Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

  Harriet was astonished. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that’s what is known as magic realism.’

  ‘Exegi monumentum aere perennius…’ Flint was quoting.

  ‘No, Andrew, it is true.’ Charles was in the middle of a heated discussion with him. ‘Poetry is the finer art.’

  Flint was suddenly very angry. ‘And what does that mean, really?’

  ‘It lives.’ Charles closed his eyes for a moment.

  ‘This is essentially a Romantic attitude. I am not a Romantic.’ Flint had never wanted to come to this dinner, and had accepted only from fear of seeming discourteous to Charles; but now he was furious at himself for attending. ‘Don’t you realise,’ he said, ‘that nothing survives now? Everything is instantly forgotten. There is no history any more. There is no memory. There are no standards to encourage permanence – only novelty, and the whole endless cycle of new objects. And books are simply objects – consumer items picked up and laid aside.’ In his anger, Flint was speaking freely for the first time that evening. ‘And poetry is no different. Poetry is disposable, too. Something has happened during the course of this generation – don’t ask me why. But poetry, fiction, the whole lot – none of it really matters any more.’

  ‘If I thought that,’ Harriet said, ‘I’d shoot myself!’ She put her thumb and forefinger up to her right temple. ‘Mummy go bang bang,’ she added, for the waiter’s benefit.

  ‘No,’ Charles said, softly. ‘Some things do survive.’

  But Flint was eager to pursue his own argument. ‘Yes, they survive. But don’t you realise that it’s just another kind of death? Five hundred books of poetry published in any one year – they’re piled up in the library stacks, or they gather dust on the shelves.’ Philip looked down thoughtfully at his hands. ‘They are preserved, yes, but only as reminders of all that remains unread, will never be read. A monument to human ambition and human indifference. When I see all that waste of paper, that waste of time, I want to be sick.’ As Flint continued talking, Charles got up and walked uncertainly towards one of the curtained alcoves. He held one hand up to his forehead and Vivien half-rose from her chair, looking anxiously around after him. ‘Any contemporary work has a life of about three months. That’s all.’ Flint was quieter now. ‘We can’t think of posterity. There is no posterity. At least I can’t see it.’

  ‘Do you think Charles will remember that he’s paying?’ Harriet whispered to Philip. ‘He seemed a bit squiffy just then.’

  But Philip was staring at Flint, his hands clenched tightly together. ‘What do you see, then?’

  Flint paused, and for the first time took in Philip’s lean and sombre face. ‘What do I see? I don’t know.’ He was apologetic now. ‘I see nothing really.’ He took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from the sides of his nose.

  ‘Don’t be so gloomy, Andrew.’ Charles had returned and was patting him on the shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No. Don’t be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry for. We can all have our day in the sun.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  ‘What was that, Philip?’

  ‘I said he’s wrong. Andrew is wrong.’ Philip was still very tense, and Harriet watched him with amusement as he strained forward in his seat.

  ‘I know he’s wrong.’ Charles frowned, and seemed to shield his eyes from the restaurant’s weak lights. ‘Of course words survive. How else could Chatterton’s forgeries become real poetry?’ He paused again, rubbing his hand slowly across his forehead. ‘And there are lines so beautiful that everything is changed by them.’

  ‘Name two,’ Flint whispered to Harriet. They had both been drinking heavily, and were now entering a kind of complicity against the others.

  ‘The Brighton Line is one,’ she whispered back.

  ‘A child can read a poem, and his whole life can be changed too. I remember this.’ Charles looked at Vivien as if he were talking only to her, and she put her hand upon his arm. ‘That is why it is such a wonderful thing to have the vocation of a poet, since it’s a vocation from childhood that nothing can ever change. No poet is ever completely lost. He has the secret of his childhood safe with him, like some secret cave in which he can kneel. And, when we read his poetry, we can join him there.’

  ‘I thought,’ Flint whispered once more to Harriet, ‘that eloquence was supposed to be a dead art.’

