Chatterton Read online

  Peter Ackroyd

  Chatterton

  First published in 1987

  For Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson

  Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was born in Bristol; he was educated at Colston’s School there and was for a few months apprenticed to a lawyer, but his education was less important than the promptings of his own genius. His father died three months before his son’s birth, and from an early age Chatterton had been fascinated by the ancient church of St Mary Redcliffe where his father had once worked as a chorister. He was seven years old when his mother gave him certain scraps of manuscript which had been found in the muniment room of that church, and at once his imagination was formed. He told her that she had ‘found a treasure, and he was so glad, nothing could be like it’; ‘he fell in love,’ his mother said, both with antiquity and with the past of Bristol itself. He began writing poems and then, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, he composed the ‘Rowley’ sequence: these were verses ostensibly written by a medieval monk, and for many years accepted as such, but they were the work of the young Chatterton who had managed to create an authentic medieval style from a unique conflation of his reading and his own invention.

  At last tired of Bristol, and lured by the prospect of literary success, Thomas Chatterton travelled to London at the age of seventeen. But his hopes of fame were to remain unfulfilled, at least within his own life-time; the booksellers were unenthusiastic or indolent, and the London journals declined to publish most of the elegies and verses he offered them. At first he stayed in Shoreditch with relations, but in May 1770 he moved to a small attic room in Brooke Street, Holborn. It was here on the morning of 24 August 1770, apparently worn down by his struggle against poverty and failure, that he swallowed arsenic. When the door of his room was broken open, small scraps of paper - covered with his writing - were found scattered across the floor. An inquest was held and a verdict of felo de se or suicide was announced; the next morning, he was interred in the burying ground of the Shoe Lane Workhouse. Only one contemporary portrait of him is known to exist, but the image of the ‘marvellous boy’ has been fixed for posterity in the painting, Chatterton, by Henry Wallis. This was completed in 1856, and has the young George Meredith as its model for the dead poet lying in his attic room in Brooke Street.

  ‘Come’, he said. ‘Let us take a walk into the meadow. I have got the cleverest thing for you that ever was. It is worth half a crown merely to have me read it to you.’

  He waved the little book at her, but his eager manner frightened the girl and she walked away from him quickly. Then, taking courage from the sight of a friend sitting on the church steps, she called out to him over her shoulder, ‘What a poor boy you are, to be sure. And Lord, Tom, how your shoes gape open!’

  ‘I am not so poor that I need pity from such as you!’ Chatterton ran out into the open fields, pushing his face against the wind that chilled him; then he stopped short, sat down on the cropped grass and, gazing at the tower of St Mary Redcliffe, muttered the words that had so powerfully swayed him: The time of my departure is approaching.

  Nigh is the hurricane that will scatter my leaves.

  Tomorrow, perhaps, the wanderer will appear – His eye will search for me round every spot, And will, - and will not find me.

  He looked at the church and, with a shout, raised his arms above his head.

  ‘Yes, I am a model poet,’ Meredith was saying. ‘I am pretending to be someone else.’

  Wallis put up his hand and stopped him. ‘Now the light is right, now it is falling across your face. Put your head back. So.’ He twisted his own head to show him the movement he needed. ‘No. You are still lying as if you were preparing for sleep. Allow yourself the luxury of death. Go on.’

  Meredith closed his eyes and flung his head against the pillow. ‘I can endure death. It is the representation of death I cannot bear.’

  ‘You will be immortalised.’

  ‘No doubt. But will it be Meredith or will it be Chatterton? I merely want to know.’

  Harriet Scrope rose from her chair, eager to deliver her news. ‘Cut is the bough,’ she said, ‘that might have grown full straight.’ And she doubled up, as if she were about to be sawn in half.

  ‘Branch.’ Sarah Tilt was very deliberate.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘It was a branch, dear, not a bough. If you were quoting.’

  Harriet stood upright. ‘Don’t you think I know?’ She paused before starting up again. ‘We poets in our youth begin in gladness. But thereof in the end come despondency and madness.’ She stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth and rolled her eyes. Then she sat down again. ‘Of course I know it’s a quotation. I’ve given my life to English literature.’

