CHAP. II. Living in phantasy. His cousin Associations St. Mary It is not to be doubted that the strange, stolid-looking child, whose marvellous powers even a mother's eye was slow to discern; and who, in his eighth year, took his unheeded place among the boys of Colston's Charity: was already living in phantasy, nurturing associations which thenceforth became a part of his being. Ælla, Lord of Bristowe Castel; Sir Simon Burton, the original founder of Redcliffe Church; Sir Charles Baldwyne, a famous Lancastrian knight; with the Canynges and their imaginary friends, became substantial realities to him: and soon the circle was enlarged by the addition of Thomas Rowley, the impersonation of his own ideal as the Bristowe poet of Canynge's time. The daughter of Richard Phillips, recalling the memory of her little cousin, Chatterton, as her schoolmate at the Pyle Street Free School, described him to Mr. George Cumberland as a cheerful child, having a face round as an apple, rosy dimpled cheeks, flaxen hair, and blue, or more correctly, bright grey eyes. He had a little pouch under his petticoat, in which to carry his fruit and cakes; and reappears to our imagination as a bright, attractive child. So far, indeed, as I can discern from all the evidence recoverable in reference to him, the terms moody, sullen, dogged, and the like, have been far too indiscriminately employed by his biographers. He was indeed prone from childhood to fits of abstraction; but his natural disposition appears to have been kindly and social; he loved a jest; and, as a good old lady, who had herself been the butt of his practical jokes, said of him, "He was a sad wag of a boy." 1 But an earnest seriousness appears to have marked Chatterton in all his associations with the ancient church of St. Mary Redcliffe. His cousin Phillips recalling him again, in his eleventh year, when he wore the quaint garb of the Bluecoat School, described him as habitually mounting the steps of the church, and repeating poetry to those whom he preferred among his playfellows.2 A 1 Gent. Mag. N.S. x. p. 603. 2 Mrs. Stephens, Dix, App. p. 304. CHAP. II. Picture of picture in her father's possession-the work, as she church warden. Mr. Joseph Thomas, churchwarden of St. Mary Red- The aesthetic cliffe in 1763, appears to have busied himself after the fashion of æsthetic churchwardens of the eighteenth century. The cemetery around the ancient church, crowded with the memorials of many generations. offended the eye of its new curator, and he resolved to restore it to a tasteful propriety. The grave-mounds were levelled; old familiar monuments disappeared; and, among other good works, it is apparently due to him that the ancient structure, described by William of Worcester, in 1480, as a most beautiful cross of curious workmanship, no longer graces the churchyard on Redcliffe Hill. 1. ancient city cross. It was not till 1789, more than a quarter of a century Doom of the after the memorable churchwardenship of Mr. Joseph Thomas, that Barrett's long-promised History of Bristol appeared. The historian merely states that an elegant cross, from which sermons used to be preached, formerly stood in the centre of Redcliffe churchyard, but it is now destroyed. But the history of another procedure in the year of the churchwarden's rule on Redcliffe Hill probably throws some light on his motive for its demolition. The ancient city cross, or Bristol High Cross as it was called, after various disasters, restorations, and changes of site, had found a suitable resting-place in the 1 Barrett's History and Antiquities of Bristol, 4to. p. 588. C CHAP. II. An irreverent age. St. Mary cross demolished. The parish Vandal pilloried. centre of the College Green. But "even here, in time," says the city historian, "the cross lost that reverence and regard that had been hitherto paid it throughout all ages; for in the year 1763 it was at length found out that this beautiful structure, by intersecting one of the walks, intercepted ladies and gentlemen from walking eight or ten abreast."1 So the Dean and Chapter, on whose ground it stood, gave their sanction to its demolition. The spirit of veneration developed in the boy is thus all the more remarkable in its contrast to every idea and teaching of the age in which he lived. The deed and its chief perpetrators are thus recalled at a later date, in his metrical Journal, written shortly before he left Bristol, where he celebrates "The lazy Dean, Who sold the ancient cross to Hoare The example was not lost on the churchwarden of St. "The night was cold, the wind was high, 1 Barrett's History and Antiquities of Bristol, 4to. p. 475. and finds himself face to face with the ghastly phantom of his own conscience, accusing him of selfish hypocrisy, and of making a gain of godliness. As the production of a boy only emerging from childhood, this slight jeu d'esprit is chiefly noticeable for the veneration for the monuments of antiquity in which it had its origin, revealing thereby sympathies as dissimilar to those natural to boyhood, as they were to the taste inculcated by that eighteenth century. In this respect it contrasts with Apostate Will," another juvenile satire, which embodies borrowed sentiments of worldly experience, and the current prejudices of his day. 66 What "golden prize" Churchwarden Joe dreamt of as the reward of his vandalism-unless the beautiful old cross was the reputed shrine of some sacred treasure,—is not now apparent. But tradition reports him as a brickmaker, to whom the ancient cemetery presented the lucrative aspect of a clay-field. When accordingly he proceeded to reduce the mouldering heaps of centuries to one uniform level, there appeared in Felix Farley's Journal for Jan. 7th, 1764, a letter, under the nom de plume of "Fulford the grave-digger," the earliest of Chatterton's literary disguises. Sir Baldwin Fulford, a zealous Lancastrian executed at Bristol in the reign of Edward IV. and the hero ere long of the "Bristowe Tragedie," no doubt suggested the name; but the ideal impersonation was his own grandfather, the last of the direct line of hereditary sextons. The old grave-digger protests that he has enjoyed his place so long, he has dug the graves of half the parish, and could tell to an inch where they lie; but, he says, "My head master, a great projector, has taken it into his head to level the CHAP. II. The golden prize. Fulford the grave digger. CHAP. II. Felix new corre spondent. St. Mary's churchyard, and by digging and throwing about his clay there, and defacing the stones, makes such a confusion among the dead, that no man living will be able to find where to lay them properly;" and, after stating that "even the poor love to bury with their kindred," he adds an ironical offer to rent the old spot, when the green turf is all removed; and, for decency's sake, to make a potato patch of it, which will prevent the naked appearance, besides helping him to a profitable job, as well as his master!11 Felix Farley's Journal, the weekly Bristol newspaper, appears to have placed little restriction on anonymous correspondence; and hence the boy was able to assume whatever guise his fancy suggested. At how early a date the idea was formed of figuring behind the mask of "Thomas Rowley, parish priest of St. John's in the city of Bristowe," and resuscitating the time when the bountiful Canynge ruled in Bristowe's civic chair, is now matter of conjecture. It was, no doubt, a work of gradual development. First there was the dreamy realization of that remote past when the church of Our Ladye was rising anew from its foundations on Redcliffe Hill; and the knights and dames, princely mayors, architects and priests, who slumber there in stone, were the living actors. besides these, there were actual records and parchments, engrossed by the hands of those very artists and builders of the fifteenth century: all already familiar to him almost from his cradle. The poetical romance which was to win for him an enduring place in English literature was already taking shape in his young mind; while he thus tasted the first pleasures of literary disguise. But Over the north porch of St. Mary Redcliffe-rebuilt on the site of an earlier structure, and traditionally affirmed to have been completed at the cost of William Canynge, merchant, and mayor of Bristol in the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., there is a chamber, designated in 1 This piece was first pointed out, and assigned to the author of the "Bristowe Tragedie," by Mr. W. Tyson, of Bristol. (Vide Dix, pp. 30, 326.) |