Thomas Chatterton: an 18th century poet accused of forgery

 

One of the most recognisable paintings from the Pre-Raphaelite era is “The Death of Chatterton” by Henry Wallis, painted in 1856 and now part of the collection of London’s Tate Britain art gallery. It shows a young man lying dead in an attic room, having taken a dose of arsenic to end his life at the age of 17.

The legend of Thomas Chatterton, as a poet who claimed to be more than he was and who committed suicide when he feared being exposed as a fraud, owes much to Wallis’s painting, although the truth and the legend do not correspond closely.

Thomas Chatterton was born on 20^th November 1752 in Bristol. His father, who died three months before Thomas was born, had taught writing at Pile Street School.

Thomas was admitted to the same school at the age of five but was found to be “dull” and forced to leave. His main problem was that he refused to learn to read from the books presented to him at school, but was far more interested in the old documents that his father had collected and which were available at home. These included gothic “black letter” characters and illuminated capitals and were the source material from which he learned to read.

In 1760 (at the age of eight) he attended Colston’s school in Bristol, which only taught reading, writing, accounts and the church catechism. Young Thomas would much rather have had a grounding in the classical languages.

From the age of ten he joined two circulating libraries and hired books from them to read in his own time, with a particular preference for old books of poetry written in the black letter script with which he was already acquainted. He also read widely in local bookshops, his subjects of interest including heraldry and philosophy. It is reckoned that between the ages of eleven and twelve he read around seventy complete volumes.

On leaving Colston’s school in 1767 he was apprenticed to John Lambert, a solicitor, and contracted to work for twelve hours a day. However, there was rarely enough work to keep him occupied for more than two, which therefore left him plenty of time for reading, although he also suffered from bouts of depression.

Thomas Chatterton’s interest in old poetry, coupled with the medieval atmosphere engendered by the uniforms and general demeanour of Colston’s school, had much to do with his invention of “Thomas Rowley”, as did his discovery of more of his father’s collection of manuscripts and parchments.

According to Chatterton, Thomas Rowley was a monk who lived from about 1400 to 1470, a secular priest of St John’s, Bristol, the biographer of mayor William Canynge, a poet, antiquarian and more. However, although William Canynge was a real person, Thomas Rowley was not.

Thomas Chatterton proceeded to create the collected works of Thomas Rowley, these being poems and other writings, including a biography of William Canynge, transcribed on to vellum using ancient calligraphy and illuminated with heraldic sketches. All the items were original, but original to Chatterton, not the fictitious Thomas Rowley.

The first mock-medieval piece by Thomas Chatterton to appear in print (in 1768) was an apparently 13^th-century account of the opening of a bridge in Bristol. His technique included being inconsistent with the spelling, adding and subtracting words and letters, and using verb forms interchangeably. However, his syntax was noticeably 18^th-century.

Having claimed to have found a 13^th-century document, Chatterton felt obliged to produce it. He obtained pieces of vellum by trimming pieces from old documents that he found in the solicitor’s office where he worked, then “aged” them by various means.

The “bridge” narrative came to the attention of two local antiquarians, George Catcott and William Barrett, who made contact with Thomas Chatterton who in turn showed them a whole lot more of his work, notably the “Rowley” manuscripts. Although Barrett was suspicious about the provenance of the Rowley pieces, he encouraged Chatterton to “discover” as many as he could.

Chatterton tried to interest Horace Walpole in his Rowley poems. At first, Walpole was enthusiastic and offered to get the poems published, but he changed his mind after showing them to other writers who declared them to be forgeries. This was much to Chatterton’s annoyance.

He now began to spread his wings and to write material that did not always have Thomas Rowley’s name attached to it. By the beginning of 1770 he was writing mostly satires, mock epics and political letters.

He decided that he would only advance his literary career if he left Bristol for London, and he could only do this if he could be released from his apprenticeship to the solicitor Lambert. He engineered this by threatening to commit suicide and even writing a “will” in which he stated the date on which he intended to die. He was immediately dismissed, as he had always intended, although the so-called will was never intended to be taken seriously.

Once in London, Thomas Chatterton began writing at a furious rate to satisfy the demands of his new publishers. His work included poems, essays and journalism, although he had to delay producing any new “Rowley” pieces because he had had left his Rowley glossary in Bristol and had to wait until it was sent to him.

Although he boasted in his letters home of being somewhat more prosperous than he actually was, there is no indication that he ever fell on particularly hard times – there always seemed to be work on hand that would produce a reasonable income for him. He did quite well from writing political journalism for the radical side of the spectrum, although he suffered a setback when the political tide changed early in 1770 and the market for his work declined.

In his private life there is every indication that Thomas Chatterton did what might have been expected of a young man living on his own and having funds at his disposal, especially as his lodgings were on the top floor of what was effectively a brothel. There is a high possibility that he contracted a venereal disease and took medication to counter its effects.

His sudden death on 24^th August 1770 was almost certainly accidental, possibly as a result of mixing his medicine and recreational drugs. It was immediately believed that he had committed suicide, which is why he was declared to have been insane which prevented his body being open to public display before burial. As it was, he was only given a pauper’s funeral and quickly buried in Shoe Lane burial ground.

A myriad of myths soon sprang up, some of which proved more long-lasting than others. The literati and the chattering classes engaged in a fierce “Rowley debate” concerning Chatterton’s role as a forger, which produced the inevitable conclusion that he had killed himself out of shame for his long-running deception. Another strand of the myth saw Chatterton as the archetypal poet starving in a garret, and this aspect had much to do with his influence on the Romantics who included Coleridge, Wordsworth and Keats. Indeed Keats’s famous poem Endymion was dedicated to his memory.

The fact remains that Thomas Chatterton had everything to live for, was not starving, had no reason to fear “exposure”, and showed every indication of emerging as a major literary talent, not least for his non-Rowley work that was occupying far more of his attention during his latter months.

The painting by Henry Wallis was just part of the Chatterton myth, albeit probably the best known. One irony is that George Meredith, Wallis’s model, was to enjoy much greater literary success than Thomas Chatterton, although which of them was more deserving of it is a matter for debate.

© John Welford