Thomas Chatterton

Thomas Chatterton (November 20, 1752 - August 24, 1770) was an English poet, remembered chiefly for his success as a forger of pseudo-medieval poetry, and for his suicide at the age of only seventeen.

First "medieval" works

The first of his literary mysteries, the duologue of "Elinoure and Juga," was written before he was twelve, and he showed it to the usher at Colston's hospital, Thomas Phillips, as the work of a 15th century poet. Chatterton remained an inmate of 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 Weever, Dugdale and Collins, as well as to Speght's edition of Chaucer, Spenser and other books.

Related Topics:
Duologue - Usher - 15th century - Circulating library - Weever - Dugdale - Speght - Chaucer - Spenser

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Chatterton's "Rowleian" jargon appears to have been chiefly the result of the study of John Kersey's Dictionarium Anglo-Britannicum, and it seems that his knowledge of even 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 had already conceived the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century, and lived for the most part in an ideal world of his own, in the reign of Edward IV, when Master William Canynge - familiar to him among the recumbent effigies in Redcliffe church - still ruled in Bristol's civic chair. Canynge is represented as an enlightened patron of literature, and Rowley's dramatic interludes were written for studies.

Related Topics:
John Kersey - Edward IV - William Canynge

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In 1769 Chatterton sent a history of England, allegedly by Rowley, to Horace Walpole, who was briefly taken in. Chatterton now turned his attention to periodical literature and politics, and exchanged Felix Farley's Bristol Journal for the Town and County Magazine 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.

Related Topics:
1769 - Horace Walpole - Junius - Duke of Grafton - Earl of Bute - Augusta of Saxe-Gotha - Princess of Wales

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He had just despatched one of his political diatribes to the Middlesex Journal, when he sat down on Easter Eve, April 17 1770, and penned his "Last Will and Testament," a strange satirical compound of jest and earnest, in which he intimated his intention of putting an end to 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.

Related Topics:
Easter - April 17 - 1770 - 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 County Magazine, and speedily found access to the Freeholder's Magazine, another political miscellany supportive of John Wilkes and liberty. His contributions were accepted; but the editors paid little or nothing for them.

Related Topics:
Nom de plume - John Wilkes

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 Churchill, parody Macpherson's Ossian, or write in the manner of Pope, or with the polished grace of Thomas Gray and William Collins.

Related Topics:
William Beckford - Tobias Smollett - Churchill - Macpherson - Pope - Thomas Gray - William Collins

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He wrote political letters, eclogues, 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 only 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 County Magazine, and had it rejected.

Related Topics:
1770 - Shoreditch - Holborn

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Already failure and starvation stared Chatterton in the face. 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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He had wished, according to his foster-mother, to study medicine with Barrett; in his desperation he now reverted to this, and 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 there drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand. He was only seventeen years and nine months old; but the best of his numerous productions, in prose and verse, seem very mature.

Related Topics:
24 August - 1770 - Arsenic

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He pictures Lydgate, the monk of Bury St Edmunds, challenging Rowley to a trial at versemaking, and under cover of this fiction, produces his Songe of Allla, a piece of rare lyrical beauty, worthy of comparison with any antique or modern production of its class. 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 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.

Related Topics:
Lydgate - Bury St Edmunds - English literature

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~