Thomas Chatterton
Encyclopedia
Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and forger
of pseudo-medieval poetry
. He died of arsenic poisoning
, either from a suicide
attempt or self-medication for a venereal disease.
where the office of sexton
of St. Mary Redcliffe had long been held by the Chatterton family. The poet's father, also named Thomas Chatterton, was a musician, a poet, a numismatist
, and a dabbler in the occult
. He had been a sub-chanter
at Bristol Cathedral
and master of the Pyle Street free school, near Redcliffe church.
After Thomas's birth (four months after his father's death), his mother established a girls' school and took in sewing and ornamental needlework. Thomas was admitted to Edward Colston
's Charity, a Bristol charity school
, in which the curriculum was limited to reading, writing, arithmetic and the catechism
.
Thomas, however, was always fascinated with his uncle the sexton and the church of St Mary Redcliffe. The knights, ecclesiastics and civic dignitaries on its altar tombs, became familiar to him. Then he found a fresh interest in oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch on the north side of the nave
, where parchment deeds, old as the Wars of the Roses
, lay forgotten. Thomas learned his first letters from the illuminated capitals of an old musical folio, and learned to read out of a black-letter Bible. He did not like, his sister said, reading out of small books. Wayward from his earliest years, and uninterested in the games of other children, he was thought to be educationally backward. His sister relates that on being asked what device he would like painted on a bowl that was to be his, he replied, "Paint me an angel, with wings, and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world."
From his earliest years he was liable to fits of abstraction, sitting for hours in what seemed like a trance, or crying for no reason. His lonely circumstances helped foster his natural reserve, and to create the love of mystery which exercised such an influence on the development of his genius. When Chatterton was six, his mother began to recognize his capacity; at eight he was so eager for books that he would read and write all day long if undisturbed; by the age of eleven, he had become a contributor to Felix Farley's Bristol Journal.
His confirmation inspired him to write some religious poems published in this paper. In 1763 a beautiful cross which had adorned the churchyard of St Mary Redcliffe for upwards of three centuries was destroyed by a churchwarden. The spirit of veneration was strong in Chatterton, and he sent to the local journal on 7 January 1764 a clever satire on the parish vandal. He also liked to lock himself in a little attic which he had appropriated as his study; and there, with books, cherished parchments, saved from the loot of the muniment room of St Mary Redcliffe, and drawing materials, the child lived in thought with his 15th century heroes and heroines.
of "Elinoure and Juga", was written before he was 12, and he showed it to Thomas Phillips, the usher at the boarding school Colston's Hospital where he was a pupil, pretending it was the work of a 15th-century poet. Chatterton remained a boarder at Colston's Hospital for more than six years, and it was only his uncle who encouraged the pupils to write. Three of Chatterton's companions are named as youths whom Phillips's taste for poetry stimulated to rivalry; but Chatterton told no one about his own more daring literary adventures. His little pocket-money was spent on borrowing books from a circulating library; and he ingratiated himself with book collectors, in order to obtain access to John Weever
, William Dugdale
and Collins, as well as to Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer
, Spenser
and other books.
Chatterton's "Rowleian" jargon appears to have been chiefly the result of the study of John Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, and it seems his knowledge even of Chaucer
was very slight. His holidays were mostly spent at his mother's house, and much of them in the favourite retreat of his attic study there. He lived for the most part in an ideal world of his own, in the reign of Edward IV
, when the great Bristol merchant William II Canynges(d.1474), five times mayor of Bristol, patron and rebuilder of St Mary Redcliffe "still ruled in Bristol's civic chair". Canynges was familiar to him from his recumbent effigy in Redcliffe church, and is represented by Chatterton as an enlightened patron of art and literature.
Thomas Rowley for poetry and history. Rowley's dramatic interludes were written for studies.
In 1769 Chatterton sent Rowley's History of England, allegedly by Rowley, to Horace Walpole, who was briefly taken in.
and other London periodicals. Assuming the vein of Junius
- then in the full blaze of his triumph — he turned his pen against the Duke of Grafton, the Earl of Bute
, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the Princess of Wales
.
and liberty. His contributions were accepted, but the editors paid little or nothing for them.
