Dr Tony Shaw: John Clare, Helpston (Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire), and Working-Class Literature

16 August 2009

John Clare, Helpston (Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire), and Working-Class Literature

Labels: Clare (John), Helpston

I was delighted to discover, by casual Googling, that the house where the poet John Clare (1793-1864) was born, in Helpston, Cambridgeshire (formerly Northamptonshire), has now been turned into a museum called Clare Cottage. This attraction was apparently opened on 3 August 2009, and the website states that it is 'NOW OPEN 10.30am to 3.30pm', although when we arrived today at around 13:00 we discovered that it had been closed all weekend, and would be open tomorrow (17 August 2009). This was after we'd heard, at Stamford Tourist Information Centre and Gift Shop, that the cottage was indeed open. There are obviously some serious teething troubles, so I wouldn't recommend anyone venturing out there - as we did from Nottingham - without verifying that the place is actually open.

This sign greets the visitor to Helston village. Very close to the village sign is the memorial to John Clare:
Around the monument are quotations from Clare's poetry:

The cottage itself has been wonderfully preserved, and the street-facing side carries the following plaque:

The extension at the back also looks impressive, and visitors to Helpston will doubtless appreciate the obvious care taken to preserve the cottage - once the initial problems have eased. Penny and I look forward to visiting John Clare's home in Helpston, when things have settled down and are organized a little better.

2 comments:

Rebecca said...: how strange, that while googling my own name (egotistical I know, I was testing something) I find my own home village, as my middle name is Clare, after John. thank you for a reminder of home :); 18 February 2010 18:52
Dr Tony Shaw said...: Don't we all Google our own names, Rebecca? :-) Thanks for the comment, and apologies for my own belated one.; 15 March 2010 11:09

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Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women – Myriam J. A. Chancy

<i>Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women</i> – Myriam J. A. Chancy

Chancy develops the theory of culture-lacune, a revolutionary strategy by means of which Haitian women writers both celebrate and fight the absence and the loss which has been the female voice in the history of the country. In Haitian women writers, a folkloric figure is used as a tool: they 'reformulate the marabout eternalized in Oswald Durand's still popular folksong "Choucoune" of 1883.' Whereas Durand's Choucoune is a figure of betrayal who stands for a lost Haiti, the women writers transform her and reclaim her for themselves. Some writers included in this study are Anne–christine d'Adesky, Ghislaine Charlier, Marie Chauvet, Jan J. Dominique, Nadine Magloire, Edwidge Danticat, and the earlier writers Virgile Valcin, and Annie Desroy.

The Marrow of Tradition – Charles W. Chesnutt

<i>The Marrow of Tradition</i> – Charles W. Chesnutt

At the end of The Marrow of Tradition (1901), the black Dr Miller enters the house of the white Carteret family in an attempt to save the life of their young child. Previously, Major Carteret had not allowed Miller to tend to his son because Miller is black, and Miller's own young son has just died in a skirmish instigated by the Major himself. Clearly, Chesnutt's focus of interest is not on the fate of the white family's son, but on the integrity of Dr Miller. The novel is set 'Wellington', although there are parallels between this fictional town and Wilmington, North Carolina, which was the scene of a 'race riot' in 1898. Dr Miller represents the 'New Negro', the educated, ambitious and socially aware black person beginning to emerge through many years of slavery in the Southern states, through the subservience of Uncle Tomism, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and now through the appalling compromise of the Jim Crow laws in the South.* Most of all, though, all black people have to battle against a wall of prejudice that still exists, where whites not only segregate and bar, but are only too eager, particularly via lynching, to apply the rule of the mob. The book is a kind of thriller and obviously is influenced by many Victorian novels that have gone before it (and there is an unfortunate strong touch of melodrama towards the end), but it is evident that the novel's main purpose is didactic. *Along with T. S. Stribling's Birthright and Chesnutt's own Mandy Oxendine, there is a scene in which the segregation of blacks from whites on a train takes place.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt

<i>Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil</i> – John Berendt

I approached this book, which Edmund White calls a 'non-fiction novel', with some caution because of its great popularity: I'm generally very suspicious of books that are popular. However, I was very pleasantly surprised, and also surprised that it has in fact proved so popular, as Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is hardly a conventional novel. It's a love affair John Berendt had with Savannah, Georgia, and which brought a stream of tourists into the city in search of the human and architectural sights mentioned, such as Bonaventure Cemetery (where the poet Conrad Aiken's bench grave stands), or perhaps a sighting of Savannah's larger-than-life characters, like 'female impersonator' The Lady Chablis, or hope for an invitaton to a party such as the ones thrown by Joe Odom, the highly likeable con merchant. These characters move around the main story, which is the murder of the priapic Danny Hansford by his employer and occasional lover, the antique furniture dealer Jim Williams, who lived in the impressive Mercer House, the former home of songwriter Johnny Mercer. The novel is funny and fast-moving, but there is a structural problem: it is too episodic, and although the murder and subsequent trials are the central issue, the colourful characters who flit in and out of it somehow don't merge too well with this central interest.

Mandy Oxendine - Charles W. Chesnutt

<i>Mandy Oxendine</i> - Charles W. Chesnutt

This novel was originally written towards the close of the 19th century, and was in fact the first novel Chesnutt wrote. However, The House behind the Cedars (1900) was his first published novel, and it would be 100 years after Mandy Oxendine was written that it was in fact published. This is the story of two mixed race lovers - both of whom could pass for white - Mandy and Tom Lowrey, who part for two years while Tom goes off to educate himself. When he comes back, it is to work in a school for black children, while Mandy is in a white school passing herself as white. Tom's problem is that Mandy now believes that she is in love with the rich womanizer Robert Utley, although the novel develops into a thriller - almost a whodunnit - when Utley is killed when attempting to sexually assault Mandy. A tale of race, class and gender conflict, Mandy Oxendine was considered too daring for publication at the time it was written.

As I Was Going Down Sackville Street (1937) – Oliver St John Gogarty

A Feast of Snakes (1976) – Harry Crews

<b>A Feast of Snakes</b> (1976) – Harry Crews

Harry Crews is one of the wild men of literature. Of working-class origin, Crews writes about the underbelly of America, of drugs, alcohol abuse, and trailer park communities in the Deep South, for instance. He was born in southern Georgia but has spent most of his life in Florida. The problem is perhaps that he also spent too long parodying himself, and it can make us forget his undoubted importance as a serious writer. This is a link to a youtube interview, in which he boasts of spending 30 years of his life drunk every day, and illustrates this problem very well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpeFmXJG4Ak.

Festus: A Poem - Philip J. Bailey

<i>Festus: A Poem</i> - Philip J. Bailey

A plaque on a building on the north corner of Fletcher Gate and Middle Pavement, Nottingham, UK, reveals that the writer Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) once lived there. Bailey was born in Nottingham and educated in Glasgow, and is usually associated with the Spasmodic school of poetry along with J. W. Marston, S. T. Dobell, and Alexander Smith. He is most noted for Festus, a huge work to which Bailey was continually adding, and which was heavily influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost. Its most famous lines are: 'We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts not breaths; / In feeling, not in figures on a dial / We should count time by theart throbs; he most lives / Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.' There is a bronze bust of Bailey by Albert Toft at the rear entrance to Nottingham Castle.