Poems Chiefly from Manuscript Part 1

Poems Chiefly From Ma.n.u.script.

by John Clare.

NOTE

For the present volume over two thousand poems by Clare have been considered and compared; of which over two-thirds have not been published. Of those here given ninety are now first printed, and are distinguished with asterisks in the contents: one or two are gleaned from periodicals: and many of the others have been brought into line with ma.n.u.script versions. While poetic value has been the general ground of selection, the development of the poet has seemed of sufficient interest for representation; and some of Clare's juvenilia are accordingly included. The arrangement is chronological, though in many cases the date of a poem can only be conjectured from the handwriting and the style; and it is almost impossible to affix dates to such Asylum Poems as bear none.

Punctuation and orthography have been attempted; Clare left such matters to his editor in his lifetime, conceiving them to be an "awkward squad." In some poems stanzas have been omitted, particularly in the case of first drafts which demand revision; but in others stanzas dropped by previous editors have been restored. t.i.tles have been given to many poems which, doubtless, in copies not available to us were better christened by Clare himself. So regularly does Clare use such forms as "oer," "eer," and the like that he seems to have regarded them not as abbreviations but as originals, and they are given without apostrophe. The text of the Asylum Poems which has been used is a transcript, and one or two difficult pa.s.sages are probably the fault of the copyist.

For permission to examine and copy many of the poems preserved in the Peterborough Museum, and to have photographs taken, we are indebted to J. W. Bodger, Esq., the President for 1919-1920; without whose co-operation and interest the volume would have been a very different matter. Valuable help, too, has been given by Mr. Samuel Loveman of Cleveland, Ohio, who has placed at our disposal his collection of Clare MSS. To G. C. Druce, Esq., of Oxford, whose pamphlet on Clare's knowledge of flowers cannot but delight the lover of Clare: to the Rev. S. G. Short of Maxey, and formerly of Northborough: to J.

Middleton Murry, Esq., the Editor of the _Athenaeum_: to Edward Liveing, Esq., and E. G. Clayton, Esq.: and to Norman Gale, Esq., who has not wavered from his early faith in Clare, our grat.i.tude is gladly given for a.s.sistance and sympathy.

And to Mr. Samuel Sefton of Derby, the grandson of Clare and one of his closest investigators, who has patiently and carefully responded to all our queries in a long correspondence, and who, besides informing us of the Clare tradition as it exists in the family, has supplied many materials of importance in writing the poet's life, special thanks are due. It was a fortunate chance that put us in communication with him.

EDMUND BLUNDEN

ALAN PORTER

INTRODUCTION

And he repulsed, (a short tale to make), Fell into a sadness; then into a fast; Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness; Thence to a lightness; and by this declension, Into the madness wherein now he raves.

BIOGRAPHICAL

The life of John Clare, offering as it does so much opportunity for sensational contrast and unbridled distortion, became at one time (like the tragedy of Chatterton) a favourite with the quillmen. Even his serious biographers have made excessive use of light and darkness, poetry and poverty, genius and stupidity: that there should be some uncertainty about dates and incidents is no great matter, but that misrepresentations of character or of habit should be made is the fault of shallow research or worse. We have been informed, for instance, that drink was a main factor in Clare's mental collapse; that Clare "pottered in the fields feebly"; that on his income of "45 a year ... Clare thought he could live without working"; and all biographers have tallied in the melodramatic legend; "Neither wife nor children ever came to see him, except the youngest son, who came once," during his Asylum days. To these attractive exaggerations there are the best of grounds for giving the lie.

John Clare was born on the 13th of July, 1793, in a small cottage degraded in popular tradition to a mud hut of the parish of Helpston, between Peterborough and Stamford. This cottage is standing to-day, almost as it was when Clare lived there; so that those who care to do so may examine Martin's description of "a narrow wretched hut, more like a prison than a human dwelling," in face of the facts. Clare's father, a labourer named Parker Clare, was a man with his wits about him, whether educated or not; and Ann his wife is recorded to have been a woman of much natural ability and precise habits, who thought the world of her son John. Of the other children, little is known but that there were two who died young and one girl who was alive in 1824.

