Life of William Blake (1880), Volume 1/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX.
TRIAL FOR SEDITION. 1803—1804. [ÆT. 46—47.]
High visions and patient industry, friendly intercourse with his neighbours, and happy enjoyment of nature were all interrupted for Blake during the short remainder of his stay at Felpham, by the incongruous event in a peaceful and innocent life narrated in the next letter to Mr. Butts,—the last of the series: —
Felpham, August 16, 1803.
Dear Sir,
I send seven Drawings, which I hope will please you. This, I believe, about balances our account. Our return to London draws on apace. Our expectation of meeting again with you is one of our greatest pleasures. Pray tell me how your eyes do. I never sit down to work but I think of you, and feel anxious for the sight of that friend whose eyes have done me so much good. I omitted, very unaccountably, to copy out in my last letter that passage in my rough sketch, which related to your kindness in offering to exhibit my two last pictures in the Gallery in Berners-street. It was in these words: 'I sincerely thank you for your kind offer of exhibiting my two pictures. The trouble you take on my account, I trust, will be recompensed to you by Him who seeth in secret. If you should find it convenient to do so, it will be gratefully remembered by me among the other numerous kindnesses I have received from you.'
I go on with the remaining subjects which you gave me commission to execute for you; but I shall not be able to send any more before my return, though, perhaps, I may bring some with me finished. I am, at present, in a bustle to defend myself against a very unwarrantable warrant from a justice of peace in Chichester, which was taken out against me by a private in Captain Leathes' troop of 1st or Royal Dragoons, for an assault and seditious words. The wretched man has terribly perjured himself, as has his comrade; for, as to sedition, not one word relating to the King or Government was spoken by either him or me. His enmity arises from my having turned him out of my garden, into which he was invited as an assistant by a gardener at work therein, without my knowledge that he was so invited. I desired him, as politely as possible, to go out of the garden; he made me an impertinent answer. I insisted on his leaving the garden; he refused. I still persisted in desiring his departure. He then threatened to knock out my eyes, with many abominable imprecations, and with some contempt for my person; it affronted my foolish pride. I therefore took him by the elbows, and pushed him before me till I had got him out. There I intended to have left him; but he, turning about, put himself into a posture of defiance, threatening and swearing at me. I, perhaps foolishly and perhaps not, stepped out at the gate, and, putting aside his blows, took him again by the elbows, and, keeping his back to me, pushed him forward down the road about fifty yards—he all the while endeavouring to turn round and strike me, and raging and cursing, which drew out several neighbours. At length, when I had got him to where he was quartered, which was very quickly done, we were met at the gate by the master of the house—the Fox Inn—(who is the proprietor of my cottage) and his wife and daughter, and the man's comrade, and several other people. My landlord compelled the soldiers to go indoors, after many abusive threats against me and my wife from the two soldiers; but not one word of threat on account of sedition was uttered at that time. This method of revenge was planned between them after they had got together into the stable. This is the whole outline. I have for witnesses:—the gardener, who is ostler at the Fox, and who evidences that, to his knowledge, no word of the remotest tendency to Government or sedition was uttered; our nextdoor neighbour, a miller's wife (who saw me turn him before me down the road, and saw and heard all that happened at the gate of the inn), who evidences that no expression of threatening on account of sedition was uttered in the heat of their fury by either of the dragoons. This was the woman's own remark, and does high honour to her good sense, as she observes that, whenever a quarrel happens, the offence is always repeated. The landlord of the inn and his wife and daughter will evidence the same, and will evidently prove the comrade perjured, who swore that he heard me, while at the gate, utter seditious words, and d—— the K——, without which perjury I could not have been committed; and I had no witnesses with me before the justices who could combat his assertion, as the gardener remained in my garden all the while, and he was the only person I thought necessary to take with me. I have been before a bench of justices at Chichester this morning; but they, as the lawyer who wrote down the accusation told me in private, are compelled by the military to suffer a prosecution to be entered into, although they must know, and it is manifest, that the whole is a fabricated perjury. I have been forced to find bail. Mr. Hayley was kind enough to come forward, and Mr. Seagrave, printer at Chichester; Mr. H. in £100, and Mr. S. in £50, and myself am bound in £100 for my appearance at the quarter-sessions, which is after Michaelmas. So I shall have the satisfaction to see my friends in town before this contemptible business comes on. I say contemptible, for it must be manifest to every one that the whole accusation is a wilful perjury. Thus you see, my dear friend, that I cannot leave this place without some adventure. It has struck a consternation through all the villages round. Every man is now afraid of speaking to, or looking at, a soldier: for the peaceable villagers have always been forward in expressing their kindness for us, and they express their sorrow at our departure as soon as they hear of it. Every one here is my evidence for peace and good neighbourhood; and yet, such is the present state of things, this foolish accusation must be tried in public. Well, I am content, I murmur not, and doubt not that I shall receive justice, and am only sorry for the trouble and expense. I have heard that my accuser is a disgraced sergeant: his name is John Scholfield. Perhaps it will be in your power to learn somewhat about the man. I am very ignorant of what I am requesting of you; I only suggest what I know you will be kind enough to excuse if you can learn nothing about him, and what, I as well know, if it is possible, you will be kind enough to do in this matter.
