Part 27

The severity and fearful amount of ridicule at Gilray's command, exposed him to threats of personal chastisement, and sometimes to the probability of a prosecution. Fox was more than once disposed to prosecute the artist, or the publishers--and not without reason; for in some of his portraits he was the incarnation of diabolical sensuality. Burke always figured as a half-starved Jesuit; and Sheridan, himself a satirist, could scarcely stand the attacks of the caricaturist on his red nose and portly person. However, they wisely foresaw that a prosecution would be an excellent advertisement for the offensive prints; so the senators sat down, and gratified themselves with enjoying a hearty laugh at each other. George III. was more than once severely attacked by Gilray; but he bore it with great good humour.

The facile invention, extraordinary humour, and rapid execution of Gilray's works were marvellous. Some of his subjects are full of figures, carefully drawn, although exaggerated. A complete collection of his works amounts to no less than fifteen hundred! An over-taxed imagination, constantly on the rack, watching opportunities, and the rapidity with which the design, the etching, finishing, printing, and publishing of the prints required to be executed, told fearfully upon his mind. His mental powers failed, and the mirth-inspiring son of genius became dead to the world. Some lucid intervals occurred, in one of which he etched the well-known plate of the "Barber's Shop," after Bunbury. Poor Gilray was deprived of his reason in the year 1811, from which time, until his death in 1815, he was the wretched occupant of a garret in Miss Humphrey's house. Here, at the barred windows, he was sometimes seen by that esteemed artist, Kenny Meadows, who contemplated the mad artist with horror. Miss Humphrey entirely supported Gilray until death claimed what disease had left of the great satirist. He threw himself out of an up-stairs window, and died of the injuries he received, on the 1st of June, 1815. He was buried at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, where a tablet is erected to his memory.

From Mr. Wright's curious and interesting _England under the House of Hanover_, illustrated by caricatures and satires, we gather that the favourite subjects to the artists of fun were the sans-culotte extravagancies of the French Revolutionists; and at home the coalition of North and Fox, the fiscal devices of Minister Pitt, the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and the "Alarmists." It was the popular belief that Hastings had bribed the Court of St. James's with presents of diamonds of large size, and in great profusion, to shelter his Indian delinquencies. Caricatures on this subject were to be seen in every print shop. In one of these Hastings is represented as wheeling away in a barrow the King, with his crown and sceptre, observing, "What a man buys he may sell!" and in another, the King is represented on his knees, with his mouth wide open. A common representation of the King and the Queen was as "Farmer George and his wife;" his Majesty's familiarity of manner, general somnolency, Weymouth displays, and his prying into cottage domesticities--to wit, the memory of the seamless apple-dumpling,--afforded unfailing hits for Peter Pindar, Sayer, and Gilray. The dissipation of the Prince of Wales suggested his portrayal as "The Prodigal Son," the Prince's Feathers in the mire, and the inscription on his garter reduced to the word "honi." In one print a Brighton party is represented, "The Jovial Crew, or Merry Beggars:" among the Prince's guests are Mrs. Fitzherbert, Fox, Sheridan, Lord North, and Captain Morris--"Jolly companions every one."

A scarce print of Gilray's commemorates a grand installation of knights at Westminster Abbey, May 19th, 1788, and is called "The Installation Supper," given at the Pantheon, in Oxford Road. It portrays the chief notorieties of the day, in separate groups, simulating over the bottle an obliviousness of political jealousies: Pitt and Fox hobnobbing behind the gruff Chancellor Thurlow; Lord Shelburn is shaking hands jesuitically with Lord Sydney; Lord Derby is hand-in-glove with Lady Mount Edgecumbe, an antiquated _blue_, who still dreams of conquest; the Prince is besieged by Lady Archer (of gambling notoriety) on one side, and Lady Cecilia Johnson on the other: while Mr. Fitzherbert is in amiable confab with the ex-patriot, Johnny Wilkes:--

"Johnny Wilkes, Johnny Wilkes, Thou greatest of bilks, How changed are the notes you now sing; Your famed Forty-five Is Prerogative, And your blasphemy, 'God save the King.'" SHERIDAN.

Edmund Burke always appears with long-pointed nose and spectacles. In one large print by Gilray, he is discharging a blunderbuss at Hastings, who is defending himself with the "shield of honour." The thin, meagre figure of Pitt, "with his d--d iron face," was fruitful for jest as that of his fat, slovenly opponent, Fox. An equivocal phrase of the Prime Minister gave rise to Gilray's caricature of "The Bottomless Pitt;" or it may have been the financial profundity of the Minister, or the wit of his celebrated housekeeper niece:--

"William Pitt, 'tis known by many people, Was thin as a lath, and tall as a steeple; And so spare his behind, he was called (with some wit), By famed Lady Hester, 'the bottomless pit.'"

