The Ballad of John Clare

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The Ballad of John Clare Page 23

by Hugh Lupton


  Sophie came home. They ate their supper. Parker tended his garden until nightfall. Still there was no John.

  It was when Sophie climbed the steps for bed that she saw that John’s blankets were gone. She shouted down.

  “Come and look. John’s flitted. His bed’s stripped bare.”

  They climbed and saw, by the light of the flickering candle, nothing but the flattened straw-stuffed mattress. Ann lifted the lid of his box.

  “All his spare clothes are here.”

  Sophie seized her father’s arm:

  “Should we raise an alarum? Shall I run to Constable Bullimore’s?”

  Parker shook his head.

  “No, no. Leave him be. He won’t have gone far. John’ll be back soon enough Sophie …and he can fend for himself.”

  *******

  John had followed the Marholm road to the edge of Hayes Wood. He’d pushed through blackthorn and hazel until he came to his quiet place. He’d crawled through brambles until he found the rotted whitethorn stulps. And, even as Parker and Sophie stared at his stripped bed, he was lying on his back amongst the dead leaves, wrapped up in his blankets, and staring through the quickening branches at the sky as it filled with stars.

  All night he lay wakeful and watched until the day broke into song and his hair was wet with dew. He watched as I watch. And all day his watch continued until hunger and thirst got the better of him.

  It was night-fall when he rolled up his blankets and crawled back to the road. He brushed away the dead leaves and set off for home.

  18

  A Dream

  And now John has climbed the cottage stairs and has fallen into deep sleep at last. And I look down at him in tenderness and remember the time when we was tucked up together and it seemed there was no harm in the world could touch us.

  I slip behind his closed lids and find a way through to him.

  In his dream he knows me instantly and remembers me, though he does not recognise me, for I am become a young woman with eyes that seem to John to speak more of beauty than the earth inherits. I seem to him to be an angel.

  I take him by the hand and together we climb Maple Hill. From the top we look down and there is an immense crowd gathered at Hilly Wood and Swordy Well.

  Soldiers on horse-back are exercising and ladies in their finery are gliding this way and that. Drovers are goading their cattle into pens. Gypsies are hawking, fiddlers playing, tradesmen calling out their wares. Milling throngs surge this way and that as though driven by a shared thought, like the shoals of little fishes under Lolham Bridge. Everywhere tents and stalls and diversions glitter with bright promise.

  He turns to me and asks:

  “Why am I brought here, when all that my heart desires is to be alone and to myself?”

  And I reply to him:

  “Of all this crowd – it is you shall be remembered.”

  And I lead him down and through all the swirling confusion of the Fair. Here is a stall that is selling books. I take him inside and there are shelves and shelves that are stacked with volumes, leather-bound and gilt-lettered.

  John follows me, a little reluctant, to the counter where the book-man stands. I lean forwards and whisper into his ear. The book-man turns to John and bows. He stands aside and points with his finger. There, on the shelf behind him, is a row of volumes inscribed with John’s own name. John leans forward, astonished. He reaches and touches them with the tip of his finger.

  Then he turns to me …but I am gone and he is awake in his bed with such a strong and happy recollection that he cannot doubt me, though he does not know me for his lost Bessie.

  And I shall leave his bed-side now and wait for him in churchyard clay. I shall fall silent and bide my time.

  Day will follow day and John Clare shall take his fair portion of all that the world gives and withholds. His share digs deep into its furrow, and could I tug at the stilts I would not change its course. He is sundered and there’s only one way that he can find what’s been took from him.

  Ay, though every lark in England should rise up above his head and sing for him, it can only be in his art that he shall make himself whole.

  Author’s Note

  There’s a tradition among the First Nation peoples of America that any action we take today will have its full implication in seven generations time. This is a story that takes place seven generations ago. The wholesale enclosure of the English parishes rang the final death knell for ancient patterns of subsistence economy. It also displaced the small farmers and the landless poor, who became the workforce for the mills, factories and mines of the industrial north. A different relationship with the land began that we are reaping the full harvest of today. John Clare (in his life and his poetry) has become emblematic of these losses.

  Very little is known about Clare’s early life beyond a few bare bones in the ‘Autobiographical Fragments’ that he wrote for his children in the mid 1820s.

  This story is in no way ‘biographical’. It is an improvisation around a few of the sketchy facts that we have of his doings between 1811 & 1812 (when he was 17 and 18 years old). I have incorporated several incidents and a dream that he describes, and throughout there are traces of his poetry, but the narrative is pure fiction.

  I have used many of the names of village people that Clare mentions in his poems, memoirs and letters … but in my story their personalities are entirely invented, they bear no relation to their real historical name-sakes.

  Place names, on the other hand, are for the most part pretty accurate.

  I have shrunk the protracted process of enclosure, which took several years, into twelve months.

  Anyone wanting to find the true story of Clare’s life should go to Jonathan Bate’s excellent biography (Picador), or to John Clare By Himself (Carcanet).

  And I hope that there are enough clues here as to the real emotional journey of Clare’s youth, and the language that surrounded him, for any reader to go to his poems afterwards and find that they make sense in a way that they might not have done otherwise. That is the true purpose of this story.

  My thanks to Ana Adnam, Ronald Hutton, Emma Thomas, Anna Magyar and Liz McGowan for careful reading, and to Eric Lane for rigorous editing.

