CHAPTER VIII

WILLIAM HAYLEY

William Hayley, "the poet," as he delighted to call himself, enjoyed a wide reputation as the author of _The Triumphs of Temper_, which appeared in 1780 and was intended as a poetical and pleasing guide to young ladies how to behave under the provocation of testy fathers and sour aunts, with the promise of a peerless husband if their tempers were triumphant.

For us the poem is pleasantly incongruous and stirs to laughter in the wrong places. The perfect heroine Serena, set down in the midst of artificial society by day, is transported to infernal and supernal regions by night. In the Inferno she sees all the wicked vices in action, and in the Paradise the graces attending on their queen Sensibility. Hayley humbly hoped to emulate Pope's satire in treating of Serena's days, and Dante's sublimities in her nights. He was singularly fortunate in the artists he found to embellish his darling offspring. Stothard and Maria Flaxman, in turn, supplied charming designs, and even Romney was induced to present the divine Emma as Sensibility with her pot of mimosa, to whom Stothard had already done more than justice.

Hayley had been a close student all his life, having mastered Greek and Latin and the more important modern languages. He had read extensively the world's best literature. Taught by Meyer, he had taken up miniature portrait painting till he excelled his master and his eyes failed. He wrote plays which Garrick nearly liked, but which the undiscerning public never liked at all. He reckoned himself not merely a connoisseur in art, music, architecture, and sculpture, but also as one who might have distinguished himself in any one of these difficult arts had envious time permitted. Confident that Heaven had bestowed on him her best gift of poetry, he felt it his duty to renounce his opportunity to excel in so many arts and devote himself to that which all discerning people acknowledged to be the highest.

_The Triumphs of Temper_ was his first great success, and the many highly flattering things said to him by artists and famous literary men confirmed him in the faith, though he had never really doubted, that he was a man of genius. That was the opinion of elegant Mrs Opie, feeling Anna Seward, diffident Romney, copious Hannah More, and portentously learned Edward Gibbon. Yet time has been pitiless with the bard of Sussex, and instead of discovering a steady or even a flickering light shining in the gross darkness of his times, we of the twentieth century can see in him, if we take the trouble to see at all, nothing but an amusingly solemn specimen of a male Blue-stocking.

With so assured a position and never a shadow of self-doubt, he was able to live with himself on most cordial terms of good temper and serenity, and, like others of his type, extend his self-esteem to his fellows, particularly if they were publicly admired. To these he generally effected an acquaintance by a polite little letter of self-introduction.

His most important catch was Romney, to whom he was introduced by Meyer in the autumn of 1776. Hayley possessed accidental advantages over Romney in good birth and education. Romney was sufficiently impressed through self-conscious lack of these, and when in addition he found that his diffidence was met by Hayley's confidence, his depression by serenity, he allowed him to gain that ascendancy over him which was out of all proportion to his intrinsic merit, and which has irritated all biographers of the artist against the poet. Yet if Hayley contrived to get possession of Romney and his pictures, he also helped him for a considerable time to fight against his melancholy. Let us in fairness remember that.

Another important friend was Cowper, whom Hayley caught considerably later in life. Visits were exchanged, and Hayley set himself with much good will to combat the ghastly melancholia that was getting its death-grip on him. After Cowper's death there was some friendly wrangling between Hayley and Lady Hesketh about who should write his Life. Hayley was easily persuaded to undertake it, and by its accomplishment won for himself a latter rain of gratifying applause just when his popularity seemed to be on the decline.

Hayley lived till 1820, which was actually long enough to outlive his public. His _Life of Romney_ was not a success. He and his works would have died together but for his unfortunate habit of fastening himself on to great men. His cancerian grip of them has given him vicarious immortality, and made him obnoxious to the kicks of those who write the lives of Romney, or Cowper, or Blake.

The particular friend of Hayley who most concerns us here was Flaxman. He introduced Blake to Hayley from motives of pure kindness, knowing Blake's struggle to live, and believing that Hayley was just the man to help him.