Dear Sir, this perhaps was suffered to clear up some doubts, and to give opportunity to those whom I doubted to clear themselves of all imputation. If a man offends me ignorantly, and not designedly, surely I ought to consider him with favour and affection. Perhaps the simplicity of myself is the origin of all offences committed against me. If I have found this, I shall have learned a most valuable thing, well worth three years' perseverance. I have found it. It is certain that a too passive manner, inconsistent with my active physiognomy, had done me much mischief. I must now express to you my conviction that all is come from the spiritual world for good and not for evil.
Give me your advice in my perilous adventure. Burn what I have peevishly written about any friend. I have been very much degraded and injuriously treated; but if it all arise from my own fault, I ought to blame myself,
O why was I born with a different face?
Why was I not born like the rest of my race?
When I look, each one starts; when I speak, I offend;
Then I'm silent and passive, and lose every friend.
Then my verse I dishonour, my pictures despise;
My person degrade, and my temper chastise;
And the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame;
All my talents I bury, and dead is my fame.
I am either too low or too highly priz'd;
When elate I am envied, when meek I'm despised.
Yours, William Blake.
The sequel forcibly reminds us we are here in the times of 'the good old king,' not in those of Victoria. The soldier and 'his mate' made their charge on oath before a magistrate, and Blake had to stand his trial for high treason at the next Quarter Sessions.
Hayley, full of zeal for the artist, whose extraordinary entanglement 'pressed not a little on his mind and heart,' engaged as defendant's counsel, his friend, Samuel Rose, another name familiar to the reader of Cowper's correspondence as that of the enthusiastic young Scotchman, who, at twenty-two, had introduced himself to the shy recluse, winning a large share of the poet's regard and favour. Now in his thirtieth year, he had been about eight years at the bar, practising with fair success on the home circuit. Prospects of a brilliant future were only dashed by wavering health,—a constitution unequal to the strain of his profession. On that sunken rock, how many struggling in the same arduous career,—often those of brightest promise, of finest nature,—have been wrecked, almost at the outset; not great and famous, but nameless and unremembered.
Meanwhile, as the trial was not to come off till the following January, and all the arrangements for Blake's return to London had been completed, he quitted Felpham at the end of September, carrying with him Hayley's unabated goodwill and esteem; some unfinished work for the Lives of Romney and of Cowper; and charged also with instructions to glean all the particulars he could respecting Romney's works. These instructions Blake zealously fulfilled, as letters written to Hayley during the next two years show. He left the literary hermit producing his daily occasional poem, epitaph, or song, on waking in the morning; extempore sonnet while shaving; and facile labours during the day, at an extensive composition on the Triumphs of Music, 'with devotional sonnets and hymns interspersed.' Two days sufficed for a whole canto. This composition the English public has hitherto declined to trouble its head about, despite the confident prediction of an amiable female friend, 'that it would gradually become a favourite with readers' of a turn 'for simplicity and tenderness.'
A week or two after his return, Blake writes from South Molton Street:—
October 26th, 1803.
Dear Sir,
I hasten to write to you by the favour of Mr. Edwards. I have been with Mr. Saunders who has now in his possession all Mr. Romney's pictures that remained after the sale at Hampstead; I saw Milton and his Daughters, and 'Twas where the Seas were Roaring, and a beautiful Female Head. He has promised to write a list of all that he has in his possession, and of all that he remembers of Mr. Romney's paintings, with notices where they now are, as far as his recollection will serve. The picture of Christ in the Desert lie supposes to be one of those which he has rolled on large rollers. He will take them down and unroll them, but cannot do it easily, as they are so large as to occupy the whole length of his workshop, and are laid across beams at the top.
Mr. Flaxman is now out of town. When he returns I will lose no time in setting him to work on the same object.
I have got to work after Fuseli for a little Shakespeare. Mr. Johnson the bookseller tells me that there is no want of work. So far you will be rejoiced with me, and your words, 'Do not fear you can want employment!' were verified the morning after I received your kind letter; but I go on finishing Romney with spirit, and for the relief of variety shall engage in other little works as they arise.