  ‘It is.’

  Charles was looking around the restaurant with a look of intense concentration. ‘And there are true poems because there are true feelings, feelings which touch everyone. Do you remember this?’ He put his head back, and began quoting in a strange sing-song voice:

  ‘But it’s not the selfsame bird

  Perished to dust is he…

  As also are those who heard

  That song with me.’

  Then he laughed, and rubbed his eyes. ‘And if poetry doesn’t matter, Andrew, why is it that there are people who find their only comfort on earth in reading it? Why is it that some poets are the only companions of lonely or unhappy people? What is it that they find in books which nothing else in the world can show or tell them? Do you know?’ Flint looked across at him and said nothing. ‘And why is it, Andrew, that some people try all their lives to become writers or poets, even though they are too ashamed to show their work to anyone? Why do they keep on trying? Why do they write and write, putting their poems and stories away as soon as they’re finished? Where does their dream come from?’ Vivien took his hand, but he did not notice her movement. ‘I’ll tell you what it is. It is a dream of wholeness, and of beauty. All the yearning and all the unhappiness and all the sickness can be taken away by that vision. And the vision is real. I know. I’ve seen it, and I am sick.’ Vivien looked at him in astonishment, because he had never before confessed to the sickness which she could now see clearly upon his face. He turned towards her and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, love,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you were stuck with me. I tried my best but it wasn’t good enough, was it?’

  His attention was distracted by someone standing behind her; he made an effort to rise from his chair, as he muttered, ‘Yes, of course. I know you very well.’ But then he collapsed, falling sideways from his chair onto the carpet of the Kubla Khan.

  ‘… it must be sleep, when low

  Hangs that abandon’d arm towards the floor:

  The head turn’d with it. Now make fast the door.’

  (Modern Love. Sonnet 15. George Meredith)

  Henry Wallis was standing at the window of his studio as the Merediths came down Paradise Walk; it was a large window on the second floor, looking down onto the Chelsea street, and the winter sunlight filled the room behind him.

  The house itself might have been especially designed for a painter, in fact – it was newly built and the high-ceilinged rooms, the broad expanse of the windows and the general airiness were precisely what Wallis needed although, when the wind came from the Thames a hundred yards away, some of its scents made him retch. He feared the cholera even here. But the light was the especial thing – that brilliant light which glanced off the surface of the water, spilling across the housefronts and the fields like some wave which has travelled inland from the sea; a light which, in this suburb of London, was free of the smoke which even now could be seen hanging over the city.

  Meredith was walking a little ahead of his wife, peering at the numbers of the new houses in obvious confusion. Wallis noticed that Mary looked neither at the houses nor at her husband, but kept her gaze on the ground as she walked towards the river. Now Meredith was standing in the middle of the road and waving up to him: ‘We’re here,’ he shouted. ‘Your dead poet and his consort are here!’ Mary’s face was still averted but, just as he was about to turn away from the window, she looked up at him and smiled. Meredith was knocking wildly on the door. ‘Take me in!’ he called. Take me in or I will die on the streets of Chelsea!’

  Wallis hurried down the stairs into the long hallway. He prided himself on having no serva
nts, although in fact he still retained a cook; but she rarely ventured from the basement, and lived in constant fear of meeting one of her employer’s female models. Occasional shrieks or groans from the kitchen were the only tokens of her presence in the house, and Wallis had already christened the basement area of the house Tartarus. He opened the front door and Mary was standing there alone. He took a step backwards; neither of them said anything; and then Mary inclined her head slightly to the left. Wallis peered over the threshold and saw Meredith lying sprawled upon the dusty ground, apparently choking. The poet has taken poison for a broken heart,’ he was saying, clutching at his throat with his hands. The poet has taken poison!’ He looked up at them. ‘You are the giants in the land of Cockaigne. Please help me.’ Mary entered the house without speaking, as Wallis grabbed his arm and lifted him to his feet.

