John Clare | |
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 John Clare byWilliam Hilton, oil on canvas, 1820 | |
| Born | (1793-07-13)13 July 1793 Helpston,Northamptonshire, England |
| Died | 20 May 1864(1864-05-20) (aged 70) Northampton,Northamptonshire, England |
| Genre | Rural |
| Notable works | Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery |
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John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and his sorrows at its disruption.[1] His work underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th century; he is now often seen as a major 19th-century poet.[2] His biographerJonathan Bate called Clare "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self."[3]
Clare was born inHelpston, 6 miles (10 km) to the north of the city ofPeterborough,[4] on 13 July 1793. He was the elder of twins, but his twin sister died in infancy.[5] In his lifetime, the village was in theSoke of Peterborough in Northamptonshire and his memorial calls him "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet". Helpston is now part of theCity of Peterboroughunitary authority.
Clare became an agricultural labourer while still a child, but attended school inGlinton church until he was 12. In his early adult years, Clare became apotboy in The Blue Bell public house and fell in love with Mary Joyce, but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade them to meet. Later, Clare was a gardener atBurghley House.[6] He enlisted in themilitia, tried camp life withGypsies, and worked inPickworth, Rutland, as alime burner in 1817. In the following year, he was obliged to acceptparish relief.[7][8] Malnutrition stemming from childhood may have been the main factor behind his five-foot (1.5 m) stature and contributed to his poor physical health in later life.
Clare had bought a copy ofJames Thomson'sThe Seasons and began to write poems and sonnets. In an attempt to hold off his parents' eviction from their home, Clare offered his poems to a local bookseller, Edward Drury, who sent them to his cousin,John Taylor of the Taylor & Hessey firm, which had published the work ofJohn Keats. Taylor published Clare'sPoems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery in 1820. The book was highly praised and the next year hisVillage Minstrel and Other Poems appeared.[7] "There was no limit to the applause bestowed upon Clare, unanimous in their admiration of a poetical genius coming before them in the humble garb of a farm labourer."[9]
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On 16 March 1820, Clare married Martha ("Patty") Turner, amilkmaid, in theChurch of St Peter and St Paul inGreat Casterton.[10] An annuity of 15guineas from theMarquess of Exeter, in whose service he had been, was supplemented by subscription, so that Clare gained £45 a year, a sum far beyond what he had ever earned. Soon, however, his income became insufficient and in 1823 he was nearly penniless.The Shepherd's Calendar (1827) met with little success, which was not increased by hishawking it himself. As he worked again in the fields, his health temporarily improved; but he soon became seriously ill.Earl Fitzwilliam presented him with a new cottage and a piece of ground, but Clare could not settle down.[7]
Clare was constantly torn between the two worlds of literary London and his often illiterate neighbours, between a need to write poetry and a need for money to feed and clothe his children. His health began to suffer and he had bouts of depression, which worsened after his sixth child was born in 1830 and as his poetry sold less well. In 1832, his friends and London patrons clubbed together to move the family to a larger cottage with asmallholding in the village ofNorthborough, not far from Helpston. However, he only felt more alienated there.
Clare's last work, theRural Muse (1835), was noticed favourably byChristopher North and other reviewers, but its sales were not enough to support his wife and seven children. Clare's mental health began to worsen. His alcohol consumption steadily increased along with dissatisfaction with his own identity and more erratic behaviour. A notable instance was his interruption of a performance ofThe Merchant of Venice, in which Clare verbally assaultedShylock. He was becoming a burden to Patty and his family, and in July 1837, on the recommendation of his publishing friend, John Taylor, Clare went of his own volition (accompanied by a friend of Taylor's) to Dr Matthew Allen's private asylumHigh Beach nearLoughton, inEpping Forest. Taylor had assured Clare that he would receive the best medical care.
