The Rowley Poems Part 1

The Rowley Poems.

by Thomas Chatterton.

INTRODUCTION.

I. CHATTERTON'S LIFE AND DEATH AND THE GENESIS OF THE ROWLEY POEMS

Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on the 20th of November 1752.

His father--also Thomas--dead three months before his son's birth, had been a subchaunter in Bristol Cathedral and had held the mastership in a local free school. We are told that he was fond of reading and music; that he made a collection of Roman coins, and believed in magic (or so he said), studying the black art in the pages of Cornelius Agrippa. With all the self-acquired culture and learning that raised him above his cla.s.s (his father and grandfathers before him for more than a hundred years had been s.e.xtons to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe) he is described as a dissipated, 'rather brutal fellow'.

Lastly, he appears to have been 'very proud', self-confident, and self-reliant.

Of Chatterton's mother little need be said. Gentle and rather foolish, she was devoted to her two children Mary and, his sister's junior by two years, Thomas the Poet. Of these Mary seems to have inherited the colourless character of her mother; but Thomas must always have been remarkable. We have the fullest accounts of his childhood, and the details that might with another be set down as chronicles of the nursery will be seen to have their importance in the case of this boy who set himself consciously to be famous when he was eight, wrote fine imaginative verse before he was thirteen, and killed himself aged seventeen and nine months.

Thomas, then, was a moody baby, a dull small boy who knew few of his letters at four; and was superannuated--such was his impenetrability to learning--at the age of five from the school of which his father had been master. He was moreover till the age of six and a half so frequently subject to long fits of abstraction and of apparently causeless crying that his mother and grandmother feared for his reason and thought him 'an absolute fool.' We are told also by his sister--and there is no incongruity in the two accounts--that he early displayed a taste for 'preheminence and would preside over his playmates as their master and they his hired servants.' At seven and a half he dissipated his mother's fear that she had borne a fool by rapidly learning to read in a great black-letter Bible; for characteristically 'he objected to read in a small book.' In a very short time from this he appears to have devoured eagerly the contents of every volume he could lay his hands on. He had a thirst for knowledge at large--for any kind of information, and as the merest child read with a careless voracity books of heraldry, history, astronomy, theology, and such other subjects as would repel most children, and perhaps one may say, most men. At the age of eight we hear of him reading 'all day or as long as they would let him,'

confident that he was going to be famous, and promising his mother and sister 'a great deal of finery' for their care of him when the day of his fame arrived. Before he was nine he was nominated for Colston's Hospital, a local school where the Bluecoat dress was worn and at which the 'three Rs' were taught but very little else, so that the boy, disappointed of the hope of knowledge, complained he could work better at home. To this period we should probably a.s.sign the delightful story of Chatterton and a friendly potter who promised to give him an earthenware bowl with what inscription he pleased upon it--such writing presumably intended to be 'Tommy his bowl' or 'Tommy Chatterton'. 'Paint me,' said the small boy to the friendly potter, 'an Angel with Wings and a Trumpet to trumpet my Name over the World.'

At ten he was making progress in arithmetic, and it should be mentioned that he 'occupied himself with mechanical pursuits so that if anything was out of order in the house he was set to mend it.' At school he read during play hours and made few friends, but those were 'solid fellows,' his sister tells us; while at home he had appropriated to himself a small attic where he would read, write and draw pictures--a number of which are preserved in the British Museum--of knights and churches, and heraldic designs in red and yellow ochre, charcoal, and black-lead. In this attic too he had stored--though at what date is uncertain--a number of writings on parchment which had a rather singular history. In the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe, the church in which Chatterton's ancestors had served as s.e.xtons, there were six or seven great oak chests, of which one, greater than the others and secured by no fewer than six locks, was traditionally called 'Canynges Cofre' after William Canynge the younger, with whose name the erection and completion of St. Mary's were especially a.s.sociated. These had contained deeds and papers dealing with parochial matters and the affairs of the Church, but some years before Chatterton's birth the Vestry had determined to examine these doc.u.ments, some of which may have been as old as the building itself. The keys had in the course of time been lost, and the vestrymen accordingly broke open the chests and removed to another place what they thought of value, leaving Canynge's Coffer and its fellows gutted and open but by no means void of all their ancient contents. Such parchments as remained Chatterton's father carried away, whole armfuls at a time, using some to cover his scholars' books and giving others to his wife, who made them into thread-papers and dress patterns.

