Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

  ‘I was dead, remember.’ The words had sounded too harsh, and Meredith quickly went on to say, ‘Actually, I was thinking of bringing poison into a love poem.’ He opened his eyes. ‘But I think that for once the woman ought to take it, don’t you, Henry?’

  For some reason Wallis was embarrassed by this. ‘I wonder why you talk so little of your poetry.’

  Meredith laughed. ‘Because I talk so much about everything else?’

  ‘No, I mean that you speak so eloquently about painting –’

  ‘Your painting, at least.’

  ‘– And yet you are always so reticent about your own work.’ Wallis was blocking in some shadows as he spoke.

  ‘There is nothing really to speak about.’

  ‘You mean it isn’t real?’

  ‘No, not that. There is nothing more real than words. They are reality. It is just that everything I do becomes an experiment – I really don’t understand why and, please God, I never shall – and until it is completed I never know whether it will be worth a farthing.’

  Wallis was at that moment trying to fix the colour of the smoke, which was about to issue from the expired candle. ‘But how can you experiment with what is real? Surely you have only to depict it.’

  ‘As you do? But what about your phial of poison, which miraculously changed its position?’

  ‘But the phial was a real object. That did not change.’ He had found the right mixture of Naples white and cobalt blue, and began carefully to paint the smoke with a sable brush.

  ‘And I am in the same boat. Do you know that phrase? I said that the words were real, Henry, I did not say that what they depicted was real. Our dear dead poet created the monk Rowley out of thin air, and yet he has more life in him than any medieval priest who actually existed. The invention is always more real. May I get up now? My arm aches.’ Wallis nodded and then stepped back to see the effect of the candle smoke upon the canvas. Meredith, inspired by his theme, jumped up from the bed and began prowling around the studio, taking care not to look at the painting as he talked. ‘But Chatterton did not create an individual simply. He invented an entire period and made its imagination his own: no one had properly understood the medieval world until Chatterton summoned it into existence. The poet does not merely recreate or describe the world. He actually creates it. And that is why he is feared.’ Meredith came up to Wallis, and for the first time looked at the canvas. ‘And that is why,’ he added quietly, ‘this will always be remembered as the true death of Chatterton. Can you smell burning?’

  Wallis looked up in alarm, and at once saw thick smoke billowing across the window. ‘Oh my God,’ he shouted, ‘there must be a fire outside!’ Yet at the same time he noticed how darker and lighter patches of smoke crossed each other in succession.

  The fire seemed to be coming from the direction of the river, and the two men ran out of the house. One of Meredith’s buckled shoes came off on the cobbles (he had forgotten that he was still in costume) and, by the time he had bent down and refastened it, Wallis had joined a small crowd at the corner of Paradise Walk and Chelsea Wharf. A workman was pointing towards the back of an eighteenth-century house beside the river: ‘It was in that garden,’ he was saying. ‘It went up quick but it came down again ditto.’ The smoke was now slowly clearing as the wind changed direction, sending the ash and debris across the water.

  ‘Was there no danger?’ Wallis asked.

  ‘No, not a bit of danger.’

  Meredith had come up behind him and Wallis thought he heard him whisper, ‘Let it burn, let it burn,’ but, before he could turn to look at him, he saw Mary emerging from the house with a small child in her arms. ‘Mrs Meredith!’ he called. ‘Mrs Meredith! Over here!’ For one single instant of fear, he believed that for some reason she had started the blaze. Mary had given the child to a young woman, who seemed to be a servant of the house, and now started walking towards Wallis. She was smiling happily, and he assumed that she had seen her husband beside him; but now, when he turned, Meredith had gone. ‘I didn’t know you were still here,’ he said. ‘I…’ He noticed a small dark smudge on her left cheek, like a shadow. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed. ‘Not in the least. It was only Miss Slimmer’s chalet.’

  Miss Slimmer was a poet who lived in this house beside the river, but she insisted on writing in a small wooden shed, her chalet, at the bottom of the garden. She did not often leave the house, but Wallis had occasionally seen his neighbour wandering down Paradise Walk with her bonnet half-tied and her skirts sometimes trailing in the muddy road. She was a large woman, whose somewhat hectoring manner was not expressed in her delicate and pathetic verses.

