Thomas Chatterton’s Romantic cult is somewhat of a commonplace. A common place, of course, is essential for any cult, and in Chatterton’s case, that geographic location is St. Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol, alongside with the garret in Brook Street, Lon-don, where he died of arsenic poisoning on August .1 For our consideration, however, the former place is more relevant since this is where the stories of Chatterton, his alter ego Thomas Rowley, and a th-century Bristol mayor, William Canynges converge. It is this complex of real and fictitious individuals that I will here inspect from the perspective of literary cult and mythography.
William Canynges (also spelt Canynge; c. – ) was one of entire England’s wealthiest merchants in the th century, who held the position of mayor five times and also served as Member of Parliament for Bristol on several occasions. In addi-tion to his internaaddi-tional trade exploits, he was also a generous patron of culture and religion—most importantly, he funded the reconstruction of St. Mary Redcliffe church2 after major damages caused by natural forces in the first half of the s.
For this purpose he employed at least a hundred workmen, which “tends to prove what part the last William Canynges had in building or rebuilding Redcliff church to
1. Nick Groom has argued convincingly that this was accidental overdose rather than a conscious act of premeditated suicide (“The Death of Chatterton,” in From Gothic to Romantic: Thomas Chat-terton’s Bristol, ed. Alistair Heys [Bristol: Redcliffe, ], – ). Still, his “premature death […]
was to seal his image as the archetypal neglected genius of Romantic poetry, more famous for com-mitting suicide than for anything he wrote” (“Literary Sleuthing Sheds New Light on Mystery of Poet’s Death,” Press Release, University of Bristol, August <http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/
/ .html>, accessed on September ). In fact, even the most often quoted non-Rowleyan text attributed to Chatterton, a sharp accusation against Horace Walpole, has been shown to be a th-century forgery, presumably by John Dix. Cf. Nick Groom, “The Case against Chatter-ton’s ‘Lines to Walpole’ and ‘Last Verses’,” Notes and Queries . (September ): – and Boldizsár Fejérvári, “Chatterton’s Middle Ages: The Power Economics of the Chatterton vs. Wal-pole Affair,” in Heroes and Saints: Studies in Honour of Katalin Halácsy, ed. Zsuzsanna Simonkay and Andrea Nagy (Budapest: Mondat, ), – , p. .
2. Famously, it was at this same place of worship that Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey married Sara and Edith Fricker, respectively, in . On Coleridge’s “Monody on the Death of Chatterton” and its significance for the Chatterton cult, see Paul Magnuson, “Cole-ridge’s Discursive ‘Monody on the Death of Chatterton’,” Romanticism on the Net (February
), https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ron/ -n -ron / ar/ (accessed on October ).
entitle him to the name of a founder, as he has been generally and deservedly es-teemed.”3 After the death of his wife Joan, Canynges took the Holy Orders of the Ro-man Catholic Church in —he celebrated his first mass at St. Mary Redcliffe. Al-though he subsequently moved to the Westbury suburb of Bristol, he was buried at St.
Mary Redcliffe, where his canopied tomb is situated today. Thomas Chatterton, whose great uncle John had been a sexton at this church, could enter St. Mary Redcliffe at pleasure and “would sit for hours, reading by Canynges’ tomb and often climbed ‘the towers of the church,’ where he would read.”4
Thomas Rowley is a more ambiguous character in the Chatterton story. Chatterton took his name from actual history, but the Thomas Rowley that he envisioned had nothing to do with his real-life namesake.5 From this early moment, Chatterton had in mind a cunning scheme “to graft on to William Canynges […] a friend or dependant who should sing his praises and those of the church.”6 In Chatterton’s imagination, Rowley became an erudite priest, who composed original poetry as well as translated earlier pieces of history and literature, such as some fictitious Latin works by John Tur-got, a real th-century abbot.7
It is thus clear how Canynges’ and Rowley’s name are tied together in Chatterton’s mythography. His own name is added to the catalogue more indirectly, in the common space of St. Mary Redcliffe. And the link is not exactly overstressed, either. As Nick Groom explains: “Inside the church, there is only a recently inscribed and very bland tablet: ‘ / of this parish / – / Poet.’ It is placed near the tomb of William Canynges, mayor of Bristol and patron of Chatterton’s fictitious
me-3. William Barrett, The History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol (Bristol: William Pine, ), p. . Barrett also cites William Botoner, who recorded that here “habuit operarios, carpentarios, masones &c. omni Dei C. homines.” Barrett, of course, is what we can best describe as a largely unreliable narrator. It will be remembered that he was closely associated with the adolescent Chatterton, whose talent he exploited unscrupulously. His notorious chronicle, pub-lished almost two decades after Chatterton’s death, and one after the authenticity of the Rowley texts had been seriously challenged by Thomas Tyrwhytt, Thomas Warton, and others, quoted
“Rowley” extensively and based much of its factual claims on this spurious source uncritically.
