A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Blake, Katharine
BLAKE, KATHARINE,
Wife of William Blake, the artist, was born in humble life, and first noticed by the young painter for the whiteness of her hand and the sylph-like beauty of her form. Her maiden name was Boutcher, not name to set in ryhme, but her lover inscribed his lyrics to the "dark-eyed Kate." He also drew her picture; and finding she had good domestic qualities, he married her. They lived long and happily together. A writer who knew them intimately, thus describes her:—
"She seemed to have been created on purpose for Blake; she believed him to be the finest genius on earth; she believed in his verse; she believed in his designs; and to the wildest flights of his imagination she bowed the knee, and was a worshipper. She set his house in good order, prepared his frugal meal, learned to think as he thought, and, indulging him in his harmless absurdities, became as it were bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. She learned—what a young and handsome woman is seldom apt to learn—to despise gaudy dresses, costly meals, pleasant company, and agreeable invitations; she found out the way of being happy at home, living on the simplest of food, and contented in the homeliest of clothing. It was no ordinary mind which could do all this; and she whom Blake emphatically called his 'beloved' was no ordinary woman. She wrought off in the press the impressions of his plates—she coloured them with a light and neat hand—made drawings much in the spirit of his compositions, and almost rivalled him in all things, save in the power which he possessed of seeing visions of any Individual living or dead, whenever he chose to see them."
William Blake died in 1828, without any visible pain, his faithful wife watching over him to the last. She died a few years afterwards.