Anna Maria, born 2nd June 1820

TO ANNA, THREE YEARS OLD 

My Anna, summer laughs in mirth, 


And we will of the party be, 


And leave the crickets in the hearth 


For green fields' merry minstrelsy. 


I see thee now with little hand 


Catch at each object passing by, 


The happiest thing in all the land 


Except the bee and butterfly. 


The weed-based arches' walls that stride 


O'er where the meadow water falls 


Will turn thee from thy path aside 


To gaze upon the mossy walls. 


And limpid brook that leaps along, 


Gilt with the summer's burnished gleam, 


Will stop thy little tale or song 


To gaze upon its crimping stream. 


Thou'lt leave my hand with eager speed 


The new-discovered things to see— 


The old pond with its water-weed 


And danger-daring willow-tree, 


Who leans, an ancient invalid, 


O'er spots where deepest waters be. 


In sudden shout and wild surprise 


I hear thy simple wonderment, 


As new things meet thy childish eyes 


And wake some innocent intent; 


As bird or bee or butterfly 


Bounds through the crowd of merry leaves 


And starts the rapture of thine eye 


To run for what it ne'er achieves; 


The simple reasoning arguments 


Shaped to thy fancy's little view, 


The joys and rapturous intents 


That everywhere pursue. 


So dreamed I over hope's young boon, 


When merry summer was returning, 


And little thought that time so soon 


Would change my early hope to mourning. 


I thought to have heard thee mid the bowers 


To mock the cuckoo's merry song, 


And see thee seek thy daisy flowers 


That's been thy anxious choice so long. 


But thou art on the bed of pain, 


So tells each poor forsaken toy. 


Ah, could I see that happy hour 


When these shall be thy heart's employ, 


And see thee toddle o'er the plain, 


And stoop for flowers, and shout for joy. 


Enclosure

Clare grew up during a period of massive changes in both town and countryside.  The Industrial Revolution blackened urban areas.  Many former agricultural workers, including children, went to work in factories because of the rural poverty caused by the Napoleonic wars, which kept wages down but forced prices up.  The Agricultural Revolution (the enclosures) saw pastures ploughed up, trees and hedges uprooted, the nearby fens drained and the common land enclosed.  This destruction of a centuries-old way of life distressed Clare deeply.

John Clare identified this loss of common land as a loss of wildness.  He describes common land as “wilderness”, in Clare’s eyes the “wild” and “wild pasture” were a “common right”.  For Clare, the loss of wild lands was a loss of freedom.  He speaks of England as the land of liberty but now, “Like emigrating bird thy freedom’s flown”, “Enclosure came, and all your glories fell”.

How to illustrate this?  Have you been blackberrying?  Blackberrying may appear to be a trivial subject, yes it does appear in Clare's poetry. So does lots of other ‘country activities’… collecting elderberries to make wine, or hazel nuts, or mushrooms, or water-cress, or gathering rotten wood for the cottage-fire.  All these were really important to the common people of the parish.

In Helpston, like all parts of England – indeed all of Europe –the inhabitants had always used the produce of the Commons, the wild land all around them. Even gathering rotten wood.

At dusk right across rural areas, you might be see silently-moving lines of shadowy figures, their backs bent under the weight of trunks and piled-up wood, as they headed for their cottages.

Here’s Clare on the subject… (he called them ‘stickers’)

Where ‘stickers’ stroll from day to day

And gather loads of rotten wood

And poachers left in safety stray

When midnight wears its deepest mood.

(from Walks in the Woods)

Clare's natural sympathies are with the "stickers".  Just as the fallen wood belonged by right to the local inhabitants in the forests in all parts of Europe, so, ‘everyone’ knew (didn’t they) that fallen wood belongs to the locals right across the country – in fact, is was crucial in keeping the common people warm in winter.

This conflict over rotten wood extended to other products of the wild lands -- the Commons -- rabbits, hares, birds, willow, reeds, cresses, sloes, dewberries, nuts, mushrooms, elderberries, wild strawberries and blackberries - and eggs, snakes, deer, eels, fish, and other edibles.

Clare writes about all these… sometimes in minute detail.

