EARLY MARRIED LIFE AND EARLY WORK
We saw that William and Catherine Blake after their marriage settled at 23
Green Street, Leicester Fields. This was in 1782. Here they remained for
two years, learning, not without pain, to adjust themselves to each other.
Mrs Blake's love was maternal and whole-hearted. Hers was not a nature to
question why love should involve the accepting of immeasurable cares. The
cares came one by one and not always singly, and she meekly and bravely
accepted them, contented to live her life in her husband's life, and happy
when she perceived that she could smooth his path and shelter him from
rough blasts.
Blake at this time was an extraordinarily difficult man to live with. He
was by turns vehement, passionate, wildly self-assertive and submissive to
others far inferior to himself. His visions were less bright than they had
been, and his mind was choked with theories about the elemental things of
life that every woman understands by instinct. He was conscious of his own
genius and of the shortcomings of his successful contemporaries. His
rampant egotism sowed his consciousness with resentments that poisoned his
blood and bred bitterness. He made frantic efforts to grasp the liberty he
had seen from afar, but he only succeeded in confounding liberty with
licence, and peremptorily demanding the latter with his wife in a way that
was bound to give her pain. I will not attempt to lift further the veil
of their early married life. We have no right to pry. Mr Ellis has
constructed this period as far as is possible from the poems of Blake, and
to his _Real Blake_ I must refer the curious reader; but for my own part I
am content to note the signs of trouble in the various poems and not to
probe deeper into the secret things which no right-minded person can ever
wish to be proclaimed on the house-top. Suffice it to say that Mrs Blake's
self-forgetful love won the day, and when the early storms had passed, and
the adjustments been made, they were united by a bond which, untouched by
the fickleness of the flesh, could defy all shocks and changes because it
was founded on the enduring reality of the spirit.
In the early years of married life Blake continued with his wife's company
the long walks which had been an early habit. Nothing could have been
better for him. Walking till he was tired, rhythmic swing of his arms,
unchecked sweating, did more than all else to cleanse his whole being and
to cause that uprise of the spirit which was eventually to bring unity and
peace to his chaotic and divided self.
His marriage had disturbed another elemental relationship of life. His
father disapproved of it, and this led to an estrangement. We must admit
that the father had not acquitted himself badly of his paternal duties. It
is true he had foolishly wished to thrash him for reporting his visions,
believing that the boy lied; but he had helped him to be an artist, and
had never really opposed him when a boy. No one can reasonably demand more
of a father. Nature has no superstitions about parent birds when their
young have left the home nest. Gratitude and reverence to parents is still
a beautiful thing, and would doubtless be given spontaneously to them if
they could learn not to interfere when their children have grown up.
It has often been affirmed that the old man was a student of Swedenborg.
If so, there had been at once a bond of sympathy between father and son.
But the truth is that he had not read much of Swedenborg for the simple
reason that he died four years before any theological work of importance
by Swedenborg was translated into English. Everything shows that the
father could not understand the son, who must have appeared to him
eccentric, headlong, and obstinate. When William heard on July 4th, 1784,
of his father's death, he paid all due respect to his memory, but he was
not moved by any violent grief.
We do not suppose that Mr Blake made his fortune by hosiery, but he left a
little money which was divided among the sons. James took on the business
and the mother lived with him. William, assisted by Mrs Mathew (if we may
trust the testimony of J. T. Smith), took the house Number 27, next door
to his brother, and there he opened a print shop in partnership with
Parker, who had been a fellow-pupil at Basire's. Robert, who was teething
when we last saw him, was now grown up and proved understanding and
sympathetic of William's visionary point of view. It was agreed that
Robert should live with William at Number 27 and become his apprentice.
Once more Blake was all mixed up with his immediate kith and kin. When one
remembers that he had no illusions about fathers and saw clearly that the
father of one's flesh might be the enemy of one's spirit, it seems
incredible that he should have planted himself and his wife next door to a
brother who was, he knew, an enemy to his spirit, and to a mother who
would hardly approve of the young wife, and who would not be behindhand
with her advice; but Blake was not strong in common sense, nor could he
keep his neck out of a noose until it had first nearly strangled him.
