Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-07-23
A SADDENING SHRINE.
Wakeman's Trip Through Bristol's
Churls and COnsistOries.
BIRTHPLACE OF CHATTERT0N.
Redcliffs Church. Its Imminent Room and
the Cenotaph.
HISTORIC HINTS AND NOBLE NAMES
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE prspArcH.l

| bRlSTOL, ENGLAND, July IL. - line
name, the birthspot and the shrine of Chat.
terton are all that will ordinarily impel the
traveller to turn aside from pleasanter En-
glish sights aud scenes to loiter in the mat
ter-of-fact old city of Bristol. Above its
hard, dank streets, its grimy smokestacks
and harbor spars, at the whim of the Seven
tides overtopping its tallest warehouses or
ling quays, the one name, more sad and
clear and luminous than all the other acts
or facts in its history, seems to conjure all
else of civic, commercial, ecclesiastic OF
| literary interest in the ancient seaport
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.
Chstterton died August "a, ITO, before
he was IS years of age. Yet this STRIPPING,
starved in Bristol oud bounded to death by
Indifference ard desperation in London, in
what had been done by his pen from the
| time he was 10 years old to the morning
| they found him dead in the London garret
and pitched his poor body into the Shoe
Lane workhouse p6tter'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 achieve
ments, than altogether has ever been pro-
duced or complied by or concerning Bristol
| or Bristol folk.
Resentment Against the Pilgrims.
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 glsmor of inn
mortality on its own account, for its wigged
pudges of rulers, its wicked old slave trad
ers, its old-time pedantic and hypocritical
merchant princes, its churches, docks and
warehouses, and resents to this day the pill
grim's coming to the one shrine which the
whole world has forced upon the place in
spite OF itself, as If to retrieve it from in
fanny and contempt
Something like the canny and almost
brutal suspicion and watchfulness of Chat
terton's attorney master of infamous men,
ory, John Lambert, has always pervaded
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 first vindictive
effort to uphold the currish Walpole's def
amation of the dead boy, in his own defense,
to almost the latest Bristol 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 fnality,
as far as their little power could 60, fight
ing bitterly to the last the erection of q
monument to his name in the churchyard of
Redcliffe church, until nearly 100 years had
elapsed from the time of the poets death
before this paltry requital was forced upon
Bristol; while 10000 travellers every year
come here, and especially to the beautiful
church of St. Mary of Redcliffe, because of
Chatterton's association with the latter, to
one who comes to see 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 Ludiorous Situation.
Mournfully ludicrous does this feeling
display itself to strangers, even to this dav.
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 Davey had
charge of the Pneumatic Institution in
Dowry square; the Council House, rich in
ancient parchment lore, unique old char
tiers and somber pictures by Kneller and
Vandyc, the museum and peep at the fa-
nous miniature likeness on ivory of Oliver
Cromwell; the ancient stone images of
Brennus and Belinus, Bristols tutelar
deities removed from an ancient church to
their present place in the old city gateway
arched in the fourteenth century; to that
wonderful old Norman archway in the gate
way leading into lower College Green; and
to scores more places and objects of modern
and antiquarian interest But he will
never have word or moment to devote
to your longings regarding the personality
of and object associative with Chatterton.
If at last you humbly beg to know of
these, his interest in your interest is at an
end. Even your landlord will regard you
with contempt if you mention the name of
Chatterton. If you attempt to penetrate
the dust-mounds of the local antiquarians,
everything is at your disposal until that un-
fortunate name is heard. They are then all
instantly dead, voiceless and mummied as
the moldy old stuff upon which their lives
are passed. Happening into several old
bookstores with the hope of finding odds
and ends regarding the poet and his birth
spot, after the inevitably unsuccessful
search was made, timid inquiry after what
I wished invariably put to flight the weaz-
ened habitues of the place, as though pesti-
lence came with the breath that formed the
name
The Most Curious Thing of All.
But most curious of all was the conduct of
the verger of the Redcliffe church, which
owes its chief notoriety and its richest offer
ings to its hateful hostility to Chatterton,
his trifing association with its old num-
ment room and the miserly Chatterton ceno-
taph within its churchyard close. He
Iabored three mortal hours to impress the
wonders of Redcliffe church upon me. In
conceivable eloquence flowed from his fer
vent lips. I would occasionally pleasantly
intimate that believed it all; was willing
to credit more; but most wished to visit
the old imminent room; whereupon the
storms of descriptive eloquence would
break forth anew. Something in the
hushed quiet of the place, the hopelessness
of ever coming to see what longed for most,
and the sustained notes of his chant about
the worthless whose dust was beneath us and
their wondrous deeds and gifts to St. Mary's,
furnished an uncomfortable somnolence I
finally sank into pew in an attitude of def
erential interest, bulged my eyes to the lim-
1t OF human endurance, and with this won
derful human talking machine in regular
pulsations growing to giants size and di-
minishing to the stature Of a pigmy de-
claiming before me, refreshing slumber
came.
awoke with start as the verger shook
me and upbraided me with the charge that
he could not interest me in this prince
of English churches" I pressed half
crown upon him and again timorously
limited something about ''the Chatterton
muniment- room" As if in frenzy of de-
spair at the perversity of all humankind,