The news that a poet had arisen on the borders of the Fens soon spread far and wide, even into Northamptonshire. The 'Quarterly Review' and 'Gentleman's Magazine' carried the report into mansions, villas, and vicarages, and the 'Stamford Mercury' and other local papers spread it among the inmates of farmhouses and humbler dwellings. Much incredulity was manifested at first; but the news being confirmed on all hands, there arose a great and universal desire to behold the new poet. The reign of fame commenced soon after Clare's return from London, when, true to his resolution, he had taken to his old labours in the fields. About the second or third morning after resuming work, there came a message from his father, requesting him to return home in all haste, in order to see some gentlemen waiting for him. Clare ran as fast as he could, and found two elderly men in spectacles, who said they were schoolmasters, had come from Peterborough, and wished to make his acquaintance. After questioning him closely for two hours, upon all matters, and at the end subjecting him to a rigid cross-examination, they went away, promising to call again. Clare had lost part of a day's work; however, he did not mind it much, for he was somewhat flattered by the visit. The day passed, and the next morning; but on the following afternoon, he was again called away from his labours. This time, there were three aged ladies from Market Deeping, who said that they had bought a copy of his poems between them, and could not rest till they had seen him face to face. One of the ladies was somewhat deaf, and Clare had to answer all questions twice; first by speaking to two of his visitors in the ordinary key, and then shouting it into the ear of the third old dame. After detaining him for an hour, the elderly individuals said they did not know their way back, and nothing remained but to show them the road for a couple of miles. It was getting late, and Clare, therefore, instead of going to his work again; went into the public-house. Fame threatened to be dangerous.

The tide set in with full force before another week was over. Not a day passed without Clare being called away from his work in the fields, to speak to people he had never seen in his life; people of all ranks and conditions, farmers, clergymen, horsedealers, dissenting ministers, butchers, schoolmasters, commercial travellers, and half-pay officers. One morning, the inmates of a whole boarding-school, located at Stamford, visited the unhappy poet, and, a shower coming on, the fluttering damsels with their grave monitors crowded every room in the little hut, preventing the baby from sleeping, and Mrs. Clare from doing her weekly washing. Most of the visitors were polite; some, however, were sarcastic, and a few rude. After having inspected Clare, his person, house, wife and child, father and mother, they wanted further information concerning his daily habits, mode of eating and drinking, quantity of food consumed, and other particulars, and not getting the wished-for replies to all their questions, they told him to his face that he was an ill-bred clown. But there was another class of visitors still more dangerous to the peace of Clare and his little household. Young and middle-aged men came over from Stamford, from Peterborough, and sometimes as far as from London, inviting the poet to conversation and 'a glass' at the tavern, and keeping him at their carousals for hours and whole days. Already too much inclined by nature and early bad example to habits of intemperance, the good resolutions of Clare fairly gave way under this new temptation. The persons who invited him to the alehouse were among the most intelligent of his visitors; they talked freely and pleasantly about subjects interesting to the poet, and often made their conversation still more attractive by music and song. To resist the incitement of flying the dull labours of the fields in favour of such company, required more moral strength than Clare possessed, or was able to command. Early training he had none; and even now there was not a soul near to teach and warn him of the danger. So the unhappy poet kept gliding down the fatal abyss.