I called on Mr. Evans who gives small hopes of our ballads; he says he has sold but fifteen numbers at the most, and that going on would be a certain loss of almost all the expenses. I then proposed to him to take a part with me in publishing them on a smaller scale, which he declined on account of its being out of his line of business to publish, and a line in which he is determined never to engage, attaching himself wholly to the sale of fine editions of authors and curious books in general. He advises that some publisher should be spoken to who would purchase the copyright: and, as far as I can judge of the nature of publication, no chance is left to one out of the trade. Thus the case stands at present. God send better times. Everybody complains, yet all go on cheerfully and with spirit. The shops in London improve; everything is elegant, clean, and neat; the streets are widened where they were narrow; even Snow Hill is become almost level and is a very handsome street, and the narrow part of the Strand near St. Clement's is widened and become very elegant.
My wife continues poorly, but fancies she is better in health here than by the seaside. We both sincerely pray for the health of Miss Poole and for all our friends in Sussex, and remain, dear sir,
Your sincere and devoted servants,
W. and C. Blake.
The trial came off at Chichester, 11th January, 1804, at the Quarter Sessions; the Duke of Richmond (the radical, not the corn-law duke) being the presiding magistrate. The sessions were held, in those days, in the Guildhall, which is the shell of a Gothic building, having been formerly the chancel, of Early English date, to the old church of the Grey Friars convent. The fragmentary chancel and the Friary grounds are still extant, just within what used to be the city walls, at the north-east corner of the cheerful old cathedral town.
A few days before the impending trial, Hayley met with an accident, which very nearly prevented his attending to give evidence in his protégé's favour. It was of a kind, however, to which he was pretty well accustomed. A persevering and fearless rider, he was in the eccentric habit of using an umbrella on horseback, to shade his eyes; the abrupt unfurling of which was commonly followed, naturally enough, by the rider's being forthwith pitched on his head. He had, on this occasion, lighted on a flint with more than usual violence; owing his life, indeed, to the opportune shield of a strong, new hat. ' Living or dying,' however, he declares to his doctor, he 'must make a public appearance, within a few days, at the trial of our friend Blake.' And on the appointed day he did appear in Court, to speak to the character and habits of the accused.
Reference obligingly made for me by the present editor, to the file of the Sussex Advertiser, at that date the only Sussex newspaper, discovers a report (16th Jan. 1804) of this singular trial; one its inditer little thought would ever become curious and interesting. The report is after the curt fashion of local journals in those backward days. 'William Blake, an engraver at Felpham, was tried on a charge exhibited against him by two soldiers for having uttered seditious and treasonable expressions, such as "D—n the king, d—n all his subjects, d—n his soldiers, they are all slaves; when Bonaparte comes, it will be cut-throat for cut-throat, and the weakest must go to the wall; I will help him; &c. &c."'
Mrs. Blake used afterwards to tell how, in the middle of the trial, when the soldier invented something to support his case, her husband called out 'False!' with characteristic vehemence, and in a tone which electrified the whole court, and carried conviction with it. Rose greatly exerted himself for the defence. In his cross-examination of the accuser, he 'most happily exposed,' says Hayley, 'the falsehood and malignity of the charge, and also spoke very eloquently for his client,' though, in the midst of his speech, seized with illness, and concluding it with difficulty. Blake's neighbours joined Hayley in giving him the same character of habitual gentleness and peaceableness; which must have a little astonished the soldier, after his peculiar experiences of those qualities. A good deal of the two soldiers' evidence being plainly false, the whole was received with suspicion. It became clear that whatever the words uttered, they were extorted, in the irritation of the moment, by the soldier's offensive conduct.
'After a very long and patient hearing,' the Sussex Advertiser continues, 'he was, by the jury, acquitted; which so gratified the auditory that the court was, in defiance of all decency, thrown into an uproar by their noisy exultations. The business of the afore-going Sessions,' it is added, 'owing to the great length of time taken up by the above trials' (Blake's and others), 'was extended to a late hour on the second day, a circumstance that but rarely happens in the western division' of the county. 'The Duke of Richmond sat, the first day, from ten in the morning till eight at night, without quitting the court, or taking any refreshment.'
An old man at Chichester, but lately dead, who was present as a stripling, at the trial, attracted thither by his desire to see Hayley, 'the great man' of the neighbourhood, said, when questioned, that the only thing he remembered of it was Blake's flashing eye
Great was Hayley's satisfaction. 'It was late in the evening,' writes he to Johnson, and 'I was eager to present the delivered artist to our very kind and anxious friend, the lady of Lavant, Mrs. Poole.' The friendly welcome and social evening meal which followed all this frivolous vexation and even peril, the pleasant meeting in the cheerful hospitable house of the venerable lady, we can picture. Her house, in which Blake often was, yet stands, somewhat altered, by the wayside to the right as you enter the hamlet of Mid Lavant, ten minutes' drive from Chichester; at the back, pleasant grounds slope down to the babbling Lavant brook, with a winding road beside it, across which rise other pleasant wooded slopes, and beyond, the solemn, rounded Downs,—-in this part bare of trees; among them, to the right, Goodwood, and that specially conspicuous hill, the Trundle (or St. Roche's). The 'peerless villa,' Hayley used to call it; everything of his, or of his friends, being more or less extraordinary and romantic. The lady herself was a woman respected far and wide, sociable, cheerful, and benevolent. She is still remembered in those parts, though none of her kin remain there. 'Ah! good creature!' exclaimed an infirm old labourer but the other day, on hearing mention of her name; he had worked for her. She died at a ripe age, suddenly, while dining among her friends at the Bishop's palace, a little more than three years after Blake's trial.