  She was waiting for them in the hallway. These flowers are so real,’ she said. Wallis had hung a sunflower pattern on his walls, and its colours glowed against the white staircase and the polished wooden floors.

  Meredith touched a small terracotta bust beside the stairs, and felt the coolness of its head beneath his hand. He clutched it tightly as he spoke. This is modern living, my love.’ And then he added, ‘Everything is so bright.’

  Wallis looked from one to the other, not certain if they wished to continue their conversation here; but they fell silent, and he began leading them upstairs to his studio. ‘Here,’ he said, over his shoulder, ‘is a scene of antique living. Not so bright, as you will see.’

  Meredith laughed out loud when he entered the studio: the bed, the wooden chest, the small table and the chair were exactly as he had last seen them in Brooke Street. They were arranged against the far wall of the studio, beneath a window which looked out upon a long garden; and, on the window-sill itself, Wallis had placed a small rose plant just as it had been in Chatterton’s garret. Then Meredith noticed a body lying on the bed. It was only when he came closer to it that he saw it was a costume. ‘I rented the clothes from Nathan’s,’ Wallis said.

  Meredith fingered the light grey shirt and the purple breeches, wondering who had last worn them. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘that they will fit me?’

  ‘I have measured you like an undertaker, George. I know your size as if it were my own.’

  ‘A small thing, but it is my own.’ Meredith seemed exhilarated at the prospect of dressing up in this costume. ‘And what will you do with my body when I am found dead in this?’

  Wallis laughed. ‘I intend to varnish it. It will give the flesh a greater look of nature.’

  ‘I thought I could smell the embalming fluids of the Nile.’

  ‘No, that is the spirit.’

  ‘So there are spirits, too, in this resurrection.’

  Mary had walked away from them, and was in fact sniffing the clay bottles of Martin’s Spirit as they talked. Then she glimpsed her reflection in a tall gilt mirror propped against a corner of the studio, and she stood up quickly; she turned around, examining the paint brushes, mixing bowls, phials of paint and palettes which were scattered across two old wooden tables. There were several sketches pinned to the walls of the studio and, as she wandered across to them, she noticed many of Wallis’s old canvases racked on their side behind a faded Japanese screen. A tall studio easel had been placed just in front of the screen and she ran her fingers down its side, feeling the grain of the wood beneath her hand. The canvas upon it had been freshly stretched, and an undercoat of brilliant white already applied: it was so bright that Mary could not look at it without blinking, and small whorls or spirals were appearing in front of her eyes. No one can perceive blankness, she thought; the eye is forced to create shapes as the mouth forms words.

  ‘If the cap fits,’ Meredith was saying, ‘then I must wear it. But where is the cap?’

  She stared once more at the whitened canvas, trying to imagine how the fabricated image of Chatterton’s room could be transferred to it. But she could see nothing. All the time she had been conscious only of Wallis’s presence, and now she moved behind the screen as if she were shielding herself from a source of heat. She picked up one of the abandoned paintings stored there, and saw a female nude, the upturned breasts pink and glowing.

  ‘These breeches are too tight,’ she could hear her husband saying. ‘Too much Nature and not enough Art.’

  Very deliberately she put down the painting, and came out from behind the screen. ‘Be thankful, George,’ she said, ‘that Mr Wallis is not painting you without breeches.’ She saw the surprise on the painter’s face, and she faltered slightly.

  ‘Go on, my dear. Go on.’ Meredith was grinning at her. ‘Now that you have mentioned the unmentionable, I am eager for more.’

  ‘I was only going to say –’ She hesitated. ‘I was only going to say that I must leave you both. I have to go now.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No, Mr Wallis. I came only to point George to the right house. He has no sense at all, really, no sense.’ She turned at the doorway and said very quickly, ‘Goodbye, George.’

  ‘Adieu, Mrs Chatterton.’