Flaxman had drawn Hayley's attention to Blake in a letter written as early as 1784, in which he quotes Romney as saying that Blake's historical drawings rank with those of Michael Angelo. But not until 1800 did the two men meet. Early in that year--May 6th--Blake wrote to Hayley to condole with him on the loss of his son Thomas Alphonso, who had been studying sculpture with Flaxman. By September it was settled that Mr and Mrs Blake should leave Lambeth and go and settle at Felpham, where Blake would be only a stone's-throw from Hayley, and ready to help him in his poetical and biographical works by engraving for them suitable designs.

Blake was destined to stay three years at Felpham, and he always regarded this period as marking a most important crisis in his life. Since the publication of his _Poetical Sketches_ in 1783 he was conscious of being under a cloud. His visions that had been so bright and inspired him to songs of such divine simplicity had not vanished, but they had lost their crystalline clearness. His cloudy vision appeared in uncertain art. It is true that his allegiance to the linear schools never wavered, and Michael Angelo remained the supreme master in his eyes, but for a time he was fascinated by the luscious ornament and colour of the Venetian school, and with his passion for uniting contraries believed that he might marry Florence and Venice. The same uncertainty appeared in his spiritual life. We have followed him through various stages of rebellion, and seen how his faith in rebellion received a rude shock from the Reign of Terror. Since then he was learning more and more to explore the riches of the past, but he had not gone far enough to place his rebellion and to see it and that of his rebel contemporaries in its proper historical perspective. He was disturbed also by a restless ambition of worldly success. Many men whose gifts were much inferior to his own were famous and rich. Sir Joshua did all that a spiritually blind man could do, and was reckoned with the giants. Romney, whose art Blake much preferred to Reynolds's (he was decidedly of the Romney faction), on account of its greater simplicity and more scrupulous regard to outline, was sufficiently famous and remunerated; but Blake, whose gifts were rarer than any, had scant recognition and scant money, and he still hoped that with an influential patron he might take his place in contemporary fame, and incidentally make enough money to relieve him of all anxiety for the future. For he was being ground by poverty. His wants were simple enough--food, clothing, materials of work--but when the supply falls even a little below the want, then the grinding process begins and carries on its inexorable work until the spirit breaks. But now friend Flaxman had introduced him to poet Hayley, who was not only famous for his literary work, but also for a remarkable and untiring zeal in the service of those he reckoned his friends.

Blake's hopes rose high, and his spirits overflowed. He wrote an enthusiastic letter to Flaxman attributing to him all his present happiness, and enclosing lines in which he recalls his successive friends "in the heavens"--Milton, Ezra, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Paracelsus, Boehme--and concludes by affirming that he has seen such visions of the American War and the French Revolution that he "could not subsist on the earth, but by conjunction with Flaxman, who knows to forgive nervous fear." Flaxman had studied Swedenborg, and could perfectly understand such language.

On September 21st, 1800, Sunday morning, he writes to the "dear Sculptor of Eternity" that he has arrived at their cottage with Mrs Blake and his sister Catherine, and that Mr Hayley has received them with his usual brotherly affection.

He found Felpham "a sweet place for study." The quiet, cleanness, sweetness, and spiritual atmosphere of the place stirred his cosmic consciousness and gave him quick access to the great memory reaching back far beyond his mortal life, and enabled him to recall his works in eternity that were yet to be produced in time.

And Hayley was excessively kind. Still under a cloud, shaken in self-confidence, Blake's consequent diffidence united with his instinctive trust of men, and for a month he believed that Hayley was a prince.

Hayley was busy decorating his "marine villa," to which he had lately come from Eartham. Flaxman had already been drawn in to help, much as Mrs Mathew had used him at an earlier date; and now Blake was bidden to paint a set of heads of the poets which were to form a frieze to Hayley's library. Hayley was at work on some ballads, _Little Tom the Sailor_ and others, to which Blake was to contribute designs. _Little Tom_ was for the benefit of a Widow Spicer at Folkestone and her orphans, as Blake understood, and also for the emolument of Blake, as we learn from a letter of Hayley's to the Reverend John Johnson.