  Sarah was still very cool. ‘It’s a pity, then, that you didn’t get anything in return.’ And they both laughed.

  Charles Wychwood sat with his head bowed. He watched the leaves falling to the ground; they were rustling together and he heard, also, the sound of hammers, of drilling, of workmen calling to each other inside the new building. Then the pain returned and it was only later that he noticed how the leaves had been swept away, the noises stopped. There was a young man standing beside him, gazing at him intently: he put his hand upon Charles’s arm as if he were restraining him. ‘And so you are sick,’ one said. And the other replied, ‘I know that I am’. Charles looked down again in despair and, when he glanced up, the figure of Thomas Chatterton had disappeared.

  Part One

  Look in his glommed face, his sprighte there scanne; Howe woe-be-gone, how withered, forwynd, deade!

  (An Excelent Balade of Charitie. Thomas Chatterton.)

  So have I seen a Flower ynn Sommer Tyme

  Trodde down and broke and widder ynn ytts pryme.

  (The Story of William Canynge. Thomas Chatterton.)

  1

  AS SOON as he turned the corner, he looked for the House above the Arch. And, when he entered Dodd’s Gardens, it seemed that the sun was waiting for him at the end of the long, narrow street. ‘There are no souls, only faces,’ he said as he looked up at the houses which now enclosed him: the pilasters copied from eighteenth century facades and reproduced in miniature; the small iron balconies, some of them newly painted and others stippled with rust; the pediments so broken or decayed that they were scarcely recognisable above the doors and windows; the curiously moulded fanlights discoloured with age, so that no light could now pass through them; the elaborate stucco work, none of it now without blemish or injury; the wood rotten, and the stone fractured or defaced. This was Dodd’s Gardens, London W14 8QT.

  But to Charles all these houses seemed alike, all very agreeable family residences. He put his hands deep into the pockets of his khaki greatcoat and whistled, pausing only to stroke a large black dog which was about to lope past him. ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ he said, ‘to be running in the countryside together?’ He bent down in order to talk more confidentially. ‘Like Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Like the Indian Boy and Lassie. Like the blind man and Old Dog Tray. The country isn’t very far, you know. We could always reach it if we want to. Anyone can.’ And with this final message of comfort he walked away; the dog lay down in the filth, and watched Charles as he continued with his jaunty step along the street. Then it saw him stop, take a step back, scratch his head, and disappear.

  At first Charles thought that a hole had been blown in the side of Dodd’s Gardens; it was only when he stepped back off the pavement that he saw the curve of the arch, and then the house above it. The entire structure was made of stone, so that it seemed much older than the brick houses beside it, and when Charles walked beneath the arch the air became colder. A black silhouette of a face had been daubed against one of the interior walls and, above his head, there were
elaborate signs and graffiti sprayed upon the wooden roof and the rusted iron bands which secured it. Beyond the arch was a small courtyard and, as Charles entered it, he noticed a small sign beside a blue door: ‘Leno Antiques. Don’t Linger. Make Us Very Happy. Walk Up, Do.’ This amused him. He took the two books, which he had been carrying under his arm, and put them upon his head; then he tiptoed across the courtyard, balancing them precariously until they fell, and he caught them.

  There were two flights of stone stairs, smelling strongly of disinfectant, and as he climbed them he could hear angry voices just above him. He could not make out the words but he could distinguish a woman’s high furious shouts and, rising against them, the bellows of a man who seemed to be close to hysteria. Charles reached the first landing, where a door was marked with the sign, ‘Yes, You Are Here. Leno’s.’ He knocked, hesitantly, and there was an immediate silence. He knocked again, and a grave voice from within murmured ‘Come’. He opened the door and, peering around it, saw a man busily engaged in dusting the beak of a stuffed eagle. ‘I’m looking -‘

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I’m looking for Mr Leno.’

  ‘He speaks.’ The man still had his back to him, and had now moved down to the claws of the dead bird.

