Life and Remains of John Clare Part 8

Very ill to-day and very unhappy. My three children are all unwell.

Had a dismal dream of being in h.e.l.l: this is the third time I have had such a dream. As I am more than ever convinced that I cannot recover I will make a memorandum of my temporal concerns, for next to the spiritual they ought to be attended to for the sake of those left behind. I will insert them in No. 5 in the Appendix.

October 9.--

Patty has been to Stamford, and brought me a letter from Ned Drury, who came from Lincoln to the mayor's feast on Thursday. It revives old recollections. Poor fellow: he is an odd one, but still my recollections are inclined in his favour. What a long way to come to the mayor's feast! I would not go one mile after it to hear the din of knives and forks, and to see a throng of blank faces about me, chattering and stuffing, "that boast no more expression than a m.u.f.fin."

October 12.--

Began to teach a poor lame boy the common rules of arithmetic, and find him very apt and willing to learn.

October 16.--

Wrote two more pages of my life: find it not so easy as I at first imagined, as I am anxious to give an undisguised narrative of facts, good and bad. In the last sketch which I wrote for Taylor I had little vanities about me to gloss over failings which I shall now take care to lay bare, and readers, if they ever are published, to comment upon as they please. In my last four years I shall give my likes and dislikes of friends and acquaintances as free as I do of myself.

December 25.--

Christmas Day: gathered a handful of daisies in full bloom: saw a woodbine and dogrose in the woods putting out in full leaf, and a primrose root full of ripe flowers. What a day this used to be when I was a boy! How eager I used to be to attend the church to see it stuck with evergreens (emblems of eternity), and the cottage windows, and the picture ballads on the wall, all stuck with ivy, holly, box, and yew! Such feelings are past, and "all this world is proud of."

January 7, 1825.--

Bought some cakes of colours with the intention of trying to make sketches of curious snail horns, b.u.t.terflies, moths, sphinxes, wild flowers, and whatever my wanderings may meet with that are not too common.

January 19.--

Just completed the 9th chapter of my life. Corrected the poem on the "Vanities of the World," which I have written in imitation of the old poets, on whom I mean to father it, and send it to Montgomery's paper "The Iris," or the "Literary Chronicle," under that character.

February 26.--

Received a letter in rhyme from a John Pooley, who ran me tenpence further in debt, as I had not money to pay the postage.

March 6.--

Parish officers are modern savages, as the following will testify: "Crowland Abbey.--Certain surveyors have lately dug up several foundation stones of the Abbey, and also a great quant.i.ty of stone coffins, for the purpose of repairing the parish roads."--Stamford Mercury.

March 9.--

I had a very odd dream last night, and take it as an ill omen, for I don't expect that the book will meet a better fate. I thought I had one of the proofs of the new poems from London, and after looking at it awhile it shrank through my hands like sand, and crumbled into dust. The birds were singing in Oxey Wood at six o'clock this evening as loud and various as in May.

March 31.--

Artis and Henderson came to see me, and we went to see the Roman station agen Oxey Wood, which he says is plainly Roman.

April 16.--

Took a walk in the fields, bird-nesting and botanizing, and had like to have been taken up as a poacher in Hilly Wood, by a meddlesome, conceited gamekeeper belonging to Sir John Trollope. He swore that he had seen me in the act, more than once, of shooting game, when I never shot even so much as a sparrow in my life. What terrifying rascals these woodkeepers and gamekeepers are! They make a prison of the forest, and are its gaolers.

April 18.--

Resumed my letters on Natural History in good earnest, and intend to get them finished with this year, if I can get out into the fields, for I will insert nothing but what has come under my notice.

May 13.--

Met with an extraordinary incident to-day, while walking in Openwood.

I popt unawares on an old fox and her four young cubs that were playing about. She saw me, and instantly approached towards me growling like an angry dog. I had no stick, and tried all I could to fright her by imitating the bark of a fox-hound, which only irritated her the more, and if I had not retreated a few paces back she would have seized me: when I set up an haloo she started.

May 25.--

I watched a bluecap or blue t.i.tmouse feeding her young, whose nest was in a wall close to an orchard. She got caterpillars out of the blossoms of the apple trees and leaves of the plum. She fetched 120 caterpillars in half an hour. Now suppose she only feeds them four times a day, a quarter of an hour each time, she fetched no less than 480 caterpillars.

May 28.--

Found the old frog in my garden that has been there four years. I know it by a mark which it received from my spade four years ago. I thought it would die of the wound, so I turned it up on a bed of flowers at the end of the garden, which is thickly covered with ferns and bluebells. I am glad to see it has recovered.

June 3.--

Finished planting my auriculas: went a-botanizing after ferns and orchises, and caught a cold in the wet gra.s.s, which has made me as bad as ever. Got the tune of "Highland Mary" from Wisdom Smith, a gipsy, and p.r.i.c.ked another sweet tune without name as he riddled it.

June 4.--

Saw three fellows at the end of Royce Wood, who I found were laying out the plan for an iron railway from Manchester to London. It is to cross over Round Oak spring by Royce Wood corner for Woodcroft Castle. I little thought that fresh intrusions would interrupt and spoil my solitudes. After the enclosure they will despoil a boggy place that is famous for orchises at Royce Wood end.

June 23.--

Wrote to Mrs. Emmerson and sent a letter to "Hone's Every-day Book,"

with a poem which I fathered on Andrew Marvel.

July 12.--

Went to-day to see Artis: found him busy over his antiquities and fossils. He told me a curious thing about the manner in which the golden-crested wren builds her nest: he says it is the only English bird that suspends its nest, which it hangs on three twigs of the fir branch, and it glues the eggs at the bottom of the nest, with the gum out of the tree, to keep them from being thrown out by the wind, which often turns them upside down without injury.

August 21.--