He wrote hopefully to his mother and sister, and spent his first earnings in buying gifts for them. His pride and ambition were gratified by the promises and interested flattery of editors and political adventurers; Wilkes himself had noted his trenchant style "and expressed a desire to know the author"; and Lord Mayor William Beckford
graciously acknowledged a political address of his, and greeted him "as politely as a citizen could." He was abstemious and diligence was great. He could assume the style of Junius or Tobias Smollett
, reproduce the satiric bitterness of Charles Churchill, parody Macpherson
's Ossian, or write in the manner of Pope
, or with the polished grace of Thomas Gray
and William Collins
.
He wrote political letters, eclogue
s, lyrics, operas and satires, both in prose and verse. In June 1770 - after nine weeks in London - he moved from Shoreditch
, where he had lodged with a relative, to an attic in Brook Street, Holborn
. He was still short of money; and now state prosecutions of the press rendered letters in the Junius vein no longer admissible, and threw him back on the lighter resources of his pen. In Shoreditch, he had shared a room; but now, for the first time, he enjoyed uninterrupted solitude. His bed-fellow at Mr Walmsley's, Shoreditch, noted that much of the night was spent by him in writing; and now he could write all night. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he transcribed from an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his "Excelente Balade of Charitie." This fine poem, perversely disguised in archaic language, he sent to the editor of the Town and Country Magazine, and had it rejected.
Mr Cross, a neighbouring apothecary
, repeatedly invited him to join him at dinner or supper; but he refused. His landlady also, suspecting his necessity, pressed him to share her dinner, but in vain. "She knew," as she afterwards said, "that he had not eaten anything for two or three days." But he assured her that he was not hungry. The note of his actual receipts, found in his pocket-book after his death, shows that Hamilton, Fell and other editors who had been so liberal in flattery, had paid him at the rate of a shilling for an article, and less than eightpence each for his songs; much which had been accepted was held in reserve and still unpaid for.
According to his foster-mother, he had wished to study medicine with Barrett, and in his desperation he wrote to Barrett for a letter to help him to an opening as a surgeon's assistant on board an African trader. On 24 August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with him the arsenic
which he drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand. He was only 17 years and nine months old; but the best of his numerous productions, in prose and verse, seem very mature.
He pictures John Lydgate
, the monk of Bury St Edmunds, challenging Rowley to a trial at versemaking, and under cover of this fiction, produces his Songe of Alla, a piece of rare lyrical beauty. Again, in his Tragedy of Goddwyn, of which only a fragment has been preserved, the Ode to Liberty, with which it abruptly closes, may claim a place among the finest martial lyrics in the English language. The collection of poems in which such specimens occur furnishes by far the most remarkable example of intellectual precocity in the whole history of English literature
.
The death of Chatterton attracted little notice at the time; for the few who then entertained any appreciative estimate of the Rowley poems regarded him as their mere transcriber. He was interred in a burying-ground attached to the Shoe Lane Workhouse, in the parish of St Andrew, Holborn
, later converted into a site for Farringdon Market
. There is a discredited story that the body of the poet was recovered, and secretly buried by his uncle, Richard Phillips, in Redcliffe Churchyard. There a monument has since been erected to his memory, with the appropriate inscription, borrowed from his "Will," and so supplied by the poet's own pen. "To the memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a Superior Power. To that Power only is he now answerable."
It was after Chatterton's death that the controversy over his work began. Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777) was edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt
, a Chaucerian scholar who believed them genuine medieval works. However, the appendix to the following year's edition recognises that they were probably Chatterton's own work. Thomas Warton
, in his History of English Poetry (1778) included Rowley among 15th century poets, but apparently did not believe in the antiquity of the poems. In 1782 a new edition of Rowley's poems appeared, with a "Commentary, in which the antiquity of them is considered and defended," by Jeremiah Milles, dean of Exeter
.
