On September 21st, 1800, Sunday morning, he writes to the "dear Sculptor
of Eternity" that he has arrived at their cottage with Mrs Blake and his
sister Catherine, and that Mr Hayley has received them with his usual
brotherly affection.
He found Felpham "a sweet place for study." The quiet, cleanness,
sweetness, and spiritual atmosphere of the place stirred his cosmic
consciousness and gave him quick access to the great memory reaching back
far beyond his mortal life, and enabled him to recall his works in
eternity that were yet to be produced in time.
And Hayley was excessively kind. Still under a cloud, shaken in
self-confidence, Blake's consequent diffidence united with his instinctive
trust of men, and for a month he believed that Hayley was a prince.
Hayley was busy decorating his "marine villa," to which he had lately come
from Eartham. Flaxman had already been drawn in to help, much as Mrs
Mathew had used him at an earlier date; and now Blake was bidden to paint
a set of heads of the poets which were to form a frieze to Hayley's
library. Hayley was at work on some ballads, _Little Tom the Sailor_ and
others, to which Blake was to contribute designs. _Little Tom_ was for the
benefit of a Widow Spicer at Folkestone and her orphans, as Blake
understood, and also for the emolument of Blake, as we learn from a letter
of Hayley's to the Reverend John Johnson.
Hayley always loved to teach his friends. He had been anxious to improve
Romney's epistolary style; and now it occurred to him that he might teach
Blake miniature portrait painting. As usual, his purpose was thoroughly
kind. He did not think that Blake's work had much marketable value; but he
believed that if he proved an apt pupil he could procure him plenty of
sitters from among his neighbours who would pay well, and thus Blake would
become a real success.
In this Hayley showed himself a wise child of this world, but hardly a
child of light. Blake's genius did not lie in drawing portraits. A face
for him immediately became a symbol, and lost its time traits as it gained
in eternal significance. It is often said that Enitharmon was Mrs Blake;
but if this were so, she was Mrs Blake as no one but Blake could ever see
her. In reality he possessed the faculty which was pre-eminent in the
authors of the Book of Genesis and St John's Gospel. As the characters of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Peter, James, and John were seen and
portrayed in an eternal light, so likewise Blake would have striven to
present his opulent sitters, but the result would not have been that for
which they would have been willing to pay their money.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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