From watching cows and geese, the boy was in due course promoted to
the rank of team-leader, and was also set to assist his father in the
threshing barn. "John," his father used to say, "was weak but
willing," and the good man made his son a flail proportioned to his
strength. Exposure in the ill-drained fields round Helpstone brought
on an attack of tertiary ague, from which the boy had scarcely
rallied when he was again sent into the fields. Favourable weather
having set in, he recovered his health, and was able that summer to
make occasionally a few pence by working overtime. These savings were
religiously devoted to schooling, and in the following winter, he
being then in his tenth year, he attended an evening school at the
neighbouring village of Glinton. John soon became a favourite of the
master, Mr. James Merrishaw, and was allowed the run of his little
library. His passion for learning rapidly developed itself, and he
eagerly devoured every book that came in his way, his reading ranging
from "Robinson Crusoe" to "Bonnycastle's Arithmetic" and "Ward's
Algebra." He refers to this in later life when he thus speaks of the
"Village Minstrel":--
And oft, with books, spare hours he would beguile,
And blunder oft with joy round Crusoe's lonely isle.
John pursued his studies for two or three winters under the guidance
of the good-natured Merrishaw, and at the end of that time an
unsuccessful effort was made to obtain for him a situation as clerk
in the office of a solicitor at Wisbeach. After this failure he
returned contentedly to the fields, and about this time found a new
friend in the son of a small farmer named Turnill. The two youths
read together, Turnill assisting Clare with books and writing
materials. He now began to "snatch a fearful joy" by scribbling on
scraps of paper his unpolished rhymes. "When he was fourteen or
fifteen," to use his mother's own words, "he would show me a piece of
paper, printed sometimes on one side and scrawled all over on the
other, and he would say, 'Mother, this is worth silver and gold,' and
I used to say to him, 'Ay, boy, it looks as if it wur,' but I thought
he was only wasting his time." John deposited a bundle of these
fragments in a chink in the cottage wall, whence "they were duly and
daily subtracted by his mother to boil the morning's kettle," but we
do not find that he was greatly disturbed by the loss, for being
sympathetically asked on one occasion whether he had not kept copies
of his earliest poems he replied that he had not, and that they were
very likely good for nothing.
While he was yet in his early youth an important and, in some
respects, a favourable change took place in the nature of his daily
occupation. Among the few well-to-do inhabitants of Helpstone 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 towards 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 sun at
morn and eventide were to him spectacles of which his eye never
tired, with which his heart never got satiated." (Martin.)