It would seem that Blake, having won “those just rights as an artist and a man” for which he had striven with Hayley and Cromek in the old days, and having now established his claim to live as he pleased in honourable poverty for the sake of the imaginative life, gained a tardy recognition and respect among the intellectual spirits of the time during his last years. One of the friendly acquaintances of this period was Thomas Griffiths Wainwright, a strange character of great artistic capacity and sensibilities, and yet destined to be a secret poisoner and murderer. I wonder if Blake was thinking of him when he said in one of his conversations with Crabb Robinson, “I have never known a very bad man who had not something very good in him.” Palmer Samuel has given a never-to-be-forgotten picture of Blake at the Academy looking at a picture of Wainwright’s.

“While so many moments better worthy to remain are fled,” wrote Palmer, “the caprice of memory presents me with the image of Blake looking up at Wainwright’s picture; Blake in his plain black suit and rather broad-brimmed but not quakerish hat, standing so quietly among all the dressed-up, rustling, swelling people, and myself thinking, ‘How little you know who is among you!’” These few graphic and reverential words touch the heart by their simple directness and love, for to Samuel Palmer, Blake was “the Master.” The names of Frederick Tatham the elder, and his son the sculptor must be appended to the tale of Blake’s friends; Edward Calvert, who used to go long walks with Blake, made memorable by high conversation; F. O. Finch, a member of the old Water Colour Society; and the distinguished painter Richmond, who was a mere boy when he fell under the spell of the inspired old man. Blake showed this group of young men the most fatherly kindness, encouraged them to appeal to him for advice and counsel, and gathered them around him and talked to them simply, directly and earnestly, of his high and spiritual views on life and art. He poured his noble enthusiasm and other-worldliness into receptive hearts, and his words bore fruit in their works in after life. For this group learned from Blake that Art must express the spirit, and must interpret natural phenomena esoterically. Richmond tells the following characteristic story of how once, “finding his invention flag during a whole fortnight, he went to Blake, as was his wont, for some advice and comfort. He found him sitting at tea with his wife. He related his distress: how he felt deserted by the power of invention. To his astonishment, Blake turned to his wife suddenly and said, ‘It is just so with us, is it not, for weeks together when the visions forsake us? What do we do then, Kate?’ ‘We kneel down and pray, Mr. Blake.’”

To these earnest young men Blake was as the prophet Ezekiel, and the home in Fountain Court got to be called by them significantly enough, “The House of the Interpreter.”

[Larger Image]

BLAKE’S LIVING-ROOM AND DEATH-ROOM IN FOUNTAIN COURT

Reproduced from the sketch by Mr. Frederic J. Shields, kindly lent by the artist

Mr. Frederick Shields (who, like Blake and many other great artists, will doubtless be honoured as he deserves to be when nothing further can touch him, and this world may not lay at his living feet its due meed of recognition and gratitude,) made a sketch of the sombre little living room in Fountain Court. His friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti was so profoundly touched on seeing it that he eased his heart in a sonnet:

This is the place. Even here the dauntless soul,
The unflinching hand, wrought on; till in that nook,
As on that very bed, his life partook
New birth and passed. Yon river’s dusky shoal,
Whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll,
Faced his work window, whence his eyes would stare,
Thought wandering, unto nought that met them there,
But to the unfettered irreversible goal.
This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud
Of his soul writ and limned; this other one,
His true wife’s charge, full oft to their abode
Yielded for daily bread, the martyr’s stone,
Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone,
The words now home-speech of the mouth of God.

The house in Fountain Court has been pulled down lately. The footprints of the great and gentle soul in his passage through this world to the “unfettered irreversible goal” have almost all disappeared in the dust and scurry of the last century. We can still think of him, and of those long rapt mornings he spent in our glorious Abbey. Full as it is—pent up and overflowing—with the associations of centuries, it will henceforth hold this one more—Blake worked there, Blake dreamed there, Blake caught inspiration from the enchanted forests of its aisles.