CHATTERTON’S MANUSCRIPT of THE REVENGE, FOUND in a CHEESEMONGER’S SHOP.

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This is a remarkable story of good fortune :

Back in 1825, Mr Upcott, a Librarian of the London Institution, rescued ‘a great literary treasure’, namely Chatterton’s handwritten manuscript of ‘The Revenge,’ a burletta, with additional songs. 

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So, what drew Mr Upcott to the Cheesemonger’s shop where, fortuitously, the manuscript was resting on the counter among a pile of waste paper?  Was he peckish and buying a nibble for lunch, or getting supplies for an evening soirée? Whatever the reason, and whatever he had planned, he was in the right place at the right time. Or, perhaps, not exactly the right time, for a few pages containing lines 444-496, plus the last four songs are missing from the manuscript, which now rests on the shelves of the British Library. 

 

It’s a bit sad to imagine the missing pages of such an important manuscript leaving the cheese shop one by one, wrapped around various chunks of ‘Stinking Archbishop’. Fortunately, that specific stinky cheese, modelled on a real cheese created in 1972, was invented in 2015 for a Wallace and Gromit movie. However, I think it is safe to assume that some cheeses in 1825 were pretty smelly too.

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And so we ask, don’t we, what are the chances of such a remarkable discovery?  Well, ‘waste’ paper, in the form of the daily newspaper, was an important commodity when I was a lad. It was used primarily for starting the fire in the hearth (when coal was available), and of course torn into strips for use in the WC. – those were the days! 

 

My guess is that it was much the same back in 1825, providing you were fortunate enough to have a WC.  The upshot is, waste paper was used for many and sundry purposes, including the wrapping of food in shops.