The controversy which raged round the Rowley poems is discussed in Andrew Kippis
, Biographia Britannica
(vol. iv., 1789), where there is a detailed account by G Gregory of Chatterton's life (pp. 573–619). This was reprinted in the edition (1803) of Chatterton's Works by Robert Southey
and J Cottle, published for the benefit of the poet's sister. The neglected condition of the study of earlier English in the 18th century alone accounts for the temporary success of Chatterton's mystification. It has long been agreed that Chatterton was solely responsible for the Rowley Poems, but the language and style were analysed in confirmation of this view by W. W. Skeat in an introductory essay prefaced to vol. ii. of The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (1871) in the "Aldine Edition of the British Poets." The Chatterton manuscripts, originally in the possession of William Barrett of Bristol, were left by his heir to the British Museum
in 1800. Others are preserved in the Bristol library.
Chatterton's genius and his death are commemorated by Shelley
in Adonais
(though its main emphasis is the commemoration of Keats), by Wordsworth
in "Resolution and Independence
", by Coleridge
in "A Monody on the Death of Chatterton," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
in "Five English Poets," by Henry Wallis
in his painting "The Death of Chatterton," and in John Keats
' sonnet "To Chatterton". Keats also inscribed Endymion
"to the memory of Thomas Chatterton". Alfred de Vigny
's drama of Chatterton gives an altogether fictitious account of the poet. Herbert Croft, in his Love and Madness, interpolated a long and valuable account of Chatterton, giving many of the poet's letters, and much information obtained from his family and friends (pp. 125–244, letter Ii.).
Two of Chatterton's poems were set to music as glees
by the English composer John Wall Callcott
. These include separate settings of distinct verses within the Song to Aelle. His best known poem, O synge untoe mie roundelaie was set to a five part madrigal by Samuel Wesley
. Chatterton has attracted operatic treatment a number of times throughout history, notably Ruggiero Leoncavallo's largely unsuccessful 2 Act "Chatterton"; The German composer Matthias Pinscher's modernistic "Thomas Chatterton"; and Australian composer Matthew Dewey
's lyrical yet dramatically intricate one-man mythography entitled "The Death of Thomas Chatterton".
There is a collection of "Chattertoniana" in the British Museum, consisting of works by Chatterton, newspaper cuttings, articles dealing with the Rowley controversy and other subjects, with manuscript notes by Joseph Haslewood, and several autograph letters. E. H. W. Meyerstein
, who worked for many years in the manuscript room of the British Museum wrote a definitive work - "A life of Thomas Chatterton" - in 1930. Peter Ackroyd
's 1987 novel Chatterton was an acclaimed literary re-telling of the poet's story, giving emphasis to the philosophical and spiritual implications of forgery.
In 1928 a plaque in memory of Chatterton was mounted on 39, Brooke Street, Holborn, bearing the inscription below. The plaque has subsequently been transferred to a modern office building on the same site.
In a House on this Site
Thomas
Chatterton,
died
August 24, 1770.
Within Bromley Common
, is a road called Chatterton Road, this is the main throughware in Chatterton Village, based around the public house The Chatterton Arms. Both road and pub are named after the poet.
French singer Serge Gainsbourg
entitled one of his songs Chatterton, stating:
The song was covered (in Portuguese) by Seu Jorge
live and recorded in the album Ana & Jorge: Ao Vivo
.
Forgery
Forgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or...
of pseudo-medieval poetry
Medieval poetry
Because most of what we have was written down by clerics, much of extant medieval poetry is religious. The chief exception is the work of the troubadours and the minnesänger, whose primary innovation was the ideal of courtly love. Among the most famous of secular poetry is Carmina Burana, a...
. He died of arsenic poisoning
Arsenic poisoning
Arsenic poisoning is a medical condition caused by increased levels of the element arsenic in the body. Arsenic interferes with cellular longevity by allosteric inhibition of an essential metabolic enzyme...
, either from a suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
attempt or self-medication for a venereal disease.
