Gates of Paradise

by Beryl Kingston

  His words caused an uproar. Within seconds he was the centre of a group of anxious neighbours, all eager to know more. Sedition was a serious charge and especially when the French were expected to invade at every high tide. The punishment for it was five years in jail or, even worse, five years deportation. There’d been a feller up Portsmouth way only a few years back who’d been tried and found guilty and died in prison before he could serve his term. ‘What did he say?’ they asked.

  Blake couldn’t tell them. ‘I know no more than I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘I am to go to Chichester today to read the charge and answer it. I have asked Will if he will accompany me, if that is agreeable to you, Mr Grinder. He was in the garden when this began and would be my best witness as to what was said.’

  Of course he must go, Mr Grinder said. That went without saying. Would they need a carriage or did Mr Blake propose to ride? Did Mr Hayley know of it? What was the world coming to?

  Those were Mr Hayley’s sentiments when Blake appeared in his library to tell him the news. He took supportive action at once. He would accompany the two men to Chichester. ‘Do not thank me, my dear, dear friend. ’Tis the least I can do.’ They would take the carriage and travel in comfort. ‘I cannot believe the treachery of this creature to accuse you so. What times we do live in, to be sure.’

  So the little party set out, Mr Hayley wearing his new hat and warm with righteous indignation, the ostler nervous at the thought that he might have to give evidence in a court of law, Blake silent with suppressed anxiety. The summer sizzled all around them, as they drove through cornfields burgeoning towards harvest and larks sprang into the air and spiralled upwards singing as they rose, passed between hedges dusty with heat and trundled through pastures where the sheep browsed peacefully and rabbits jumped away from their wheels and bounded into the fields, white scuts flashing a warning. Oh, how could this monstrous charge be possible in such a green and pleasant land?

  The solicitor’s quiet offices were easily found and, as soon as the clerk had ascertained who they were, he ushered them into an inner office where the charges would be read. It was a dark cold room and the chill of it made Blake shiver, as if he’d already been found guilty and sentenced. They sat themselves down as directed and waited while the clerk found the deposition and the solicitor made his entry and enquired whether they wished him to read the indictment aloud so that they might all hear it at one and the same time.

  It had been written at considerable length and was extremely alarming. It was called, ‘The Information and Complaint of John Scolfield, a private Soldier in His Majesty’s First Regiment of Dragoons, taken upon oath this 15th day of August 1803 before me, John Quantock, one of His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace… Who saith… One Blake, a miniature painter…did utter the following seditious expressions viz: That we (meaning the people of England) were like a parcel of Children, that would play with themselves till they would get scalded and burnt: that the French knew our strength very well and if Buonaparte should come he would be master of Europe in an hour’s time… That every Englishman would be put to the choice whether to have his throat cut or to join the French… That he damned the King of England – his country and his Subjects – that his soldiers were all bound for slaves & the poor people in general.’

  ‘Preposterous!’ Mr Hayley said, when the solicitor paused for breath.

  ‘There is more, sir,’ the solicitor told him. ‘Private Scolfield included a complaint against Mrs Blake, too. Perhaps you should hear it all before you comment upon it.’

  So the torment continued and for Blake it was even more terrible to hear what Catherine was accused of saying than it had been to be accused himself. He listened as the solicitor’s dry voice read out the rest of the indictment and his heart jumped in his chest with the panic of a caged bird. ‘…his wife then came up & said to him…that the king of England would run himself so far into the fire that he might not get himself out again & although she was a woman she would fight as long as she had a drop of blood in her – to which the said Blake said, my Dear you would not fight against France – she replied, no, I would fight for Buonaparte as long as I am able.’

  ‘This is insupportable,’ Blake said. ‘It is bad enough in all conscience to hear myself maligned in this way but to attack my wife is cowardice, sir. Sheer cowardice.’

  The solicitor smiled bleakly. ‘I will read to the end of the indictment,’ he said, ‘and then I will give you such advice as I may. “…the said Blake pushed this Informant out of the garden & twice took this Informant by the Collar without this Informant’s making any resistance and at the same time the said Blake damned the King & said the soldiers were all slaves. Sworn before me John Quantock.”’

