“Though I am but sixteen years of age, I have lived long enough to see that poverty attends literature. I am obliged to you, sir, for your advice, and will go a little beyond it, by destroying all my useless lumber of literature, and never using my pen again but in the law.” (Thomas Chatterton, April 8, 1769).

“Sir, 

You have so clearly marked me out as the person whom T. Chatterton first addressed in order to extricate himself from his irksome situation; and you have accompanied that description with so injurious a picture of my behaviour, that my appearing to the citation will not subject me to the suspicion of vanity.” (Horace Walpole, 1779).

Chatterton had been hanging around the fringes of London’s literary scene for about a year at the time of his death, but the 1777 publication of his Rowleyan works by Thomas Tyrwhitt set off the controversy amongst the literati in a huge way. The debate over the authenticity of the medieval works lasted for over a century, but most of Chatterton’s editors and promoters tended to fall under the “Anti-Rowleyan” camp (Rogers, 124). 

Another controversy hit London’s literary scene based on Horace Walpole’s, one of the most notable “Anti-Rowleyans” in the debate, rejection of Thomas Chatterton’s request for patronage in 1768. This was set off by the publication of many of Chatterton’s letters (some of which were obtained under false pretenses from Chatterton’s surviving mother and sister), including ones where he appealed to Walpole. John Broughton took up this issue when he published an edition of Chatterton’s non-Rowleyan works in 1778, where he excoriated Walpole for his supposed mistreatment of Chatterton, ultimately blaming him for his tragic suicide. Walpole chose to respond in a very public manner, publishing a long open letter to the editor of the work (Groom, “Forgery or Plagiarism?” 47-48). 

Both of these works are available in the William Ready Division Archives, and through this exhibition the reader can get a sense of how Chatterton’s story exploded into controversy.

John Broughton falls on the “Anti-Rowleyan” side of the debate, which ironically means that he gave Chatterton a lot more artistic credit than his supporters. The “Anti-Rowleyans” like Broughton credited Chatterton with the creation of all the beautiful medieval-style works that he produced, while the “Pro-Rowleyans” argued that a child like Chatterton could never produce works of such power. Throughout the introduction Broughton mourns for the works that could have been if not for the cruelties of people like Walpole (Stroe, 106).

Walpole was an important figure in the London literary scene, both as a writer and as a patron. He helped to kickstart the gothic revival of the late 18th century through his patronage of both literature and architecture. He also wrote what is considered to be the first English gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. It was this work, also written under the guise of a fake medieval author, that attracted Chatterton to him and made him think that he would be a good patron (Stroe, 113). Walpole rejected Chatterton’s fake medieval manuscripts as forgeries and somewhat condescendingly advised Chatterton to dedicate himself to becoming a lawyer rather than a writer, prompting Chatterton’s response: 

“Though I am but sixteen years of age, I have lived long enough to see that poverty attends literature. I am obliged to you, sir, for your advice, and will go a little beyond it, by destroying all my useless lumber of literature, and never using my pen again but in the law.” (Thomas Chatterton, April 8, 1769).

Here we can see the discourse happening through these publicly printed letters and introductions. Walpole is never directly mentioned in Broughton’s introduction, but he takes great personal offense to the idea that he treated the young Chatterton with “neglect and contempt” and the accusation that he may have contributed to Chatterton’s suicide.  Broughton also publicly says that Walpole and the people like him who drove Chatterton to his death are to blame for a lot of lost potential in English literature. Walpole, although he doesn’t deny that Chatterton had potential, denies this accusation as well, saying that “in truth he was fonder of inventing bards than of being one” (13).

Works Cited:

Nick Groom “Forgery or Plagiarism? Unravelling Chatterton's Rowley.” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 1 no. 2, 1996, 41-54. 

Rogers, Pat. “Chatterton and the Club.” Thomas Chatterton and Romantic Culture, edited by Nick Groom, Macmillan Press, 1999, pp. 121-150.

Stroe, Mihai A. “The Universe of Thomas Chatterton: The Life and the Literary Revolution.” Creativity (New York, N.Y), vol. 3, no. 1, June 2020, pp. 103–329.