Clare himself wrote a sonnet in the _London Magazine_ for June, 1821, "To a Twin Sister, Who Died in Infancy."

Parker Clare, a man with some reputation as a wrestler and chosen for thrashing corn on account of his strength, sometimes shared the fate of almost all farm labourers of his day and was compelled to accept parish relief: at no time can he have been many shillings to the good: but it was his determination to have John educated to the best of his power. John Clare therefore attended a dame-school until he was seven; thence, he is believed to have gone to a day-school, where he made progress enough to receive on leaving the warm praise of the schoolmaster, and the advice to continue at a nightschool--which he did. His aim, he notes later on, was to write copperplate: but there are evidences that he learned much more than penmanship. Out of school he appears to have been a happy, imaginative child: as alert for mild mischief as the rest of the village boys, but with something solitary and romantic in his disposition. One day indeed at a very early age he went off to find the horizon; and a little later while he tended sheep and cows in his holiday-time on Helpston Common, he made friends with a curious old lady called Granny Bains, who taught him old songs and ballads. Such poems as "Childhood" and "Remembrances" prove that Clare's early life was not mere drudgery and despair. "I never had much relish for the pastimes of youth. Instead of going out on the green at the town end on winter Sundays to play football I stuck to my corner stool poring over a book; in fact, I grew so fond of being alone at last that my mother was fain to force me into company, for the neighbours had a.s.sured her mind ... that I was no better than crazy.... I used to be very fond of fishing, and of a Sunday morning I have been out before the sun delving for worms in some old weed-blanketed dunghill and steering off across the wet grain ... till I came to the flood-washed meadow stream.... And then the year used to be crowned with its holidays as thick as the boughs on a harvest home." It is probable that the heavy work which he is said to have done as a child was during the long holiday at harvesttime. When he was twelve or thirteen he certainly became team-leader, and in this employment he saw a farm labourer fall from the top of his loaded wagon and break his neck. For a time his reason seemed affected by the sight.

At evening-school, Clare struck up a friendship with an excise-man's son, to the benefit of both. In 1835, one of many sonnets was addressed to this excellent soul:

Turnill, we toiled together all the day, And lived like hermits from the boys at play; We read and walked together round the fields, Not for the beauty that the journey yields-- But muddied fish, and bragged oer what we caught, And talked about the few old books we bought.

Though low in price you knew their value well, And I thought nothing could their worth excel; And then we talked of what we wished to buy, And knowledge always kept our pockets dry.

We went the nearest ways, and hummed a song, And s.n.a.t.c.hed the pea pods as we went along, And often stooped for hunger on the way To eat the sour gra.s.s in the meadow hay.

One of these "few old books" was Thomson's "Seasons", which gave a direction to the poetic instincts of Clare, already manifesting themselves in scribbled verses in his exercise-books.

Read, mark, learn as Clare might, no opportunity came for him to enter a profession. "After I had done with going to school it was proposed that I should be bound apprentice to a shoemaker, but I rather disliked this bondage. I whimpered and turned a sullen eye on every persuasion, till they gave me my will. A neighbour then offered to learn me his trade--to be a stone mason,--but I disliked this too....

I was then sent for to drive the plough at Woodcroft Castle of Oliver Cromwell memory; though Mrs. Bellairs the mistress was a kind-hearted woman, and though the place was a very good one for living, my mind was set against it from the first;... one of the disagreeable things was getting up so early in the morning ... and another was getting wetshod ... every morning and night--for in wet weather the moat used to overflow the cause-way that led to the porch, and as there was but one way to the house we were obliged to wade up to the knees to get in and out.... I staid here one month, and then on coming home to my parents they could not persuade me to return. They now gave up all hopes of doing any good with me and fancied that I should make nothing but a soldier; but luckily in this dilemma a next-door neighbour at the Blue Bell, Francis Gregory, wanted me to drive plough, and as I suited him, he made proposals to hire me for a year--which as it had my consent my parents readily agreed to." There he spent a year in light work with plenty of leisure for his books and his long reveries in lonely favourite places. His imagination grew intensely, and in his weekly errand to a flour-mill at Maxey ghosts rose out of a swamp and harried him till he dropped. This stage was hardly ended when one day on his road he saw a young girl named Mary Joyce, with whom he instantly fell in love. This crisis occurred when Clare was almost sixteen: the fate of John Clare hung in the balance for six months.