Hayley always loved to teach his friends. He had been anxious to improve Romney's epistolary style; and now it occurred to him that he might teach Blake miniature portrait painting. As usual, his purpose was thoroughly kind. He did not think that Blake's work had much marketable value; but he believed that if he proved an apt pupil he could procure him plenty of sitters from among his neighbours who would pay well, and thus Blake would become a real success.

In this Hayley showed himself a wise child of this world, but hardly a child of light. Blake's genius did not lie in drawing portraits. A face for him immediately became a symbol, and lost its time traits as it gained in eternal significance. It is often said that Enitharmon was Mrs Blake; but if this were so, she was Mrs Blake as no one but Blake could ever see her. In reality he possessed the faculty which was pre-eminent in the authors of the Book of Genesis and St John's Gospel. As the characters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Peter, James, and John were seen and portrayed in an eternal light, so likewise Blake would have striven to present his opulent sitters, but the result would not have been that for which they would have been willing to pay their money.

Blake took kindly and without question to the new task. "Miniature," he says, "has become a goddess in my eyes.... I have a great many orders, and they multiply." Hayley was glowing with satisfaction. But Blake, in one little month, after repeated efforts of self-deception, could no longer hide from himself that he saw Hayley as he really was. He was learned, of course, and genteel, and kind, and admired with gush what it was correct to admire. But of insight there was none. He was born under a watery sign and not a fiery. He was really a crab ambling around his enclosed garden with his lame leg, and getting his claws into the tender skin of those who, he had been told, were really men of fire.

Blake's disappointment was bitter. His patron was blind to his real genius, to which he must at all costs be faithful. Hayley was, and continued to be, very much a corporeal friend, but he was a spiritual enemy. Blake's fond hopes were dashed. He tottered on the verge of a horror of great darkness, and escaped the darkness only by falling into a mild and pleasant slumber, lulled by Hayley's amazing amiability, mildness, and crooning serenity. From this slumber he might--who knows?--never have awakened, but for the discernment of his real friends--Flaxman and Butts--whose faith finally aroused him and drew him away from the enchanted ground.

But though he saw, he said nothing. His spiritual friends (on the other side) commanded him "to bear all and be silent, and to go through all without murmuring, and, in fine, hope, till his three years shall be accomplished." When Hayley was more than usually exasperating, Blake vented himself in an epigram, and, much relieved, went on quietly.

Thus, when Blake was convinced that Providence did not mean him to paint miniatures, he wrote:

"When Hayley finds out what you cannot do, That is the very thing he'll set you to do."

Again, Blake discovered that Hayley's virtues and faults were both of the feminine order. It was a feminine instinct that had prompted him to write _The Triumphs of Temper_ and the _Essay on Old Maids_. A brilliant epigram of Blake's accounts for this odd psychic twist, and flashes Hayley before us:

"Of Hayley's birth this was the happy lot: His mother on his father him begot."

That was the true state of affairs. But Blake obeyed his spiritual friends, and for a long time no sign appeared in his letters that there was anything the matter.

Hayley was also anxious to teach Blake Greek. Like most men of his times, he believed that no man could attain to the highest degree of excellence who had not mastered Greek and Latin. He probably thought that a knowledge of Greek would at least correct some of Blake's vagaries. Blake was quick at languages, and soon Hayley was able to write to Johnson: "Blake is just become a Grecian, and literally learning the language.... The new Grecian greets you affectionately."

Blake, however, never attained to his teacher's proficiency; he learnt just enough to be able to formulate to himself the nature of the Greek genius, and to see it in relation to his own. "The Muses were the Daughters of Memory." The inspiration of the Bible was from a higher source than Memory. Memory is the indelible record of experience. Inspiration is always a breaking into experience to the creation of something new. Then only is the new creation handed over to Memory. Thus Inspiration feeds Memory, but is not its fruit. Imagination is the true instrument of Inspiration. When Blake saw all this clearly, he wrote in the Preface to _Milton_: "We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are just and true to our own Imaginations." Greek and Latin have their abiding place in Memory, and Blake was about to write fine things about Memory, which he calls the Halls of Los; but for himself they did not stimulate his imagination. To master them would add to his culture; but mere culture is always barren.