In the house to which Mrs. Chatterton had moved upon her husband's death there was still a sufficient number of these old ma.n.u.scripts to make a considerable trove for the boy who, then nine or ten years old, had first learnt to read in black-letter and was in a few years to produce poetry which should pa.s.s for fifteenth century with many well-reputed antiquaries. It was no doubt on blank pieces of these parchments that he inscribed the matter of the few Rowley doc.u.ments which he ever showed for originals. We have the account of a certain Thistlethwaite, one of the 'solid lads' with whom Chatterton had made friends at school, that his friend Thomas in the summer of 1764 told him 'he was in possession of some old MSS. which had been found deposited in a chest in Redcliffe Church, and that he had lent some or one of them to Thomas Phillips'--an usher at Colston's, an earnest and thoughtful man fond of poetry, and a great friend of Chatterton's.

'Within a day or two after this,' (Thistlethwaite wrote to Dean Milles,) 'I saw Phillips ... who produced a MS. on parchment or vellum which I am confident was "Elenoure and Juga"[1] a kind of pastoral eclogue afterwards published in the _Town and Country Magazine_ for May 1769. The parchment or vellum appeared to have been closely pared round the margin for what purpose or by what accident I know not ...

The writing was yellow and pale manifestly as I conceive occasioned by age.'

This was the beginning of the Rowley fiction--which might be metaphorically described as a motley edifice, half castle and half cathedral, to which Chatterton all his life was continually adding columns and b.u.t.tresses, domes and spires, pediments and minarets, in the shape of more poems by Thomas Rowley (a secular priest of St.

John's, Bristol); or by his patron the munificent William Canynge (many times Mayor of the same city); or by Sir Thibbot Gorges, a knight of ancient family with literary tastes; or by good Bishop Carpenter (of Worcester) or John a Iscam (a Canon of St. Augustine's Abbey, also in Bristol); together with plays or portions of plays which they wrote--a Saxon epic translated--accounts of Architecture--songs and eclogues--and friendly letters in rhyme or prose. In short, this clever imaginative lad had evolved before he was sixteen such a ma.s.s of literary and quasi-historical matter of one kind or another that his fict.i.tious circle of men of taste and learning (living in the dark and unenlightened age of Lydgate and the other tedious post-Chaucerians) may with study become extraordinarily familiar and near to us, and was certainly to Chatterton himself quite as real and vivid as the dull actualities of Colston's Hospital and the Bristol of his proper century.

Chatterton's own circle of acquaintance was far less brilliant. His princ.i.p.al patrons were Henry Burgum and George Catcott, a pair of pewterers, the former vulgar and uneducated but very ambitious to be thought a man of good birth and education, the latter a credulous, selfish and none too scrupulous fellow, a would-be antiquary, of whom there is the most delightfully absurd description in Boswell's _Johnson_. The biographer relates that in the year 1776 Johnson and he were on a visit to Bristol and were induced by Catcott to climb the steep flight of stairs which led to the muniment room in order to see the famous 'Rowley's Cofre'. Whereupon, when the ascent had been accomplished, Catcott 'called out with a triumphant air of lively simplicity "I'll make Dr. Johnson a convert" (to the view then still largely obtaining that Rowley's poems were written in the fifteenth century) and he pointed to the "Wondrous chest".' '"_There_" said he 'with a bouncing confident credulity "_There is the very chest itself_"!' After which 'ocular demonstration', Boswell remarks, 'there was no more to be said.' It was to such men as these that Chatterton read his 'Rouleie's' poems. Another of his audience was Mr. Barrett, a surgeon, who collected materials for a history of Bristol, which, when published after the boy-poet's death, was found to contain contributions (supplied by Chatterton) in the unmistakable and unique 'Rowleian' language--valuable evidence about old Bristol miraculously preserved in Rowley's chest.

We hear also of Michael Clayfield, a distiller, one of the very few men in Bristol whom Chatterton admired and respected; of Baker, the poet's bedfellow at Colston's, for whom Chatterton wrote love poems, as Cyrano de Bergerac did for Christian de Neuvillette, to the address of a certain Miss Hoyland--thin, conventional silly stuff, but Roxane was probably not very critical; of Catcott's brother, the Rev. A.

