William Blake Part 6

f.a.n.n.y was a slave to conventions. Mary followed her own nature. f.a.n.n.y refused to correspond with Madame de Genlis, and asked Queen Charlotte whether she had not done right, and at her father's bidding dropped Madame de Stael, to whom she was attracted. Mary consulted no one about her friendships, and in defiance of legal bonds was willing to be the mother of Charles Imlay's child because she loved him.

Alas! Charles Imlay was faithless; and when Mary returned to England with little f.a.n.n.y Imlay, alone and broken in spirit, it was bookseller Johnson who befriended her as he had our lonely Blake. Obviously there was much in common between her and Blake. He was with her in her hope for women, and children, and the poor. She had found herself in spite of mistakes, and her character and her works were informed with vital pa.s.sion. Had Blake been single, and she drawn into friendship with him, she would have become the perfect type of new woman, imaginative, understanding, impa.s.sioned, inspired; as it happened, it was into G.o.dwin's arms she fell, and not Blake's, and while G.o.dwin took her in like a wandering dove, and gave her shelter and sympathy, yet the slight chill of his marital deportment and reasoned ways would have hindered her, had she lived, from bringing her fine character to full fruition.

Tom Paine presents another type of rebel with whom Blake came into contact. He had already made for himself fast friends and bitter enemies by aiding and abetting the American Rebellion. The thirteen colonies, though irritated by the Stamp Act, were not at once inclined to rebel, and even after Charles Townshend's proposal of tea-duty, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware still held back. Paine could wield a powerful pen, and by this means he kept the flame of discontent alive, and urged the States on till Jefferson composed a Declaration of Independence to which the four backward States were brought reluctantly to agree, and on July 4th, 1776, the American United Colonies declared themselves Free and Independent States.

After this success Paine felt that his pen was equal to any task. Having returned to England and fallen in with the G.o.dwin set, he of course shared with them in their sympathies for the French Revolution, and in addition declared himself a deist, and set himself, in his _Age of Reason_, to discredit the Bible. It was all very well when he was doing the rough work of fanning rebellion, but he was ludicrously unfit for the fine work of criticizing the Bible. Its poetry and mysticism and manifold wisdom were not even suspected by him. He stolidly read through the sublime chapters of Isaiah, and thought them worse than the production of a schoolboy; and when he came to the stories of the Nativity, which, whether fact or poetry, are marvellously beautiful, he became so grossly indecent that one is bound to relegate him to the vulgarest order of Bible-smashers.

His deism was a symptom of the times. Dr Priestley, who also attended Johnson's dinners, was a polished ornament of the sect. They persuaded themselves that G.o.d, having set the universe agog, remained Himself wholly outside of it. It was well that Blake should come into personal touch with these rebel deists. They could never appeal to him even for a moment, for he was penetrated all his life with the belief that G.o.d dwelt inside of His creation; and since all theological rebellion tended more and more in the direction of a mechanical deism, he began to suspect that he must look elsewhere to discover the wisdom that should crown his years.

Yet there was something in Paine that appealed to Blake. They were both worshippers of liberty, and while they could not meet on theological ground, they were stirred alike by the portentous and successive crises on the other side of the Channel. Paine felt that he still had work to do. He had served his apprenticeship in America, he would now put forth his whole strength in his _Rights of Man_, and help forward the sacred cause of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.

There were other rebels--Holcroft, playwright and translator, friend of G.o.dwin, afterwards to be sent to Newgate; Hardy and Thelwall; Horne Tooke, who raised subscriptions for the relief of Americans and spoke of the transactions at Lexington and Concord as "inhuman murders." He was to be tried along with Holcroft and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment.

Now Blake sympathized with all these rebels in their political aspirations; but whereas their watchword was reason, and their revolt was in the name of reason, he believed that reason carried one very little way, and that the elemental deeps of life and pa.s.sion that lie far under reason must be stirred and aroused if the work of rebellion was to bring forth lasting fruit. In any case, the reason-bound men had little to teach him. He had looked to Swedenborg, he had taken knowledge of his advanced contemporaries. G.o.dwin rebelled for political liberty, Mary Wollstonecraft for liberty of women and children, Tom Paine for liberty of man. What was left for Blake? The s.e.x question had never been dragged out into the light. The subject was unclean. s.e.xual morality consisted in repression.

