Gilchrist on Blake: The Life of William Blake by Alexander Gilchrist. Richard Holmes
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I find Blake engraving after Stothard and others in the Wit’s Magazine. The Wit’s Magazine was a ‘Monthly Repository for the Parlour Window’ – not designed (as the title in those free-speaking days might warrant a suspicion) to raise a blush on Lady’s cheek: – a miscellany of innocently entertaining rather than strictly witty gleanings, and original contributions mostly amateur. A periodical curious to look back upon in days of a weekly Punch! It would be difficult now to find a literary parallel to Mr Harrison’s plan of ‘creating a spirit of emulation, and rewarding genius:’ by awarding ‘one silver medal’ per month to the ‘best witty tale, essay, or poem,’ another to ‘the best answer’ to the munificent proprietor’s ‘prize enigmas.’ A full list of the names and addresses of successful candidates for Fame is appended to each of the two octavo volumes to which the Magazine ran. A graceful grotesque, the Temple of Mirth, of Stothard’s design, is the frontispiece to the first number: a folding sheet forcibly engraved by Blake in his characteristic manner of distributing strongly contrasted light and shade and tone. To it succeeded, month by month, four similar engravings by him after a noted caricaturist of the day, now forgotten, S. Collings: on broad-grin themes, such as The Tithe in Kind, or the Son’s Revenge, The Discomfited Duellists, The Blind Beggar’s Hats, and May Day in London. After which, an engraver of lower grade, one Smith, (quære, our friend Nollekens Smith?) executes the engravings; and after him a nameless one. The engraving caricatures, of the earth earthy, for this ‘Library of Momus’ was truly a singular task for a spiritual poet!
Some slight clue to the original Design of this period in a somewhat different key is given by the Exhibition-Catalogues, which report Blake as making a second appearance at the Academy in 1784. In that year, – the year of Reynolds’ Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and Fortune-Teller, – hung in the ‘Drawing and Sculpture Room,’ two designs of Blake’s: one, War unchained by an Angel – Fire, Pestilence and Famine following; the other, a Breach in a City – The Morning after a Battle. Companionsubjects, their tacit moral – the supreme despicableness of War – was one of which the artist, in all his tenets thorough-going, was a fervent propagandist in days when War was tyrannously in the ascendant. This, by the way, was the year of Peace with the tardily recognized North American States. I have not seen those two drawings. The same theme gave birth about twenty years later to four very fine water-colour drawings, – for Dantesque intensity, imaginative directness, and power of the terrible: illustrations of the doings of the Destroying Angels that War lets loose – Fire, Plague, Pestilence, and Famine. Another very grand and awe-inspiring illustration of still later date, of the same suggestive theme, is Let loose the Dogs of War – a Demon cheering on blood-hounds who seize a man by the throat; of which Mr Ruskin possesses the original pencil sketch, Mr Linnell the water-colour drawing.
During the summer of 1784, died Blake’s father, an honest shopkeeper of the old school, and a devout man – a dissenter. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, on the fourth of July (a Sunday) says the Register. The eldest son, James, – a year and a half William’s senior – continued to live with the widow Catherine, and succeeded to the hosier’s business in Broad Street, still a highly respectable street, and a good one for trade, as it and the whole neighbourhood continued until the era of Nash and the ‘first gendeman in Europe.’ Golden Square was still the ‘town residence’ of some half-dozen M.P.’s – for county or rotten borough; Poland Street and Great Marlborough Street of others. Between this brother and the artist no strong sympathy existed, little community of sentiment or common ground (mentally) of any kind; although indeed, James – for the most part an humble matter-of-fact man – had his spiritual and visionary side too; would at times talk Swedenborg, talk of seeing Abraham and Moses, and to outsiders seem like his gifted brother ‘a bit mad’ – a mild madman instead of a wild and stormy.