Catcott, who had a fine library and was the author of a treatise on the Deluge; of Smith, a schoolfellow; of Palmer an engraver, and a number of others--mere names for the most part. Baker, Thistlethwaite and a few more were contemporaries of the poet, but the rest of the circle consisted mainly of men who had reached middle age--dullards, perhaps, who condescended to clever adolescence, whom Chatterton certainly mocked bitterly enough in satires which he wrote apparently for his own private satisfaction, but whom he nevertheless took considerable pains to conciliate as being men of substance who could lend books and now and then reward the Muse with five shillings.

For Burgum the poet invented, and pretended to derive from numerous authorities (some of which are wholly imaginary), a magnificent pedigree showing him descended from a Simon de Seyncte Lyse _alias_ Senliz Earl of Northampton who had come over with the Conqueror. To this he appended a portion of a poem not included in this edition, ent.i.tled the 'Romaunte of the Cnyghte', composed by John de Bergham about A.D. 1320. It was some years before Mr. Burgum applied to the College of Heralds to have his pedigree ratified, but when he did so he was informed that there had never been a de Bergham ent.i.tled to bear arms.

With a second instalment of the genealogical table were copies of the poems called _The Tournament_ and _The Gouler's_ (i.e. Usurer's) _Requiem_, which are printed in this volume. Mr. Burgum was completely taken in, and, exulting in his new-found dignity, acknowledged the announcement of his splendid birth with a present of five shillings.

It is worthy of notice that the pedigree made mention of a certain Radcliffe Chatterton de Chatterton, but Burgum's suspicions were not aroused by the circ.u.mstance.

In July 1765, that is to say when the boy was aged about 13, the authorities of Colston's Hospital apprenticed him to John Lambert, a Bristol attorney. He had chosen the calling himself, but it was not long before the life became intolerable to him. It was arranged that he should board with Lambert, and the attorney made him share a bedroom with the foot-boy and eat his meals in the kitchen. Further, though his sister has recorded that the work was light, the practice being inconsiderable, Lambert always tore up any writing of Chatterton's that he could find if it did not relate to his business.

'_Your stuff_!' he would say. Nevertheless he admitted that his apprentice was always to be found at his desk, for he often sent the footman in to see. And no doubt on some of these occasions Chatterton was copying the legal precedents of which 370 folio pages, neatly written in a well-formed handwriting, remain to this day as evidence of legitimate industry. At other times he was certainly composing poems by Rowley.

Perhaps at this point it would be well to give some account of Chatterton's method in the production of ancient writings. First it seems he wrote the matter in the ordinary English of his day. Then he would with the help of an English-Rowley and Rowley-English Dictionary (which he had laboriously compiled for himself out of the vocabulary to Speght's _Chaucer_, Bailey's _Universal Etymological Dictionary_, and Kersey's _Dictionarium Anglo-Britannic.u.m_) translate the work into what he probably thought was a very fair imitation of fifteenth century language. His spelling Professor Skeat characterizes as 'that debased kind which prevails in Chevy Chase and the Battle of Otterbourn in Percy's _Reliques_, only a little more disguised.'

Percy's _Reliques_ were not published till 1765, but it is natural to suppose that Chatterton when he was 'wildly squandering all he got On books and learning and the Lord knows what,' and thereby involving himself in some little debt, would have bought the volume very soon after its publication. Finally as to the production of 'an original'.

We have two accounts; one of which represents the pseudo-Rowley rubbing a parchment upon a dirty floor after smearing it with ochre and saying 'that was the way to antiquate it'; the other, even more explicit, is the testimony of a local chemist, one Rudhall, who was for some time a close friend of Chatterton's. The incident in which Rudhall appears is worth relating at length.