Gilray, often as he struck at a minister or satirized a courtier, he yet more often returned to the battle which he loved to wage--that against Bonaparte. With him the Corsican was a murderer, a fanatic, a tyrant; an invader with death's head and dripping sword; a ghoul who loved to feast on human flesh; an incarnate fiend, a demon. Single-handed, Gilray fed and nursed the flame of hatred which burnt so steadily and so long in these islands against that potentate, whether as general, first consul, or emperor. Napoleon himself perceived it, and complained of it. His empress and generals came in for a share of Gilray's pictorial wrath. Ministers, who at the time of the trial of Peltier were not unwilling to conciliate the master of a hundred legions, in vain attempted to stop Gilray. The shop-windows still displayed the bright colours of the newest print, wherein, as incendiary or demon, the chief person was still Napoleon Bonaparte. If, according to the _dictum_ of the latter, one newspaper editor were worse than five _corps d'armée_ acting against him, surely Gilray, with his enormous effect on the British mind, then hardly swayed or taught by leading articles, was worse than five editors. And if we of the volunteer corps wish to realise the intense hatred, the indignation, the burning passion with which most of our fathers regarded the first Napoleon, we have only to turn over some old caricatures. How the old times rise before us, summoned by the tricksy Ariel of art, as we look over them.--_See a clever paper in the London Review._

One of Gilray's late prints was Dr. Burgess, of Mortimer Street, "from Warwick Lane." The doctor was one of the last men who wore a cocked hat and deep ruffles. What rendered his appearance more remarkable, he walked on tiptoe.

The commercial history of the caricatures is curious. At the period of the artist's death, the copper-plates from which they were struck were estimated to be worth 7,000_l._ Upon the demise of the printseller, his widow pledged the plates for 1,000_l._; but in the process of time, a better tone of political feeling having supervened, and likewise an improved public taste as regards art, this property, upon being put to sale by auction, was bought in for 500_l._ Subsequently the widow offered them to Mr. Henry Bohn, the eminent publisher, for that sum; but the process of change adverted to still continuing, the offer was declined. Upon her death her executors, unable to sell them as engravings, sold them as old copper for as many pence as they were originally worth pounds, and Mr. Bohn became the purchaser.

The early political caricatures of Gilray were generally directed against the Government party. These he was hired to sketch, and generally at a small price, according to the will of his employers. He used to smoke his pipe with his early employers, and exert his faculties more to win a bowl of punch than to gain ten pounds. For years he occasionally smoked his pipe at the Bell, the Coal Hole, or the Coach and Horses; and although the _convives_ whom he met at such dingy rendezvous knew that he was Gilray who fabricated those comical prints, yet he never sought to act the coxcomb, nor become the king of the company. In truth, with his neighbouring shopkeepers and master manufacturers, he passed for no greater wit than his associates. Rowlandson, his ingenious compeer, and he sometimes met. They would, perhaps, exchange half-a-dozen questions and answers upon the affairs of etching, copper, and nitric acid, swear that the world was one _vast masquerade_, and then enter into the common chat of the room, light their cigars, drink their punch, and sometimes early, sometimes late, shake hands at the door and depart, one for the Adelphi, the other to St. James's Street, each to his bachelor's bed.

The facility with which Gilray composed his subjects, and the rapidity with which he etched them, astonished those who were eye-witnesses of his powers. Many years ago, he had an apartment in a court in Holborn. A commercial agent for a printseller had received a commission to get a satirical design etched by Gilray, but he had repeatedly called in his absence. He lived at the west end of the town, and on his way to the city waited on him again, when he happened to be at home.

"You have lost a good job and a useful patron, Gilray," said he; "but you are always out."

"How? What--what is your object?" said the artist.

"I want this subject drawn and etched," said the agent; "but now it is too late."

"When is it wanted?"

"Why, to-morrow."

"It shall be done."

"Impossible, Gilray!"

"Where are you going?"

"Onward to the Bank."

"When do you return?"

"At four o'clock." It was now eleven.

"I'll bet you a bowl of punch it shall be completed, etched and bitten in, and a proof before that time."

"Done!"

The plate was finished; it contained many figures; the parties were mutually delighted, and the affair ended with a tipsy bout, at the Gray's Inn Coffee-house, at the employer's expense.