  ‘Why were you carrying the child?’ He blushed as soon as he asked the question and Mary, sensing his sudden embarrassment, tried not to smile. ‘Why, Mr Wallis, did you think it was my own?’

  ‘No, not at all. Of course not. I merely wondered…’

  ‘It was the daughter of Miss Slimmer’s housekeeper. The little girl was enjoying the drama so much that she did not want to leave the house, but I was afraid the smoke might choke her. What is the saying, no smoke without fire?’

  The unaccustomed and unexpected physical excitement had enlivened her: Wallis had never seen her so happy. A sudden gust of wind sent the smell of charred wood towards him, and he did not know what to say next. ‘The study of Chatterton is well under way,’ he muttered. And then, in a more confident tone, ‘Will you come and see it?’

  She became quieter now. ‘No, not yet.’ She put her hand under his arm for a moment. ‘I would rather see the final painting. May I?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Write to me when it is finished, and then I will come.’ Wallis did not know how to respond to this. ‘I would prefer to see it without my husband dancing attendance –’

  ‘He was just here…’

  She ignored this. ‘He thinks he is my prompt book. He thinks I cannot speak for myself. So of course in his company I am as mute as any other palace servant.’ Wallis had never known her talk so freely but, then, he had never before been alone with her.

  ‘Mary! Mary!’ The deep voice of Miss Slimmer prompted them to move further apart, although in fact they were holding only an ordinary conversation. ‘You are an absolute heroine, Mary dear. You saved the life of that poor, poor child!’ Miss Slimmer was sweating profusely, and was holding a linen handkerchief up to her forehead.

  There was no danger, Agnes.’

  ‘No danger! Just look at me!’ And indeed she did look as if she had been rescued only moments before from some natural disaster. Her bombazine dress was torn in several places, and her face was streaked with ash and soot: where the sweat had run down her cheeks, furrows of white flesh could be glimpsed beneath the patina of grey. In fact she had torn the bombazine with her own hands. ‘If you painted me, Mr Wallis, it could only be as Lot’s wife or some Harpie.’

  This seemed to be a challenge rather than a statement. ‘You look very well, Miss Slimmer. I see you more as Ophelia.’

  She smiled at this, but rather grimly. ‘At least,’ she went on, ‘my manuscripts are safe. I had already sent my last poem to The Examiner, and everything else has been given into the care of the public. My Muse has been scorched, but she has survived the burning.’ She turned her back on them for a moment to examine the scene once more; the little crowd had dispersed, and a thin column of smoke could be seen drifting towards the river. ‘But my chalet! My poor chalet!’ She twined her fingers together. ‘How does one wring one’s hands?’ she demanded. ‘I could never do it properly, not even as a child.’ Then she turned around abruptly. ‘We were discussing you, Mr Wallis, just before the catastrophe. You know that Mrs Meredith –’ Miss Slimmer looked pityingly at her – ‘that Mrs Meredith is a great admirer of your work.’

  Wallis was delighted by Mary’s approval, which he had not suspected, and was about to thank her when Miss Slimmer held up her hand. ‘No, before you say it, Mr Wallis, I con
fess I am of the old school. I dwell in the realms of the Ideal.’ At the last word she lifted her dress slightly. ‘That is why I cannot endure your new subject, Chatterton.’ Mary blushed, as if in describing Wallis’s latest painting to her friend she had betrayed some confidence. That medieval style offends me, it is all artifice. What is it that you painters say? Pasticcio. It is all pasticcio. For me poetry must be direct and it must be inspired. It will be simple and it will be true. And I know. I have a public. Is that not right, my heroine?’ Mary nodded, although in fact she was considering the possibility that Agnes Slimmer’s poetry might be rather more interesting if it did truthfully reflect her forceful personality. ‘It must come from the heart, where all our feelings start.’ She seemed to be searching for evidence of that organ as she pressed her hand against her bosom, but it was only to bring out a fresh handkerchief. ‘It must be real,’ she went on. ‘What is the reason for the imitation of an imitation?’

  ‘I don’t agree, Agnes.’ Mary was smiling at Wallis as she said this. ‘Sometimes reason does not seem to be so very important. Sometimes one should do exactly as one pleases.’