  ‘Hi, I’m Wychwood.’ This was Charles’s customary greeting.

  Mr Leno sounded puzzled. ‘Which…?’

  ‘Wood. I telephoned this morning. About the books.’

  ‘This is probably true.’ Mr Leno turned suddenly to face him and Charles, with some alarm, noticed a bright purple birthmark splayed across his right cheek; it had given him a momentarily savage appearance. ‘My darling,’ he called into the air. ‘My darling, there is a man on the premises.’ And Charles realised that the high voice he had heard from the stairs was actually that of Mr Leno himself. ‘Mr Witch, be pleased to…’ He waved his hand but did not complete the sentence, and in the sudden silence Charles glanced around the room with a benevolent, almost proprietorial, interest. From the ceiling to the floor it was filled with ornaments, prints, stuffed animals and miscellaneous bric-ŕ-brac: spoons apparently flung into a cracked fruit dish from a great distance, a row of ivory paperweights placed on some faded sheet music, a heap of large dolls with their various limbs tangled together as if they had been shot and thrown into a mass grave, brightly coloured chess men ranged alongside plaster busts, and on several dusty shelves Charles could see playing cards, books, clay bowls and three small lace umbrellas placed end to end. There were dishes filled with buttons and toothpicks, wooden drawers half-open and bulging with old magazines, and two brass racks in which a number of prints had been filed away. A paraffin stove was burning in one corner of the room (dangerously close to a wooden rocking horse) and for the first time Charles noticed that, in spite of the intense heat emanating from the stove, Mr Leno was wearing a dark three-piece suit. ‘Mrs Leno,’ he called out again, ‘the man is still with us. Come and be mother.’

  A metal ramp connected this room to one slightly above it - the difference in height testifying to the great age of the house, which appeared to have tilted or sunk at one end - and now there hurtled down it, as if propelled by a mighty hand, a wheelchair which stopped very suddenly beside a headless torso made of pink plaster. Mrs Leno paid no attention to Charles but leaned forward in her chair and snarled noiselessly at her husband. She was dressed in heavy black, also, but her sombre appearance was modified by the small violet hat which perched precariously on her apparently lustrous brown hair. ‘Mr Witch -‘

  ‘Wood.’

  ‘Mr Wood has brought books for you, my darling.’

  It was only now that she looked up at Charles, almost coyly, and with a sudden movement she stretched out to snatch the two volumes which he held towards her. They were entitled The Lost Art of Eighteenth Century Flute-Playing by James Macpherson. She made a small noise in the back of her throat; to Charles it sounded like a joyful hiccup. ‘It is the flute, Mr Leno, the divine afflatus.’

  ‘Put it to your lips, my darling. Your metaphorical lips, that is.’

  She looked up at Charles, who had been smiling through this brief exchange. ‘Are you of a wandering nature? With your bird nest hair and your peach-fuzz moustache, are you a banditto of a minstrel kind? Where is your lovely instrument?’

  Charles, not at all surprised by her questions, at once became confidential; he might have known these people all his life. ‘I could have been a flautist…’In fact he had bought these books from a market barrow in Cambridge some years before; it had been an impulse only, but at that moment he had decided that he was destined to become a flautist. So he had read the first few pages attentively but then he had put the books aside and rarely, if ever, looked at them again. The Lost Art of Eighteenth Century Flute-Playing became part of the life which Charles carried about with him from place to place, a permanent reminder that he might still become a great flautist if he ever wished to do so. ‘There are no rules,’ he used to say. ‘Everything is possible.’

  But he had woken up that morning in a state of desperation, as if he had spent the night struggling with an enemy that could not be overcome, and for the first time in many months he recognised how poor he was and how much poorer he was likely to become. Idly, to quieten these thoughts, he had taken up the two volumes by James Macpherson; and almost at once it occurred to him that he might sell them for a large sum. His depression lifted: he was so impressed by his acumen in business matters that he forgot his poverty and contemplated a new career as a bookseller. ‘I could have been a flautist,’ he was saying, ‘but actually I’m a writer.’ He looked straight at her as he said this.

