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 passing over the Old Bridge taken from an ancient manuscript.' 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 document 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 circumstances 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 manuscript 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 manuscript, 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 document. 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 manuscript of the Vita Burtoni, to take a further instance, was effected by smearing the middle of it with glue or varnish. This document was also written partly in an attorney's regular engrossing[3] hand. During the next four years Chatterton 'transcribed' a great quantity of ancient documents, including Ælla, a Tragycal Enterlude—far the finest of the longer Rowleian poems—the Songe to Ælla 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 circumstance 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 passage from Ælla. 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 Mediæval—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 mediæval 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 à Iscam and a manuscript 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 snobbish contempt for his correspondent, who had frankly confessed himself an attorney's apprentice. Chatterton then wrote twice to have his MS. returned, asserting at the same time his confidence in the authenticity of the Rowley documents. 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 manuscript 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 passing 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 circumstance 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—illustrates 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 mediæval tomb to cover the remains of his father and himself. Part of this strange document 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 Saturday 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 document, 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 Middlesex 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 Ælla—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 Shoreditch, 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 assured 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.