“The first time you ever saw God was when you were four years old”’ and from that time onwards his visions had become almost regular. Once when he returned to his home and told his mother that he had seen the prophet Ezekiel under a tree, he was beaten, but when he started telling regularly that he had seen a tree filled with angels; she stopped scolding him, though he knew he was telling lies. Later when he was drawing the Spiritual Portraits he said: “Work up imagination to the state of vision, and the thing is done.” Who was this man, who first created visions and then translated the same into reality? This man was none other than William Blake, a genius, who was an artist at the age of ten and at twelve, a poet:
“How sweet I roam’d from field to field, and tasted all the summer’s pride;
Till I the prince of love beheld, who in the sunny beams did glide!”
Born on November 28, 1757, William Blake was the third child of a hosier, James Blake of Broad Street, London. When James and Catherine Blake realised that their son had frequent visions and was an unusual child, they decided not to send him to any school, but taught him at home. His undisciplined reading ignited Blake’s imagination and very soon manifested his talents for composition. His father intended he should join his shop, but at the shop he displayed his talent for drawing sketches on the back of the bills. Both his parents became sympathetic and admitted the boy of ten to Par’s drawing school in the Strand. There he remained for four years, where apart from drawing from the antique, he also wrote poems in his spare time. In 1783, his poems written between the ages of twelve and twenty were printed under the title “Poetical Sketches.”
At the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to James Basire, the engraver, though he had a desire to obtain training under an eminent painter. He voluntarily opted for engraving, because he knew his father would not be able to afford heavy tutorial fees of the painter. When Basire sent out Blake to copy monuments in old city churches and Westminster Abbey, he was highly influenced by Gothic art. “Lost in the corners of these old churches, Blake’s romantic imagination was completely Gothicized, and for the future he completely closed his mind to every other influence or interpreted it by the light of these impressions ... His active mind was besieged in his boyhood by the symbolism of the Abbey, and it is to his lonely hours within its people's walls that we can trace the origin and leanings of his later mysticism." When his apprenticeship ended in 1778, he joined the antique school of the Royal Academy and simultaneously he began making engravings for London booksellers. In 1780, he befriended Stothard, an artist and Fuseli, a painter, and under their influence exhibited a water colour “Death of Earl Godwin” at Royal Academy, and received high accolades from arts’ connoisseurs.
During this period, he fell in love with Polly Wood, a lively little girl. She had a fascination for the society of men, when Blake remonstrated with her, she simply laughed, for which the sensitive Blake felt highly upset and went to stay with William Boucher, a market-gardener. There he met Catherine, Boucher’s daughter with different traits, sensitive, modest and polite. When Blake noted that she was deeply moved by his tale, he blurted out: “Do you pity me?” When he received the reply that indeed she did, he immediately said, “Then I love you.” But he did not marry her instantly, rather he returned to London to earn money. Only after a year, on August 18, 1782, he married her and settled down at Green Street, Leicester Fields. She was a genius and adapted herself completely to the ways of her extraordinary husband. Under her care, Blake’s skill achieved further maturity; because his mind was now free from every mundane problem. Therefore, in her own way, she was no less a genius than Blake. Here at Leicester, he was introduced to Reverend Matthew and his wife, who was a bluestocking. When once at their parties Blake recited or sang his own poems, as he could also compose his own music, Mrs Matthew felt highly impressed and persuaded her husband to share the cost of print of Blake’s poems with Flaxman, another votary of his poems, and his next door neighbour. This was done in 1783 and printed sheets of “Poetical Sketches”, unbound, were printed and presented to Blake for distribution, whomever he wanted.
Next year, he moved to Broad Street and set up a print-seller in partnership and kept his own brother Robert as voluntary apprentice, which broke-up, when his brother Robert died in 1787. During this period he could not print anything until he settled down at Poland Street. There in 1789, he published his “Songs of Innocence”, which is remarkable for its beauty, simplicity and purity in terms of its lyrics. This book was exquisitely designed by Blake himself, ”the text and the surrounding design were written in reverse in a medium impervious to acid upon copper plates.” Both husband and wife worked hard to design, bind, print and publish the works, which he wrote and illustrated himself. Burdett writes, “The text and illustration are interwoven into a harmonious whole, and as the colour can be varied no two copies need be exactly alike ... Only those who have compared his originals with the printed pages in which his poems are ordinarily read are fully aware of the loss now suffered by his writings, which require to be read as much by as by the mind on pages suffused with life and colour.”
