Читать книгу Poems Chiefly from Manuscript - John Clare - Страница 6

During this stay in London, Clare had had proofs that his poems were not completely overlooked. Strangers, recognizing him from the portrait in the "Village Minstrel," often addressed him in the street. In this way he first met Alaric A. Watts, and Henry Behnes, the sculptor, who induced Clare to sit to him. The result was a strong, intensely faithful bust (preserved now in the Northampton Free Library). Hilton, who had painted Clare in water-colours and in oils, celebrated with Behnes and Clare the modelling of this bust, all three avoiding a dinner of lions arranged by Mrs. Emmerson. On another occasion, Clare found a congenial spirit in William Hone.

But now Clare is home at Helpston, ready with a sack of poetry to tramp from house to house and try his luck. Sometimes he dragged himself thirty miles a day, meeting rectors who "held it unbecoming to see poems hawked about": one day, having walked seven milesinto Peterborough, and having sold no books anywhere, he trudged home to find Patty in the pains of labour; and now had to go back to Peterborough as fast as he might for a doctor. Now there were nine living beings dependent on Clare. At length he altered his plan of campaign, and advertised that his poems could be had at his cottage, with some success. About this time Clare was invited to write for "The Spirit of the Age," and still he supplied brief pieces to the hated but unavoidable annuals. Letters too from several towns in East Anglia, summoning John Clare with his bag of books, at least promised him some slight revenue; actually he only went to one of these places, namely Boston, where the mayor gave a banquet in his honour, and enabled him to sell several volumes—autographed. Among the younger men, a similar feast was proposed; but Clare declined, afterwards reproaching himself bitterly on discovering that they had hidden ten pounds in his wallet. On his return home not only himself but the rest of the family in turn fell ill with fever, so that the spring of 1829 found Clare out of work and faced with heavy doctor's-bills.

Intellectually, John Clare was in 1828 and 1829 probably at his zenith. He had ceased long since to play the poetic ploughman; he had gained in his verses something more ardent and stirring than he had shown in the "Shepherd's Calendar"; and the long fight (for it was nothing less) against leading-strings and obstruction now began to manifest itself in poems of regret and of soliloquy. Having long written for others' pleasure, he now wrote for his own nature.

I would not wish the burning blaze

Of fame around a restless world,

The thunder and the storm of praise

In crowded tumults heard and hurled.

There had been few periods of mental repose since 1820. His brain and his poetic genius, by this long discipline and fashioning, were now triumphant together. The declension from this high estate might have been more abrupt but for the change in his fortunes. He had again with gentleness demanded his accounts from his publisher, and when in August, 1829, these accounts actually arrived, disputed several points and gained certain concessions: payment was made from the editors of annuals; and with these reliefs came the chance for him to rent a small farm and to work on the land of Earl Fitzwilliam. His working hours were long, and his mind was forced to be idle. This salutary state of affairs lasted through 1830, until happiness seemed the only possibility before him. What poems he wrote occurred suddenly and simply to him. His children—now six in number—were growing up in more comfort and in more prospect than he had ever enjoyed. But he reckoned not with illness.

In short, illness reduced Clare almost to skin-and-bone. Farming not only added nothing but made encroachment on his small stipend. In despair he flung himself into field labour again, and was carried home nearly dead with fever. Friends there were not wanting to send food and medicine; Parson Mossop, having long ago been converted to Clare, did much for him. Even so the landlord distrained for rent, and Clare applied to his old friend Henderson the botanist at Milton Park. Lord Milton came by and Clare was encouraged to tell him his trouble; his intense phrases and bearing were such that the nobleman at once promised him a new cottage and a plot of ground. At the same time, he expressed his hope that there would soon be another volume of poems by John Clare. This hope was the spark which fired a dangerous train, perhaps; for Clare once again fell into his exhausting habit of poetry all the day and every day. He decided to publish a new volume by subscription.