In the month of September 1768 an event of some importance occurred at Bristol--a new bridge that had been built across the Avon to supersede a structure dating from the reign of the second Henry being formally thrown open for traffic. At the time when this was the general talk of the city Chatterton had left with the editor of _Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_ a description of the 'Fryars pa.s.sing over the Old Bridge taken from an ancient ma.n.u.script.' This account was in the best Rowleian manner, with strange spelling and uncouth words, but for the most part quite intelligible to the ordinary reader. The editor accordingly published it (no payment being asked) and great curiosity was aroused in consequence. Where had this most interesting doc.u.ment come from? Were there others like it? The Bristol antiquaries, rather a large body, were all agog with excitement. Ultimately they discovered that the unknown contributor, of whom the editor could say nothing more than that his 'copy' was subscribed _Dunclinus Bristoliensis_, was Thomas Chatterton the attorney's apprentice. Now the amazing credulity of these learned people is one of the least comprehensible circ.u.mstances of our poet's strange life. For on being asked how he had come by his MSS. he refused at first to give any answer. Then he said he was employed to transcribe some old writings by 'a gentleman whom he had supplied with poetry to send to a lady the gentleman was in love with'--the excuse being suggested no doubt by the case of Miss Hoyland and his friend Baker. Finally when, as we can only conclude, this explanation was disproved or disbelieved, he announced that the account was copied from a ma.n.u.script his father had taken from Rowley's chest. And this explanation was considered perfectly satisfactory.

Yet it seemed obvious that the antiquaries would demand to see the ma.n.u.script, and Chatterton, contrary to his usual practice of secrecy, called upon his friend Rudhall and, having made him promise to tell nothing of what he should show him, took a piece of parchment 'about the size of a half sheet of foolscap paper,' wrote on it in a character which the other did not understand, for it was 'totally unlike English,' and finally held what he had written over a candle to give it the 'appearance of antiquity,' which it did by changing the colour of the ink and making the parchment appear 'black and a little contracted.' Rudhall, who kept his secret till 1779 (when he bartered it for 10, to be given to the poet's mother, at that time in great poverty), believed that no one was shown or asked to see this doc.u.ment. Why, it is impossible to say.

The present volume contains a reproduction[2] in black and white of the original MS. of Chatterton's '_Accounte of W. Canynges Feast_'.

This was written in red ink. The parchment is stained with brown, except one corner, and the first line written in a legal texting hand.

The ageing of his ma.n.u.script of the _Vita Burtoni_, to take a further instance, was effected by smearing the middle of it with glue or varnish. This doc.u.ment was also written partly in an attorney's regular engrossing[3] hand. During the next four years Chatterton 'transcribed' a great quant.i.ty of ancient doc.u.ments, including _aella, a Tragycal Enterlude_--far the finest of the longer Rowleian poems--the _Songe to aella_ and _The Bristowe Tragedy_ (the authorship of which last he appears in an unguarded moment to have acknowledged to his mother). He told her also that he had himself written one of the two poems _Onn oure Ladies Chyrche_--which one, Mrs. Chatterton could not remember[4], but if it was the first of the two printed in this edition (p. 275) it was a strange coincidence indeed that led him to repudiate the antiquity of the only two Rowley poems which are really at all like 'antiques'--Professor Skeat's convenient expression. The two Battles of Hastings were written during this period, and it appears that Barrett the surgeon, on being shown the first poem, was for once very insistent in asking for the original, whereupon Chatterton in a momentary panic confessed he had written the verses for a friend; but he had at home, he said, the copy of what was really the translation of Turgot's Epic--Turgot was a Saxon monk of the tenth century--by Rowley the secular priest of the fifteenth. This was the second _Battle of Hastings_ as printed in this book. Again this strange explanation, so laboured and so patently disingenuous, was accepted without comment though probably not believed. And if it appears matter for surprise that there should ever have been any controversy about the authorship of the Rowley writings, in view of the lad's admission that he had written three such signal pieces as the _Bristowe Tragedy_, the first _Battle of Hastings_, and _Onn oure Ladies Chyrche_, it must be considered that the production of the greater part of the poems by a poorly educated boy not turned seventeen would naturally appear a circ.u.mstance more surprising than that such a boy should tell a lie and claim some of them as his own.

With his acknowledged work, as with Rowley, Chatterton by dint of continued application was making good progress. In 1769 he had become a frequent contributor to the _Town and Country Magazine_, to which he sent articles on heraldry, imitations of Ossian (whom he very much admired) and various other papers; and in December of this year he wrote to Dodsley, the well-known publisher, acquainting him that he could 'procure copies of several ancient poems and an interlude, perhaps the oldest dramatic piece extant, wrote by one Rowley, a Priest in Bristol, who lived in the reign of Henry the Sixth and Edward the Fourth * * * If these pieces would be of any service to Mr. Dodsley copies should be sent.' The publisher returned no answer.

Chatterton waited two months, then wrote again and enclosed a specimen pa.s.sage from _aella_. He could procure a copy of this work, he wrote, upon payment of a guinea to the present owner of the MS. Again Mr.

