Edward Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1886)
T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (London, 1959)
Elaine Feinstein, Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (New York, 2001)
Robert Gittings, John Keats (London, 1968)
Geoffrey Hadman, Spirit's Expense, privately published (London, 1941)
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, repr. (London, 1957)
Michael Hastings, Calico (London, 2004)
Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit (London, 1974)
H. J. K. Jenkins, Along the Nene (Exeter, 1991)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, 3rd edn (London, 1964)
James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London, 1996)
Howard C. Levis, ed., Bladud of Bath. The British King Who Tried to Fly, repr. (Bath, 1973)
John Mackintosh, A Song of Summer (Kirkcaldy, 2001)
Brenda Maddox, Nora: A Biography of Nora Joyce (London, 1988)
Charles Mapleston, A Painter in Search of a Poet (Rigby Graham & John Clare) (Uppingham, 1992)
E. W. Martin, The Secret People (English Village Life after 1750) (London, 1954)
Frederick W. Martin, The Life of John Clare, 2nd edn (London, 1964)
Gary Spencer Millidge, ed., Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman (Quebec, Canada, 2003)
G. E. Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England (London, 1976)
Alan Moore, Voice of the Fire (London, 1996)
Henrietta Moraes, Henrietta (London, 1994)
Gerda S. Norvig, Dark Figures in the Desired Country: Blake's Illustrations to The Pilgrim's Progress (Berkeley, Ca., 1993)
Christopher Petit, Robinson (London, 1993)
Tom Raworth, Moving (London, 1971)
Herbert Read, Paul Nash (London, 1944)
Gerhard Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting (London, 1995)
William St Clair, Trelawny: The Incurable Romantic (London, 1977)
José Saramago, The Double (London, 2004)
Will Self, How the Dead Live (London, 2000)
James Sharpe, Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English Highwayman (London, 2004)
Carol Loeb Shloss, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake (New York, 2003)
Iain Sinclair, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (Uppingham, 1987)
—Flesh Eggs & Scalp Metal: Selected Poems (1970–1987) (London, 1989)
—London Orbital: A Walk around the M25 (London, 2002)
Edward Storey, A Right to Song (The Life of John Clare) (London, 1982)
C. E. Street, Earthstars: The Visionary Landscape (London, 2000)
Kim Taplin, The English Path, 2nd edn rev. (Sudbury, Suffolk, 2000)
James Thomson, The Seasons, pocket edn (London, 1838)
J. W. and Anne Tibble, John Clare: His Life & Poetry (London, 1956)
Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler, Wordsworth Classics, reissue (Ware, Hertfordshire, 1996)
Bernard T. Ward, Lawrence of Arabia & Pole Hill, Chingford, repr. (Chingford, 1987)
Colin Watson, Snobbery with Violence (London, 1971)
June Wilson, Green Shadows: The Life of John Clare (London, 1951)
Simon Winchester, The Map That Changed the World (London, 2001)
Acknowledgements
One aspect of the story belongs to Anna Sinclair; her company on the expeditions, her memories. What I have presented in terms of Hadman family history is my version of Anna's telling, the episodes I asked her to recall. In points of detail, these will not be the memories of her brothers and sister. But I thank them for additional facts and other prompts, challenges and provocations. Susa Ellis retrieved her father's privately published poems at the optimum moment. Bill Hadman alerted me to the King's Cross war memorial and the Hadman who sailed on the Titanic. Anna's cousins, Gini Dearden and Juliet (Judy) Brown, provided much useful information. The Rose family connections – Norman and Carol Turner of Doddington, Michael and Pat Turner of Whittlesey – gave time and hospitality to importunate strangers. They treated Anna, at once, as a long-lost relative.
Out on the road, Renchi Bicknell's presence was, as ever, relished: always nudging the Hunter S. Thompson scenario in the direction of John Bunyan (all tracks lead to Bedford). Chris Petit's pertinent eye was valued as much as his measured asides: a necessary counterbalance to overheated rhetoric. In their contrary fashion, these men are true poets of the English landscape: ghost roads, river roads and motorway service stations. Both the paintings and the narrative of Emma Matthews haunted our walk.
The project would have stumbled without injections of blood/ treacle/gunpowder from Brian Catling in Oxford and Alan Moore in Northampton. Moore has pulled off that nice conceit of converting the stubbornly local into the universal: hill town as rock in celestial ocean. Without Catling's narrowboat, memory traces would have vanished for ever into the black depths of Whittlesey Mere.