Robert was a comfort to him, but he can only have added to Mrs Blake's
cares. For at this time William was passionately devoted to Robert, and
his feeling to his wife had not yet quite resolved itself into that
enduring comradeship which was to be his priceless treasure to the end of
his days. The oft-repeated tale of Mrs Blake's obedience when her husband
said peremptorily: "Kneel down and beg Robert's pardon directly, or you
will never see my face again," throws a searchlight on the whole
situation. One sees William's peril and Catherine's care, and how her
self-forgetful love was the one thing that could bring these discordant
elements into a lasting harmony.
This arrangement lasted for two and a half years, when Robert fell
desperately ill. William nursed him tenderly, and during the last
fortnight sat with him day and night. At the end he saw Robert's soul rise
from his body, clapping its hands for joy as it ascended to its perfect
life of liberty. Then William, tired out, went to sleep, and did not wake
up till after three days and three nights.
The print shop was not successful. Blake lacked the necessary business
quality, and the failure was aggravated by disagreements with Parker. The
partnership was dissolved, Parker going his own way, and engraving chiefly
after Stothard, and Blake closing the shop and retiring with his wife to
the other end of Poland Street, which joins Broad Street with Oxford
Street. There at Number 28 (now pulled down and replaced) the two, having
lost everything, set about in a nearer fellowship to retrieve their
fortunes and face the unknown future with as much courage as might be.
Here it is necessary to review briefly Blake's works in engraving and
design. We have seen that his instinct when a boy led him directly to the
Masters of the Past who could guide him best until he came to himself. The
greatest of these were Michael Angelo and Albert Duerer. He did not at
first study these demigods and then adopt their principles. He formulated
his principles from his immediate experience of Reality, and then rejoiced
to find that the men he worshipped produced splendid examples of his
principles. First among these was the value of outline. His spiritual eye
being opened at a very early age, it was always self-evident to him that
the outer world was a vegetable mirror of the inner, and corresponded with
it even in the minutest details. If he saw in the outer colour and form,
he immediately looked at the inner for the reality of both; and to his
inexpressible joy he not only found what he sought, but also that they so
far transcended the outer things that he who saw only the outer could have
only the dimmest idea of the wondrous beauty and glory of the archetypes.
Hence, with his eye on the eternal outline, he declared consistently all
his life that the essence of a body is in its form, and that no man can be
a great artist who does not build up his art on the foundation of good
drawing. Oil as a medium blurred the outline, and therefore he preferred
to work in water-colour. But engraving even better than water-colour,
enabled him to apply his principle. It was simply incredible to him that
any engraver could undervalue drawing. If engraving lost drawing, it lost
all character and expression, and therefore his indignation was aroused
with the Woolletts and Bartolozzis, who in this respect were mortal
sinners. We can see that such a principle was a necessity for Blake with
his peculiar mind, and was even a safeguard to its sanity; but we have a
perfect right to observe that whatever obscures the outlines of things, as
twilight, also removes the barriers that hinder our approach to the
unseen, and therefore we may enunciate another principle, that one
property of a body is its contribution to atmosphere, with its power to
evoke our subjective selves. Holding this as a correlative to Blake's
axiom, we can do full justice not only to Michael Angelo, Albert Duerer,
Raphael, and Blake, but also to Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt, whom Blake
despised. Unfortunately, Blake held to his principle so rigidly that it
was apt to lead him into false admirations. We have seen how unduly he
admired Macpherson, and here we have to note further that whomsoever of
his contemporaries drew the human figure correctly he immediately extolled
to the skies, and always with oblique reference of disdain to others whom
we have come to think were intrinsically better artists. Hence he admired
Mortimer, whom we just remember as the illustrator of Fanny Burney's
_Evelina_, whose substantial immortality gives him vicarious and ghostly
existence. He also admired Hamilton. In the violent alternations of his
mood we have seen how submissive and meek he could be. In such a mood he
allowed Mortimer and Hamilton to influence him to such a degree that he
actually distrusted the genius in himself which could inspire _Glad Day_,
and produced such lifeless imitations of Mortimer's historical style as
the _Penance of Jane Shore_ (1778), _King Edward and Queen Elinor_ (1780),
and _Earl Godwin_ (1780).
Blake's deferences were not always thus unfortunate. He appreciated
Hogarth for his intrinsic value at a time when respectable people
patronized him for pictured moralities. We cannot imagine a greater
contrast than Blake the frugal seer and Hogarth "the typical carnivorous
Englishman." Outline was their meeting-ground. Hogarth saw, we may say
detected, in the scenes that marked the progresses of the Rake and the
Harlot, a full pulsing life and an unexpected beauty. When he would
express what he saw, with a mighty stretch he shook off all foreign
influences and set about to express himself naturally and in his own way.
