Part 45

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"And now begins a new life, because another covering of earth is shaken off. I am more famed in Heaven for my works than I could well conceive. In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity before my mortal life; and those works are the delight and study of archangels. Why then should I be anxious about riches or the fame of mortality? The Lord our Father will do for us and with us according to his Divine will, for our good. You, O dear Flaxman! are a sublime archangel--my friend and companion from eternity. In the Divine bosom is our dwelling-place. I look back into the regions of reminiscence, and behold our ancient days before this earth appeared in its vegetated mortality to my mortal vegetated eyes. I see our houses of eternity which can never be separated, though our mortal vehicles should stand at the remotest corners of heaven from each other. Farewell my best friend! Remember me and my wife in love and friendship to our dear Mrs. Flaxman, whom we ardently desire to entertain beneath our thatched roof of rusted gold. And believe me for ever to remain your grateful and affectionate

"WILLIAM BLAKE."

This association at Felpham lasted four years, when the Blakes left by mutual consent. Yet the painter wrote upon his host these sarcastic epigrams:--

"To Hayley.

"Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: Do be my enemy, for friendship's sake!"

"On H. [Hayley], the Pickthank.

"I write the rascal thanks; till he and I With thanks and compliments are quite drawn dry."

He had already written:--

"My title as a genius thus is proved,-- Not praised by Hayley, nor by Flaxman loved."

About this time, Blake's mind was confirmed in that extraordinary state which many suppose to have been a species of chronic insanity. He was so exclusively occupied with his own ideas, that he at last persuaded himself that his imaginations were spiritual realities. He thought that he conversed with the spirits of the long-departed great--of Homer, Moses, Pindar, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and many others. Some of these spirits sat to him for their portraits.

Dr. de Boismont, among his Hallucinations involving Insanity, thus describes him as a lunatic, of the name of Blake, who was called the Seer. There was nothing of the impostor about him; he seemed to be thoroughly in earnest.

"This man constituted himself the painter of spirits. On the table before him were pencils and brushes ready for his use, that he might depict the countenances and attitudes of his heroes, whom he said he did not summon before him, but who came of their own accord, and entreated him to take their portraits. Visitors might examine large volumes filled with these drawings: amongst others were the portraits of the devil and his mother. When I entered his cell," says the author of this notice, "he was drawing the likeness of a girl whose spectre he pretended had appeared to him."

"Edward III. was one of his most constant visitors, and in acknowledgment of the monarch's condescension, Blake had drawn his portrait in oils in three sittings. I put such questions as were likely to have embarrassed him; but he answered them in the most unaffected manner, and without any hesitation.

"'Do these persons have themselves announced, or do they send in their cards?'--'No; but I recognise them when they appear. I did not expect to see Marc Antony last night, but I knew the Roman the moment he set foot in my house.'--'At what hour do these illustrious dead visit you?'--'At one o'clock: sometimes their visits are long, sometimes short. The day before yesterday I saw the unfortunate Job, but he would not stay more than two minutes; I had hardly time to make a sketch of him, which I afterwards engraved----but silence! Here is Richard III.!'--'Where do you see him?'--'Opposite to you, on the other side of the table: it is his first visit.'--'How do you know his name?'--'My spirit recognizes him, but I cannot tell you how.'--'What is he like?'--'Stern, but handsome: at present I only see his profile; now I have the three-quarter face; ah! now he turns to me, he is terrible to behold.'--'Could you ask him any questions?'--'Certainly. What would you like me to ask him?'--'If he pretends to justify the murders he committed during his life?'--'Your question is already known to him. We converse mind to mind by intuition and by magnetism. We have no need of words.'--'What is his Majesty's reply?'--'This; only it is somewhat longer than he gave it to me, for you would not understand the language of spirits. He says what you call murder and carnage is all nothing; that in slaughtering fifteen or twenty thousand men you do no wrong; for what is immortal of them is not only preserved, but passes into a better world, and the man who reproaches his assassin is guilty of ingratitude, for it is by his means he enters into a happier and more perfect state of existence. But do not interrupt me; he is now in a very good position, and if you say anything more, he will go.'"

