The Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis 1856

Each time I see this familiar painting in Tate Britain I feel the same emotions flooding through me as they did more than thirty years ago. Pity, sorrow for the gaunt young man and a compulsion to know more. I pass over the open window, the empty phial and open chest by the narrow hard bed and turn my head sideways to stare at the pale corpse, his waxen features framed by tousled chestnut hair. His shirt is stained, his stockings wrinkled. Pointed shoes and abandoned heavy silk-lined coat are the trappings of a gentleman of fashion, now fallen on hard times. His extravagant silk breeches are blue-violet, the colour of woodland bluebells. The attic room is dark and bare, musty and damp. A single rose twines and withers, caught in the light coming through the casement. He rests, his limbs fall from him. The deed is done.
Cut is the branch that might have grown full-straight
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough.
On that first encounter, I had neither set eyes on Chatterton’s spidery writing in the British Library nor found the Georgian schoolhouse where he grew up opposite St. Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol. I knew little about his forgeries, his background but sensed, perhaps, that this was a poet killed by his own hand; the torn, tattered fragments lay scattered on the floor. All hope lay abandoned; Wordsworth’s ‘marvellous boy’ had ‘perished in his pride’. I wanted to tell him: you are worth more than all your ship-wrecked desires. Forget the forgeries and start again. Can you not hear the bells of St. Paul’s ringing through the narrow streets below? Does not the fragrant rose bring hope of brighter days ahead? Stop burning the midnight oil and find work. Go to the tavern and enjoy yourself rather than incarcerate yourself in a dirty garret, lonely, hungry, impoverished. Or return to Bristol, find yourself a comely wife and a few mouths to feed to set you straight. Give up this writing nonsense; get a life.
But I knew, all too well, it was in vain. That which a man most loves shall in the end destroy him. And you were in no mood to compromise; the very shade of your breeches told me that. Not for you the drab, daily toil towards middle-age, the security of a comfortable pension. You flew too near the sun; your wings were scorched. Your creativity, your uniqueness was your undoing. And I could only pity you, poor dejected youth, looking up at the stars. Your image haunts me as you tumble into oblivion and toss the world aside.
Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol in 1752, the son of a schoolmaster, and died at 17 years of age. Having spent a long time researching medieval manuscripts in St. Mary Redcliffe Church, he composed verses under the guise of a 15th century monk, Thomas Rowley. He tried to earn a living as a writer in London without success and was thought to have poisoned himself with arsenic. Chatterton was found in a garret in Holborn and was buried in a pauper’s grave. He was 17 years old.

(Originally published in INSIGHT magazine)