Childhood
Thomas Chatterton was born in BristolBristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
where the office of sexton
Sexton (office)
A sexton is a church, congregation or synagogue officer charged with the maintenance of its buildings and/or the surrounding graveyard. In smaller places of worship, this office is often combined with that of verger...
of St. Mary Redcliffe had long been held by the Chatterton family. The poet's father, also named Thomas Chatterton, was a musician, a poet, a numismatist
Numismatics
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes the broader study of money and other payment media used to resolve debts and the...
, and a dabbler in the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
. He had been a sub-chanter
Chanter
The chanter is the part of the bagpipe upon which the player creates the melody. It consists of a number of finger-holes, and in its simpler forms looks similar to a recorder...
at Bristol Cathedral
Bristol Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity is the Church of England cathedral in the city of Bristol, England, and is commonly known as Bristol Cathedral...
and master of the Pyle Street free school, near Redcliffe church.
Edward Colston
Edward Colston was a Bristol-born English merchant and Member of Parliament. Much of his wealth, although used often for philanthropic purposes, was acquired through the trade and exploitation of slaves...
's Charity, a Bristol charity school
Charity school
A charity school, also called Blue Coat School, was significant in the History of education in England. They were erected and maintained in various parishes, by the voluntary contributions of the inhabitants, for teaching poor children to read, write, and other necessary parts of education...
, in which the curriculum was limited to reading, writing, arithmetic and the catechism
Catechism
A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...
.
Thomas, however, was always fascinated with his uncle the sexton and the church of St Mary Redcliffe. The knights, ecclesiastics and civic dignitaries on its altar tombs, became familiar to him. Then he found a fresh interest in oaken chests in the muniment room over the porch on the north side of the nave
Nave
In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...
, where parchment deeds, old as the Wars of the Roses
Wars of the Roses
The Wars of the Roses were a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York...
, lay forgotten. Thomas learned his first letters from the illuminated capitals of an old musical folio, and learned to read out of a black-letter Bible. He did not like, his sister said, reading out of small books. Wayward from his earliest years, and uninterested in the games of other children, he was thought to be educationally backward. His sister relates that on being asked what device he would like painted on a bowl that was to be his, he replied, "Paint me an angel, with wings, and a trumpet, to trumpet my name over the world."
From his earliest years he was liable to fits of abstraction, sitting for hours in what seemed like a trance, or crying for no reason. His lonely circumstances helped foster his natural reserve, and to create the love of mystery which exercised such an influence on the development of his genius. When Chatterton was six, his mother began to recognize his capacity; at eight he was so eager for books that he would read and write all day long if undisturbed; by the age of eleven, he had become a contributor to Felix Farley's Bristol Journal.
His confirmation inspired him to write some religious poems published in this paper. In 1763 a beautiful cross which had adorned the churchyard of St Mary Redcliffe for upwards of three centuries was destroyed by a churchwarden. The spirit of veneration was strong in Chatterton, and he sent to the local journal on 7 January 1764 a clever satire on the parish vandal. He also liked to lock himself in a little attic which he had appropriated as his study; and there, with books, cherished parchments, saved from the loot of the muniment room of St Mary Redcliffe, and drawing materials, the child lived in thought with his 15th century heroes and heroines.
First "medieval" works
The first of his literary mysteries, the dialogueDialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
of "Elinoure and Juga", was written before he was 12, and he showed it to Thomas Phillips, the usher at the boarding school Colston's Hospital where he was a pupil, pretending it was the work of a 15th-century poet. Chatterton remained a boarder at Colston's Hospital for more than six years, and it was only his uncle who encouraged the pupils to write. Three of Chatterton's companions are named as youths whom Phillips's taste for poetry stimulated to rivalry; but Chatterton told no one about his own more daring literary adventures. His little pocket-money was spent on borrowing books from a circulating library; and he ingratiated himself with book collectors, in order to obtain access to John Weever
John Weever
John Weever , was an English poet and antiquary.-Life:He was a native of Preston, Lancashire. Little is known of his early life and his parentage is not certain...