But when the Enclosure came, the villagers were being legally pauperised by squire, lord and government.  What grows on my fenced land… is mine!  You are a poacher, or a thief.

Here is Clare in 'The Village Minstrel' :

But who can tell the anguish of his mind 


When reformations formidable foes 


Wi civil wars on natures peace combind 


& desolation struck her deadly blows 


As curst improvment gan his fields inclose 


O greens & fields & trees farwell farwell 


His heart wrung pains his unavailing woes 


No words can utter & no tongue can tell 


When ploughs destroyd the green when groves of willows fell 


There once was springs when daises silver studs 


Like sheets of snow on every pasture spread 


There once was summers when the crow flower buds 


Like golden sunbeams brightest lustre shed 


& trees grew once that shelterd lubins head 


There once was brooks sweet wimpering down the vale 


The brooks no more—king cup & daiseys fled 


Their last falln tree the naked moors bewail 


& scarce a bush is left around to tell the mournful tale 


(lines 1048-1065)

Birds Nesting - Chapbook No.13

Here is part of my introduction to Chapbook number 13 - 'Birds Nesting' which was published in  July 2019. 

From my 'introduction':

"The John Clare Peterborough Manuscript MS A47 contained the original text of Clare’s long poem ‘Birds Nesting’.  We owe Eric Robinson a great debt, as if he had not struggled to copy this manuscript 50 years ago, it would only have survived in fragments and in unsatisfactory copies by earlier hands. Of course, it is possible that Eric made mistakes but comparisons can easily be made with readings made by the Tibbles in the 1930s, so readers can judge for themselves.  Perhaps one day the original manuscript will surface again, but in the meantime, it is a real privilege to bring Eric’s transcription to the public eye in this little volume: 'Birds Nesting'.

What happened to the manuscript?  We do not know, nor when exactly it disappeared.  What we do know, however, is that it was loaned to an unnamed scholar by a senior member of the Peterborough Museum Society, and left in a railway compartment between Peterborough and Cambridge.  Was it swept away as waste-paper or is it still being hoarded by some miserly soul?  If the latter, we plead for its restoration to the Peterborough Central Library Clare archive, where it can be properly conserved for future generations.

A spirit of young adventure permeates the texture of Clare’s verse as the reader is brought to join hands with the eager schoolboys scouring the fields around Helpston in the search for birds and their nests.  Clare came to denounce bird-nesting as a hobby, but the excitement of this early pursuit filled his mind and heart with the recollection of those heady days at the turn of the Nineteenth Century."

Birds Nesting (Arbour Chapbook No. 13) is available from me at £4.00 + £1.00 postage and packing (UK).  It is dedicated to Professor Eric and includes a photograph of the great man and one of his poems on the subject of Clare's words.

--- oOo ---

A cag of swipes?

[Image: A product of the thackers art in West Deeping]

I've been working on a Chapbook to be published in the early autumn of 2019.  'A cag of swipes' will be a collection of Clare's poems that contain, well shall we say, unusual words.  Here is a flavour from my draft 'introduction':

"Quite apart from that, Clare is having great fun writing this way.   He is not looking down at his fellow-villagers for their speech-habits but enjoying, as we should, its vigour and variety.   So Clare does often use a word in its dialect or obsolete form.  Not only does this alter the ‘smell’ of the poem but it also intensifies its meaning.  Clare often used words that he employs in his own speech and that he heard every day in the village street. For instance, the man who repairs a roof-covering made from straw or reeds is a ‘thacker’, not a ‘thatcher’.  Such a man uses a variety of ‘thacking’ tools, known today only to a specialist in such work, but common knowledge to every agricultural labourer of Clare’s time."

The photo was given to me by Peter Moyse, who sought out Clare 'locations' for his camera.

Childhood's Glory - Chapbook No.12

The innocence and freshness of Clare’s early years are grounded in the specific places and occasions in which his early sense of ‘glory’ was first experienced.  The landscape of his childhood, therefore, is not only a particular physical landscape – where certain kinds of fields, trees, flowers, birds and animals may be found and where even the names of places become incantations – but it is also a cultural landscape of infant affections and pastimes. 

