Читать книгу The Life of John Clare - Frederick Martin - Страница 4

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On the borders of the Lincolnshire fens, half-way between Stamford and Peterborough, stands the little village of Helpston. One Helpo, a so-called 'stipendiary knight,' but of whom the old chronicles know nothing beyond the bare title, exercised his craft here in the Norman age, and left his name sticking to the marshy soil. But the ground was alive with human craft and industry long before the Norman knights came prancing into the British Isles. A thousand years before the time of stipendiary Helpo, the Romans built in this neighbourhood their Durobrivae, which station must have been of great importance, judging from the remains, not crushed by the wreck of twenty centuries. Old urns, and coins bearing the impress of many emperors, from Trajan to Valens, are found everywhere below ground, while above the Romans left a yet nobler memento of their sojourn in the shape of good roads. Except the modern iron highways, these old Roman roads form still the chief means of intercommunication at this border of the fen regions. For many generations after Durobrivae had been deserted by the imperial legions, the country went downward in the scale of civilization. Stipendiary and other unhappy knights came in shoals; monks and nuns settled in swarms, like crows, upon the fertile marsh lands; but the number of labouring hands began to decrease as acre after acre got into the possession of mail-clad barons and mitred abbots. The monks, too, vanished in time, as well as the fighting knights; yet the face of the land remained silent and deserted, and has remained so to the present moment. The traveller from the north can see, for thirty miles over the bleak and desolate fen regions, the stately towers of Burleigh Hall—but can see little else beside. All the country, as far as eye can reach, is the property of two or three noble families, dwelling in turreted halls; while the bulk of the population, the wretched tillers of the soil, live, as of old, in mud hovels, in the depth of human ignorance and misery. An aggregate of about a hundred of these hovels, each containing, on the average, some four living beings, forms the village of Helpston. The place, in all probability, is still very much of the same outer aspect which it bore in the time of Helpo, the mystic stipendiary knight.

Helpston consists of two streets, meeting at right angles, the main thoroughfare being formed by the old Roman road from Durobrivae to the north, now full of English mud, and passing by the name of Long Ditch, or High Street. At the meeting of the two streets stands an ancient cross, of octangular form, with crocketed pinnacles, and not far from it, on slightly rising ground, is the parish church, a somewhat unsightly structure, of all styles of architecture, dedicated to St. Botolph. Further down stretch, in unbroken line, the low huts of the farm labourers, in one of which, lying on the High Street, John Clare was born, on the 13th July, 1793. John Clare's parents were among the poorest of the village, as their little cottage was among the narrowest and most wretched of the hundred mud hovels. Originally, at the time when the race of peasant-proprietors had not become quite extinct, a rather roomy tenement, it was broken up into meaner quarters by subsequent landlords, until at last the one house formed a rookery of not less than four human dwellings. In this fourth part of a hut lived the father and mother of John, old Parker Clare and his wife. Poor as were their neighbours, they were poorer than the rest, being both weak and in ill health, and partly dependent upon charity. The very origin of Parker Clare's family was founded in misery and wretchedness. Some thirty years previous to the birth of John, there came into Helpston a big, swaggering fellow, of no particular home, and, as far as could be ascertained, of no particular name: a wanderer over the earth, passing himself off, now for an Irishman, and now for a Scotchman. He had tramped over the greater part of Europe, alternately fighting and playing the fiddle; and being tired awhile of tramping, and footsore and thirsty withal, he resolved to settle for a few weeks, or months, at the quiet little village. The place of schoolmaster happened to be vacant, perhaps had been vacant for years; and the villagers were overjoyed when they heard that this noble stranger, able to play the fiddle, and to drink a gallon of beer at a sitting, would condescend to teach the A B C to their children. So 'Master Parker,' as the great unknown called himself for the nonce, was duly installed schoolmaster of Helpston: The event, taking place sometime about the commencement of the reign of King George the Third, marks the first dawn of the family history of John Clare.

