Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1892-07-23

wAKEmAN,s wANDERINGs.

wAKEMAN,s wANDERINGs.
Chatterton's Birthplace-A Saddening
Shrine-Bristol,s Churls and Con-
MISUNDERSTANDING Church, Hts Fa-
nous Imminent Room and the
Chatterton Cenotaph Historic
Hints and Noble Names.
BRIsToL, England, July II.
To the Editor OF the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
The name, birth-spot and the shrine of
Chatterton are all that will ordinarily i'm
pei the traveller to turn aside from pleas
anter English sights and scenes to loiter in
the matter-of-fact old city of Bristol.
Above it's hard, dank streets, its grimy
smokestacks and hsrbor spars, at the
whim of the Severn tides overtopping its
tallest warehouses or again disappearing
below its mossy, crumbling quays, the one
name, more sad and clear and luminous
than all other acts or facts in its history,
seems to oonjure all else of civic, ccmmer-
cial, ecclesiastic or literary interest in the
ancient sesport's moldy past.
And what a marvellous proof is here of
the overshadowing quality of literary
fame. 1t seems to me to furnish one of
the most impressive illustrations known
to men.
Chatterton died August "a, ITO, before
he was eighteen years of age. Yet this
STRIPPING, starved in Bristol and bounded
to death by Indifference and desperation
in London, in what had been done by his
pen from the time he was ten years old, to
the morning they found him dead in the
London garret and pitched his poor body
into the Shoe Lane workhouse potter's
field, cut higher and deeper inches in the
adamantine walls of fame than all other
of the millions who have lived and died in
Bristol. More has been felt, said and
written about this one delicate lad, his
misfortunes and achievements, than alto
gether has ever been produced or com
piled by or concerning Bristol or Bristol
folk.
This Bristol and these Bristol folk, save
in few shining exceptions, have never
been pleased with this. The old town has
always seemed to wish the glamor of i'm
mortality on its own account; for it's
wigged pudges of rulers, its wicked old
slave traders, its old-time pedantic and
hypocritical merchant princes, its church
es, docks and warehouses;; and resent to
this day the pilgrims coming to the one
shrine which the whole world has forced
upon the place in spite of itself, as if to
retrieve it from infomy and contempt.
Something like the canny and almost
brutal suspicion and watchfufness of Chat
terton's attorney master of infamous mem
ory, John Lambert, has always pervsded
the town, in its attitude to the memory of
Chatterton, and to those strangers who
come to Bristol with sad and tender
thoughts of the boy poet. From the hrst
vindictive efforts to uphold the currish
Walpole's defamation of the dead boy, in
his own defense, to almost the latest Bris-
tol publications on Chatterton, the effort
has been ceaseless to befoul his character
and disparage his achievements.
Ecclesiastical consistories, animated by
inconceivable venom, hunted the very
memory of the lad to Probationary fnali-
ty, as far as their little power could go,
fighting bitterly to the last the erection of
a monument to his name in the church
yard of Redcliffe church, until nearly one
hundred years had elapsed from the time
of the poets death before this psltry re-
quital was forced upon Bristol; while ten
thousand travellers every year come here,
and especially to the beautiful church of
st. Mary of Redcliffe, because of Chat
terton's association with the latter, to
one who comes to zee Bristol or Redcliffe
on their own account; and still the hard
old civic and ecclesiastic heads are blind
to the worlds judgment of themselves
and Chatterton.
Mournfully ludicrous does this feeling
display itself to strangers, even to this
day. If you are in charge of guide or
friend he will insist on your visiting the
potteries; the Downs; the docks; the Avon
bridge; the place where Sir Humphrey Da-
vey had charge of the Pneumatic Iusti-
tuition in Dow1y Square; the Council
House, rioh in ancient parchment lore,
unique old charters and somber pictures
by Kneller and Vandyc; the museum and
a peep at the famous miniature likeness on
ivory of Oliver Cromwell; the ancient
stone images of Brennus and Belinus,
Bristol's tutelar deities removed from an
ancient church to their present place i'll
the old city gateway arch in the four
tsenth century; to that wonderful old
Norman archway in the gateway leading
into lower College Green; and to scores
more places and objects of modern and
antiquarian interest. But he will never
have a word or q moment to devote to
your longings regarding the personality
of and objects associative with Chatter
ton.
If at last you humbly beg to know OF
these his interest in your interest is al
an end. Even your landlord will regard
you with contempt If you mention the
| name of Chatterton. If you attempt tc
| penetrate the dust mounds of the locs
antiquarians everything is at your dispo
sal until that unfortunate name is heard
| They are then all as instantly dead, voice
| less and mummied as the moldy old stuff
| upon which their lives are passed. Hap
pening into several old bookstores with
the hope of finding odds and ends re
garding the poet and his birth-spot, af
ter the inevitably unsuccessful sesrcl
was made, timid inquiry after what
wished invariably put to fight the wea
zened habitues of the place, as though
pestilence came with the breath tina
formed the name.
But most curious of all was the con
duct of the, verger of the Redcliff
church, which owes its chief notoriety ant
its richest O fferipgs to it's hateful hostilit
to Chstterton, his trifiing association wit
it's old imminent room and the miserl
Chatterton cenotaph within its church
yard close. He labored three mortal hour
to impress the wonders of Redcliffe churc
upon me. Inconceivable eloquence fowe
from his fervent lips. l would occasion
ally pleasantly intimate that l believed
all; was willing to credit more; but mos
wished to visit the old imminent room
whereupon the storms of descriptive elc
quence would break forth anew. Sons
thing in the hushed quiet of the place, th
hopelessness of ever coming to see what
longed for most, aud the sustained note
of his chant about the worthless who's
dust was beneath US and their wondrou
deeds and gifts to ST. Mary's, furnished a
! uncomfortable somuolence. finally san
into pew in sn attitude of deferential il
, terest, bulged my eyes to the limit of hi
man endurance, and with this wonderfI
! human talking machiue in regular pulls
! tions growing to giants size and ditninisl
ing to the stature of a pigmy declaimin
before me, refreshing .lumber came.
I awoke with start as the verger shoe
me and upbraided me with the charge thi
he could not inter est me in this prince
English churchrs." Ipressed a half crow