Then Mary's father, disturbed princ.i.p.ally by the chance that his daughter might be seen talking to this erratic youngster, put an end to their meetings. From this time, with intervals of tranquillity, Clare was to suffer the slow torture of remorse, until at length deliberately yielding himself up to his amazing imagination he held conversation with Mary, John Clare's Mary, his first wife Mary--as though she had not lived unwed, and had not been in her grave for years.

But this was not yet; and we must return to the boy Clare, now terminating his year's hiring at the Blue Bell. It was time for him to take up some trade in good earnest; accordingly, in an evil hour disguised as a fortunate one, he was apprenticed to the head gardener at Burghley Park. The head gardener was in practice a sot and a slave-driver. After much drunken wild bravado, not remarkable in the lad Clare considering his companions and traditions, there came the impulse to escape; with the result that Clare and a companion were shortly afterwards working in a nursery garden at Newark-upon-Trent.

Both the nursery garden and "the silver Trent" are met again in the poems composed in his asylum days; but for the time being they meant little to him, and he suddenly departed through the snow. Arrived home at Helpston, he lost some time in finding farm work and in writing verses: sharing a loft at night with a fellow-labourer, he would rise at all hours to note down new ideas. It was not unnatural in the fellow-labourer to request him to "go and do his poeting elsewhere."

Clare was already producing work of value, none the less. Nothing could be kept from his neighbours, who looked askance on his ways of thinking, and writing: while a candid friend to whom he showed his ma.n.u.scripts directed his notice to the study of grammar. Troubled by these ill omens, he comforted himself in the often intoxicated friendship of the bad men of the village, who under the mellowing influences of old ale roared applause as he recited his ballads. This life was soon interrupted.

"When the country was chin-deep," Clare tells us, "in the fears of invasion, and every mouth was filled with the terror which Buonaparte had spread in other countries, a national scheme was set on foot to raise a raw army of volunteers: and to make the matter plausible a letter was circulated said to be written by the Prince Regent. I forget how many were demanded from our parish, but remember the panic which it created was very great. No great name rises in the world without creating a crowd of little mimics that glitter in borrowed rays; and no great lie was ever yet put in circulation without a herd of little lies multiplying by instinct, as it were and crowding under its wings. The papers that were circulated a.s.sured the people of England that the French were on the eve of invading it and that it was deemed necessary by the Regent that an army from eighteen to forty-five should be raised immediately. This was the great lie, and then the little lies were soon at its heels; which a.s.sured the people of Helpston that the French had invaded and got to London. And some of these little lies had the impudence to swear that the French had even reached Northampton. The people were at their doors in the evening to talk over the rebellion of '45 when the rebels reached Derby, and even listened at intervals to fancy they heard the French rebels at Northampton, knocking it down with their cannon. I never gave much credit to popular stories of any sort, so I felt no concern at these stories; though I could not say much for my valour if the tale had proved true. We had a crossgrained sort of choice left us, which was to be found, to be drawn, and go for nothing--or take on as volunteers for the bounty of two guineas. I accepted the latter and went with a neighbour's son, W. Clarke, to Peterborough to be sworn on and prepared to join the regiment at Oundle. The morning we left home our mothers parted with us as if we were going to Botany Bay, and people got at their doors to bid us farewell and greet us with a Job's comfort 'that they doubted we should see Helpston no more.' I confess I wished myself out of the matter. When we got to Oundle, the place of quartering, we were drawn out into the field, and a more motley mult.i.tude of lawless fellows was never seen in Oundle before--and hardly out of it. There were 1,300 of us. We were drawn up into a line and sorted out into companies. I was one of the shortest and therefore my station is evident. I was in that mixed mult.i.tude called the battalion, which they nicknamed 'b.u.m-tools' for what reason I cannot tell; the light company was called 'light-bobs,' and the grenadiers 'bacon-bolters' ... who felt as great an enmity against each other as ever they all felt against the French."