On his father’s death, Blake, who found Design yield no income, Engraving but a scanty one, returned from Green Street, Leicester Fields, to familiar Broad Street. At No. 27, next door to his brother’s, he set up shop as printseller and engraver, in partnership with a former fellow-apprentice at Basire’s: James Parker, a man some six or seven years his senior. An engraving by Blake after Stothard, Zephyrus and Flora (a long oval), was published by the firm ‘Parker and Blake’ this same year (1784). Mrs Mathew, still friendly and patronizing, though one day to be less eager for the poet’s services as Hon in Rathbone Place, countenanced, nay perhaps first set the scheme going – in an ill-advised philanthropic hour; favouring it, if Smith’s hints may be trusted, with solid pecuniary help. It will prove an ill-starred speculation; Pegasus proverbially turning out an indifferent draught-horse. Mrs Blake helped in the shop; the poet busied himself with his graver and pencil still. William Blake behind a counter would have been a curious sight to see! His younger and favourite brother, Robert, made one in the family; William taking him as a gratis pupil in engraving. It must have been a singularly conducted commercial enterprise. No. 27 bears at present small trace – with its two quiet parlour-windows, apparently the same casements that have been there from the beginning – of having once been even temporarily a shop. The house is of the same character as No. 28: a good-sized three-storied one, with panelled rooms; its original aspect (like that of No. 28) wholly disguised, externally, by all-levelling stucco. It is still a private mansion; but let out (now) in floors and rooms to many families instead of one.
From 27, Broad Street, Blake in 1785 sent four water-colour drawings to the Academy-Exhibition, one, by the way, at which our old friend Parson Gardnor is still exhibiting – some seven Views of Lake Scenery. One of Blake’s drawings is from Gray, The Bard. The others are subjects from the Story of Joseph: Joseph’s Brethren bowing before him; Joseph making himself known to them; Joseph ordering Simeon to be bound. The latter series I have seen. The drawings are interesting for their imaginative merit, and as specimens, full of soft tranquil beauty, of Blake’s earlier style: a very different one from that of his later and better-known works. Conceived in a dramatic spirit, they are executed in a subdued key of which, extravagance is the last defect to suggest itself. The design is correct and blameless, not to say tame (for Blake), the colour full, harmonious and sober. At the head of the Academy-Catalogues of those days, stands the stereotype notification, The Pictures &c. marked (*) are to be disposed of.’ Blake’s are not so marked: let us hope they were disposed of! The three Joseph drawings turned up within the last ten years in their original close rose-wood frames (a far from advantageous setting), at a broker’s in Wardour Street, who had purchased them at a furniture-sale in the neighbourhood. Among Blake’s fellow-exhibitors, it is now curious to note the small galaxy of still remembered names – Reynolds, Nollekens, Morland, Cosway, Fuseli, Flaxman, Stothard (the last three yet juniors) – sprinkling the mob of forgotten ones: among which such as West, Hamilton, Rigaud, Loutherbourg, Copley, Serre, Mary Moser, Russell, Dance, Farington Edwards, Garvey, Tomkins, are positive points of light. This year, by the way, Blake’s friend Trotter exhibits a Portrait of the late Dr Johnson, ‘a drawing in chalk from the life, about eighteen months before his death,’ which should be worth something.
Blake’s brother Robert, his junior by nearly five years, had been a playfellow of Smith’s, whose father lived near (in Great Portland Street); and from him we hear that ‘Bob, as he was familiarly called,’ had ever been ‘much beloved by all his companions.’ By William he was in these years not only taught to draw and engrave, but encouraged to exert his imagination in original sketches. I have come across some of these tentative essays, carefully preserved by Blake during life, and afterwards forming part of the large accumulation of artistic treasure remaining in his widow’s hands: the sole legacy, but not at all unproductive, he had to bequeath her. Some are in pencil, some in pen and ink outline thrown up by a uniform dark ground washed in with Indian ink. They unmistakably show the beginner – not to say the child – in art; are naïf and archaic-looking; rude, faltering, often puerile or absurd in drawing; but are characterized by Blake-like feeling and intention, having in short a strong family likeness to his brother’s work. The subjects are from Homer and the poets. Of one or two compositions there are successive and each time enlarged versions. True imaginative animus is often made manifest by very imperfect means; in the composition of the groups, and the expressive disposition of the individual figure, or of an individual limb: as, e.g. (in one drawing) that solitary upraised