ABSTRACT
But that sense of Clare's impulse, in a sad country, was very clearly conveyed in David Jones's Omnibus biography. The main emphasis was on the last broken years. The last third of Clare's life was in an asylum. But visually there was something of the intensity of the early poems-what Clare himself called
90 RAYMOND WILLIAMS ON TELEVISION
Spontaneity and its loss: a seemingly universal history. But what was good in the film was that the social constraints on Clare's genius were so clearly shown. Stephen Duck, a labourer poet of a century earlier, became a clergyman and a client of Queen Caroline. His interesting early poems, written while he was working, became polite pastorals as he was eaten by the Establishment. Clare, after some brief attention, was starved by the Establishment. He remained a real poet but was broken as a man. Three times, in the film, this history was tellingly shown: his long and awkward walk through the stately emptiness of a country house, to leave a copy of his poems and be sent to eat with the servants; his awkward exciting meeting with a London publisher, and then the complacent patronising letter of commercial literary advice; his awkward stance, doing field-work in an asylum and being interviewed by a journalist. What Clare hit was the transition from an oppressive patronage to a directing market. His loss of identity-"I am yet what I am who cares or knows"-was lived through with a purity and irony-the delusion of marriage to the girl who was taken from him; the delusion of being Lord Byron, the rich poet-which remains a memorable voice. Freddie Jones, as Clare, had the awkwardness and the tension, though not always the "green language". The film could have been made differently, and probably better, but it was a genuine achievement.