In 1813 he read among other things the "Eikon Basilike," and turned his hand to odd jobs as they presented themselves. His life appears to have been comfortable and a little dull for a year or two; flirtation, verse-making, ambitions and his violin took their turns amiably enough! At length he went to work in a lime-kiln several miles from Helpston, and wrote only less poems than he read: one day in the autumn of 1817, he was dreaming yet new verses when he first saw "Patty," his wife-to-be. She was then eighteen years old, and modestly beautiful; for a moment Clare forgot Mary Joyce, and though "the courtship ultimately took a more prosaic turn," there is no denying the fact that he was in love with "Patty" Turner, the daughter of the small farmer who held Walkherd Lodge. In the case of Clare, poetry was more than ever as time went on autobiography; and it is noteworthy that among the many love lyrics addressed to Mary Joyce there are not wanting affectionate tributes to his faithful wife Patty.

Maid of Walkherd, meet again, By the wilding in the glen....

And I would go to Patty's cot And Patty came to me; Each knew the other's very thought Under the hawthorn tree....

And I'll be true for Patty's sake And she'll be true for mine; And I this little ballad make, To be her valentine.

Not long after seeing Patty, Clare was informed by the owner of the lime-kiln that his wages would now be seven shillings a week, instead of nine. He therefore left this master and found similar work in the village of Pickworth, where being presented with a shoemaker's bill for 3, he entered into negotiations with a Market Deeping bookseller regarding "Proposals for publishing by subscription a Collection of Original Trifles on Miscellaneous Subjects, Religious and Moral, in verse, by John Clare, of Helpstone." Three hundred proposals were printed, with a specimen sonnet well chosen to intrigue the religious and moral; and yet the tale of intending subscribers stood adamantly at seven. On the face of it, then, Clare had lost one pound; had worn himself out with distributing his prospectuses; and further had been discharged from the lime-kiln for doing so in working hours. His ambitions, indeed, set all employers and acquaintances against him; and he found himself at the age of twenty-five compelled to ask for parish relief. In this extremity, even the idea of enlisting once more crossed his brain; then, that of travelling to Yorkshire for employment: and at last, the prospectus which had done him so much damage turned benefactor. With a few friends Clare was drinking success to his goose-chase when there appeared two "real gentlemen"

from Stamford. One of these, a bookseller named Drury, had chanced on the prospectus, and wished to see more of Clare's poetry. Soon afterwards, he promised to publish a selection, with corrections; and communicated with his relative, John Taylor, who with his partner Hessey managed the well-known publishing business in Fleet Street.

While this new prospect was opening upon Clare, he succeeded in obtaining work once more, near the home of Patty; their love-making proceeded, despite the usual thunderstorms, and the dangerous rivalry of a certain dark lady named Betty Sell. The bookseller Drury, though his appearance was in such critical days timely for Clare, was not a paragon of virtue. Without Clare's knowing it, he acquired the legal copyright of the poems, probably by the expedient of dispensing money at convenient times--a specious philanthropy, as will be shown. At the same time he allowed Clare to open a book account, which proved at length to be no special advantage. And further, with striking astuteness, he found constant difficulty in returning originals. In a note written some ten years later, Clare regrets that "Ned Drury has got my early vol. of MSS. I lent it him at first, but like all my other MSS. elsewhere I could never get it again.... He has copies of all my MSS. except those written for the 'Shepherd's Calendar.'"

Nevertheless, through Drury, Clare was enabled to meet his publisher Taylor and his influential friend of the _Quarterly_, Octavius Gilchrist, before the end of 1819.

By 1818, there is no doubt, Clare had read very deeply, and even had some idea of the cla.s.sical authors through translations. It is certain that he knew the great English writers, probable that he possessed their works. What appears to be a list of books which he was anxious to sell in his hardest times includes some curious t.i.tles, with some familiar ones. There are Cobb's Poems, Fawke's Poems, Broom's, Mrs.