For guidance and for valuable documentary evidence about Glinton and Werrington, I would like to thank Judith Bunten, Val Hetzel, Veronica Smith, Val Watkinson. Paul Green and Peter Astley gave me the benefit of their knowledge: sidebars on Peterborough, Ramsey, Engine Farm.
B. C. Barker-Benfield of the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the staffs of the Northampton Central Library, the Northamptonshire Record Office at Wootton Hall Park, the County Record Office in Huntingdon, the Peterborough Library, were courteous and helpful towards a resolutely unfocused and non-academic project.
Transcripts of Clare's ‘Journey out of Essex’ and other relevant materials were made from notebooks, ledgers and microfilm, in Northampton Library. But any invasion of the life and work of the Helpston poet's autobiographical writings must acknowledge the pioneering scholarship of Eric Robinson, the diligent decrypting of close-woven texts. Jonathan Bate's Clare biography is a definitive achievement against which earlier accounts must be checked. John Barrell's meditations on landscape, enclosures and open-field poetics were an inspiration.
For books, deeds, advice I would also like to thank: Vanessa Bicknell, Keggie Carew, Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, Melinda Gebbie, Mike Goldmark, Rigby Graham, Kevin Jackson, Juliette Mitchell, Peter Moyse (of the John Clare Society), John Richard Parker, Simon Prosser, Tom Raworth, Revd George Rogers, Paul Smith, Paddy Summerfield.
A version of the chapter entitled ‘Ouse’ was published, in a very different form, as a ‘Diary’ piece in the London Review of Books.
The Clare portrait, used as a frontispiece is reproduced by permission of Northampton Libraries & Information Service. The Shelley Memorial photograph is by Paddy Summerfield and is reproduced with his permission. The Straw Bear portrait is taken from the photographic collection of the Warburg Institute. Other photographs are by Iain Sinclair, or borrowed from Hadman and Rose family archives.
Index
Abbington Hotel, Stevenage, 150, 152
Addison, William, 115
Aickman, Robert, 322
Alconbury, Hunts, 19, 48, 160, 171, 178, 179–80
Allen, Matthew, 15, 117–18, 119–20
All Saints' Church, Northampton, 224, 345
Angle Bridge, 284, 323
Angle Corner, 326
Appold Pump, Whittlesey Mere, 293–4, 295
Artis, E. T., 22, 302
Ashbery, John, 43, 97
Ashley, Peter, 183–4, 256–7, 356
Auster aeroplanes, 59, 60, 61, 64, 97, 253, 256, 259, 268, 343
‘Bachelors’ Hall', Helpston, 339
Bair, Deirdre, 231
Balcony House, Glinton, 46, 64, 66, 69, 332
Baldock, Herts, 157–8
Barker-Benfield, B. C., 200, 207, 208, 209
Barnack, Hunts, 79, 85, 150, 245, 251, 256, 285
Barnacle, Nora, 235, 238
Barnes, Djuna, 141, 142
Barrell, John, 18, 42, 44
Barrett, Francis, 226, 228
Bate, Jonathan, 22, 40, 43, 79, 84, 104, 115, 119, 146, 196
Baynes, Cary, 282, 298
Becket, Thomas à, 216, 231
Beckett, Dorothy, 231
Beckett, Samuel, 29, 71, 234, 245, 300
and Joyce, 234, 238
in London, 242
and Lucia Joyce, 232, 235, 238
in Northampton, 231, 232, 243
in Paris, 241
personal appearance, 243
Sinclair kinship, 241–2
Beckett, William, 242
Beehive Inn, Werrington, 34, 261, 262, 263
Bell Hotel, Stilton, 10, 11, 184, 339, 346, 350
Betjeman, John, 44, 67
Bett, Henry, 217
Bevill's Leam, 292, 321, 322, 323, 334, 344
Bicknell, Peter, 150, 160, 245
Bicknell, Renchi, 6, 18,147, 162, 245, 315
in Baldock, 157
diet, 144, 165
dress, 12, 134, 143, 144, 176–7