Dodsley lay low and said nothing, and so the incident closed.

Dodsley having failed him, Chatterton next took the bolder step of writing to Horace Walpole, who must have been much in his mind for some years before his sending the letter. Some one has made the ingenious suggestion that a consideration of Walpole's delicate connoisseurship sensibly coloured Chatterton's account of the life of Mastre William Canynge. More than this, his delight in the Mediaeval--the Gothic--and his content with what may be termed a purely impressionistic view of the past, was singularly akin to the Bristol poet's own outlook on these matters. Walpole had further some three years before this time indulged in the very harmless literary fraud of publishing his _Castle of Otranto_ as a translation from a mediaeval Italian MS., only confessing his own authorship upon the publication of the second edition. To Walpole then Chatterton addressed a short letter enclosing some verses by John a Iscam and a ma.n.u.script on the _Ryse of Peyncteyning yn Englande wroten by T.

Rowleie 1469 for Mastre Canynge_[5] with the suggestion that it might be of service to Mr. Walpole 'in any future edition of his truly entertaining anecdotes of painting.' This drew from the connoisseur one of the politest letters[6] that have been written in English, in which the simple and elegant sentences expressed with a very charming courtesy the interest and curiosity of its author. He gave his correspondent 'a thousand thanks'; 'he would not be sorry to print'

(at his private press) 'some of Rowley's poems'; and added--which reads strangely in the light of what follows--'I would by no means borrow and detain your MS.' Now Chatterton's _Peyncteyning yn Englande_ is the clumsiest fraud of all the Rowley compositions, with the single exception of a letter from the secular Priest which exhibits the exact style and language of de Foe's _Robinson Crusoe_.[7] Professor Skeat has pointed out that the Anglo-Saxon words, which occur with tolerable frequency in the _Ryse_, begin almost without exception with the letter _A_, and concludes that Chatterton had read in an old English glossary, probably Somners, no farther than _Ah_. Walpole however 'had not the happiness of understanding the Saxon language,' and it was not until after he had received a second letter from Chatterton, enclosing more Rowleian matter both prose and verse, that he consulted his friends Gray and Mason, who at once detected the forgery. If, as seems certain, _Elinoure and Juga_ was among the pieces sent, it was inevitable that Gray should recognize lines 22-25 of that poem as a striking if unconscious reminiscence of his own _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_.

Now Walpole had some years before introduced Ossian's poems to the world and his reputation as a critic had suffered when their authenticity was generally disputed. Accordingly he wrote Chatterton a stiff letter suggesting that 'when he should have made a fortune he might unbend himself with the studies consonant to his inclination'; and in this one must suppose that he was actuated by a very natural irritation at having been duped a second time by an expositor of antique poetry, rather than by any sn.o.bbish contempt for his correspondent, who had frankly confessed himself an attorney's apprentice. Chatterton then wrote twice to have his MS. returned, a.s.serting at the same time his confidence in the authenticity of the Rowley doc.u.ments. Walpole for some reason returned no answer to either application, but left for Paris, where he stayed six weeks, returning to find another letter from Chatterton written with considerable dignity and restraint--a last formal demand to have his ma.n.u.script returned. Whereupon, amazed at the boy's 'singular impertinence,' the great man snapped up both letters and poems and returned them in a blank cover--that is to say without a word of apology or explanation.

He might have acted otherwise if he had been a more generous spirit, but an attempt had been made to impose upon him which had in part succeeded, and he can hardly be blamed for showing his resentment by neglecting to return the forgeries. One may notice in pa.s.sing that when Chatterton, more than a year later, committed suicide there were not wanting a great many persons absurd enough to accuse Walpole of having driven him to his death--a contemptible suggestion. Yet the connoisseur's credit certainly suffers from the fact that he gave currency to a false account of the transaction in the hope of concealing his first credulity.[8]

We now come to the circ.u.mstance which procured Chatterton's release from his irksome apprenticeship--his threat of suicide. He had often been heard to speak approvingly of suicide, and there is a story, which has, however, little authority, that once in a company of friends he drew a pistol from his pocket, put it to his head, and exclaimed 'Now if one had but the courage to pull the trigger!'