Clare's visits to Stamford were not quite so frequent after his return from London as before, although he made it a point to call upon Mr. Gilchrist and Mr. Drury at least once a week. On one of these occasions he made the acquaintance of a very eccentric elderly gentleman, who, cold at first and almost offensive in speech, subsequently proved himself a warm friend. This was Dr. Bell, a retired army surgeon, who had long resided near Stamford, and was on good terms with many of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. While serving in His Majesty's forces abroad, Dr. Bell became the intimate friend of a versatile colleague, Dr. Wolcot, subsequently known as Peter Pindar, who inspired him with a taste for literature, to which he devoted himself with a real passion after his retirement from the army. Though not a writer himself, he brought out several books, among them a very droll one, made up of quotations of the most curious kind, and entitled, 'The Canister of the Blue Devils, by Democritus, junior.' Dr. Bell possessed a very large library, and spent a good part of his time in extracting, both from his books and the newspapers and periodicals of the day, all available paragraphs containing quaint sayings and doings, which he stuck upon large pieces of pasteboard, for the inspection of his friends, and subsequent publication in some 'canister' shape. John Clare met Peter Pindar's friend at the house of Mr. Gilchrist; they did not seem to like each other at first sight, but got on better terms at the second meeting, and after a while became attached friends. Dr. Bell had an instinctive dislike to poets, whom he held to be 'moonstruck.' He was not long, however, in discovering that John Clare was a great deal more than a mere maker of verses and apostrophiser of love-sick boys and girls. The high and manly spirit of the poor labourer of Helpston; his yearning after truth, and his constant endeavour to discover, beneath all the forms and symbols of outward appearances, the godlike soul of the universe, struck him with something like wonderment. He first began to look upon Clare as a sort of phenomenon; but found that the more he studied him, the more incomprehensible, yet also the more admirable, appeared this great and lofty spirit, wrapped in the coarse garb of a ploughman and lime-burner. The odd, tender-hearted doctor soon conceived a passionate affection for Clare, and set him up as a hero at the shrine of his devotion. He thought of nothing else but advancing his young friend's welfare, and worked with great zeal to this effect; to such an extent that his endeavours frequently overstepped the bounds of prudence. The first thing he did was to write letters to all the wealthy inhabitants of the neighbouring district, begging, nay, entreating them to set their name to a subscription list for a fund, destined to make the poet independent for the rest of his days. However, the appeal was but faintly responded to, and most of the persons addressed either declined, or contented themselves by forwarding small sums. But Dr. Bell was by no means discouraged at this result. With consummate worldly experience, he resolved upon attacking his 'patients' from the weakest side, and extract from their vanity what he could not get from their munificence. He put himself in communication with Mr. John Taylor, and, by dint of extreme pressure, succeeded in enlisting him in his project. It was to make an appeal in favour of John Clare on the part of the conductors of the 'London Magazine;' with delicate hint that any act of liberality would not be condemned to blush unseen. But this scheme, too, did not realize the expectations of Dr. Bell, chiefly because Mr. John Taylor, out of feelings easily comprehended, did not join him in his endeavours with the heartiness he expected. To make the appeal appear as much in favour of poetry as of a single poet, Mr. Taylor, in his letters, asked assistance for Keats as well as for Clare, wording his request in terms more dignified than persuasive. There was only one response to this petition, which came from Earl Fitzwilliam, who forwarded £100 to Clare and £50 to Keats. The liberality of the kind nobleman was scarcely appreciated as it deserved. One of the friends of Keats, in a loud article in the 'London Magazine,' of December, 1820, disclaimed his intention to be beholden to any lord. 'We really do not see,' ran the article, 'what noblemen have to do with the support of poets, more than other people, while the poor rates are in existence. In the present state of society, poetry, as well as agricultural produce, should be left to find its own level.' All this was very fine; though it looked somewhat inconsequential that the conductors of the very periodical in which this was printed, should go a-begging for poets, and that the poets themselves—Keats not excepted—made no scruple in taking the money. As for poor Clare, he got the news of Earl Fitzwilliam's noble gift together with the 'London Magazine' of December, 1820, and felt utterly ashamed to accept the money with the accompanying reminder of the poor rates being in existence.

John Clare for some time was unaware of all the exertions made by his friends to secure him an independence, and when he heard the whole of it, so far from being pleased, reproached them for what they had done. He told them they were wrong in bringing him forward in the character of a beggar without his consent, and with some energy declined to live upon alms as long as he was able to subsist by the work of his hands. Mr. Taylor was somewhat offended when he got this protest, which seemed to him like ingratitude; but Dr. Bell remained undisturbed, and secretly made up his mind to continue his efforts with more energy than ever for his friend. 