In 1827 the great Romantic poet,William Blake, died at the age of sixty-nine.
The family paid nineteen shillings for an unmarked grave, the body was placed nine feet down, stacked on top of three others, and eventually followed by four more. It would have been no matter to Blake and his peculiar and personal Christianity. Death, he said, was "but a removing from one room to the other," and according to his wife, Catherine, Blake had made his choice of rooms early: "I have very little of Mr. Blake's company," she had told a friend. "He is always in Paradise."
Perhaps lost in "the Imagination which Liveth for Ever."
The family paid nineteen shillings for an unmarked grave, the body was placed nine feet down, stacked on top of three others, and eventually followed by four more. It would have been no matter to Blake and his peculiar and personal Christianity. Death, he said, was "but a removing from one room to the other," and according to his wife, Catherine, Blake had made his choice of rooms early: "I have very little of Mr. Blake's company," she had told a friend. "He is always in Paradise."
Perhaps lost in "the Imagination which Liveth for Ever."
His is a remarkable story in so many ways. He was a disjointed artist passing through life.
He had come to see himself as an engraver and a painter more than a poet, and he had hopes that an 1808 exhibition of his work would not only make money but vindicate his original style and visionary themes. Few attended, no pictures were sold, and the only review of the Exhibition described Blake as an "unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement." The poetry fared about the same. Few saw or read any of his hand-illustrated and hand-printed work while he was alive; in 1811, two years away from his appointment as poet laureate, Robert Southey reported reading "a perfectly mad poem called Jerusalem."
He continued to sketch until the end, even taking his weeping wife as subject: "Stay, Kate! Keep just as you are -- I will draw your portrait -- for you have ever been an angel to me."
Catherine "saw Blake frequently after his decease: he used to come and sit with her two or three hours every day." This was partly companionship, partly business: "he advised with her as to the best mode of selling his engravings."
She eventually lost the engraving plates, and according to biographer G. E Bentley Jr. (The Stranger From Paradise, 2001)--from whom much of the above is taken--destroyed much else.
He continued to sketch until the end, even taking his weeping wife as subject: "Stay, Kate! Keep just as you are -- I will draw your portrait -- for you have ever been an angel to me."
Catherine "saw Blake frequently after his decease: he used to come and sit with her two or three hours every day." This was partly companionship, partly business: "he advised with her as to the best mode of selling his engravings."
She eventually lost the engraving plates, and according to biographer G. E Bentley Jr. (The Stranger From Paradise, 2001)--from whom much of the above is taken--destroyed much else.
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