The new cottage was in the well-orcharded village of Northborough, three miles from Helpston. It was indeed luxurious in comparison with the old stooping house where Clare had spent nearly forty years, but there was more in that old house than mere stone and timber. Clare began to look on the coming change with terror; delayed the move day after day, to the distress of poor Patty; and when at last news came from Milton Park that the Earl was not content with such strange hesitation, and when Patty had her household on the line of march, he "followed in the rear, walking mechanically, with eyes half shut, as if in a dream." There was no delay in his self-expression.

I've left mine own old home of homes,

Green fields and every pleasant place;

The summer like a stranger comes;

I pause and hardly know her face.

I miss the hazel's happy green,

The bluebell's quiet hanging blooms,

Where envy's sneer was never seen,

Where staring malice never comes.

This and many other verses, not the least pathetic in our language, were written by John Clare on June 20th, 1832, on the occasion of his moving out of a small and crowded cottage in a village street to a roomy, romantic farmhouse standing in its own grounds. Was this ingratitude? ask rather, is the dyer's hand subdued to what it works in?

Clare rapidly proceeded with his new collection of poems, destined never to appear in his lifetime. In a thick oblong blank-book, divided into four sections to receive Tales in Verse, Poems, Ballads and Songs, and Sonnets, he copied his best work in a hand small but clear, and with a rare freedom from slips of the pen. His proposals, reprinted with a warm-hearted comment in the Athenaeum of 1832, were in these terms:

The proposals for publishing these fugitives being addressed to friends no further apology is necessary than the plain statement of facts. Necessity is said to be the mother of invention, but there is very little need of invention for truth; and the truth is, that difficulty has grown up like a tree of the forest, and being no longer able to conceal it, I meet it in the best way possible by attempting to publish them for my own benefit and that of a numerous and increasing family. It were false delicacy to make an idle parade of independence in my situation, and it would be unmanly to make a troublesome appeal to favours, public or private, like a public petitioner. Friends neither expect this from me, or wish me to do it to others, though it is partly owing to such advice that I was induced to come forward with these proposals, and if they are successful they will render me a benefit, and if not they will not cancel any obligations that I may have received from friends, public and private, to whom my best wishes are due, and having said this much in furtherance of my intentions, I will conclude by explaining them.

Proposals for publishing in 1 volume, F.c. 8vo, The Midsummer Cushion, or Cottage Poems, by John Clare.

1st. The Book will be printed on fine paper, and published as soon as a sufficient number of subscribers are procured to defray the expense of publishing.

2nd. It will consist of a number of fugitive trifles, some of which have appeared in different periodicals, and of others that have never been published.

3rd. No money is requested until the volume shall be delivered, free of expense, to every subscriber.

4th. The price will not exceed seven shillings and sixpence, and it may not be so much, as the number of pages and the expense of the book will be regulated by the Publisher.

In his new home Clare was for a time troubled with visitors; to most he was aloof, but sometimes he spoke freely of his affairs. One visitor who found him in the communicative mood chanced to be the editor of a magazine, The Alfred. The denials of Clare, frankly given to rumours of his new benefits (variously estimated between two hundred and a thousand a year), were to this gentleman as meat and drink; and The Alfred for October the 5th, 1832, contained a violent manifesto condemning publishers and patrons in the most fiery fashion and apparently inspired by the poet himself. This did his cause much damage, and Clare wrote to the perpetrator in anger: "There never was a more scandalous insult to my feelings than this officious misstatement. … I am no beggar; for my income is Ł36, and though I have had no final settlement with Taylor, I expect to have one directly." Clare ended by demanding a recantation. None was forthcoming, and the effect on patrons and poet was unfortunate indeed. Yet still he could write of himself in this uncoloured style: "I am ready to laugh with you at my own vanity. For I sit sometimes and wonder over the little noise I have made in the world, until I think I have written nothing yet to deserve any praise at all. So the spirit of fame, of living a little after life like a noise on a conspicuous place, urges my blood upward into unconscious melodies; and striding down my orchard and homestead I hum and sing inwardly these little madrigals, and then go in and pen them down, thinking them much better things than they are—until I look over them again. And then the charm vanishes into the vanity that I shall do something better ere I die; and so, in spite of myself, I rhyme on and write nothing but little things at last."

