Knowing and Unknowing in “Helpstone”
As we have stated early in the chapter, Clare’s practice of qualitative knowing is the acknowledgement of and affinity with the natural and social environment of Helpston. It hinges on his firsthand experience of the pre-enclosed village and on the reading of his memory of the village as it appears in print. Thus, the practice of knowing entails Clare’s re-membering of pre-enclosed nature, his piecing together of a rural past severed by enclosure, through specific descriptions of the pre-enclosed environment in his poetry. Clare’s act of allowing others to know his village by way of his memory inherently expresses his emotional attachment to the village and the rural past. However, the very act of making pre-enclosed nature known through a reliance on memory always signals the presence of the enclosure movement that is responsible for removing the pre-enclosed conditions in which Helpston existed. Indeed, because pre-enclosed nature no longer exists in the present, he can only reference it through memory. Thus, Clare’s attempt to promote the rural past over enclosure is necessarily a conflicted practice. Unless he will speak of the past in the present tense, he cannot avoid invoking enclosure’s prominence. Accordingly, firsthand experience and memory are ways of knowing, but memory is also a way of subjecting the re-membered past to the realities of enclosure.
Under these conditions, Clare, as a marginalized figure, provides for his descriptions of Helpston that which Prince does not provide for her descriptions of slave labor. As we have noted in our discussion of The History of Mary Prince, the lack of detail decreases the visibility of an object or event. It forces the reader to assume or imagine what s/he cannot see in the text. Because Prince avoids this descriptiveness with respect to slave labor, the work she performs as a slave appears less menacing as a textual figure than it otherwise would, though it is one of the strongest signs of the slaveholder’s dominance over her. Clare, promoting the beauty of his village as a means of protesting what he sees as the destructiveness of enclosure, makes strong use of specificity, transforming the rural past into a vivid figure in his poetry. Comparatively, where he devotes less specific description to a facet of oppressive agrarian capitalism, Clare decreases its visibility in the text, privileging the rural past over the misshapen present.
Clare’s “Helpstone,” appearing in Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820), conveys a sense of instability because it exists under these very conditions.17 It protests the enclosure movement by recollecting the free-ranging rural environment, privileging it in the poem, while also alluding to its dissection by way of enclosures. This project, as it appears in “Helpstone,” addresses the condition of the uneven relationship existing between the poor of his village and upper-class readers and landowners, as it overturns the dismissal of the rural past that enclosers enact in the English countryside. Here, Clare’s qualitative knowing displays rural nature by way of specific description. He begins this process by noting the attention that his village does not receive. Because it is a rural area, having few readily traversable roads, the village is rarely frequented by visitors and “unheard in poets song” (5). Additionally, because the villagers pay little attention to reading, as Clare points out, Helpston is an “[u]nletterd spot” that possesses little or no internal knowledge (5). Indeed, the poem plays on the distinction it makes between Helpston villagers and outsiders, particularly with respect to its knowability. Here, the poem’s opening line plays a significant role as Clare’s narrator addresses two audiences, the unlettered audience of his village and the reading audience that lives outside the village.
The first words the reader encounters in the poem are “Hail humble Helpstone” (1). Before we reach Clare’s use of the word “thy” in the line, which indicates that the narrator is speaking to the villagers, these words immediately call the reader to attention as though the narrator is speaking to the reader. The effect is not necessarily unintentional. Clare uses alliteration in the first three words of the poem’s first line, a technique that draws attention to a phrase by causing readers to focus on the repetition of a specific sound. Here, the breathiness of the “h” sounds three times, accompanied by the similar /hāl/ and /hĕl/ sounds appearing at the beginning and ending of the phrase. This phonetic construction imprints itself on the mind of the reader, so that s/he cannot fail to register the phrase as s/he begins the poem. We may also note that the repeated sounds in question coincide with two uppercase “H’s” at the beginning and ending of the phrase, in a line that contains no other capitalized letters, increasing the reader’s awareness of the salutation. Further, Clare neglects to punctuate the phrase with commas, so that what might have appeared as a direct command to the village, “Hail, humble Helpstone,” appears as a command to the reading audience to hail humble Helpston. Indeed, in the published version of the poem, where the tyranny of grammar alters his writing, Clare renders the phrase in the fashion that addresses the village: “Hail, humble Helpstone” (1).18 This rendition is problematic. Given his view of the villagers as unlettered, they cannot be the sole target of his salutation. Heeding Clare’s call requires that one read the poem. Here, the individual inclined to read is dependent on the poem’s syntactical constructions for an indication of the audience that Clare is addressing. Accordingly, it is significant that the phonetic and visual features of the phrase work in tandem in the unpublished work, as they direct the reading audience to follow a command that also becomes a directive for the village later in the line. This latter command to the village aligns with the construction of the phrase in the published version of the poem.
The attempt to draw the attention of readers seems even more probable, considering the ambition of the poet. Clare desires to be well-received by a literate class that would have been more likely to read his work than the Helpston villagers, who thought his avid bookishness as a child “was for no other improvement then quallyfiing an idiot for a workhouse” (Clare 5). He explains, “it is common for villages to pass judgment on a lover of books as a sure indication of laziness” (6). Work trumps reading inside the boundaries of Helpston. As the typical resident of Helpston would have prized work over reading, it stands to reason that the call is intended for those who live outside of the village, though it is literally directed to the village. The phrase, “Hail humble Helpstone,” therefore, yields two results: 1. It explicitly calls for the attention of a village that could hear the salutation if Clare uttered it verbally, but which would not be likely to read it in the print medium to which it is confined. 2 It implicitly calls for the attention of those outside of the village who are likelier to read the text, but who ordinarily, as members of an upper-class literary scene, would not give attention to the rural environment. On this condition, the salutation is more effective for an audience of outsiders than it is in Helpston. Thus, even though its expressed target is the villagers with whom he lives, Clare’s call is only practical in its ability to draw the attention of outsiders, who, conceivably, are an intended target of the salutation.
