To MATTHEW ALLEN
[c.27 August 1841]
My dear Sir
Having left the Forest in a hurry [I h]ad not time to take my leave of you and your family but I intended to write and that before now but dullness and dissapointment prevented me for I found your words true on my return here having neither friends or home left but as it is called the ‘Poets cottage’ I claimed a lodging in it where I now am — one of my fancys1 I found here with her family and all well — they meet me on this side Werrington with a horse and cart and found me all but knocked up for I had travelled from Essex to Northamptonshire without ever eating or drinking all the way save one pennyworth of beer which was given me by a farm servant near an odd house called the plough one day I eat grass to humour my hunger — but on the last day I chewed Tobacco and never felt hungry afterwards — where my poetical fancy is I cannot say for the people in the neighbourhood tells me that the one called ‘Mary’ has been dead these 8 years2 but I can be miserably happy in any situation and any place and could have staid in yours on the forest if any of my friends had noticed me or come to see me — but the greatest annoyance in such places as yours are those servants styled keepers who often assumed as much authority over me as if I had been their prisoner and not likeing to quarrel I put up with it till I was weary of the place altogether so I heard the voice of freedom and started and could have travelled to York with a penny loaf and a pint of beer for I should not have been fagged in body only one of my old shoes had nearly lost the sole before I started and let in the water and silt the first day and made me crippled and lame to the end of my journey
I had Eleven Books sent me from How and Parsons Booksellers some lent and some given me — out of the Eleven I only brought 5 vols here and as I dont want any part of Essex in Northamptonshire agen I wish you would have the kindness to send a servant to get them for me I should be very thankfull not that I care about the books altogether only it may be an excuse to see me and get me into company that I do not want to be acquainted with — one of your labourers Pratts Wife borrowed — ‘Child Harold’ — and Mrs Fishs Daughter has two or three or perhaps more all Lord Byrons Poems and Mrs King3 late of the Owl Public house Leppits Hill and now of Endfield Highway has two or three all Lord Byrons and one is The ‘Hours of Idleness’4
you told me somthing before haytime about the Queen alowing me a yearly sallary of £100 and that the first quarter had then commenced or else I dreamed so5 — if I have the mistake is not of much consequence to anyone save myself and if true I wish you would get the Quarter for me if due6 as I want to be independant and pay for board and lodging while I remain here — I look upon myself as a widow or bachellor I dont know which — I care nothing about the women now for they are faithless and decietfull and the first woman when there was no man but her husband found out means to cuckold him by the aid and assistance of the devil but women being more righteous now and men more plentifull they have found out a more godly way to do it without the divils assistance and a man who possesses a woman possesses losses without gain — the worst is the road to ruin and the best is nothing like a good Cow — man I never did like much and woman has long sickened me I should [like] to be to myself a few years and lead the life of a hermit — but even there I should wish from one whom I am always thinking of and almost every Song I write has some sighs and wishes in Ink about Mary — If I have not made your head weary by reading thus far I have tired my own by writing it so I will bid you good bye
and am My dear docter yours very sincerely John Clare
give my best respects to Mrs Allen and Miss Allen and to Dr Stedman also to Campbell7 and Hayward and Howard at Leopards Hill or in fact to any of the others who may think it worth while to enquire about me
[Bodleian Don.a.8]8
1 my fancys: i.e. his wife, Patty.
2 8 years: Mary Joyce died on 16 July 1838, three years previously, not eight.
3 Mrs King: L.S.H. Young wrote in the John Clare Society Newsletter, no.7 — April 1984: ‘The licensee [of the Owl Inn] in my boyhood was a Mrs King, a daughter-in-law (or perhaps grand daughter) of the Mrs King in Clare’s time’.
4 ‘Hours of Idleness’: N7,55 contains a list, in the margin of the Morning Chronicle, 18 June [1841], of ‘books lent’: ‘Byrons Child Harold Mrs Pratt / Barn Houses near Sneston Essex / Don Juan — English Bards and Scotch Reviewers / Mrs Fish’s Daughter at the Owl Leopards Hill / Hours of Idleness by Lord Byron — Mrs King Eenfield / Highway — Middlesex’ (Barn Houses are so called from some cottages formed out of an old barn in North Shoebury).
5 I dreamed so: The Queen Dowager gave 20 guineas to an appeal fund set up in 1840, but which fell well short of Dr Allen’s target of £500.
6 York and Co Peterborough or Eaton and Co Stamford [Clare’s note].
7 Campbell: Thomas Campbell, the son of the poet, was an inmate at High Beach.
8 Clare has written this remarkable draft letter round the edges and even between the columns of print, of the Lincolnshire Chronicle and General Advertiser for Friday, 27 Aug. 1841.