  ‘I call that hedonism, Mary, and it is not becoming in a young woman.’ She turned her stare upon Wallis. ‘Where is Mr Meredith? He is your model, is he not?’

  Mary intercepted the look, which was growing more suspicious. ‘My husband is in his costume, Agnes, and he is no doubt hiding from you. You would not be pleased to find an eighteenth-century poet outside your door.’

  ‘Mr Meredith in masquerade! I never would have believed it.’

  ‘But he is always in masquerade. What was the word you used? He is always pasticcio.’

  ‘Well then you had better go and find him. Go and wake him up.’ This rather surprising response was delivered in her absence, as it were, since she began walking back to her house as soon as she had started speaking.

  They were alone again. ‘Will you come back with me?’ was Wallis’s question.

  Mary looked at Miss Slimmer’s retreating back. She seemed about to join her, but she hesitated. ‘What do you mean, come back with you?’

  ‘Will you come back with me now to see George? He must be waiting for us.’

  Mary seemed relieved. ‘Oh, no. George waits for nobody, not even for himself. He is very proud. But you know that, don’t you?’ She turned to go. ‘I think Agnes needs me more.’ She left him just as the wind changed direction once again, sending the smoke billowing around Wallis as slowly he made his way to the studio.

  Meredith was sitting on the bed, dressed in his own clothes. ‘You had finished with me, Wallis, hadn’t you?’ He sounded dispirited. He picked up the costume and solemnly handed it to him. ‘I was growing tired of my part.’

  Wallis wondered why he did not mention his wife’s appearance in his own sudden departure from the crowd. ‘Yes, George. Your part is finished.’ He flung the clothes into a corner, where they lay in a crumpled heap. ‘But don’t worry –’

  ‘I never worry.’

  ‘It will be a fine picture.’ He paused. ‘Did you know your wife was in that house?’

  Meredith seemed to pay no attention to this question, but walked around to survey the preliminary painting once more. ‘I will be immortalised,’ he said, brightening a little. ‘Not with a kiss but with a brush. When all our little feelings are forgotten, I will be there still. Now that is immortality.’ He pointed at the body on the canvas. ‘But is it Meredith or is it Chatterton?’

  There will come a time when even you will not know the difference.’

  ‘You mean I will have been swallowed up by time?’ He laughed out loud, as if this were precisely the fate he most wished for himself. ‘But after forty years, after four hundred, even four thousand years, what will I – what will he – what will it look like then?’ A sudden crash and a squeal echoed from the basement kitchen; Wallis’s cook had broken a dish.

  Meredith was gazing intently at his own image, and Wallis put his hand upon his shoulder. ‘In time of course the flesh tints will fade. Is that what you mean?’

  Meredith laughed again. ‘But you see how pale I look already.’ And then he added, ‘Mary is pale, too. Have you noticed?’

  He was squeezing the side of the canvas with his hand and Wallis gently took it from him. ‘Be careful with your picture, George. It is fragile still.’ He took the painting over to the window and scrutinised it in the light. ‘Of course in time the vegetable colours will fade as well. But, even after centuries, the mineral colours should remain the same.’

  ‘My vegetable love.’ Meredith joined him beside the window, and saw the last traces of the smoke rising from the ruined chalet. ‘Annihilating all that’s made, to a green thought in a green shade.’ He looked upwards, at that point where the smoke was fading into the brightness of the sky. ‘And so I too will one day become a thought. Whoever sees this painting will somehow be thinking of me. I must go now,’ he said. ‘My wife may –’

  ‘I will walk out with you.’ Wallis seemed relieved that he was leaving, and made no effort to detain him. ‘But we must try to avoid Agnes Slimmer. I was just talking to her, you know.’

  ‘I know. I saw everything.’

  Wallis had his back to Meredith: he was bending over to pick up his ulster, and he stayed in that position for a few moments longer than was strictly necessary. Then he turned towards him and showed him the coat. ‘Is this mine or yours?’ He held it out still further, as if demanding that Meredith take it. ‘They are both so alike that I never see the difference.’

  ‘It is yours, Henry. I have no ulster.’

  Wallis put it on very quickly. ‘Do you never feel the cold?’

