CHAP. XI. Literary work of the year. Liberal promises. Talks of going to London. humour and irony, he regarded it only as a desperate The volume of the Town and Country Magazine for 1769 shows that, to the very end of that year, his labours were purely literary. Rowley still reigned supreme; and he only turned to politics, and enlisted as a free lance in the bitter party strife of that period of excitement, when his successive efforts to find a patron or publisher for his antique poems had failed. But from the beginning of 1769 he had been in frequent correspondence with London booksellers and printers. His contributions, both in prose and verse, found ready acceptance: however meagre the pecuniary returns may have been; and, as Thistlethwaite tells Dean Milles: "The printers finding him of advantage to them in their publications, were by no means sparing of their praises and compliments; adding thereto the most liberal promises of assistance and employment, should he choose to make London the place of his residence." Here, then, was a splendid opening for the emancipated apprentice. Mrs. Chatterton and Mrs. Edkins listened in grief to him when he talked of going to London; but when they became urgent, he replied: "What am I to do? Would you have me stay here and starve ?" Then he reverted with high hope to the comforts in store for his mother and sister, when fortune should crown his endeavours. Thistlethwaite records an apocryphal story of his telling him that his first attempt was to be in literature; but failing that, he would turn Methodist preacher, devise a new sect, and trust to the credulity of mankind! But this was no more than some passing jest, to repel the importunities of an officious acquaintance, who, according to his own account, “anxious for his welfare, interrogated him as to the object of his views and expectations; and what mode of life he intended to pursue on his arrival at London." Views and expectations !—it would have been difficult indeed to reduce to sober prose the expectations that then flitted before the eager-hearted boy, just emancipated from a hated thraldom. London was before him, and he knew no fear. He only longed to reach that goal of his aspirations; to be "in among the throngs of men," and begin for himself the battle of life. So his friends and acquaintances made him up a purse. Burgum, the Catcotts, and other victims of his satirical licence, forgot their wrongs, we will hope, and contributed each his guinea. Barrett, who is our authority for the fact, no doubt spared a guinea for the boy to whom he owed the chief materials for his future volume, and all his chances for fame. resources. What the gift altogether amounted to, we can but guess. Pecuniary Dr. Maitland, with a case to make out against Chatterton, is very liberal in his interpretation of the amount :—a much larger sum than was expended on the road to London:- more money in pocket than he had ever had in his life.1 Professor Masson, taking a more probable estimate of Bristol liberality, under all the circumstances, conceives of Chatterton "elated with the prospect of invading London with a pecuniary force of five guineas."2 Elated undoubtedly he was, whatever his present resources may have been and so, provided with funds, more or less; with a light heart, and a bundle of manuscripts of rare worth, on which his fame—and, as he still fondly hoped, his fortune,—was to be founded; the boy bade farewell to mother and sister, to St. Mary Redcliffe, and all the cherished associations of the city of his birth, and set forth, at the age of seventeen, to play his brief part as a man of letters in the great metropolis. 1 Maitland, p. 35. 2 Masson's Essays, p. 232. Farewell to CHAPTER XII. CHAP. XII. The young adventurer. Arrival in First letter home. * LONDON. THE adventurous boy who entered London on the 25th of April, 1770, confident of winning a foremost place in the republic of letters, had not, so far as appears, ever before been further than a holiday's ramble beyond the bounds of his native city. His actual funds consisted of the surplus of the purse provided for him by his Bristol friends; his resources lay in his pen and fertile brain ; and on these, and the promises of the booksellers, rested hopes which for the time being flattered him with the assured realization of his brightest dreams. He reached London about five in the evening, made his way to Mr. Walmsley's, a plasterer in Shoreditch, where a relative, Mrs. Ballance, lodged; hunted up sundry aunts and cousins whom he found well, and ready to welcome him; and, what was still more practical, either that evening, or early next forenoon, waited on the most reliable of his literary connexions. This done, he sat down before his first day in London was over, and wrote his mother a graphic account of the journey. "Here I am," he writes, "safe and in high spirits :" and then follow incidents of the stage coach and its company; a snowy night on Marlborough Downs, and at bright morning which tempted him to mount the coachbox for the remainder of the day: all matters of liveliest interest to the poor mother. What follows more concerns us now. "Got into London about five o'clock in the evening; called upon Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Fell, Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Dodsley. Great encouragement from them; all approved of my design; shall soon be settled;" and then follows the proud message to Mr. Lambert already quoted, asking such a recommendation as he merited. CHAP. XII. Connexions with the press. London Decimus Chatterton's connexions with the London press were of some standing: but his contributions had hitherto, for the most part, been made, like the earlier ones to Felix Farley's Journal, with no thought of other reward than the pride of authorship. In March 1770, only a few weeks before leaving Bristol, he transmitted the first instalment of his "Kew Gardens" to the editor of the Middlesex Journal, with this note: "Mr. Edmunds will send the author, Thomas Chatterton, twenty of the journals in which the above poem-which I shall continue,--shall appear, by the machine, if he thinks proper to put it in. The money shall be paid to his orders." The first political letters were probably offered on similar terms; though payment for the author's copies would no doubt be declined by a judicious editor. The way was thus opened for the literary adventurer; but relations between him and the publishers had now to be established on a very different footing. Mr. Edmunds alone of London publishers knew that the great Decimus of his journal, and rival of Woodfall's Junius, was Mr. Thomas Chatterton of Bristol. The first sight of the youthful demagogue must have taken him somewhat aback, one would think. It did not, however, prevent the publication of further Decimus philippics, and other contributions from the same pen. Mr. Fell was editor and printer of the Freeholders' Magazine, another political miscellany of the day, strong for Wilkes and liberty; and therefore quite, in Chatterton's present line. As to Hamilton, of the Town and Country Magazine; and of the day. Dodsley, of the Annual Register: he had already, as we know, been in correspondence with them both; and, to the former at least, was known as one of his most industrious contributors. It is not unworthy of note that all four are named to his mother without word of explanation. His plans had evidently been talked over in and the Middlesex Journal. Periodicals CHAP. XII. First London ramble. Sources of informa tion. the little home circle, and he was only assuring her now that they were in a fair way of successful realization. Mr. Hamilton was to be found close by the haunt of Cave and Dr. Johnson, at St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell; while Mr. Dodsley's establishment lay far to the west of Temple Bar. We can thus follow the young stranger in his first eager exploration of the London of an hundred years ago from Shoreditch, through the crowded city, to St. Paul's, and Paternoster Row, in search of Mr. Fell; by Smithfield to Clerkenwell and old St. John's Gate; then to Mr. Edmunds, in Shoe Lane, Holborn; and so westward, past Charing Cross, to the great publisher's house in Pall Mall. The ramble was a long one, full of interest, in the freshness of its novelty, to the Bristol boy; and with "great encouragement," as yet, from all. Partly by means of the information derived from Chatterton's own letters, and still more through the persevering researches of Sir Herbert Croft, opportunely prosecuted within a few years after his death: we can realize with considerable minuteness the circumstances attendant on his settlement in London. His first host and hostess, Mr. and Mrs. Walmsley, were on the whole favourably impressed with the lad: notwithstanding certain habits incident to his literary labours, not likely to prove acceptable to any tidy housekeeper. Mr. Walmsley was struck with "something manly and pleasing about him ;" and added, that "he did not dislike the wenches." As for Mrs. Walmsley, “she never saw any harm of him, he never mislisted her," as she phrased it, "but was always very civil, whenever they met in the house by accident. He would never suffer the room in which he used to read and write to be swept; because, he said, Uses of poet poets hated brooms. She told him she did not know First host and hostess. folks. anything poet-folks were good for, but to sit in a dirty cap and gown, in a garret, and at last be starved :"-the traditions of Grub Street having by this time penetrated eastward to Shoreditch. She also stated that during the whole period Chatterton lodged with her he never, but once, stayed out after the family hours. Then "he did |