Not long after Clare's return from London, the Mayor of Boston
invited him to visit that town. He accepted the invitation and was
hospitably entertained. A number of young men of the town proposed a
public supper in his honour, and gave him notice that he would have
to reply to the toast of his own health. Clare shrank from this
terrible ordeal and quitted Boston with scant ceremony. This he
regretted on discovering that his warm-hearted friends and admirers
had, unknown to him, put ten pounds into his travelling bag. His
visit to Boston was followed by an attack of fever which assailed in
turn every member of his family, and rendered necessary the frequent
visits of a medical man for several months. For a long time Clare was
quite unable to do any work in the fields, or sell any of his poems,
and hence arose fresh embarrassments.
In the autumn of 1829 Clare once more made a farming venture on a
small scale, and for about eighteen months he was fairly successful.
This raised his spirits to an unwonted pitch, and his health greatly
improved; but the gleam of sunshine passed away and poverty and
sickness were again his portion. In 1831 his household consisted of
ten persons, a sixth child having been born to him in the previous
year. To support so large a family it was not sufficient that he
frequently denied himself the commonest necessaries of life: this for
years past he had been accustomed to do, but still he could not "keep
the wolf from the door." In his distress he consulted his
confidential friends, Artis and Henderson. While talking with
Henderson one day at Milton Park, Clare had the good fortune to meet
the noble owner, to whom he told all his troubles. His lordship
listened attentively to the story, and when Clare had finished
promised that a cottage and a small piece of land should be found for
him. The promise was kept, for we find Mr. Emmerson writing on the
9th of November, 1831:--
"Why have you not, with your own good pen, informed me of the
circumstance of your shortly becoming Farmer John? Yes, thanks to the
generous Lord Milton, I am told in a letter from your kind friend,
the Rev. Mr. Mossop (dated October 27th) that you have the offer of a
most comfortable cottage, which will be fitted up for your reception
about January the 1st 1832, that it will have an acre of orchard and
garden, inclusive of a common for two cows, with a meadow sufficient
to produce fodder for the winter."