Have you ever been struck by a painting, I mean struck in the way that somehow it touches a chord deep within you? It has happened to me on several occasions and I shall write about just one today.
I first saw a print of the work when I was around seven years old. My mother was, for a time, employed as a cleaner at the home of a reasonably wealthy lady. Her name was Mrs. Walkinshaw, funny how I can remember that so clearly. Her home was a treaure trove of antique furniture, beautiful glass and china and smelled strongly of lavendar polish. It was the school holidays and my mother had asked Mrs. W. permission for me to go along with her. I do not think the old lady was best pleased but she agreed. She told me to sit quite still and not touch anything. I sat and gazed around the room and my eye came to rest on a print she had hanging on the wall. It fascinated me the minute I saw it. A young man lying sprawled across a bed, long hair flowing. I stared and stared, somehow imagining that this young man would suddenly open his eyes (there is nothing like the imagination of a child) I somehow willed him to open his eyes. I wanted him to wake up. I was drawn to that work of art somehow. I had seen paintings before but none had touched me like this one. For many days afterwards I thought of it.
Years were to pass before I saw the same painting again in another house and the person who owned this print told me the name of the boy in the picture. So, I went home and looked him up.
His name was Thomas Chatterton and, in brief, here is his story.
He earned the reputation of being both a forger and a genius. He was born in Bristol in 1752. As a boy he was moody and quiet, he was considered unteachable, of little intelligence and he did not thrive at school, he was expelled from one teaching establishment. However, he was a voracious reader and very early on he developed an interest in all things old, especially the Middle Ages. He would spend hours in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe studying the ancient tombs, running his handsover them and deciphering the inscriptions. Many hours were spent in his room alone writing poetry - he actually started writing poetry at around the age of seven. When he left school he was apprenticed to a lawyer and hated it. He had access, in the church, to the parish chest and the historical documents it contained. He studied these and came up with the idea of producing manuscript poems, lost poems which he said he had "discovered " written by a fifteenth-century monk called Thomas Rowley. Quite why he wanted to become famous this way is not known. He took the works to local antiquaries who were thrilled to the learn of the existence of this early Bristol poet, Rowley, of whom they had known nothing. The excitement went to Chatterton's head and he became more ambitious. He sent samples of his work, including some of his Rowley poems to Town and Country Magazine. He decided he needed a patron and so he contacted the emiment writer Horace Walpole whose gothic novel ,The Castle of Otranto, had also claimed to be a translation of a lost manuscript. Chatterton sent Walpole examples of his "Rowley" poems. At first Walpole heartily encouraged this young prodigy. However, he changed his position later and proclaimed the Rowley poems to be fakes, denouncing Chatteron as a forger and a cheat.
Chatterton moved to London hoping to further his career and find new patronage. At first he was happy mixing with writers and politicians. He wrote political pamphlets, poetry and even an opera. He continued to pen the Rowley poems. Fortune however, turned against him, his payments were little and commissions for work were falling off. He moved to an attic room in Holborn. He hardly ate or slept for months but sat desperately writing - stories, songs, plays, and the poems of Thomas Rowley. He was becoming ever more depressed. His former friends shunned him, he had written home telling how successful his life was in London and now he could not bear to admit the truth to his mother. His landlady tried to help him by asking him to share her meals but he refused. On the 24th August 1770, Thomas Chatterton tore all his manuscripts to shreds and swallowed arsenic. He left a note which stated "I leave my mother and sister to the protection of my friends if I have any....." He was just seventeen years old.
Some modern authorities claim that his death was accidental, that he was taking arsenic as a cure for veneral disease and by some mishap took an overdose. I do not agree. He had suffered from moodiness and depression since childhood. Why would he leave a note like that and why would he tear up all his work if he did not intend to take his own life?
It was only after his death that he came to be recognised as a genius. Yes, he had created a fictitious poet/ monk, but it was Chatterton himself that did all of the writing. This boy with so little education, one who had been thought to be of limited intelligence. It was realised then what a great talent he had possessed. He become an icon to poets such as Keats and Byron. William Wordsworth called the him "the marvellous boy". His work is still read and studied today.
Here is the picture that affected me so all those years ago
The death of Chatterton ~ Henry Wallis
It still touches me. I see a life cut short, I see a young man who felt he had nowhere else to go and yet, outside that open window, is the whole world. A world that waited for him, a world that could have been his. I see doomed youth, for all youth is doomed, youth does not last, the weight of time soon presses down and youth has flown forever. I see wasted talent, what might have been. Had he presented the Rowley poems as his own when he wrote them he probably would have received great acclaim and perhaps been hailed as one of England's greatest ever literary geniuses. It also reminds me that nobody should waste their talents. We all have talents, little or big. We are better at some things than at others. But we all have gifts , we can all contribute, we do all contribute. We must use our gifts and not squander them or think that we do not count for anything, because we do. Poor Thomas, if only he could have seen that. This picture still does and I think always will, touch my heart.
Is there a painting that stirs your emotions?
