I went to church this morning, partly for the sake of my soul and partly to pray for the success of my endeavours but mostly, I must admit, irreligious creature that I am, in the hope of seeing Mr Boniface again. You will be pleased to know that my hope was justified, for he was sitting in the pew immediately opposite to mine and smiled quite kindly in my direction. After the service I took the opportunity of conversing with him. Unfortunately, I learnt no more than I had done on Friday, for he said he could remember very little, on account of he was ‘only a boy at the time’, not more than nine or ten or thereabouts, and most things went over his head. But as he seemed affable and plainly had a little time to spare, I asked him whether he thought his older brother might not remember rather more. ‘I would like to speak to him, if it were possible.’ I said. ‘I am told he worked for Mr Hayley and would have known Mr Blake, would he not, being that Mr Hayley was his friend and patron. If he is still in the village, perhaps you would be so kind as to introduce me.’
The change in him was so marked, there was no doubt about it at all. In The Fox I could have put it down to a fevered imagination or overmuch porter, but out in the churchyard, in bright daylight and sober as the most sober of judges, I could not help but notice it. ‘That ent possible,’ he said. ‘on account of he’s been gone these forty-eight years.’ Then he turned on his heel and walked away from me.
His abrupt departure left me nonplussed for I could not be sure of his meaning without further questioning, and that was plainly to be denied me. Did he mean that his brother had gone away and is now living somewhere else, or did the poor young man take ill and die? It is most perplexing and more of a mystery than ever. But one thing is certain. This other Boniface was involved in the Blake’s affairs in some way or another and his brother does not wish me to know of it. With perseverance I mean to find out what sort of involvement it was and what light it throws on the character of our poet, for I am sure it will prove germane to my biography.
A few minutes later the vicar very kindly introduced me to a grizzled old man who said he’d been a potboy in The Fox in Mr Blake’s day and he was more forthcoming and told me that Mr Boniface’s brother was called Johnnie and worked as a gardener up at Turret House, and that ‘our mad poet’ was a good neighbour and worked ‘uncommon long hours. Used to see the candle in his little window so late at night, you wouldn’t believe it. Hard worker, we used to say. Not afraid to put his back into it. Unlike some I could mention. That ol’ Mr Hayley never did nothing but ride about the countryside on his great hoss and build that great tower and that great high wall, which aren’t fittin’ in a village this size. Between you an’ me, I never had much time for Mr Hayley, but your ol’ Mr Blake was a different kettle a’ fish’
So if I have learnt nothing else, I now know that Blake was respected by the villagers and has a good reputation here. However, if I could discover the whereabouts of Mr Johnnie Boniface, providing he is still alive, I am sure I would learn a great deal more. I will make other enquiries, you may depend upon it, since an unanswered question is an irresistible challenge.
Meantime, I send you my fondest love. Stay well and avoid showers.
Your own Alexander G.
November 1800
It was well into the first week of November before the ballad of ‘Little Tom the Sailor’ was finished and printed, and by then William and Catherine were heartily sick of it. It had dominated their lives to the exclusion of everything else. His sister was bad-tempered with neglect, they were both exhausted and William hadn’t been able to write a single word of his own nor touch a single canvas.
‘Never mind,’ Catherine commiserated. ‘’Tis done now and you are free of it. Tomorrow I shall build up the fire and you shall work as you will.’
But there was one more matter to be attended to before he could turn his attention to the poem that was burning his brain. Now that the commission was completed, his sister decided they no longer needed her help and said it was high time she returned to London and the rest of the family. So the next morning the fire remained unlit and the three of them set off to walk the seven miles to Lavant and the London coach.
It was a raw morning and despite the fact that they were wearing their ancient greatcoats and keeping up a very good pace, they were soon pink about the nose and so wrinkled with cold that they looked completely unlike their indoor selves. Winter had changed the landscape too. The ploughed earth was ridged and dark and damp, the trunks of the denuded trees speckled pale green with ancient lichen, the bushes sharp-twigged and rabbit-brown, and the cathedral spire, which had looked such a dazzling white against the blue of the summer sky, was a forbidding grey now that the sky had lost its colour.
