WILLIAM BLAKE

See Also: CEMETERIES Highgate Cemetery, Name Dropping; ILLUSTRATION & GRAPHIC DESIGN; LITERATURE; STREET ART & GRAFFITI The Tigers of Wrath; WESTMINSTER ABBEY MEMORIALS & GRAVES Royal Graves

Blake s mother, Catherine Armitage, and her first husband were Moravians. As a child Blake was given to having religious visions. He also displayed talent as a draughtsman and had an interest in writing poetry. Religion and art were to be the dominating themes of his life. From 1771 to 1778 he served an apprenticeship with the James Basire printmaker, who exposed him to a rich diversity of intellectual and scientific phenomena. These may have included Jacob Bryant's A New System, or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1774-6). As an apprentice, he was required to draw the medieval tombs of the kings and queens of England. The experience instilled in him a sense of the country's past that never left him. Having become a journeyman in the trade, Blake's clients came to include the publisher Joseph Johnson, who was an important figure in liberal cultural circles.

In 1782 Blake married Catherine Boucher. She was to be the most important figure in his adult life. She was capable of reminding him of the financial realities of their existence by placing an empty plate before him when he had been anticipating being fed.

While intensely grieving the death of his brother Robert in 1787, Blake developed the technique of relief etching. This enabled him to create a work of art directly onto a copperplate. As a result, he could produce images that unified conception and execution. The method could be used for text as well as for pictures. Poetry occupied a large place in his life for twenty years. In 1789 he published Songs of Innocence, his first illustrated poetry book. It was a set of lyrical poems that appeared to be close to the then booming vein of poems for children. However, it differed by not setting out instruction about how readers should conduct themselves morally. In addition, their visual element of hand-coloured prints made them much more expensive. The same year he dabbled with Swedenborgian beliefs before rejecting them.¹ Thereafter, he and his wife conducted their religious life away from any formal group. His beliefs were opposed to the deism that was espoused by many of his radical contemporaries.

In 1794 Blake published the book Songs of Experience. The collection contained The Tyger, which eventually was to become one of the most popular poems in the English language. During the author's own lifetime, his works sold poorly. He became increasingly reliant upon the generosity of a number of patrons. In 1804 his spirits improved, leaving him a state of well-being that prompted him to compose two epic poems, one of which was Jerusalem. He spent the early 1810s in obscurity. He resumed his engraving in 1814 with the help of the sculptor John Flaxman, whom he had known since the early 1780s.

In 1818 Blake started his friendship with John Linnell, a painter who was 35-years younger than himself, and who introduced him to a group of artists who admired his work. These youths termed themselves The Ancients . Through Linnell, Blake came to know Henry Crabb Robinson, who was already familiar with his work and who had discussed it with the likes of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Robinson kept copious diaries. These were to become the single most important literary source about Blake. They were used by Alexander Gilchrist for his Life of Blake (1863).²

Location: 74 Broadwick Street, W1F 9QZ. Blake s birthplace. Blake House Tower occupies the site. (blue, brown)

7 Greenwell Street, W1W 5BR (red, yellow)

23 (formerly 13) Hercules Road, SE1 7DX. The site of a studio that Blake used. The building was razed in 1918.

28 Poland Street, W1F 8QP. Blake's home for six years. (red, orange)

17 South Molton Street, W1K 5QT. The Blakes moved into the house in 1804. (blue, purple)

Savoy Court, Strand, WC2R 0EZ. Blake spent a period living close to what became the site of the Savoy Hotel. (red, blue)

Website: www.blakearchive.org (The William Blake Archive)

¹. Blake's first art teacher, Richard Cosway, had been a Swedenborgian.

². Gilchrist died prior to publication. Dante Gabriel Rossetti played a role in helping the author's widow produce it.

Post-Blake Blake

In the 1830s Blake was an obscure figure in Britain, however interest began to be taken in him in the United States. During the following decade he was widely read. He was perceived of as being a spiritually-inspired champion of social reform.

Rossetti bought Blake's notebook which he plundered for ideas about art. Thereby, Blake's ideas became known to the Pre-Raphaelites. They fostered a myth of Blake that portrayed him as turning his back on the world in order to devote himself to his art.

During the counterculture the slogan the aphorism The tigers of wrath of wiser than the horses of instruction from Blake's text The Marriage of Heaven & Hell was a popular graffiti in London. (The American band The Doors had taken their name ultimately from the work.)

Jerusalem

For three years William Blake lived near Trundle Hill (near Chichester) in Sussex. The view inspired him to write Jerusalem. He used it as a preface to Milton, a strange, epic poem, rather than from Jerusalem. They were an awkward fit. He printed only four copies of Milton and only two of these contained it. Two of the four went to America. Of the two that remained in Britain one was lodged in the British Museum where Alexander Gilchrist read it while writing his Life. The lyric was concerned with the promotion of Christianity he was rejecting the Classical authors and their promotion of martiality. It is not a celebration of England but of what it could be. This enabled the material to become known.

Francis Younghusband (1863-1942) set up Fight For Right to counter German propaganda. In 1916 Robert Bridges the Poet Laureate identified William Blake's poem Jerusalem (1804) as being a text that could be adapted into a song. Hubert Parry wrote the music. The composer became concerned about the nationalistic drift of the organisation. In 1917 he resigned from it. He was glad that Jerusalem was embraced by the women's suffrage movement, singing it at a meeting that was held in the Queen's Hall. The Labour Party adopted it.

The resulting work became one of the most popular hymns in Britain. Parry conducted a performance of it at the Royal Albert Hall. In 1922 Sir Edward Elgar furnished the piece with an orchestral arrangement.

As a result of its origins, Jerusalem is still closely associated with the Women's Institute movement, an organisation with a reputation for being rural and middle-class. However, from time-to-time, it makes socially progressive statements about public policy that belie its stolid public image. The work is also always sung by the audience during the Last Night of the Proms.

Jersualem is performed in a wide range of circumstances, yet it is largely composed of a series of questions.

Location: Queen's Hall, 3-6 Langham Place, W1A 1AA. The building was destroyed by aerial bombing in 1941. (red, grey)

17 Kensington Square, W8 5HH. Parry's home. (blue, pink)

See Also: THE QUEEN OF CURVES

An Urban Hell

Dante s vision of hell had been informed by his experience of urban environments. He located it physically within the Earth. Milton's was located elsewhere in the Universe. Blake's notebooks reveal his interest in trying to draw sketches for a version of Paradise Lost. It came to nothing. It can be argued that Blake's vision of hell reflected aspects of the urban environment around him. London had become a place that alienated people. By contrast, Dante's vision of Hell was almost one of a functioning civic community. In The Wasteland, in the wake of the First World War, T.S. Eliot was to extend Blake's vision. At the time of the poem's writing, Eliot was not a Christian. He became one subsequently.

David Backhouse 2024