Hoole's, and so on; there are also Cowley's Works--Folio, Warton's "Milton," Waller, and a Life of Chatterton; nor can he have been devoid of miscellaneous learning after the perusal of Watson's "Electricity," Aristotle's Works, Ga.s.se's "Voyages," "Nature Display'd," and the _European Magazine_ ("fine heads and plates"). His handwriting at this time was bold and hasty; his opinions, to judge from his uncompromising notes to Drury respecting the text of the poems, almost cynical and decidedly his own. Tact was essential if you would patronize Clare: you might broaden his opinions, but you dared not a.s.sail them. Thus the friendly Gilchrist, a high churchman, hardly set eyes on Clare before condemning Clare's esteem for a dissenting minister, a Mr. Holland, who understood the poet and the poetry: it was some time before Gilchrist set eyes on Clare again.

The year 1820 found Clare unemployed once more, but the said Mr.

Holland arrived before long with great news. "In the beginning of January," Clare briefly puts it, "my poems were published after a long anxiety of nearly two years and all the Reviews, except Phillips'

waste paper magazine, spoke in my favour." Most a.s.suredly they did.

The literary world, gaping for drouth, had seen an announcement, then an account of "John Clare, an agricultural labourer and poet," during the previous autumn; the little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, in a little while seemed to usurp the whole sky--or in other terms, three editions of "Poems Descriptiveof Rural Life and Scenery" were sold between January 16 and the last of March. While this fever was raging among the London coteries, critical, fashionable, intellectual, even the country folk round Helpston came to the conclusion that Clare was something of a phenomenon. "In the course of the publication," says Clare, "I had ventured to write to Lord Milton to request leave that the volume might be dedicated to him; but his Lordship was starting into Italy and forgot to answer it. So it was dedicated to n.o.body, which perhaps might be as well. As soon as it was out, my mother took one to Milton; when his Lordship sent a note to tell me to bring ten more copies. On the following Sunday I went, and after sitting awhile in the servants' hall (where I could eat or drink nothing for thought), his Lordship sent for me, and instantly explained the reasons why he did not answer my letter, in a quiet unaffected manner which set me at rest. He told me he had heard of my poems by Parson Mossop (of Helpston), who I have since heard took hold of every opportunity to speak against my success or poetical abilities before the book was published, and then, when it came out and others praised it, instantly turned round to my side. Lady Milton also asked me several questions, and wished me to name any book that was a favourite; expressing at the same time a desire to give me one. But I was confounded and could think of nothing. So I lost the present.

In fact, I did not like to pick out a book for fear of seeming over-reaching on her kindness, or else Shakespeare was at my tongue's end. Lord Fitzwilliam, and Lady Fitzwilliam too, talked to me and noticed me kindly, and his Lordship gave me some advice which I had done well perhaps to have noticed better than I have. He bade me beware of booksellers and warned me not to be fed with promises. On my departure they gave me a handful of money--the most that I had ever possessed in my life together. I almost felt I should be poor no more--there was 17." Such is Clare's description of an incident which has been rendered in terms of insult. Other invitations followed, the chief practical result being an annuity of fifteen pounds promised by the Marquis of Exeter. Men of rank and talent wrote letters to Clare, or sent him books: some found their way to Helpston, and others sent tracts to show him the way to heaven. And now at last Clare was well enough off to marry Patty, before the birth of their first child, Anna Maria.