Poor Rose,—defendant's counsel,—never rallied from the illness which attacked him on that day. The 'severe cold' proved the commencement of a rapid consumption, of which he died at the close of the same year; sorrowful Hayley effervescing into an 'epitaph in the middle of the night.'
Not ten years before, quiet literary men and shoemakers, theoretic enthusiasts such as Horne Tooke the learned and witty, Holcroft, Thelwall, Hardy, members of a corresponding society—society corresponding with 'the friends of liberty' abroad that is—had been vindictively prosecuted by the Crown for (constructive) high treason, and almost convicted. At this very time, men were being hung in Ireland on such trivial charges. Blake's previous intimacy with Paine, Holcroft, and the rest, was doubtless unknown to an unlettered soldier, and probably at Chichester also. But as a very disadvantageous antecedent, in a political sense, of which counsel for the prosecution might have made good use, it was, in connexion with this vamped-up charge, a curious coincidence. Friend Hayley himself was not a very orthodox man in politics or religion, a Whig at the least, a quondam intimate of Gibbon's, admirer of Voltaire and Rousseau; holding, in short, views of his own. He was a confirmed absentee, moreover, from church, though an exemplary reader, to his household, of Church-service, and sermon, and family prayer, winding up with devotional hymns of his own composition.
Blake used to declare the Government, or some high person, knowing him to have been of the Paine set, 'sent the soldier to entrap him;' which we must take the liberty of regarding as a purely visionary notion.
The net result of this startling close to the tranquil episode of the life at Felpham was to revive, in Blake's generous heart, warm feelings of gratitude and affection towards Hayley, whose conduct on the occasion certainly had the ring of true metal in it. For a time, at any rate, it obliterated the sense of irritation and the intellectual scorn which had been engendered in Blake's mind,—witness various jottings in his note-book to be quoted hereafter,—by a too close companionship bringing into harsh prominence the inevitable yet ludicrous social inversion of their true natural relations. Full of genuine solicitude on account of Hayley's rash horsemanship, which had been so near proving fatal, he sends an emphatic caution on his return:—
London, January 14, 1804.
Dear Sir,
I write immediately on my arrival, not merely to inform you that in a conversation with an old soldier, who came in the coach with me, I learned that no one, not even the most expert horseman, ought ever to mount a trooper's horse. They are taught so many tricks, such as stopping short, falling down on their knees, running sideways, and in various and innumerable ways endeavouring to throw the rider, that it is a miracle if a stranger escape with his life. All this I learn'd with some alarm, and heard also what the soldier said confirmed by another person in the coach. I therefore, as it is my duty, beg and entreat you never to mount that wretched horse again, nor again trust to one who has been so educated. God our Saviour watch over you and preserve you.
I have seen Flaxman already, as I took to him, early this morning, your present to his scholars. He and his are all well and in high spirits, and welcomed me with kind affection and generous exultation in my escape from the arrows of darkness. I intend to see Mr. Lambert and Mr. Johnson, bookseller, this afternoon. My poor wife has been near the gate of death, as was supposed by our kind and attentive fellow inhabitant, the young and very amiable Mrs. Enoch, who gave my wife all the attention that a daughter could pay to a mother; but my arrival has dispelled the formidable malady, and my dear and good woman again begins to resume her health and strength. Pray, my dear sir, favour me with a line concerning your health, how you have escaped the double blow both from the wretched horse and from your innocent humble servant, whose heart and soul are more and more drawn out towards you, Felpham and its kind inhabitants. I feel anxious and therefore pray to my God and Father for the health of Miss Poole, and hope that the pang of affection and gratitude is the gift of God for good. I am thankful that I feel it; it draws the soul towards eternal life, and conjunction with spirits of just men made perfect by love and gratitude,—the two angels who stand at Heaven's gate, ever open, ever inviting guests to the marriage. O foolish Philosophy! Gratitude is Heaven itself; there could be no Heaven without gratitude; I feel it and I know it, I thank God and man for it, and above all, you, my dear friend and benefactor, in the Lord. Pray give my and my wife's duties to Miss Poole; accept them yourself.
Yours in sincerity,
William Blake.