The tramping schoolmaster had not been many days in the village before he made the acquaintance of a pretty young damsel, daughter of the parish-clerk. She came daily to wind the church clock, and for this purpose had to pass through the schoolroom, where sat Master Parker, teaching the A B C and playing the fiddle at intervals. He was as clever with his tongue as with his fiddlestick, the big schoolmaster; and while helping the sweet little maiden to wind the clock in the belfry, he told her wonderful tales of his doings in foreign lands, and of his travels through many countries. And now the old, old story, as ancient as the hills, was played over again once more. It was no very difficult task for the clever tramp to win the heart of the poor village girl; and the rest followed as may be imagined. When spring and summer was gone, and the cold wind came blowing over the fen, the poor little thing told her lover that she was in the way of becoming a mother, and, with tears in her eyes, entreated him to make her his wife. He promised to do so, the tramping schoolmaster; but early the next day he left the village, never to return. Then there was bitter lamentation in the cottage of the parish-clerk; and before the winter was gone, the poor man's daughter brought into the world a little boy, whom she gave her own family name, together with the prefixed one of the unworthy father. Such was the origin of Parker Clare.

What sort of existence this poor son of a poor mother went through, is easily told. Education he had none; of joys of childhood he knew nothing; even his daily allowance of coarse food was insufficient. He thus grew up, weak and in ill-health; but with a cheerful spirit nevertheless. Parker Clare knew more songs than any boy in the village, and his stock of ghost stories and fairy tales was quite inexhaustible. When grown into manhood, and yet not feeling sufficiently strong for the harder labours of the field, he took service as a shepherd, and was employed by his masters to tend their flocks in the neighbourhood, chiefly in the plains north of the village, known as Helpston Heath. In this way, he became acquainted with the herdsman of the adjoining township of Castor, a man named John Stimson, whose cattle was grazing right over the walls of ancient Durobrivae. John Stimson's place was taken, now and then, by his daughter Ann—an occurrence not unwelcome to Parker Clare; and while the sheep were grazing on the borders of Helpo's Heath, and the cattle seeking for sorrel and clover over the graves of Trajan's warriors, the young shepherd and shepherdess talked sweet things to each other, careless of flocks and herds, of English knights and Roman emperors. So it came that one morning Ann told her father that she had promised to marry Parker Clare. Old John Stimson thought it a bad match: 'when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window,' he said, fortified by the wisdom of two score ten. But when was ever such wisdom listened to at eighteen!

The girl resolved to marry her lover with or without leave; and as for Parker Clare, he needed no permission, his mother, dependent for years upon the cold charity of the workhouse, having long ceased to control his doings. Thus it followed that in the autumn of 1792, when Robespierre was ruling France, and William Pitt England, young Parker Clare was married to Ann Stimson of Castor. Seven months after, on the 13th day of July, 1793, Parker Clare's wife was delivered, prematurely, of twins, a boy and a girl. The girl was healthy and strong; but the boy looked weak and sickly in the extreme. It seemed not possible that the boy could live, therefore the mother had him baptized immediately, calling him John, after her father. However, human expectations were not verified in the twin children; the strong girl died in early infancy, while the sickly boy lived—lived to be a poet.

Of Poeta nascitur non fit there never was a truer instance than in the case of John Clare. Impossible to imagine circumstances and scenes apparently more adverse to poetic inspiration than those amidst which John Clare was placed at his birth. His parents were the poorest of the poor; their whole aim of life being engrossed by the one all-absorbing desire to gain food for their daily sustenance. They lived in a narrow wretched hut, low and dark, more like a prison than a human dwelling; and the hut stood in a dark, gloomy plain, covered with stagnant pools of water, and overhung by mists during the greater part of the year. Yet from out these surroundings sprang a being to whom all life was golden, and all nature a breath of paradise. John Clare was a poet almost as soon as he awoke to consciousness. His young mind marvelled at all the wonderful things visible in the wide world: the misty sky, the green trees, the fish in the water, and the birds in the air. In all the things around him the boy saw nothing but endless, glorious beauty; his whole mind was filled with a deep sense of the infinite marvels of the living world. Though but in poor health, the parents were never able to keep little John at home. He trotted the lifelong day among the meadows and fields, watching the growth of herbs and flowers, the chirping of insects, the singing of birds, and the rustling of leaves in the air. One day, when still very young, the sight of the distant horizon, more than usually defined in sharp outline, brought on a train of contemplation. A wild yearning to see what was to be seen yonder, where the sky was touching the earth, took hold of him, and he resolved to explore the distant, unknown region. He could not sleep a wink all night for eager expectation, and at the dawn of the day the next morning started on his journey, without saying a word to either father or mother. It was a hot day in June, the air close and sultry, with gossamer mists hanging thick over the stagnant pools and lakes. The little fellow set out without food on his long trip, fearful of being retained by his watchful parents. Onward he trotted, mile after mile, towards where the horizon seemed nearest; and it was a long while before he found that the sky receded the further he went. At last he sank down from sheer exhaustion, hungry and thirsty, and utterly perplexed as to where he should go. Some labourers in the fields, commiserating the forlorn little wanderer, gave him a crust of bread, and started him on his home journey. It was late at night when he returned to Helpston, where he found his parents in the greatest anxiety, and had to endure a severe punishment for his romantic excursion. Little John Clare did not mind the beating; but a long while after felt sad and sore at heart to have been unable to find the hoped-for country where heaven met earth.

