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Elective English—III

Notes 8.1.2 Early Poems

Clare had bought a copy of Thomson’s The Seasons and began to write poems and sonnets. In an
attempt to hold off his parents’ eviction from their home, Clare offered his poems to a local
bookseller named Edward Drury. Drury sent Clare’s poetry to his cousin John Taylor of the
publishing firm of Taylor & Hessey, who had published the work of John Keats. Taylor published
Clare’s 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.

8.1.3 The Middle Years

John Clare had married Martha (“Patty”) Turner in 1820. An annuity of 15 guineas from the
Marquess of Exeter, in whose service he had been, was supplemented by subscription, so that
Clare became possessed of £45 annually, a sum far beyond what he had ever earned. Soon,
however, his income became 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 in 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 was constantly torn between the two worlds of literary London and his often-illiterate
neighbours as well as 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 as his poetry sold less well. In 1832, his
friends and his London patrons clubbed together to move the family to a larger cottage with a
smallholding in the village of Northborough, not far from Helpston. However, he felt only
more alienated.
Christopher North and other reviewers noticed his last work, the Rural Muse (1835), favourably,
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 along with his dissatisfaction with his
own identity, Clare’s behaviour became more erratic. A notable instance of this behaviour was
demonstrated in his interruption of a performance of The Merchant of Venice, in which Clare
verbally assaulted Shylock. He was becoming a burden to Patty and his family, and in July 1837,
on the recommendation of his publishing friend, John Taylor, Clare went of his own volition
(accompanied by a friend of Taylor’s) to Dr Matthew Allen’s private asylum High Beach near
Loughton, in Epping Forest. Taylor had assured Clare that he would receive the best medical
care.

8.1.4 Later Life

During his first few asylum years in High Beach, Essex (1837–1841), John Clare re-wrote famous
poems and sonnets by Lord Byron. His own version of Child Harold became a lament for
past-lost love, and Don Juan, A Poem became an acerbic, misogynistic, sexualised rant redolent
of an ageing Regency dandy. Clare also took credit for Shakespeare’s plays, claiming to be the
Renaissance genius himself. “I’m John Clare now,” the poet claimed to a newspaper editor,
“I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly.”
In 1841, Clare absconded from 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 and
Martha as well. He did not believe her family when they told him she had died accidentally
three years earlier in a house fire. He remained free, mostly at home in Northborough, for the
five months following, but eventually Patty called the doctors in. Between Christmas and New
Year in 1841, Clare was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum (now St Andrew’s
Hospital).

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