Edge of the Orison (48 page)

Ronald Blythe,
Talking about John Clare
(Nottingham, 1999)

Edward Bond,
The Fool
(London, 1976)

Marilyn Brakhage, ‘Stan Brakhage: Last Drawings’, from
Square One (No. 2)
, ed. by Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, et al. (Denver, Colo., 2004)

Bill Brandt,
Literary Britain
, new edn (London, 1984)

Judith Bunten and Alfred Savage,
Werrington through the Ages: A History in Photographs
(Werrington, 1987)

Edward North Buxton,
Epping Forest
, 7th edn rev. (London, 1905)

Roger Cardinal,
The Landscape Vision of Paul Nash
(London, 1989)

Brian Catling,
Large Ghost
(Cambridge, 2001)

William Cobbett,
Rural Rides
, new edn with notes by Pitt Cobbett (London, 1885)

Stephen Coote,
Byron, The Making of a Myth
(London, 1988)

Thomas De Quincey,
The Collected Writings
, vol. III, ed. by David Masson (Edinburgh, 1890)

Donald Dewey,
James Stewart: A Biography
(London, 1997)

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,
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(London, 1956)

Izaak Walton,
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, 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,
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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

bears,
203–4
,
296–8
,
362

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