Nowhere as here does repression breed such poisonous fruits. Was not s.e.x a part of that vital fire and pa.s.sion in which Blake believed with his whole heart? Was it not true that whatsoever lives is holy? Must not there be liberty for the s.e.xual instinct if it was to be kept clean? For the next ten years Blake became the advocate of bodily liberty, indistinguishable from free-love. This was to be the recurring theme again and again in his prophetic books. This was to be his contribution towards the new kind of man or superman for whom he was groping. Afterwards, when he had given substance and form in his prophecies to the vague and indefinite thoughts that lay in him, he was to learn how to estimate and place them. Not until he had walked the road of mental excess was he to arrive at the palace of wisdom. Once there, he was to revise even his ideas on rebellion.

Keeping these persons and things steadily in view, let us now follow in order and detail the works of Blake's most rebellious period.

As was fitting, Blake sounded the note of rebellion in a poem on the French Revolution.

At this stage--1790-91--the Revolution had not advanced far. The Reign of Terror and the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were still in the future. But the Bastille had fallen, and the noise of its fall set the nerves of the overstrung English liberals vibrating. The battle in prose was waged by Paine, Mackintosh, and Mary Wollstonecraft against Burke, and their names came at once into notoriety. Blake was as outspoken, and even more fearless, for he wore publicly the _bonnet rouge_ as the outward and visible sign of his faith, but fortunately for him, his natural medium of expression was poetry, and that of a kind hitherto unknown, and so, say what he would, no one paid him the smallest attention. What came doubtlessly as a surprise to himself was that his poem found a publisher; and the first Book, with the promise that the remaining Books of the Poem, which were finished, should be published in their order, was announced to the world by bookseller Johnson in 1791, at the modest price of one shilling.

Blake has a strange allegorical method of dealing with the Revolution which can only irritate those who are not accustomed to his ways. Thus he speaks of the seven dark and sickly towers of the Bastille. To these he gives the descriptive names of Horror, Darkness, b.l.o.o.d.y, Religion, Order, Destiny, the Tower of G.o.d, and he gives descriptions of the prisoners in the towers corresponding to their names. All these were imprisoned because in some form or other they had bidden for liberty. One was the author of "a writing prophetic"; another, a woman, "refused to be wh.o.r.e to the Minister and with a knife smote him"; another had raised a pulpit in the city of Paris and "taught wonders to darkened souls." The horror of their condition is described with great power, although with too congested an acc.u.mulation of baneful images. Thus: "In the tower named Darkness was a man pinioned down to the stone floor, his strong bones scarce covered with sinews; _the iron rings were forged smaller as the flesh decayed_." That is a Dantesque touch. But when one reads farther down of "an old man, whose white beard covered the stone floor like weeds on margin of the sea, shrivelled up by heat of day and cold of night; his den was short and narrow as a grave dug for a child, with spiders' webs wove and with slime of ancient horrors covered, for snakes and scorpions are his companions,"

then the piled-up details prevent a clear image, and detract from the value of what has gone before. In contrast to the wretched inhabitants of the Bastille, we are presented with the King and his n.o.bles. Here are names, but no portraits. The King stands for the spirit of kingship in all ages and his n.o.bles are those who uphold "this marble-built heaven," and "all this great starry harvest of six thousand years." They must resist to the death the crooked sickle stretched out over fertile France "till our purple and crimson is faded to russet, and the Kingdoms of earth bound in sheaves, and the ancient forests of chivalry hewn, and the joys of the combat burnt for fuel." (As Blake penned these fine words something of his early Elizabethan pa.s.sion must have stirred in him.) The King, through whom the spirits of ancient Kings speak, peers through the darkness and clouds, and involuntarily sees the truth: "We are not numbered among the living." Life is with the prisoners who have burst their dens. Let Kings "shivering over their bleached bones hide in the dust! and plague and wrath and tempest shall cease."