  ‘Lies!’ Blake said fiercely. ‘A pack of lies, as those who witnessed it would attest.’

  ‘This copy of the complaint is for you,’ the solicitor said, folding it in half and handing it to Blake, ‘since I presume you would wish to write a memorandum to refute it.’

  Indeed he would. ‘I will talk to the witnesses and write it as soon as may be.’

  ‘Quite,’ the solicitor said but he seemed to have lost interest in the complaint now that he had handed it over and was sending an eye signal to his clerk, who stood up at once and left the room. Blake and his companions waited, as there was obviously more to come, and after a few seconds the clerk returned with three more people, three red-coated, aggressive people, Privates Scolfield and Cock and a Lieutenant whom neither of them had seen before.

  ‘You should know, Private Scolfield, that Mr Blake intends to write a memorandum to refute the complaint you have made,’ the solicitor told them.

  ‘That is perfectly understood,’ the lieutenant said smoothly. ‘We shall expect to receive a copy of anything that is written, naturally.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Private Cock wishes to make a deposition of his own.’

  ‘My clerk will take it down.’

  So three more chairs were produced and the six men sat in a semicircle of simmering hatred while Private Cock added his voice to that of his comrade. He had heard all that Mr Blake said and was prepared to swear to it. It took all Blake’s self-control not to shout him down as he spoke.

  But his deposition was written and signed and the soldiers took their leave. Then all that remained to be done was to bind over the said William Blake in the sum of £250 to appear at the next quarter sessions, which would be in Petworth in October. The said William Blake was hard put to it to pay even a hundred of those pounds but Mr Hayley came to his rescue and said that he would be happy to put up another hundred and he was sure Mr Seagrave the printer would stand surety too, and that between them they could make up the full amount, so the matter was concluded and Blake was free to go home.

  By the time the carriage began its journey back to Turret House, news of the accusation had spread round the village like a gunpowder trail. Betsy heard it when she walked into The Fox with her jug.

  ‘Poor old Mr Blake,’ Reuben said. ‘They been in an’ out all mornin’, bragging what they’re a-goin’ to do to him. That Scolfield he reckons ’tis treason an’ he’ll see the poor feller hanged. Oi don’t reckon to that mesself. Oi means to say they can’t hang you just fer a bit a’ shoutin’.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it,’ Mr Grinder said. ‘They can hang you for breathin’ these days. There was a feller in the papers only the other week. A Colonel something-or-other. Despard, I think. Anyway he was tried for treason and hung up straight away. Oh, they can hang you right enough.’

  ‘Then we must stand up for him,’ Betsy said, fiercely, ‘an’ say he never said nothin’ the least bit treasonable, which I’m sure he never did nor would.’ Standing there in the quiet of the taproom with Johnnie beside her and her jug on her hip, she wasn’t sure she could remember what had been said. There’d been a lot of shouting but she couldn’t swear to what it was all about. But that was of no consequence. If Mr Blake needed her support, she was
ready to give it. He was a good, kind, truthful man who spoke his mind and stood up for tormented creatures and nobody was going to put him in prison if she could help it. ‘We’ll make a list of all the people who were here and saw it,’ she decided. ‘Some a’ these trooper fellers are a bit too full of themselves. Well, they needn’t think they can get away with this. You were there for a start, weren’t you, Mr Grinder and so was Mr Cosens. You had to drag that Scolfield away, when he was roarin’ an’ shoutin’ and tryin’ to kick people. An’ Johnnie said he was drunk. I remember that. I shall bring a pencil an’ paper with me tomorrow an’ set about it.’

  But Private Scolfield was ahead of her. He and Private Cock had already visited Mrs Taylor and the miller and that afternoon they moved on to her mother and tried to put pressure on her too. ‘We need witnesses to bring this man to justice,’ they said, ‘as he rightly should be, and you were there and heard it all, so it’s beholden on you to give us assistance.’

