[Image : Werrington Green 1905]
“...
when I got near the Inn at the end of the gravel walk I maet [met]
two young
women & I asked one of them wether the road branching to the right bye the end of the Inn did not lead to Peterborough & she said 'Yes' it did so as soon
as ever I was on it I felt myself in
homes way & went on rather more cheerfull
fit though I forced to rest oftener than usual before I got to Peterborough a man & woman passed me
in a cart & on hailing me as they passed I found they were
neighbours from Helpstone where I used to
live -- I told them I was knocked up
which they could easily see & that I had neither eat or drank any thing since I left Essex when I
told my story they clubbed together
fit threw me fivepence out of the cart I
picked it up &: called at a small public house near the bridge were I had two half pints of ale &
two-penn'o'th of bread & cheese
when I had done I started quite refreshed only my feet was more crippled then
ever & I could scarcely make a walk
of it over the stones & being half ashamed to sit down in the street I
forced to keep on the move & got through Peterborough better than I
expected when I got on the high road I rested on the stone heaps as I passed
till I was able to go on afresh & bye & bye I passed Walton & soon
reached Werrington I was making for
the Beehive as fast as I could when a
cart met me with a man & woman & a boy in it when nearing me the woman jumped out & caught fast
hold of my hands & wished me to
get into the cart but I refused & thought
her either drunk or mad but when I was told it was my second wife Patty I got in & was soon
at Northborough...”
John Clare
The Journey From Essex
Has
anyone ever wondered who might have been the 'man and a woman in a cart... old
neighbours from Helpstone' who shared recognition with John Clare on
the final stage of his long walk home from High Beach
1841,
the year of Clare's exploit, was a Census year; the count was made on
Sunday-Monday night 6-7 June, six weeks before
Clare set off. As to origins, that Census asked simply whether or not people had been born in the county
where they now lived, and it recorded
ages of those over 14 only in five-year
groups. So it is not immediately evident that among those then living at Sawtry All Saints, on or hard
by Clare's route between Buckden and
Norman Cross, was a very close Helpston
contemporary.
Robert
Turnill, baptised at St Botolph's on 5 January 1794, was
thus only six months the poet's junior, and moreover, a younger
brother of Clare's close boyhood friend John Turnill (see
Newsletter, December 1996). Robert was now a farmer, married
with nine children (the youngest, at seven months, my
grandfather-to-be); his age, actually 47, was rounded down to
45.
Given
notice from their rented land at Helpston in 1811, the Turnills
did not go immediately to Sawtry. In 1827 Robert, then of Southorpe,
married at Barholm, Lines, and his children were
baptised variously at Barholm, Ryhall and Southorpe, and at Sawtry from 1830. (His parents, who went
with them, died in 1832 and 1835, too
soon for either Census or Clare's journey, and both were buried at Barnack.) In
the Census of 1851 the same family,
identifiable by Christian names and ages,
is still at Sawtry, with Robert's added detail, in the column
headed 'where born'; 'Northamptonshire, Helpstone'.
By
the time Clare encountered his 'old neighbours' he was on
the road from Norman Cross to Peterborough (which still starts
and ends, though altered midway, along much the same path) .He says the cart in
which they rode 'passed' him, which surely means 'met', not 'overtook', in which
event he might have clambered on board. This
was towards the end of a long day's
walking, on which Clare recalled seeing candles lit in houses. So even at dusk, going (presumably) home,
and scarcely with Clare in mind,
they knew who he was. He also knew them, and on an unfamiliar road (at
Norman Cross he had to be sure of the way
by asking; his coach journeys to London
had begun at Stamford , not Peterborough
The fact that later on
Patty Clare met her husband at Werrington
makes one wonder whether by then she had been warned of his likely arrival; certainly, it seems more than chance. Even so, without some general hue and cry,
the people he met earlier were hardly likely to have known.
Of course, Clare's old neighbours displaced
by enclosure included a good many more than the Turnills, and there are more
places than Sawtry where they might eventually have landed in the post-enclosure Helpston diaspora. Whoever they were,
I am glad that they gave him the fivepence, though it would have been still more kindly to get down from the cart and offer a hand. As for the inn where Clare spent
it, the Peacock on the left of the London
Oscar Turnill
JCS Newsletter
December 2000
No comments:
Post a Comment