Swavesey and District History Society: John Clare, the Peasant Poet

At our October meeting,  more than 40 members heard Gary Alderson from Helpston, a few miles east of Stamford, give a talk about “John Clare, the Peasant Poet”. 

Born in remote countryside at Helpston as a twin in 1793, he was the weakling yet his sister, Bessie, died young to John’s lifelong sadness.  The house where he grew up is now a museum in his memory.  His mother was illiterate but his father had some schooling and John seems to have been an intelligent person.  He worked in the local fields but was an inadequate labourer due to lack of height and strength and changed to being a limestone burner producing quicklime.  Aged 13 years he heard his first poem which was about springtime which thrilled him and he started to write poems celebrating the beauty of the natural world with detailed descriptions of flora and fauna, and a keen awareness of the rhythms of the seasons. 

He was a ladies’ man and liked wild living and, while a limestone burner, he fell in love with Martha who he called Patty.  He had no money and his parents were poor and, in an attempt to print his poetry, he ran up a fifteen shillings bill at the local bookshop.  However, the wealthy owner of a nearby mansion liked his poetry and paid the bill.  His first poem was published in 1819 about the changing rural landscape and showed a deep connection to nature. 

His poetry was mainly read by the middle and upper classes and many of the nobility liked his dialect and chipped in to pay for more.  In March 1820 he married Patty and they had nine children, of which two were stillbirths.  Mental instability began to affect him by 1827, possibly induced by heavy drinking which was accidentally funded by allowances from his sponsors.  Additionally, local enclosure began late, when he was 16, finishing in 1920.  His poetry frequently lamented how enclosure destroyed the village’s traditional open landscape and restricted the community’s freedom to roam. 

He started to have delusions and in 1837 he was locked in an asylum.  His mood swings became more extreme and he was moved to Northampton asylum where he lived for the rest of his life.  He was well looked after there, was allowed out to walk the countryside and still wrote good poetry.  He died in 1864 and his body was brought back to be laid beside his parents.  His work has undergone a revival in recent years because of his sensitive observations of the natural world and the attention he drew to loss of habitat and diversity.