Hayley's last attempt to teach Blake was in March 1805, the month in which Klopstock died. He translated parts of Klopstock's _Messiah_ aloud for Blake's benefit. Certain lines by Blake with big gaps have been preserved, which are hard for us to understand. The only thing we are quite sure about them is that they were written "after _too much_ Klopstock."

There was one great name that held Hayley and Blake alike at this time. We know that Blake had always admired Milton's superb gifts, while he disliked his theology. Blake's special friends had also been preoccupied with Milton. Fuseli, for example, not only disagreed with Dr Johnson's strictures on the poet, but he had been inspired by his ardent imagination to paint a series of pictures illustrating the poet's works, and these had been on public view at a Milton Gallery opened on May 20th, 1799, and reopened March 21st, 1800.

While Blake was with Hayley he naturally heard much of Milton from his latest biographer; and again their united interest in Cowper led them back to Milton, because of Cowper's cherished desire to edit Milton, with notes and translations.

In 1790, when Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery was a success, "bookseller" Johnson was fired with the idea of bringing out a magnificent Milton Gallery, "surpassing any work that had appeared in England." It was to contain Cowper's notes and translations and Fuseli's illustrations, for which the best engravers were to be found. The services of Sharpe and Bartolozzi were enlisted, and Blake was asked to engrave _Adam and Eve observed by Satan_. The project fell through owing to Cowper's mental indisposition; but when Hayley was engaged on the _Life of Cowper_ and Blake on its engravings, Cowper's _Milton_ came uppermost again in their minds, and it occurred to Hayley that it would be a good plan to bring out a fine edition of the delayed work, with engravings after designs by Romney, Flaxman, and Blake. The profits of the work were "to be appropriated to erect a monument to the memory of Cowper in St Paul's or Westminster Abbey." To this work was to be added Hayley's _Life of Milton_, so that the whole necessarily would spread out to three quarto volumes. The project was abandoned. Instead of the three volumes, one volume with Cowper's notes finally appeared in 1808, and instead of the proceeds going to a monument in St Paul's, they were given for the emolument of an orphan godson of the Sussex Bard.

Thus Blake's thought and time were fully occupied. Besides the designs for Hayley's ballads, engravings were required for the Cowper _Life_. Butts was to be kept supplied with a fresh picture as fast as Blake could paint it; and his own more secret thought was ruminating over Milton, and his stay at Felpham, and his dreams for the future. These were to take form in his longest poetical works--_Milton_, _The Four Zoas_, and _Jerusalem_; but as they are of extreme importance for understanding Blake, they must be kept over to another chapter.

Blake was thoroughly interested in this work, for he admired Cowper, and considered that his letters were "the very best letters that were ever published." It is necessary to remember his reverence for Cowper, as also for Wesley and Whitefield, because in the poems there are many vigorous attacks made on religion, and some of Blake's modern imitators follow him in the attack. The moderns for the most part are irreligious, but Blake professed to love true religion and true science. What he hated above all things was religion divorced from life and art. Such religion becomes very intense, as in the Pharisees, and when great decisions are called for, as in the trial of Christ, it invariably utters its voice on the wrong side.

Blake's engravings for the Cowper _Life_ were after designs by other artists, the most important being the head of Cowper by Romney. To engrave after another is irksome, and there was further irritation when he found that Hayley was as ready to instruct him how to engrave as to paint miniatures.

Since Hayley could never disguise his inmost thoughts, Blake soon perceived that he intended to keep him strictly to the graver, as he had no opinion of his original works, whether in poetry or design. Blake found relief in painting for Thomas Butts, who was his friend and patron for over thirty years, and to whom he sent exquisite pictures, and some letters priceless for their revelation of the writer.