Clare was reported as being "full of many strange delusions". He believed himself to be aprize fighter and that he had two wives, Patty and Mary. He started to claim he wasLord Byron. Allen wrote about Clare toThe Times in 1840:
It is most singular that ever since he came... the moment he gets pen or pencil in hand he begins to write most poetical effusions. Yet he has never been able to obtain in conversation, nor even in writing prose, the appearance of sanity for two minutes or two lines together, and yet there is no indication of insanity in any of his poetry.[11]
Clare was anAnglican.[12][13] Whatever he may have felt about liturgy and ministry, and however critical an eye he may have cast on parish life, Clare retained and replicated his father's loyalty to theChurch of England.[14] He dodged services in his youth and dawdled in the fields during the hours of worship, but he derived much help in later years from members of the clergy. He acknowledged that his father "was brought up in the communion of the Church of England, and I have found no cause to withdraw myself from it." If he found aspects of the established church uncongenial and awkward, he remained prepared to defend it: "Still I reverence the church and do from my soul as much as anyone curse the hand that's lifted to undermine its constitution."[15]
Much of Clare's imagery was drawn from theOld Testament (e.g. "The Peasant Poet"). However, Clare also honours the figure ofChrist in poems such as "The Stranger".[16]
During his early asylum years inHigh Beach, Essex (1837–1841),[17] Clare re-wrote poems and sonnets byLord Byron.Child Harold, his version of Byron'sChilde Harold's Pilgrimage, became a lament for past lost love, andDon Juan, A Poem an acerbic, misogynistic, sexualised rant redolent of an ageing dandy.[citation needed] Clare also took credit forShakespeare's plays, claiming to be him. "I'm John Clare now," the poet told a newspaper editor, "I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly."[18]
In July 1841, Clare absconded from the asylum in Essex and walked some 80 miles (130 km) home, believing he was to meet his first love Mary Joyce, to whom he was convinced he was married.[19] He did not believe her family when they told him she had died accidentally three years earlier in a house fire. He remained free, mostly at home in Northborough, for the five months following, but eventually Patty called the doctors.
Between Christmas and New Year, 1841, Clare was committed to Northampton General Lunatic Asylum (nowSt Andrew's Hospital).[20] On his arrival at the asylum, the accompanying doctor,Fenwick Skrimshire, having treated Clare since 1820,[21] completed the admission papers. Asked, "Was the insanity preceded by any severe or long-continued mental emotion or exertion?" Skrimshire entered: "After years of poetical prosing."[22]
His maintenance at the asylum was paid for byEarl Fitzwilliam, "but at the ordinary rate for poor people".[23] He remained there for the rest of his life under the humane regime ofThomas Octavius Prichard, who encouraged and helped him to write. Here he wrote possibly his most famous poem, "I Am".[24] It was in this later poetry that Clare "developed a very distinctive voice, an unmistakable intensity and vibrance, such as the later pictures ofVan Gogh" possessed.[1]
John Clare died of a stroke on 20 May 1864, in his 71st year.[23] His remains were returned to Helpston for burial in St Botolph's churchyard, where he had expressed a wish to be buried.[23]
On Clare's birthday, children at the John Clare School, Helpston's primary, parade through the village and place their "midsummer cushions" around his gravestone, which bears the inscriptions "To the Memory of John Clare The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" and "A Poet is Born not Made".[25]
In his time, Clare was commonly known as "theNorthamptonshire Peasant Poet". His formal education was brief, his other employment and class origins lowly. Clare resisted the use of the increasingly standardised English grammar andorthography in his poetry and prose, alluding to political reasoning in comparing "grammar" (in a wider sense of orthography) to tyrannical government and slavery, personifying it in jocular fashion as a "bitch".[26] He wrote in Northamptonshire dialect, introducing local words to the literary canon such as "pooty" (snail), "lady-cow" (ladybird), "crizzle" (to crisp) and "throstle" (song thrush).
In early life, he struggled to find a place for his poetry in the changing literary fashions of the day. He also felt that he did not belong with other peasants. As Clare once wrote:
"I live here among the ignorant like a lost man in fact like one whom the rest seemes careless of having anything to do with—they hardly dare talk in my company for fear I should mention them in my writings and I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbours who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose."
It is common to see an absence of punctuation in Clare's original writings, although many publishers felt the need to remedy this in most of his work. Clare argued with his editors about how it should be presented to the public.