With the gear that Mrs. Emmerson's kindness and activity had provided, Clare kept his garden and ground in order; yet the winter of 1832 was a time of great hardship and foreboding. His youngest son Charles was born on the 4th of January, 1833; the event shook Clare's nerve more terribly perhaps than anything before had done and he went out into the fields. Late in the day his daughter Anna found him lying unconscious, and for a month he had to keep his bed. As if to prove the proverb "It never rains but it pours," subscribers to his new volume hung back, and when spring had come they numbered in all forty-nine. Clare submitted the work to the publishers, great and small, but the best offer that he got depended on his providing in advance Ł100 for the necessary steel engravings. And now Clare lost all his delight in lonely walks, but sitting in his study wrote curious paraphrases of "the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the Book of Job." His manner towards those round him became apathetic and silent. Even the news brought by his doctor—who prescribed Clare to his other patients—that subscribers now were more than two hundred, seemed to sound meaningless in his ears. But even these danger-signs seemed discounted by the self-command and cheerfulness which Clare soon afterwards regained; and ashamed of his misjudgment, Dr. Smith came to the conclusion that he need visit Clare no more. An attack of insanity immediately followed, during which Clare did not know his wife, his children or himself.

From this heavy trance he awoke, bitterly aware of his peril. He wrote at once to Taylor, again and again. "You must excuse my writing; but I feel that if I do not write now I shall not be able. What I wish is to get under Dr. Darling's advice, or to have his advice to go somewhere; for I have not been from home this twelve-month, and cannot get anywhere." … "If I could but go to London, I think I should get better. How would you advise me to come? I dare not come up by myself. Do you think one of my children might go with me? … Thank God my wife and children are all well." Taylor wrote once in mildly sympathetic words, but probably thought that Clare was making much ado about nothing. And here at least was the opportunity for a patron to save a poet from death-in-life for five pounds. Nothing was done, and Clare sat in his study, writing more and more paraphrases of the Old Testament, together with series of sonnets of a grotesque, rustic sort, not resembling any other poems in our language.

The "Midsummer Cushion" had been set aside, but Clare had submitted many of the poems together with hundreds more to Messrs. Whittaker. Largely through the recommendations of Mr. Emmerson, the publishers decided to print a volume from these, picking principally those poems which had already shown themselves respectable by appearing in the annuals. One even written in 1820, "The Autumn Robin," was somehow chosen, to the exclusion of such later poems as "Remembrances" and "The Fallen Elm." With faults like these, the selection was nevertheless a distinctly beautiful book of verse. In March, 1834, Clare definitely received forty pounds for the copyright, and finally in July, 1835, appeared this his last book, "The Rural Muse." Its success was half-hearted, in spite of a magnificent eulogy by Christopher North in Blackwood's, and of downright welcome by the Athenaeum, the New Monthly and other good judges. There was a slow sale for several months, but for Clare there was little chance of new remuneration. This he could regard calmly, for while the book was in the press he had received from the Literary Fund a present of fifty pounds.

Clare's malady slowly increased. The exact history of this decline is almost lost, yet we may well believe that the death of his mother on the 18th of December, 1835, was a day of double blackness for him. The winter over, Patty made a great fight for his reason, and at last persuaded him to go out for walks, which checked the decline. Now he became so passionately fond of being out-of-doors that "he could not be made to stop a single day at home." In one of these roving walks he met his old friend Mrs. Marsh, the wife of the Bishop of Peterborough. A few nights later as her guest he sat in the Peterborough theatre watching the "Merchant of Venice." So vivid was his imagination—for doubtless the strolling players were not in themselves convincing—that he at last began to shout at Shylock and try to attack him on the stage. When Clare returned to Helpston, the change in him terrified his wife. And yet, he rallied and walked the fields, and sitting on the window-seat taught his sons to trim the two yew-trees in his garden into old-fashioned circles and cones. The positive signs of derangement which he had given so far were not after all conclusive. He had seen Mary Joyce pass by, he had spoken to her, occasionally he as a third person had watched and discussed the doings of John Clare and this lost sweetheart. He had surprised one or two people by calling mole-hills mountains. One day, too, at Parson Mossop's house he had suddenly pointed to figures moving up and down. Under these circumstances, a Market Deeping doctor named Skrimshaw certified him mad; and on similar grounds almost any one in the world might be clapped into an asylum.

