Plato imagined his Republic, Christ His Kingdom of God on earth, St John his Holy City, St Augustine his City of God. And Blake, whose first dreams had been in London’s great city, still dreamed that man would return to his ancient simplicity, and build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.
CHAPTER X
CROMEK, SIR JOSHUA, STOTHARD, AND CHAUCER
Blake had left Hayley to face poverty again in September 1803. He lodged at 17 South Molton Street, and from there he continued till December 11th, 1805, to write to the patron who had caused him so much inward disturbance. As long as he had thought it was possible to be on terms of complete friendship with Hayley he had quarrelled with him. Now he knew that such friendship was impossible. He saw Hayley as he was, and after years of self-conflict he saw himself as he was, and he recognized that there was no fundamental agreement to bridge over their differences. The effect of this discovery was to put him at peace with Hayley, and also to lower his sanguine expectations of a wide fellowship in this world.
The letters to Hayley are courteous and almost affectionate in tone. Hayley was occupied with his Life of Romney, Blake was hard at work on a Head of Romney and an engraving of the Shipwreck, after Romney. Hence there are many references to the artist from which we learn how genuine was Blake’s admiration for the classic simplicity and the skilful massing of the lights and shades of Sir Joshua’s great rival. Mr and Mrs Blake regularly send their love to Hayley and solicitations for his health till the correspondence gradually lessens, and Hayley, having no further use for Blake, gently closes it, and takes himself away out of his sight for ever. The severance was inevitable, and Blake could not be surprised. He jotted in his note-book:
“I write the rascal thanks till he and I
With thanks and compliments are both drawn dry.”
And so the patron passes. The artist who has faced poverty is tasting its bitterness, stirred with the faint hope that he may find another patron who will be a corporeal friend and not a spiritual enemy. The patron in due time appeared. Robert Hartley Cromek was his name, print-jobber, book-maker, publisher, also an engraver who had studied under Bartolozzi.
This last fact was not auspicious. Blake, we know, had no regard for Bartolozzi’s work, and a pupil of his might prove as little understanding of Blake’s severe art as the Bard of Sussex. Still, there was hope. Cromek had an admirable business capacity. He understood how to advertise, to puff, to work the artist, and, what is still more materially important, to work the public. He had, in a word, all the practical qualities that Blake lacked. Blake with his love for uniting contraries believed that his art married to Cromek’s practice might produce fame and money, and he was sorely in need of both.