His childhood innocence may have been sometimes darkened by a sense of loss and of guilt, or of fear and foreboding, but it certainly was a time of his life when his perceptions were particularly vivid, more direct, more natural than the time of  “knowledge of good and evil” — of disillusionment, and the sickness that accompanied his later years.

I look behind & like to eden find

Too late the Eden I have left behind

To lose this extacy, this rapture, is to be excluded from a direct relationship with the unsullied glory of creation, and to have to live one’s life with a sense of loss.

Childhood's Glory (Arbour Chapbook No. 12) is available from me at £4.00 + £1.00 postage and packing (UK). 

--- oOo ---

John Clare facebook group

In December 2012, poet Angela Topping and I decided it was time to start a proper John Clare Facebook page. In the 6 years since then, my how we have grown, with today no fewer than 1,000 members. In August 2013 we held our inaugural 'group' weekend in Helpston, and over 19/20th May 2014 we gathered to remember our great poet by his graveside, and the gravesides of his wife Patty and muse Mary Joyce.

We have writers, musicians, painters, photographers & illustrators, film-makers, poets, sculptors, several descendants of Clare, academics, and plain old fans of his work. We have a rolling virtual exhibition of work "John Clare 150" dedicated to Clare (more contributions would be welcomed), and several books have been published from members of the group who met via these pages, as well as other collaborations.

We plan a fourth (or is that fifth) gathering over a weekend in September 2019 (mark your diaries now), again in the Helpston area, but with the possibility of visits a bit further afield to Holme Fen and Woodwalton Fen, weather depending of course.

And to add to all that, the weekend of the 12th to 14th July are the dates of the 2019 John Clare Society  Festival in the village (many of us are, of course, members of that organisation - one of the largest literary societies in the country).

Our cup runneth over...

Click here to go to the facebook page.

The Lovers Meeting

This is the first time John Clare's "The Lovers Meeting" - a reworking of Ovid's Fifth Elegy, has been published outside the Oxford University Press ‘Clarendon’ edition.  Authenticity has been at the heart of our volume.  The poem is presented exactly as Clare wrote it and has been typeset in a font designed in Northamptonshire in Clare's time (the Founder's Caslon type of Justin Howes).  A beautiful calligraphic ampersand has been specially created by Patrick Roe of The Logan Press to acknowledge its characteristic use by Clare.  Background information about the poem and its context is included. The book is bound by hand in two cloths of complimentary colours with gold blocked titles and has hand printed end papers designed by Anne Lee.

OUR FIRST VOLUME

"The Lovers Meeting"
Clare's version of the Fifth Elegy of the First Book of Ovid

Our hand-made book was originally launched at John Clare Cottage, Helpston on Saturday, 9th November 2013 all now sold.

However, following a meeting with Patrick Roe of The Fine Book Bindery just two days before the launch of that edition,  it was agreed that he will produce the book for us, in an edition limited to 200 copies.  

So... the book has been produced in two versions - the initial one sold out, but The Fine Book Bindery edition still available at £20. 

Whilst we would have been able to continue to produce the books ourselves, being offered this opportunity to have our book printed and hand bound by a leading Fine Press maker of limited edition books is too important for us to ignore.  The level of quality in this artisan field of letterpress printed and hand bound books will be higher than we can possibly produce, yet we will still retain control of the book’s design and content.

Photos taken in the Cottage cafe on launch day, Friday 7th February 2014

---oOo---

Hot was the noon in summers sultry hour

The sun then raging with meridian power

When I more burning with the scorching heat

Of hot desire—lay hid in close retreat

Beneath the covert of a secret shade

Flush'd “with expectance of the lovley maid”

Sweet was the spot no one throughout the grove

Was better suited to the sports of Love

There is little doubt in our minds that Clare’s poetic vision was somewhat more carnal, fleshy, voluptuous than his advisers thought fitting, and of course, as a mere peasant what did he know about such sensibilities?

As Professor Robinson says in his introduction to Early Poems of John Clare (OUP) : “To survey the whole range of his poetry about Woman is to encounter a many-faceted, exhilarating, and erotic sensibility.”  This Clare certainly explored in his reworking of the Fifth Elegy of the First Book of Ovid, dating from 16 - 15 B.C. 