and drowned village, 178, 179
geology, 21, 161
in Great Paxton, 170
in Hertford, 149
in Northampton, 217, 218, 225
paintings, 6, 190, 243
photography, 17, 23, 53, 132, 137, 175
in Potton, 162
in Stevenage, 153, 154
in Stilton, 10
Bicknell, Vanessa, 56
Billings brothers, 180, 339
Blackpool, 14, 54, 69, 340
Bladud of Bath, 96, 225
Bladud of Bath, The British King Who Tried to Fly (Levis), 96
Blake, William, 91, 109, 148, 294, 315, 320
Bloomfield, Robert, 82, 92
Blue Bell, Helpston, 44, 56, 180
Blue Bell, Werrington, 262, 265
Blue Boar, Holborn, 8, 89
Blunden, Edmund, 25, 43
Blythe, Ronald, 26, 27, 51
Bodger, John, 293, 322, 355
Bodleian Library, Oxford, 198, 200, 207, 208
Bond, Edward, 82
Bradlaugh, Charles, 219–20
Brakhage, Marilyn, 167, 169
Brakhage, Stan, 167–8, 169
Brandt, Bill, 41, 44, 339
Brooke, Rupert, 69, 342
Brown, Judy (née Hadman), 64, 258–9, 279, 342
Brown family, 279, 280
Broxbourne, Herts, 140, 143, 144
Buckden, Hunts, 171–3, 175, 176
palace, 176–7
Buckhurst Hill Church, 120–21, 129
Bull Hotel, Peterborough, 318, 319
Bunten, Judith, 266–7, 268, 269, 270, 273
Bunyan, John, 163, 218, 221, 294, 315
Burghley estate, Lincs, 22, 30, 46, 82, 85, 92, 96, 301
Burkhardt (Clare's landlord), 90–91, 99
Burlowe, Henry, 219
Burroughs, William S., 156
Buxton, Edward North (‘Verdurer’), 136
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 24, 100, 194, 195–6, 221
Clare possessed by, 31, 38, 118, 122, 133, 196–7, 212, 282, 345
funeral procession, 9, 108–9, 195
Caldecote, 344, 347, 351, 354
Church, 353–4
Calico (Hastings), 235
Campbell, Thomas Jr, 118
Carew, Keggie, 303
Cary, Henry, 38, 101, 104, 110
Castor, Hunts, 14, 21, 23, 28, 32–3, 261, 265
Catling, Brian, 200–202, 204, 205, 209, 210, 253, 294
dress, 320, 353
Nene voyage, 306, 307–8, 309, 310, 312, 317, 321, 324
poetry, 200, 214, 215
and sculpture, 206–7, 315
Catling family, 253, 311
Chan, Mr, 327, 328, 330
Chancery Lane, London, 108, 146
Chatterton, Thomas, 84, 147, 222
Cherry House Restaurant, Werrington, 270, 317–18
Cheshunt, Herts, 142
Chilcott, Tim, 283
‘Child Harold’ (Clare), 197, 345
Childe Harold (Byron), 110, 118, 195
Clare, Ann (née Stimson), 28–9, 35, 83, 84–5, 222, 260–61, 265
Clare, Anna, 68, 104
Clare, Elizabeth (‘Bessy’), 21, 28, 159
Clare, John
advised to give up poetry, 88–9
burial, 24–7
calmed by walking, 275–6
childhood, 27–30, 35–6
children, 240, 254
dreams, 173–4
epitaph, 26
Epping-Werrington journey (1841), 5–6, 10–11, 15, 30–31, 34, 122–3, 124–5, 138–9, 158–9, 175, 212
Peterborough, 285
at Potton, 162
at Stevenage, 149
at Stilton, 10, 11, 181, 184
at Werrington, 34, 261
family background, 15
family forgotten, 6, 120, 122, 123
family graves, 253–4
as gardener, 251–2
Hadman family kinship with, 15, 40, 155, 222, 239–40, 254, 260–61, 306, 351
health, 94–6, 108, 109–10, 125
Helpston-Boston journey, 87–8
Helpston life, 79, 81
in High Beach, 110, 115–23, 128, 129, 281–2, 283
insanity, 13, 98, 111, 228
and Keats, 99–100, 195
library, 100, 198, 220–22
London visits, 8, 27, 30, 38, 89, 90–91, 92, 97, 98–110, 122, 145
marriage, 90
and Mary Joyce, 5–6, 29, 68, 69, 153, 158
muse, 44, 119, 133, 212
in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, 9, 11, 39, 46, 213, 228–9
overwhelmed by landscape, 18, 64
patrons, 22, 26, 28, 83, 89, 96, 213, 229, 297
personal appearance, 82–3
portraits, 39, 40, 41, 82–3, 122, 176, 204, 219, 225
possessed by Byron, 31, 38, 118, 122, 133, 196–7, 212, 282, 345
recreations, 179–80, 339