‘All is perception,’ William said when his wife commented upon it. ‘What is seen by one man in one place and time is not the same as that seen by another with a different perspective. Vision changes with the seasons and the time of day.’
His sister was unimpressed by such philosophical speculation. She walked doggedly, her mouth covered by her neckerchief. ‘How much further is it?’ she complained. ‘I don’t want the coach to leave without me.’
There was no need for her to worry. They were in plenty of time and for once she managed to get a seat inside the coach which pleased her so much that she said goodbye to them as if they were the dearest of relations and had never quarrelled in their lives.
‘She means well,’ William said as the coach finally rolled away from the inn. ‘She has a harsh tongue, I grant you, but she means well.’
Catherine was glad to see the back of her, but she didn’t say so for fear of upsetting him. He could be touchy when it came to any criticism of his relations, as she knew to her cost, except for his brother John, of course, who they both agreed had been the very devil, failing as a baker, going on the run without paying his rates and then enlisting as a soldier the way he had. ‘Have we time to find a grocer’s shop?’ she asked. ‘The sugar loaf is down to a few grains and we’ve barely any tea to speak of.’
So they walked south into Chichester and, once there, explored the town from one end to the other, east to west and north to south and twice round the market cross in the centre, which was extremely old and rather the worse for wear, its stone tracery crumbling and stained, the stone seat that circled its central column worn into hollows by centuries of sitting. Catherine was charmed by the place. The town centre might be marked by a decaying antiquity, the alleys might smell as rank as any in London, but most of the shop fronts were in the latest style and extremely handsome, although the goods they were selling were unlike any she’d seen in London. The ironmonger offered scythes and sheep-shears among the spades, hoes and pails she’d expected; there were bee-hives and hay-rakes, churns and milking stools at the cooper’s, and the glover’s stocked some very sturdy country wear, huge leather gloves for hedgers, knee-caps for thatchers, country leggings and wooden pattens. But she also found several bakers’, a chandler’s, three butchers’ and as many grocers’, and after some debate as to quality and prices, finally bought the things they needed. And in the course of their long perambulation, William discovered to his great delight that it was a four-gated city.
‘Think of that, my dear,’ he said. ‘Four roads to quarter the town, four gates to guard the entrances and a wall with four sides. ’Tis my Golgonooza no less. What could be more fitting?’
‘’Tis a pretty town,’ Catherine said, ‘even though the price of tea is exorbitant. But that’s to be expected, I daresay, given the wealth of the citizens. Just look at that one – the one over there riding the chestnut. That waistcoat must have cost a fortune, what with all that embroidery an’ all, and he wears it as if it was linsey woolsey. And look at the carriage that’s coming. Brand new I’m certain sure, and with two footmen up. There must be some very grand houses hereabouts.’
‘We will take some sustenance before we return,’ William said. ‘There are some very grand hostelries hereabouts too. The bill of fare at this
one looks possible. Then we must return home and I must take the ballad sheets to Mr Hayley.’
That worthy gentleman declared himself delighted with them. ‘Absolutely delighted,’ he said. ‘You might not have completed quite within the time I specified – for we did say the beginning of October did we not? – but no matter. The print is excellent and sits well upon the page. Yes, yes, it is quite admirable. Quite, quite admirable. I shall start selling them immediately.’
Blake said he was glad to have been of service and thought how glad he was to get the wretched papers off his hands. Now perhaps he could continue with his own work.
But his patron had other plans for him. ‘Now my dear friend,’ he said, ‘you must begin upon the Poetic Heads. They are the last and final embellishment that my library requires so they must be magnificent in every respect. You are just the man to paint them. I required spaces to be left for eighteen portrait heads as you see.’ He waved an imperious hand at the ranks of waiting spaces. ‘Milton, of course, and Shakespeare, that goes without saying, Dante, Homer, Chaucer, Dryden, my dear friend Cowper, myself, naturally, and my dear Thomas Alphonso who would most certainly have been among the truly great had he been spared, poor dear talented boy, don’t you agree?’
