Poems Chiefly from Manuscript | Page 4

the matter plausible a letter was circulated said to be written by the Prince Regent. I forget how many were demanded from our parish, but remember the panic which it created was very great. No great name rises in the world without creating a crowd of little mimics that glitter in borrowed rays; and no great lie was ever yet put in circulation without a herd of little lies multiplying by instinct, as it were and crowding under its wings. The papers that were circulated assured the people of England that the French were on the eve of invading it and that it was deemed necessary by the Regent that an army from eighteen to forty-five should be raised immediately. This was the great lie, and then the little lies were soon at its heels; which assured the people of Helpston that the French had invaded and got to London. And some of these little lies had the impudence to swear that the French had even reached Northampton. The people were at their doors in the evening to talk over the rebellion of '45 when the rebels reached Derby, and even listened at intervals to fancy they heard the French rebels at Northampton, knocking it down with their cannon. I never gave much credit to popular stories of any sort, so I felt no concern at these stories; though I could not say much for my valour if the tale had proved true. We had a crossgrained sort of choice left us, which was to be found, to be drawn, and go for nothing--or take on as volunteers for the bounty of two guineas. I accepted the latter and went with a neighbour's son, W. Clarke, to Peterborough to be sworn on and prepared to join the regiment at Oundle. The morning we left home our mothers parted with us as if we were going to Botany Bay, and people got at their doors to bid us farewell and greet us with a Job's comfort 'that they doubted we should see Helpston no more.' I confess I wished myself out of the matter. When we got to Oundle, the place of quartering, we were drawn out into the field, and a more motley multitude of lawless fellows was never seen in Oundle before--and hardly out of it. There were 1,300 of us. We were drawn up into a line and sorted out into companies. I was one of the shortest and therefore my station is evident. I was in that mixed multitude called the battalion, which they nicknamed 'bum-tools' for what reason I cannot tell; the light company was called 'light-bobs,' and the grenadiers 'bacon-bolters' ... who felt as great an enmity against each other as ever they all felt against the French."
In 1813 he read among other things the "Eikon Basilike," and turned his hand to odd jobs as they presented themselves. His life appears to have been comfortable and a little dull for a year or two; flirtation, verse-making, ambitions and his violin took their turns amiably enough! At length he went to work in a lime-kiln several miles from Helpston, and wrote only less poems than he read: one day in the autumn of 1817, he was dreaming yet new verses when he first saw "Patty," his wife-to-be. She was then eighteen years old, and modestly beautiful; for a moment Clare forgot Mary Joyce, and though "the courtship ultimately took a more prosaic turn," there is no denying the fact that he was in love with "Patty" Turner, the daughter of the small farmer who held Walkherd Lodge. In the case of Clare, poetry was more than ever as time went on autobiography; and it is noteworthy that among the many love lyrics addressed to Mary Joyce there are not wanting affectionate tributes to his faithful wife Patty.
Maid of Walkherd, meet again,?By the wilding in the glen....
And I would go to Patty's cot?And Patty came to me;?Each knew the other's very thought?Under the hawthorn tree....?And I'll be true for Patty's sake?And she'll be true for mine;?And I this little ballad make,?To be her valentine.
Not long after seeing Patty, Clare was informed by the owner of the lime-kiln that his wages would now be seven shillings a week, instead of nine. He therefore left this master and found similar work in the village of Pickworth, where being presented with a shoemaker's bill for ￡3, he entered into negotiations with a Market Deeping bookseller regarding "Proposals for publishing by subscription a Collection of Original Trifles on Miscellaneous Subjects, Religious and Moral, in verse, by John Clare, of Helpstone." Three hundred proposals were printed, with a specimen sonnet well chosen to intrigue the religious and moral; and yet the tale of intending subscribers stood adamantly at seven. On the face