, William Dugdale
William Dugdale
Sir William Dugdale was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject.-Life:...
and Collins, as well as to Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
and other books.
Chatterton's "Rowleian" jargon appears to have been chiefly the result of the study of John Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, and it seems his knowledge even of Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
was very slight. His holidays were mostly spent at his mother's house, and much of them in the favourite retreat of his attic study there. He lived for the most part in an ideal world of his own, in the reign of Edward IV
Edward IV of England
Edward IV was King of England from 4 March 1461 until 3 October 1470, and again from 11 April 1471 until his death. He was the first Yorkist King of England...
, when the great Bristol merchant William II Canynges(d.1474), five times mayor of Bristol, patron and rebuilder of St Mary Redcliffe "still ruled in Bristol's civic chair". Canynges was familiar to him from his recumbent effigy in Redcliffe church, and is represented by Chatterton as an enlightened patron of art and literature.
Adopts persona of Thomas Rowley
He soon conceived the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century, and adopted for himself the pseudonymPseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Thomas Rowley for poetry and history. Rowley's dramatic interludes were written for studies.
In 1769 Chatterton sent Rowley's History of England, allegedly by Rowley, to Horace Walpole, who was briefly taken in.
Political writings
Chatterton now turned his attention to periodical literature and politics, and exchanged Felix Farley's Bristol Journal for the Town and Country MagazineTown and Country Magazine
Town and Country Magazine was an 18th century London based publication that featured tales of scandals and affairs between members of London's upper classes.-History:...
and other London periodicals. Assuming the vein of Junius
Junius
Junius was the pseudonym of a writer who contributed a series of letters to the Public Advertiser, from 21 January 1769 to 21 January 1772. The signature had been already used, apparently by him, in a letter of 21 November 1768...
- then in the full blaze of his triumph — he turned his pen against the Duke of Grafton, the Earl of Bute
John Stuart
John Stuart may refer to:*Sir John Stuart, 4th Baronet , MP for Kincardineshire*John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute , Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1762–1763...
, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the Princess of Wales
Princess of Wales
Princess of Wales is a British courtesy title held by the wife of The Prince of Wales since the first "English" Prince of Wales in 1283.Although there have been considerably more than ten male heirs to the throne, there have been only ten Princesses of Wales. The majority of Princes of Wales...
.
Determines on leaving Bristol
He had just dispatched one of his political diatribes to the Middlesex Journal, when he sat down on Easter Eve, 17 April 1770, and penned his "Last Will and Testament," a strange satirical compound of jest and earnest, in which he intimated his intention of ending his life the following evening. Among his satirical bequests, such as his "humility" to the Rev. Mr Camplin, his "religion" to Dean Barton, and his "modesty" along with his "prosody and grammar" to Mr Burgum, he leaves "to Bristol all his spirit and disinterestedness, parcels of goods unknown on its quay since the days of Canynge and Rowley." In more genuine earnestness he recalls the name of Michael Clayfield, a friend to whom he owed intelligent sympathy. The will was probably purposely prepared in order to frighten his master into letting him go. It had the desired effect. Lambert cancelled his indentures, his friends and acquaintances donated money, and he went to London.London
Chatterton was already known to the readers of the Middlesex Journal as a rival of Junius, under the nom de plume of Decimus. He had also been a contributor to Hamilton's Town and Country Magazine, and speedily found access to the Freeholder's Magazine, another political miscellany supportive of John WilkesJohn Wilkes
John Wilkes was an English radical, journalist and politician.He was first elected Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives...
and liberty. His contributions were accepted, but the editors paid little or nothing for them.
He wrote hopefully to his mother and sister, and spent his first earnings in buying gifts for them. His pride and ambition were gratified by the promises and interested flattery of editors and political adventurers; Wilkes himself had noted his trenchant style "and expressed a desire to know the author"; and Lord Mayor William Beckford
William Beckford
William Beckford may refer to:* William Beckford , English businessman, often called "Alderman Beckford", father of William Thomas* William Beckford of Somerley , Jamaican slave-owner and writer...
graciously acknowledged a political address of his, and greeted him "as politely as a citizen could." He was abstemious and diligence was great. He could assume the style of Junius or Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...
