Friday, October 18, 2024

Dissertation Excerpt

 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”

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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)

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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

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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.

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Dissertation Excerpt

  Knowing and Unknowing in “Helpstone” As we have stated early in the chapter, Clare’s practice of qualitative knowing is the acknowledgemen...