For those of you for whom John Clare is a
new name,
But who might want to join us on a John
Clare Walk,
Around the common lands of Stroud and the 5
Valleys,
On John Clare Day and Night, every July 13th,
(He was born on July 13th 1793,
at, in Clare’s words:
‘Helpstone, a gloomy village…on the brink
of the Lincolnshire fens’.)
Here is a selection of his poem titles, to
give you a flavour,
Taken from my treasured 40 year old
Everyman edition:
Impromptu
on Winter; The Robin; To the Violet; Winter’s Gone;
The
Village Minstrel; The Setting Sun; The Primrose; Autumn; Badger;
Swamps
of wild rush-beds; The Shepherd’s Calendar; Swordy Well;
Evening
Pastime; Winter Winds cold and blea; Summer Images;
The
Spring returns; The Eternity of Nature; The Voice of Nature;
The
Shepherd’s Tree; The Nightingale’s Nest; The Blackcap; The Vixen;
The
Missel-thrush’s nest; The Redcap; The Lark’s Nest; The Flight of Birds;
The
Fern-owl’s Nest; The Reed-bird; The Wren; The Thrush’s Nest;
The
Mole-catcher; The Frightened Ploughman; A Walk in the Forest;
The
Pale Sun; Haymaking; April; The Round Oak; The Winter’s Come; Dewdrops;
The
Beanfield; The Peasant Poet; The Daisy; The Autumn’s Wind;
The
Green Lane; Early Spring; The Dark Days of Autumn;
Evening.
It is the silent hour when they who roam; Enclosure;
Mary.
‘Tis April and the morning, love.
This is just the smallest selection from my
second hand book,
Bought in Camden Town to offer respite and
relief
From the tedium of studying political
theory at UCL,
When we all knew Karl Marx had it all tied
up,
And was the only show in Town – plus ca
change -,
So, join us for some walk, talk,
refreshment and readings,
Sunday, July 13th, time and
place to be confirmed.
Context:
Even though Clare was born in 1793, two of
his grandchildren were still alive in the 1950s and, as Jonathan Bate points
out in his biography, ‘It is strange to think’ that Clare was ‘born two years
before Keats and only four after the storming of the Bastille’. But we don’t
need to show this generational overlap as evidence for the relevance of Clare:
far better to look at his writing. And we shall start by looking at his writing
about enclosure.
We lament the disappearance of hedgerows
today, but for Clare’s generation, hedgerows meant a violation of landscape and
liberty. How he hated the hawthorn hedgerows of enclosure! The following
selections show this; we’ll start with a few lines from ‘The Lament of Swordy Well’:
‘The
gipsey’s camp was not afraid
I
made his dwelling free
Till
vile enclosure came and made
A
parish slave of me.’
His poem about his village, Helpston, contains lines that Lord
Radstock objected to as ‘radical slang’; here are a few:
‘Accursed
Wealth! o’er-bounding human laws,
Of
every evil thou remain’st the cause:
Victims
of want, those wretches such as me,
Too
truly lay their wretchedness to thee:
Thou
art the bar that keeps them from being fed,
And
thine our loss of labour and of bread;
Thou
art the cause that levels every tree,
And
woods bow down to make a way for thee.’
Now here’s a few lines from Impromptu on Winter:
‘To
me all seasons come the same:
Now
winter bares each field and tree
She
finds that trouble sav’d in me
Stript
already, penniless,
Nothing
boasting but distress;
And
when spring chill’d nature cheers,
Still
my old complaint she hears;
Summer
too, in plenty blest,
Finds
me poor and still distrest;
Kind
autumn too, so liberal and so free,
Brings
my old well-known present, Poverty.’
And now here’s a stanza or twain from The Village Minstrel:
‘Spring
more resembles winter now than spring,
The
shades are banish’d all – the birds have took to wing.
There
once were lanes in nature’s freedom dropt,
There
once were lanes that every valley wound –
Inclosure
came, and every path was stopt;
Each
tyrant fixed his sign where paths were found,
To
hint a trespass now who cross’d the ground;
Justice
is made to speak as they command;
The
high road now must be each stinted bound;
Inclosure, thou’rt a curse upon the land,
And tasteless was the wretch who thy existence plann’d.’
