Chatterton

by Peter Ackroyd

  He rushed up to the canvas and, uncertain what to do, lifted it from its easel. But it was too hot: the sides were burning in his hands, and with a cry he threw it down upon the floor where it shook and shuddered. He put his hands against his ears, to block out the whispers of the dissolving paint, and stared down at the portrait in the last stages of its decay. Within a few minutes nothing remained: except, curiously enough, certain letters from the titles of the books which now hovered in an indeterminate space. He touched it gingerly with his foot and then, in a sudden furious burst of anger and resentment, he stamped upon it, put his heel through the canvas, and kicked it into a corner of his studio. ‘Dead? Yes?’ he shouted, wiping away the spittle from his mouth.

  a birth pain, my bowels ripped open to find the child, oh mother mother. Chatterton is being tossed up and down upon the sodden bed, the agony rising from him like mist into the attic room. Hold on oh hold on until this fit is past but my hands are nailed to the bed, my flesh being torn from me as I curve and break. His face is swelling, his eyelids bursting in the heat. I am the giant in the pantomime oh God save me from melting, melting, melting

  Edward passed a night-storm upon the ocean, its turbulent crest rising above his head and the spray all around him; then he stepped in front of a volcanic abyss, where travellers peered in horror at the chasms beneath their feet; then he entered a white gallery and made his way through a circle of polished stones which had, at their centre, a cubic pyramid made of shining bronze; he walked on quickly, impatient to reach Gallery Fifteen.

  And the painting was still there: he had feared that it might have been concealed, or even destroyed, after his father’s death. But ‘Chatterton’ remained, securely fastened to the wall, and to Edward it seemed even more real; it was brighter, perhaps even larger, than before. He walked straight up to it, and at first saw nothing but the texture of the canvas protected beneath the glass: he saw its cracks, and its patches of colour, and he was disgusted by it. He knew that ‘Chatterton’ had some connection with his father’s own death: he remembered the precise expression with which Charles had first looked at the painting, and he would never forget his shadowy haunted look when he turned away. So where was its secret?

  Folding his arms as he had seen his father do, he scrutinised the painting as if it were some hostile but silent witness. At first it seemed to him no better than a photograph, or a picture from a film; and an old one, at that. The colours were all wrong. But he watched it steadily, searching for a clue, and by degrees the painting relaxed also: to Edward the garret room became more real, and he noticed how it seemed to increase in size as he continued to gaze into it. The casement window was shaking slightly in the breeze, and he was just about to step forward and close it when he saw that two other people had entered the room. They were standing beside the body and the woman had put a handkerchief over her mouth and nose. He could hear them talking. What mischief is this, Mr Cross? I smell the arsenic, Mrs Angell, he is utterly undone.

  Edward had not yet chosen to look closely at the man lying upon the bed but now, when he did so, he stepped back in astonishment: it was his father lying there. He was putting out his hand towards his son. Edward came forward, and held it for a moment before it fell away onto the wooden floor. He thought his father might be about to speak, but he could not raise his head and he only smiled. Then this picture faded.

  Edward blinked three times, trying not to cry. He could not move and after a few moments he realised that he was staring at the reflection of his own face in the glass, just in the place where his father’s face had been. And now Edward was smiling, too. He had seen his father again. He would always be here, in the painting. He would never wholly die.

  The summer flies, in their terror, escape through the casement window. Chatterton is suffocating now, something is sitting on my chest and exulting, its head thrown back, I am the horse he rides. His body is plucked up and then thrown down in derision, the bed swaying and groaning beneath his convulsions. But he is suddenly quiet. No pain now the Arctic frost protects me from the dazzling sky and look my limbs are covered with snow. The air grows violet around me, violet and rose-coloured and steadily paler still. This is not dying this is forgetting to breathe. He seems to be looking around his room for the last time, but these are only the uncoordinated movements of the dying body: his left arm is pressed against his chest while his right arm slips from the bed, the hand clenching and unclenching as if trying to grasp the torn scraps of his writing which are scattered across the floor. Chatterton’s neck has been twisted by the force of his arsenic convulsions, so that he lies at an unnatural angle on the dank pillow. His left foot is shaking but, eventually, it becomes still. Then he suffers a sudden blow inside his head and there is no pain but, rather, a sudden dazzling rush of light.

