyce as the symbol, ideal, and incarnation of love. With the
exception of a few verses addressed to 'Patty,' his future wife, the
whole of Clare's love poetry came to be a dedication and worship of Mary.
As yet, in these youthful days of grief and affection, he wrote no
verses, though he felt a burning desire to give vent to his feelings in
some shape or other. Having lost his Mary, he carved her name into a
hundred trees, and traced it, with trembling hand, on stones, and walls,
and monuments. There still stands engraven on the porch of Glinton
churchyard--or stood till within a recent time--a circular inscription,
consisting of the letters, 'J. C. 1808,' cut in bold hand, and
underneath, in fainter outline, the name 'Mary.'