Blake didn’t agree with very much of it, but felt obliged to make the sort of vague noises that could be interpreted as acceptance. How was his work to be done if he had to paint eighteen pictures? It would take him months.
‘There are sketches of most of these great men in my books,’ Mr Hayley went on happily, ‘which you shall borrow for your purposes. You can enlarge them into portraits as I require, can you not? Ah, my dear friend, what good fortune this is for you. It is a noble commission and will keep you occupied most handsomely.’
Temper was rising in Blake’s chest, making it difficult for him to breathe and to control himself. I must say nothing, he thought. The man means well. He is trying to help me. It is a living. But he ached to write of Jerusalem and the four-gated city, to follow the progress of Eternal Man through the tribulations of the material world, through aspirations and fulfilments, until all the scattered fragments of his eternal nature are reconciled in the final glory of eternity. Having set himself such a monumental task, the thought of spending his time merely copying somebody else’s sketches was demoralising.
‘He acts like a prince,’ he complained to Catherine when he was safely back home and could speak his mind. ‘You must needs agree with him whether you will or no.’
‘Try not to mind it too much,’ Catherine said, kissing him. ‘’Twill pay the rent and keep us in vittles. That is how we must think of it, my dear. I will help you all I can.’
But even with her help, it was well into November before he had completed the first two portraits – one of Shakespeare, surrounded by the ghostly figures of his imagination and the other of Milton wearing a wreath of oak leaves – and there were sixteen more to go.
Winter and work progressed inexorably and often miserably. The cottage was damp and grew damper as the winds blew the sea mists straight across the fields and under their door. The chimneys smoked, the fires wouldn’t take, and when it rained, as it often did, the thatch dripped dirty water on them whenever they went out to the well or to empty their chamber pots in the privy. They both had fevers, with coughs and rheums and miserably aching limbs, and, although William recovered after a week or two, Catherine grew worse and worse until her knees were so sore and swollen it was painful for her to walk. And the visions spoke with terrible regularity, rising from the shining pebbles of the beach to tower above the cottage, stern-faced and angry against the grey skies and the driven smoke of the chimneys.
‘I am rebuked because I do not work upon the task they have set me,’ Blake mourned, agonised by what he saw and heard, ‘because I neglect the task to which I am called, because I have left the story of Eternal Man, of Albion and Jerusalem, to labour like a hired hand.’ It was not a happy time.
‘’Twill be better come the spring,’ Catherine tried to encourage. But the spring was far away. As he started upon the next portrait, which was the picture of Thomas Alphonso, it was so bleak and cold he declared he was fast giving up hope of ever being warmed by the sun again. And to make matters worse, that picture was more difficult than all the others put together.
Mr Hayley was impossible to please. The shape of the boy’s head was wrong, it would be better if he were depicted in profile, his nose was too long, his eyes were the wrong colour and lacked life. ‘You are inaccurate,’ he cried, when William presented his third attempt. ‘You have not caught the spirit of my darling boy. You detract from the grace of his character. It is imperative that you present a true likeness, that you show his soulfulness, his nobility, his intelligence. It must be done again.’
It was done again, and again, and again until William was crushed under the weight of so much criticism and disapproval. He wanted to please his patron because, however trying he might be, he had been extremely generous, but the longer this work went on the more impossible it became to do it.
‘There’s not a single line in the entire portrait that he will accept,’ he said to Catherine wearily. ‘I shall still be working on it come the summer.’
‘Paint one of the other portraits,’ Catherine advised. ‘Dryden perhaps. Or Cowper. And present them together. Perhaps you have concentrated too long upon one subject.’
So Dryden was copied from the frontispiece of Mr Hayley’s collection of his poems and the two canvases were carried up to Turret House and set up for inspection side by side. The stratagem worked. Mr Hayley was delighted with the head of Dryden and pronounced it ‘quite capital’ and the head of Thomas Alphonso, whilst not entirely accurate, was ‘prettily done’ and would ‘pass muster’. And the next day when the Blakes went out to buy fresh meat and take the air, there was actually enough winter sunshine to warm their faces.
