Gates of Paradise (21 page)

‘I am glad to hear it,' Hayley said generously. ‘The epic is the highest literary form known to man.'

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite high enough to take precedence over his next commission. Later that morning, when they were back at Turret House, he asked Blake to join him in the library for a few minutes before his return to the cottage and, once there, told him he had an excellent commission for him. Lady Hesketh, ‘a woman of
exquisite taste and ever mindful to enhance my reputation' had suggested that he should produce another edition of his famous poem ‘The Triumphs of Temper'. ‘Her advice is sound,' he said, ‘so I shall comply with her wishes. Naturally, my dear friend, you are just the man to provide fresh illustrations.'

To his credit his dear friend didn't rage or argue, much though he wanted to, but accepted the commission with as good a grace as he could summon up. A new design would pay well and it would give him scope to draw an original figure or two, which would be no bad thing. But to his chagrin he discovered that six designs had already been chosen. All that he was required to do was to copy and engrave them. Even then he kept his nervous fear under control and merely asked the name of the artist who had drawn the originals. It was a crushing blow to be told that it was Maria, the sister of their mutual friend, Mr Flaxman, a pleasant enough woman, as he knew having met her, but one with no artistic talent whatsoever. He received the information like the insult it was.

‘You try me too hard,' he said to Mr Hayley. ‘Indeed you do, sir. 'Tis not to be borne.'

‘I provide you with gainful employment,' Mr Hayley pointed out, his face stiff with displeasure. ‘Which you would do well to remember.'

The rebuke provoked an outburst of anger. ‘How can I forget when I am burdened on every side?' Blake cried. ‘I labour for you day and night, sir. I
have no time to call my own. 'Tis the devil's work to treat me so.'

It was a long quarrel and a very loud one. The household walked on tiptoe and held its breath so as not to miss a word. And that night in The Fox it was rehearsed and savoured with great enjoyment. ‘At it hammer an' tongs they was,' Mr Hosier reported. ‘I could hear 'em out in the garden.'

‘Who'd ha' thought our mad poet would go off like that?' Mr Cosens asked, puffing smoke. ‘I allus thought he was a mild sort a' man.'

‘Oi would,' Reuben said, nodding knowledgeably. ‘Oi knew he was a firebrand first time Oi see him. You can tell by that oiye of his'n. That's the fiercest oiye Oi ever see. Loike a sabre.'

‘He got a good pair a' shoulders on him,' Mr Haynes observed, ‘what's more to the mark if you're a-fightin'. If it come to fisticuffs I'd back him against anybody.'

But a fierce eye and a pair of broad shoulders were no help to Mr Blake in his present predicament. He could rage all he liked and put his tongue to every bit of low abuse he could bring to mind, but the engravings had to be done. He was short of money now that the ballads weren't selling and even as anger swelled in his brain he knew he had no option but to do as he was bid. It was corrosive knowledge. Two days after the quarrel he took a fever and was ill for more than a fortnight. And when he finally struggled from his bed and declared that he was ready to work again, Maria's
wretched drawings lay on his round table to taunt him.

‘'Tis beyond endurance,' he said to Catherine as he prepared the first plate. ‘I have neither the energy nor the will for it. And now here's September come and neither of us well.'

But no matter how he felt the work had to be completed. He laboured miserably as darkness seeped into the cottage and the cold air chilled his bones. It was late October before even two engravings were finished and he knew they were poorly produced and would print badly. How could it be otherwise when the originals were so clumsily drawn? He trudged them up to Turret House, hunched against a north-east wind, knowing he had taken too long with them, feeling cold and crabby and determined to be justified in his anger. And was then given even greater justification when the prints were taken from him at the door and he was not invited in.

‘You see how it is,' he said to Catherine on his return. ‘You see how he treats me.' He was white with fury, his blue eyes blazing. ‘'Tis not to be endured.'

But he had to endure it just the same. He had no choice.