Still, in sections where Barrett relied on other background literature, we have no reason to assume that his facts are erroneous.
4. E. H. W. Meyerstein, A Life of Thomas Chatterton (New York: Russell, ), p. n. This, perhaps, can be deemed the first sign of Chatterton’s private cult of Canynges.
5. Cf. Nick Groom, The Forger’s Shadow: How Forgery Changed the Course of Literature (Ba-singstoke: Picador, ): “He took the name ‘Rowley’ (originally he deliberately misspelt it
‘Ronlie’) from a brass of Thomas Rouley, bailiff – and sheriff – (when William Canynge was mayor) in St. John-in-the-Wall” (p. n).
6. Meyerstein, p. .
7. Cf. George Washington Sprott, “Turgot,” Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sidney Lee (London: Smith, Elder & Co., ), Vol. , – .
dieval poet, Thomas Rowley.”8 Of a Chatterton cult in Bristol, then, it would probably be an exaggeration to speak.
At this point, we do well to heed Péter Dávidházi’s mission statement and define what kind of cult we would expect, on the one hand, and what we may mean by a
“blueprint” on Chatterton’s part, on the other:
Let us explore the genesis of a literary cult, let us trace the history of its de-velopment, let us observe its peculiar order of rites, let us analyse its linguistic characteristics, let us attempt to glimpse into its psychology, establishment, and societal impacts, so as ultimately to be able to draw up some general connections between cult and culture.9
With this methodology, one may address the three main areas of cultic practices: atti-tude, custom, and linguistic mode.10 Below, I will first briefly summarize these aspects pertaining to Chatterton’s cult, followed by some examples for Rowley’s implied cult of his patron Canynges.
It is from the first perspective, attitude, that Chatterton’s cult raises the most serious doubts, questioning whether there really is such a thing in the first place. Due to his assumed “suicide by reason of insanity,”11 as well as the criminal offence of forgery, whatever the merit of his poetry written in a language that to some contemporary and later purists never even existed, he was generally condemned. Even his Romantic admir-ers were hard pressed to find excuses for his conduct, blaming in turns the backward-ness of his provincial Bristol, the arrogant dilettantism of Horace Walpole, or social injustice at large. Perhaps Robert Browning came closest to a disinterested appraisal of his life and output, in the rhetorically polished special pleading of his Essay on Chatter-ton, which Browning does not seem to have acknowledged in his lifetime, and which would not be published until the mid- th century.12
The greatest stumbling-block in this Romantic attitude to Chatterton is the fact that it turns on the notion of Chatterton’s Romantic suicide. If that idea is refuted, or called into doubt, many other assumptions need also to be reconsidered or even revoked. All is not lost, of course, since Chatterton’s myth has already developed into a self-feeding
automa-8. Groom, The Forger’s Shadow, p. .
9. Péter Dávidházi, “Isten másodszülöttje”: A magyar Shakespeare-kultusz természetrajza (Buda-pest: Gondolat, ), p. (my translation).
10. Dávidházi, p. . In the use of cult-specific language, hyperbole is the dominant trope. It is, however, hardly a hyperbolic exaggeration to refer to Dávidházi’s ground-breaking work in such terms as Géza Fodor used in his review of “Isten másodszülöttje,” calling it “the first-born of an aspect of literary research” (cf. Fodor, “Egy irodalomkutatási szempont elsőszülöttje,”
Irodalomtörténeti Közlemények . [ ], – ).
11. Linda Kelly, The Marvellous Boy: The Life and Myth of Thomas Chatterton (London: Faber
& Faber, [ ]), p. .
