Looking at John Clare’s long life as a whole, the time he actually spent with Mary Joyce was very short. She was four years younger than Clare and came from a prosperous farming family in Glinton. It was, it seems, a childhood friendship, though in his eyes, perhaps much more.
The strength of his feelings may only have developed in retrospect, for he wrote most of his poems about her long after they had parted. Most of what we are able to discover about Mary Joyce comes from this early period and largely from what Clare wrote about her:
If I coud but gaze on her face or fancy a smile on her countenance it was sufficient I went away satisfied we playd with each other but named nothing of love yet I fancyd her eyes told me her affections we walkd together as school companions in leisure hours but our talk was of play & our actions the wanton innosence of children …
After a short but intense friendship, Mary and John parted as a result of a misunderstanding, the precise nature of which is not clear. Clare alleges that her family felt her station to be above his.
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