  Glossary

  Alicumpane – Doctor’s remedy in Morris (Mummer’s) Play

  Annis – Witch-like cannibal hag of East Midlands

  Avata acoi – (Romany) Come here

  Baggin – Pack lunch

  Barnack – Sandstone, local to Helpston

  Bau – (Romany) Comrade

  Baulk – A ridge left by the plough

  Bengte – (Romany) The Devil

  Bero – (Romany) Ship

  Bi luvva – (Romany) Without money

  Boggarts – Malign fairies of the Fens

  Boney – Napoleon Bonaparte

  Boro pawnee – (Romany) Sea (big water)

  Cambri – (Romany) Pregnant

  Chal – (Romany) Lad, boy

  Changeling – A stolen mortal child that has been replaced by a fairy child

  Charles’ Wain – (Clare) The constellation of the Plough

  Charlie Wag – Fen nick-name for Charles 1st

  Chin – (Romany) Cut

  Cocalor – (Romany) Bones

  Coney – Rabbit

  Crop – The stomach of a bird

  Curlo – (Romany) Throat

  Dimute – (Clare) Diminutive

  Dotterel – (Clare) A pollarded tree

  Dukkering – (Romany) Fortune-telling

  Dunnock – Hedge Sparrow

  Fancy – The art of boxing

  Florin – Two shillings

  Frumity – Wheat boiled in milk and seasoned with sugar and cinnamon

  Fustian – Cloth made of linen and wool

  Gelding – Castrated stallion

  Gentils – Maggots

  Ghostly Enemy – The Devil

  Gorgio – (Romany) Someone who lives in a house

  Gry – (Romany
) Horse

  Guddle – To fish with bare hands

  Handywoman – Midwife

  Hickathrift – Tom Hickathrift, legendary giant of the Fens

  Hok-hornie-mush – (Romany) Policeman

  Holkham – The seat of Coke of Holkham, pioneer of agricultural improvement

  Horkey – Harvest home celebration

  Kickshawed – Criticised, put down

  Lurcher – Greyhound cross

  Maiden assize – An assize with no death penalty

  Mardling – Gossiping

  Mawkin – Scarecrow

  Men – (Romany) Neck

  Mere-stone – Parish boundary marker

  Michaelmas shack – Allowing cattle to graze on stubble

  Mutzi – (Romany) Skin

  Nip-cheese – Mean, stingy

  Noddle – Head

  Old Sow – Last sheaf of wheat to be cut (end of harvest)

  Pismires – (Clare) Ants

  Poggar – (Romany) Break

  Poknies – (Romany) Judge

  Poppy-head tea – Tea made with opium poppy heads, taken in the Fens as a cure for marsh fever (Malaria)

  Por-engro – (Romany) Someone able to write

  Pricked – (Clare) Marked or written

  Proggle – (Clare) Stir up

  Pudge – (Clare) Puddle

  Queen Mab – Queen of the Fairies

  Reynolds – Fox

  Ride – A track (for riding) through a wood

  Rockie – Spindle

  Shepherd’s Lamp – (Clare) The Pole Star

  Simmeno – (Romany) Broth

  Sisal – Hemp

  Skep – Beehive

  Slomekin – Dishevelled

  Snottum – (Cant) Iron pole for hanging pots and kettles over a fire

  Squit – Nonsense

  Stannyi – (Romany) Deer

  Starnel – (Clare) Starling

  Stook – A bundle of sheaves of wheat, oats or barley

  Stulps – (Clare) Stumps

  Sturt – (Clare) Start in a startled way

  Tailor’s yardband – (Clare) Orion’s belt

  Tel te jib – (Romany) Hold your tongue

  Tippoty dre mande – (Romany) Bearing malice against me

  Todloweries – Fairies of the Fens

  Tumbrel – Cart

  Turn-key – Gaoler

  Tyburn frisk – Dance of a hanging man on the gallows

  Varmint – Pest (from vermin)

  Vennor – (Romany) Entrails

  Verdigrease – Crystals of copper acetate

  Wain – Wagon

  Wat – Hare

  Whelp – Young dog

  Whin – Gorse

  Wishengro – (Romany) Game-keeper

  Withies – Thin branches of pollarded willow

  Copyright

  Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,

  24-26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE

  email: [email protected]

  www.dedalusbooks.com

  ISBN printed book 978 1 907650 00 0

  ISBN ebook 978 1 907650 99 4

  Dedalus is distributed in the USA by SCB Distributors,

  15608 South New Century Drive, Gardena, CA 90248

  email: [email protected] www.scbdistributors.com

  Dedalus is distributed in Australia by Peribo Pty Ltd.

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  email: [email protected]

  Dedalus is distributed in Canada by Disticor Direct-Book Division

  695, Westney Road South, Suite 14, Ajax, Ontario, LI6 6M9

  email: [email protected] www.disticordirect.com

  Publishing History

  First published by Dedalus in 2010

  Reprinted in 2011

  First ebook edition in 2012

  The Ballad of John Clare copyright © Hugh Lupton 2010

  The right of Hugh Lupton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Printed in Finland by Bookwell

  Typeset by Marie Lane

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A C.I.P. Listing for this book is available on request.

 

 

 


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