The fare of agricultural labourers in these early days of John Clare was much worse than at the present time. Potatoes and water-porridge constituted the ordinary daily food of people in the position of Clare's parents, and they thought themselves happy when able to get a piece of wheaten bread, with perhaps a small morsel of pork, on Sundays. At this height of comfort, however, Parker Clare and his wife seldom arrived. Sickly from his earliest childhood, Parker Clare had never been really able to perform the work required of him, though using his greatest efforts to do so. A few years after marriage, his infirmities increased to such an extent that he was compelled to seek relief from the parish, and henceforth he remained more or less a pauper for life. Notwithstanding this low position, Parker Clare did not cease to care for the well-being of his family, and, by the greatest privations on his own part, managed to send his son to an infant school. The school in question was kept by a Mrs. Bullimore, and of the most primitive kind. In the winter time, all the little ones were crowded together in a narrow room; but as soon as the weather got warm, the old dame turned them out into the yard, where the whole troop squatted down on the ground. The teaching of Mrs. Bullimore did not make much impression upon little John, except a slight fact which she accidentally told him, and which took such firm hold of his imagination that he remembered it all his life. There was a white-thorn tree in the school-yard, of rather large size, and the ancient schoolmistress told John that she herself, when young, had planted the tree, having carried the root from the fields in her pocket. The story struck the boy as something marvellous; it was to him a sort of revelation of nature, a peep into the mysteries of creation at the works of which he looked with feelings of unutterable amazement, not unmixed with awe. But there was little else that Mrs. Bullimore could teach John Clare, either in her schoolroom or in the yard. The instruction of the good old woman was, in the main, confined to two things—the initiation into the difficulties of A B C, and the reading from two books, of which she was the happy possessor. These books were 'The Death of Abel' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Their contents did not stir any thoughts or imaginings in little John, whose mind was filled entirely with the pictures of nature.

When John Clare had reached his seventh year, he was taken away from the dame-school, and sent out to tend sheep and geese on Helpston Heath. The change was a welcome one to him, for, save the mysterious white-thorn tree, there was nothing at school to attract him. Helpston Heath, on the other hand, furnished what seemed to him a real teacher. While tending his geese, John came into daily contact with Mary Bains, an ancient lady, filling the dignified post of cowherd of the village, and driving her cattle into the pastures annually from May-day unto Michaelmas. She was an extraordinary old creature, this Mary Bains, commonly known as Granny Bains. Having spent almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold, storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the signs foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. To John, old Granny Bains soon took a great liking, he being a devout listener, ready to sit at her feet for hours and hours while she was warbling her little ditties, alternately merry and plaintive. Sometimes the singing had such an effect that both the ancient songstress and her young admirer forgot their duties over it. Then, when the cattle went straying into the pond, and the geese were getting through the corn, Granny Bains would suddenly cease singing, and snatching up her snuff-box, hobble across the fields in wild haste, with her two dogs at her side as respectful aides-de-camp, and little John bringing up the rear. But though often disturbed in the enjoyment of those delightful recitations, they nevertheless sunk deep into John Clare's mind, until he found himself repeating all day long the songs he had heard, and even in his dreams kept humming—

'There sat two ravens upon a tree,

Heigh down, derry, O!

There sat two ravens upon a tree,

As deep in love as he and she.'

It was thus that the admiration of poetry first awoke in Parker Clare's son, roused by the songs of Granny Bains, the cowherd of Helpston.