The Life of John Clare. Frederick Martin
happened to listen to this involuntary outburst of enthusiasm, they broke out in mocking laughter. A rose was to them a rose, and nothing more; an apple they valued higher, as something eatable; and, perhaps, over plum-pudding they would have got enthusiastic, too. As it was, poor John was a constant butt for all the shafts of coarse ridicule; even his own parents, to whom he was attached with the tendered affection, and who fully returned his love, did not spare him. Old Parker Clare shook his head when he heard his son descanting upon the beauties of nature, and reproved him on many occasions for not using his spare time to better purpose than scribbling upon little bits of paper. Parker Clare's whole notion of poetry was confined to the halfpenny ballads which the hawkers sold at fairs, and it struck him, not unnaturally, that the things being so cheap, it could not be a paying business. This important fact he lost no occasion to impress upon his son, though with no result whatever.
While the father was not sparing in his attacks upon John's poetical manifestations, the mother, on her part, was active in the same direction. She had discovered her son's hiding-place of the curious slips of paper which engrossed his nightly attention, and, to make an end of the matter at once, the good woman swept up the whole lot one morning, and threw it in the chimney. Very likely there was in her mind some intuitive perception of the fact that her son's poems 'wanted fire.' John was greatly distressed when he found his verses gone; and more still when he discovered how the destruction happened. To prevent the recurrence of a similar event, he conceived the desperate plan of instilling into his parents a love of poetry. He boldly told them, what he had hitherto not so much as hinted at, that he was writing verses 'such as are found in books,', coupling it with the assertion that he could produce songs and ballads as good as those sold at fairs, so much admired by his father. Parker Clare again shook his head in a doubting mood, expressing a strong disbelief of his offspring's abilities in writing poetry. Thus put upon his mettle, John resolved to do his best to change the scepticism of his father, and having written some verses which he liked, and corrected them over and over again into desirable smoothness, he one evening read them to his astonished parents. But the result was thoroughly disappointing. So far from admiring his son's poetry, Parker Clare expressed his strong conviction that it was mere rubbish, not to be compared to the half-penny songs of the fairs. John was much humbled to hear this; however, he carried within himself a strong belief that his verses were not quite valueless, and therefore resolved upon one more test. Hearing the constant vaunting of the cheap ballads, he made up his mind to try whether his father was really able to distinguish between his own verses and those in print. Accordingly, when he had finished another composition, he committed it to memory, and rehearsed it to his parents in the evening, pretending to read it from the print. Then his father broke out in the delightful exclamation: 'Ah, John, my boy, if thou couldst make such-like verses, that would do.' This was an immense relief to the poor scribbler of poetry. He now saw clearly that his father's want of confidence was in him, the writer, and not in his writings. Henceforth, he made it his regular habit of reciting his own poetry to his parents as if reading it from a book, or printed sheet of paper. The habit, though it was strictly a dishonest proceeding, proved to him not only a real source of pleasure, in hearing his praises from the lips of those he loved most, but it also served him as a fair critical school. Whenever he found his parents laugh at a sentence which he deemed very pathetic, he set himself at once to correct it to a simpler style; whenever they asked him for an explanation of a word, or line, he noted it down as ill-expressed, or obscure; and whenever either his father or mother asked for a repetition of a song which they had heard before, he marked the slip of poetry so honoured as a success. And all these successful slips of paper John Clare placed in a crevice between his bed and the lath-and-plaster wall; a hole so dark and unfathomable as to be beyond the reach of even his sharp-eyed mother, always on the look-out for manuscript poetry to light the fire.
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