This anecdote--if not in fact true--ill.u.s.trates very well the gloomy depression of spirit which alternated with those outbursts of feverish energy in which his poems were composed. And he had much to make him miserable when with a change of mood he lost his buoyancy and confidence of ultimate fame and success. His ambition was boundless and his audience was as limited in numbers as in understanding. He was as proud as the poor Spaniard who on a bitter day rejected the friendly offer of a cloak with the words 'A gentleman does not feel the cold,' and his pride was continually fretted. He was keenly conscious of the indignity of his position in Lambert's kitchen; he seems to have been pressed for money, and though he 'did not owe five pounds altogether' he probably smarted under the thought that all his hard work, all the long nights of study and composition in the moonlight which helped his thought, could not earn him even this comparatively small sum. Again, he was not restrained from a contemplation of suicide by any scruples of religion--for he has left his views expressed in an article written some few days before his death. He believed in a daemon or conscience which prompted every man to follow good and avoid evil; but--different men different daemons--his held self-slaughter justified when life became intolerable; with him therefore it would be no crime. Wilson suggests too that the boy who had read theology, orthodox and the reverse, held to the common eighteenth century view that death was annihilation; and this may well have been the case. One thing at any rate is certain, that Chatterton on the 14th of April 1770 left on his desk a number of pieces of paper filled with a jumble of satiric verse, mocking prose, and directions for the construction of a mediaeval tomb to cover the remains of his father and himself. Part of this strange doc.u.ment was headed in legal form--'This is the last Will and Testament of me Thomas Chatterton,' and contained the declaration that the Testator would be dead on the evening of the following day--'being the feast of the resurrection.' The bundle was dated and endorsed 'All this wrote between 11 and 2 o'clock Sat.u.r.day in the utmost distress of mind.' Now while one need not doubt that the distress was perfectly genuine, it is tolerably certain that Chatterton intended his master to find what he had written and draw his own conclusions as to the desirability of dismissing his apprentice. The attorney (who is represented as timid, irritable and narrow-minded)[9] did in fact find the doc.u.ment, was thoroughly frightened, and gave the boy his release. He was now free to starve or earn a living by his pen--so no doubt he represented the alternative to his mother. He must go to London, where he would certainly make his fortune. He had been supplying four or five London journals of good standing with free contributions for some time past, and had received it appears great encouragement from their editors. He gained his point and started out for the great city.

His letters show that he called upon four editors the very day he arrived. These were Edmunds of the _Middles.e.x Journal_; Fell of the _Freeholders Magazine_; Hamilton of the _Town and Country Magazine_; and Dodsley--the same to whom he had sent a portion of _aella_--of the _Annual Register_. He had received, he wrote, 'great encouragement from them all'; 'all approved of his design; he should soon be settled.' Fell told him later that the great and notorious Wilkes 'affirmed that his writings could not be the work of a youth and expressed a desire to know the author.' This may or may not have been true, but it is certain that Fell was not the only newspaper proprietor who was ready to exchange a little cheap flattery for articles by Chatterton that would never be paid for.[10]

We know very little about Chatterton's life in London--but that little presents some extraordinarily vivid pictures. He lodged at first with an aunt, Mrs. Ballance, in Sh.o.r.editch, where he refused to allow his room to be swept, as he said 'poets hated brooms.' He objected to being called Tommy, and asked his aunt 'If she had ever heard of a poet's being called Tommy' (you see he was still a boy). 'But she a.s.sured him that she knew nothing about poets and only wished he would not set up for being a gentleman.' He had the appearance of being much older than he was, (though one who knew him when he was at Colston's Hospital described him as having light curly hair and a face round as an apple; his eyes were grey and sparkled when he was interested or moved). He was 'very much himself--an admirably expressive phrase.

He had the same fits of absentmindedness which characterized him as a child. 'He would often look stedfastly in a person's face without speaking or seeming to see the person for a quarter of an hour or more till it was quite frightful.' We have accounts of his sitting up writing nearly the whole of the night, and his cousin was almost afraid to share a room with him 'for to be sure he was a spirit and never slept.'[11]

He wrote political letters in the style of Junius--generally signing them Decimus or Probus--that kind of vague libellous ranting which will always serve to voice the discontent of the inarticulate. He wrote essays--moral, antiquarian, or burlesque; he furbished up his old satires on the worthies of Bristol; he wrote songs and a comic opera, and was miserably paid when he was paid at all. None of his work written in these veins has any value as literature; but the skill with which this mere lad not eighteen years old gauged the taste of the town and imitated all branches of popular literature would probably have no parallel in the history of journalism should such a history ever come to be written.

