All that was possible was done for Clare at the house of Dr. Allen,
one of the early reformers of the treatment of lunatics. He was kept
pretty constantly employed in the garden, and soon grew stout and
robust. After a time he was allowed to stroll beyond the grounds of
the asylum and to ramble about the forest. He was perfectly harmless,
and would sometimes carry on a conversation in a rational manner,
always, however, losing himself in the end in absolute nonsense. In
March, 1841, he wrote a long and intelligible letter to Mrs. Clare,
almost the only peculiarity in which is that every word is begun with
a capital letter. There is no doubt that at this time he was
possessed with the idea that he had two wives--Patty, whom he called
his second wife, and his life-long ideal, Mary Joyce. In the letter
just referred to he begins "My dear wife Patty," and in a postscript
says, "Give my love to the dear boy who wrote to me, and to her who
is never forgotten." He wrote verses which he told Dr. Allen were for
his wife Mary, and that he intended to take them to her. He made
several unsuccessful attempts to escape in the early part of 1841,
but in July of that year he contrived to evade both watchers and
pursuers, and reached Peterborough after being four days and three
nights on the road in a penniless condition, and being so near to
dying of starvation that he was compelled to eat grass like the
beasts of the field. The day after his return to Northborough he
wrote what he called an account of his journey, prefacing the
narrative by this remark, "Returned home out of Essex and found no
Mary." Mr. Martin gives this extraordinary document in his "Life of
Clare." It is a weird, pathetic and pitiful story, "a tragedy all too
deep for tears." Having finished the journal of his escape he
addressed it with a letter to "Mary Clare, Glinton." In this letter
he says:--
"I am not so lonely as I was in Essex, for here I can see Glinton
Church, and feeling that my Mary is safe, if not happy I am
gratified. Though my home is no home to me, my hopes are not entirely
hopeless while even the memory of Mary lives so near to me. God bless
you, my dear Mary! Give my love to our dear beautiful family and to
your mother, and believe me, as ever I have been and ever shall be,
my dearest Mary, your affectionate husband, John Clare." Truly,
"Love's not Time's fool: though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come,
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom."