Life of William Blake (1880), Volume 1/Chapter 16

by Alexander Gilchrist, Anne Gilchrist

CHAPTER XVI.

A NEW LIFE, 1799—1800, [ÆT. 42—43.]

About this time (1800) the ever-friendly Flaxman gave Blake an introduction which had important consequences; involving a sudden change of residence and mode of life. This was in recommending him to Hayley, 'poet,' country gentleman, friend and future biographer of Cowper; in which last capacity the world alone remembers him. Then, though few went to see his plays, or read his laboured Life of Milton, he retained a traditional reputation on the strength of almost his first poem,—still his magnum opus, after nearly twenty years had passed since its appearence,—the Triumphs of Temper. He held, in fact, an honoured place in contemporary literature; his society eagerly sought and obtained, by lovers of letters; to mere ordinary squires and neighbours sparingly accorded; to the majority point-blank refused. His name continued to be held in esteem among a slow-going portion of the world, long after his literary ware had ceased to be marketable. People of distinction and 'position in society,' princesses of the blood, and others, when visiting Bognor, would, even many years later, go out of their way to see him, as if he had been a Wordsworth.

Between Flaxman and the Hermit of Eartham, as the book-loving squire delighted to subscribe himself, friendly relations had, for some twenty years, subsisted. During three of these, Hayley's acknowledged son (he had no legitimate children), Thomas Alphonso, had been an articled pupil of the sculptor's. Early in 1798, beginnings of curvature of the spine had necessitated a return from Flaxman's roof into Sussex. There, after two years' more suffering, he died of the accumulated maladies engendered in a weakly constitution by sedentary habits; a victim of forcing, I suspect.

In 1799, the author of the Triumphs of Temper was seeing through the press one of his long Poetical Essays, as smooth and tedious as the rest, on Sculpture; in the form of 'Epistles to Flaxman.' It was published in 1800, with three trivial illustrations. Two of these are engraved by Blake: The Death of Demosthenes, after a bald outline by Hayley junior, whom the father easily persuaded himself into believing, as well as styling, his 'youthful Phidias;' and a portrait of the 'young sculptor,' after a medallion by his master, Flaxman, the drawing of which was furnished Blake by Howard; the combined result being indifferent. This was the occasion of Blake's first coming into direct personal communication with Hayley, to whom he submitted an impression of the plate of The Death of Demosthenes, which 'has been approved,' he writes, February 18th, 1800, 'by Mr. Flaxman;' adding his hopes that the young sculptor 'will soon be well enough to make hundreds of designs both for the engraver and the sculptor.'

On April 25th, 1800, the long intermittent tragedy of Cowper's life came to an end, amid dark and heavy clouds: the last years of suffering having been smoothed by a pension obtained through Hayley's intercession. A week later died Hayley's hapless son. And our poor bard had to solace himself in his own way, by inditing sonnets to his child's memory, 'on his pillow,' at four o'clock in the morning; a daily sonnet or two soon swelling into MS. volumes.

Blake, to whom death ever seemed but as 'the going out of one room into another,' was, of all men, one who could offer consolation as sincere as his sympathy. On hearing the sorrowful news he wrote at once the following characteristic letter:—

Dear Sir,

I am very sorry for your immense loss, which is a repetition of what all feel in this valley of misery and happiness mixed. I send the shadow of the departed angel, and hope the likeness is improved. The lips I have again lessened as you advise and done a good many other softenings to the whole. I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago I lost a brother and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the spirit, and see him in my remembrance, in the regions of my imagination; I hear his advice and even now write from his dictate. Forgive me for expressing to you my enthusiasm which I wish all to partake of, since it is to me a source of immortal joy, even in this world. By it I am the companion of angels. May you continue to be so more and more; and to be more and more persuaded that every mortal loss is an immortal gain. The ruins of Time build mansions in Eternity.

I have also sent a proof of Pericles for your remarks, thanking you for the kindness with which you express them, and feeling heartily your grief with a brother's sympathy.

I remain,
Dear Sir,
Your humble servant,
William Blake.

Lambeth, May 6th, 1800.

The Pericles in question is an outline engraving of a medallion in the Townly collection which forms the frontispiece to Hayley's Essay on Sculpture.

'The shadow of the departed angel,' here spoken of, may possibly be the sepia drawing, which subsequently passed into the hands of Mr. George Smith, and was by him bound up in a volume of Blakiana containing many other items of great interest. At the sale of that gentleman's library, at Christie's, April, 1880, this volume fetched £66.

As further consolation, Hayley resolved on ample memoirs of son and friend. To the biography of Cowper he was ultimately urged by Lady Hesketh herself. During one of his frequent flying visits to town, and his friends the Meyers, at Kew, in June, 1800, and while he, nothing loth, was being coaxed to the task of writing Cowper's life, the idea was mooted of helping a deserving artist, by the employment of Blake to engrave the illustrations of the projected quarto. And in the same breath followed the proposal for the artist to come and live at Felpham that, during the book's progress, he might be near 'that highly respected hermit,' as Smith styles the squire; a generous, if hot-headed hermit, who thought to push Blake's fortunes, by introducing him to his numerous well-connected friends. All Hayley's projects were hurried into execution in the very hey-day of conception, or as speedily abandoned. Blake at once fell in with this scheme, encouraged perhaps by the prospect of a patron. And his friend Mr. Butts rejoiced aloud, deeming his protégé's fortune made.

A copy of the Triumphs of Temper (tenth edition), illustrated by Stothard, which had belonged to the poet's son, and was now given to Blake, contains evidence,—in verse of course,—of Hayley's esteem for him. Perhaps the fact can palliate our insertion of rhymes so guiltless of sense otherwise. It is Smith who is answerable for having preserved them:—

Accept, my gentle visionary Blake,
Whose thoughts are fanciful and kindly mild;
Accept, and fondly keep for friendship's sake,
This favoured vision, my poetic child!

Rich in more grace than fancy ever won,
To thy most tender mind this book will be.
For it belonged to my departed son;
So from an angel it descends to thee.
W. H. July, 1800.

After seven productive years in Lambeth, the modest house in Hercules Buildings was exchanged for a cottage by the sea, where Blake spent three years; the only portion of his life passed in the country. He was now in his forty-third year, Hayley in his fifty-seventh. In August, Blake went down to Felpham to look at his future home, and secure a house; which he did at an annual rent of twenty pounds: not being provided with one rent-free by Hayley, as some supposed,—a kind of patronage which would have ill-suited the artist's independent spirit. The poet was not even his landlord, owning, in fact, no property in the village beyond what he had bought to build his house on. Blake's cottage belonged to the landlord of the Fox Inn.

Hayley, whose forte was not economy nor prudent conduct of any kind, had, by ill-judged generosities and lavish expenditure, seriously incumbered the handsome estate inherited from his father. Felpham, his present retreat, lay some six miles off the patrimonial 'paradise,' as he, for once, not hyperbolically styled it,—romantic Eartham, a peaceful, sequestered spot among the wooded hills stretching southward from the Sussex Downs; a hamlet made up of some dozen widely-scattered cottages, a farm-house or two, a primitive little antique church, and the comfortable modern 'great house,' lying high, in the centre of lovely sheltered gardens and grounds, commanding wide, varied views of purple vale and gleaming sea. At Felpham, during the latter years of his son's life, he had built a marine cottage, planned to his own fancy, whither to retire and retrench, while he let his place at Eartham. It was a cottage with an embattled turret; with a library fitted up with busts and pictures; a 'covered way for equestrian exercise,' and a well-laid-out garden; all as a first step in the new plans of economy. His son passed the painful close of his ill-starred existence in it; and here Hayley himself had now definitely taken up his abode. He continued there till his death in 1820; long before which he had sold Eartham to Huskisson, the statesman; whose widow continued to inhabit it for many years.

On the eve of removing from Lambeth, in the middle of September, was written the following characteristic letter from Mrs. Blake to Mrs. Flaxman,—the 'dear Nancy' of the sculptor. I am indebted for a copy of it to the courtesy of Mrs. Flaxman's sister, the late Miss Denman. Characteristic, I mean, of Blake; for though the wife be the nominal inditer, the husband is obviously the author. The very hand-writing can hardly be distinguished from his. The verses with which it concludes may, in their artless spiritual simplicity, almost rank with the Songs of Innocence and Experience.

From Mrs. Blake to Mrs. Flaxman.

'My dearest Friend,

I hope you will not think we could forget your services to us, or any way neglect to love and remember with affection even the hem of your garment. We indeed presume on your kindness in neglecting to have called on you since my husband's first return from Felpham. We have been incessantly busy in our great removal; but can never think of going without first paying our proper duty to you and Mr. Flaxman. We intend to call on Sunday afternoon in Hampstead, to take farewell; all things being now nearly completed for our setting forth on Tuesday morning. It is only sixty miles and Lambeth one hundred; for the terrible desert of London was between. My husband has been obliged to finish several things necessary to be finished before our migration. The swallows call us, fleeting past our window at this moment. O! how we delight in talking of the pleasure we shall have in preparing you a summer bower at Felpham. And we not only talk, but behold! the angels of our journey have inspired a song to you:—

To my dear Friend, Mrs. Anna Flaxman.

This song to the flower of Flaxman's joy;
To the blossom of hope, for a sweet decoy;
Do all that you can and all that you may,
To entice him to Felpham and far away.

Away to sweet Felpham, for Heaven is there;
The ladder of Angels descends through the air,
On the turret its spiral does softly descend,
Through the village then winds, at my cot it does end.

You stand in the village and look up to heaven;
The precious stairs glitter in flight seventy-seven;
And my brother is there; and my friend and thine
Descend and ascend with the bread and the wine.

The bread of sweet thought and the wine of delight
Feed the village of Felpham by day and by night;
And at his own door the bless'd hermit does stand,
Dispensing unceasing to all the wide land.
W. Blake.

'Receive my and my husband's love and affection, and believe me to be yours affectionately,

'Catherine Blake.'

'H. B. Lambeth, 14 Sept. 1800.'

The labour of preparation and the excitement of eager anticipation proved almost too much for the affectionate and devoted Kate. September 16th, a few days before they started, Blake writes to Hayley, 'My dear and too careful and over-joyous woman has exhausted her strength... Eartham will be my first temple and altar; my wife is like a flame of many colours of precious jewels whenever she hears it named.'

A letter from Blake's own hand to Flaxman, penned immediately after arrival in Sussex, has been put into print by our excellent friend Smith. This very physiognomic composition, lucid enough to all who know Blake, needlessly puzzled Allan Cunningham. It does not, to my mind, separate, as he maintains, into two distinct parts of strongly contrasted spirit; nor does it betoken that irreconcilable discord of faculties he imagines. The mingling of sound sagacity with the utmost licence of imagination showed itself at every hour of Blake's life. He would, at any moment, speak as he here writes, and was not a mere sensible mortal in the morning, and a wild visionary in the evening. Visionary glories floated before his eyes even while he stooped over the toilsome copper-plate. There was no pause or hiatus in the life-long wedding of spiritual and earthly things in his daily course; no giving the reins to imagination at one time more than other.

And if immortality, if eternity, mean something, if they imply a pre-existence as well as a post-mortal one, that which startles the practical mind in this letter is not so wholly mad; especially if we make due allowance for the dialect, the unwonted phraseology (most very original men have their phraseology), which long custom had made familiar and anything but extravagant to him, or to those who have read themselves into Blake's writing and design; a dialect so full of trope and metaphor, dealt with as if they were literal, not symbolic facts.

'Dear Sculptor of Eternity

'We are safe arrived at our cottage, which is more beautiful than I thought it, and more convenient. It is a perfect model for cottages, and I think for palaces of magnificence, only enlarging not altering its proportions, and adding ornaments and not principles. Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple without intricacy, it seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be improved either in beauty or use.

'Mr. Hayley received us with his usual brotherly affection. I have begun to work. Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates: her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen; and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. My wife and sister are both well, courting Neptune for an embrace.