Before his marriage, probably, Clare was desired to spend a few days with his publisher Taylor in London. In smock and gaiters he felt most uncertain of himself and borrowed a large overcoat from Taylor to disguise his dress: over and above this question of externals, he instinctively revolted against being exhibited. Meeting Lord Radstock, sometime admiral in the Royal Navy, at dinner in Taylor's house, Clare gained a generous if somewhat religiose friend, with the instant result that he found himself "trotting from one drawing-room to the other." He endured this with patience, thinking possibly of the cat killed by kindness; and incidentally Radstock introduced him to the strangely superficial-genuine lady Mrs. Emmerson, who was to be a faithful, thoughtful friend to his family for many years to come. In another direction, soon after Clare's return to Helpston, the retired admiral did him a great service, opening a private subscription list for his benefit: it was found possible to purchase "250 Navy 5 Per Cents" on the 28th April and a further "125 Navy 5 Per Cents" a month or so later. This stock, held by trustees, yielded Clare a dividend of 18 15s. at first, but in 1823 this income dwindled to 15 15s.; and by 1832 appears to have fallen to 13 10s. To the varying amount thus derived, and to the 15 given yearly by the Marquis of Exeter, a Stamford doctor named Bell--one of Clare's most energetic admirers--succeeded in adding another annuity of 10 settled upon the poet by Lord Spencer. But in the consideration of these bounties, it is just to examine the actual financial effect of Clare's first book.

The publishers' own account, furnished only through Clare's repeated demands in 1829 or thereabouts, has a sobering tale to tell: but so far no biographer has condescended to examine it.

On the first edition Clare got nothing. Against him is entered the item "Cash paid Mr. Clare for copyright p. Mr. Drury ... 20"; but this money if actually paid had been paid in 1819. Against him also is charged a curious "Commission 5 p. Cent... 8 12s.," while Drury and Taylor acknowledge sharing profits of 26 odd.

On the second and third editions Clare got nothing; but to his account is charged the 100 which Taylor and Hessey "subscribed" to his fund.

"Commission," "Advertising," "Sundries," and "Deductions allowed to Agents," account for a further 51 of the receipts: and Drury and Taylor ostensibly take over 30 apiece.

The fourth edition not being exhausted, the account is not closed: but "Advertising" has already swollen to 30, and there is no sign that Clare benefits a penny piece. Small wonder that at the foot of these figures he has written, "How can this be? I never sold the poems for any price--what money I had of Drury was given me on account of profits to be received--but here it seems I have got nothing and am brought in minus twenty pounds of which I never received a sixpence--or it seems that by the sale of these four thousand copies I have lost that much--and Drury told me that 5,000 copies had been printed tho' 4,000 only are accounted for." Had Clare noticed further an arithmetical discrepancy which apparently shortened his credit balance by some 27, he might have been still more sceptical.

Not being overweighted, therefore, with instant wealth, Clare returned to Helpston determined to continue his work in the fields. But fame opposed him: all sorts and conditions of Lydia Whites, Leo Hunters, Stigginses, and Jingles crowded to the cottage, demanding to see the Northamptonshire Peasant, and often wasting hours of his time. One day, for example, "the inmates of a whole boarding-school, located at Stamford, visited the unhappy poet"; and even more congenial visitors who cheerfully hurried him off to the tavern parlour were the ruin of his work. Yet he persevered, writing his poems only in his leisure, until the harvest of 1820 was done; then in order to keep his word with Taylor, who had agreed to produce a new volume in the spring of 1821, he spent six months in the most energetic literary labour.

Writing several poems a day as he roamed the field or sat in Lea Close Oak, he would sit till late in the night sifting, recasting and transcribing. His library, by his own enterprise and by presents from many friends, was greatly enlarged, and he already knew not only the literature of the past, but also that of the present. In his letters to Taylor are mentioned his appreciations of Keats, "Poor Keats, you know how I reverence him," Sh.e.l.ley, Hunt, Lamb--and almost every other contemporary cla.s.sic. Nor was he afraid to criticize Scott with freedom in a letter to Scott's friend Sherwell: remarking also that Wordworth's Sonnet on Westminster Bridge had no equal in the language, but disagreeing with "his affected G.o.dliness."