Having made the call for attention, Clare turns toward establishing the lowly character of Helpston, which he ultimately ties to lack of attention and ignorance, the obscurity-inducing facets of unknowing. He refers to Helpston’s “mean village” and its “lowly head” in line 2, conveying a sense of the low status of the area by anthropomorphizing it. This form of representation makes the rural scene into a person of inferior status, a figure that fits the dominant figure/Other paradigm given that the paradigm is primarily used to discuss relationships between people of differing social and cultural statuses.19 This is not to say that Clare viewed Helpston as Other, but that his language crafts the image of Helpston as Other. An additional consequence of this humanizing is that the reader can view land in a light similar to the way he may view him- or herself. Land, imagined as a person, can more readily receive the sympathies that some people would wish for themselves or afford to others. That the village is mean and lowly in the second line of the stanza, and already declared “humble” in the first line, equips Helpston with a favorable human quality that allows it to court the reader’s favor—as it courts the onlooker’s gaze in line 102. Clare’s description of the village allows readers to interpret Helpston’s experience as a neglected human being’s experience rather than something that is happening to a detached area of land devoid of senses or moral quality. He makes it possible for readers to engage in a qualitative knowing of the rural environs, as opposed to the quantitative knowing conducted by enclosers.
As a result of the dual connotations of meanness and lowliness, obscurity becomes an ambiguous condition, favoring pre-enclosed nature at the same time that it also indicates the lack of regard that Helpston receives from the upper class. Clare’s consistent use of praise and specificity to describe the village, offset by the appearance of enclosure in the form of past-tense language, manifests this ambiguity. Helpston is humble in its meanness and lowliness and, therefore, human-like and favorable. However, it is also “Unknown to grandeur and unknown to fame,” an “Unlettered spot unheard” of in the works of other poets. To be unknown, in this line, is to be qualitatively unknown, setting the village directly opposite the notion of high regard. It also sets the village opposite those who are the dispensers of favor or disfavor. The distinguishing characteristic dividing Helpston from these who have the ability to give their attention, the London literary scene for example, is the use of the words “grandeur” and “fame.” It is through being known by these individuals that one may obtain commendatory recognition, rather than the quantifying attention that comes by way of enclosure. Clare’s desire for the village to receive their recognition positions the providers of attention as the normative figures in the paradigmatic relationship. By failing to notice Helpston, they prevent the acceptance of the village as part of normal society. Something of this exclusion from normal society appears in critics’ reviews of Clare’s work.
In Monthly Magazine, a reviewer disapproving of Clare’s use of provincial words and phrases in his poetry, writes,
We leave it to the sober judgment of our readers, to decide, whether these, though indisputable, are desirable additions to our language…. If the peculiar phraseology of the Northamptonshire rustics is to be licensed in poetry, we see no reason why that of Lancashire, Somersetshire, and other counties should not be allowed an equal currency; and thus our language would be surprisingly enriched, by the legitimization of all the varieties of speech in use among the canaille throughout the kingdom. (qtd in McKusick 256-257)
The passage attests to an overlooking of a rural dialect as the reviewer considers whether it is “desirable” to recognize Clare’s “innovating style” as an acceptable part of literary language (256).
Indeed, referring to the dialect as an innovation suggests that it is new insofar as upper-class arbiters of taste do not recognize it. The review has inherently social implications, given its use of hierarchizing terms to refer to the dialect of people living in a particular location, the “Northamptonshire rustics” (256). In the mind of the reviewer, Clare’s writing is “the mere patois of a small district” and contains “unauthorised contractions” (256). The characterization of the dialect as merely the verbiage of a small region and full of unauthorized syntax suggests the higher authority of the upper class to legitimize or condemn Clare’s language (256). In the passage, “mere” indicates something small and insignificant. Combined with the idea that the dialect is also unauthorized, requiring sanction from an authoritative source, the reviewer diminishes the culture of the regional community that informs Clare’s language. Additionally, Clare’s provincialisms are
“strangers” to acceptable literature, reinforcing the notion that to be known by the upper-class is
to be legitimate; whereas to be unknown, strange, is to be of low regard and illegitimate (256). The
Monthly Magazine’s readership possesses “sober judgment,” which, in the context of the
conversation, suggests that Clare’s writing is impolitic, lacking sobriety. Again, the upper class
possesses the ability to license rustic language, wielding the power to make it “equal” to the
acceptable language of the traditional literary scene. On its own, however, it is “peculiar” and
unworthy of acceptability. To solidify the relationship of upper-class tastes to acceptable literature
and lower-class character to unacceptable literature, the reviewer interjects recent sociopolitical
strife on the Continent into his examination of Clare’s volume of poetry. McKusick explains that
the word, “canaille,” meaning “rabble,” is employed by the reviewer as a way of invoking the
political conflict of the French Revolution. It is a reference to the uprising itself, “when the canaille
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demolished the Bastille, marched on Versailles, and ultimately legitimized a new political patois
that replaced all honorific forms of address with the simple appellative citoyen” (257). The
reviewer is drawing a parallel between the dissolving of class distinctions in the revolution and the
possible effect that giving place to Clare’s regional dialect will have on English literature, given
its position as an indicator of class. Appearing in published work, Clare’s obscure rural dialect
threatens to diminish acceptable English language. Consequently, protecting normative
Englishness means excluding the lowly rural regions of the country.20
Despite some critics’ views of Clare’s poetry, its appearance as a published work makes it
part of the literary scene, unsettling the marginalizing influence of the upper class. Clare’s
undermining of the aggressive capitalistic attention that enclosers pay to his village is palpable in
“Helpstone.” His several references to the loss of nature’s appeal are a consistent invoking of the
privatization of land held in common. Clare problematizes this invocation, however, through the
manner in which he describes his surroundings. Primarily, he relies on the past tense to signify
enclosure. Lush descriptions of the village surround his use of the past tense in the poem, so that
descriptions of rural beauty dwarf his allusions to enclosure. Consequently, nature’s beauty is
bound up with enclosure in a relationship of continual exposure and suppression that privileges
the image of the village’s past, while maintaining semblances of the enclosure movement that
clears away the rural nature of Clare’s youth.
