Life and Remains of John Clare Part 12

"The plan was not carried out, and if the Marquis gave any aid of any kind to the peasant-poet the world, and I verily believe the poet himself, remained in ignorance of the amount."

AT HIGH BEECH ASYLUM

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 gra.s.s 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 Ess.e.x and found no Mary." Mr. Martin gives this extraordinary doc.u.ment 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 Ess.e.x, 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. G.o.d 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 compa.s.s come, Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom."

AT NORTHAMPTON

Clare remained for a short time at Northborough, and was then removed under medical advice to the County Lunatic Asylum at Northampton, of which establishment he continued an inmate until his death in 1864.

During the whole of that time the charge made by the authorities of the Asylum for his maintenance was paid either by Earl Fitzwilliam or by his son, the Hon. G. W. Fitzwilliam. It is to the credit of the managers of the inst.i.tution that although the amount paid on his behalf was that usually charged for patients of the humbler cla.s.ses, Clare was always treated in every respect as a "gentleman patient."

He had his favourite window corner in the common sitting room, commanding a view of Northampton and the valley of the Nen, and books and writing materials were provided for him. Unless the Editor's memory is at fault, he was always addressed deferentially as "Mr.

Clare," both by the officers of the Asylum and the townspeople; and when Her Majesty pa.s.sed through Northampton, in 1844, in her progress to Burleigh, a seat was specially reserved for the poet near one of the triumphal arches. There was something very nearly akin to tenderness in the kindly sympathy which was shown for him, and his most whimsical utterances were listened to with gravity, lest he should feel hurt or annoyed. He was cla.s.sified in the Asylum books among the "harmless," and for several years was allowed to walk in the fields or go into the town at his own pleasure. His favourite resting place at Northampton was a niche under the roof of the s.p.a.cious portico of All Saints' Church, and here he would sometimes sit for hours, musing, watching the children at play, or jotting down pa.s.sing thoughts in his pocket note-book.

THE APPROACHING END

In course of time it was found expedient not to allow him to wander beyond the Asylum grounds. He wrote occasionally to his son Charles, but appears never to have been visited by either relatives or friends. The neglect of his wife and children is inexplicable. It was no doubt while smarting under this treatment that he penned the lines given below, of which an eloquent critic has said that "in their sublime sadness and incoherence they sum up, with marvellous effect, the one great misfortune of the poet's life--his mental isolation-- his inability to make his deepest character and thoughts intelligible to others. They read like the wail of a nature cut off from all access to other minds, concentrated at its own centre, and conscious of the impa.s.sable gulf which separates it from universal humanity:"--

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, G.o.d, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie, The gra.s.s below; above, the vaulted sky.

Clare's physical powers slowly declined, and at length he had to be wheeled about the Asylum grounds in a Bath chair. As he felt his end approaching he would frequently say "I have lived too long," or "I want to go home." Until within three days of his death he managed to reach his favourite seat in the window, but was then seized with paralysis, and on the afternoon of the 20th of May, 1864, without a struggle or a sigh his spirit pa.s.sed away. He was taken home.

In accordance with Clare's own wish, his remains were interred in the churchyard at Helpstone, by the side of those of his father and mother, under the shade of a sycamore tree. The expenses of the funeral were paid by the Hon. G. W. Fitzwilliam. Two or three years afterwards a coped monument of Ketton stone was erected over Clare's remains. It bears this inscription:--

"Sacred to the Memory of John Clare, the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet. Born July 13, 1793. Died May 20th, 1864. A Poet is born, not made."

In 1869, another memorial was erected in the princ.i.p.al street of Helpstone. The style is Early English, and it bears suitable inscriptions from Clare's Works.

CONCLUSION

In looking back upon such a life as Clare's, so prominent are the human interests which confront us, that those of poetry, as one of the fine arts, are not unlikely to sink for a time completely out of sight. The long and painful strain upon our sympathy to which we are subject as we read the story is such perhaps as the life of no other English poet puts upon us. The spell of the great moral problems by which the lives of so many of our poets seem to have been more or less surrounded makes itself felt in every step of Clare's career. We are tempted to speak in almost fatalistic language of the disastrous gift of the poetic faculty, and to find in that the source of all Clare's woe. The well-known lines--

We poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness--

ring in our ears, and we remember that these are the words of a poet endowed with a well-balanced mind, and who knew far less than Clare the experience of

Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills.

In Clare's case we are tempted to say that the Genius of Poetry laid her fearful hand upon a nature too weak to bear her gifts and at the same time to master the untoward circ.u.mstances in which his lot was cast. But too well does poor Clare's history ill.u.s.trate that interpretation of the myth which pictures Great Pan secretly busy among the reeds and fashioning, with sinister thought, the fatal pipe which shall "make a poet out of a man." And yet it may be doubted whether, on the whole, Clare's lot in life, and that of the wife and family who were dependent upon him, was aggravated by the poetic genius which we are thus trying to make the scapegoat for his misfortunes. It may be that the publicity acquired by the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet simply brings to the surface the average life of the English agricultural labourer in the person of one who was more than usually sensitive to suffering. Unhappily there is too good reason to believe that the privations to which Clare and his household were subject cannot be looked upon as exceptional in the cla.s.s of society to which both husband and wife belonged, although they naturally acquire a deeper shade from the prospect of competency and comfort which Clare's gifts seemed to promise. In this light, while the miseries of the poet are none the less real and claim none the less of our sympathy, the moral problem of Clare's woes belongs rather to humanity at large than to poets in particular.

We are at liberty to hope, then, that the world is all the richer, and that Clare's lot was none the harder, by reason of that dispensation of Providence which has given to English literature such a volume as "The Rural Muse." How many are there who not only fail, as Clare failed, to rise above their circ.u.mstances, but who, in addition, leave nothing behind them to enrich posterity! We are indeed the richer for Clare, but with what travail of soul to himself only true poets can know.

ASYLUM POEMS

'TIS SPRING, MY LOVE, 'TIS SPRING

'T is Spring, my love, 'tis Spring, And the birds begin to sing: If 'twas Winter, left alone with you, Your bonny form and face Would make a Summer place, And be the finest flower that ever grew.

'T is Spring, my love, 'tis Spring, And the hazel catkins hing, While the snowdrop has its little blebs of dew; But that's not so white within As your bosom's hidden skin-- That sweetest of all flowers that ever grew.

The sun arose from bed, All strewn with roses red, But the brightest and the loveliest crimson place Is not so fresh and fair, Or so sweet beyond compare, As thy blushing, ever smiling, happy face.

I love Spring's early flowers, And their bloom in its first hours, But they never half so bright or lovely seem As the blithe and happy grace Of my darling's blushing face, And the happiness of love's young dream.

LOVE OF NATURE

I love thee, Nature, with a boundless love!

The calm of earth, the storm of roaring woods!

The winds breathe happiness where'er I rove!

There's life's own music in the swelling floods!

My heart is in the thunder-melting clouds, The snow-cap't mountain, and the rolling sea!

And hear ye not the voice where darkness shrouds The heavens? There lives happiness for me!

My pulse beats calmer while His lightnings play!

My eye, with earth's delusions waxing dim, Clears with the brightness of eternal day!

The elements crash round me! It is He!

Calmly I hear His voice and never start.

From Eve's posterity I stand quite free, Nor feel her curses rankle round my heart.

Love is not here. Hope is, and at His voice-- The rolling thunder and the roaring sea-- My pulses leap, and with the hills rejoice; Then strife and turmoil are at end for me.

No matter where life's ocean leads me on, For Nature is my mother, and I rest, When tempests trouble and the sun is gone, Like to a weary child upon her breast.