  Mrs Haynes was annoyed to be pestered and said so. ‘’Tis no concern of mine,’ she told them. ‘If you wants to complain against the poor man, which it seems you done al-a-ready, that’s your affair, but don’t go aspecting me to help you with it.’

  ‘I wonder you take his part,’ Private Scolfield said, ‘when he’s a proven spy and everybody knows it. A military painter.’ And when she looked surprised he sneered at her, ‘You didn’t know that, did you? A military painter and a spy, that’s what he is, making plans of the countryside to sell to the enemy. You should have his house searched, that’s what you should do, ma’am, instead of obstructing the course of justice.’

  At which she lost her temper and found her broom and proceeded to sweep them off the doorstep, saying that if there was any obstructing going on they were a-doin’ of it.

  ‘You’ll regret this, ma’am,’ Private Scolfield said furiously, as the broom hit his ankles. ‘You should show more loyalty to your king and country, not scorn its defenders. We was sent here to defend the likes of you, don’t forget. To risk our lives for king and country. You should be mindful of your safety.’

  The threat was unmistakeable and worrying but she faced him out. ‘Be off with you an’ don’t talk nonsense,’ she said. ‘I’ve better things to do with my time than stand here bandy in’ words.’

  ‘The woman’s a fool,’ the trooper said as he walked away. ‘I could arraign her for sedition, too, if I’d a mind to. Saying such things.’

  ‘But there’s more money in the engraver feller,’ Private Cock pointed out. A successful prosecution for treason or sedition, especially if it was brought against a known agitator, could earn a handsome bounty. A trooper at Horsham had earned himself £70 that way.

  ‘I shall talk to that old fool Reuben next,’ Private Scolfield said. ‘High time we made him jump about a bit.’

  But Reuben Jones was much too wily to be caught by a pair of troopers. ‘Never heard a thing,’ he told them, ‘on account of Oi was indoors a-sittin’ in moi seat, which if Oi don’t, some other beggar’ll take it from me.’

  ‘You’re a lying hound,’ Private Cock said. ‘You was out in the street the whole time. I seen you.’

  ‘Ho no,’ Reuben said. ‘Must ha’ been someone else. Oi was inside loike Oi said. Never heard hoide nor hair of anythin’.’

  And even though they bullied him for another ten minutes he sat tight in his chair and refused to budge. In the end they had to leave him where he was and go off and find another one of their witnesses. ‘There must be someone,’ Scolfield said. ‘They can’t all be deaf and blind. This is a matter a’ law an’ if the law says they’re to testify they’ll have to turn out and do it. Bloody old mules!’

  But the bloody old mules were adamant and the more they were bullied the more they refused to give evidence. ‘Be a different matter if ’twas ol’ Mr Blake what come askin’,’ Will Smith said, ‘but I aren’t a-swearin’ black’s white to please a couple a’ drunken soldiers an’ that’s flat, ‘specially when they threatens to knock my eyes out. All this carry-on about how they’re our defenders. We never asked ’em to come here.’

  Old Mr Blake was keeping out of everybody’s way, too anxious and depressed to move from his workroom. He was caught in the coils of the law and the law was more terrifying to him than any other institution. He’d always known it for the monstrous oppression it was, a tangle of unanswerable enforcements designed to keep the poor in their place and protect the wealth and property of the rich. And now that he was caught up in it himself, he recognised with the most dreadful certainty that innocence was no protection against it.

  ‘I am lost,’ he said to Catherine. ‘If I am to appear in a court of law, as seems entirely likely, I shall be found guilty no matter what I say. They will discover what friends I have in London, if they do not know already. I shall be judged as a companion to Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, to Joseph Johnson and Henry Fuseli and William Goodwin, and a member of the London Corresponding Society, what’s more, revolutionaries all. What judge will believe a word I say?’

  Catherine tried to comfort him but he had sunk too far into nervous fear to be reached. He felt himself gripped by talons of repression and authority, saw the dread emanations of punishment, banishment and death rising on every side. ‘I am lost.’

