The Life of John Clare | Page 4

world. Though but in poor health, the parents were never able to keep
little John at home. He trotted the lifelong day among the meadows and
fields, watching the growth of herbs and flowers, the chirping of insects,
the singing of birds, and the rustling of leaves in the air. One day, when
still very young, the sight of the distant horizon, more than usually
defined in sharp outline, brought on a train of contemplation. A wild
yearning to see what was to be seen yonder, where the sky was
touching the earth, took hold of him, and he resolved to explore the
distant, unknown region. He could not sleep a wink all night for eager
expectation, and at the dawn of the day the next morning started on his
journey, without saying a word to either father or mother. It was a hot
day in June, the air close and sultry, with gossamer mists hanging thick
over the stagnant pools and lakes. The little fellow set out without food
on his long trip, fearful of being retained by his watchful parents.
Onward he trotted, mile after mile, towards where the horizon seemed
nearest; and it was a long while before he found that the sky receded
the further he went. At last he sank down from sheer exhaustion,
hungry and thirsty, and utterly perplexed as to where he should go.
Some labourers in the fields, commiserating the forlorn little wanderer,
gave him a crust of bread, and started him on his home journey. It was
late at night when he returned to Helpston, where he found his parents
in the greatest anxiety, and had to endure a severe punishment for his
romantic excursion. Little John Clare did not mind the beating; but a
long while after felt sad and sore at heart to have been unable to find
the hoped-for country where heaven met earth.
The fare of agricultural labourers in these early days of John Clare was
much worse than at the present time. Potatoes and water-porridge
constituted the ordinary daily food of people in the position of Clare's
parents, and they thought themselves happy when able to get a piece of
wheaten bread, with perhaps a small morsel of pork, on Sundays. At

this height of comfort, however, Parker Clare and his wife seldom
arrived. Sickly from his earliest childhood, Parker Clare had never been
really able to perform the work required of him, though using his
greatest efforts to do so. A few years after marriage, his infirmities
increased to such an extent that he was compelled to seek relief from
the parish, and henceforth he remained more or less a pauper for life.
Notwithstanding this low position, Parker Clare did not cease to care
for the well-being of his family, and, by the greatest privations on his
own part, managed to send his son to an infant school. The school in
question was kept by a Mrs. Bullimore, and of the most primitive kind.
In the winter time, all the little ones were crowded together in a narrow
room; but as soon as the weather got warm, the old dame turned them
out into the yard, where the whole troop squatted down on the ground.
The teaching of Mrs. Bullimore did not make much impression upon
little John, except a slight fact which she accidentally told him, and
which took such firm hold of his imagination that he remembered it all
his life. There was a white-thorn tree in the school-yard, of rather large
size, and the ancient schoolmistress told John that she herself, when
young, had planted the tree, having carried the root from the fields in
her pocket. The story struck the boy as something marvellous; it was to
him a sort of revelation of nature, a peep into the mysteries of creation
at the works of which he looked with feelings of unutterable
amazement, not unmixed with awe. But there was little else that Mrs.
Bullimore could teach John Clare, either in her schoolroom or in the
yard. The instruction of the good old woman was, in the main, confined
to two things--the initiation into the difficulties of A B C, and the
reading from two books, of which she was the happy possessor. These
books were 'The Death of Abel' and Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.'
Their contents did not stir any thoughts or imaginings in little John,
whose mind was filled entirely with the pictures of nature.
When John Clare had reached his seventh year, he was taken away
from the dame-school, and sent out to tend sheep and geese on
Helpston Heath. The change was a welcome one to him, for, save the
mysterious white-thorn tree, there was nothing at school to attract him.
Helpston Heath, on the other hand, furnished what