, reproduce the satiric bitterness of Charles Churchill, parody Macpherson
James Macpherson
James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems.-Early life:...
's Ossian, or write in the manner of Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, or with the polished grace of Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
and William Collins
William Collins (poet)
William Collins was an English poet. Second in influence only to Thomas Gray, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century...
.
He wrote political letters, eclogue
Eclogue
An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.The form of the word in contemporary English is taken from French eclogue, from Old French, from Latin ecloga...
s, lyrics, operas and satires, both in prose and verse. In June 1770 - after nine weeks in London - he moved from Shoreditch
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
, where he had lodged with a relative, to an attic in Brook Street, Holborn
Holborn
Holborn is an area of Central London. Holborn is also the name of the area's principal east-west street, running as High Holborn from St Giles's High Street to Gray's Inn Road and then on to Holborn Viaduct...
. He was still short of money; and now state prosecutions of the press rendered letters in the Junius vein no longer admissible, and threw him back on the lighter resources of his pen. In Shoreditch, he had shared a room; but now, for the first time, he enjoyed uninterrupted solitude. His bed-fellow at Mr Walmsley's, Shoreditch, noted that much of the night was spent by him in writing; and now he could write all night. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he transcribed from an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his "Excelente Balade of Charitie." This fine poem, perversely disguised in archaic language, he sent to the editor of the Town and Country Magazine, and had it rejected.
Mr Cross, a neighbouring apothecary
Apothecary
Apothecary is a historical name for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons and patients — a role now served by a pharmacist and some caregivers....
, repeatedly invited him to join him at dinner or supper; but he refused. His landlady also, suspecting his necessity, pressed him to share her dinner, but in vain. "She knew," as she afterwards said, "that he had not eaten anything for two or three days." But he assured her that he was not hungry. The note of his actual receipts, found in his pocket-book after his death, shows that Hamilton, Fell and other editors who had been so liberal in flattery, had paid him at the rate of a shilling for an article, and less than eightpence each for his songs; much which had been accepted was held in reserve and still unpaid for.
According to his foster-mother, he had wished to study medicine with Barrett, and in his desperation he wrote to Barrett for a letter to help him to an opening as a surgeon's assistant on board an African trader. On 24 August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with him the arsenic
Arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As, atomic number 33 and relative atomic mass 74.92. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in conjunction with sulfur and metals, and also as a pure elemental crystal. It was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250.Arsenic is a metalloid...
which he drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand. He was only 17 years and nine months old; but the best of his numerous productions, in prose and verse, seem very mature.
He pictures John Lydgate
John Lydgate
John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...
, the monk of Bury St Edmunds, challenging Rowley to a trial at versemaking, and under cover of this fiction, produces his Songe of Alla, a piece of rare lyrical beauty. Again, in his Tragedy of Goddwyn, of which only a fragment has been preserved, the Ode to Liberty, with which it abruptly closes, may claim a place among the finest martial lyrics in the English language. The collection of poems in which such specimens occur furnishes by far the most remarkable example of intellectual precocity in the whole history of English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
.
Posthumous recognition
St Andrew, Holborn
St Andrew, Holborn is a Church of England church on the northwestern edge of the City of London, on Holborn within the Ward of Farringdon Without.-Roman and medieval:Roman pottery was found on the site during 2001/02 excavations in the crypt...
, later converted into a site for Farringdon Market
Farringdon Market
Farringdon Market was a market erected in 1829 to replace the Fleet Market, which had been cleared for the widening of Farringdon Street and Farringdon Road. The market was between Farringdon Street east and Shoe Lane west, north of Stonecutter Street, in the City of London ward of Farringdon...
. There is a discredited story that the body of the poet was recovered, and secretly buried by his uncle, Richard Phillips, in Redcliffe Churchyard. There a monument has since been erected to his memory, with the appropriate inscription, borrowed from his "Will," and so supplied by the poet's own pen. "To the memory of Thomas Chatterton. Reader! judge not. If thou art a Christian, believe that he shall be judged by a Superior Power. To that Power only is he now answerable."
