The age at which Clare's poetic fancies first wrought themselves into
verse cannot be definitely fixed. We know from his steadfast friend
and first editor, the late Mr. John Taylor, publisher to the London
University, that his fondness for poetry found expression before even
he had learnt to read. He was tired one day with looking at the
pictures in a volume of poems, which he used to say he thought was
Pomfret's, when his father read him one piece in the book to amuse
him. This thrilled him with a delight of which he often afterwards
spoke, but though he distinctly recollected the vivid pleasure which
the recital gave him he could never recall either the incidents or
the language. It may almost be taken for granted that so soon as
Clare could write he began to rhyme. The Editor of this volume has
before him the book in which the boy set down his arithmetical and
geometrical exercises while a pupil of Mr. Merrishaw, and in this
book are scribbled in pencil a few undecipherable lines commencing,
"Good morning to ye, ballad-singing thrush." He was thirteen years
old when an incident occurred which gave a powerful impulse to his
dawning genius. A companion had shown him Thomson's "Seasons," and he
was seized with an irrepressible desire to possess a copy. He
ascertained that the book might be bought at Stamford for
eighteenpence, and he entreated his father to give him the money. The
poor man pleaded all too truthfully his poverty, but his mother, by
great exertions, contrived to scrape together sevenpence, and the
deficiency was made up by loans from friends in the village. Next
Sunday, John rose long before the dawn and walked to Stamford, a
distance of seven miles, to buy a copy of the "Seasons," ignorant or
forgetful of the fact that business was suspended on that day. After
waiting for three or four hours before the shop to which he had been
directed, he learnt from a passer-by that it would not be re-opened
until the following morning, and he returned to Helpstone with a
heavy heart. Next day he repeated his journey and bore off the
much-coveted volume in triumph. He read as he walked back to
Helpstone, but meeting with many interruptions clambered over the
wall surrounding Burghley Park, and throwing himself on the grass
read the volume through twice over before rising. It was a fine
spring morning, and under the influence of the poems, the singing of
birds, and the bright sunshine, he composed "The Morning Walk." This
was soon followed by "The Evening Walk," and some other minor
pieces.
At the age of sixteen, if we may trust the account given by his early
friend Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, in the "London Magazine" for January,
1820, Clare composed the following sonnet "To a Primrose":--
Welcome, pale primrose, starting up between
Dead matted leaves of oak and ash, that strew
The every lawn, the wood, and spinney through,
'Mid creeping moss and ivy's darker green!
How much thy presence beautifies the ground!
How sweet thy modest, unaffected pride
Glows on the sunny bank and wood's warm side!
And where thy fairy flowers in groups are found
The schoolboy roams enchantedly along,
Plucking the fairest with a rude delight,
While the meek shepherd stops his simple song,
To gaze a moment on the pleasing sight,
O'erjoyed to see the flowers that truly bring
The welcome news of sweet returning Spring.
As we have traced the poet's history down to his sixteenth year, the
next incident of importance may be anticipated: of course he fell in
love, and the object of his first and purest affection was Mary
Joyce, daughter of a farmer at Glinton. Little is known of this
episode excepting that the maiden was very beautiful, that after a
few months of blissful intercourse their frequent meetings came to
the knowledge of Mary's father, who sternly forbad their continuance,
and that although "Patty," Clare's future wife, was the theme of some
pretty verses, Mary Joyce was always Clare's ideal of love and
beauty, and when thirty years afterwards, he lost his reason, among
the first indications of the approaching calamity was his declaration
that Mary, who had then long been in her grave, had passed his
window. While under the influence of this delusion he wrote the poem
entitled "First Love's Recollections," of which the following are the
first two stanzas:--
First love will with the heart remain
When all its hopes are bye,
As frail rose-blossoms still retain
Their fragrance when they die;
And joy's first dreams will haunt the mind
With shades from whence they sprung,
As summer leaves the stems behind
On which spring's blossoms hung.
Mary! I dare not call thee dear,
I've lost that right so long;
Yet once again I vex thine ear
With memory's idle song.
Had time and change not blotted out
The love of former days,
Thou wert the last that I should doubt
Of pleasing with my praise.
Clare's engagement at the Blue Bell having terminated, a stone mason
of Market Deeping offered to teach him his craft on payment of a
premium which, though a very moderate sum, was far beyond the means
of Parker Clare. A shoemaker in the village next offered to take him
as an apprentice, on condition that Clare found his own tools, but
the youth's aversion to the trade was too great to be overcome.
After that his father applied to the head gardener at Burghley Park,
who engaged Clare on the terms of a three years' apprenticeship,
with eight shillings per week for the first year and an advance of
one shilling per week in each succeeding year. The engagement was
considered by Clare's father and mother to be a very fortunate and
promising one, but it proved to be in a high degree prejudicial to
his welfare. He was thrown into the society of a set of coarse-
minded, intemperate fellows who insisted on his accompanying them in
their frequent and forbidden visits to public houses in the
neighbourhood. Mr. Martin informs us that it was the custom at
Burghley to lock up at night all the workmen and apprentices
employed under the head gardener, to prevent them from robbing the
orchards, and that they regularly made their escape through a
window. On several occasions Clare was overcome by drink and slept
in the open air, with consequences to his delicate frame which may
easily be imagined. It would appear that the head gardener set the
example of habitual drunkenness to his subordinates, and that he
was, moreover, of brutal disposition, which will account for the
circumstance of the flight of Clare from Burghley Park, after he had
been there nearly a year. Accompanied by a fellow-apprentice he
walked to Grantham, a distance of twenty-two miles, and thence to
Newark, where the youths obtained employment under a nurseryman. But
Clare very shortly became homesick, and he returned to his parents
in a state of complete destitution.