"Visions, such as are said to arise in the sight of those who indulge in opium," says Allan Cunningham, "were frequently present to Blake; nevertheless, he sometimes desired to see a spirit in vain. 'For many years,' said he, 'I longed to see Satan--I never could believe that he was the vulgar fiend which our legends represent him--I imagined him a classic spirit, such as he appeared to him of Uz, with some of his original splendour about him. At last I saw him. I was going upstairs in the dark, when suddenly a light came streaming amongst my feet; I turned round and there he was looking fiercely at me through the iron grating of my staircase window. I called for my things--Katherine thought the fit of song was on me, and brought me pen and ink--I said hush!--never mind--this will do--as he appeared so I drew him--there he is.' Upon this Blake took out a piece of paper with a grated window sketched on it, while through the bars glared the most frightful phantom that ever man imagined. Its eyes were large and like live coals--its teeth as long as those of a harrow, and the claws seemed such as might appear in the distempered dream of a clerk in the Heralds' office. 'It is the Gothic fiend of our legends,' said Blake--'the true devil--all else are apocryphal.'

"These stories are scarcely credible, yet there can be no doubt of their accuracy. Another friend, on whose veracity I have the fullest dependence, called one evening on Blake, and found him sitting with a pencil and a panel, drawing a portrait with all the seeming anxiety of a man who is conscious that he has got a fastidious sitter; he looked and drew, and drew and looked, yet no living soul was visible. 'Disturb me not,' said he, in a whisper, 'I have one sitting to me.' 'Sitting to you!' exclaimed his astonished visitor; 'where is he, and what is he?--I see no one.' 'But I see him, Sir,' answered Blake, haughtily; 'there he is, his name is Lot--you may read of him in the Scripture. He is sitting for his portrait.'"

Blake's last residence was No. 3, Fountain Court, Strand; he had two rooms on the first floor, that in front, with the windows looking into the court, had its walls hung with frescoes, temperas, and drawings of Blake's, and was used as a reception-room. The back room was the sleeping and living-room, kitchen, and studio; in one corner was the bed, in another the fire, at which Mrs. Blake cooked. By the window stood the table serving for meals, and by the window the table at which Blake always sat (facing the light), designing or engraving. "There was," says Mr. Gilchrist, "an air of poverty as of an artizan's room; but everything was clean and neat; nothing sordid. Blake himself, with his serene, cheerful, dignified presence and manner, made all seem natural and of course. Conversing with him, you saw or felt nothing of his poverty, though he took no pains to conceal it: if he had, you would have been effectually reminded of it. But, in these latter years he, for the most part, lived on good though simple fare. His wife was an excellent cook--a talent which helped to fill out Blake's waistcoat a little as he grew old. She could even prepare a made dish when need be. As there was no servant, he fetched the porter for dinner himself, from the house at the corner of the Strand. Once, pot of porter in hand, he espied coming along a dignitary of Art--that highly respectable man, William Collins, R.A., whom he had met in society a few evenings before. The Academician was about to shake hands, but seeing the porter, drew up and did not know him. Blake would tell the story very quietly, and without sarcasm. Another time, Fuseli came in, and found Blake with a little cold mutton before him for dinner, who, far from being disconcerted, asked his friend to join him. 'Ah! by G--!' exclaimed Fuseli, 'this is the reason you can do as you like. Now I can't do this.' His habits were very temperate. Frugal and abstemious on principle, and for pecuniary reasons, he was sometimes rather imprudent, and would take anything that came in his way. A nobleman once sent him some oil of walnuts he had had expressed purposely for an artistic experiment. Blake tasted it, and went on tasting, till he had drunk the whole. When his lordship called to ask how the experiment had prospered, the artist had to confess what had become of the ingredients. It was ever after a standing joke against him. In his dress, there was a similar triumph of the man over his poverty, to that which struck one in his rooms. In-doors, he was careful, for economy's sake, but not slovenly: his clothes were threadbare, and his grey trousers had worn black and shiny in front, like a mechanic's. Out of doors he was more particular, so that his dress did not in the streets of London challenge attention either way. He wore black knee-breeches and buckles, black worsted stockings, shoes which tied, and a broad-brimmed hat. It was something like an old-fashioned tradesman's dress. But the general impression he made on you was that of a gentleman in a way of his own."