It was after Chatterton's death that the controversy over his work began. Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777) was edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt
Thomas Tyrwhitt
Thomas Tyrwhitt was an English classical scholar and critic.-Life:He was born in London, where he also died. He was educated at Eton and Queen's College, Oxford . In 1756 he was appointed under-secretary at war, in 1762 clerk of the House of Commons...
, a Chaucerian scholar who believed them genuine medieval works. However, the appendix to the following year's edition recognises that they were probably Chatterton's own work. Thomas Warton
Thomas Warton
Thomas Warton was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. From 1785 to 1790 he was the Poet Laureate of England...
, in his History of English Poetry (1778) included Rowley among 15th century poets, but apparently did not believe in the antiquity of the poems. In 1782 a new edition of Rowley's poems appeared, with a "Commentary, in which the antiquity of them is considered and defended," by Jeremiah Milles, dean of Exeter
Exeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
.
The controversy which raged round the Rowley poems is discussed in Andrew Kippis
Andrew Kippis
Andrew Kippis was an English nonconformist clergyman and biographer.The son of Robert Kippis, a silk-hosier, he was born at Nottingham. Having gone to school at Sleaford in Lincolnshire he passed at the age of sixteen to the Dissenting academy at Northampton, of which Dr Philip Doddridge was then...
, Biographia Britannica
Biographia Britannica
Biographia Britannica was a multi-volume biographical compendium, "the most ambitious attempt in the latter half of the eighteenth century to document the lives of notable British men and women". The first edition, edited by William Oldys, appeared in 6 volumes between 1747 and 1766...
(vol. iv., 1789), where there is a detailed account by G Gregory of Chatterton's life (pp. 573–619). This was reprinted in the edition (1803) of Chatterton's Works by Robert Southey
Robert Southey
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
and J Cottle, published for the benefit of the poet's sister. The neglected condition of the study of earlier English in the 18th century alone accounts for the temporary success of Chatterton's mystification. It has long been agreed that Chatterton was solely responsible for the Rowley Poems, but the language and style were analysed in confirmation of this view by W. W. Skeat in an introductory essay prefaced to vol. ii. of The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton (1871) in the "Aldine Edition of the British Poets." The Chatterton manuscripts, originally in the possession of William Barrett of Bristol, were left by his heir to the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
in 1800. Others are preserved in the Bristol library.
Chatterton's genius and his death are commemorated by Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
in Adonais
Adonais
Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. , also spelled Adonaies, is a pastoral elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley for John Keats in 1821, and widely regarded as one of Shelley's best and most well-known works...
(though its main emphasis is the commemoration of Keats), by Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
in "Resolution and Independence
Resolution and Independence
"Resolution and Independence" is a lyric poem by the English romantic poet William Wordsworth, composed in 1802 and published in 1807 in Poems in Two Volumes...
", by Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
in "A Monody on the Death of Chatterton," by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
in "Five English Poets," by Henry Wallis
Henry Wallis
Henry Wallis was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter, writer and collector.Born in London on 21 February 1830, his father's name and occupation are unknown. When in 1845 his mother, Mary Anne Thomas, married Andrew Wallis, a prosperous London architect, Henry took his stepfather's surname. His...
in his painting "The Death of Chatterton," and in John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
' sonnet "To Chatterton". Keats also inscribed Endymion
Endymion (poem)
Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. Beginning famously with the line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever", Endymion, like many epic poems in English , is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter...
"to the memory of Thomas Chatterton". Alfred de Vigny
Alfred de Vigny
Alfred Victor de Vigny was a French poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life:Alfred de Vigny was born in Loches into an aristocratic family...
's drama of Chatterton gives an altogether fictitious account of the poet. Herbert Croft, in his Love and Madness, interpolated a long and valuable account of Chatterton, giving many of the poet's letters, and much information obtained from his family and friends (pp. 125–244, letter Ii.).
