CHAPTER IV

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.