'A noble soul, yet altogether unfit for this ignoble world,' he said to Mr. Gilchrist, issuing his circulars for another philanthropic campaign. When Clare learnt that new appeals to assist him had been put forward, he determined to interfere in the matter. Accordingly, he wrote long letters—very pathetic, though ill-spelt—to Earl Fitzwilliam, Earl Spencer, General Birch Reynardson, and other gentlemen, telling them that he had nothing to do with these appeals in his favour, and that he required no assistance whatever. Clare's innate nobility of character was strikingly shown in these epistles; nevertheless, they were very injudicious, and had an effect decidedly contrary to that imagined by the author. The gentlemen to whom the letters were addressed naturally came to the conclusion that Clare, scarcely risen from obscurity, was already quarrelling with those who had helped him to rise, and showed himself ungrateful as well as ill-bred. Besides, the wording of the letters was of a kind not to inspire any admiration of the poet. Though verse flowed as naturally from his pen as music from the throat of the nightingale, Clare, all his life long, was unable to express his thoughts in prose composition. There was not wanting in his letters a certain ruggedness and picturesqueness of style, but it was marred nearly always by ill-expressed and frequently incoherent eruptions, and disquisitions on extraneous matters, marking the absence of a regular chain of thought. It was here that Clare's want of education was most strongly visible. High-soaring like the lark in his poetical flights, yet unable to trot along, step by step, on the grammatical turnpike road of life, Clare's mode of expressing his thoughts, orally or in writing, was not of the ordinary kind, and required some sort of study to be duly appreciated. But it could scarcely be expected that gentlemen like Earl Spencer, and the other exalted personages to whom the poet addressed his pathetic notes, should enter upon such a study. They saw before them nothing but large sheets of paper, of coarse texture, full of ill-spelt and ill-connected sentences, made more obscure by an utter absence of punctuation; and the not unnatural judgment thereupon was that the man who wrote such letters was a thoroughly vulgar and uneducated person. There came doubts into the minds of many, who read these prose compositions, as to whether the author was really the genius exalted by the periodicals of the day. Was it not possible that the 'Quarterly Review' which unduly depreciated poor Keats, had, equally unjustly, raised John Clare upon an unmerited pedestal of fame? This was the question asked by some of the former patrons of Clare, notably Earl Spencer and General Birch Reynardson. The latter spoke to Dr. Bell about it; but was astonished at the burst of indignation which broke from the lips of Peter Pindar's friend. 'What! Clare not a poet?' exclaimed the irate doctor; 'well, if he is not a poet, there never was one in the world.' General Reynardson, having a great respect, somewhat mingled with fear, for the author of the 'Canister,' humbly acquiesced in the decision, promising to put his name down on the Stamford subscription list. But Dr. Bell was ill at ease nevertheless, and rode over the same day to Helpston. 'If you ever again write letters to our friends without showing them to me first, I shall be very angry with you—I shall put you among the Blue Devils.' So spoke the doctor; and John Clare, having heard the whole story of the effect of his epistles, promised obedience. He knew but too well, by this time, that the speech which God had given him was poetry, not prose.

The stream of visitors which set in at Helpston during the spring of 1820, did not cease till late in the summer of the same year. After the flood of schoolmasters, of farmers' wives, and of boarding-school misses, there came a rush of rarer birds of travel, authors and authoresses, writers of unpublished books, and unappreciated geniuses in general. The first of the tribe was an individual of the name of Preston, a native of Cambridge, and author of an immense quantity of poetic, artistic, and scientific works—none of them printed, owing to ignorance of public and publishers. He sent Clare formal notice that he would come on a certain day, and, previous to coming, forwarded a large box full of manuscripts. There was a full description of his life, with sketch of his rare talents and accomplishments; also the greater part of his poetical writings, comprising five epics, three hundred ballads, and countless acrostics, madrigals, and sonnets. John Clare felt greatly flattered when he got the large box, and the same evening, after coming home from his work in the fields, sat down to inspect the manuscripts sent for his perusal. However, he did not get far, but fell asleep over the first dozen pages of the first epic. He honestly tried again the second evening, but with the same result as before; and on the third day relinquished the attempt in despair, accusing himself for his want of intelligence. Soon after, Mr. Preston made his appearance. He was a tall, thin man, with red whiskers and a red nose; dressed in a threadbare black coat, buttoned up to the chin. Introducing himself with some dignity, he at once fell into a familiar strain: 'How do you do, John?' and 'Hope you are glad to see a brother poet.' John was glad, of course; very glad. The tall, thin man then gave a glance at his large box, and John trembled. To allay the coming storm, Clare confessed at once that he had not had time to read through the manuscripts, having been hard at work in the fields. The great man frowned; yet after a while relaxed his features, telling Clare that he would give him two days more to read through his poems. At the end of this term, he intended to ask for a kind of certificate containing the brother poet's appreciation of his works, together with letters of introduction to his patrons and publishers. It seemed cruel to refuse the request of such a dear and determined brother. John Clare, weighing in his mind how poor and friendless he had been himself but a short while ago, felt stirred by compassion, and though he knew he could not read the epics, indited a warm letter of praise and admiration for Mr. Preston. The latter thereupon took his farewell, and went away, accompanied by his large box. Some days after, Dr. Bell came down to Helpston, in greater excitement than ever. 'What do you mean by sending me such a d—— fellow?' he broke forth in a burst of indignation. Poor Clare! he meant nothing, thought of nothing, and knew nothing; and all that he could do was in a few simple words to explain the whole story. The doctor quietly listened to the account of Mr. Preston and his box, and when Clare had finished, delivered another lecture upon practical wisdom, threatening his friend, as penalty for disobedience, with the 'Canister of the Blue Devils.'