Lines 71-76 provide an example of Clare’s privileging of the past over the process by which
expansive land and its free-growing flora has disappeared. The onlooker, who “feels his heart
warm” (71) and who feels a “fondness” (72) for the rural past, observes
The vanish’d green to mourn the spot to see
Where flourish’d many a bush and many a tree
Where once the brook for now the brook is gone.
Oer pebbles dimpling sweet went whimpering on…. (73-76)
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The attractiveness of nature appears within the context of an onlooker’s fondness for the rural past.
Accordingly, Clare takes care to provide readers with a luxuriant characterization of the
environment. The green of the village was of such beauty that it is worth mourning in its absence
(73). The several trees and bushes were not only present in the environment, but thrived there with
eye-catching extravagance (74). The brook seems almost to play sweetly over pebbles (75-76). The
description is written in a manner that makes the beauty of nature a prominent theme in the poem.
The village, unimproved by aggressive agrarian capitalism, appears outright, while Clare obscures
enclosure by deemphasizing it. To be clear, it is not the case that Clare necessarily makes enclosure
unrecognizable in the poem, though one should take care not to assume that enclosure is the poem’s
focus—a point to which we will return shortly. Rather, we are arguing that Clare does not go so
far as to position enclosure as an overt figure in “Helpstone.” Indeed, enclosure never appears by
name in the poem, nor in the entire volume in which the poem appears, and Clare does not give it
the explicit or ornamental description he provides to the natural world. For instance, “vanish’d”
(73), “flourish’d” (74), “Where once” (75), and “gone” (75) all allude to enclosure clearing the
land of its various natural elements. They encapsulate a process that Clare might have described
more fully, especially given the work involved in enclosing a designated field: the digging of
ditches, the cutting down of trees and bushes, the draining of the fens, which required the use of
windmills and then steam-engine technology to keep them dry, the erecting of signs, posts, and
fences, etc. Clare, however, does not describe this work. Rather than receiving treatment
comparable to that lavished on elements of nature, these activities find faint expression in past-
tense verbiage that renders the rural past more visible in the imagination of the reader who follows
Clare’s descriptions in the poem. In reading through the passage, one is more likely to gloss over
ed-verbs and other indicators of enclosure’s destructive activity, because these indicators are
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relatively short and plainly stated. They readily give place to a more descriptive past, rather than
calling attention to themselves. In the case of line 74’s “flourish’d,” for example, the “’d” is not
likely to receive most of the reader’s notice. Instead, the root word is likeliest to receive it, because
it is the root that is most responsible for the word’s meaning and because the passage focuses on
describing a lush environment, rather than enclosure. Flourished indicates thriving trees and
bushes more than it reflects their passing away by means of enclosure, because the root word
means to “throw out leaves and shoots; to shoot forth; to grow vigorously and luxuriantly” (OED).
By dint of its meaning, the word seems expansive and elastic, unstinted by boundaries. As a result,
the reader imagines the plenitude of rural nature in place of its present-day absence. Pre-enclosed
nature takes precedence in the passage, undermining enclosure as Clare pushes the enclosure
movement into the background, while thrusting pre-enclosed nature into the foreground.
Here, it is important to note that it is not a given that Clare is addressing enclosure in a
poem where it may appear he is addressing it. John Barrell makes this point clear when he discusses
scholars’ interpretations of Clare’s poetry. He explains that a majority of scholars have addressed
the stereotypical influence of Helpston’s enclosure on Clare’s poetry, instead of demonstrating the
precise “significance the enclosure might have had for Helpston and for Clare” (Barrell 189). He
argues that much of this practice derives from J. L. and Barbara Hammond’s The Village Labourer,
in which the authors provide “an unusually one-sided account of the economic effects of
parliamentary enclosure” (Barrell 189). The text positions a particular instance of enclosure as
though it were indicative of the conditions of all instances of enclosure (Barrell 189). This leads
to scholars emphasizing “that side of English rural literature which seems to be a continuous
lament for the passing of the ‘organic’ rural community” (Barrell 189). Accordingly, Barrell notes
that these critics often assume that when Clare “writes about enclosure, about rural poverty, he is
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making the same sorts of connections between them as the Hammonds made; and when he writes
about rural poverty without mentioning enclosure, it is nevertheless assumed that what he is
describing is the effects of enclosure on Helpston” (190). Further, he states that “the land-tax
assessments for Helpston” suggest “the enclosure had had no catastrophic effect on small owner-
occupiers by 1825, the date by which the enclosure has ceased to be one of Clare’s major
preoccupations” (204). It is, therefore, important to examine each poem without assuming whether
Clare is addressing enclosure—particularly where he does not use the word itself. To be clear, this
is not to suggest that the enclosure movement did not have so significant an effect on Clare as to
prompt him to reference it in much of his poetry, or in “Helpstone” specifically.21 Whatever the
extent of enclosure in his particular village, it draws very much of his attention. It is to say that the
lack of a direct reference to enclosure in “Helpstone,” in light of the circumstances and his disdain
for the practice, makes the absence noteworthy.
Despite the undermining influence of enclosure in Clare’s descriptions of the rural past in
“Helpstone,” he is heavily invested in illustrating pre-enclosed nature for his readers. This
qualitative knowing provides a counter to the unknowing of the village, revealing the importance
of his specific descriptions of the area and his lack of overt emphasis on enclosure’s effect on the
land. Knowing appears in combination with references to enclosure, as we have seen in lines 73-
76, and both precede and follow these references, so that attempts to make Helpston visible to his
readers essentially enclose the poem’s allusions to enclosure. For instance, the third stanza, lines
47-72, focuses on the beauties of nature and the narrator’s childhood enjoyments before the fourth
stanza, lines 73-94, introduces enclosure by way of implication. The latter stanza ends with the
narrator’s admission that the removal of nature’s beauties “[g]riev’d [him] at heart” (94), preceding
the fifth stanza’s allusion to enclosure in line 95, “Thou far fled pasture long evanish’d scene.”