From these we learn the nature of Blake's spiritual crisis at Felpham.

Miniature portrait painting drove home to him the vast difference between historical designing and portrait painting. Portrait requires nature before the painter's eye, historical designing depends on imagination. Nature and imagination were as antithetical in Blake's eye as nature and grace in the theologian's, and just here he kept as far away from pantheism as he could in his obstinate determination to keep nature and imagination as separate as the sheep and the goats. While agreeing with Blake in keeping them apart, I suppose most of us would say that the finest portrait painting depended on imagination no less than historical designing.

The atmosphere of Felpham induced in Blake long fits of abstraction and brooding, and he pushed his thoughts on miniature forwards to the recollecting of all his scattered thoughts on art. He determined to discontinue all attempts at eclecticism. Venetian _finesse_ and Flemish _picturesque_ were "excellencies of an inferior order" and "incompatible with the grand style." He was convinced that the reverse of this--uniformity of colour and long continuation of lines--produces grandeur. So said Sir Joshua, who did not always practise what he preached in his discourses; so said Michael Angelo, whose profession and practice were one; so said Blake, who was decided, while adhering to the principles of the great Florentine, to be true to his own genius, so that his work should be as distinct from Michael Angelo's as Caracci's from Correggio's, or Correggio's from Raphael's.

Here was strength for Blake in knowing his own mind about his art and methods, and following it. It helped him out of his paralysing diffidence, which Hayley fostered, and made more clear the real issue between him and his patron. He strove to see the situation in the largest light possible. The old question of God's providence exercised him. Did God bring him to Felpham? Did God keep him there? If so, it must be because it was not fit for him at present to be employed in greater things. That thought kept him patient. When it is proper his talents will be properly exercised in public. But God guides by cleansing man's understanding and pushing him forwards to a decision. He understood his art, yet Hayley objected to his doing anything but the mere drudgery of business. He trusted his art, and he saw how he must work. Let him trust himself, and then? He saw all clearly now, as he had seen it in the first month, although he had stifled his apprehensions. God had given him a great talent. It would be affected humility to deny it. If he stayed with Hayley he would paint miniatures, make money, and make his beloved Kate comfortable for life; but he would sell his divine birthright. If he obeyed God by following the gifts He had bestowed on him, then farewell to Hayley and lovely Felpham: he must return without delay to London, and once more he and Kate together must face the grinding life of poverty. Anyone who knows Blake must know what decision he would make. He made it silently, irrevocably. By the beginning of October 1803 he and Kate were back again in London, lodging in South Molton Street, with a sense of escape and liberty which more than compensated for the uncertain prospect of the future.

Blake had not quite finished with Felpham. Before leaving he had had a disagreeable affair with a private in Captain Leathe's troop of 1st or Royal Dragoons. From a letter of Blake's to Mr Butts, dated August 16th, 1803, we learn that this man was found by him in the garden, invited to assist by the gardener without his knowledge. He desired him politely to go away; and on his refusal, again repeated his request. The man then threatened to knock out his eyes, and made some contemptuous remarks about his person. Blake thereupon, his pride being affronted, took the man by the elbows and pushed him before him down the road for about fifty yards. In revenge, the soldier charged Blake with uttering sedition and damning the King. Blake had no difficulties in gathering witnesses for his defence. He was summoned before a bench of justices at Chichester and forced to find bail. Hayley kindly came forward with L50, Mr Seagrave, printer at Chichester, and protege of Hayley's, with another L50, and himself bound in L100 for his appearance at the Quarter Sessions after Michaelmas. The trial came off at Chichester on January 11th, 1804. The Duke of Richmond presided as magistrate. Hayley had procured for the defence Samuel Rose (Cowper's friend), and between them they had no difficulty in releasing Blake.

There would have been no need to repeat this story, except that the event made a deep impression on Blake. Skofield, the soldier's name, became in his mind an abiding symbol, and the soldier's contempt for his person decided him to change his deportment.

