The Ballad of John Clare
Page 23
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
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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
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