---oOo---
  
'The Lovers Meeting' as published by John Clare Cottage Press

The Poet in Love

Book Two of our Handmade, limited edition trilogy.

Come to my bosom my only thought pleasure

Prove that thou lovst to give pleasure to me

Come to my bosom my lone valud treasure
As all that can please me is resting wi thee

Come to my bosom that waits thy complying
Like the parchd earth in the summer the rain
Love in thy absence droops languid & dying
& only revives when it meets thee again

When I think on thee life half its load looses
When I enjoy what thy presence can bring
Sorrow half charmd into sorrow reposes
& pain melts wi kindness to lay by his sting

Come then to me wi thy fondness revealed
Softly to mine let thy blushing cheek bend
One wish Ill breathe wi my lips to thine sealed
Our trance may in heaven awake at its end

The very real story of Clare's meeting and courtship of Patty Turner, then her subsequent pregnancy and their marriage in 1820.

A review from Ronald Blythe:
"I read, and re-read 'The Poet in Love'... it is a delight; beautifully presented and even revolutionary in its demand that we should look at Clare 'passionately and practically'. You have re-instated Patty... and you have dethroned Mary Joyce. The book makes us look at Clare in a fresh way, and this is no easy matter considering the stream of Clare criticism. Anne Lee's illustrations are fascinating - a kind of poetry in themselves."

"So beautiful, such treasures for my John Clare bookcase. They should lie on a table where everyone can see them, pick them up and delight in them. The end-papers themselves are a treat... they really are very beautiful." (Of The Poet in Love & The Lovers Meeting)

And from Eric Robinson's Afterword to 'The Poet in Love': 

"No one can read this book without learning much of Clare's courtship of Patty during these formative years. It is a very strange story, but it reveals much of the essential character of a poet who had at last been recognised as a very great writer. Roger Rowe and Anne Lee have made an important contribution to Clare studies. And I am pleased to know that more is yet to come from their joint efforts."

Each book is signed and numbered and is available direct from me.  Simply email arborfield@gmail.com or message me via the John Clare Poet facebook page, and I will get back to you.

Each book measures 11" x 8"

"The Poet in Love" is £25 (Post free)

From 'The Old Shepherd'

The green where I tended my sheep when a boy
Has yielded its pride to the plough

& the shades where my infancy revelled in joy
The axe has left desolate now

Yet a bush lingers still that invites me to stop
What heart can such whimsies withstand
Where Susan once saw a birds nest in its top
& I reached her the eggs with my hand

& so long since the day I remember it well
It has stretched to a sizable tree
& the birds yearly come in its branches to dwell
As far from a jiant as me

On a favourite spot by the side of a brook
When Susan was just in her prime
A ripe bunch of nutts from her apron she took
& planted them close by my side

It has grown up with years & on many a bough
Groweth nutts like its parent agen
Where shepherds no doubt have oft sought them ere now
To please other susans since then

(MP III 444)

The Gothic John Clare

Gothic literature is often described with words such as "wonder" and "terror.” These senses, to which must be added the suspension of disbelief, are important to Gothic writing of all kinds, perhaps saving when it is parodied.

Notwithstanding the occasional melodrama, gothic writing is typically played straight, in a very serious manner. All that is required is that the imagination of the reader is willing to accept the idea that there might be something "beyond that which is immediately in front of us."

The Gothic often uses scenery of decay, death, and morbidity to achieve its effects . Nearly two centuries after Clare penned most of  these poems they maintain a dark and mysterious appeal.

 Soft as creeping feet can fall

 Still the damp green stained wall

 As the startled ghost flits bye

 Mocking murmurs faintly sigh

 Minding our intruding fear

 Such visits are unwelcome here

 Seemly then each hollow urn

 Gentle steps our steps return

 Ere so soft & ere so still

 Check our breath or how we will

 Listning spirits still reply

 Step for step & sigh for sigh

 Murmuring oer ones wearied woe

 Life as once was theirs to know

(Solitude, lines 281-294)

Epistle 1st from Richard

Here is one of Clare's love poems where Richard is writing to Kate - Clare appended to one of the manuscripts, "Richard a Country Clown and Kitty the Milkmaid".  Half a dozen years later Clare was composing the Hubbergubbel letters in much the same way.  As Professor Robinson wrote in his Introduction to Clare's aborted novel Memoirs of Uncle Barnaby, "It is high time that we learn to understand why Clare determined to ignore much that editors had forced upon him - and laugh with him."

