DISCOVERY 



199 



ing, called the " Blue Bell," where he worked for a 

 year under a gentle master. He was next apprenticed 

 in the gardens of Burghley ; escaped from the brutali- 

 ties of his elders to a nursery-garden at Newark-upon- 

 Trent ; ran away home, was drawn into the militia 

 that proposed to drive out invading Napoleon, and 

 after a few weeks of organised yahooism was relieved 

 to find himself disbanded. He was now twenty, could 

 write verses and play the vioHn, had lost his heart (or 

 head) once or twice, and earned his living as comfort- 

 ably as he could. At twenty-four, he was one day on 

 his way from the lodging-house, where he and other 

 lime-burners lodged, to the " Flower Pot " at Ticken- 

 cote, when he met his wife-to-be, Patty Turner. Almost 

 at the same time, to meet a debt, he launched a pros- 

 pectus for publishing Original Trifles on Miscellaneous 

 Subjects, Religious and Moral. In the course of a few 

 weeks he had deeply offended Patty, and also lost his 

 work by reason of his distributing the prospectus when 

 he should have been burning lime. The only future 

 seemed to lie in the industrial revival in Yorkshire or 

 the artillery ; but luck turned, and his prospectus 

 came to the notice of John Taylor, who was publishing 

 the poems of Keats. 



In brief, Taylor produced Clare's first book in 

 January 1820, and the metropolis recognised, if not 

 a new poet, at least a new lion. By the end of March 

 the book was in its fourth edition, and Clare had visited 

 town to find a song of his being sung at Co vent Garden 

 by Vestris herself, and admiration at every turn. He 

 returns to Helpston, marries Patty, and is provided 

 by his patrons with an income of, at first, ^45 a year. 



The story now takes its obvious course. Fashion 

 speedily wearies, and the glare of fame fades from Clare 

 year by 3'ear, though he writes finer poetry and makes 

 friends with Lamb, Hood, and other men of genius. 

 Other friends disappoint him ; " I mistook," he says 

 in 1829, " Collins' Ready Reckoner for A Treatise on 

 Friendship." His family grows apace, and illness 

 comes to breed debt and despair. In 1832 he leaves 

 his old home for a farmhouse in the village of North- 

 borough, increasing his physical comfort and his mental 

 discomfort at once ; in 1832, he sees once again — and 

 I believe for the last time — his guardian spirit, " a 

 beautiful presence, a woman deity." " The first dream 

 in which she appeared to me was when I had not written 

 a line." Meanwhile, Clare is slaving as cottage-farmer 

 and fighting with mental overstrain. 



His last and best book, the Rural Muse, was published 

 in 1835 ; it failed. He grew more melancholy and 

 solitary, puzzled folks more with his strange imagina- 

 tions, until he was judged out of his mind. He was 

 sent to a private asylum near Epping. Four years 

 afterwards, in July 1841, he broke away and reached 

 home on foot after a terrible journey. His courage 



availed him little ; his insanity was certified " after 

 years addicted to poetical prosings," and on December 29, 

 1841, he was finally shut up in the county asylum at 

 Northampton. 



The record of the last twenty-two years is one of 

 " deep melancholy " (not unintelligible), of constant 

 meditation and poetry, of kindly but uncomprehending 

 interest from those about him, and of conversations 

 with the spirit of Mary—" and every song I write has 

 some sighs and wishes in ink for Mary." He still 

 mystified his acquaintances with liis deliberate hallu- 

 cinations, and with his pipe, a pencil, and paper could 

 always be " miserably happy." At last he waited 

 calmly for death, saying often, " I have lived too long " 

 and " I want to go home " ; and when death came, it 

 was in a sleep that he found freedom after so many 

 years. 



Clare died on May 20, 1864, and a few memoirs re- 

 minded magazine readers of the curious enthusiasm of 

 1820 for the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet. Ob- 

 livion had veiled him, more surely than asylum walls, 

 for so long that these memoirs seemed only the last 

 words of a weary tale. But in the following year there 

 appeared a biography of the poet by his ardent admirer 

 Frederick Martin, Carlyle's secretary, which aroused 

 attention. Martin, however, was afflicted with an 

 exuberant fancy, and his work, for all its enthusiasm, 

 is better described as a novel. The book had a 

 moderate sale ; then nine years afterwards a Northamp- 

 ton journalist named Cherry produced a Life and 

 Remains, which was included in the Chandos Classics. 

 Cherry brought the giftof caution to his work, exercising 

 it too zealously in his choice of Clare's Asylum Poems, 

 though not in revising their text. His book had its 

 audience ; but apathy reasserted itself, and Clare 

 seemed doomed to a line in literary histories and a 

 niche among literary curiosities. 1908 found him 

 practically unknown and unregarded, when Mr. Arthur 

 Symons put forth his volume of selections, with an 

 introduction of careless biography blended with subtle 

 and delightful criticism. 



Mr. Symons had had the good luck to come upon 

 two volumes of poems in John Clare's handwriting, 

 from one of which he selected several sonnets and 

 longer pieces of great beauty. He at the same time 

 regretted that he had not discovered the Asylum manu- 

 scripts. These two facts induced Mr. Alan Porter and 

 the present writer to take up a fresh search ; and, not 

 unnaturally, they discovered that there existed at 

 Peterborough a large collection of Clare's miscellaneous 

 papers. These yielded a rich harvest. It is sufficient 

 to say that they include a volume known as the 

 Midsummer Cushion, which comprises the prime of 

 Clare's poetry before 1S35 ; a folio bound in vellum 

 containing many poems of various dates and in special 



