On
the 16th July, whilst many were still at the Society’s
Festival, Jeremy Corbyn quoted John Clare at Tolpuddle festival:
"Inclosure came and trampled on the
grave
Of labour's rights and left the poor a
slave …
And birds and trees and flowers without a
name /
All sighed when lawless law's enclosure
came."
Even
in 2017, without doubt, Clare is as
relevant as ever. Here are the lines
from his 1820 collection "Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and
Scenery" that his publisher had expunged from the book in the Second and
subsequent editions, MUCH to Clare's annoyance:
"Accursed wealth oer bounding human
laws
Of every evil thou remains the cause
Victims of want those wretches such
as me
Too truly lay their wretchedness to
thee
Thou art the bar that keeps from
being fed
& thine our loss of labour &
of bread
Thou art the cause that levels every
tree
& woods bow down to clear a way
for thee "
‘Accursed Wealth’ –
those two words echo down the generations for any student of Clare, whether
scholar or simply a reader of the great poet’s work. Right from the early poems that have come
down to us, we find in Clare an honesty that is often painful to observe. We all know that here was a man born in
grinding poverty but perhaps because of naivety, roundly cheated by his
publishers of much of his earnings:
"& tho I know
I am cheated such is the cunning of
avarice [that] like the tricks of a conjuror
it defies detection"
It is hardly surprising that Clare was personally affronted by the
actions of those who should have been acting on his behalf. As he appended to one ‘financial’ statement
from Drury and Taylor:
"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."
Clare had not befitted by these sales by a
single penny. All this simply cemented his long-held belief
that, in the words of his essay ‘Apology for the Poor:
“Every restraint now
adays is laid on poverty & every liberty is given to luxury (…) every
nessesary article with the poor is taxed & every luxury with the rich goes
riot free”
For Clare all this is cemented into to place in his mind by the
evidence of the enclosure around Helpston.
Clare’s poetic response to the
dramatic transformations in society of the time provides a unique, eye-witness
account of the impact these changes had on the people who were their
victims. The only voice, of a rural
working man and victim of the enclosures, that we have. Read Clare for yourself and will get a very
good idea of what the ordinary labourer thought.
“They
give me eight pence by the day
&
make it up at night
With
six pence worth of parish pay
&
can ye call it right
Nay
they have stopt me when Ive gone
To
take that weight away
&
backed deceptions wrong
To
take your gains away”
“Accursed Wealth” is the 5th
Chapbook in the series, and is to be published on the 4th September. It is
available from me for £4 including P&P.
Email me at arborfield@pm.me for more details, or leave a message below.
--- oOo ---
Posts