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The following lines of this stanza overwhelm allusions to enclosure with the narrator’s listing of
specific flowers and animals that populated the environment. The sixth stanza, lines 115-134,
returns to the idea of enclosure. Here, the poem blatantly blames the wealthy for the destruction of
the environment and the poor’s loss of work and food, but stops short of mentioning enclosure
outright. Line 135 directs the reader’s attention to the “departed charms” of nature before lines
138-144 return to a description of “Peace and Plenty” (137). This manner of downplaying
enclosure while privileging the pre-enclosed natural world continues throughout the poem, ending
with lines 185-186: “And every wish that leaves the aching breast / Flies to the spot where all its
wishes rest.” In these lines, Clare indicates that enclosure is prominent in rural England. It is the
reason for the traveler’s “aching breast” (185). However, he does not give enclosure the final word.
The travelers’ wishes to see “happy Eden” (163) and the “charms of youth” again do not die at the
end of the poem (175). They fly to a place where all such “wishes rest” (186). Here, unenclosed
nature, however ephemeral, lives on in the desire to return to the luxuriant natural world just as it
lives in Clare’s practice of re-membering. In the poem, the past supersedes the present, in which
enclosure claims the natural world.
The third stanza signals a beginning of the enclosers’ and enclosure’s subordination to the
rural past with a salutation that recalls the opening line of the poem. Like his first salutation,
Clare’s second draws the readers’ attention to the village’s physical features. In line 47, he writes,
“Hail scenes obscure so near and dear to me.” Again, the village merits appreciation, though it
does not receive it because of its obscurity (47). Consequently, Clare sets out to make its scenes
known by noting parts of the landscape and using obscurity in the endeavor. He writes, “The
church the brook the cottage and the tree / Still shall obscurity rehearse the song / And hum your
beauties as I stroll along” (47-50). The recognition requested for the village is set alongside
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obscurity, although without any references to a lack of knowledge as we find in the first stanza.
The use of “obscure” in line 47 loosely recalls these references, because of its synonymous
relationship to the first stanza’s use of “Unknown” and “unheard”—terms illustrating that no one
pays attention to Helpston. However, the third stanza goes further than the first to check its mention
of Helpston’s obscurity with several lines extolling the narrator’s youthful enjoyment of his “native
place” (71). Significantly, the stanza imbues the parish with importance by establishing a
relationship between it and the narrator. Although outsiders may overlook the scene, it is cherished
by the narrator who states that it is “near and dear” to him (47). The statement is a definitive
expression of the narrator’s affinity with the village and signals the beginning of a tract that will
focus on revealing the village to readers. This manner of presentation, in the absence of language
pointing out the deficiencies of the environment, lifts Helpston out from the fog of obscurity,
placing the detail of the village in view of Clare’s audience. It is the attachment to the obscure
scenes, now made visible, that enjoys a privileged position, rather than the point of view of
outsiders.
As opposed to merely allowing obscurity to vanish from the poem as a result of his
description of the village, Clare has obscurity rehearse the song of rural nature’s beauty (49). It
engages in a qualitative knowing of nature’s features, practicing them in order to hum them for the
narrator’s amusement (50). This is especially important given the reach of obscurity in the poem.
Clare’s narrator, the village-dwellers, Helpston itself, and also the relationship of these figures to
those who are inattentive to the village, are all obscure. Helpston is obscure to the negligent, a
relationship that initially places those who overlook Helpston in a dominant position relative to
the village and its denizens. Lines 49-50 unsettles this position. The outsiders’ heedlessness
lessens, because the obscurity born of the outsiders’ inattention learns from nature as the narrator
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walks through the parish. Inattentiveness becomes attentive, losing its marginalizing power as it
immerses itself in the particular features of the village to such a degree as to “hum [the] beauties”
of nature that soothe the narrator (50). The narrator, content with the humming, strolls along
through the scene. There is a certain calm with which he moves from describing obscurity to
describing the rest of the natural scene that is absent in the first stanza. This is largely because the
unknowing of the first stanza is replaced by an obscurity that learns facets of Helpston that are
“near and dear” to the narrator in the third stanza, where rural nature appears as a desirable figure
(31). The description of Helpston’s landscape is important here as the narrator focuses his primary
attention on the surrounding physical setting.
Clare, as if attempting to make Helpston worthy of the poem’s lofty salutations, speaks of
the village’s past condition in flattering terms. The “Dear native spot,” “Those golden days,”
“Those sports those pastimes,” and the “happy youth [running] in pleasures circle,” he recalls with
great fondness (51-57). To this he adds that every joyous impulse was pursued to the full (59-68).
Despite Clare’s notice that these facets of nature have all passed away, the remembrance of what
the village had been almost glows in these lines. Of some significance is the appearance of
knowing in the passage. The first stanza emphasizes Helpston’s lack of grandeur and education.
Here, however, that which is unknown is of a markedly different character. It is the hope that
accompanies each new day (61). The connotation of knowing is completely reversed in accordance
with the perspective of the village. In the opening stanza of the poem, Clare is describing Helpston
in relation to the perspectives of outsiders. By contrast, the third stanza describes Helpston in
relation to the perspective of his narrator—a native of the village. Between the transition in
perspectives there is a closing of the gap, a move from unfamiliarity to familiarity and affinity that
undermines the relationship of the outsiders to the village. The cold negligence of those in a
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position to overlook Helpston, compared specifically with the remembrance of the rural narrator,
leaves little to no impression. Clare’s use of “known” and “knew” later in the passage, where he
writes, “These joys all known in happy infancy / And all I ever knew were spent on thee,” bolsters
this reversal (67-68). “[K]nown” literally counters the negative connotations that may be
associated with “Unknown” in the first stanza, particularly given the phrasing of which it is a part.