His letters to his mother and sister were always gay and contained glowing accounts of his progress; but in reality he must have been miserably poor and ill-fed.

In July he changed his lodgings to the house of a Mrs. Angel, a sacque maker in Brook Street, Holborn; the dead season of August was coming on and probably he wanted to conceal his growing embarra.s.sment from his aunt, who might have sent word of it to his mother at Bristol.

His opera was accepted--it is a spirited and well written piece--and for this he was paid five pounds, which enabled him to send a box of presents to his mother and sister bought with money he had earned.

He had dreamed of this since he was eight. But his _Balade of Charitie_--the most finished of all the Rowley poems--was refused by the _Town and Country Magazine_ about a month before the end; which came on August 24th. He was starving and still too proud to accept the invitations of his landlady and of a friendly chemist to take various meals with them. He was offended at the good landlady's suggestion that he should dine with her; for 'her expressions seemed to hint'

(to _hint_) 'that he was in want'--no cloak for Thomas Chatterton! He could have borrowed money and gone back to Bristol, but there are many precedents for beaten generalissimos falling on their swords rather than return home defeated and disgraced. How could he return? He had set out so confidently; had boasted not a little of his powers, and had satirized all the good people in Bristol _de haut en bas_. Think of the jokes and commiserations of Burgum, Catcott, and the rest!

'Well, here you are again, boy; but of course _we_ knew it would come to this!' He could not endure to hear that.

Accordingly on Friday the 24th August 1770 he tore up his ma.n.u.scripts, locked his door, and poisoned himself with a.r.s.enic.

Southey, Byron, and others have supposed that Chatterton was mad; it has been suggested that he was the victim of a suicidal mania. All the evidence that there is goes to show that he was not. He was very far-sighted, shrewd, hard-working, and practical, for all his imaginative dreaming of a non-existent past; and this at least may be said, that Chatterton's suicide was the logical end to a very remarkably consistent life.

Chatterton's character has suffered a good deal from three accusations vehemently urged by Maitland and his eighteenth-century predecessors.

The first is that the boy was a 'forger'; the second that he was a freethinker; the third that he was a free-liver.

To examine these in turn: the first admits of no denial as a question of fact, but justification may be pleaded which some will accept as a complete exculpation and others perhaps will hardly comprehend.

Chatterton could only produce poetry in his fifteenth-century vein; his imagination failed him in modern English. No one who has any appreciation of Rowley's poems will consider that the _African Eclogues_ are for a moment comparable with them. If he was to write at all he must produce antiques, and, as it happened, interest had been aroused in ancient poetry, largely by the publication of Percy's _Reliques_ and of the spurious Ossian. Appearing at this juncture, then, as ancient writings taken from an old chest, his poems would be read and their value appreciated; while no one would trouble to make out the professed imitations--not by any means easy reading--of an attorney's apprentice. Probably if an adequate audience had been secured in his lifetime, Chatterton would have revealed the secret when it had served its purpose--just as Walpole confessed to the authorship of _Otranto_ only when that book had run into a second edition.

To the second count of the indictment no defence is urged. Chatterton was too honest and too intelligent to accept traditional dogmatics without examination.

Finally, he was no free-liver in the sense in which that objectionable expression is used. Rather he was an ascetic who studied and wrote poetry half through the night, who ate as little as he slept, and would make his dinner off 'a tart and a gla.s.s of water.' He was devoted to his mother and sister and to his poetry; and what spare time was not occupied with the latter he seems to have spent largely with the former. The attempt to represent him as a sort of provincial Don Juan--though in the precocious licence of a few of his acknowledged writings he has even given it some colour himself--cannot be reconciled with the recorded facts of his life.

Equally ill judged is that picture which is presented by Professor Ma.s.son and other writers less important--of a truant schoolboy, a pathetic figure, who had petulantly cast away from him the consolations of religion. Monsieur Callet, his French biographer, knew better than this: 'Il fallait l'admirer, lui, non le plaindre,' is the last word on Chatterton.

[Footnote 1: An extraordinary production for a boy of twelve, but we need not suppose that if 'Elenoure and Juga' were written in 1764 and not published until 1769 no alterations and improvements were made by its author in the period between these dates.]