Happy for Clare if his weary life had been allowed to end here, in dreams
of his first, his purest love. But it was ordained otherwise, and he had
yet to drag a miserable course of earthly existence for more than twenty
years. The period was one of great physical and mental suffering. Much of
it might have been, if not prevented, at least softened and alleviated,
but for the fresh interference of troublesome foes and ignorant friends.
There was clearly no harm in leaving the poet in his little cottage at
Northborough, allowing him to tend his flowers, to listen to the song of
birds, and to write verses to his Mary in heaven. Now as ever, he was as
harmless and guileless as a child; he would not hurt the worm under his
feet, and even in his most excited moods not an unkind word to those
around him escaped his lips. A little additional assistance--if only from
the 'county,' of which a noble earl held him to be 'a great
credit'--might have made his own and his wife's existence perfectly free
from cares, and softened the evening of their lives. But the great
patrons would have it otherwise. Clare had no more books to dedicate to
Honourables and Most Honourables, and they thought that the best thing to
be done was to get such a useless 'county poet' out of the way and out of
sight.
Clare had not been many weeks at his little home, resting from his
fatigue, and enjoying the caresses of his children, when he was visited
by the Mr. Skrimshaw, of Market Deeping, who had attended him on a former
occasion. This person, who called himself a doctor, had a notion that
poets were always and naturally insane, and that the very fact of a man
being given to write verses was decisive proof of his madness. Mr.
Skrimshaw, therefore, had little trouble in consigning Clare to another
lunatic asylum. All that was necessary was to engage the help of a
brother-doctor to go through a slight legal formality. This was soon
done, and 'Fenwick Skrimshaw,' together with 'William Page,' both of
Market Deeping, signed the due certificate that John Clare was to be kept
under restraint at a madhouse, for the definitely stated reason of having
written poetry, or, as literally given by the doctors:--
'_After years addicted to poetical prosings._'
On the ground of this new crime, punishable, according to the wise men of
Market Deeping, with life-long imprisonment, Clare was torn away from his
wife and children, and carried off to the madhouse. He struggled hard
when the keepers came to fetch him, imploring them, with tears in his
eyes, to leave him at his little cottage, and seeing all resistance
fruitless, declaring his intention to die rather than to go to such
another prison as that from which he had escaped. Of course, it was all
in vain. The magic handwriting of Messrs. Fenwick Skrimshaw and William
Page, backed by all the power of English law, soon got the upper hand,
and the criminal 'addicted to poetical prosings' was led away, and thrust
into the gaol for insane at Northampton.
It was, perhaps, with some regard to Clare being considered, on high
authority, 'our county poet,' that he was consigned to the county lunatic
asylum at Northampton, instead of being taken hack to the more
respectable refuge of Dr. Allen, who was anxious to see him again under
his charge, and even expressed strong hopes of an ultimate cure. The
change was not a hopeful one; though, as far as the patient's physical
comforts were concerned, there was no suffering attached to it. During
the whole of his long sojourn at Northampton, the poet was treated with a
kindness and consideration beyond all praise, and which, indeed, he had
scarcely a right to expect from his position. Earl Fitzwilliam, who had
taken him under his charge, only allowed eleven shillings a week for his
maintenance, which small sum entitled Clare to little better than pauper
treatment. Nevertheless, the authorities at Northampton, with a noble
disregard for conventionalities, placed Clare in the best ward, among the
private patients, paying honour to him as well as themselves by
recognising the poet even in the pauper.
The Northampton General Lunatic Asylum stands at a little distance from
the town, on the brow of a hill, in a very beautiful position,
overlooking the smiling plain traversed by the River Nene. It is a large
establishment, containing, on the average, some four hundred patients,
the great majority of them paupers. The private patients have to
themselves a large sitting-room, somewhat similar to a gentleman's
library, the windows of which overlook the front garden, the valley of
the Nene, and the town of Northampton. In the recess of one of these
windows, Clare spent the greater part of his time during the twenty-two
years that he was an inmate of the asylum. Very melancholy at first, and
ever yearning after his 'Mary,' he became gradually resigned to his fate,
and after that never a murmur escaped his lips. He saw that the world had
left him; and was quite prepared himself to leave the world. During the
whole twenty-two years, not one of all his former friends and admirers,
not one of his great or little patrons ever visited him. This he bore
quietly, though he seemed to feel it with deep sorrow that even the
members of his own family kept aloof from him. 'Patty' never once showed
herself in the twenty-two years; nor any of her children, except the
youngest son, who came to see his father once. The neglect thus shown
long preyed upon his mind, till it found vent at last in a sublime burst
of poetry:--
'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.'