His hand appropriated to its use the power of the line, more particularly
the vitality of the curved line, with the amazing result that the moment
we forget his "moralities," we see in him an exuberant artist of the
beautiful. Blake was wholly with him in all this. We rejoice for the
seeing eye that Blake and Hogarth cast on the shady side of life, but our
wonder and amazement pass into worship when we perceive that this was
included in the vision of Him who was called in derision the Friend of
Publicans and Sinners, but was contented to speak of Himself as the Son of
Man.
Blake affirmed that Hogarth's execution could not be copied or improved.
He borrowed from his _Satan, Sin and Death at Hell's Gate_, which is
hardly one of Hogarth's masterpieces, for a water-colour of the same
subject, and he engraved, after Hogarth, _When my Hero in Court Appears_
in the Beggar's Opera (1790).
Blake produced two water-colours in 1784 which show that his thoughts on
war were already undergoing a change. These are _War unchained by an
Angel--Fire, Pestilence and Famine following_, and _A Breach in a
City--the Morning after a Battle_.
Blake had been watching closely the course of affairs on the other side of
the Atlantic. While men's minds were becoming more and more inflamed with
the thought of war, he was criticizing it with the searching rays of his
spiritual vision and finding himself compelled to revise his ideas, which
he had taken without question from Shakespeare, and had expressed in the
_Poetical Sketches_. Then, in spite of seas of blood, he glorified war;
now, as he began to consider the abominations that it lets loose on
overburdened mankind--Fire, Pestilence and Famine--he included it in the
abominations as a thing altogether useless and despicable. He felt a
peculiar joy when peace was this year signed with the North American
States.
During these years (1773-84) Blake accomplished an immense amount of
engraving, chiefly after Stothard. These engravings must come as a
surprise to those who only know his own sublime designs, that reveal
might, power, terror, and immense energy, and not the softer things that
we associate with grace. It is sufficient to mention those plates that
Blake engraved after Stothard in Ritson's _English Songs_ to show that he,
like Michael Angelo and Milton, could do not only the works that call for
massive power, but also the graceful and lovely things that can be done by
genius not quite so rare. But I must leave the consideration of Blake's
relation, personal and artistic, to Stothard to a later chapter, when I
come to speak about the _Canterbury Pilgrims_.
Blake's songs, poems, and designs came to birth side by side. Where the
engravings were not after his own designs, but after other artists, he
knew exactly what to do with them. But sooner or later, as his own
productions of wedded poem and design grew under his hands, the anxious
question of publication arose, and by this time it was perplexingly clear
to him that his spiritual productions were not for every taste, and that
it would be difficult to find anyone who would run the risk of being his
publisher. His _Poetical Sketches_ were printed, though not published,
through the kindness of Mrs Mathew, but there was no likelihood that any
of the Blue-stockings would be kind in a helpful way to him again.
While pondering this difficulty day and night, and increasingly urged by
poverty, his brother Robert came to him and directed him what he was to
do. He told him to write his poems and designs on copper with an
ineffaceable liquid, and with aquafortis to eat away the remainder of the
plate until the writing and designs were left in clear relief. Then he
might take as many copies as he liked, and just touch them up by hand.
According to Gilchrist, Mr and Mrs Blake possessed just half-a-crown, with
which Mrs Blake went out and bought the necessary materials, returning
with eightpence change in her pocket. At once they set to work, the wife
proving an apt pupil, and thus, with the exception of _The French
Revolution_, Blake engraved and published his own creations, experiencing
the rare joy of being at once both the creator and the handicraftsman of
his works.
Robert visited William continually to the end of his life, bringing him
consolation and encouragement during times of anxiety and stress.
These supernatural happenings in the life of Blake read as simply and
naturally as the beautiful stories of St Francis converting brother Wolf
or receiving the sacred stigmata. There was nothing of the modern
spiritualist's paraphernalia--no medium, no trance, no tappings. Blake was
born with his inner spiritual eye open, his outer bodily eye, contrary to
general custom, proving sluggish. Hence he was able to keep a natural
simplicity amidst things which are too apt to stir only the thaumaturgic
appetite of other people.