Clare grew up in a time of massive changes in town and countryside as theIndustrial Revolution swept Europe. Many former agricultural and craft workers, including children, moved from the countryside to crowded cities, as factory work mechanized. TheAgricultural Revolution saw pastures ploughed up, trees and hedges uprooted, fens drained and commonsenclosed. This destruction of an ancient way of life distressed Clare. His political and social views were mainly conservative. ("I am as far as my politics reaches 'King and Country' – no Innovations in Religion and Government say I.") He refused even to complain of the subordinate position to which English society had placed him, swearing that "with the old dish that was served to my forefathers I am content."[27]
His early work expresses delight in nature and the cycle of the rural year. Poems such as "Winter Evening", "Haymaking" and "Wood Pictures in Summer" mark the beauty of the world and the certainties of rural life, where animals must be fed and crops harvested. Poems such as "Little Trotty Wagtail" show his sharp observation of wildlife, though "The Badger" shows a lack of sentiment about the place of animals in the countryside. At this time he often used poetic forms such as the sonnet and the rhyming couplet. His later poetry tends to be more meditative and use forms similar to the folk songs and ballads of his youth. An example of this is "Evening".
Clare's knowledge of the natural world went far beyond that of the majorRomantic poets. However, poems such as "I Am" show ametaphysical depth parallel with his contemporary poets and many of his pre-asylum poems deal with intricate play on the nature of linguistics. His "bird's nest poems", it can be argued, display the self-awareness and obsession with the creative process that captivated the romantics. Clare was the most influential poet, apart fromWordsworth, to prefer an older style.[28]
In a foreword to the 2011 anthologyThe Poetry of Birds, the broadcaster and bird-watcher Tim Dee notes that Clare wrote about 147 species of British wild birds "without any technical kit whatsoever".[29]
The only Clare essay to appear in his lifetime was "Popularity of Authorship", which described anonymously his predicament in 1824.[30][31] Other essays by Clare to appear posthumously were "Essays on Landscape", "Essays on Criticism and Fashion", "Recollections on a Journey from Essex", "Excursions with an Angler", "For Essay on Modesty and Mock Morals", "For Essay on Industry", "Keats", "Byron", "The Dream", "House or Window Flies" and "Dewdrops".[32]
Clare was relatively forgotten in the later 19th century, but interest in his work was revived byArthur Symons in 1908,Edmund Blunden in 1920 and John andAnne Tibble in their ground-breaking 1935 two-volume edition, while in 1949Geoffrey Grigson editedPoems of John Clare's Madness (published byRoutledge and Kegan Paul).Benjamin Britten set some of "May" fromA Shepherd's Calendar in hisSpring Symphony of 1948 and included a setting ofThe Evening Primrose in hisFive Flower Songs.
Copyright on much of his work was claimed after 1965 by Professor Eric Robinson, the editor of theComplete Poetry,[33] but this has been contested. Some publishers such asFaber andCarcanet Press refused to acknowledge it.[34][35] Robinson died in 2019 and neither his widow nor his literary agent maintain his claim to own the copyright.[36]
The largest collection of original Clare manuscripts is held atPeterborough Museum and Art Gallery, where items are available to view by appointment. Other Clare papers are in public libraries in Northampton and New York.[36]
Altering what Clare actually wrote continued into the later 20th century.Helen Gardner, for instance, amended both the punctuation and the spelling and grammar when editing theNew Oxford Book of English Verse 1250–1950 (1972).