All of the narrator’s childhood joys are known, as opposed to the village existing in a state in which
it is completely unknown by others. “All” broadens the scope of knowing (66). It encompasses a
world of youthful enjoyment that existed before the enclosing of the parish, undermining the grand
unknown status of the parish presented earlier in the poem. The expansive knowing is reiterated
in the last line of the passage, where Clare writes “all I ever knew” [emphasis mine]. Here, the
expansiveness of knowing is expanded even further by the inclusion of “ever.” Given that the
narrator is working from memory, the recollection of all that s/he knew transports knowing beyond
the immediate moment in which s/he knew it. The re-membering of the past interjects the pre-
enclosed environment and the narrator’s youthful experiences into the enclosed present, where it
overwhelms allusions to enclosure in Clare’s poetry. Qualitative knowing and remembrance are
coequal. Although Helpston is subjected to the negligence of others who live outside of the parish,
rendering it lowly, the fondness of the narrator for the environment charges the environment with
an internal regard that becomes known to his contemporary readers.
Clare’s long description of the particulars of his village preserve the land’s original beauty
and have the effect of slowing the consumption of a significant portion of the reader’s time as s/he
reads through the intricate account. Lines 95-114, to which we will return, provides such a
description, walking the reader alongside daisies, lilacs, meandering oxen, and sheep. Clare forces
them to pay attention, so that the obscurity of Helpston is offset by his observance of the rural
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beauty that is obscure to upper-class outsiders. Here, it is appropriate that obscurity is checked by
Clare’s active observing of the natural world as it existed in the rural past. His observation of the
environment undermines the upper-class marginalization of the land and the poor as he attempts
“to maintain, or uphold” the original “quality, state, or condition” of his village (OED).22 The Latin
variation of the verb, observe, indicates even further involvement on the part of the observer. It
couples the act of seeing with the more purposeful act of guarding; observare means to “watch
over,” to “guard.” Taking the two meanings together, the observer functions as a watchful
protector, a role that Clare’s narrator assumes in the anti-enclosure context of “Helpstone.” To
know the village, in this regard, means viewing its particularities from a protective stance. It is
important to reiterate that the English countryside’s past is the primary subject of the narrator’s
observance in the poem. S/he is concerned with preserving nature as it existed before enclosure
reshaped the land. It is, therefore, the remembered rural setting, devoid of obstructing fences and
ditches, over which the narrator’s gaze takes a protective stance.
The safeguarding of the rural past goes yet a step further, given the inherent social leanings
of a published work. John Clare’s Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery appeared in four
editions, with the first three editions each selling one thousand copies and the fourth edition selling
616 copies, at a price of 5s. 6d. By prompting this audience to read his specific descriptions of the
landscape and sympathize with the village, Clare elicits the participation of at least 3,616 readers
in preserving the memory of the rural environment despite the enclosure movement’s steady
encroachment over the countryside. Indeed, the “poem assumes that the power to rescue both
village and poet from obscurity rests with the reader. ‘Helpstone’ is,” at once, “a condemnation of
heedless gazing” and “a plea for recognition,” which it receives from Clare and his audience
(Helsinger 513). We, as readers who envision the scenes he recollects and describes, become
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partners with him in guarding the memory of the unenclosed commons. The implicit drafting of
partners for this task is significant, given his complaints of memory loss in some of the letters he
wrote to Eliza Emmerson, one of his patrons. Beginning in November 1823 and lasting for an
approximate twelve-month period, he informed Emmerson of a number of symptoms regarding
his failing health. Among them, Clare noted that his “memory is worse & worse nearly lost” (qtd
in Blackmore 210). In poetry that relies heavily on his recollection of the past, a poor ability to
remember would impair future attempts to write detailed depictions of the rural past as a
counterpoint to the enclosed fields of the present. His soliciting of the audience’s recognition of
Helpston’s past becomes imperative for guarding the village’s former glory. It is a collective act
that occurs as a result of reading and sympathizing, because of Clare’s practice of remembering
the natural past in the present.
Remembrance, in Clare’s enclosure poetry, is heavily dependent on specificity. In the fifth
stanza, Clare’s scope is fairly broad, moving through a large area of land. However, the language
is particular in terms of the individual objects and creatures that it includes. The stanza avoids
maintaining a focus on any one object for an extended period of time. While the passage begins
with the general category of “the flowery green,” it transitions into a gaze that encompasses
specific aspects of Helpston’s natural environment. Within the space of eighteen lines, his eye
lights on “golden kingcups,” “silver dazies,” “silver grasses” and their “tiny stems,” “the pale
lilac,” “cowslaps,” “lowing oxen,” “the shepherd” and his “woolly charge,” “echoing vallies,”
“sultry suns,” and “the troubling fly” (95-112).23 It is also worth noting that this specificity comes
as a result of Clare’s narrator moving, in his or her memory, from the plain to the valleys in order
to populate the description with a number of individual parts to recreate the whole environment.
That is, the narrator’s positioning is decidedly un-picturesque. Rather than describing the
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environment from a distance and with a sense of detachment, s/he moves in close, recording sights
that would likely be indiscernible from a remote position. S/he mentions that the daisies are
“tottering,” moving unsteadily in line 99. In the following line, s/he draws the readers’ attention
to the “grasses” with their “tiny stems” “bent” (100). The pluralization appearing here indicates
that Clare’s narrator is close enough to view a mass of individual blades of grass, which his or her
notice of their “tiny stems” supports. From an aloof position, they would be an indistinct part of a
collective pasture, but their particularity is visible because of the narrator’s close proximity to the
objects s/he describes. S/he seems almost bent down as s/he moves through the environs.
