The short trial of gypsy life was not sufficient to make John Clare
forget his troubles of love, and he began to think seriously of his
further prospects in life. He would have been but too happy to ask
Elizabeth Newton to become his wife; but having seen so much of poverty
in the case of his parents, he had a natural dread to start in the same
career, with the workhouse for ultimate goal. While thus given up to
reflections on his life, there came an offer which appeared to be most
acceptable. A fellow labourer of the name of Gordon, who had been once
working at a lime-kiln, with good wages, proposed to him to seek the same
employment, and to act as a guide and instructor in the matter. John
Clare consented, and starting with his friend, in the summer of 1817, the
two were lucky enough to find work not far off, near the village of
Bridge Casterton, in Rutlandshire. By dint of very severe labour, Clare
managed to earn about ten shillings a week, a part of which he carefully
hoarded, with the firm intention of attempting a new start in life, by
the aid of a little capital.
The first investment of the small sum thus acquired led to rather
important results. Having collected a considerable quantity of verses,
and safely carried them off from the old hiding-place at Helpston, John
Clare resolved to copy a selection, comprising the best of them, into a
book, so as to preserve his poetry the more easily. With this purpose in
view he went to the next fair at Market Deeping, and after having gone,
with some friends, through the usual round of merry-makings, called upon
a bookseller and stationer, Mr. Henson, to get the required volume of
blank paper. Mr. Henson had no such article in stock, but offered to
supply it in a given time, which being agreed on, particulars were asked
as to the quantity of paper required, and the way in which it should be
ruled and bound. In reply to these questions, John Clare, made talkative
by a somewhat large consumption of strong ale, for the first time
revealed his secret to a stranger. He told the inquirer that he had been
writing poetry for years, and having accumulated a great many verses,
intended to copy them into a book for better preservation. The bookseller
opened his eyes at the widest. He had never seen a live poet at Market
Deeping, yet fancied, somehow or other, that the species was of an
outward aspect different from that of the tattered, half-tipsy,
undersized farm labourer who was standing before him. Though an active
tradesman, willing to oblige people at his shop, Mr. Henson could not
help hinting some of these sceptic thoughts to his customer, and
feelingly inquired of him whether it was 'real poetry' that he was
writing. John Clare affirmed that it was real poetry; further explaining
that he wrote most of his verses in the fields, on slips of paper, using
the crown of his hat as a desk. This was convincing; for the hat, on
being inspected, certainly showed abundant marks of having been employed
as a writing-desk, and even bore traces of its occasional use as a
camp-stool. Doubts as to John Clare being a poet were now impossible; and
Mr. Henson willingly agreed to furnish a book of white paper, strongly
bound, fit for the insertion of a vast quantity of original poetry, at
the price of eight shillings. When parting, the obliging bookseller
begged as a favour to be allowed to inspect one of his customer's poems,
promising to keep the matter as secret as possible. The flattering
request was promptly acceded to, and in a few days after, there arrived
by post at Market Deeping two sonnets by John Clare, which he had
recently composed. One of these was called 'The Setting Sun;' and the
other 'The Primrose.' Mr. Henson, who was no particular judge of sonnets,
thought them very poor specimens of poetical skill, the more so as they
were ill-spelt, and without any attempts at punctuation. He threw the
poems aside at once, and wrote to the poet that he might have his blank
paper book on paying the stipulated eight shillings. So the matter rested
for the present.
John Clare's labours as a lime-burner at Bridge Casterton were of the
most severe kind. He was in the employ of a Mr. Wilders, who exacted
great toil from all his men, setting them to work fourteen hours a day,
and sometimes all the night long in addition. Nevertheless, Clare felt
thoroughly contented in his new position, being delighted with the
beautiful scenery in the neighbourhood, and happy, besides, in being able
to earn sufficient money to send occasional assistance to his parents.
When not engaged at work, he went roaming through the fields far and
wide, always with paper and pencil in his pocket, noting down his
feelings in verse inspired by the moment. It was the time when his
poetical genius began to awaken to full life and consciousness. He began
writing verses with great ease and rapidity, often composing half-a-dozen
songs in a day; and though much of the poetry thus brought forth was but
of an ephemeral kind, and of no great intrinsic value, the exercise,
combined with extensive reading of nearly all the old poets, contributed
considerably to his development of taste. Sometimes he himself was
surprised at the facility with which he committed verses to paper, on the
mere spur of the moment. It was on one of these occasions that the
thought flashed through his mind of his being endowed with poetical gifts
denied to the majority of men. This was a perfectly new view which he
took of himself and his powers, and it helped to give him immense
confidence. Timid hitherto and entirely distrustful of his own abilities,
he now felt himself imbued with strength never known, and under the
impulse of this feeling determined to make another attempt to rise from
his low condition. The idea occurred to him of printing his verses, and
of coming openly before the world as a poet. Each time he had written a
new verse with which he was pleased, his confidence grew; though his
hopes fell again when he set himself thinking the matter over, and
dwelling upon the difficulties in his way. This inward struggle lasted
nearly a year, in the course of which there occurred another notable
event, which in its consequences grew to be one of the most important of
his whole life.