12. Donald Smalley (ed.), Browning’s Essay on Chatterton (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, ).
tism, including the ironic fact that one of Chatterton’s most famous poems was not even written by him:13 “the ceaseless promotion of this myth makes the Romantic conception of the poet as a self-destructive genius a potentially fictitious construct, which nevertheless enforces an ideology of self-conscious extremity that has since helped to mould literary history.”14 Never mind that the “self-destructive genius” idea is diagonally opposed to what Chatterton himself thought about poets in general—he is reputed to have “boasted to his sister that poets don’t commit suicide: they were too tough.”15
The scarcity of formal customs or rituals follows from the ambiguous standing of the historical Thomas Chatterton as well as the mythical one. If there was early interest in his life and output soon after his death, it had a more or less commercial character. His manuscripts and personal belongings were traded and when the stocks ran out, further supplies were occasionally forged by others. Such items of merchandise as “Chatterton handkerchiefs” were printed and sold in large quantities.16 And although a Chatterton Society was finally established in , it is conspicuously belated; nor is the activity of the Society too vigorous for the time being.17
Where his cult can best be traced is in the realm of language use, with special regard to poetic works. The first such came months after his death, in the elegy of his Bristol friend Thomas Cary, who praised him as the “wonder of our drooping isle”18—surely qualifying as hyperbolic language. The reactions of the Romantic poets (notably Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Shelley, and Keats, as well as the French playwright Alfred de Vigny) are comprehensively covered in Linda Kelly’s monograph, along with William Henry Ireland’s Chatterton-inspired Shakespeare forgeries.19
All in all, Chatterton’s myth, in which his assumed life, pride, destitution, and Romantic suicide outshine the actual poetry and everyday fact, meet the criteria of cultic language use, “marked by a preference for such glorifying statements that can be neither verified nor falsified because they are not amenable to any kind of empiri-cal testing whatsoever.”20 From this point of view, the historical facts of Chatterton’s
13. See the reference to “Lines to Walpole” in footnote above.
14. Groom, “The Death of Chatterton,” p. .
15. Neil Bell’s novel Cover His Face cited in Groom, “The Death of Chatterton,” p. . 16. Cf. Kelly, p. .
17. Incidentally, Nick Groom is identified as the founder of the Society in Jürgen Heizmann, Chatterton oder Die Fälschung der Welt (Heidelberg: Mattes, ), p. , a piece of information one has to mine deep for on the Society’s homepage (https://www.thomaschattertonsociety.com/
press-releases, accessed on October ). One welcome achievement of the Society is the fact that—in the absence of a grave—Chatterton’s House has recently been renovated and may hence-forth serve as a place of commemoration.
18. Cited in Kelly, p. .
19. Kelly, pp. – and pp. – , respectively.
20. Péter Dávidházi, “Cult and Criticism: Ritual in the European Reception of Shakespeare,”
in Literature and Its Cults, eds. Péter Dávidházi & Judit Karafiáth (Budapest: Argumentum,
death are not merely of secondary importance, but quite irrelevant for the Chatterton cult built on his myth.
Needless to say, historical fact is even more immaterial for Rowley’s praise of William Canynges and, indirectly, for Chatterton’s private cult. From a psychological perspec-tive, Louise J. Kaplan argues that the entire imposture is motivated by the single aim of establishing the fantasy of a family romance, which Thomas Chatterton, whose father had died months before the infant was born, could not actually enjoy. Kaplan goes as far as to call William Canynge “Chatterton’s Fifteenth-Century Father”21—an appella-tion thought-provoking but difficult to sustain, and one that yields little added value to our knowledge of the facts. In such narratives, Chatterton is invariably pictured as the poor working-class poet who lives in destitution and seeks a wealthy patron ideally modelled on his imaginary Canynges. While this scenario may even contain much truth, especially in terms of Chatterton’s communication with Horace Walpole, for our dis-cussion here it is irrelevant.
Let us turn, then, to Rowley’s attitude to Canynge. It reflects loyalty bordering on veneration, just as one would expect of a poet’s tribute to his generous patron. More-over, Chatterton has Rowley and Canynges engage repeatedly in various literary ven-tures: to the beginning of Ælla, for instance, Rowley appended two verse passages ad-dressed to Canynges; while to the tragic fragment Goddwyn, “Maistre William Canynge” delivered a “Prologue.” Chatterton might not have known or intended this, but in composing the “Letter to the Dygne Mastre Canynge,” he had his Rowley im-port the ottava rima stanza to England half a century before literary histories date its arrival:
Cannynge and I from common course dyssente;
Wee ryde the stede, botte yev to hym the reene;
Ne wylle betweene crased molterynge bookes be pente, Botte soare on hyghe, and yn the sonne-bemes sheene;
And where wee kenn somme ishad floures besprente, We take ytte, and from oulde rouste doe ytte clene;
Wee wylle ne cheynedd to one pasture bee, Botte sometymes soare ’bove trouthe of hystorie.
), – , p. . In “Isten másodszülöttje,” Dávidházi elaborates further on this principle, adding that cultic utterances aim to “suggest the psychological authenticity of a shared or thus intended conviction through a claim that seemingly describes a fact but is actually thoroughly metaphorical” (p. [my translation]).
21. Louise J. Kaplan, The Family Romance of the Impostor-Poet Thomas Chatterton (Berkeley &
Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), p. . Kaplan is one of those authors whom Groom names as having “rejected (or perhaps just overlooked)” the accumulated evidence regard-ing Chatterton’s death, among other mythical components of his biography (“The Death of Chatterton,” p. & n ).
Saie, Canynge, whatt was vearse yn daies of yore?
Fyne thoughtes, and couplettes fetyvelie bewryen, Notte syke as doe annoie thys age so sore, A keppened poyntelle restynge at eche lyne.