Additionally, line 101 notes that the lilacs were “mean and lowly.” Given this description, the
narrator’s ability to distinguish the lilacs from the grass and other flowers suggests the nearness of
the narrator to the environment s/he describes. As a consequence, the readers are nearly in the
scene themselves because of the pains Clare takes to reconstruct it. He is not working from a view
of what he sees, but of what he saw with such particularity that the scene becomes, in a manner of
speaking, present. This method of re-membering links image to image, so that the passage works
like a puzzle, or a stream of reconstruction in which the unknown village and unheeded poet
become the centers of attention. That which had been invisible has now increased in visibility.24
While John Clare works to expose Helpston to the view of those who would overlook it,
by devoting significant portions of the poem to descriptions of his memory of the rural area’s
beauty, he also subverts this practice. An important way in which this occurs entails a managing
of the text that takes place before the public is ever introduced to the poem. Clare is engaged in a
struggle over the appropriateness of his provincialisms, the lack of correct spelling and grammar,
and politically charged statements woven into the poem that challenge wealthy landowners.
Because of Clare’s unwilling capitulation to these editorial demands, the version of “Helpstone”
51
made accessible to his readers diminishes the rustic voice of the writing and its defense of its
environs against measures undertaken to utterly transform the character of the open fields. This
contrasts starkly with Clare’s tendency to depart from literary norms, such as occurs when he
refigures literary forms in his own work.25
Some caution is required here, as there can be some temptation to attach the notion of irony
to Clare’s adherence to literary forms, in light of his departures from traditional forms—especially
when comparing them to Clare’s distaste for the debilitating form of enclosure. As an example,
Clare writes “Helpstone” in iambic pentameter. Though the meter is not entirely consistent
throughout, featuring lines that contain eleven and twelve syllables, the poem largely adheres to
the standard heroic meter that possesses a “bourgeois” connotation (Helsinger 519). As the poem
promotes the former beauty of the unenclosed village over the lands enclosed by upper-class
landowners, one may suppose that Clare’s use of the bourgeois form is ironic. Though he opposes
enclosures, partly because of their prohibitive formal structure, Clare subjects his representation
of unenclosed nature to a formal poetic structure, essentially imposing structural rules on his
depiction of the environment. This occurs in the fifth stanza of “Helpstone,” where Clare lists
several natural objects that had been part of the unenclosed village: the “golden kingcups,” “silver
dazies,” meandering oxen, etc. (95-114). In accordance with his distaste for grammatical rules, the
stanza avoids the use of commas and periods, structural elements, mimicking the untamed
character of the scene.26 At the same time, Clare presents the description to readers in heroic
couplets, only breaking the pattern with an extra syllable in three out of twenty lines. Because of
this subjection of described nature to form, one might suppose that Clare’s literary practice
problematizes his position against enclosure. It is important to note, however, that a preference for
a particular kind of form does not necessarily equate to a preference for all kinds of form. The
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circumstances in which the form exists, are important here. As an example, Clare’s penchant for
rhyming, a practice that automatically produces form because it establishes a pattern, is a practice
in which he engaged as a child, attempting to assuage his own sadness and fears—even prior to
his endeavoring to write poetry (Clare 55-57). Generally speaking, it is not an unwanted
imposition; it is a self-protective practice that grows into a desirable practice when he begins
reading and writing poems. The enclosure movement is of an entirely different character where
Clare is concerned. It marginalizes and displaces the rural poor, and imposes an unwanted structure
on the land that prevents the poor from returning. For Clare, the context in which the form exists
is the important factor. Nevertheless, his departure from traditional literary forms demonstrates his
ability to manipulate established norms to favor the underprivileged.
An example of Clare’s manipulation of traditional literary forms appears in his work with
georgic poetry and the antiquarian miscellany. In “Representing Rural Leisure: John Clare and the
Politics of Popular Culture,” Theresa Adams explains that Clare refashions these literary genres
with the effect of privileging the rural poor and their lifestyle. In georgic poetry, there is a
peaceable relationship existing between labor and leisure; “the laborer’s life consists of difficult
work sometimes broken up by brief periods of leisure” (Adams 372). Labor and leisure are bound
up together, depicting rural society as a place in which “vertical bonds” persist “between members
of different classes” (Adams 372). However, Clare, particularly in a poem like “The Village
Minstrel,” overturns this construction. The leisure of the rural inhabitants becomes the prevailing
focus of the poem, broken up by temporary periods of work. As this primary focus occurs outside
the employer’s view, the poem establishes horizontal bonds between its lower-class workers
(Adams 372). This is made all the more significant by the relationship of the writing of poetry to
socioeconomic classes. Near the end of the eighteenth century and stretching into the nineteenth
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century, “for polite poets to make writing into legitimate or heroic work, it was necessary to
prevent writing from being an occupation for” individuals who mainly earned a living from manual
labor (Keegan 2). The professionalization of poetry required those who wrote it to have “specific
training and appropriate credentials generally unavailable to the laboring classes. When they wrote
merely as a casual or leisure activity, and thus not ‘seriously,’ laboring-class poets would not pose
the same threat to the legitimacy of ‘professional authorship’” (Keegan 2). Thus, not only is the
georgic genre altered to promote the lower-class laborer and leisure, but Clare’s writing of the
poem as part of his literary profession resists the implicit prohibition against the idea of a laboring-
class poet. In like fashion, the antiquarian miscellany was a form of writing that “was seasonally
organized and described superstitions, customs and sports; its purpose was to collect and preserve
the nation’s disappearing cultural heritage” (Adams 381). Clare took care to include songs and
ballads in his miscellany “using fieldwork” and “personal experience,” something that
contemporary antiquarians neglected to do (Adams 381). He also provided the social context for
the customs contained in his work. By contrast, the antiquarians of the day generally considered
customs to be “collectible fragments” (Adams 382). They needed “the world to be fragmented in
order to feel that they have mastered those fragments. They endeavor to contain the past by
overwhelming it with their meticulous attentions” (Trumpener qtd in Adams 382). In these
particular genres, Clare performs against traditional literary currents. However, in the case of much
of his early published poetry, the influence of outside forces is pervasive and imposes upper-class
sensibilities on Clare. Here, “Helpstone” works more on behalf of the upper class, as Clare
consents to make changes to the poem that soften his negative characterizations of the upper-class.