The Archbishop of Paris, symbol of traditional religion, arises and addresses the King. For him revolution can only mean atheism. "G.o.d so long worshipped departs as a lamp without oil.... The sound of prayer fails from lips of flesh, and the holy hymn from thickened tongues."

Clergy as well as n.o.bles vanish, mitre as well as crown. "The sound of the bell, and voice of the sabbath, and singing of the holy choir is turned into songs of the harlot in day, and cries of the virgin in night. They shall drop at the plough and faint at the harrow, unredeemed, unconfessed, unpardoned; the priest rot in his surplice by the lawless lover, the holy beside the accursed, the King, frowning in purple, beside the grey ploughman, and their worms embrace together."

This, fine as it is, calls out a still finer speech from Orleans. "Can n.o.bles be bound when the people are free, or G.o.d weep when His children are happy?" Then to the Archbishop he cries: "Go, thou cold recluse, into the fires of another's high flaming rich bosom, and return unconsumed, and write laws. If thou canst not do this, doubt thy theories, learn to consider all men as thy equals, thy brethren, and not as thy foot or thy hand, unless thou first fearest to hurt them."

Finally the voice of the people is heard rising from valley and hill. What though "the husbandman weeps at blights of the fife, and blastings of trumpets consume the souls of mild France, and the pale mother nourishes her child to deadly slaughter, yet when the will of the people is accomplished, then shall the soldier throw down his sword and musket and run and embrace the meek peasant ... the saw and the hammer, the chisel, the pencil, the pen, and the instruments of heavenly song sound in the wilds once forbidden ... and the happy earth sing in its course, the mild peaceable nations be opened to heaven, and men walk with their fathers in bliss."

This and much more is what the capture of the Bastille symbolized for Blake. We see that his hopes ran high. The Revolution was to rectify no temporary disorder. It was to set the people free for the first time in the world's history, and so effect a Kingdom of G.o.d on earth which had been the pa.s.sionate yearning of imprisoned souls in all ages. The Kingdom was to come by pa.s.sion and not intellect, by fire and not snow. And so to cold _doctrinaire_ G.o.dwin and such-like, he would have said as Orleans to the Archbishop in the poem: "Go, thou cold recluse, into the fires of another's high flaming rich bosom." G.o.dwin was to go, as we know, into Mary's flaming rich bosom, and to warm as he chilled her; but even Mary could not bring him to the flaming point which burned in the bosom of William Blake as it had in the bosom of Jesus Christ.

Blake's obscurity protected him from the persecution that was pursuing its victims in the Johnson circle.

On July 14th, 1790, Dr Priestley had arranged a dinner party in Birmingham to commemorate the capture of the Bastille, for which he was mobbed, and his house, containing a fine library, philosophical instruments, and laborious ma.n.u.scripts, was destroyed. In 1792 Tom Paine was marked out by the Home Office as another victim; but while he was reporting at Johnson's his public speech of the preceding evening, Blake advised him to decamp at once to France or he was a dead man; and he, taking the hint, escaped safely to Calais, and was ready to take his part in the National Convention, to which the Department of Calais had appointed him. Paine never returned to England, but he was to encounter many perils during the Reign of Terror, and to write the _Age of Reason_, in which he attacked at once the Bible and French atheism.

Blake, still fired by liberty, wrote his _Song of Liberty_ according to Dr Sampson about 1792.

Liberty was the new-born terror, fire, and wonder, brought forth by the eternal Female. Under its inspiration England was to be healed, America renewed, Spain to burst the barriers of old Rome, and Rome herself to cast her keys deep down into eternity. But liberty has a dire conflict with Urizen, here called the jealous King and the gloomy King, who with his grey-browed counsellors, thunderous warriors, curled veterans, and ten commands, makes a fight for life. Liberty stamps the stony law to dust till Empire is no more, and is confident that the lion and wolf shall cease. The sons of liberty are sons of joy, and counting that everything that lives is holy, proceed to act whenever they will.