  ‘I knew it, Mr Leno!’ Her husband sucked in his cheeks, somehow enlarging the area of his birthmark, and said nothing. ‘Are you in the realm of fiction? Or merely the imagination?’

  ‘I’m working on some poems at the moment.’

  ‘Ah, poetry. Bags of fluff!’ All the while she was bent over in her wheelchair, scrutinising the books. ‘My middle name is poetry. Sibyl Poetry Leno.’

  Her husband had returned to the stuffed eagle, and now spoke to her over his shoulder. ‘Has Mrs Leno come to any conclusion?’

  She emitted a little squeal and pointed to an engraving of an antique flute. ‘Look, dearest, look at those golden stops!’ But she closed the book before he had any chance to take her advice. ‘I can offer fifteen.’

  Charles was incredulous. ‘Do you mean pounds?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean pounds. I meant iron age monuments.’

  Charles took his hands from his pockets, and started twirling a strand of his hair with two fingers. Mrs Leno was once more bowed in meditation, so he addressed her husband. ‘Can you go a little higher?’

  Mr Leno was polishing the claws with great ferocity, and asked the dead bird. ‘Can she go a little higher?’

  ‘She could go higher.’ Mrs Leno’s trance had been broken. ‘She could go as high as the Post Office Tower if she had her legs. But not everything is possible. This is not a perfect world.’

  Charles was so surprised by the smallness of the offered sum that he lost interest in the subject, and began to wander around the shop with as nonchalant an air as any unseen or unannounced visitor. In any case, he was no longer sure if the Lenos’ conversation was directed towards him or merely towards each other. ‘Poetry and poverty.’ Mrs Leno was declaiming. ‘Poetry and poverty.’

  ‘Go on, my darling.’

  ‘What an attic room and a funeral urn they are!’

  ‘She is not to be stopped today,’ Mr Leno said, in a tone that managed to combine delight and resentment. ‘I see that now.’

  Charles believed that this remark, at least, had been addressed to him: he had been examining a pack of Edwardian Tarot cards and, when he turned around, they were indeed both glaring in his direction. ‘I would like more, you know. Those are valuable books.’

  ‘He would like more, Mrs Leno.’

  ‘Would he? I would like to run barefoot
on Brighton Rock, but what does that signify?’

  ‘With feathers in her hair.’ Mr Leno sighed.

  Charles was suddenly disgusted by the smell of the paraffin stove, and turned back to the Tarot pack. It was then that he saw the picture. He had the faintest and briefest sensation of being looked at, so he turned his head to one side - and caught the eyes of a middle-aged man who was watching him. For a moment he stood gazing back in astonishment. Then with an effort he walked over and picked up the painting. The canvas had been clumsily tacked upon a light wooden frame, and he held it out at arm’s length in order properly to survey it. It was a portrait of a seated figure: there was a certain negligent ease in the man’s posture, but then Charles noticed how lightly his left hand gripped some pages of manuscript placed upon his lap, and how indecisively his right hand seemed to hover above a small table where four quarto volumes were piled on top of each other. Perhaps he was about to put out the candle, flickering beside the books and throwing an uncertain light across the right side of his face. He was wearing a dark blue jacket or top-coat and an open-necked white shirt, the large collar of which billowed out over the jacket itself: a costume which might have seemed too Byronic, too young, for a man who had clearly entered middle age. His short white hair was parted to display a high forehead, he had a peculiar snub nose and a large mouth; but Charles particularly noticed the eyes. They seemed to be of different colours, and they gave this unknown man (for there was no legend on the canvas) an expression of sardonic and even unsettling power. And there was something familiar about his face.

  Mrs Leno was suddenly beside him. ‘We take Access, Visa, American Express -‘

  ‘And Co-op Gold Card, my darling.’

  ‘And Diners Card. Never forget that.’ She tapped Charles on the leg. ‘Plastic dulls the pain, I am told. But you know that already. You are a poet.’