Blake died August 12th, 1827: he composed and uttered songs to his Maker so sweetly to the ear of his Katherine, that when she stood to hear him, he, looking upon her most affectionately, said: "My beloved, they are not mine--no--they are not mine." He expired in his sixty-ninth year, in the back room at Fountain Court, and was buried in Bunhill Fields on the 17th of August, at the distance of about twenty-five feet from the north wall, numbered 80.

Nollekens, the Sculptor.

Avarice would appear to have run in the blood of the Nollekens family. "Old Nollekens," the father of Joseph, was "a miserably avaricious man," and when, in the Rebellion of 1745, his house was attacked by the mob, who thought themselves sure of finding money, the old man became so terrified that he lingered in a state of alarm until his death.

Little Joey was described by Mrs. Scheemakers, the sculptor's wife, as "so honest that she could always trust him to stone the raisins." His love of modelling was his greatest pleasure, though he had an idle propensity for bell-tolling; and whenever his master missed him, and the dead-bell of St. James's church was tolling, he knew perfectly well what Joey was at.

As Nollekens grew up, not unmindful of his art, he rose early and practised carefully, and being a true son of his father, was passionately fond of money. He was much employed as a shrewd collector of antique fragments, some of which he bought on his own account; and after he had dexterously restored them with heads and limbs, he stained them with tobacco-water, and sold them for enormous sums.

When he returned from Rome, he succeeded as a smuggler of silk stockings, gloves, and lace; all his plaster busts being hollow, he stuffed them full of the above articles, and then spread an outside coating of plaster at the back across the shoulders of each, so that the busts appeared like solid casts. Pointing to the cast of Sterne, Nollekens observed to Lord Mansfield: "There, do you know that bust, my Lord, held my lace ruffles that I went to Court in when I came from Rome."

His mode of living when at Rome was most filthy: he had an old woman who was so good a cook, that she would often give him a dish for dinner which cost him no more than threepence. "Nearly opposite to my lodgings," he said, "there lived a pork-butcher who sold for twopence a plateful of cuttings--bits of skin, gristle, and fat, and my old lady dished them up with a little pepper and salt; and with a slice of bread, and sometimes a bit of vegetable, I made a very nice dinner." Whenever good dinners were mentioned after that, he was sure to say, "Ay, I never tasted a better dish than my Roman cuttings."

Nollekens married the daughter of Mr. Justice Welch. She was as parsimonious as her husband. Of a poor old woman, whom she allowed to sit at the corner of her house, she would contrive to get four apples, instead of three, to make a dumpling, saying, "for there's my husband, myself, and two servants, and we must have one a-piece." When she went to Oxford Market to beat the rounds, in order to discover the cheapest shops, she would walk round several times to give her dog Cerberus an opportunity of picking up scraps.

Nollekens's bust of Dr. Johnson is a wonderfully fine one, and very like, but the sort of hair is objectionable, having been modelled from the flowing locks of a sturdy Irish beggar, who, after he had sat an hour, refused to take a shilling, stating that he could have made more by begging.

Most of Nollekens's sitters were much amused with his oddities. He once requested a lady who squinted dreadfully to "look a little the other way, for then," said he, "I shall get rid of the shyness in the cast of your eye;" and to another lady of the highest rank, who had forgotten her position, and was looking down upon him, he cried, "Don't look so scorny; you'll spoil my busto; and you're a very fine woman; I think it will be one of my best bustos."