This unfortunate being, well known by the designation of “the poor
poet,” was born at Soham, in Cambridgeshire, in 1748, where his father
was a leather-seller, but having been unfortunate in business, and
marrying a second wife, disputes and family broils arose. It was
probably from this discomfort in his paternal dwelling-place, that he
left home never to return. At first, and for an uncertain period, he was
a maker and seller of nets and some small wares. Afterwards, he composed
verses on birthdays and weddings, acrostics on names, and such like
matters. Naturally mild and unassuming in his manners, he attracted the
attention and sympathy of many, and by this means lived, or, rather,
suffered life! That his mind was diseased there can be no doubt, for no
sane being would have preferred an existence such as his. What gave the
first morbid turn to his feelings is perhaps unknown. His sharp, lively,
sparkling eye might have conveyed an idea that he had suffered
disappointment in the _tender_ passion; while, from the serious tendency
of many of his compositions, it may be apprehended that religion, or
false notions of religion, in his very young days, operated to increase
the unhappiness that distressed his faculties. Unaided by education of
any kind, he yet had attained to write, although his MSS. were scarcely
intelligible to any but himself; he could spell correctly, was a very
decent grammarian, and had even acquired a smattering of Latin and
Greek.
From the age of sixteen to seventy years, poor Chambers travelled about
the county of Suffolk, a sort of wandering bard, gaining a precarious
subsistence by selling his own effusions, of which he had a number
printed in cheap forms. Among the poorer people of the country, he was
mostly received with a hearty welcome; they held him in great estimation
as a poet, and sometimes bestowed on him a small pecuniary recompense
for the ready adaptation of his poetical qualities, in the construction
of verses on certain occasions suitable to their taste or wishes.
Compositions of this nature were mostly suggested to him by his muse
during the stillness of night, while reposing in some friendly barn or
hay-loft. When so inspired, he would immediately arise and commit the
effusion to paper. His memory was retentive, and, to amuse his hearers,
he would repeat most of his pieces by heart. He wandered for a
considerable time in the west of Suffolk, particularly at Haverhill; and
Mr. John Webb, of that place, in his poem entitled “Haverhill,” thus
notices him:--
An hapless outcast, on whose natal day
No star propitious beam’d a kindly ray.
By some malignant influence doom’d to roam
The world’s wide dreary waste, and know no home.
Yet heav’n to cheer him as he pass’d along,
Infus’d in life’s sour cup the sweets of song.
Upon his couch of straw, or bed of hay,
The poetaster tun’d the _acrostic lay_:
On him an humble muse her favours shed,
And nightly musings earn’d his daily bread.
Meek, unassuming, modest shade! forgive
This frail attempt to make thy memory live.
Minstrel, adieu!--to me thy fate’s unknown;
Since last I saw you, many a year has flown.
Full oft has summer poured her fervid beams,
And winter’s icy breath congeal’d the streams.
Perhaps, lorn wretch! unfriended and alone
In hovel vile, thou gav’st thy final groan!
Clos’d the blear’d eye, ordain’d no more to weep,
And sunk, unheeded sunk, in death’s long sleep!
Chambers left Haverhill, never to return to it, in the year 1790. In
peregrinating the country, which he did in every change of sky, through
storms, and through snow, or whatever might betide, he was often
supported entirely by the spontaneous benevolence of those who witnessed
his wanderings. In his verses on a snow-storm, he says:--
This vile raiment hangs in tatters;
No warm garment to defend:
O’er my flesh the chill snow scatters;
No snug hut!--no social friend!
About four years before his death, while sojourning in Woodbridge,
sleeping in a miserable hut on the barrack ground, and daily wandering
about the town, with every visible mark of misery to distress the eye,
his condition became a libel upon the feelings of the inhabitants of the
place; a few gentlemen determined he should no longer wander in such a
state of wretchedness, offered to clothe and cleanse him, and provide a
comfortable room, bed, &c. and a person to shave him and wash for him;
and they threatened, if he would not comply, to take him home to where
he belonged.
His aversion to a poor-house amounted to horror: he expresses somewhat
to that effect in one of his poems----
’Mongst Belial’s sons of contention and strife,
To breathe out the transient remains of my life!
This dread operated in behalf of those who desired to assist him. His
wretched hovel was emptied, its miserable accumulations were consigned
to the flames, and he was put into a new habitation, clothed from head
to foot, and so metamorphosed, that but few knew him at first sight. A
bedstead and bedding, a chair, table, and necessary crockery were
provided for his comfort, but the poor creature was often heard to
exclaim, of the cleansing and burning, that “it was the worst day’s work
he ever met with.” After a few short weeks he left this home, and a
shilling a week allowed him by a gentleman, besides some weekly pence,
donations from ladies in the town, for a life of wandering privation
and, at times, of absolute want, until the closing scene of his weary
pilgrimage. He breathed his last on the 4th of January, 1827, in an
unoccupied farm-house belonging to Mr. Thurston of Stradbroke, where he
had been permitted the use of two rooms. Within a few days before, he
had been as well as usual, but he suddenly became ill, and had the
attention of two women, neighbours, who provided him warm gruel, and a
few things his situation required. Some one had given him a warm
blanket, and when he died there was food in the house, with tenpence
halfpenny in money, a few scraps of poetry, and a bushel of wheat which
he had gleaned in the harvest. A decent coffin and shroud were provided,
and he was buried in Stradbrook churchyard.[99]
Chambers was literally one of the poor at all times; and hence his
annals are short and simple. Disregard of personal appearance was
natural to his poverty-stricken circumstances and melancholy
disposition; for the wheel of his fortune was fixed by habit, as by a
nail in a sure place, to constant indigence. Neglected in his youth, and
without fixed employment, he brooded throughout life on his hopeless
condition, without a friend of his own rank who could participate in his
sorrows. He was a lonely man, and a wanderer, who had neither act nor
part in the common ways of the world.
[99] The Ipswich Journal, January 31, 1827.
* * * * *
~Vauxhall.~