  ‘Write to Mr Butts,’ Catherine suggested. ‘He might know something about your accuser. After all he does work in the office of the Muster-master General and if there is army gossip to be found he would be the man to find it.’

  So a letter was composed and because it would hardly be possible to ask for gossip about the army unless there was very good cause, he wrote a full account of what had happened, saying he was ‘in a bustle to defend himself’ and finishing with the hope that Mr Butts might be in a position to ‘learn somewhat’ about Private Scolfield. At this point he remembered that in his last letter to his old friend he had said some extremely uncharitable things about Mr Hayley, and now he was ashamed to have done such a thing, and begged ‘burn what I have peevishly written about any friend’ adding ‘I have been very much degraded & injuriously treated, but if it all arise from my own fault, I ought to blame myself.

  Oh why was I born with a different face?

  Why was I not born like the rest of my race?

  When I look each one starts! When I speak, I offend;

  Then I’m silent & passive & lose every friend.

  When the letter was written he took it through into the kitchen so that Catherine could see it. But to his distress she was sitting beside the grate, white-faced and weeping. She had found Private Scolfield’s deposition and knew that she was being accused too. ‘What are we to do?’ she cried. ‘They will hang us both.’

  Now it was his turn to try to comfort and his turn to fail. She wept for a very long time. They’d had nothing but ill fortune ever since they came to this place. ‘You cannot deny it.’ He’d been given work to do that was an insult to his talents. He’d had no time for his own work, which was better in every way than the poetry he was required to illustrate. His great epic was unwritten. He’d laboured day and night and all for what? She wished they’d never come, she did indeed. The cottage was damp, even in the summer. It had made them both ill.

  ‘The lease is up in three weeks’ time,’ Blake pointed out, ‘and then we will go back to London, as we intended, and you will have better health.’

  But she was stuck fast in her fears like a bird in lime. ‘What if they put us in prison?’ she wept. ‘We could die there and never see one another again. Oh, my dear William, what are we to do?’

  ‘We will fight,’ he said. Her weakness had made fighting not just possible but imperative. ‘We will fight and we will win. I will write my memorandum and refute all these charges with all my strength. I will not allow them to send you to prison. I will send my letter and then I will go to The Fox and see Mr Grinder and make a list of all the people who saw what happened and then I will visit them all and ask them to witness for us. You mu
st not despair.’

  Mr Grinder was busy but helpful. ‘Betsy Haynes is the one you want,’ he said. ‘She’s been makin’ a list. Could be just what you want. I’ll send her across to you as soon as she comes in.’

  She and Johnnie arrived the next morning, she with an empty jug in her hand, he with a list of all the witnesses. Blake was touched by how many there were and how clearly they had made their feelings known.

  ‘You see what good neighbours we have, my love,’ he said to Catherine. ‘They do not desert us in our hour of need. I will name them all in my memorandum and then the judges will understand that the charge has been trumped up and should be dismissed out of hand.’

  He took great pains with his statement, making sure that he named all the people on the list ‘so that we may not have any witnesses brought against us that were not there’ and offering all the relevant facts. ‘The soldier’s Comrade swore before the magistrate, while I was present,’ he wrote, ‘that he heard me utter seditious words, at the Stable Door, and in particular Said that he heard me D—n the K—g. Now I have all the persons who were present at the Stable Door to witness that no Word relating to Seditious Subjects was uttered, either by one party or the other, and they are ready, on their Oaths, to Say that I did not utter such words.’ And he finished with a flourish, ‘If such a perjury as this can take effect, any Villain in future may come & drag me and my Wife out of our Home & beat us in the Garden, or use us as he pleases, or is able, & afterwards go and Swear our Lives away.’

  Two weeks later the chaise arrived to be loaded with their printing press and their sixteen heavy boxes and carry them back to London. They had arrived by moonlight with only Mr Grinder, Will Smith and the potboys to welcome them, they left in sunlight with half the village gathered at their door to wave them goodbye. ‘Write and let us know how you get on,’ Betsy said to Catherine, ‘and when you’re to appear in Petworth.’ And added, with sober truth, ‘I shall miss you.’