Dear kate 

            Since I no longer can 

Go on in such a mopeing plan 


I send these lines with ham & hum 


To let the[e] ‘no’ I mean to cum' 


Sum' time or uther you to see 


W'en things ar' fitting to agree 


For ever since you jog'd from here 


The day to me do's seem a year 


I can't endur't so 'tis no use 


I love you wel' without excuse 


Therefore as now I plainly show't 


I only wish for you to 'now't 


& w'en the let'er you do get 


Let it suffice you how I fret 


For e'rey night I gang to bed 


Nou'ht but kit runs in my he'd 


The boys they all keep clit'er clat'er 


Wondering w'at can be the mat'er 


W'y I look dul'.—& w'ats befel' 


They on'y wish I wou'd but tel' 


But I'm determind not to do't 


They'l' on'y call me foolish fo' 't 


Yet not as I shou'd car' for that 


'T'wou'd on'y then be tit for tat 


But if I bro'ght thy name I 'no' 


Up 'mong such chaps as Jim & Jo 


 (Tho Jim if he 'ad on'y sense) 


 (To tel' mi'te be of conseq'ence) 


For he can reed an' never spel' 


 (An' 'rite a let'er mons'orous wel') 


Was thou to hear't as likly mi''te 


'Twou'd presen'ly to'n luv' to spite 


An' wou'd so much a terify'd thee 


As you ne'er after cou'd abide me 


This is the reeson kit (don't dou't it) 


That I ne'er tel' the boys about it 


For I'll sweet kit the thing is tru' 


Do ony thing to pleasur' you 


& w'ot you do'n't like sh'u'd be 


Shal' be the last thing dun by me 


For ere I 'rit this scrauling let'er 


 (I wish I cou'd ha' 'rit a bet'er) 


Fe'ering sum peeping chaps mi''te 'no' 


I 'new not 'ardly w'ere to go 


Yet anx''us stil' to send you one 


I at last contriv'd an' pitch'd upon 


Our bushy clos' agen the link 


'Twas ther' I went wi' pen an' ink 


The ink I stole from Jimys box 


For that he 'ardly ever lo'ks 


 (& if I'm 'ang'd for doing so 


It wil' be you that caus'd the wo') 


The paper at the shop I got 


& lu'ky pitch'd upon this spot 


Wher' skilarks wis'l'd oer my head 


& morning shun so bri''te an' red 


The du on e'rey bush did hing 


An' bods of al' so'tes did so sing 


That cou'd I sing like farmer's Jo' 


 (For shep'ads all can sing you 'no') 


I'd surely sung this very morn 


An' made a song in bushy laun 


But thats all now't I can'ot sing 


Nor 'bout this lawn nor 'bout the spring 


En'uf for me cans't thou but read 


This baddy stuf quite bad indeed 


An' w'at made worser on't you see 


Was writing on't upon my 'nee 


But w'y su'h 'pologin odrotit 


The stufs for you an' we'n you've got it 


Excuse the whol' an' never wonder 


That 'tis in all a worthles' blunder 


But kitty think nor think in vain 


My daily toyls my ni'tely pa'ne 


O if thy ''art can tender be 


'Twil' never fa'le to pity me 


I must konclude ther'fore ad''u 


My ''art an' so'le's for' ever tru' 


EP I 64

Superstitious Dream (excerpt)

Strange, as I read this - I am currently assembling Chapbook No.9 'The Gothic John Clare" - I feel Clare speaking of the disastrous Climate Change policy of most of the world's governments - a wringing of hands and not much else.  Already we are seeing the results of many decades of idle chatter and no coherent change to protect the environment.  Clare of course wrote this long poem about 'judgement' but perhaps that is not far from what awaits our childrens childrens children?