Two of Chatterton's poems were set to music as glees
Glee (music)
A glee is an English type of part song spanning the late baroque, classical and early romantic periods. It is usually scored for at least three voices, and generally intended to be sung unaccompanied. Glees often consist of a number of short, musically contrasted movements and their texts can be...
by the English composer John Wall Callcott
John Wall Callcott
John Wall Callcott was an eminent English musical composer.Callcott was born in Kensington, London. He was a pupil of Haydn, and is celebrated mainly for his glee compositions and "catches". In the best known of his catches he ridiculed Sir John Hawkins' History of Music...
. These include separate settings of distinct verses within the Song to Aelle. His best known poem, O synge untoe mie roundelaie was set to a five part madrigal by Samuel Wesley
Samuel Wesley
Samuel Wesley was an English organist and composer in the late Georgian period. Wesley was a contemporary of Mozart and was called by some "the English Mozart."-Personal life:...
. Chatterton has attracted operatic treatment a number of times throughout history, notably Ruggiero Leoncavallo's largely unsuccessful 2 Act "Chatterton"; The German composer Matthias Pinscher's modernistic "Thomas Chatterton"; and Australian composer Matthew Dewey
Matthew Dewey
Matthew Ingvald Dewey is an Australian composer and singer.-General information:Dewey is an Australian composer and singer who studied composition with Professor Douglas Knehans at the University of Tasmania and composition/theatrical design/singing with Greek-Australian composer/designer...
's lyrical yet dramatically intricate one-man mythography entitled "The Death of Thomas Chatterton".
There is a collection of "Chattertoniana" in the British Museum, consisting of works by Chatterton, newspaper cuttings, articles dealing with the Rowley controversy and other subjects, with manuscript notes by Joseph Haslewood, and several autograph letters. E. H. W. Meyerstein
E. H. W. Meyerstein
Edward Harry William Meyerstein was an English writer and scholar. He wrote poetry and short stories, and a Life Of Thomas Chatterton.-Early life and education:...
, who worked for many years in the manuscript room of the British Museum wrote a definitive work - "A life of Thomas Chatterton" - in 1930. Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a particular interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot and Sir Thomas More he won the Somerset Maugham Award...
's 1987 novel Chatterton was an acclaimed literary re-telling of the poet's story, giving emphasis to the philosophical and spiritual implications of forgery.
In 1928 a plaque in memory of Chatterton was mounted on 39, Brooke Street, Holborn, bearing the inscription below. The plaque has subsequently been transferred to a modern office building on the same site.
In a House on this Site
Thomas
Chatterton,
died
August 24, 1770.
Within Bromley Common
Bromley Common
Bromley Common is the area centered around the road of the same name, stretching between Masons Hill at the south end of Bromley and Hastings Road, Locksbottom. Part of the A21...
, is a road called Chatterton Road, this is the main throughware in Chatterton Village, based around the public house The Chatterton Arms. Both road and pub are named after the poet.
French singer Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...
entitled one of his songs Chatterton, stating:
- Chatterton suicidé
- Hannibal suicidé [...]
- Quant à moi
- Ça ne va plus très bien.
The song was covered (in Portuguese) by Seu Jorge
Seu Jorge
Seu Jorge is a Brazilian musician, singer/songwriter and actor. Born Jorge Mário da Silva, he was raised in a favela in the city of Belford Roxo in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro state. He is considered by his fans a renewer of Brazilian pop samba...
live and recorded in the album Ana & Jorge: Ao Vivo
Ana & Jorge: Ao Vivo
Ana & Jorge: Ao Vivo is an MPB album by Brazilian singers Ana Carolina and Seu Jorge, released on CD and DVD in 2005. In Brazil it was awarded Triple Platinum certification, as more than 300,000 copies were sold in the country.- Background :...
.
External links
- The Rowley Poems at Exclassics.com
- "Chatterton - A Novel" by Peter Ackroyd, Hamish Hamilton, London 1987
- Musical settings of Chatterton's poems