Natural history in Clare's prose
I have spent whole days (Sundays) in Searching Curious wild Flowers
of which I was very fond and I often wondered when in Company with others
that they never noticed them and that they never in the least noticed my
remarks on such and such beauties when I have stooped down and cropped
the flower to explain my Ideas ("More Hints in the Life Etc" )
I loved to employ leisure in wandering about the fields watching the habits of birds to see the wood pecker s[w]eeing away in its ups and downs and the jay birds chattering by the wood side its restless warnings of passing clowns the travels of insects were the black beetle nimbld along and the opening of field flowers -- such amusements gave me the greatest of pleasures ("[Leisure]") I often lingered a minute on the woodland stile to hear the wood pigeons clapping their wings among the dark oaks -- I hunted curious flowers in rapturs and muttered thoughts in their praise -- I lovd the pasture with its rushes and thistles and sheep tracks -- I adored the wild marshy fen with its solitary hernshaw sweeing along in its mellan[c]holy sky ("[Leisure]") I was finding new wonders every minute . . . the white moth had begun to flutter beneath the bushes the black snail was out upon the grass and the frog was leaping across the rabbit tracks on his evening journeys and the little mice was nimbling about and twittering their little earpiercing song with the hedge cricket whispering ( "Autobiographical Fragments") . . . the gad flyes noon day hum the fainter murmer of the bee flye 'spiring in the evening ray' the dragon flyes in their spangld coats darting like 'winged arrows down the stream' the swallow darting through its one arched brig . . . the wild geese scudding along and making all the letters of the Alphabet as they flew ("[Leisure]") . . . nature is the same everywhere -- the little daisey wears the self same golden eye and silver rim with its delicate blushing stains underneath in our fenny flats as its on the mountains of switerzland if it grows there - my companion had no knowledge of poesy books -- he had never read Thompson or Cowper or Wordsworth or perhaps heard of their names yet nature gives every one a natural simplicity of heart to read her language ("Autobiographical Fragments") I have puzzledd wasted hours over Lees Botany to understand a shadow of the system so as to be able to class the wild flowers peculiar to my own neighborhood for I find it woud require a second Adam to find names for them in my way and a second Solomon to understand them in Lennsis system . . . when one turns to the works of [John] Ray [John] Parkinson and [John] Gerrard [early naturalists of 1600's] were there is more of nature and less of Art it is like meeting the fresh air and balmy summer of a dewey morning after the troubled dreams of a nightmare ("Autobiographical Fragments") I had knowledge of wild plants I usd to be amusd with the names they calld them by . . . Wasp weed is the water betony growing by brook sides which gaind their name by the wasps being invariably attachd to its blossoms getting therfrom a gluttinous matter for the cement of their combs . . . Buckbane is the bogbean -- husk head is the self heal cure for wounds and furze b[ou]nd is the tormentill a cure for fevers adder bites etc ("[Gipseys]") I noticd the cracking of the stubbs to the increasing sun while I gleand among them -- I lovd to see the heavey grassopper in his coat of delicate green bounce from stub to stub -- I listened the headge cricket with raptures ("[Leisure]") Robinson, Eric, ed. John Clare's Autobiographical Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. |