  ‘No. Never.’ But Wallis noticed, as they went out into the street, how he seemed to shrink a little in the wind. They walked towards the river in silence. Meredith had decided to take the paddle steamer from the Chelsea jetty to Westminster and, as they passed Miss Summer’s house, Wallis looked towards it anxiously; and yet he was not sure why he felt ashamed to meet her again. Meredith was contemplating the rough surface of the road: ‘The effect of that painting,’ he began to say quite suddenly, ‘will be quite different from anything we can understand now. Certainly quite different from anything that you intend, Henry. It is the same with a poem or with a novel.’ Wallis thought he saw a face at a ground-floor window, and he was startled for a moment. ‘The final effect it has upon the world can never be anticipated or measured or arranged.’ Meredith was looking across at the turbulent surface of the water. That is what I mean by its reality’ – a door was opened and closed somewhere – ‘It can only be experienced. It cannot be spoken of.’ He paused, as if listening to the sound of the hurrying footsteps. ‘And yet the words for it still haunt us, pluck at us, fret us.’

  ‘Mr Meredith, a moment please.’ It was Miss Slimmer, still a few yards off but coming up quickly.

  There is my steamer, Henry. I must make haste. Goodbye.’ He ran off towards the jetty and Miss Slimmer, breathing rather heavily, came to a sudden halt.

  ‘I only wanted to give him this,’ she said, and held out a volume of her poetry entitled Songs of Autumn. Wallis shrugged his shoulders and then, with a polite bow, hurried away from her.

  But he felt too uneasy to return to his studio, and instead he went towards the river. Along its bank there was a lane where he often walked in the early evening; it was known as Willow Passage, because of the pollard willows which sprang up on each side of it, and here he would sometimes sit or sketch. He considered the trees to be highly picturesque in their perspective, and often lost himself in contemplation of their general lines, but on this particular evening they seemed to dip and weave in the wind, disharmonious, incomplete, merely confused matter against the sky. He usually sat in the same spot, where the grass bank rose into a small hill, and now he hurried towards it, hoping to find some rest there from his own distracted thoughts. He lay down against the soft slope, wrapping his coat around him; and idly, without his usual curiosity, he gazed
at the willow on the opposite side of the path.

  But even as he lay here he began to perceive patterns in the bark of the tree, its cracked and mottled surface taking on shapes and contours which he could not help but recognise. But the patterns themselves no longer seemed to him to be sufficient: their texture and colour came from their place upon the whole tree, and from the line of trees to each side, just as their shade and tone were borrowed from the changing lights of the world itself. But if all this could not be painted – for what hope was there of capturing the general life of the world upon a canvas – how was he to depict the human form itself? Then another thought disturbed him: how could he invoke the soul of Chatterton when he believed that his own soul was now stained? He had come with such restless impatience to Willow Passage because he believed that he had acted furtively or even deceitfully towards his friends – how could a man such as he portray the human body in all its glory?

  He looked across the darkening fields of Chelsea, and it was only after a few moments that he noticed the figure of a woman; she was bent over, cutting the willow wands which grew by the side of a ditch beyond the trees. She must have felt his eyes upon her, for at this moment she straightened up and looked across at him: Wallis could see her sweep her red hair back from her face. And then Mary Ellen Meredith was running towards him, and she was saying, ‘I knew you walked this way. I have been waiting for you.’ Yet he was alone. The woman was still looking at him but then she gave a harsh laugh and, taking up her basket of willow wands, hurried away towards Pimlico. His imagination had been deceived or, rather, he had deceived his imagination.

  On the following morning he began. He had prepared the canvas; its glue and plaster ground was now perfectly smooth and, as he touched it, he could feel the outline of the projected images already guiding his finger… here the body would lie, and here the arm would fall. He began mixing the flake white with the linseed oil until he knew that it was of the right consistency, then he placed the paint on blotting paper to remove the excess oil. Nothing is pure, he thought, everything is stained. He took a French brush, dipped it into the paint, and began to cover the canvas with a brilliant white ground, working from left to right until the underpainting was complete. He stepped back to examine the freshly painted surface, looking for cracks or patches of uneven brightness, but it was quite smooth. This was the stage before all colour and for a moment Wallis wanted to strike out with his brush, to slash it or to make wild and indecipherable marks upon it until the brightness was torn and then dimmed for ever.