Vearse maie be goode, botte poesie wantes more, An onlist lecturn, and a songe adygne;
Accordynge to the rule I have thys wroughte, Gyff ytt please Canynge, I care notte a groate.
The thynge yttself moste bee yttes owne defense;
Som metre maie notte please a womannes ear.
Canynge lookes notte for poesie, botte sense;
And dygne, and wordie thoughtes, ys all hys care.
Canynge, adieu! I do you greete from hence;
Full soone I hope to taste of your good cheere;
Goode Byshoppe Carpynter dyd byd mee saie, Hee wysche you healthe and selinesse for aie.22
What we learn hence is that Rowley, as much as he appreciates Canynges’ cultural pat-ronage, is doubtful whether his master is capable of savouring the poesy in his dramatic work, Ælla, or he will focus solely on the historical subject matter in the tragedy. Chatter-ton, at the same time, is very conscious of the literary merits of Rowley’s play; in com-mending the text to the publisher Dodsley, he cannot be accused of false modesty: “It is a perfect Tragedy, the Plot, clear, the Language, spirited, and the Songs interspersd in it, are flowing, poetical and Elegantly Simple. The Similes judiciously applied and tho’ wrote in the reign of Henry th., not inferior to many of the present Age.”23 Of course, we should expect no less than that from a poet whom John Lydgate, the famous author of Fall of Princes (an imitation of Boccaccio), had praised in these words: “Now Rowlie ynne these mokie Daies / Sendes owte hys shynynge Lyghte / And Turgotus and Chaucer live / Inne evry thynge hee wrytes,”24 and whose Ælla even served as one of Shakespeare’s sources.25
22. All Chatterton quotations are from this edition: Donald S. Taylor & Benjamin B. Hoover (ed.), The Complete Works of Thomas Chatterton: A Bicentenary Edition, volumes (Oxford: Clar-endon, ).
23. Taylor & Hoover, Vol. , p. .
24. “John Ladgates Answer,” Taylor & Hoover, Vol. , p. . For more information on Row-ley and Lydgate’s “All-a-boone”—poetic “boutynge matche”—see Fejérvári, “The Sources of Rowley’s Language: Semi-Fictitious Vocabulary,” snippets to mark Ádám Nádasdy’s th birth-day, ed. Péter Szigetvári (Budapest: ELTE, ) (http://seas .elte.hu/nadasdy /fejervari .html, accessed on October ).
25. Cf. Nick Groom’s affirmative claim in Fejérvári, “From Fake Lit to the Value of Real Nightingales: An Interview with Nick Groom,” The AnaChronisT ( / ): – , p. . This is just about as far as alternative (literary) histories may take us in mythography and cult.
By making such bold statements, both in his own behalf and under his aliases, Chat-terton constructs his own myth around his heroes and himself. Lydgate praises Rowley, Rowley eulogises on Canynges, and Chatterton exalts all three of them, in the shelter of St. Mary Redcliffe. With Rowley’s attitude confirmed as one of occasionally critical reverence for William Canynge, the benefactor of Bristol and of Rowley himself, and his language use demonstrating such erudition as was not expected of the th century, it may be concluded that the germs of a Canynge cult had been sown through Chatter-ton’s collection of forgeries. Moreover, these Rowleyan works found their way not only into Barrett’s flawed History and Antiquities, but even into poet laureate Thomas War-ton’s History of English Poetry.26 In other words, they were but one step away from mak-ing it to a veritable cult, in which, perhaps, rituals celebratmak-ing Bristol and its local heroes, Rowley, Canynges, and Chatterton might develop.
This, however, was not to be. Due to Chatterton’s assumed lack of integrity, as well as the crime of his alleged suicide, he could not rise to the status of a hero, so he sank into relative oblivion. Despite his Romantic cult, Bristol would not acknowledge him until very recently.27 Nevertheless, in establishing an alternative history of th-century English literature (and beyond), and ingraining into it a highly erudite fictitious priest, Chatterton provided a blueprint for potential mythographers, akin to those that would eventually complete his own myth. In this, though not amounting to an elaborate cult, his efforts may deserve the “reverence for first phases,” so integral to the development of
This, however, was not to be. Due to Chatterton’s assumed lack of integrity, as well as the crime of his alleged suicide, he could not rise to the status of a hero, so he sank into relative oblivion. Despite his Romantic cult, Bristol would not acknowledge him until very recently.27 Nevertheless, in establishing an alternative history of th-century English literature (and beyond), and ingraining into it a highly erudite fictitious priest, Chatterton provided a blueprint for potential mythographers, akin to those that would eventually complete his own myth. In this, though not amounting to an elaborate cult, his efforts may deserve the “reverence for first phases,” so integral to the development of