William Blake. Osbert Burdett
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in his bold manner, that this question cured him of jealousy forever, but at the time he was greatly upset and felt so ill that he went, according to Tatham, for a change of air to Kew. In fact, he went to Battersea, where he stayed with a market-gardener, Mr. William Boucher. Blake, who was badly in need of sympathy, was ready to confide in the first compassionate ear, and he found in the market-gardener’s daughter a willing listener. He told Catherine why he had come to Battersea, and she heard his story with such affectionate interest that he was completely won. Tatham, who tells the anecdote, was very close to the Blakes in later life, and there is no reason to doubt his statement that the two young people made a great impression upon each other. Catherine Boucher had a different temperament from lively Polly Wood. She was a demure young woman who did not run after men, and when her mother would ask her which of her acquaintances she would fancy for a husband, Catherine would reply that she had not yet seen the man. This was her state of mind when Blake suddenly appeared at Battersea, but she afterward related that when she first came upon Blake sitting in her house, she instantly recognised her future husband, and so nearly fainted that she left the room until she had composed herself. In this condition his story made a profound impression. When Blake saw how affected she was, he asked in his impulsive way: “Do you pity me?” “Indeed, I do,” she answered. “Then I love you,” he said, and so it was settled between them.
William Blake, Illustration from The Daughters of Albion, plate 7, 1793.
Relief etching, watercoloured by hand.
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge (Massachusetts).
William Blake, Illustration from The Daughters of Albion, plate 11, 1793.
Relief etching, watercoloured by hand.
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge (Massachusetts).
They were married on August 18, 1782, in St. Mary’s Church at Battersea, after Blake had returned to London to work until he had enough money to provide his wife with a home. The suggestion of Tatham that Blake had resolved not to see her until this was accomplished explains the year that elapsed between his visit to Battersea and his marriage.
Catherine Boucher, like many brides of her day, signed her name on the register with a mark. There were no national schools at this time, and even regular Sunday schools had not been invented. She had nothing to unlearn when she came to her husband, unless it were some puritan prejudices. He taught her all she ever knew, but she brought to him a slim figure, dark rich eyes, a warm heart, and a loyal affection. Mr. Symons thinks that she was the model for her husband’s “invariable type of woman, tall, slender, and with unusually long legs,” a sufficiently fascinating description. Crabb Robinson, who met her two years before Blake’s death, also spoke of her “dark eyes,” “good expression,” and the remains of youthful beauty. The verses in the Poetical Sketches about the dark-eyed maid were written five years before Blake met Catherine Boucher, but they occur often enough to suggest a preference that was to remain with him. There is no question of the happiness of his marriage, or of the singular devotion of his wife. He taught her to read and write, to draw, to help him to print, and even to colour his engravings. Like that of many wives, her handwriting resembled her husband’s. She was his complement in every way, and as obedient as he was imperious. “It is quite certain,” Crabb Robinson says, “that she believed in all his visions.” He filled her horizon, and she saw the world through his eyes. According to Gilchrist,
She would get up in the night when he was under his very fierce inspirations, which were as if they would tear him asunder… and so terrible a task did this seem to be that she had to sit motionless and silent: only to stay him mentally, without moving hand or foot. This for hours, and night after night.
Tatham is the source of this description:
While she looked on him as he worked, her sitting quite still by his side doing nothing soothed his impetuous mind; he has many a time, when a strong desire presented itself to overcome any difficulty in his plates or drawings, in the middle of the night, risen and requested her to get up with him, and sit by his side, in which she has cheerfully acquiesced.
Blake was twenty-four and Catherine twenty at the time of their marriage, and, possibly because it was not welcomed by his father, their first home was not with the hosier but at 23 Green Street in Leicester Fields. Hogarth had lived in Leicester Fields, which was an artists’ quarter, for the Blakes had a neighbour in Sir Joshua Reynolds. The young couple had a much rougher path to tread, but luckily for both of them Mrs. Blake was one of those reliable, sympathetic, and adaptable women who will second their husbands at whatever work they may set their hearts upon. Tatham tells us that she was a good cook and a careful housewife who “did all the work herself, kept the house clean and tidy, besides printing all Blake’s numerous engravings, which was a task sufficient for any industrious woman.” In addition to all this, Mrs. Blake had to adapt her ideas and behaviour to those of a man, an extraordinary thing to do in any age and wholly new to her own experience. We can well believe, without the hints to be found in the poetry that Blake composed in the early years of his marriage, that this was not the least exacting call upon her character. It was, no doubt, also the one of which Blake was at first the least conscious himself. The contrast between the two is apparent in their countenances and physique: she slim, dark-eyed, maternal; he, in Swinburne’s[19] summary of several contemporary descriptions, with “the infinite impatience of a great preacher or apostle,” showing “intense, tremulous vitality, as of a great orator, with the look of one who can do all things but hesitate.” How was a woman of Catherine’s placid nature to become, as she did, a responsive companion to such a man?
William Blake, Illustration from The Daughters of Albion, plate 10, 1793.
Relief etching, watercoloured by hand.
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge (Massachusetts).
William Blake, Illustration from The Daughters of Albion, plate 9, 1793.
Relief etching, watercoloured by hand.
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge (Massachusetts).
William Blake, Illustration from The Daughters of Albion, plate 4, 1793.
Relief etching, watercoloured by hand.
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge (Massachusetts).
They were not left entirely to themselves, for Flaxman, the sculptor, was not only nearby in Wardour Street, but he had many friends of his own and was eager to introduce Blake into this more fashionable circle. It was he who took the Blakes to the drawing-room of the accomplished blue-stocking, Mrs. Mathew, the wife of the Rev. Henry Mathew, then living in Rathbone Place, where their house was much frequented by literary and artistic figures. The Mathews were a cultivated, genial pair, the smiling centre of a little select world, and ready to be kind to all who seemed worthy of admission. Like most of their type, they confused benevolence with insight and were far more strict than they supposed in their liberal ideas. The helping hand that they were ready to extend did not really encourage independence, and suitors for their favour had to conform to the real, if scarcely visible, yoke of their polite patronage. They must have been very proud and pleased when they reflected on the accomplishments of each other. Mr. Mathew was said to have “read the church service more beautifully than any other clergyman in London.” He had also discovered Flaxman as a little boy learning Latin behind his father’s counter, and had held out a helping hand to him. Mrs. Mathew in turn became the sculptor’s friend, and would read Homer to him while he made designs on the table at her side during these voluntary lessons. She was well versed in Greek and Latin, and fully able to hold her own with such learned ladies as Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu[20] and Mrs. Carter.[21]
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) was an English poet, famous for his taste for provocative subjects.
Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800) was a British social reformer, patron of the arts, hostess, literary critic and writer.
Elizabeth Carter, (1717–1806), was a poet, classicist, writer and translator.