Every Sunday afternoon, the labourers at Mr. Wilder's lime-kiln were in
the habit of visiting a small public-house, at the hamlet of Tickencote,
called 'the Flower Pot.' Thirsty, like all of their tribe, they spent
hours in carousing; while John Clare, after having had his glass or two,
went into the fields, and, sitting by a hedge, or lying down under a
tree, surveyed the glories of nature, feasting his eyes upon the
thousandfold beauties of earth and sky. It was on one of these Sunday
afternoons, in the autumn of 1817--Clare now past twenty-four--that he
saw for the first time 'Patty,' his future wife. She was walking on a
footpath across the fields, while he was lying in the grass not far off,
dreaming worlds of beauty and ethereal bliss. Patty stepped right into
his ideal realm, and thus, unknown to herself, became part and parcel of
it. She was a fair girl of eighteen, slender, with regular features, and
pretty blue eyes; but to Clare, at the moment, she seemed far more than
fair, slender, and pretty. He watched her across the field, and when she
disappeared from sight, John Clare, almost instinctively, climbed to the
top of a tree, to discover the direction in which she was going. His
courage failed him to follow and address her, though he would have given
all he possessed to have one more glance at the sweet face which so
suddenly changed his poetical visions into a still more poetical reality.
However, the shades of evening were sinking fast; John Clare could not
see far even from the top of his tree, to which he clung with a lover's
despair, so that the beautiful apparition was soon lost to him. Sleep did
not come to his eyes in the following night; and the slow hours of
lime-burning the next day only passed on in making projects how he would
go to the field near the 'Flower Pot,' and try to meet his sweet love
again. He went to the field, but she came not; not the following day, nor
the second, nor the whole week. John Clare began to think the fair face
which he had seen, and with which he had fallen in love at first sight,
was after all, but the vision of a dream.
More than two weeks passed, and John Clare, with his fiddle under his
arm, one evening made his way to Stamford, to play at a merry meeting of
lime-burners the tunes which the gypsies had taught him. While walking
along the road, the vision burst upon him a second time in not to be
mistaken reality. There again was the fair damsel he had seen walking, or
floating, across the greensward on the Sunday eve; as fair and trim as
ever, though this time not in her Sunday dress. John Clare, with much
good sense, thought it useless to climb again upon a tree; but summing up
courage, followed his vision, and, after a while, addressed her in timid,
soft words. What gave him some courage for the moment was, that being on
a festive excursion, he had donned his very best garments, including a
flowery waistcoat and a hat as yet free from the desk service of poetry.
The fair damsel, when thus addressed in the road, smiled upon her
interlocutor; there could be no doubt, his words, and, perhaps, his
waistcoat and new hat, found favour in her eyes. And not only did she
allow him to address her, but permitted him even to accompany her to her
father's cottage, some four miles off. Thither accordingly went John
Clare, in an ecstacy of delight; feeling as if in heaven and playing
merry gypsy-tunes to the winged angels. He wished the four miles were
four hundred; and when arrived at the paternal door with his fair
companion, and she told him that he must leave her now, it seemed to him
as if it had been but a minute since he met her. He looked utterly
dejected; but brightened up when she told him that her name was Martha
Turner, that her father was a cottage farmer, and that the place where
they were standing was called Walkherd Lodge--which perhaps, she
whispered, he would find again. It sounded as if the fiddle under his arm
was again making music to the bright angels. John Clare was in heaven;
but the poor lime-burners at Stamford did not think so, that evening,
when they had to dance without a fiddle.
After seeing his sweet companion disappear behind the garden-gate; after
hearing the door of the house open and shut, and watching the movement of
the lights within the house for an hour or two, John Clare at last turned
his back upon Walkherd Lodge, and went the way he came. The road he
trotted along, with his feet on good Rutlandshire soil, but his head
still somewhat in the clouds, got gradually more and more narrow, till it
ended at a broad ditch, with, a dungheap on the one side and a haystack
on the other. It was now that John perceived for the first time that he
had lost his way. While walking along with Martha Turner, he no more
thought of marking the road than of solving riddles in algebra, and,
besides a faint consciousness that he was coming somewhere from the east
and going to the west, he was utterly lost in his topography. However,
under the circumstances, it seemed no great matter to John to lose his
way, and rather pleasant than otherwise to sleep in a haystack within a
mile of the dwelling of Martha Turner. On the haystack, accordingly, he
sat down with great inward satisfaction, and, the moon having just risen,
pencil and paper were got out of the pocket, by the help of which, in
less than half an hour, another love-song was finished. But though the
day was warm and comfortable, John felt too restless to sleep. So he
cleared the ditch before him with one jump, and pursued the journey
further inland, where lights appeared to be glimmering in the distance.
Onward he trotted and leaped, over hedges and drains, across ploughed
fields, through underwood and meadows, around stone-quarries and
chalk-pits. At last, after a wild race of four or five hours, he sank
down from sheer exhaustion. There was soft, mossy grass under his feet,
and a sheltering tree above, and he thought it best to stop where he was
and to compose himself to sleep. The heavy eyelids sank without further
bidding, and for several hours his soul took flight into the land of
dreams. When he awoke, the moon was still shining, but not far above the
western horizon. Looking around, he perceived something bright and
glittering near him, similar to the bare track beaten by the sheep in hot
weather. To follow this path was his immediate resolve, as sure to lead
to some human habitation, if only a shepherd's hut. He was just going to
rise, but still on the ground, when one of his feet slipped a short
distance, in the direction of the silvery line, and he heard the clear
splash of water under him. At the same moment, the last rays of the moon
disappeared from above the horizon. John Clare shuddered as if the hand
of death was upon him. Creeping cautiously towards the neighbouring tree,
and clasping both his arms around it, he awaited daybreak in this
position. At length, after hours which seemed endless, the burning clouds
appeared in the east. He once more looked around him, and found that he
was lying on the brink of a deep canal, close to the River Gwash. One
turn of the body in its restless dreams; one step towards the tempting
silvery road of night, would have made an end for ever of all the
troubles, the love and life and poetry, of poor John Clare.