Fierce ragd destruction sweeping oer the land

& the last counted moment seemd at hand

As scales near equal hang the earnest eyes

In doubtful balance which shall fall or rise

So in the moment of that crashing blast

Eyes hearts & hopes pausd trembling for the last

& sudden thunder claps with yawning rents

Gashd the frail garments of the elements

& bursting wirlwinds wingd in purple flame

& lightnings flash in stronger terrors came

Burning all life & nature were they fell

& leaving earth as desolate as hell

The pleasant hues of woods & fields was past

& natures beautys had enjoyd their last

The colord flower the green of field & tree

What they had been forever ceasd to be

Grass shriveld brown in miserable hues

& showers of fire dryd up the hissing dews

Leaves crumbld ashes in the airs hot breath

& all awaited universal death

The sleeping birds scard from their mossy nest

Beat through the evil air in vain for rest

& many a bird the withering shades among

Wakend to perish oer its brooded young

& nightingale that waken with the moon

Dyd in the midst of its unfinishd tune

The cattle startld with the sudden fright

Sickend from food & maddend into flight

& steed and beast in plunging speed pursued

The desperate struggle of the multitude

The faithful dog yet knew its masters face

& cringing followd with a fearful pace

& joind the piteous yell with panting breath

While blasing lightnings followd fast with death

& as destruction stopt the vain retreat

They dropt & dying lickd their owners feet

MP I 327
(lines 49-84)

SONG

1. 

   The wing of the blackbird is the hue of her hair
   The hue of the rose is the face of my fair
   & yet she's a romekin slomekin thing
   & as wild as a filly let loose in the spring
   Shell jump oer the anthills as quick as a bee
   & shout to the birds on their nests in the tree
   Shes a good-for-nothing romikin slomekin thing
   Yet as sweet as a queen by the side of a King
   
   
   Shes healthy & wealthy & wild as a bird
   & startles with fear if a bramble be stirred
   When far from her home she will run like the roe
   & thinks rudeness watching where eer she may go
   But she has good excuses for being so wild
   Shes a woman in size while shes only a child
   She pictures in fancy what innocence means
   & sports like a baby not yet in her teens
   
   
   O girlhood has joys what her mother would fain
   Recall to herself if they would come back again
   & so would we all but ones youth is the time
   For health love & innocence justs in their prime
   A child so loves nature she does not mean sin
   Only see what a rolicking humour shes in
   Shes a young sweet & good-for-naught rolicking thing
   Yet as fair as a queen by the side of a King
   
   
   LP I 365

I am

'I am' was a Knight transcript (KT) from the Northampton Asylum, therefore no original manuscript remains. However, whilst the KT is quite clear - the reading is 

'Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes' 

The poem was published in a whole list of periodicals from when it was written, likely in 1846. In these periodicals changes were often made at the whim of the editor(s), so several 'versions' come down to us.  There are a number of mis-readings of Clare’s original text too (remember it has not survived) that scholars have suggested, nearly all due to Clare’s handwriting.  So this is our best ‘educated guess’:

I am—yet what I am, none cares or knows; 


My friends forsake me like a memory lost:—


I am the self-consumer of my woes;— 


They rise and vanish in oblivion's host, 


Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes:— 


And yet I am, and live—like vapours tost 


Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,— 


Into the living sea of waking dreams, 


Where there is neither sense of life or joys, 


But the vast shipwreck of my lifes esteems; 


Even the dearest, that I love the best 


Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest. 


I long for scenes, where man hath never trod 


A place where woman never smiled or wept 


There to abide with my Creator, God; 


And sleep as I in childhood, sweetly slept, 


Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie, 


The grass below—above the vaulted sky. 


The punctuation would be Knight’s, as Clare rarely punctuated his work.  Even this text is open to debate, for instance Knight’s ‘n’ is very much like his ‘u’, so ‘oblivions’s host’ might well be ‘oblivious host’ (5).  Knight has ‘lost’ for ‘tost’ (6), but this is a understandable misreading of Clare who hardly ever crossed his ‘t’…. and so on, and on, and on ………