Miniature portrait painting drove home to him the vast difference between historical designing and portrait painting. Portrait requires nature before the painter’s eye, historical designing depends on imagination. Nature and imagination were as antithetical in Blake’s eye as nature and grace in the theologian’s, and just here he kept as far away from pantheism as he could in his obstinate determination to keep nature and imagination as separate as the sheep and the goats. While agreeing with Blake in keeping them apart, I suppose most of us would say that the finest portrait painting depended on imagination no less than historical designing.
The atmosphere of Felpham induced in Blake long fits of abstraction and brooding, and he pushed his thoughts on miniature forwards to the recollecting of all his scattered thoughts on art. He determined to discontinue all attempts at eclecticism. Venetian finesse and Flemish picturesque were “excellencies of an inferior order” and “incompatible with the grand style.” He was convinced that the reverse of this—uniformity of colour and long continuation of lines—produces grandeur. So said Sir Joshua, who did not always practise what he preached in his discourses; so said Michael Angelo, whose profession and practice were one; so said Blake, who was decided, while adhering to the principles of the great Florentine, to be true to his own genius, so that his work should be as distinct from Michael Angelo’s as Caracci’s from Correggio’s, or Correggio’s from Raphael’s.
Here was strength for Blake in knowing his own mind about his art and methods, and following it. It helped him out of his paralysing diffidence, which Hayley fostered, and made more clear the real issue between him and his patron. He strove to see the situation in the largest light possible. The old question of God’s providence exercised him. Did God bring him to Felpham? Did God keep him there? If so, it must be because it was not fit for him at present to be employed in greater things. That thought kept him patient. When it is proper his talents will be properly exercised in public. But God guides by cleansing man’s understanding and pushing him forwards to a decision. He understood his art, yet Hayley objected to his doing anything but the mere drudgery of business. He trusted his art, and he saw how he must work. Let him trust himself, and then? He saw all clearly now, as he had seen it in the first month, although he had stifled his apprehensions. God had given him a great talent. It would be affected humility to deny it. If he stayed with Hayley he would paint miniatures, make money, and make his beloved Kate comfortable for life; but he would sell his divine birthright. If he obeyed God by following the gifts He had bestowed on him, then farewell to Hayley and lovely Felpham: he must return without delay to London, and once more he and Kate together must face the grinding life of poverty. Anyone who knows Blake must know what decision he would make. He made it silently, irrevocably. By the beginning of October 1803 he and Kate were back again in London, lodging in South Molton Street, with a sense of escape and liberty which more than compensated for the uncertain prospect of the future.
Blake had not quite finished with Felpham. Before leaving he had had a disagreeable affair with a private in Captain Leathe’s troop of 1st or Royal Dragoons. From a letter of Blake’s to Mr Butts, dated August 16th, 1803, we learn that this man was found by him in the garden, invited to assist by the gardener without his knowledge. He desired him politely to go away; and on his refusal, again repeated his request. The man then threatened to knock out his eyes, and made some contemptuous remarks about his person. Blake thereupon, his pride being affronted, took the man by the elbows and pushed him before him down the road for about fifty yards. In revenge, the soldier charged Blake with uttering sedition and damning the King. Blake had no difficulties in gathering witnesses for his defence. He was summoned before a bench of justices at Chichester and forced to find bail. Hayley kindly came forward with £50, Mr Seagrave, printer at Chichester, and protégé of Hayley’s, with another £50, and himself bound in £100 for his appearance at the Quarter Sessions after Michaelmas. The trial came off at Chichester on January 11th, 1804. The Duke of Richmond presided as magistrate. Hayley had procured for the defence Samuel Rose (Cowper’s friend), and between them they had no difficulty in releasing Blake.
There would have been no need to repeat this story, except that the event made a deep impression on Blake. Skofield, the soldier’s name, became in his mind an abiding symbol, and the soldier’s contempt for his person decided him to change his deportment.
Blake’s humble birth and childlike trust of his fellows had united to produce in him a too passive and docile manner. There was plenty of fire within, and the lamb knew how to roar; but he judged that his roar need not be provoked if his appearance somehow warded people off from taking a liberty with him. Diffidence is not a virtue. Blake’s too passive deportment changed as he gradually became more self-confident. Hence the Skofield episode left a lasting mark on both his mind and body.
Blake’s decisive step in leaving Hayley and following his own will immediately preceded the noonday glory of his genius. Hayley must have thought that Blake was extremely ungrateful after the invariable kindness that he had shown him; and if Hayley liked to call his neighbouring friends around him and put his case to them, probably all, without a single dissentient voice, would have agreed that he had shown himself a Christian and a gentleman, and that charity itself could not demand of him to trouble himself any further about such a crazed visionary as Blake. Blake not only thought otherwise, but turning to the Gospel as he was wont to do, he found a word of Christ that convinced him that Christ was on his side. “He who is not with me is against me.” There were a thousand evidences that Hayley was not with the real Blake that was striving to manifest himself in time, and therefore he was against him, and an enemy to his genius. Blake went to Felpham shaken in himself and diffident. When there is diffidence (dispersal of faith) there is a lamentable waste of precious energy. Blake left Felpham reassured that the light he had seen in his youth was the true light, and confident (confidence is concentration of faith) that if he remained faithful to his real self, he would also be found on the side of Christ, and that this true self-confidence must result in beautiful work of the creative order. That was the supreme hour in his life. The full vision must come. Like Habakkuk, he was on his tower, assured that though it tarry it would come and not tarry. He was not impatient. “The just shall live by his faith.” Blake had faith, and he asked no more; but he gained a thousandfold more, and the full vision came to him in a way that must seem odd to a child of the world, but wonderfully appropriate to one who understands what is the nature of the fire that sustains and consumes the artist’s soul.
During the months of 1803-4 a certain Count Truchsess, who owned a valuable collection of pictures, exhibited them at a gallery in the New Road, opposite Portland Place, London. The pictures were by German, Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Spanish, and French masters. The masters included Albert Dürer, Hans Holbein senior, Breughel, Vandyck, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Bourdon, Watteau.
Blake went to see the pictures, and must have been unusually excited and thrilled at seeing works by Michael Angelo and Albert Dürer directly, and not through the blurred medium of poor engravings. The divine frenzy stirred in his soul. The next day, suddenly, he was enlightened with the light he enjoyed in his youth. The cloud that had hung over him for twenty years vanished, the grim spectre (reason) who had haunted his ways and checked his inspiration fled with the cloud. Blake was drunk with intellectual vision, and in his drunken hilarity came to himself, knew what was his proper work, and once for all gave himself with passionate surrender to that which his whole and undivided being saw to be good.
It will take us the rest of our time gathering some of the fruits of Blake’s richly matured genius.