return to Northborough, 30, 46, 64–5, 121, 212–13, 276
schooldays, 29, 47, 66
shoes, 216
snuffboxes, 279, 280, 281–2, 283–4
spiritual bride, 118, 120, 122, 153
and Straw Bear, 297
and Thomson's Seasons, 80–81, 82
twin's death, 21, 28, 159
Wisbech voyage, 30, 210, 275, 284, 285
work, 30
writing method, 81, 84, 85
Clare, John (great-grandfather), 29
Clare, Martha ‘Patty’ (née Turner), 26, 82, 109, 212, 213
forgotten, 120, 122, 123
grave, 240, 253
meets Clare at Werrington, 34, 261, 268
at Northborough, 161
sells Clare's books, 220
Clare, Parker, 28–9, 358
Clare family, 29, 104, 254, 284, 306, 328
Cobbett, William, 171, 172
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 38, 105, 292
Collegium Insanorum, St Albans, 145–6
Compleat Angler (Walton), 222
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (De Quincey), 174
Conrad, Joseph, 83, 290
Cowper, William, 92, 145, 146, 222
Cromwell, Oliver, 92, 145, 151, 163, 216
Cromwell, Richard (John Clarke, pseud.), 142
Crystal Palace, London, 182, 183
Cunningham, Allan, 38, 109
Cymbeline (Shakespeare), 54, 55
Darling, Dr, 108, 109, 128
Davie, Donald, 42
Dearden, Gini, 47
Defoe, Daniel, 8, 126, 222, 294
Delavals Farm, Glassmoor, 328, 329, 334, 354
De Quincey, Thomas, 38, 105–7, 174, 292
Deville, Jean, 108
de Wint, Peter, 38, 100
Diana, Princess of Wales, 232–3
Dick Turpin, The Myth of the English Highwayman (Sharpe), 126, 127
Don Juan (Byron), 31, 109, 118, 195, 197, 221, 282
‘Don Juan’ (Clare) 109, 197, 345
Don Juan (yacht), 191, 195, 341
Double, The (Saramago), 316
Dowden, Edward, 191–2,193
Downriver (Sinclair), 200
Drake, Thomas, 35–6
drownings, 177–8, 190–92
Drummond, Bill, 231
Drury, Edward ‘Ned,’ 86, 89
Dublin, 156, 240–42
Trinity College, 69, 70, 156, 231, 241
Duck, Stephen, 82
Earthstars: The Visionary Landscape (Street), 160
Eliot, T. S., 16–17, 342, 359
Ellis, Richard, 286
Ely Cathedral, 203, 256, 257
Emmerson, Eliza, 98, 101, 104, 105, 108
Emmonsales Heath, 34, 35, 79
Enclosure Acts (1760–99), 15, 17
Endgame (Beckett), 29, 234
Enfield Island Village, 126, 127
Engine Farm, Holme Fen, 184, 256, 293–4
English Legends (Bett), 217
Epping Forest, 31, 46, 110, 116–17, 119, 126, 132
study (1905), 136
Epping Forest, Its Literary and Historical Associations (Addison), 115
Ermine Street, 10, 16, 138, 180, 181–2, 184
Exeter, Lord, 22, 38, 96, 301
Fair Mead, High Beach, 110, 118, 119, 129, 136
Farrow, Tom, 196
Farrow, Will, 196
Finnegans Wake (Joyce), 238, 297, 347
Fitzwilliam, Earl, 26, 213, 229, 301
Fleet Street, London, 101–3, 146
flight, 190
Northamptonshire tradition, 268–9
Fotheringhay, Northants, 233, 350, 357–9
Fountain family, 284, 354–5
Frankenstein (Shelley), 209
Gebbie, Melinda, 233
George Hotel, Buckden, 127
George Hotel, Stamford, 8, 86, 89
Gilchrist, Octavius, 89, 90, 92, 145
Ginsberg, Allen, 156
Glassmoor, Whittlesey, 292, 295, 301, 326
Glassmoor House, 304, 321, 322–3
Glinton, Northants, 5, 13, 14, 15, 46–57
life in, 251–2
Godwin, William, 193, 209
Goldmark, Mike, 15, 94, 362
Grafham Water, 175, 177–8, 182
Graham, Rigby, 15, 129, 135, 136, 176, 184
Graham, W. S., 189–90
Graves, Robert, 43
Great North Road, 5, 8,15, 27, 95, 96, 122, 124, 127, 132, 138, 139, 175, 180, 213
Great Paxton, Hunts, 170
Green, Paul, 275, 277–8
Grigson, Geoffrey, 43
Grimshaw, Thomas, 219
Haddon, Northants, 14, 347
Hadman, Florence (née Rose) (1873–1944), 54, 55–6, 254, 255, 259, 260, 267, 284, 291, 292, 329, 330–31, 332
Hadman, Geoffrey (1909–64), 54, 255, 259
as artist, 69
career, 71, 72–5