The Rowley Poems by Thomas Chatterton (inspirational books to read .txt) 📖

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 circumstance.

 

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-Britannicum_) 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 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