Taylor and Hessey for their part did not seem over-anxious to produce the new volume of poems, perhaps because Clare would not allow any change except in the jots and t.i.ttles of his work, perhaps thinking that the public had had a surfeit of sensation. At length in the autumn of 1821 the "Village Minstrel" made its appearance, in two volumes costing twelve shillings; with the bait of steel engravings,--the first, an unusually fine likeness of Clare from the painting by Hilton; the second, an imaginative study of Clare's cottage, not without representation of the Blue Bell, the village cross and the church. The book was reviewed less noisily, and a sale of a mere 800 copies in two months was regarded as "a very modified success." Meanwhile, Clare was writing for the _London Magazine_, and Cherry tells us that "as he contributed almost regularly for some time, a substantial addition was made to his income." Clare tells us, in a note on a cash account dated 1827, "In this cash account there is nothing allowed me for my three years' writing for the _London Magazine_. I was to have 12 a year."

To insist in the financial affairs of Clare may seem blatant, or otiose: actually, the treatment which he underwent was a leading influence in his career. He was grateful enough to Radstock for raising a subscription fund; he may have been grateful to Taylor and Hessey for subscribing 100 of his own money; but what hurt and embittered him was to see this sum and the others invested for him under trustees. Indeed, what man would not, if possessed of any independence of mind, strongly oppose such namby-pamby methods? It is possible to take a more sinister view of Taylor and Hessey and their reluctance ever to provide Clare with a statement of account; but in the matter of Clare's funded property folly alone need be considered.

In October 1821, notably, Clare saw an excellent opportunity for the future of his family. A small freehold of six or seven acres with a pleasant cottage named Bachelor's Hall, where Clare had spent many an evening in comfort and even in revelry, was mortgaged to a Jew for two hundred pounds; the tenants offered Clare the whole property on condition that he paid off the mortgage. Small holdings were rare in that district of great landowners, and this to Clare was the chance of a lifetime. He applied therefore to Lord Radstock for two hundred pounds from his funded property; Radstock replied that "the funded property was vested in trustees who were restricted to paying the interest to him." It would have been, thought Clare, no difficult matter for Radstock to have advanced me that small amount; and he rightly concluded that his own strength of character and common sense were distrusted by his patrons. Not overwhelmed by this, he now applied to his publisher Taylor, offering to sell his whole literary output for five years at the price of two hundred pounds. Taylor was not enthusiastic. These writings, he urged, might be worth more, or might be worth less; in the first case Clare, in the second himself would lose on the affair; besides, there were money-lenders and legal niceties to beware of; let not Clare "be ambitious but remain in the state in which G.o.d had placed him." Thus the miserable officiousness went on, and if Clare for a time found some comfort in the gla.s.s who can blame him? In his own words, "for enemies he cared nothing, from his friends he had much to fear." He was "thrown back among all the cold apathy of killing kindness that had numbed him ... for years."

In May, 1822, Clare spent a brief holiday in London, meeting there the strong men of the _London Magazine_, Lamb, Hood, and therest. From his clothes, the _London_ group called him The Green Man; Lamb took a singular interest in him, and was wont to address him as "Clarissimus"

and "Princely Clare." Another most enthusiastic acquaintance was a painter named Rippingille, who had begun life as the son of a farmer at King's Lynn, and who was now thoroughly capable of taking Clare into the most Bohemian corners of London. Suddenly, however, news came from Helpston recalling the poet from these perambulations, and he returned in haste, to find his second daughter born, Eliza Louisa, G.o.d-child of Mrs. Emmerson and Lord Radstock.

At this time, Clare appears to have been writing ballads of a truly rustic sort, perhaps in the light of his universal t.i.tle, The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet. He would now, moreover, collect such old ballads and songs as his father and mother or those who worked with him might chance to sing; but was often disappointed to find that "those who knew fragments seemed ashamed to acknowledge it ... and those who were proud of their knowledge in such things knew nothing but the senseless balderdash that is brawled over and sung at country feasts, statutes, and fairs, where the most senseless jargon pa.s.ses for the greatest excellence, and rudest indecency for the finest wit."

None the less he recovered sufficient material to train himself into the manner of these "old and beautiful recollections." But whatever he might write or edit, he was unlikely to find publishers willing to bring out. The "Village Minstrel" had barely pa.s.sed the first thousand, and the "second edition" was not melting away. Literature after all was not money, and to increase Clare's anxiety and dilemma came illness. In the early months of 1823, he made a journey to Stamford to ask the help of his old friend Gilchrist.