This was the last poem which Clare wrote--the last, and, we think, the
noblest of all his poems. Clare's swan-song, we fervently hope, will live
as long as the English language.
For the last ten or twelve years of his existence the poet suffered much
from physical infirmities. Previously he was allowed to go almost daily
into the town of Northampton, where he used to sit raider the portico of
All Saints' Church, watching the gambols of the children around him, and
the fleeting clouds high up in the sky. When these excursions came to be
forbidden, he retired to his window-recess in the asylum, reading little
and speaking little; dreaming unutterable dreams of another world.
Sometimes his face would brighten up as if illuminated by an inward sun,
overwhelming in its glory and beauty. This life of contemplation,
extending over many years, was followed by a singular change in the
physical constitution. The head seemed to expand vastly; the bushy
eyebrows grew downward until they almost obscured the eyes, and the
abundant hair, white as snow, came to fall in long curls over the massive
shoulders. In outward appearance the poet became the patriarch.
The inmates of the asylum treated Clare with the greatest respect--far
greater than that previously allotted to him by the world without. To his
fellow-sufferers he always was John Clare the poet; never Clare the
farm-labourer or the lime-burner. An artist among the patients was
indefatigable in painting his portrait, in all possible attitudes; others
never wearied of waiting upon him, or rendering him some slight service.
The poet accepted the homage thus rendered, quietly and unaffectedly, as
a king would that of his subjects. He gave little utterance to his
thoughts, or dreams, whatever they were, and only smiled upon his
companions now and then. When he became very weak and infirm, they put
him into a chair, and wheeled him about in the garden. The last day he
was thus taken out, and enjoyed the fresh air and the golden sunshine,
was on Good Friday, 1864. He was too helpless to be moved afterwards; yet
would still creep, now and then, from his bed to the window, looking down
upon the ever-beautiful world, which he knew he was leaving now, and
which he was not loth to leave, though he loved it so much.
Towards noon on the 20th of May, the poet closed his eyes for ever. His
last words were, 'I want to go home.' So gentle was his end that the
bystanders scarcely knew when he had ceased to breathe. God took his soul
away without a struggle.
Clare had always expressed a wish to sleep his last sleep in the
churchyard of his native village, close to his 'own old home of homes.'
In the very first poem of his earliest published book of verses, he
summed up all his aspirations in the one that he should--
'As reward for countless troubles past,
Find one hope true: to die at home at last.'
Accordingly, when the poet's spirit had fled, the superintendent of the
Northampton asylum wrote to his patron, Earl Fitzwilliam, asking for a
grant of the small sum necessary to carry the wish of the deceased into
effect. The noble patron replied by a refusal, advising the burial of the
poet as a pauper at Northampton.
But this lasting disgrace, fortunately, was not to be. Through the active
exertions of some true Christian souls, real friends of poetry, the
requisite burial fund was raised in a few days, and the poet's body,
having been conveyed to Helpston, was reverently interred there on
Wednesday, the 25th of May, 1864. There now lies, under the shade of a
sycamore-tree, with nothing above but the green grass and the eternal
vault of heaven, all that earth has to keep of John Clare, one of the
sweetest singers of nature ever born within the fair realm of dear old
England--of dear old England, so proud of its galaxy of noble poets, and
so wasteful of their lives.
* * * * *
Allen, Dr. Matthew, of Fair Mead House.
'Anniversary,' annual, edited by Allan Cunningham.
Artis, Edward, friend of Clare.
Bachelors' Hall, Helpston, meeting at.
Bains, Granny, cowherd of Helpston.
Baring, Sir Thomas, patron of Clare.
Bedford, Duke of, patron of Clare.
Behnes, Henry, sculptor, makes a bust of Clare; spends an evening with.
Bell, Dr. makes Clare's acquaintance; defends his friend; threatens him
with the 'canister of the Blue Devils'.
Bellamy, 'Mr. Councillor' of Wisbeach.
Benyon, Tom, head-porter of Messrs. Taylor and Hessey; teaches political
economy.