Thus Blake stumbles again on the vexed subject of s.e.x, and it was to remain something of an obsession with him for many years.

His main thoughts can be gathered from _The Visions of the Daughters of Albion_, which he engraved and printed in 1793. The heroine Oothoon, a Blakean Tess, loves and is beloved by Theotormon. But Bromion, forcibly conveying her to his stormy bed, tears her virgin mantle in twain.

Satiated, he cries to Theotormon: "Now thou mayst marry Bromion's harlot, and protect the child of Bromion's rage, that Oothoon shall put forth in nine moons' time."

Theotormon refused. Consumed with jealousy, and reckoning Oothoon a defiled thing, he cannot receive her, and the two, loving, remain apart, consuming their days in misery and tears.

Oothoon calls on Theotormon's eagles to rend away her defiled bosom, that she may reflect the image of Theotormon on her pure transparent breast.

The eagles rend their bleeding prey, at which Theotormon, considering that Oothoon suffers what she deserves, severely smiles. She, with no touch of resentment at his self-righteous cruelty, which in truth she is too self-effacing to perceive, reflects the smile, "and as the clear spring, muddied with feet of beasts, grows pure and smiles." It is plain that, whatever her past acts, she is a pure living soul, and Theotormon with his conventional morality is neither clean nor alive. She is "a new-washed lamb tinged with the village smoke," or "a bright swan by the red earth of our immortal river," but she has only to bathe her wings, and she is white and pure to hover round Theotormon's breast.

With the cleansing of her breast comes the clearing of her vision. She is no longer enclosed by her five senses, nor her infinite brain into a narrow circle, but she sees through nature, and comes to see Theotormon as he really is. He was only a selfish devourer. But she cries:

"Can that be Love, that drinks another as a sponge drinks water, That clouds with jealousy his nights, with weepings all the day, To spin a web of age around him, grey and h.o.a.ry and dark; Till his eyes sicken at the fruit that hangs before his sight?"

Then she names it aright:

"Such is _self-love_ that envies all, a creeping skeleton, With lamplike eyes watching around the frozen marriage bed!"

Her own love has risen far above such selfishness. She will even lie by his side on a bank, and view him without jealousy as he takes his delight with "girls of mild silver, or of furious gold," and into the heaven of generous love she will bring no selfish blightings. Then with these lovely words she concludes her golden speech:

"Arise, you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy!

Arise, and drink your bliss, for everything that lives is holy."

Here we get in poetry, as later in the _Epipsychidion_ of Sh.e.l.ley, a beautiful conception of love and s.e.xual morality. It is what all with any touch of poetical feeling have at times felt since the days of Sh.e.l.ley, and it has appeared in many modern novels and plays. But we must keep in mind that man's deepest feelings and thoughts are revealed by his acts and not his words, however beautiful they may be. Blake was to push his mental liberty to its utmost extent, and advocate a freedom that should satisfy the exorbitant demands of the most modern eroto-maniac; but the fact remains that in his own life he fulfilled to the letter the requirements of traditional morality, not because his wandering fancy was inactive, but because, things being as they are, it is not always possible to translate poetry into act, and the old morality is the only thing that reckons with the disabilities of this tiresome old world.

In this same year Blake wrote and engraved _America, A Prophecy_.

We have already seen his interest in the French Revolution, and his excited hope that it would lead to the regeneration of Europe and the world. He now works backwards to the American War of Independence, and considers that the Demon's (Orc's) light that France received had first been kindled when the thirteen States of North America struck for liberty.

He expected much from America. Believing at this period that rebellion was the direct road to liberty and wisdom, his expectation of America was great because, being farther removed from tradition, her position predisposed her to rebel.

England's boast of colonies was to him a vain boast, and her watchword "Empire" had no magic for him. While the thirteen States of North America were possessions of England, and were ruled by thirteen governors of England's choosing, he believed that America must remain enslaved and unfruitful, and therefore Earth must lose another portion of the Infinite.