  ‘So it’s all over.’ Philip gave an almost ceremonial bow to Edward who, presuming that this was a moment of great significance, bowed in return. ‘I’ve sent all the manuscripts back to Bristol.’ As soon as he had left Harriet’s house with them, in fact, he had despatched them to Mr Joynson. He did not really even want to touch them.

  ‘And the painting?’ Vivien was clearly delighted.

  ‘The painting has been destroyed.’

  ‘Hoorah!’ Edward got up and danced around Philip, butting him with his head and punching him. ‘Chatterton’s dead! Chatterton’s dead!’ Then he stopped suddenly and, putting one finger in his ear, went over to his mother. ‘What about the other one?’

  ‘Which other one, Eddie?’

  ‘You know, the good one. That mustn’t be killed.’

  ‘There is no other one, Eddie. There was only one picture.’ He looked at his mother with something very much like pity, but he said nothing. In any case, Vivien was more interested in Philip’s news. ‘And what did Mr Joynson say about the painting?’

  Philip was smiling, enjoying the look of relief upon her face. ‘He seemed pleased, actually. And Harriet was delighted. Don’t ask me why.’

  Harriet had come back into the room after her telephone conversation with Cumberland, and said to him, ‘The painting is no longer with us. It has passed over to the other side.’ She made the sign of the cross, and laughed. ‘You know sometimes, Philip, I have thoughts which are far too deep for words. Or is it tears? I can never remember.’

  ‘So it is all over,’ Vivien said. ‘At last.’

  The three of them usually had dinner together, and on this special evening Philip had decided to celebrate by bringing over two bottles of Chianti.

  Edward was particularly happy and insisted on trying the wine throughout the meal of asparagus soup, spaghetti bolognese and raspberry ripple ice-cream. By the end of it, he had a wide ring of wine and ice-cream around his mouth. ‘You look,’ his mother said, ‘like a piece of Brighton rock.’

  With a shriek of laughter he ran into his bedroom and then, after a few minutes, he started calling out, ‘Philip! Philip!’ He went in, and found Edward already in bed. ‘Philip,’ he said quietly, ‘will you tell me a story?’ So another story was told, and very soon the child was asleep.

  Philip went back into the front room where Vivien was sitting, her legs tucked up beneath her on the small sofa. ‘A penny for them,’ he said.

  ‘I was thinking of Charles.’ And Philip blushed. ‘No, not like that.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Poor Charles. It seems a pity,’ she added, ‘that it should end like this.’

  ‘You mean the papers?’

  She nodded. ‘In one way he was right, wasn’t he? We all believed it.’ In the silence voices could be heard in the flat above them. ‘I wish it didn’t have to be forgotten, Philip. It’s such a waste.’

  ‘But how…’ He seemed to be staring into the distance as his question trailed off, but in fact he was looking at the chair where Charles had once sat. It was not an empty corner: he could still sense his friend’s presence there, as if it were suspended in the air, remaining in the idea of Chatterton which Charles had created in thi
s room. His belief had been the important thing. So the papers were imitations and the painting a forgery – yet the feelings they evoked in Charles, and now in Vivien, were still more important than any reality. ‘You know,’ he said softly, ‘they don’t have to be forgotten. We can keep the belief alive.’ He looked at Vivien, and smiled. ‘The important thing is what Charles imagined, and we can keep hold of that. That isn’t an illusion. The imagination never dies.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s keep it alive.’ She looked at Philip, her eyes bright, waiting for him to complete his thought. But he did not quite know how to continue; he rubbed his beard and looked down at the ground. ‘Look up, Philip,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You know,’ he replied, slowly at first, ‘how I tried to write? Life seemed so mysterious to me – everything was connected and yet apart. Do you remember I told you this?’ She nodded. There had been a conversation between them, the day after their walk in the pine forest, when in order to comfort her Philip had explained his own sense of insufficiency and loss; he told her how he, too, was bewildered by a world in which no significant pattern could be found. Everything just seems to take place, he had said, and there’s not even any momentum. It’s just, well, it’s just velocity. And if you trace anything backwards, trying to figure out cause and effect, or motive, or meaning, there is no real origin for anything. Everything just exists. Everything just exists in order to exist. It was after this conversation that Philip and Vivien had grown closer together. ‘And you remember,’ he was saying now, ‘I told you how I used to read novelists, to see if any of them had felt the mystery, too? But none of them had, none of them seemed to feel how odd it is that life is just the way it is and no other. Did I tell you this?’ She said nothing, waiting for him to go on. ‘So I tried writing my own novel but it didn’t work, you know. I kept on imitating other people. I had no real story, either, but now –’ he hesitated – ‘but now, with this – with Charles’s theory – I might be able to –’

  Vivien got up from the sofa, clapping her hands. That’s a wonderful plan! That’s exactly what he would have wanted!’