The most lamentable consequence of the roystering life which Clare
led with the gardeners at Burghley was, that he acquired a fondness
for strong drink with which he had to struggle, not always
successfully, for years. That he did struggle manfully is evident
from his correspondence, and at length, acting upon the advice of Dr.
Darling, a London physician, who for a long time generously
prescribed for him without fee or reward beyond the poet's grateful
thanks, he abstained altogether. It will be seen hereafter that in
all probability Dr. Darling's advice was given upon the supposition
that Clare was able to procure a sufficient supply of nourishing
food, when unhappily he was almost literally starving himself, in
order that his family might not go hungry.
On returning from Nottinghamshire Clare took again to the work of a
farm labourer, and the poetic fervour which had abated in the
uncongenial society of Burghley once more manifested itself. After
taking infinite pains to that end, he had the satisfaction of
convincing his father and mother that his poetry was of somewhat
greater merit than the half-penny ballads sold at the village feast;
but his neighbours could not bring themselves to approve John's
course of life, and they adopted various disagreeable modes of
showing that they thought he was a mightily presumptuous fellow. His
shy manners and his habit of talking to himself as he walked led some
to set him down as a lunatic; others ridiculed his enthusiasm, or
darkly whispered suspicions of unhallowed intercourse with evil
spirits. This treatment, operating upon a sensitive mind and a body
debilitated both by labour and scanty and unwholesome food, had the
natural effect of robbing him of hope and buoyancy of spirits. In a
fit of desperation he enlisted in the militia, and with other
Helpstone youths was marched off to Oundle, a small town lying
between Peterborough and Northampton. He remained at Oundle for a few
weeks, at the end of which time the regiment was disbanded and Clare
returned to Helpstone, carrying with him "Paradise Lost" and "The
Tempest," which he had bought at a broker's shop in Oundle. This
brings us down to 1812, when Clare was nineteen years old.
Little is known of Clare's manner of life for the next four or five
years, excepting that he continued to work as a farm labourer
whenever work could be found, that he tried camp life with some
gipsies, and speedily had his romantic ideas of its attractiveness
rudely dispelled, that he had a love passage or two with girls of the
village and that he accumulated a large number of poems of varying
degrees of excellence.
In 1817 he obtained employment as a lime burner at Bridge Casterton,
in the neighbouring county of Rutland, where he earned about ten
shillings per week. The labour was very severe, but Clare was
contented, and during his stay at Bridge Casterton several of the
best among his earlier poems were produced. It was probably this
period of his life which he had in his mind when he said:--
I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.
In the course of this year 1817 Clare fell in love with Martha
Turner, the daughter of a cottage farmer living at a place called
Walkherd Lodge, and this is the maiden who after the lapse of three
or four years became his wife. "She was a fair girl of eighteen,
slender, with regular features, and pretty blue eyes." Clare entered
into this new engagement with passionate ardour, but the courtship
ultimately took a more prosaic turn, and having once done so, there
was little in the worthy but illiterate and matter-of-fact "Patty" to
elevate the connection into the region of poetry. In his
correspondence Clare more than once hints at want of sympathy on the
part of those of his own household, and at one time domestic
differences, for which there is reason to think he was mainly
responsible, and which occurred when he was mentally in a very morbid
condition, caused him to contemplate suicide. It is due, however, to
the memory of "Patty" to say that Clare's latest volume of poems
("The Rural Muse," 1835) contains an address "To P * *" which is
honourable to the constancy of both parties. It is as follows:--
Fair was thy bloom when first I met
Thy summer's maiden-blossom;
And thou art fair and lovely yet,
And dearer to my bosom.
O thou wert once a wilding flower,
All garden flowers excelling,
And still I bless the happy hour
That led me to thy dwelling.
Though nursed by field, and brook, and wood,
And wild in every feature,
Spring ne'er unsealed a fairer bud,
Nor found a blossom sweeter.
Of all the flowers the spring hath met,
And it has met with many,
Thou art to me the fairest yet,
And loveliest of any.
Though ripening summers round thee bring
Buds to thy swelling bosom,
That wait the cheering smiles of spring
To ripen into blossom.
These buds shall added blessings be,
To make our loves sincerer,
For as their flowers resemble thee
They'll make thy memory dearer.
And though thy bloom shall pass away,
By winter overtaken,
Thoughts of the past will charms display,
And many joys awaken.
When time shall every sweet remove,
And blight thee on my bosom,
Let beauty fade!--to me, my love,
Thou'lt ne'er be out of blossom!