As Elizabeth Helsinger notes in “Clare and the Place of the Peasant Poet,” England’s
stratified social structure is an important political reality of nineteenth-century life in the
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countryside. It holds a significant place in the literature of the period as unambiguous
representations of the hierarchy, especially “the form of social stability that rural scenes staged for
their urban middle-class audiences,” attest to the continuance of class stratification and the reader’s
position in it” (Helsinger 510). Equally important, however, is the eruption of economic protests
in the nineteenth century that signaled a passing away of “the hierarchical relations of deference
and responsibility” in rural England, transforming the “known and familiar inhabitants of the rural
scene” into strangers in the eyes of the upper class (Helsinger 510). Clare’s poetry, where the
sanctioning and destruction of the social hierarchy is concerned, is ambiguous. It both participates
in the solidifying of class difference and privileges the strangeness of rural life (Helsinger 510).
This latter facet of his work in particular, its representation of rural foreignness, threatens to rouse
“specific anxieties among his early readers” (Helsinger 510). Thus, in addition to customs,
traditions, and geographical location, the political protests in his poetry and his provincial word
choices and deviations from standard spelling and grammar—abnormalities to the upper-classes
and the London-literary society—become indelible markers of Helpston’s and Clare’s identities
as unknown, unfamiliar rural figures.
The state of being unknown, unfamiliar is not only a condition foisted on the rural
environment from the outside. Clare himself acquiesces to upper-class pressure, participating in
an erasure of his rural identity that makes himself and his village unknown to a certain degree. The
means by which this occurs in the text is one of unknowing, countering the work he has done to
make pre-enclosed Helpston visible to his reading audience. Here, Clare capitulates to editorial
requests to remove his provincialisms from the text and to fix his grammar and spelling
peculiarities. He also lessens the emphasis that he originally placed on the culpability of the upper
class. As a consequence, he forces his blatant exposure of Helpston to compete with an unseen
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marginalizing of rural identity that reasserts the unknowing of the upper class in the published
version of the poem—that rendition of the text which readers are to receive as the complete and
acceptable version.
The unknowing discussed in “Helpstone” is a reference to a desire on the part of the London
elite to keep the regional dialect of writers like Clare out of the circle of acceptable, standardized
English literature.27 As this group is largely comprised of upper-class, educated men, James
McKusick describes the elite as a kind of socially hegemonic cadre of individuals, some of whom
marginalized Clare’s work through editing and literary reviews.28 A staunch repudiation of Clare’s
work appears in a response to his first volume of poetry, in which “Helpstone” is included. The
repudiation comes from Lord Radstock, one of Clare’s patrons. Radstock “was a retired admiral,
an Evangelical, a prominent figure in the Societies for the Propagation of the Gospel and for the
Suppression of Vice, a subscriber to Hannah More’s Cheap Repository Tracts (1795-1798), and a
person whom John Goodridge feels ‘would nowadays be counting the number of swear words on
TV’” (Smith 38). In the volume in question, Clare takes wealthy landowners to task for destroying
the rural environment, disrupting the customs and traditions of the rural poor, and displacing them
from the land itself by means of enclosure. Offended by the material, Radstock urgently expresses
the need for Clare to revise the volume. He writes to another of Clare’s patrons, Eliza Emmerson,
that she
must tell him—to expunge certain highly objectionable passages in his 1st
Volume—before the 3rd Edition appears—passages, wherein, his then depressed
state hurried him not only into error, but into the most flagrant acts of injustice; by
accusing those of pride, cruelty, vices, and ill-directed passions—who, are the very
persons, by whose truly generous and noble exertions he has been raised from
misery and despondency…. Tell Clare if he has still a recollection of what I have
done, and am still doing for him, he must give me unquestionable proofs of being
that man I would have him to be—he must expunge! (qtd in McKusick 258)
56
We may note the forcefulness with which Radstock speaks, as it is the imposing voice of the
landowning class. Clare must be told to redact passages from his poetry that offend the wealthy,
passages that would undoubtedly include his disapproval of the wealthy’s support of enclosure—
the “cruelty” listed amidst “pride…vices, and ill-directed passions”—despite his experience of the
effects of enclosure on the rural community in which he lives (qtd in McKusick 258). And he must
make these erasures in order to prove that he is not what he is, but what his wealthy patron would
make him. In demanding that Clare strike his characterizations of the wealthy as prideful and cruel
from his poetry, Radstock requires him to accept the callous imposition of the wealthy’s
commercial aims by overlooking the transformation of Helpston into a mirror of upper-class
sensibilities. Indeed, the demand effectively means the unknowing of Helpston’s rural identity, as
enclosure disfigures the village and conceals the conditions under which these changes take place.
In print, Radstock is enacting against a rural native that which enclosure enacts against villagers
in the countryside. They are imposing class-based strictures—boundaries—on Clare’s work that
privilege upper classes and marginalize the rural poor. In the case of enclosure, this means the
displacement of people from their homes and livelihood. In the case of editorial decisions and
reviews, this effectively means the attempt to displace an authentic rural identity. Clare, with
protest, capitulates to these demands, creating a kind of political silence in the final versions of his
poetry. Here, he is very much like Mary Prince, eviscerating the Self as a result of applied pressure
that everywhere implies the inferiority of his regional background and identity. There is this
difference between Prince’s and Clare’s silences, however, that Clare’s silence does not make
invisible the machinations that support the idea of his inferiority. While Prince fails to provide
detailed descriptions of activities that evidence the oppressive forces acting on her, Clare is
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mitigating the evidence of his identity and his protest against the oppressive forces acting on
himself.