Blake's humble birth and childlike trust of his fellows had united to produce in him a too passive and docile manner. There was plenty of fire within, and the lamb knew how to roar; but he judged that his roar need not be provoked if his appearance somehow warded people off from taking a liberty with him. Diffidence is not a virtue. Blake's too passive deportment changed as he gradually became more self-confident. Hence the Skofield episode left a lasting mark on both his mind and body.

Blake's decisive step in leaving Hayley and following his own will immediately preceded the noonday glory of his genius. Hayley must have thought that Blake was extremely ungrateful after the invariable kindness that he had shown him; and if Hayley liked to call his neighbouring friends around him and put his case to them, probably all, without a single dissentient voice, would have agreed that he had shown himself a Christian and a gentleman, and that charity itself could not demand of him to trouble himself any further about such a crazed visionary as Blake. Blake not only thought otherwise, but turning to the Gospel as he was wont to do, he found a word of Christ that convinced him that Christ was on his side. "He who is not with me is against me." There were a thousand evidences that Hayley was not with the real Blake that was striving to manifest himself in time, and therefore he was against him, and an enemy to his genius. Blake went to Felpham shaken in himself and diffident. When there is diffidence (dispersal of faith) there is a lamentable waste of precious energy. Blake left Felpham reassured that the light he had seen in his youth was the true light, and confident (confidence is concentration of faith) that if he remained faithful to his real self, he would also be found on the side of Christ, and that this true self-confidence must result in beautiful work of the creative order. That was the supreme hour in his life. The full vision must come. Like Habakkuk, he was on his tower, assured that though it tarry it would come and not tarry. He was not impatient. "The just shall live by his faith." Blake had faith, and he asked no more; but he gained a thousandfold more, and the full vision came to him in a way that must seem odd to a child of the world, but wonderfully appropriate to one who understands what is the nature of the fire that sustains and consumes the artist's soul.

During the months of 1803-4 a certain Count Truchsess, who owned a valuable collection of pictures, exhibited them at a gallery in the New Road, opposite Portland Place, London. The pictures were by German, Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and French masters. The masters included Albert Duerer, Hans Holbein senior, Breughel, Vandyck, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Bourdon, Watteau.

Blake went to see the pictures, and must have been unusually excited and thrilled at seeing works by Michael Angelo and Albert Duerer directly, and not through the blurred medium of poor engravings. The divine frenzy stirred in his soul. The next day, suddenly, he was enlightened with the light he enjoyed in his youth. The cloud that had hung over him for twenty years vanished, the grim spectre (reason) who had haunted his ways and checked his inspiration fled with the cloud. Blake was drunk with intellectual vision, and in his drunken hilarity came to himself, knew what was his proper work, and once for all gave himself with passionate surrender to that which his whole and undivided being saw to be good.

It will take us the rest of our time gathering some of the fruits of Blake's richly matured genius.

Blake wrote an enthusiastic account of his mystic experience to Hayley, of all men--Hayley who had so exasperated him, and made him sore, and, in his soreness, say biting things. Now he was thoroughly at peace with himself, and could regard Hayley with the kindness and tolerance that before had been impossible. For a while he continued to correspond with him while he was occupied with his _Life of Romney_. Blake engraved a portrait of the artist for the frontispiece which never appeared, and a fine engraving of Romney's _Shipwreck_, which appeared along with the other engravings by Caroline Watson. The _Life of Romney_ was a dreary performance. Like the _Life of Cowper_, it revealed its subject only when it gave his letters. For the rest, it abounds in a welter of elegant eighteenth-century words and phrases which assure us that "the poet" never saw even Romney and Cowper as they really were, and therefore it is not surprising that he saw in Blake merely a mild and harmless visionary who might do paying work if only he would listen to the wise counsel that he was always ready to give.

Peace be with Hayley! Among those that appear before Peter's Gate, we cannot help thinking that he will be more readily admitted than the vast crowd of eighteenth-century squires who will knock at the gate, and stamp and fume if it is not opened to them on the instant.