In 1794, his two books “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” appeared which incorporated his finest lyrics unmatched by other poets because of their clarity, delicacy and chasteness. Blake did not stop here, he continued engraving tracts and writing the Prophetical Books. In 1788, he brought out two tracts in prose “There is No Natural Religion” and “All Religions are One”, which constitute short propositions. In the same year, he also wrote “Tiriel”, however immediately next year in 1789, he composed “The Book of Thel”. Once the chain started, working day and night, he consecutively produced a couple of works, such as “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, “The Vision of the Daughters of Albion”, “The Book of Urizen”, “The Book of Los”, and “the Book of Ahania”. Though prima facie they appear as prophetical works, yet expounding his mythology, he enriched his poetry with distinction and profundity. Beside writing and decorating his own works, Blake also engraved for Johnson, who was Godwin’s publisher and a friend of Thomas Paine. Being impacted by sympathisers of the French Revolution in the house of Johnson, Blake also wore a red cap when he came out in the street as a mark of support.
In 1793, he shifted to Lambeth and received pupils of high ranks, and as a result, he was offered a post of drawing master to the royal household, but Blake’s pride did not permit him to accept the offer and displaying extreme courtesy, even he dismissed his own pupils. His decision suddenly brought extreme poverty to him; even there was a fall in demand for engraving. In this hour of crisis, one of his fans named Thomas Butt came to his rescue. From 1799, Butt started buying whatever Blake produced, which has immensely helped to extricate him from starvation. Another patron named William Hayley, a poet with no talent but a squire, suddenly appeared in Blake’s life. He requested Blake to engrave for a “Life of Cowley”, which Hayley was writing. Blake was invited to live at Felpham, which was near the patron’s house. He stayed there for three years, from 1800 to 1803, where he also illustrated Hayley’s ballads. Though their relationship broke in 1803, Hayley had also saved Blake from a frivolous sedition charge brought by a soldier. In 1804, Blake engraved Jerusalem and Milton, in the preface of the latter; he wrote a resplendent lyric, beginning:
“And did those feet in ancient time, Walks upon England’s green:
And was the holy Lamb of God, On England’s pleasant pastures seen!”
During this period, Cromek, an engraver played a nasty trick with Blake by selling his designs of “The Grave” to another engraver, Schiavonetti, for a mere twenty guineas. Meanwhile, Blake had drawn a design and did engraving for Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, against which he received sixty guineas. Somehow, Blake was trying to run his family with modest earnings during these days, though he was a very simple man, who was duped time and again by many people. In 1809, he held an exhibition of all his works written till then and received wide acclaim from the local public. In the same year, he also published “Descriptive Catalogue”, which proved to be his very important prose work later.
Blake’s greatest engravings were: “Canterbury Pilgrimage” and “Inventions to Job”, and were again bought by Butt. These engravings were so exquisite that even one John Linnel, a rising young painter, ordered him to prepare duplicates of those two engravings, and to draw a series of designs for “Dante”. Henceforth nothing was going to stop Blake from producing a series of drawings numbering twenty-two in watercolour, which include some of the best drawings. He worked relentlessly late into the night. In fact, it was Linnell, who has helped Blake to come out of his poverty, but he also took advantage of Blake’s popularity to achieve his own success. There were also many other people like Linnell, who took advantage from Blake’s acquaintance to make them popular.
During his last years, Blake was surrounded by a lot of budding artists, like Tatham, Richmond, Palmer and Calvert, who behaved like his disciples, because they received constant inspiration from him, but Blake always considered them his friends. Blake worked in his rooms at Fountain Court in Strand until he breathed his last. Though his health was constantly falling, yet he continued with the designs of “Dante”. Sometime in December, 1826, when he heard about the death of his friend Flaxman, he lamented that he should have gone first. Even for him death was nothing but “going out of one room into another.” In August, 1827, lying in bed, he suddenly cried out to his beloved wife Catherine, “Stay as you are! You have been an angel to me; I will draw you.” He literally seized a pencil and started drawing; he had recalled that he had spent almost forty-five years together. But Blake could not continue for long, because his hands were no longer steady and also he was constantly sinking. He lay in bed, but never stopped composing and singing songs in praise of God. He was a deeply religious person. On the evening of August 12, 1827, in full consciousness singing the prayer a poet, an engraver, a painter, a designer, a mystic and a great visionary closed his eyes never to open again like a genuine saint. Though he always lived on the edge of poverty and neglect, he is now regarded as the greatest figure of romanticism. The love and loyalty of Catherine during every thick and thin of his life was really an inspiration for William Blake to make him a genius out of a non-entity. She also did not live long after the death of Blake and died on 18 October, 1831. Palmer, one of his great disciples, has drawn a vivid picture of William Blake, when he was an old man:
“His eye was the finest I ever saw: brilliant, not roving, clear and intent; yet susceptible; it flashed with genius, or melted in tenderness. It could also be terrible. Cunning and falsehood quailed under it, but it was never busy with them. It pierced them and turned away. Nor was the mouth less expressive; the lips flexible and quivering with feeling. I yet recall it when, on one occasion, dwelling upon the exquisite parable of the Prodigal, he began to repeat a part of it; but at the words: ‘When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him’ could go no further; his voice faltered and he was in tears ... He saw everything through art, and in matters beyond its range exalted it from a witness into a judge.”
(Email: drpkchhetri7@gmail.com)
