1907] His Friendship with Patmore 183 



in the Premonstratensian monastery at Storrington. It was here that 

 his hest work was clone. It was a constant series of beautiful poems. 

 He did not beat about for subjects but wrote on the simplest subjects 

 with unfailing wealth of thought and power of language. He had be- 

 come devoted to my wife, and many of his poems were addressed to 

 her or her children. Both his first volumes date from this time at 

 Storrington, as was his magnificent " Ode to the Sunset " which for 

 some reason was omitted from these and stands in another volume. He 

 owed much in his style to Coventry Patmore. It was through me that 

 they became acquainted. The bond between them was a common 

 adoration for Alice. Thompson went to stay a week with Patmore in 

 the country and they made friends, talking constantly of her, and after- 

 wards corresponded always about her. He took opium again, after he 

 left Storrington, and went back to his life in the London streets, but 

 not again to the slums. He used, before I know him, to sleep at night 

 under the arches of Covent Garden where every quarter of an hour he 

 was liable to be kicked awake by the police and told to move on. It 

 was in an empty space of ground behind the market where the gardeners 

 throw their rubbish, that, just before, he had resolved on suicide. He 

 then spent all his remaining pence on laudanum, one large dose, and he 

 went there one night to take it. He had swallowed half when he felt an 

 arm laid on his wrist, and looking up he saw Chatterton standing over 

 him and forbidding him to drink the other half. I asked him when he 

 told me of it how he had known that it was Chatterton. He said, " I 

 recognized him from the pictures of him — besides, I knew that it was 

 he before I saw him — and I remembered at once the story of the 

 money which arrived for Chatterton the day after his suicide." Just 

 the same thing happened to Thompson, for a friend having seen the copy 

 of " Merrie England " told him about it the very next morning with 

 the result I told you of.' 



" I asked Meynell whether he thought Thompson had ever seriously 

 to do with women. He said, ' I hardly think so. The only thing he 

 ever mentioned on such a subject was about the girl I once told you of. 

 It was when I was proposing to take him into my house, and I was 

 surprised, being as he was then destitute, that he should hesitate to 

 accept my offer. He then explained to me that his reason was that a 

 girl, a street walker, he never told me her name, had made a friendship 

 with him out of her charity. She lived in Brompton, but frequented 

 the streets near the Strand, and when she had failed to secure a com- 

 panion for the night she used to take him home with her and give him 

 a supper and a shelter. She liked his poetry, not any of it then pub- 

 lished, and they were friends in this way. He had told her of my 

 offer, and when she heard it she had said at once that he must give up 

 coming to see her, for it would not do for him with his new respectable 



