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CHAPTER XII.

CHAP. XII.

The young adventurer.

Arrival in
London.

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 a 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

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 Decimus London publishers knew that the great Decimus of his journal, and rival of Woodfall's Junius, was Mr. Thomas Journal. 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

Periodicals

CHAP. XII.

First London ramble.

Sources of informa

tion.

First host and hostess.

Uses of poet folks.

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, poets hated brooms. She told him she did not know 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

not come home all night, and had been, she heard, poet- CHAP. XIJ. ing a song about the streets :"- -a report which his relative, Mrs. Ballance, corrected; as she ascertained that he lodged that night at one of the aunts or cousins already referred to.1

Mrs. Walmsley had a nephew and niece, to whom reference has already been made. The former, a young man about twenty-four years of age, 2 shared his bed with the stranger, and was rather put out, as we have already seen, by some of the odd ways of this, the first poet he had ever encountered. Yet he also said that, "notwithstanding his pride and haughtiness, it was impossible to help liking him." The niece, a young woman nearly ten years his senior, somewhat resented the lad's saucy ways; and declared that, "for her part, she always took him more for a mad boy than anything else." Yet she also was impressed, in spite of herself, with the countenance and bearing of the youth, and said that, "but for his face, and her knowledge of his age, she should never have thought him a boy, he was so manly, and so much himself." His own relative, Mrs. Ballance, was, even more puzzled what to make of him than Miss Walmsley. From Chatterton's efforts, ere long, to obtain some interest in her behalf at the Trinity House, she appears to have been the widow of a seaman, originally, we may presume, from the port of Bristol. She knew her relative, Mrs. Chatterton, to have been left, like herself, in a very humble way; and no doubt, when written to, was ready to do what little was in her power for the widow's son. But, instead of the poor lad she had expected, she found a youth "proud as Lucifer. He very soon quarrelled with her for calling him 'Cousin Tommy,' and asked her

1 Croft, p. 215.

But

2 The relative ages of Chatterton and his companions is of importance in correctly estimating their statements regarding him. Professor Masson speaks of the nephew as a boy of fourteen. Sir H. Croft, writing in 1779, says: "Their nephew and niece; the latter about as old as Chatterton would be now, the former

three years younger.' The nephew, therefore, must have been about twenty-four, and the niece twenty-seven.

A London room-mate.

Manly selfpossession.

Proud as
Lucifer.

CHAP. XII.

Mrs. Ballance's advice.

Poor Cousin
Tommy.

Settling the

nation.

if she ever heard of a poet's being called Tommy? But she assured him that she knew nothing of poets, and only wished he would not set up for a gentleman. Upon her recommending him to get into some office, when he had been in town two or three weeks, he stormed about the room like a madman, and frightened her not a little by telling her that he hoped, with the blessing of God, very soon to be sent prisoner to the Tower : which would make his fortune." The two took their meals together; though not in the most social manner, for he would eat no meat, drank only water: and scared the poor woman, in the midst of her well-meant advices, by declaring “he should settle the nation before he had done! How could she think that her poor Cousin Tommy was so great a man as she now finds he was? His mother should have written word of his greatness; and then, to be sure, she would have humoured the gentleman accordingly."

Chatterton was busy in those days on letters to the Middlesex Journal, Freeholders' Magazine, &c., "settling the nation." The return, in the form of pride, and the flattering notoriety so acceptable to the literary neophyte, was ample. In actual money it must have been small indeed. Fell, a needy adventurer on the verge of bankruptcy, was only too happy to find a novice eager to contribute clever political essays on the chance of future pay. But literary work was no longer, as in Bristol, the pastime of leisure hours. Some more reliable patron must be found, if the profession of letters was to furnish "The Flight him with permanent bread-work. There is a piece in the

of Youth."

Annual Register for 1769, in imitation of an Ode of Casimir on "The Flight of Youth," which bears the initials T. C. and was possibly sent to Dodsley while the "Ella" MS. was under consideration. Its merits are small, nor do I find any distinct trace of Chatterton using his own initials; though the very nature of his correspondence about the mysterious "Ella" might tempt him to assume this signature for an inferior modern piece; and any

T. C. was the signature adopted by Thomas Cary, of Bristol. From his sixteenth year Chatterton most frequently signed D. B.

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