Ruins, Radicals and Reactionaries: John Clare's Enclosure Elegies

Andrew Smith

Johanne Clare argued that even in 'the enclosure elegies [...] it would be difficult if not impossible to claim that Clare intended to serve the cause of political radicalism: he was distrustful and almost entirely disengaged from most forms of political dissent/1 Her view is apparently supported by Clare's own proud; youthful declaration: ? am as far as my politics reaches "King & Country" - no Inovations on Religion & government say I/2 Johanne Clare acknowledges that such sentiments must be taken with a grain of salt, considering Clare's reliance on the support of conservatively-minded patrons, but, leaving the obligations imposed by patronage to one side, she argues 'there can be no doubt that his distrust of political agitation and fear of the violence it might unleash were genuine enough/3 In a powerfully argued response, however, John Lucas emphasised the extent to which the expectations of 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. The point is rather that an attentive reading of his poems and the circumstances of his life will suggest that his political views cannot be stabilised, for the very good reason that he himself was subject to (and of) so many contradictory forces as to put stability or consistency out of reach.4 One of the most obvious 'contradictory forces7 to which Clare was subject was his patron Lord Radstock, who famously denounced as 'radical slang; one of Clare's early attacks on enclosure.5 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.'6 Although he may not have been the most even-handed of Clare's readers, Radstock's response emphasises that whether or not Clare 'intended to serve the cause of political radicalism7 - to return briefly to Johanne Clare's argument - is to some extent beside the point; a critique of wealth and enclosure, coming as it did from a labouring-class poet, invited such a claim to be laid at Clare's door regardless of intentions. Referring to Clare's belief in the need for equal taxation and for a reform of placements and government pensions, expressed in a letter to Taylor in February 1830, Bate notes 'Such sentiments might once have been "considered as proceeding from a Leveller and a Radical," [...] but now the label "Radical" had become as meaningless as "Whig" and "Tory"'.9 Clare's sense of the increasing irrelevance of traditional political divisions comes through not only in his letters but in many of his enclosure elegies as well.10 As a result, the elegies offer a fascinating alternative perspective on enclosure to that promoted, on the one hand, by establishment bodies like the Board of Agriculture and its officials Sir John Sinclair and Arthur Young, and, on the other, by a writer like William Cobbett.11 In this article, I seek to elaborate Clare's position on enclosure with respect to these partisan alternatives by discussing his use of the ideas of 'waste' and 'ruin', key rhetorical terms around which the debate between supporters and critics of enclosure revolved. Some sense of the nature of this malaise may be gained from comments made by Sir John Sinclair, founder and President of the Board of Agriculture, who in an 1803 speech to the House of Commons, advocated a war against uncultivated land in Britain, as part of the war effort against France: We have begun another campaign against the foreign enemies of the country [ . . . ]

Ruins, Radicals and Reactionaries: John Clare's Enclosure Elegies

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Ruins, Radicals and Reactionaries: John Clare's Enclosure Elegies

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