Since 1993, the John Clare Society of North America has organised an annual session of scholarly papers concerning John Clare at the annual Convention of theModern Language Association of America.[37] In 2003 the scholarJonathan Bate published the first major critical biography of Clare, which helped to keep up the revival in popular and academic interest.[38]
The thatched cottage where Clare was born was bought by the John Clare Trust in 2005.[39] In May 2007, the Trust gained £1.27 million of funding from theHeritage Lottery Fund and commissionedJefferson Sheard Architects to create a new landscape design and visitor centre, including a cafe, shop and exhibition area. The cottage at 12 Woodgate, Helpston, has been restored using traditional building methods and is open to the public. In 2013, the John Clare Trust received a further grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help preserve the building and provide educational activities for youngsters visiting it.[40]
In chronological order:
In chronological order:
Clare's father was, according to Clare, a 'noted singer', and Clare himself played the fiddle and collected folk songs and tunes.[49] Regarding his fiddle-playing ability, he described himself as "a decent scraper",[50] and collected over two hundred folk tunes in two books, theNorthampton Manuscripts Nos. 12 and 13.[51]
As well as collecting folk tunes, Clare also collected many folk songs which are recorded in theNorthampton Manuscript No. 18, and thePeterborough Manuscripts B4 and B7. According to George Deacon,[49] theNorthampton Manuscript No. 18 contains "more polished and refined versions" of songs which were originally written up in a rougher form in the twoPeterborough Manuscripts, B4 and B7. Deacon's research led him to view the two Peterborough manuscripts as more authentic, inasmuch as they showed, "less conscious interference from the poet in Clare" than the versions of the songs in the Northampton manuscript.[49]
Since Clare's death, many of his poems have been set to music by classical composers, and, more recently, by contemporary singer/songwriters working in the acoustic and folk genres. However, at least one of Clare's poems was set to music in his lifetime, although Clare arrived in London too late to attend the performance. According to Professor Simon Kövesi, "The Meeting ... [was] Clare's first poem to be set to music and performed on stage. The performance by singerMadame Vestris was at Drury Lane Theatre on 19 February 1820; the song was threaded into the pasticcio operaThe Siege of Belgrade. Clare just missed the show, arriving in London for his first visit to the capital a short while after. Clare wrote that 'on the night we got into London it was announcd [sic] in the Play Bills that a song of mine was to be sung at Covent Garden by Madam Vestris and we was to have gone but it was too late. I felt uncommonly pleasd [sic] at the circumstance'."[52]
TheCatalogue of the John Clare Collection in the Northampton Public Library with Indexes to the Poems in Manuscript was compiled by David Powell and published by the County Borough of Northampton, Public Libraries, Museums and Art Gallery Committee in 1964. Included in the catalogue are the two books of folk tunes (MSS 12 & 13) and the book of folk songs (MSS 18).
Catalogue entry reads:
"A small oblong music book of song and dance tunes, inscribed on p.1 'John Clare / Helpstone / 1818' and entitled on p.3A Collection / of Songs / Airs and Dances / For the Violin.
3¾" × 6¼", 82 pp., red quarter-leather with marbled boards.
Contents consist of eighty-eight titles, but the tunes are without words and directions. The titles are noted down in Clare's hand. This is No. 109 in the Peterborough Centenary Catalogue."[51]
Catalogue entry reads:
"An oblong music book of song and dance tunes. Undated.
5¾″ × 9½″, 56 pp., blue paper covers.
Contents consist of 180 titles. Directions for some of the country dances are given in abbreviated form, but the only words given are those forBlack Ey'd Susan and Dibdin'sThe Sailors Journal. The titles are noted down in Clare's hand. A few fragmentary lines of verse are scribbled inside the back cover. This is No. 108 in the Peterborough Centenary Catalogue."[51]
Catalogue entry reads:
"A small oblong notebook, entitledOld Songs & Ballads, which Clare was using in 1827–8.
4″ × 6¼″, 34 pp. (+146 blank), worn brown half-calf with marbled boards.
The introduction begins: 'I commenced sometime ago with an intention of making a collection of old Ballads...', and contents includeJohn Randall, The Maidens Welcome, The False Knights Tradegy, Loves Riddles, Banks of Ivory, etc. There is an additional poem,Round Oak, in pencil and several of the blank pages at the end contain traces of pencil writing which has been erased. This is No. 98 in the Peterborough Centenary Catalogue."[51]
in chronological order:
in chronological order:
in chronological order:
in chronological order:
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Clare, John".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 424–425.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link)...and most surprising perhaps is a staunch 'I Am' (Kevin Coyne recorded an expressive setting of this poem on his 1978 album Dynamite Daze)...
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