The reason for Clare’s decision to moderate his descriptions of the rural self may well have
been his desire to be known. That is, Clare may have agreed to expunge certain descriptions of the
conditions in “Helpstone” that are indicative of the village’s, and his own, rural self in order to
publish his work. Andrew Smith notes “the extent to which the expectations of John Clare’s
patrons, publishers, established and prospective audiences, and his desire to be accepted by literary
London led him to censor his writings on socio-political reform” (37). It is important to note that
censorship of his work was met with reticence on Clare’s part. Responding to Radstock’s demands
to strike the political protests from his poetry in a letter to John Taylor, Clare writes “Being much
botherd latley I must trouble you to leave out the 8 lines in ‘helpstone’ beginning ‘Accursed
wealth’ … leave it out & put ***** to fill up the blank this will let em see I do it as negligent as
possible d—n that canting way of being forcd to please I say—I cant abide it & one day I will
show my Independance more stron[g]ly than ever” (qtd in McKusick 258). McKusick notes that
Clare’s patrons never made direct demands to Clare to censor his work, following those made for
this volume. He is also careful to mention, however, that this may have been because Clare and
Taylor had come to realize the need for “self-censorship,” or because they “unconsciously
internalized the very repression they sought to oppose” (McKusick 258-259). In either case, the
working of upper-class authority on rural poor sensibilities significantly influenced “Helpstone,”
as it was to appear in the third edition of Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820).
The poem is a doubly undermined subversion of landed-class power. Radstock and other patrons
undermine Clare, who goes on to undermine his own protest.29
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In the wake of Clare’s censorship of “Helpstone,” enclosure becomes a powerful figure in
the poem by his own hand. Here, it is striking that the word, “enclosure,” does not make an
appearance anywhere in the poem, just as seven of the eight lines beginning with, “Accursed
wealth,” are absent from it. As previously noted, the workings of enclosure are palpable in the
poem, but only as effects of the enclosure process. This is starker nowhere in the poem than in
lines 123-134 of “Helpstone.” After describing the beauty of rural nature, now lost to him, Clare
levels the blame for this loss on the poem’s single use of “Accursed Wealth” (127). The accusation
voiced by Clare’s narrator does not directly point to people. Again, he presents wealth as the cause
of rural nature’s destruction in the passage, while the specific means of the destruction goes untold.
Economic status, wealth, is at fault for nature’s disfigured condition and the rural inhabitants’ loss
of work and food, not the “generous and noble” landowners (qtd in McKusick 258). The accusation
against affluence partially shields the landowners who support enclosure behind an abstraction that
subsumes the landowners and the will to privatize land. It implicates these landowners, but stops
short of placing blame on them outright. Even the emphasis on wealth is diminished as Clare has
agreed to remove the repeated references to affluence from the poem. Here, the anthropomorphic
hand of Desolation (123) and the almost nebulous thee’s and thou’s—nebulous in that they do not
refer directly to people, but to wealth—become symbolic targets of Clare’s criticisms. They are
not the culprits, but they stand in for the culprits. The “very persons,” identified in Radstock’s
demand to distill “Helpstone,” miss the full brunt of the blame. Completely unnamed, though
indirectly discussed, enclosure becomes an ominous power of the landed class. It acts on nature
and people, causing nature’s destruction and the people’s further impoverishment, but only does
so under the cloak of an abstraction. That is, it lays waste to the rural village; it “levels half the
land” (124), it leaps over “human laws” (127), preventing others’ “being fed” (131) and “levels
59
every tree” (133). But the poem attributes all of this to desolation and wealth, hinting at enclosure.
Clare’s capitulation to upper-class pressure, despite his displeasure at committing to self-
censorship, presents the means by which the wealthy make wretched the “happy Eden” of his youth
in the form of metaphors (163).
The lack of enclosure’s visibility in “Helpstone,” attributable to Clare’s attempt to assuage
his patrons’ concerns over political criticism and to gain acceptance in the London literary scene,
is replaced by enclosure’s plain presence in his other anti-enclosure poems. Here, it is important
to note that a capitulation to editorial requests does not require that there be a fear of consequences
on Clare’s part. This is evidenced by the fact that he leaves negative references to the wealthy and
enclosure in the poem despite requests to expunge. In so doing, Clare is not making a secret of his
opposition to the wealthy’s practice of enclosing fields, commons, and wastes; his general stance
on the matter is staunch. As we have noted, and as Alan Vardy makes clear, Clare was
unwilling to falsify the record of economic destruction in order to protect his
patrons from discomfort. If they were implicated in this destruction they deserved
their share of guilt…. Clare had promised as long ago as ‘Helpstone’ that he could
‘be content’ within the existing relationships of power, provided they truly were
benevolent rather than hypocritical and destructive. (53)
It is not fear that drives Clare. He is negotiating the emphasis with which he faults the wealthy, in
deference to the advice of people he esteems and in order to avoid whitewashing the oppressive
realities in the English countryside. It is possible that his outlook on how best to address enclosure
changes between the publishing of Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820), in which
“Helpstone” appears, and later volumes of poetry. Accordingly, it is of great significance that Clare
never uses the word “enclosure” in the entirety of his first volume, though he alludes to the
practice. Given Radstock’s worries, Clare’s changes to the text, and Taylor’s attempts, in the
introduction, to diffuse a potentially negative reception of Clare’s anti-enclosure stance from
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enclosers who might read his work, it is not impossible to envision Clare making a conscious
choice to avoid expressly using the word enclosure in his poetry (Vardy 53-55). It is also possible
that Clare became less concerned with the comfort of his patrons, editor and reading audience
sometime after the publishing of his first work. This is very likely to be the case, given that his
patrons no longer made direct demands on Clare after his first volume of poetry. He, perhaps,
became more adamant about using the specific word in response to the damage done by the steady
encroachment of enclosure in Northamptonshire, “one of the two Midland counties most densely
enclosed by Act of Parliament” and where these acts were met with significant opposition (Neeson
287). Whatever the reason for his word choice, maintaining a representation of the destructive
qualities of enclosure in the poetry where he discussed the practice was imperative. As a
consequence, “Helpstone” features abstracted allusions to enclosure. A more aggressive stance
possibly accounts for the decision to move from merely illustrating the effects of enclosure to
depicting enclosure acting on nature in Clare’s later poetry. A poem like “The Mores” presents
enclosure in this manner, focusing on the ravaging of an idyllic image of nature by land
privatization.