It was not likely that such an original would be content to sit, year after year, over a sheet of copper, perpetuating the renown of others, whilst possessed of a restless and ardent mind, intent on exploring unknown regions of taste, he could open a way through the intricacies of art, and by a short but eccentric cut reach the Temple of Fame. He set to work, and succeeded to the astonishment of the goddess, who, one day, beheld this new votary unceremoniously resting upon the steps of her altar.[36]

[36] See an able paper in _Fraser's Magazine_, No. 133.

William Blake, Painter and Poet.

The life of this extraordinary man of genius has been written by Mr. Alexander Gilchrist, with much feeling, judgment, and good taste. Wordsworth was more interested with what he terms Blake's "madness" than with the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott. Fuseli and Flaxman predicted a day when the drawings of Blake should be as much sought after and treasured by artists as those of Michael Angelo. Hayley admired and befriended Blake. He was a true poet, though, as Gilchrist says, "he neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for workyday men at all; rather for children and angels--himself a divine child, whose play-things were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens, and the earth."

Blake was born in 1757, at No. 28, Broad Street, Carnaby Market, where his father carried on the business of a hosier. When a boy he began to dream. When eight or ten years of age, he brought home from Peckham Rye a tale of a tree filled with angels, for doing which his father threatened to thrash him.

In 1767 he was sent to the drawing-school of Mr. Pars, in the Strand, and taught to copy plaster casts after the antique, while his father made a collection of prints for him to study. He had already, too, begun to write poetry. At the age of fourteen he was placed with James Basire, the engraver. His father intended to apprentice him to Ryland, a more famous engraver than Basire. The boy Blake, however, raised an unexpected scruple. "The sequel," says Mr. Gilchrist, "shows it to have been a singular instance, if not of absolute prophetic gift or second sight, at all events of natural intuition into character and power of forecasting the future, from such as is often the endowment of temperament like his. In after-life this involuntary faculty of reading hidden writing continued to be a characteristic. 'Father,' said the strange boy, after the two had left Ryland's studio, 'I do not like the man's face; _it looks as if he lived to be hanged!_' Appearances were at this time utterly against the probability of such an event." But, twelve years after this interview, the unfortunate Ryland got into embarrassment, committed a forgery on the East India Company, and the prophecy was fulfilled.

By 1773 Blake had begun to draw his own dreams, such as one of Joseph of Arimathea, described by him as "one of the Gothic artists who built the cathedrals in what we call the Dark Ages, wandering about in sheepskins and goatskins." In 1783 Blake published, by the help of friends, a small volume of _Poetical Sketches_, of which here is a specimen:--

"Memory, hither come, And tune your merry notes; And, while upon the wind Your music floats, I'll pore upon the stream Where sighing lovers dream, And fish for fancies as they pass Within the watery glass.

"I'll drink of the clear stream, And hear the linnet's song; And there I'll lie and dream The day along: And, when night comes, I'll go To places fit for woe; Walking along the darkened valley With silent Melancholy."

We pass over Blake's progress in his art, but may remark, from his biographer, that although he drew the Antique with great care, he thus early conceived a distaste for the study as pursued in Academies of Art. "Already 'life,'" says Mr. Gilchrist, "in so factitious, monotonous an aspect of it as that presented by a model artificially _posed_ to enact an artificial part--to maintain in painful rigidity some fleeting gesture of spontaneous Nature's--became, as it continued, 'hateful,' looking to him, laden with thick-coming fancies, 'more like death' than life; nay (singular to say), 'smelling of mortality'--to an imaginative mind! 'Practice and opportunity,' he used afterwards to declare, 'very soon teach the language of art;' as much, that is, as Blake ever acquired, not a despicable if imperfect quantum. 'Its spirit and poetry, centred in the imagination alone, never can be taught; and these make the artist:' a truism, the fervid poet already began to hold too exclusively in view. Even at their best--as the vision-seer and instinctive Platonist tells us in one of the very last years of his life (_MS. notes to Wordsworth_)--mere 'Natural objects _always did and do_ weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me!'"

Blake wrote many songs, to which he also composed tunes, sometimes singularly beautiful; these he would occasionally sing to his friends. His later verse, which he attached to his plates, was very enigmatical. Though he did not for forty years attend any place of divine worship, yet he was not a Freethinker nor irreligious, as has been scandalously represented. The Bible was everything with him. How he reverenced the Almighty, the following conclusion of his address to the Deity will show:--

"For a tear is an intellectual thing; And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King; And the bitter groan of a martyr's woe Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow."