'Our journey was very pleasant; and though we had a great deal of luggage, no grumbling. All was cheerfulness and good humour on the road, and yet we could not arrive at our cottage before half-past eleven at night, owing to the necessary shifting of our luggage from one chaise to another; for we had seven different chaises, and as many different drivers. We set out between six and seven in the morning of Thursday, with sixteen heavy boxes and portfolios full of prints.

'And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life; and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why then should I be anxious about the riches or fame of mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to His Divine will, for our good.

'You, O dear Flaxman! are a sublime archangel—my friend and companion from eternity. In the Divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days before this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity which can never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other.

'Farewell, my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me for ever to remain your grateful and affectionate

''William Blake.'

'Felpham, Sept. 21st, 1800.
Sunday morning.'

BLAKE'S COTTAGE AT FELPHAM

From this letter it appears the squire's method of travelling by post-chaise was adopted by the painter. His sister, nearly seven years younger than himself, made one in the party and in Blake's family during his residence at Felpham.

Blake also wrote, during this time, at frequent intervals, to Mr. Butts, letters which in their full and frank utterance show that this steady and almost life-long buyer of his works was a sympathetic friend as well as a constant patron.

The first of these letters, after describing the journey and the cottage in words almost identical with those used in the letter to Flaxman just quoted, continues:—

[Date of Post-mark, Sept. 23, 1800,]

Dear Friend of my Angel's,

****** The villagers of Felpham are not mere rustics; they are polite and modest. Meat is cheaper than in London; but the sweet air and the voices of winds, trees, and birds, and the odours of the happy ground, make it a dwelling for immortals. Work will go on here with God-speed. A roller and two harrows lie before my window. I met a plough on my first going out at my gate the first morning after my arrival, and the ploughboy said to the ploughman, 'Father, the gate is open.' I have begun to work, and find that I can work with greater pleasure than ever, hoping soon to give you a proof that Felpham is propitious to the arts.

God bless you! I shall wish for you on Tuesday evening as usual. Pray, give my and my wife's and sister's love and respects to Mrs. Butts. Accept them yourself, and believe me for ever

Your affectionate and obliged friend,

William Blake.

My sister will be in town in a week, and bring with her your account, and whatever else I can finish.

Direct to me—

Blake, Felpham, near Chichester,

Sussex.

Belonging also to early days at Felpham is the following:—

Felpham, Oct. 2, 1800.

Friend of Religion and Order,

I thank you for your very beautiful and encouraging verses, which I account a crown of laurels, and I also thank you for your reprehension of follies by me fostered. Your prediction will, I hope, be fulfilled in me, and in future I am the determined advocate of religion and humility—the two bands of society. Having been so full of the business of settling the sticks and feathers of my nest, I have not got any forwarder with the Three Maries, or with any other of your commissions; but hope, now I have commenced a new life of industry, to do credit to that new life by improved works. Receive from me a return of verses, such as Felpham produces by me, though not such as she produces by her eldest son. However, such as they are, I cannot resist the temptation to send them to you:—

To my friend Butts I write
My first vision of light,
On the yellow sands sitting.
The sun was emitting
His glorious beams
From Heaven's high streams
Over sea, over land;
My eyes did expand
Into regions of air,
Away from all care;
Into regions of fire,
Remote from desire:
The light of the morning,
Heaven's mountains adorning.
In particles bright.
The jewels of light
Distinct shone and clear.
Amazed, and in fear,
I each particle gazed,
Astonish'd, amazed;
For each was a man
Human-formed. Swift I ran.
For they beckon'd to me,
Remote by the sea,
Saying: 'Each grain of sand,
Every stone on the land,
Each rock and each hill.
Each fountain and rill,
Each herb and each tree,
Mountain, hill, earth, and sea,
Cloud, meteor, and star,
Are men seen afar.'
I stood in the streams
Of heaven's bright beams,
And saw Felpham sweet
Beneath my bright feet,
In soft female charms;
And in her fair arms
My shadow I knew,
And my wife's shadow too,
And my sister and friend.
We like infants descend
In our shadows on earth,
Like a weak mortal birth.
My eyes more and more.
Like a sea without shore,
Continue expanding,
The heavens commanding,
Till the jewels of light,
Heavenly men beaming bright,
Appeared as one man,
Who complacent began
My limbs to infold
In his beams of bright gold;
Like dross purged away,
All my mire and my clay.
Soft consumed in delight.
In his bosom sun-bright
I remain'd. Soft he smil'd,
And I heard his voice mild,
Saying: 'This is my fold,
O thou ram, horn'd with gold,
Who awakest from sleep
On the sides of the deep.
On the mountains around
The roarings resound
Of the lion and wolf,
The loud sea and deep gulf.
These are guards of my fold,
thou ram, horn'd with gold!'
And the voice faded mild,
I remain'd as a child;
All I ever had known,
Before me bright shone:
I saw you and your wife
By the fountains of life.
Such the vision to me
Appear'd on the sea.

