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Updated: May 19, 2025
'Give as much as you like, was the immediate reply of her ladyship. This was satisfactory, and after an hour's simmering of his saucepans, Monsieur Grill put on his coat, poured his broth into a stone bottle, took his stick, and went out at the back of the mansion, and through the park towards Helpston. Not long, and he stood before Clare.
John Clare thereupon left his quarters at the 'Rose and Crown, where he had been tolerably well treated by the owners, a widow and her two daughters, and, with a joyful heart, returned to Helpston.
Breaking out into glowing praise of John Clare, which made the latter blush like a maiden, the parish-clerk finished by pulling from his pocket a bit of antique pottery, unearthed somewhere in the grounds between Helpston Heath and Castor.
An hour after he was on his return, to Helpston, feeling happier in his mind than he had been for a long time. The promise made to Dr. Darling was faithfully kept.
In the spring of 1833, Clare informed his kind friend, the Vicar of Helpston, who continued to assist him in his needs, that he had secured 'subscribers for forty-nine copies' of his intended new volume; adding, however, the dismal fact of eighteen among them being 'rather doubtful. Thus a poet, whose fame the leading organ of criticism, the 'Quarterly Review, had proclaimed a dozen years before, and who was now at the very zenith of his power, was actually unable to find more than thirty persons in his own neighbourhood, where he was best known, who would support him to the extent of a few pence.
Frequent excursions to Stamford, and sometimes to Peterborough, where he found a few good friends, drew him away from the 'Blue Bell, though sometimes to places where ale and spirits flowed as rapidly and were consumed with as much relish as at the little inn at Helpston. It was altogether a fatal period of excitement, threatening to the future of the warm-hearted and but too susceptible poet.
Has Hogg visited London yet? When he does tell me, and I'll see if I don't muster up every atom of my strength to have a sight of him. Having left your address at Helpston, I am obliged to trust this letter and my friend to Providence to find you, which I trust he will readily. Your J. C. Allan Cuningham, Esq. London. Favoured by my friend, Mr. Nell.
All the country, as far as eye can reach, is the property of two or three noble families, dwelling in turreted halls; while the bulk of the population, the wretched tillers of the soil, live, as of old, in mud hovels, in the depth of human ignorance and misery. An aggregate of about a hundred of these hovels, each containing, on the average, some four living beings, forms the village of Helpston.
He came all the way from London to see Clare, and having taken a guide from Stamford to Helpston, was utterly amazed, on his arrival, to find that the cottage, beautifully depicted in the 'Village Minstrel, was not visible anywhere.
When grown into manhood, and yet not feeling sufficiently strong for the harder labours of the field, he took service as a shepherd, and was employed by his masters to tend their flocks in the neighbourhood, chiefly in the plains north of the village, known as Helpston Heath.
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