  Wallis hurried after her in order to open the street door, and she paused before walking out. ‘I hope,’ she said, not quite knowing what she was saying, ‘I hope that I didn’t shock you…’ She regained her self-possession. ‘I hope that I didn’t surprise you by arriving with my husband. It was on my way…’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m only sorry that –’

  ‘I must go now. Goodbye, Mr Wallis.’

  Before he could complete his sentence, she had turned away and started walking towards the river. ‘You are going in the wrong direction!’ he shouted at her, ‘Mrs Meredith! The road is that way!’ She looked at him and then – as if she had not heard what he said – she merely shook her head and smiled before turning the corner towards Chelsea Wharf. She will yield to no one, Wallis thought, as he went back to the studio.

  Meredith was now completely dressed in the mid-eighteenth-century costume which Wallis had found for him. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘You are Chatterton to the life.’ Wallis walked over to one of the wooden tables; he had already prepared his colours in several clay mixing bowls, and now only needed to place them on his palette. He thought he heard Meredith laugh. ‘No, truly, you do resemble him. Did you know that you both have red hair?’

  Meredith was silent. ‘How did you persuade Pig,’ he said after a few moments, ‘to give up everything for art?’

  ‘Pig?’ Wallis was still bent over the table.

  ‘How did you persuade her to lend you her poor furniture?’ Meredith was bouncing up and down upon the bed.

  ‘I’m sorry to disillusion you, but these are not Pig’s. I purchased everything. Can’t you see the difference?’

  Meredith pressed his finger into the pillow which lay against the bed-head. ‘I suppose it makes everything more real? When you buy something, when it is your own, does it acquire a deeper reality?’ Now he lay down upon the bed itself, wriggling his feet in the air and inspecting the buckled shoes which he had just put on. ‘Don’t you think so?’

  Wallis took the large canvas from the studio easel and put in its place a smaller one, on which he had underpainted his final composition. Above this he pinned two sketches, already marked with his colour notes for the finished work. He carried the easel into the centre of the studio. ‘Do you remember how you were lying in the garret, George?’

  ‘No. You must ask Chatterton that question.’

  ‘You were so.’ Wallis brought over to him one of the sketches.

  ‘You are a Resurrectionist, Henry. You can bring the dead to life, I see.’

  Wallis went back to his easel. ‘Put your head to the side. Let your left hand lightly clutch your chest. Good. Now allow your right arm to trail upon the floor. Good. Very good.’

  ‘Was I meant to be clutching some poison?’

  The phial looks better on the floor. It helps the composition.’

  ‘In th
at case, let us banish reality. Throw it out of the window. Abjure it.’ But, as he spoke, he adopted the position which Wallis had shown him; in fact he remembered it so well that he took on Chatterton’s last attitude without thought.

  Wallis selected a horsehair brush and dipped it into his mixture of ochre and veridian red: this for the colour of Chatterton’s, and Meredith’s, hair. He worked quietly and intently; his mood of pervasive concentration seemed to affect his sitter, also, who closed his eyes and with his head on one side seemed to sleep. But Wallis understood the lineaments of the human face, and he sensed that Meredith was thinking – thinking in perplexity.

  Neither man spoke, and Wallis was soon so absorbed in his task that he saw not the individual face but the general human image on his canvas. He was uncertain how to throw light across the small room when it occurred to him that he should come upon the body as the others must have done – the garret forced open when the servants woke and smelt the bitter arsenic seeping beneath the door, the dead poet discovered just after dawn in late August. Wallis was now entering the room with the others and at once he could see how the slanting rays of the early sun brushed the body of Chatterton, how the guttering candle had been snuffed out by their entrance and how, in the sudden draught, the scattered papers drifted uneasily across the floor. Now he was painting the pale face of the poet. ‘Have you passed Chatterton on the stairs again, George?’ he said at last.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘In your dream. You told me how you saw Chatterton.’

  ‘No, I dream of other things now.’

  ‘Suddenly, George, you are very solemn.’