Mrs. Butts will, I hope, excuse my not having finished the portrait, I wait for less hurried moments. Our cottage looks more and more beautiful. And though the weather is wet, the air is very mild, much milder than it was in London when we came away. Chichester is a very handsome city, seven miles from us. We can get most conveniences there. The country is not so destitute of accommodations to our wants as I expected it would be. We have had but little time for viewing the country, but what we have seen is most beautiful; and the people are genuine Saxons, handsomer than the people about London. Mrs. Butts will excuse the following lines:—

TO MRS. BUTTS.

Wife of the friend of those I most revere,
Receive this tribute from a harp sincere;
Go on in virtuous seed-sowing on mould
Of human vegetation, and behold
Your harvest springing to eternal life.
Parent of youthful minds, and happy wife!

W. B.

I am for ever yours,

William Blake.

'I have begun to work,' Blake writes; on the plates to a ballad of Hayley's, that is:—Little Tom the Sailor, written and printed for a charitable purpose. The project had been set going in Hayley's fervid head by an account his friend Rose the barrister gave of the boy's heroism and the mother's misfortunes, as celebrated in the poem. Hayley was at once to write a ballad, Blake to illustrate and engrave it, and the broadsheet to be sold for the widow's benefit to the poet's friends, or any who would join in helping the 'necessities of a meritorious woman;' in which the brochure, says Hayley's Memoirs, proved successful.

The poem, like some others of Hayley's, has simplicity, and perhaps even a touch of sweetness. At any rate, it is brief. If its author had not been cursed with the fatal facility of words and numbers, he might have done better things. A tinge of Blake-like feeling seems to have passed for once into the smooth verse of the poet of Eartham. The ballad was written 22nd September, 1800; Blake's broadsheet bears date October 5th. Both verse and designs, of which there are two, one at the head, the other at the foot of the page, are executed on metal—pewter, it is said—the designs being graver work, in the same manner as on wood, the ballad and imprint bitten in with acid. The impressions were printed off by himself and Mrs. Blake:—'Printed for and sold by the Widow Spicer of Folkstone, for the benefit of her orphans.' The sheet is now exceedingly scarce, as broadsheets always become, even when far more widely circulated than this could ever have been. I have come across but two or three copies.

The engravings are vigorous and effective, in an unpretending, rude style. The designs have all Blake's characteristic directness and naïveté. At the foot we see the future widow leaving her humble cottage to seek her sick husband, and turning her head wistfully round as she steps forth on her way; her little son rocking the cradle within. Around stretches a landscape in the typical style of Poussin,—wood, and winding path, and solemn distant downs. It is a grand and simple composition. The engraving at the head of the sheet represents the sailor-boy aloft on the shrouds, climbing to the top-mast, the embodied spirit of his father bursting with extended arms from the midst of the storm-cloud and forked lightnings. This picture also is full of high feeling.

To those disposed to judge a work of art vulgarly by what the eye merely can see, instead of by the emotions aroused, it may look like gross exaggeration to speak of grandeur in so rude and slight a work. But the kindled imagination of the artist can speak eloquently through few and simple strokes? and with them kindle imagination in others. This is more than the most skilful piece of mere artistic handicraft can do, which as it does not come from, neither can it appeal to, the mind. Hence we venture to claim for these designs, a place among the genuinely great in kind, though not in degree, of excellence. In truth, there are very few works by Blake for which thus much, at least, cannot be claimed.