"But his great discovery
was the accidental finding in the library at Wintersmoon a volume of John Clare. At that time in 1919 Clare was a forgotten poet. In the following years, thanks to the
generous enthusiasm of Edmund Blunden, he was rediscovered and beautifully
reissued, but to Wildherne that chance finding of a third edition of the Poems descriptive
of Rural Life and Scenery seemed a miracle.
He devoured the book, discovered then that no one had ever heard of Clare,
and further that no one found the poems anything but trivial and commonplace. Even his father failed him here.
No matter. He would keep that to himself, as it seemed
to him he must keep almost everything that was of importance. Hunting discovered for him the two volumes of
The Village Minstrel, and this was of especial value to him because the first
volume contained a steel
engraving of Hilton's painting of Clare.
That strange, beautiful, pathetic face became now part of Wildherne's life. It seemed to him that he had somewhere known
him and been his friend. He knew nothing
as yet about his history, but he saw the tragedy in those
eager gazing eyes and that gentle mouth.
To that man at least he could have bared his soul.
His love of England, of
his father, of his home, of such poetry as Clare's, of the long naked shoulder
of the Plain, of the weedy rubble under foot in country lanes, of sudden
streams, of riding, of early mornings seen from the windows of Wintersmoon - all these (save possibly his
love for his father) had been affections, not passions."
Hugh Walpole
Wintersmoon (1928)
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