The weeks passed and the quarrel dragged on. There were no more rides to Lavant and the comfort of Lady Paulina, no evenings in the library studying Greek and Latin – not that he could have
expected such a thing after such harsh words had been exchanged – worse still, no news of any other commissions to keep him going through the winter. He had made a grievous mistake and now he was paying for it, betrayed by his own terrible nervous fear, caught up in the perpetual dilemma of any artist, with time to write his own poetry but with no money to clothe them and keep them fed.

His inability to provide for them was anguish to him and Catherine, watching as he scowled and sweated over his great work in a room half lit and poorly heated, knew it and grieved for him. In the end she put on her bonnet, pulled up the collar of her greatcoat and walked up the lane to see if a gentle approach would mollify their powerful neighbour.

He received her politely but was beyond mollification. He would, he said, endeavour to procure such commissions as he could for her husband, since he had given his word to Mr Flaxman that he would be a helpful patron and he had always been a man of his word, but he was of the opinion that they would be better advised to keep a sensible distance between them. ‘I am a man of extreme sensitivities,' he told her, ‘and was much hurt by your husband's belligerent attitude.'

She tried to argue William's case, pointing out that he had always suffered from nervous fear, ‘as so many artists do, Mr Cowper among them,' and that he often said things he did not truly mean. But Mr Hayley was adamant. The rift had occurred and
the rift would continue. He would remunerate Mr Blake for the work he was doing and pay her to run off the copies he required, but that was all.

The walk back to the cottage took her considerably longer than the walk out because she was so dispirited and, when she rounded the bend in the path and saw that William was waiting for her outside the wicket gate, her heart contracted with distress. He was in a black temper, demanding to know where she had been, and when he was told, he erupted into such a vitriolic attack that she recoiled from him as if he was spitting fire.

How could she belittle him so? What was she thinking of? There was no talking to Hayley. She must know that. He was a man without compassion, a man full of spite and jealousy. Bad enough he should be imposing his will upon a fellow poet, is he now to be allowed to come between a man and his wife?

She retreated from him, withdrawing to the kitchen where she busied herself preparing supper. It was impossible to reach him in a mood as deep and black as this one and she had more sense than to try. She peeled the potatoes and listened. And presently she heard him stomping into his work room, where he thwacked at the logs with the poker, scraped a chair into position before the table, rustled a paper. Then, to her relief, there was silence, and she knew he was working and hoped that his work would heal him.

But the words he wrote in the days that followed were bitter and dripped from his pen like gall.

God is not a Being of Pity and Compassion

He cannot feel Distress: he feeds on Sacrifice & Offering

Delighting in cries and tears
&
clothed in holiness
&
solitude

But my griefs advance also, for ever and ever without end

O that I could cease to be! Despair! I am Despair

Created to be the great example of horror
&
agony
.

To be all evil, all reversed
&
for ever dead
.

For the next few days the cottage was shrouded in his misery. Then he roused himself sufficiently to write to Thomas Butts, his dear old friend who had stood by him through the lean years in London and was often the only one who had commissioned work from him. The first letter was hard to compose because he owed his old friend at least two pictures and hadn't written to him for more than a year, so he began with an apology. But that done, he wrote with greater fluency, although with extreme gloom, telling his dear Mr Butts what unsuitable employment Mr Hayley had provided and how he was constrained to do the work, insulting though it was, and how exceedingly unhappy it made him. ‘
I should be employed in greater things
, he mourned.

Thomas Butts wrote back by return of post, like the good man he was, and offered a commission for two more paintings, tactfully neglecting to mention that the two he had ordered before the Blakes left
for Felpham had yet to be delivered. ‘
You must not despair
,' he comforted. ‘
You are a great artist and one day the world will know it
.'

His friendship was so staunch it began to lift Blake's depression. He wrote again. And again, swinging from despair into a mood of exaggerated bravado and self-justification. ‘
I have Spiritual Enemies of formidable magnitude
,' he wrote. ‘
I have travel'd thro' Perils
&
Darkness not unlike a Champion. I have conquer'd and shall still Go on Conquering. Nothing can withstand the fury of my course among the Stars of God. I am under the direction of Messengers from heaven, daily & nightly
.' And when that letter was written, he walked down to the empty beach, where his messengers were waiting, and listened to the power of their voices and was comforted.

But now the first snows of winter were beginning to fall and, even with Mr Butts' commission, he was still parlously short of money and his poor dear Catherine was suffering from aching bones again. ‘We will stay here until our tenancy has run out,' he told her. ‘The rent is paid and we cannot afford to waste twenty pounds. Then we will go back to London, I promise you. You will have better health there and I shall be beyond the power of my enemies.'

The first snowfall brought misery to Johnnie and Betsy too. They had been happy lovers all through the summer and far into autumn, sneaking into any barn that lay open to them, but now the farm dogs
were ready for them wherever they went and the barns were too cold for comfort and they were facing another winter of enforced celibacy.

‘It aren't to be endured,' Betsy said, just as she had the previous year. ‘We can't go on like this, Johnnie. We must do somethin' about it.'

But what? That was the problem. There was nowhere that either of them could think of, except the stable room and that had a new tenant now in Sam the stable lad, who wasn't disposed to be friendly, not since Johnnie had been preferred as the second coachman. The evenings passed in a misery of frustration. They were back to drifting about the garden shivering and complaining.

In the end Betsy said she thought they should risk the stable room. ‘He'll never know,' she said. ‘We could be gone long afore he come back, now couldn't we. What's to stop us? He don't want it in the evenin's. He's always in The Fox.'

Johnnie tried to be sensible. ‘I can tell 'ee what's to stop us,' he said. ‘He could come back unexpected an' catch us, that's what's to stop us.'

‘No fear a' that,' she said. ‘He spends every evenin' in The Fox, drinkin' hisself silly. I knows on account of I been watchin' him.'

‘But what if he don't?'

‘We'll keep an eye out for him,' Betsy said, ‘through the little window. Anyways he won't come back. He's too fond a' porter for that.'

It was risky, even so, and Johnnie knew it, but she was so persuasive and so pretty and he wanted
her so much that, in the end, he stifled his fears and, two nights later, which was the next opportunity they had, they sneaked up the ladder to their old love nest, she pink-cheeked with excitement, he shivering with anxiety and repressed desire. The place was almost exactly as they remembered it. They snuggled into the welcoming mattress as if they were returning home, loved long and lustily – and were back in the kitchen, calmed, satisfied and tidy, a clear half hour before the stable lad came whistling into the garden.

‘There you are, you see,' Betsy said, when Johnnie strode into the kitchen with the vegetables next morning. ‘I was right. Nothin' ventured, nothin' gained.'

‘There's no stoppin' you,' he said, admiring her, and was just about to suggest that they went to the stables again that evening when Mrs Beke brisked over to check the potatoes so the arrangement had to be left till later.

Now that they'd proved they could take risks with impunity, they used the stable room whenever they could. Johnnie was still worried about it because they hadn't asked permission and were probably trespassing, but as the weeks went by he stilled his conscience with argument. 'Tweren't as if they were doing anythin' wrong, now was it. 'Tweren't as if they were harmin' anyone. All they were a-doin' was just usin' an empty room when nobody else wanted it. Betsy was right. There weren't no harm in that. As the days shortened and
the regulars at The Fox drank deeper and longer, they stayed in their nest for longer and longer too, reluctant to step out into the cold again for their dash to the house. They were so happy there, so warm in one another's arms, so sure of themselves.

Christmas was celebrated with a Twelfth Night party that kept them all up and hard at work until two in the morning, and two days later there was a heavy fall of snow which lay so thickly outside the stable door that they were afraid of leaving tracks and had to postpone their happy evenings until the horses had come out to churn everything up and the paths had been marked by hooves and footprints. Even then a visit was more risky than usual, for, as Johnnie pointed out, if fresh snow fell while they were inside, they would leave tracks when they left.