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Updated: May 19, 2025
In consequence, he sent for Clare, and, repeating his promise of giving him a neat little cottage with garden for occupation, urged him strongly not to neglect writing poetry, and to publish his new volume as soon as possible. Clare was but too willing to follow the advice of the noble lord. The visits of Dr. Smith to Helpston did not cease with the first.
He earnestly sought work immediately after his return from London, and though sneered at by one or two farmers, who told him that he was too famous a man again to soil his hands, he at last secured employment near Helpston Heath, part of which was being enclosed for the benefit of the great landowners of the neighbourhood.
John was the foremost to take his shilling, and though his heart misgave him a little when thinking the matter over in the cool of the next morning, he had no choice but to take the red-blue-and-white cockade and follow the sergeant. The latter managed to enlist a score of young fellows from Helpston, and the whole village turned out when he marched them off to Peterborough.
The chief of these spots was the hollow of an old oak, on the borders of Helpston Heath, called Lea Close Oak now ruthlessly cut down by 'enclosure' progress where he had formed himself a seat with something like a table in front. Few human beings ever came near this place, except now and then some wandering gypsies, the sight of whom was not unpleasing to the poet.
Patty cried when the news was brought to her; and old Parker Clare and his wife cried still more. In a few hours, the report spread like wildfire through Helpston that John Clare was going to London. There was but one man in the village who had ever been to the big town far away, and his account of it had filled the hearts of all the Helpston people with terror.
John Clare heard nothing, saw nothing; he snatched up his book, and ran away eastward as fast as his legs would carry him. 'A queer customer, said the shopkeeper, finishing to take down his shutters. The sun had risen in all his glory when John Clare was trotting back from Stamford to Helpston. Every now and then he paused to have a peep in his book.
A day was fixed, accordingly, for the visit to the noble lord, residing at Milton Park, half way between Helpston and Peterborough. After infinite trouble of dressing, the memorable waistcoat, with cotton gloves, and white necktie, which had made the journey to Wisbeach, being again put into requisition, John Clare and his patron started one fine morning for Milton Park.
On the line of a Roman road, which passes within a few hundred yards of the village of Helpston, I met Clare, about a mile from home. He was going to receive his quarter's salary from the steward of the Marquis of Exeter.
This was the more valuable to John Clare at the present moment, in consequence of an affair which occurred soon after his return from Oundle, and which was nothing less than his falling in love, for the second time in his life. He met, saw, and was conquered by Elizabeth Newton, the daughter of a wheelwright, at Ashton, a small hamlet close to Helpston.
Clever diplomatist, like all ladies, young or old, she managed to get, with some difficulty, her son's bundle of many-coloured papers, in the midst of which stuck, like the hard kernel in a soft plum, a stout, linen-bound book. John, over-anxious now to possess his verses, awaited the result of the journey half-way between Deeping and Helpston, near the village of Maxey.
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