of Canynges – Thomas Rowley. (Barrett was writing a History of Bristol, and for him Chatterton conveniently produced descriptions of medieval painting and architecture, grotesque family trees, and gorgeous examples of local heraldic devices – all spurious.)
One of the finest of the early Rowley productions was this fragment which praised St Mary Redcliff and its great restorer William Canynges. It is of particular interest in that it performs a strange transmutation of the ‘Sly Dick’ poem; it is a vision and a supernatural command, but this time the opposite of Satanic. Moreover, in using the same short four-stress line and rhyming couplets, it yet manages to produce a simplicity quite literally worlds away from ‘Sly Dick’s’ satiric jingle. ‘Onn Oure Ladies Chyrche’ by Thomas Rowley–
As on a hille one eve sittinge,
At oure Ladies Chyrche muche wonderinge,
The cunninge handieworke so fine
Han well nighe dazzeled mine eyne.
Quod I: some cunninge fairy hande
Yreer’d this chapelle in this lande;
Full well I wot, so fine a sighte
Was n’ere yreer’d of mortal wighte.
Quod Truth: thou lackest knowledgynge;
Thou forsooth ne wotteth of the thinge.
A Rev’rend Fadre, William Canynge hight [called]
Yreered up this chapelle bright;
And eke another in the Towne
Where glassie bubblinge Trymme doth roun.
Quod I: ne doubt for all he’s given
His soule will certes goe to heaven.
Yea, quod Truth, then go thou home
And see thou do as he hath done.
Quod I: I doubte, that can ne be,
I have ne gotten markes three.
Quod Truth: as thou hast got, give almes-deeds so:
Canynges and Gaunts could do ne moe.
This and many other small pieces, together with the brilliant narrative ballad ‘The Death of Sir Charles Bawdin’, the two poetic tragedies ‘Godwyn’ and especially ‘Æella’ (of which the famous and beautiful Minstrel’s Song is a mere chorus), and numerous Epistles, Prologues and Songs, were all accepted blandly and beamingly by Catcott and Barrett who never dreamed of looking a gift-horse let alone a prodigy in the mouth; they calmly accepted everything as genuine curios and antiquities pouring forth in a gratuitous flood at their feet, as if young Chatterton were the keeper of some magic casket of inexhaustible delights. It never seemed to cross their minds that beauty is the most terrible and merciless of masters. Mrs Newton: ‘He was introduced to Mr Barrett and Mr Catcott; his ambitions increased daily. His spirits were rather uneven, sometimes so gloom’d, that for many days together he would say but very little, and that by constraint. When in spirits, he would enjoy his rising fame; confident of advancements, he would promise my mother and me should be partakers of his success … About this time he wrote several satirical poems, one in the papers, on Mr Catcott’s putting the pewter plates in St Nicholas towers. He began to be universally known among the young men. He had many cap acquaintances, but I am confident few intimates.’ ‘Many cap acquaintances’ is apt. The role of the satirical poetry was now becoming obvious; it kept him on balance in a situation fluctuating violently between tragedy and farce which only an English provincial city with its mixture of greed, pomposity and eloquent mediocrity could ever have provided.
When occasionally Chatterton was asked to exhibit his ‘originals’, he either prevaricated successfully or else forged with excruciating crudeness (forty-two scraps still survive in the British Museum) practically illegible parchments which he then aged with ochre, candle-flame, glue, varnish, or plain floor-dirt. Catcott and Barrett, the redoubtable double, stored them away without a murmur. At the same time they judiciously criticized his public forays into the local exchange of satirical verses. And had their noses, or rather their ears, nearly bitten off for it–
No more, dear Smith, the hackney’d Tale renew:
I own their censure, I approve it too. For how can Idiots, destitute of thought, Conceive, or estimate, but as they’re taught?
Say, can the satirising Pen of Shears,
Exalt his name, or mutilate his ears? None, but a Lawrence, can adorn his Lays, Who in a quart of Claret drinks his praise.
This poisonous piece, which continues for some hundred lines and is one among many, is gently accompanied by the following: ‘Mr Catcott will be pleased to observe that I admire many things in his learned Remarks. This poem is an innocent effort of poetical vengeance, as Mr Catcott has done me the honour to criticise my Trifles.’
At the same time, Chatterton was also writing this, for his own private satisfaction:
Since we can die but once, what matters it,
If rope or garter, poison, pistol, sword, Slow-wasting sickness or the sudden burst Of valve arterial in the noble parts Curtail the miseries of human life? Tho’ varied is the Cause, the Effect’s the same: All to one common Dissolution tends.
And yet, all the while, the tonsured figure of Thomas Rowley was walking through the streets of Bristol or brooding by the apprentice’s chair in the office of John Lambert. Through Rowley’s eyes the scorn and enmity of authority, and the imminent threat of death, were transmuted. They assumed a bold narrative line which gloried in the simplicity of the issues at stake, and, as in ‘The Death of Sir Charles Bawdin’, marched forward in that hypnotic pageantry of primal emotions which the medieval ballad traditionally invokes:
King Edward’s soule rush’d to his face,
He turned his hedde away, And to his broder Gloucester He thus did speke and say:
‘To him that so-much-dreaded Death
Ne ghastlie terrors bringe, Behold the manne! He spake the truth He’s greater thanne a Kinge!’
‘So let him die!’ Duke Richard sayde;
‘And may echone our foes
Bend down they’re neckes to bloudie axe
And feede the carrion crowes.’
And now the horses gentlie drewe
Sir Charles up the highe hille; The axe did glyster in the sunne, His precious bloode to spille.
It was Coleridge, the great admirer of Chatterton, who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner some twenty years later.
Chatterton tried other outlets. He sent a copy of an ‘original’ piece of a medieval painting catalogue to Horace Walpole in London. After an exchange of correspondence, Walpole somewhat callously rebuffed the young poet on the grounds that his material seemed suspect. Walpole, who had recently achieved a succès de scandale with his faked Castle of Otranto, should have known better. He suffered for it later. Chatterton had more success with the London publisher Dodsley of Pall Mall; and
