The Life of John Clare. Frederick Martin
joy when her John again entered the little cottage; but the father welcomed him with a melancholy smile. John himself, though with a little mortified vanity, felt rather pleased than otherwise. His good sense told him that this journey to Wisbeach had been but a fool's errand, and that, in order to rise in the world, he had to look into other directions than to a lawyer's office. He therefore fell back with a strong feeling of contentment into his old occupation, holding the plough, carting manure to the field, and studying algebra. In the latter favourite labour he was much assisted by a young friend, whose acquaintance he had made at Glinton school, named John Turnill, the son of a small farmer. The latter, having a little more money at his command than his humble companion, was able to purchase the necessary books, as well as a modest allowance of paper and pencils, the gift of which threw John Clare into ecstasies of delight. With Master Turnill, the attachment to mathematics and algebra was a real love, though it was otherwise with Clare, who pursued these studies solely out of ambition, and with a hope of raising himself in the world. The desire to improve his position became stronger than ever after his return from Wisbeach. The sneers of the people who met him during the journey had sunk deep into his sensitive mind, and he determined to make a struggle for a better position. How far mathematics and the pure sciences would help him on the road he did not trouble himself to consider; he only had a vague notion that they would lead him to be a 'scholar.' So he toiled with great energy through the algebraic and mathematical handbooks purchased by friend Turnill, often getting so warm on the subject as to neglect his dinner-hour, in brown studies over the plus and minus, squares, cubes, and conic sections. Every evening that he could possibly spare he walked over to Turnill's house, near Elton, regardless of wind, rain, and snow, and regardless even of the reproaches of his kind parents, who began to be afraid of his continued dabbling in the occult arts. However, little John stuck to his algebra, and it was nearly two years before he discovered that he was as little fit to be a mathematician as a lawyer's clerk.
Meanwhile, and before the algebraic studies came to an end, there occurred a somewhat favourable change in the circumstances of John Clare. Among the few well-to-do inhabitants of Helpston was a person named Francis Gregory, who owned a small public-house, under the sign of the 'Blue Bell,' and rented, besides, a few acres of land. Francis Gregory, a most kind and amiable man, was unmarried, and kept house with his old mother, a female servant, and a lad, the latter half groom and half gardener. This situation, a yearly 'hiring,' being vacant, it was offered to John, and eagerly accepted, on the understanding that he should have sufficient time of his own to continue his studies. It was a promise abundantly kept, for John Clare had never more leisure, and, perhaps, was never happier in his life than during the year that he stayed at the 'Blue Bell.' Mr. Francis Gregory, suffering under constant illness, treated the pale little boy, who was always hanging over his books, more like a son than a servant, and this feeling was fully shared by Mr. Gregory's mother. John's chief labours were to attend to a horse and a couple of cows, and occasionally to do some light work in the garden or the potato field; and as these occupations seldom filled more than part of the day or the week, he had all the rest of the time to himself. A characteristic part of Clare's nature began to reveal itself now. While he had little leisure to himself, and much hard work, he was not averse to the society of friends and companions, either, as in the case of Turnill, for study, or, as with others, for recreation; but as soon as he found himself, to a certain extent, his own master, he forsook the company of his former acquaintances, and began to lead a sort of hermit's life. He took long strolls into the woods, along the meres, and to other lonely places, and got into the habit of remaining whole hours at some favourite spot, lying flat on the ground, with his face toward the sky. The flickering shadows of the sun; the rustling of the leaves on the trees; the sailing of the fitful clouds over the horizon, and the golden blaze of the sky at morn and eventide, were to him spectacles of which his eye never tired, with which his heart never got satiated. And as he grew more and more the constant worshipper of nature, in any of her aspects, so his mind gradually became indifferent to almost all other objects. What men did, what they had done, or what they were going to do, he did not seem to care for, or had the least curiosity to know. In the midst of these solitary rambles from his 'Blue Bell' home, the news was brought of some extraordinary discoveries at Castor, his mother's native village. It was news which, one might have thought, would fire the imagination of any man gifted with the most ordinary understanding. In a part of the township of Castor called Dormanton Fields, the greater part of the vast ruins of Durobrivae were discovered: temples and arches crumbled into dust; many-coloured tiles and brickwork; urns and antique earthen vessels; and coins, with, the images of many emperors—so numerous that it looked as if they had been sown there. To reconstruct the ancient Roman city, to people it anew with the conquerors of the world, was a task at once undertaken by zealous antiquarians; yet Clare, though he heard the matter mentioned by numerous visitors to the 'Blue Bell,' and had plenty of time for investigation, took so little interest in it as not even to attempt a walk to the city of ruins, on the borders of which he was feeding his cattle. Now, as up to a late period of his life, a bunch of sweet violets was worth to John Clare more than all the ruins of antiquity.
