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Clare
(13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864)
"The Northamptonshire
Peasant Poet"
Born the son of a farm labourer at Helpston (which, at the time of his birth,
was in the Soke of Peterborough, which itself was part of Northamptonshire)
near Peterborough. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late
20th century and he is often now considered to be one of the most important
19th-century poets.
Life
Clare became an agricultural labourer whilst still a child, however he attended
school in Glinton church until he was twelve.
In his early adult years, Clare became a pot-boy in the Blue Bell public house
and fell in love with Mary Joyce; but her father, a prosperous farmer, forbade
her to meet him. Subsequently he was a gardener at Burghley House. He
enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with Gypsies, and worked in Pickworth as
a lime burner in 1817, but in the following year he was obliged to accept
parish relief. Malnutrition stemming from childhood would be the main culprit
behind his 5-ft stature and contributed to his poor physical health in later life.
Clare had bought a copy of Thomson's Seasons out of his scanty earnings
and had begun to write poems. In an attempt to hold off his parents' eviction
from their home, Clare offered his poems to a local bookseller named Edward
Drury. Clare eventually befriended the author of Seasons who introduced his
poems to his cousin John Taylor of the publishing firm of Taylor & Hessey,
who had published the work of John Keats. They issued the Poems
Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery in 1820. This book was highly praised,
and in the next year his Village Minstrel and other Poems were published.
Fame, in the shape of curious visitors, broke the tenor of his life, and he
indulged more freely the convivial habits that he had formed: mainly
alcoholism, in which Clare eloquently described as his "taste for ale".
Clare became possessed of £45 annually, a sum far beyond what he had ever
earned; but new wants made his income insufficient, and in 1823 he was
nearly penniless. The Shepherd's Calendar (1827) met with little success,
which was not increased by his hawking it himself. As he worked again on 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 in his new home.
Clare began to find himself discontent with the fact that his style of poetry was
no longer in the current "fashion", but also felt that he did not belong with
other peasants. 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."
Clare was constantly torn between the two worlds of literary London and his
often illiterate neighbours, between the need to write poetry and the need for
money to feed and clothe his children. His health began to suffer, and he had
bouts of severe depression, which became worse after his sixth child was
born in 1830 and his poetry sold less well. His friends and his London patrons
clubbed together to move the family in 1832 to a larger cottage with a
smallholding in the village of Northborough, not far from Helpston, thinking
that would help him. However, this only made him feel more alienated.
His last and best work, the Rural Muse (1835), was noticed favorably by
Christopher North and other reviewers, but this was not enough to support his
wife and seven children. Clare's mental health began to worsen. As his
alcohol consumption steadily increased and his dissatisfaction with his own
identity, Clare's behaviour became more erratic. A more notable instance of
this behaviour was demonstrated in his interruption of a performance of The
Merchant of Venice, in which Clare verbally assaulted Shylock. In July 1837
he was finally removed to a Dr Matthew Allen's High Beach Private Asylum
near Loughton in Epping Forest.
In 1841, Clare left the asylum in Essex, to walk home, believing that he was to
meet his first love Mary Joyce; Clare was convinced that he was married with
children to her. He did not believe her family when they told him she had died
three years earlier. He remained free, mostly at home in Helpston, for the five
months to follow, but eventually the doctors were called in, between
Christmas and New Year in 1841, and Clare was committed to the
Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. He remained here for the rest of his
life, encouraged and helped to write. Here he wrote poetry, including possibly
his most famous poem, I Am. He died 20 May 1864, in his 71st year. His
remains were returned to Helpston for burial in St Botolph’s churchyard.
Poetic Themes
Rural Village Life
Love
His early work delights both in nature and the cycle of the rural year. Poems
such as Winter Evening, Haymaking and Wood Pictures in Summer celebrate
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 is unsentimental 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 folks songs and ballads of his youth.
An example of this is Evening.