To lose a portion, however small, of the Infinite is unutterable loss, and so Blake's fiery impetuous sympathies burned towards those men--Washington, Franklin, Paine, Warren--who had stirred the States to insurrection and revolt. His imagination leapt to an ensuing liberty in which social evils should be left far behind.

"Let the enchained soul, shut up in darkness and in sighing, Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years, Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open; And let his wife and children return from the oppressor's scourge.

They look behind at every step, and believe it is a dream, Singing: 'The sun has left his blackness, and has found a fresher morning, And the fair moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night; For Empire is no more, and now the Lion and Wolf shall cease.'"

Then all the things that religion has repressed spring up and flourish.

The pristine fiery joy, once perverted to ten commands, burns through all obstructions, and, as a flame of life, leaps to life, rejoicing in all living things, even in the harlot who remains undefiled, "though ravished in her cradle night and morn." And man walks amidst the l.u.s.tful fires unconsumed. The fires serve to make his feet "become like bra.s.s, his knees and thighs like silver, and his breast and head like gold."

Blake exulted in his vision and proclaimed it in unfaltering tones because he knew that "the soul of sweet delight can never be defiled." Here he adds a touch or two to his vision of s.e.x in _The Vision of the Daughters of Albion_, and he reaches its heart. The _soul_ of sweet delight is eternally clean. Once a man has grasped this truth, and it may cost him much mental fight to reach it, then he is able to think and speak cleanly of the pa.s.sion of love, he can go naked, like Adam in Eden, and the angels of the highest heaven, and know no touch of shame.

There is much in modern literature and art that Blake would have detested, but he would have loved the soul of Sonia the undefiled harlot that Dostoieffski has revealed with such wonderful power in his _Crime and Punishment_.

Blake followed the American conflict until "the British soldiers through the Thirteen States sent up a howl of anguish" and threw their swords and muskets to the earth. They were unable to stand before the flames of Orc; and since those flames had now reached to France, Blake dreamed that nothing could withstand their hungry course till the regeneration of the world should come.

All this and much more is said in Blake's symbolical way. Here, as in _The French Revolution_, there are no portraits. The rebels of the States, and even Paine, are mere names, and much less real than the angels of the States who carry on the real business. These angels lived in an ancient palace built on the Atlantean hills between America and England. It is interesting to note these things, because the angels of the States are suggested by the angels of the Kingdoms in the apocalyptic book of Daniel, which Blake loved and instinctively understood, and the Atlanteans have always had an irresistible attraction for men of a theosophical turn of mind. Blake was a close student of the apocalyptic books of the Bible all his life; his knowledge of the Atlanteans probably came to him through his Rosicrucian readings.

_America_ lets us see the profound admiration Blake felt towards Paine for his action in the American War. Later on we shall find him criticizing with some asperity the deism that his friend confessed.

I must pa.s.s over Blake's other writings of this year, and merely recount that he again changed his residence, and went to live in Lambeth at 13 Hercules Buildings. Dr Samson says that it is now numbered 23, but authorities cannot agree whether it was this house or the next.

In 1794 Blake engraved his _Europe: A Prophecy_, which is the last of his poems dealing with contemporaneous political events.

Europe stood for Blake in his rebellious mood as the symbol of tradition, authority, science, religion. It was the dead past. "Enitharmon slept eighteen hundred years. Man was a dream, the night of Nature and their harps unstrung." Europe, during this long sleep, was without vision, inspiration, art, and true nature. Her religion, divorced from art, was repressive, and existed by trading on men's fears. Falling under the tyranny of the five senses, she believed only so much as the senses could testify of; hence she was rational, utilitarian, unimaginative, and joyless. She squinted so abominably with such eyes as she had that she saw nothing as it was. G.o.d, man, nature, became creations of man's perverted reason, and G.o.d was used as an efficient policeman to keep insurrectionary nations in subjection and vital men in order.