While at the 'Blue Bell' John gradually dropped his algebra and mathematics, and began to read ghost-stories. The reason of his leaving the 'sciences called pure' was the discovery that the further he proceeded on the road the more he saw his utter incapacity to understand and to master the subjects. His friend and guide, John Turnill—subsequently promoted to a post in the excise—was equally unable to throw light into the darkness of plus and minus, and after a few last convulsive struggles to get through the 'known quantities' into the unknown regions of x, y, and z, he gave it up as a hopeless effort. The spare hours henceforth were devoted to studies of a very different kind, namely, fairy tales and ghost stories. Under the roof of the 'Blue Bell' no other literature was within his reach, and he was quite content to draw temporary nourishment from it. Scarcely any books but these highly spiced ones, stuffed in the pack of travelling pedlars, ever found their way to Helpston. There was 'Little Red Riding-hood,' 'Valentine and Orson,' 'Sinbad the Sailor,' 'The Seven Sleepers,' 'Mother Shipton,' 'Johnny Armstrong,' 'Old Nixon's Prophecy,' and a whole host of similar 'sensation' stories, printed on coarse paper, with a flaming picture on the title-page. John Clare scarcely knew that there were any other books than these and the few he had seen at Glinton school in existence; he had never heard of Shakespeare and Milton, Thompson and Cowper, Spenser and Dryden; and, therefore, with the natural eagerness of the young mind just awoke to its day dreams, eagerly plunged into the new realm of fancy. The effect soon made itself felt upon the ardent reader, fresh from his undigested algebraic studies. He saw ghosts and hobgoblins wherever he went, and after a time began to look upon himself as a sort of enchanted prince in a world of magic. He had no doubt whatever about the literal truth of the stories he read; the thought of their being mere pictures of the imagination not entering his mind for a moment. It was natural, therefore, that he should come to the conclusion that, as the earth had been, so it was still peopled with fairies, dwarfs, and giants, with whom it would be his fate to come into contact some time or other. So he buckled his armour tight, ready to do battle with the visible and invisible world.
Opportunity came before long. Among his regular duties at the 'Blue Bell' was that of fetching once a week flour from Maxey, a village some three miles north of Helpston, near the Welland river. The road to Maxey was a very lonely one, part of it a narrow footpath along the mere, and the superstition of the neighbourhood connected strange tales of horror and weird fancy with the locality. In the long days of summer, John Clare, who had to start on his errand to the mill late in the afternoon, managed to get home before dark, thus avoiding unpleasant meetings; but when the autumn came, the sun set before he left Maxey, and then the ghosts were upon him. They always attacked him half way between the two villages, in a low swampy spot, overhung by the heavy mist of the fens. Poor John battled hard, but the spirits nearly always got the upper hand. They pulled his hair, pinched his legs, twisted his nose, and played other tricks with him, until he sank to the ground in sheer exhaustion. Recovering himself after a while, the fairies then let him alone, and he staggered home to the 'Blue Bell,' pale and trembling, and like one in a dream. His good friend and master, Francis Gregory, wondering at the haggard look of the lad, thought he was going to have another attack of the tertiary ague, and spoke to his parents; but John, in his silent mood, said it was nothing, and begged to be left alone. So they let him have his way, and he continued his weekly errands