  ‘Of course,’ he added, grave again, ‘I must tell it in my own way. How Chatterton might have lived on.’

  ‘You could tell it in any way you want. It will be a wonderful book!’

  ‘And you know,’ he said, smiling at her enthusiasm, ‘I might discover that I had a style of my own, after all.’

  Edward, woken by the sudden noise, entered the room and stood wondering in the doorway as Philip and Vivien hugged each other. Philip saw him, and gently broke away from her. ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘that I’m attempting too much? Do you think I should go and see Harriet Scrope first?’

  Edward and Vivien shouted out in unison, ‘No!’

  * rush of light around him his heart is beating like a hollow drum and Chatterton is being borne away; he is staring at the wooden boards of the floor and now, in his opium dream, the floor dissolves and the limitless sky is revolving beneath him. He has left his bed and his arsenic fear far behind and ah he is flying. Flying towards St Mary Redcliffe and the church is his father, lying on the short grass, propped upon his elbow and yawning as the sun rolls above him. Flying through the porch and through the west door, the sudden coldness of old stone changing the colour from light violet to aquamarine, which is the colour of dreams. The iron latch closes behind him and echoes for ever. Flying, into the church and seeing for the first time its vast spaces. Flying, past columns and circular stairways, past the exhausted faces of saints and the broken claws of griffins, past the upper arches and the clusters of pitted moulding. Flying, between the vaulting and the leaded roof, among the huge dusty roof timbers. Flying, along the narrow ledges of the galleries with abysses and cavernous depths to either side of him. The nave of the church has become a gigantic plain of smooth stone and when he looks down he sees his own monk, Thomas Rowley, with tonsured head, raising his hands to greet him; they stare at each other across the vast distance, and in the eternity of that look the light between them burns and decays.

  Falling, and Chatterton is walking down a stairway of old stone where he passes a young man ascending on the other side; and he is always walking, always passing him, and the young man always shows him the puppet which he holds in his left hand. Falling, and Chatterton is standing beside a young man with his head bowed in pain; there is a fountain behind them, and the fountain is playing for ever. Falling, into the nave of the church where distant figures are trying to reach him and he waits with his arms outstretched. The idiot boy, hydrocephalic; the posture master; the Tothill whore; the pot-boy of Shoe Lane; the druggist bearing gifts. Each one of them in turn emerges from the shadow and greets him by name, ‘Thomas Chatterton’. In turn he salutes each one with pride and gravity, and then kneels on the stone floor of the nave. ‘We poets in our youth,’ he calls to them across the infinite abyss, ‘begin in gladness, but thereof come in the end despondency and madness.’

  The silence that follows is never broken and now, when he looks up, he sees ahead of him an image edged with rose-coloured light. It is still forming, and for centuries he watches himself upon an attic bed, with the casement window half-open behind him, the rose plant lingering on the sill, the smoke rising from the candle, as it will always do. I will not wholly die, then. Two others have joined him – the young man who passes him on the stairs and the young man who sits with bowed head by the fountain – and they stand silently beside him. I will live for ever, he tells them. They link hands, and bow towards the sun.

  And, when his body is found the next morning, Chatterton is still smiling.

  The End

  About the Author

  Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949 and was educated at Cambridge and Yale universities. He was literary editor of the Spectator for some years and is now chief book reviewer for The Times. He has published three books of poetry and is the author of The Great Fire of London, The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde, winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize for 1984, Hawksmoor, winner of the Whitbread Award and Guardian Fiction Prize for 1985, Chatterton, First Light and English Music. His non-fiction work includes Ezra Pound and His World, a biography of T. S. Eliot, which won the Whitbread and the Heinemann Awards for 1984, and a biography of Dickens, which was shortlisted for the NCR Book Award for 1991.