And now for a few lines from Enclosure:
‘Far spread the moory ground, alevel scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green,
That never felt the rage of blundering plough,
Though centuries wreathed spring blossoms on its brow.
Autumn met plains that stretched then far away
In unchecked shadows of green, brown, and grey.
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene;
No fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect from the gazing eye;
Its only bondage was the circling sky.
A mighty flat, undwarfed by bush and tree,
Spread its fair shadow of immensity,
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds,
In the blue mist the horizon’s edge surrounds.
-
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours,
Free as spring clouds and wild as forest flowers,
Is faded all – a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once as it no ore shall be.
Enclosure came, and trampled on the grave
Of labour’s rights, and left the poor a slave; …
-
The skybound wastes in mangled garbs are left,
Fence meeting fence in owner’s little bounds
Of field and meadow, large as garden-grounds,
In little parcels little minds to please,
With men and flocks imprisoned, ill at ease.’
Jonathan Bate comments in The Song of the Earth; ‘In 1809 Parliament
had passed An Act for Inclosing Lands in the Parishes of Maxey…and Helpstone,
in the County of Northampton.’ And so:
‘These
paths are stopt – the rude philistine’s thrall
Is
laid upon them and destroyed them all
Each
little tyrant with his little sign
Shows
where man claims earth glows no more divine
But
paths to freedom and to childhood dear
A
board sticks up to notice ‘no road here’
And
on the tree with ivy overhung
The
hates sign by vulgar taste is hung
As
tho’ the very birds should learn to know
When
they go there they must no further go
Thus,
with the poor, sacred freedom bade goodbye
And
much they feel it in the smothered sigh
And
birds and trees and flowers without a name
All
sighed when lawless law’s enclosure came’.
Professor Bate in his biography John Clare mentions EP Thompson’s
perspective on Clare: ‘Clare may be described, without hindsight, as a poet of
ecological protest’; Bate goes on to show, as Thompson implied, that enclosure
affected Clare in a visceral way: he felt the changes in the landscape
personally, for his village community and, as it were, for the very fields,
trees, flowers, hills and springs themselves.
‘By
Langley Bush I roam, but the bush hath left its hill;
On
Cowper Hill I stray,’tis a desert strange and chill;
And
spreading Lea Close Oak, ere decay had penned its will,
To
the axe of the spoiler and self-interest fell a prey;
And
Crossberry Way and old Round Oak’s narrow lane
With
its hollow tree like pulpits, I shall never see again:
Inclosure
like a Bonaparte let not a thing remain,
It
levelled every bush and tree and levelled every hill
And
hung the moles for traitors – though the brook is running still,
It
runs a naked brook, cold and chill’.
Bate goes on to show this ecological
empathy with ‘The Lamentations of Round Oak Waters’; Clare uses the voice of
the water to voice his lament for the clearing of the trees that once shaded
the brook (‘There’s scarce a greensward spot remains, And scarce a single
tree.’) This mixture of the personal and the ecologically empathetic was always
unceremoniously and forcefully brought home to Clare when he could no longer
walk and wander where old habits would lead:
‘I always wrote my poems in the fields…I
used to go out of the village to particular spots which I was fond of…in one of
these rambles I was in a narrow escape of being taken up as a poacher…I found a
beautiful spot…and…began to rhyme till I insensibly fell asleep and was
awakened by muttering voices on the other side of the thicket – I looked
through and saw they were keepers by their guns – one of their dogs came up…the
part I was in was enclosed by a wall and belonged to the Marquis.’
These
lines written after his move from Helpstone to Northborough (a 3 mile distance,
but infinite to Clare) further convey his sense of intrusion, loss of freedom
and anxiety about new rights of property:
'I
deaded walking where there was no path
And
prest with cautious tread the meadow swath
And
always turned to look with wary eye
And
always feared the owner coming bye
Yet
everything about where I had gone
Appeared
so beautiful I ventured on
And
when I gained the road where all are free
I
fancied every stranger frowned at me
And
every kinder look appeared to say
You've
been on trespass on your walk to day
I've
often thought the day appeared so fine
How
beautiful if such a place were mine
But
having nought I never feel alone
And
cannot use another's as my own.'