And in his _Address to the Christians_:--

"I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem's wall."

Blake was a diligent and enthusiastic student. The day he devoted to the graver and the night to poetry; he was utterly indifferent to the goods of this life, and used to say: "My business is not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes expressing god-like sentiments."

When Blake was twenty-six years of age, he married Catherine Boutcher, who lived near his father's house, and was noticed by Blake for the whiteness of her hands, the brightness of her eyes, and a slim and handsome shape, corresponding with his own notions of sylphs and naiads. His marriage proved a mutually happy one. She had not learned to write, but Blake instructed his "beloved," as he most frequently called her, and allowed her till the last moments of his practice to take off his proof impressions and print his works, which she did most carefully, and ever delighted in the task; nay, she became a draughtswoman. And as a convincing proof that she and her husband were born for each other's comfort, she not only cheerfully entered into his views, but, what is curious, possessed a similar power of imbibing ideas, and produced drawings equally original, and in some respects, interesting. She almost rivalled him in all things, save in the power of seeing visions of any individual living or dead, whenever he chose to see them. Yet, she joined him in other extravagances. The painter and Mrs. Blake one day received a guest in their arbour in a state of nakedness, to whom they calmly declared that they were Adam and Eve!

In his thirtieth year, Blake annotated the Aphorisms of Lavater, and illustrated his own poems, _The Songs of Innocence and of Experience_. These, with the illustrations to _Blair's Grave_, to the _Book of Job_, and the plate of the _Canterbury Pilgrimage_--are the works of Blake by which he is best known. He was his own printer and publisher. His deceased brother and pupil, Robert Blake, disclosed to him in a dream by what manner of process his purpose could be brought to pass and the last half-crown he possessed was spent by Mrs. Blake to procure the materials. Their manner of manipulation was revealed to him by "Joseph, the sacred carpenter."

One of the most touching and popular of _The Songs of Innocence_ was "The Chimney Sweeper:"

"When my mother died I was very young And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry--weep! weep! weep! So your chimneys I clean and in soot I sleep.

"There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curl'd like a lamb's back, was shaved; so I said, Hush, Tom, never mind it, for when your head's bare, You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.

"And so he was quiet--and on that very night, As Tommy was sleeping, he had such a sight; There thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack, Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

"And by came an Angel, who had a bright key, He opened the coffins and set them all free; Then down a green vale, leaping, laughing they run, And wash in a river, and shine like the sun.

"Then, naked and white, all their bags left behind, They rise up on pure clouds and sport in the wind: And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy, He'd have God for his father and never want joy.

"And so Tommy awoke and we rose in the dark, And got with our bags and our brushes to work; Though the morning was cold, he was happy and warm, So, if all do their duty, they need not fear harm."

In 1800, the Blakes were invited by Hayley to visit him at Felpham, in Sussex, under the idea of providing the artist with occupation and emolument. Upon this occasion Blake wrote thus to Flaxman:--

"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 men. 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.

* * * * *

"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 riches or the 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."

This association at Felpham lasted four years, when the Blakes left by mutual consent. Yet the painter wrote upon his host these sarcastic epigrams:--

"_To Hayley._

"Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: Do be my enemy, for friendship's sake!"

"_On H. [Hayley], the Pickthank._

"I write the rascal thanks; till he and I With thanks and compliments are quite drawn dry."

He had already written:--

"My title as a genius thus is proved,-- Not praised by Hayley, nor by Flaxman loved."

About this time, Blake's mind was confirmed in that extraordinary state which many suppose to have been a species of chronic insanity. He was so exclusively occupied with his own ideas, that he at last persuaded himself that his imaginations were spiritual realities. He thought that he conversed with the spirits of the long-departed great--of Homer, Moses, Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and many others. Some of these spirits sat to him for their portraits.

Dr. de Boismont, among his _Hallucinations involving Insanity_, thus describes him as a lunatic, of the name of Blake, who was called the Seer. There was nothing of the impostor about him; he seemed to be thoroughly in earnest.

"This man constituted himself the painter of spirits. On the table before him were pencils and brushes ready for his use, that he might depict the countenances and attitudes of his heroes, whom he said he did not summon before him, but who came of their own accord, and entreated him to take their portraits. Visitors might examine large volumes filled with these drawings: amongst others were the portraits of the devil and his mother. When I entered his cell," says the author of this notice, "he was drawing the likeness of a girl whose spectre he pretended had appeared to him."