‘There you are, you see,’ Catherine encouraged. ‘There are some good days, even in December.’
‘But not enough of them,’ her husband growled.
* * *
That was Johnnie Boniface’s opinion too, for he was in an agony of frustration that was every bit as acute and painful as that of his poetic neighbour. After that first wondrous Sunday when he and Betsy had walked into the fields and exchanged their first gentle kiss, he’d lived in a fever of impatience until the next Sabbath and the chance to kiss her again. But despite deliberate patience and extraordinary self-control, he was disappointed.
For a start the service was much too long, and then, when it was finally over, they walked out of the church into a stinging torrent of rain. Still hopeful, he suggested they might take a stroll, but Betsy laughed at him and told him it was ‘out of the question’ and to have some sense, which, as the rain was buffeting against them as if it meant to push them off their feet and everyone in the congregation was scurrying off home as fast as their legs would carry them, he was forced to do. And then, of course, once they were back at the house, they were caught up in the preparations for dinner and kept apart by hot soup and roast beef and a ridiculous assortment of vegetables.
‘If it clears this evening…’ he hoped, as they passed one another on the way to the dining room, he bearing used dishes back to the kitchen, she carrying in the pudding.
But all he got was a scolding. ‘Johnnie! Johnnie! How can you be so foolish?’ she said. ‘Look at it, for pity’s sake. ’Tis a-comin’ down cats and dogs. ’Twill be raining all day. An’ all night too I shouldn’t wonder. There’ll be no walking for any of us, not while this holds. We shall all have to bide indoors an’ put up with it.’
He was in a state of such painful desire that it was all he could do to walk straight and his yearning wasn’t satisfied by so much as a single kiss, or even the chance to stand and talk to her, for the rain continued all day, just as she’d forecast, and, as Mr Hayley would insist on going for his usual ride despite the weather and consequently came home mud-smothered to th
e thigh, by evening there was so much work to do cleaning the floors he’d trampled on and polishing his filthy boots and brushing his rain-soaked clothes and grooming his mud-spattered horse, that the entire household was kept at it until long past their usual bedtime and he didn’t even get the chance to wish her goodnight.
‘Maybe we could go for a bit of a walk this evening,’ he hoped, when they met at breakfast the next morning. But he was laughed to scorn again. That night there were stockings to be mended and skirts to be patched and all three housemaids spent the evening sewing in Mrs Beke’s parlour. The best entertainment he could manage for himself was to go mooching off through the mud to The Fox, where he was doleful company.
He became more and more doleful as the weeks progressed, for no matter how carefully he broached the subject, there never seemed to be a moment when a walk was possible. At first her answers seemed sensible. There wasn’t enough time, it was too cold, or too wet, there was too much work to be done. But when the third Sunday had come and gone without so much as the hope of a hand to hold, he began to feel she was deliberately putting him off, almost as if she didn’t want to walk out with him. That couldn’t be true, could it? She’d allowed him to kiss her and she must know what that meant. The weather was bad. He couldn’t deny it. It was too wet. But there wasn’t too much work. In fact, there was hardly anything to do in the garden at all, once the beds were cleared, and all the indoor jobs were boring and repetitive – coal to carry, fires to tend, candle ends to scour from the sconces of a morning, errands to run, tables to clear – and none of them took very long. So he was left with plenty of time to think, and the longer he thought, the more troublesome his thoughts became. He mooched about the house, weak with longing for her, aching to kiss her. And oh he did so want to, constantly, every time he saw her, every time he thought of her, and in every single night of his dreams. His shirt was soon so sticky with love spillings, he was afraid Mrs Beke would comment on it when it turned up in the laundry, and took a cloth to try and wash the worst away. But there was nowhere to dry the offending garment when he finished with it – or at least nowhere where it wouldn’t be seen – so he had to wear it wet and that gave him a cold and made him feel more miserable than ever.
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