The Rowley Poems | Page 7

wrote
between 11 and 2 o'clock Saturday in the utmost distress of mind.' Now
while one need not doubt that the distress was perfectly genuine, it is

tolerably certain that Chatterton intended his master to find what he had
written and draw his own conclusions as to the desirability of
dismissing his apprentice. The attorney (who is represented as timid,
irritable and narrow-minded)[9] did in fact find the document, was
thoroughly frightened, and gave the boy his release. He was now free to
starve or earn a living by his pen--so no doubt he represented the
alternative to his mother. He must go to London, where he would
certainly make his fortune. He had been supplying four or five London
journals of good standing with free contributions for some time past,
and had received it appears great encouragement from their editors. He
gained his point and started out for the great city.
His letters show that he called upon four editors the very day he arrived.
These were Edmunds of the Middlesex Journal; Fell of the Freeholders
Magazine_; Hamilton of the _Town and Country Magazine; and
Dodsley--the same to whom he had sent a portion of _Ælla_--of the
Annual Register. He had received, he wrote, 'great encouragement from
them all'; 'all approved of his design; he should soon be settled.' Fell
told him later that the great and notorious Wilkes 'affirmed that his
writings could not be the work of a youth and expressed a desire to
know the author.' This may or may not have been true, but it is certain
that Fell was not the only newspaper proprietor who was ready to
exchange a little cheap flattery for articles by Chatterton that would
never be paid for.[10]
We know very little about Chatterton's life in London--but that little
presents some extraordinarily vivid pictures. He lodged at first with an
aunt, Mrs. Ballance, in Shoreditch, where he refused to allow his room
to be swept, as he said 'poets hated brooms.' He objected to being called
Tommy, and asked his aunt 'If she had ever heard of a poet's being
called Tommy' (you see he was still a boy). 'But she assured him that
she knew nothing about poets and only wished he would not set up for
being a gentleman.' He had the appearance of being much older than he
was, (though one who knew him when he was at Colston's Hospital
described him as having light curly hair and a face round as an apple;
his eyes were grey and sparkled when he was interested or moved). He
was 'very much himself--an admirably expressive phrase. He had the

same fits of absentmindedness which characterized him as a child. 'He
would often look stedfastly in a person's face without speaking or
seeming to see the person for a quarter of an hour or more till it was
quite frightful.' We have accounts of his sitting up writing nearly the
whole of the night, and his cousin was almost afraid to share a room
with him 'for to be sure he was a spirit and never slept.'[11]
He wrote political letters in the style of Junius--generally signing them
Decimus or Probus--that kind of vague libellous ranting which will
always serve to voice the discontent of the inarticulate. He wrote
essays--moral, antiquarian, or burlesque; he furbished up his old satires
on the worthies of Bristol; he wrote songs and a comic opera, and was
miserably paid when he was paid at all. None of his work written in
these veins has any value as literature; but the skill with which this
mere lad not eighteen years old gauged the taste of the town and
imitated all branches of popular literature would probably have no
parallel in the history of journalism should such a history ever come to
be written.
His letters to his mother and sister were always gay and contained
glowing accounts of his progress; but in reality he must have been
miserably poor and ill-fed.
In July he changed his lodgings to the house of a Mrs. Angel, a sacque
maker in Brook Street, Holborn; the dead season of August was coming
on and probably he wanted to conceal his growing embarrassment from
his aunt, who might have sent word of it to his mother at Bristol.
His opera was accepted--it is a spirited and well written piece--and for
this he was paid five pounds, which enabled him to send a box of
presents to his mother and sister bought with money he had earned. He
had dreamed of this since he was eight. But his _Balade of
Charitie_--the most finished of all the Rowley poems--was refused by
the Town and Country Magazine about a month before the end; which
came on August 24th. He was starving and still too