Hallucinations ceased for a few months, but Mrs. Clare had difficulty in keeping outside interference at bay. Earl Fitzwilliam, in his position of landlord, proposed to send the man who called mole-hills mountains at once to the Northampton Asylum. When the summer came, unfortunately, Clare's mind seemed suddenly to give way, and preparations were being made for his admission to the county Asylum when letters came from Taylor and other old friends in London, proposing to place him in private hands. Clare was taken accordingly on the 16th of July, 1837, to Fair Mead House, Highbeach, in Epping Forest.

Dr. Allen, the mild broad-minded founder of this excellent asylum, had few doubts as to the condition of Clare's mind, and assured him an eventual recovery. As with the fifty other patients, so he dealt with Clare: keeping him away from books, and making him work in the garden and the fields. Poetry, it is said, was made impossible for him, paper being taken away from him; but it is not conceivable that Clare could live apart from this kindest of companions for many months together. Soon he was allowed to go out into the forest at his will, often taking his new acquaintance Thomas Campbell, the son of the poet, on these wood-rambles. His hallucinations do not appear to have diminished, although they changed. He was now convinced that Mary Joyce was his true wife—Patty was his "second wife." He had known William Shakespeare, and many other great ones in person. Why such men as Wordsworth, Campbell and Byron were allowed to steal John Clare's best poems and to publish them as their own, he could not imagine. John Clare was not only noble by nature but by blood also.—On such rumoured eccentricities did the popular notion of his madness rest. It would seem that anything he said was taken down in evidence against him. How dared he be figurative?

On the other hand, Miss Mitford records figurative conversations not so easily explained; his eye-witness's account of the execution of Charles the First, "the most graphic and minute, with an accuracy as to costume and manners far exceeding what would probably have been at his command if sane," and his seaman's narrative of the battle of the Nile and the death of Nelson in exact nautical detail. These imaginations she compares to clairvoyance. Cyrus Redding, who left three accounts of his visit, found him "no longer, as he was formerly, attenuated and pale of complexion … a little man, of muscular frame and firmly set, his complexion fresh and forehead high, a nose somewhat aquiline, and long full chin." "His manner was perfectly unembarrassed, his language correct and fluent; he appeared to possess great candour and openness of mind, and much of the temperament of genius. There was about his manner no tincture of rusticity." Once only during the conversation did Clare betray any aberration, abruptly introducing and abandoning the topic of Prize-fighting, as though "a note had got into a piece of music which had no business there."

Clare told Redding that he missed his wife and his home, the society of women, and books. At last, having been in the private asylum four years, he "returned home out of Essex" on foot, leaving Epping Forest early on July 20, 1841, and dragging himself along almost without pause until July 23. Of this amazing journey he himself wrote an account for "Mary Clare," which is printed in full in Martin's "Life": it is both in style and in subject an extraordinary document. The first night, he says, "I lay down with my head towards the north, to show myself the steering-point in the morning." On "the third day I satisfied my hunger by eating the grass on the roadside which seemed to taste something like bread. I was hungry and eat heartily till I was satisfied; in fact, the meal seemed to do me good." And "there was little to notice, for the road very often looked as stupid as myself." At last between Peterborough and Helpston "a cart met me, with a man, a woman and a boy in it. When nearing me the woman jumped out, and caught fast hold of my hands, and wished me to get into the cart. But I refused; I thought her either drunk or mad. But when I was told it was my second wife, Patty, I got in, and was soon at Northborough."

Rest and home somewhat restored Clare's mind, and it was Patty's hope and aim to keep him in his cottage. Though she attempted to keep paper from him he contrived to write verse paraphrases of the prophetical books, sometimes putting in between a song to Mary or a stanza of nature poetry. At the end of August, round the edges of a local newspaper he wrote the draft of a letter to Dr. Allen, of Highbeach, which in the almost complete absence of documents for this period is an important expression: