The Poets' Wives Read online

  But that sweet village where my black-eyed maid

  Closes her eyes to sleep beneath Night’s shade,

  Whene’er I enter, more than mortal fire

  Burns in my soul, and does my song inspire.

  I think it was always my eyes he liked the best. I don’t know what colour to use for them and won’t look in the mirror in fear of seeing them dull and clouded with age. Some nights by candlelight or the fire’s final burn he’d lie and look into them as if he could see into another world. He’d say they were black as jet, as deep as far-off seas, or say some great fire burned there. And sometimes he’d take his fingertips and gently close them saying that if he didn’t they would consume him, set his very soul ablaze.

  We got married in St Mary’s church by the river and I wore wild flowers in my hair and carried a posy of bluebells. But such dread I felt that it replaced all the things I was supposed and wanted to feel and then the moment came, not when I made my vows or received his, but when we stood before the parish certificate and unable to meet his gaze I signed my name with an X. So it was finally made known to him what I had hidden but no words were said and when I looked at him in shame nothing marked his face but love and he took my hand and as if with a fullness of pride led me through the church.

  After all my fears and confusions it proved not such a great mystery after all. I took to it quick enough, as quickly as I took to so many things that were unknown to me in my previous life. We’d sit in Green Street where we first lodged and each evening after his work was done he’d teach me to read and write – Catherine was the first word I learned – and it pleased him that I mastered it so well. While he worked during the day I practised my letters when time was spare and read passages in the Bible he’d marked for me. It pleased him too when I’d read them aloud to him as he sat and rested after his toil. And best of all is when I read from the Song of Solomon, ‘Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits.’

  Those are the first and best days of love when everything is new and nothing runs empty or needs replenishing. I am his all and everything is rich in its bounty and my skin wears the inky marks of his fingers again and again, whether by firelight or in the early morning’s first rays. And sometimes I fear he will grow tired of me or leave nothing for his work but he also gives me words that are wondrous and full of Heaven’s light and he tells me it is a holiness, sanctified and blessed. Once I tease him by asking if he has any strength left to do his work and he laughs and tells me, ‘Enjoyment and not abstinence is the food of intellect.’

  ‘Then, Mr Blake, I understand why you possess such an incomparable cleverness,’ I say and it pleases him so much he laughs again and it is a sound that is sweeter to me than any other. And then he tells me about a vision that he has had and the great work of poetry that he must write which will confound his enemies and make him known and, although I don’t fully grasp all that he intends, his passion blazes like an angry fire until it frightens me a little and I still him into a different passion by kissing his lips and when he says my name in his need his breath rushes warm against my cheek.

  There is no shame in love – he makes me understand that – but there are drawings that never get shown and which in truth must be hidden from me. I find them by chance when looking for something else when he is out. And in these there are all manner of creatures engaged in everything that flesh can offer and things that I have never countenanced and in their monstrous strangeness they frighten me so that the hand which holds them trembles under the weight of their excess. Then I hear his footsteps on the stairs and I bundle them away but when he enters we both look as if we are surprised to see each other.

  ‘What’s wrong, Kate?’ he asks and I try to mask my confusion with a smile but he looks at me as if he knows what I have seen. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘I’m well enough, just resting my weary eyes.’

  He seems satisfied and takes off his coat to begin his labour and I sit and watch him. He has told me often that he writes when commanded by angels but I think of the drawings and wonder what angel told him to draw these things. And then, but not for the first time, it frightens me that I grasp so little of what exists in him even though I have striven to know him and understand the visions that bring his work into the world.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ I ask him almost before I know I’m going to.

  ‘Thinking?’ he repeats, ‘I suppose just what always plagues me from time to time, not knowing whether to curse or bless engraving because it takes so long and is so intractable, yet it’s capable of such beauty and perfection.’

  ‘And anything else?’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes, what else do you think in this very moment?’ I persist.

  ‘Will there be a sun in the sky tomorrow?’

  ‘Answer seriously, Will.’

  ‘Why do you ask this, Kate?’

  ‘Because I want to know such things as are in your head. To be fully your wife. As you start work on this new design tell me everything that you’re thinking.’

  ‘I can’t describe everything in words and if I could it would destroy the spirit of my invention and turn the imagination into nothing more than an empty husk. And sometimes I don’t know everything but have to wait for it to be spoken through me.’

  He stops working and takes my hand and tells me that I have been the truest wife from the day when we married and if he was to tell the world everything that was in his head they would say for sure that he was a madman.

  ‘Who thinks you mad?’ I ask. ‘I’ve not heard it.’

  ‘Only because your ears have been stopped by love. “Poor Blake” is how they refer to me when I’ve passed by.’

  ‘Then they are fools, they are the madmen.’

  ‘And I must prove them so, show them that their minds are manacled and silence every doubter. Nothing I do is the fashion of the age but some day I shall be known. Do you believe that, Catherine?’

  I tell him I believe it with all my heart and he kisses me on the cheek and then he holds me until it feels as if he has fallen into a trance and I have to remind him of the work that he has to do. Then as I am about to leave him I hear him say, ‘There is one thing I think of, Kate.’

  I stop in the doorway and try not to think of the pictures in the drawer that he’s never shown to me.

  ‘It’s that girl we saw when we walked at dawn.’

  ‘The one who cursed us even when you gave her money?’

  ‘Yes. There’s something about her that’s stayed with me – the fear in her eyes, the pretence of hatred in her voice that made her sound as if she was fending off the world itself. I’ve never been so close to someone so utterly lost.’

  ‘She’s the girl in the poem, isn’t she?’

  ‘I think so. Perhaps.’

  He goes to say something more but stops himself and as he returns to his work I leave him and turn to my own but as I make my way through the crowded street think only how the youthful harlot’s curse blights with plague the marriage hearse. And already her presence in the world seems to throw a shadow over us, a shadow that will soon lengthen and grow stronger.

  A new and a better house and there is work but not always the work that he wants to do and I see when his heart is not in it, his natural passion diverted into narrow tributaries unworthy of the man. And sometimes there is no laughter and he sinks into a black despair. Then for days he is beyond even the reach of love and all the light fades from his eyes and it’s as if he sees nothing but a trembling darkness. And at first I try to pull him free from this slough of despond but come to understand that there is nothing that can be done so I say little but stay by him and sometimes he asks me to read and then he appears a little cheered at first until his good spirits slowly melt away again like snow. It’s then I ask myself why our love is not sufficient and am hurt and fearful when it doesn’t prove strong enough to restore him to himself.

  There are times he sits at the table w
here he engraves but touches nothing, as if to lift the tools would be a burden too great to bear. And seeing him like this makes me pray that some good angel will carry him up on bright wings of hope to where his spirit will soar once more. And sometimes when he falls under what he calls his evil star I make him come with me, ignoring his excuses and pulling on his coat and hat, and then we walk without purpose or direction following whatever impulse takes me or stepping where the sunlight finds a way to slant its path through the houses. We talk little and I think he does not want my chatter and sometimes we journey along the river or into the country until his eyes begin to leave their inner world and see anew what lies at hand. Sometimes on these walks his lips move as if he is deep in conversation with an unseen presence and then I touch him only with the light lean of my shoulder and try to find us good paths in which to venture.

  The sound of the engraving tool is always what signals his restoration and then he goes anew to his work with a hunger like that of a man who has been starved and it can come at any time, so often I wake from a troubled sleep to hear its scratch and score in the adjoining room and I give thanks and in my shift I hurry to prove to myself that the sound has not been conjured from my imagination. And at such times he’ll look up and smile with all the morning light in his eyes once more and he’ll call me to him and kiss my hand and press his head against me and when he speaks of me as ‘the blessed hand that lifts him out of despondency’ I feel like I am truly his good angel.

  Soon after he makes a decision that he will exhibit his work and his excitement overflows and knows no restraint. His heartening sense of the success that must come quivers through his being and I too believe that this will be the enterprise that will change our fortunes because in truth there are times when we need more money – sometimes I think he does not understand how much I have to scrimp and save to make ends meet. He works night and day to get it ready and I think he will be consumed by his own blaze of industry and the works in watercolour and tempera are full of wondrous sights that speak both of Heaven and Albion’s history. And there is a painting of the Canterbury pilgrims that is very fine, and as large a painting as he has ever done is called The Ancient Britons which is already commissioned.

  Such work should be hung in the mighty halls of this city but there is no choice other than to exhibit in 28 Broad Street where his brother James still has the hosier shop and it is decided that one shilling will be charged for entry. Will composes a pamphlet signalling this event that will surely bring him into the light and when he writes it he titles it ‘Exhibition of Paintings in Fresco, Poetical and Historical Inventions by Wm Blake’ and then all his anger at being kept down by cunning knaves who conspire to bring him ill-fortune makes him issue a challenge, so to those who have called his work an unscientific and irregular eccentricity, a madman’s scrawls, he demands they do him the justice of examining it in person before they fall into judgement. And his overflowing energy leads him to have a catalogue printed which my hand helps and we bind it in blue-grey wrappers so it looks most handsome.

  All the passion of the enterprise is in his face and his dark star is clouded and far away. Sometimes I try to calm him in fear that his unceasing industry will do him harm but nothing can put out the flame of his work or the excited voice of his conviction that rings out again and again like church bells. And everything is ready and the day and hour arrive but no one comes. I tell him that there is time, that they will surely appear and those who do will spread the word to others, but almost no one does and not a painting is sold except the one already agreed. And in the corner sits the pile of catalogues that consumed so much of our recent efforts and which seems only to mock them now. I want to cry but have to make myself strong and he says nothing, not a word, then goes back to creating illustrations for someone else’s work and his head and hand are weighted with despair that I try to dispel with foolish words that have no semblance of truth. He says nothing and I want to go into the street and rail against those whose self-serving meanness of spirit has blinded their eyes to his greatness. And I want to shout above their indifference what he has often told me, that he who does not know truth at sight is unworthy of her notice, and how the man who never in his mind and thoughts travelled to Heaven is no artist.

  But this world is evil in its cruelty and its mind cannot free itself from the manacles that bind it. So there is a night when I come into the house and find no sign of him but a copy of the Examiner open on his table. Nothing I have ever read causes so much pain as the words I find there that speak of ‘an unfortunate lunatic whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement’ and his work is ‘the wild ebullitions of a distempered brain’. Then when I lift the paper away I see the words he has scored in black ink on his desk. It says, ‘I am hid.’ Quickly I take the paper and feed it to the fire and curse the spirits of envy and malignity that write such abominations. I feel a sickness rising but know I have to find him and that he has gone out into the night without coat or hat.

  There is no certainty where he might have headed and I am frightened and wonder if it’s the very darkest star of all that shines brightest now in his firmament. Close to our house I ask if anyone has seen him and an old woman laughs and asks if he’s run off with the angels but further on a child points the direction he saw him taking. I follow the road that leads me closer to the river; pass the coal wharves and timber yards, the stench-filled dye-works and silent lime kilns, the gin shops blazing with noise and degradations. Somewhere in the distance I hear the sound of a barrel-organ and raucous laughter.The night air has grown cold and a mist clouds the river so the lights along the other shore look smoky and almost dimmed. I pass groups of men already searching and squabbling over where they shall lay their heads for the night and one of them calls after me but I do not turn from my search. Then just when I think I have taken the wrong road and am about to go back I see him, his shirt white in the gloom like a flag beckoning me on even though he stands still as some stone carving. I stop at a little distance and watch him stare into the waters below. He is close to the edge and I am frightened of startling him so I stand silent and pray for the knowledge of what I must do.

  ‘I am like a sea without a shore, Kate,’ he says and I am the one who is startled – by his voice and because I had not thought he was aware of my presence.

  ‘Come home, William, it’s chilly and you’ve no coat,’ I urge him.

  ‘I have no need of a coat, Kate – I am wrapped in mortality, this flesh is a prison and my bones the bars of death.’

  ‘The world is wrong, Will, the world is a fool. And in my heart I know that some day it will realise what it did and you will be known, known and revered by all,’ I say as I go to him and put my arm across his shoulders. But his body is cold and yields nothing to my touch.

  ‘Perhaps what they say is true,’ he answers, turning to look at me for the first time. ‘Things are sometimes confused in my head. Perhaps I am deceived by the voices.’

  ‘And that would mean I am in love with a madman when I know there is no saner, better man walks God’s earth. Come home, William.’

  And I try to lead him by the arm but he resists, returning his gaze again to the water, so I have no choice. It is too soon and I have no certainty but I have no choice and so I say, ‘I think I am with child.’

  Children are everywhere with Mr Blake, in the songs and poems, in the drawings, and in truth I think they play and gambol inside his head. So from that moment when I say those words he is filled with a great happiness that threatens to overflow and in his imagination the child is already born and he writes ‘Infant Joy’ and the drawing of the poem is very beautiful. He wants me to colour and find delight in it and I try my best. The mother and the newborn child are shown inside an open flower that is the deepest red and signals the opening of the womb. My hand trembles a little and I have to steady it before I give the first copy its colour and see how the mother and child are visited by an angel who brings a holy blessing. And
the womb formed by the petals is shaped like a heart and I feel his love and excitement in every line that he has made. I have told him I am with child because I think it might be so for my body feels strange and I tell myself it is because a life grows inside me but I revealed it to him so soon when I am not certain because I could think of no other way of pulling him back to himself.

  He is all tenderness and often he lays his hand lightly on me as if he expects to feel the child that grows there and he calls me his sweet infant joy. All the previous disappointment is put behind him and he continues with his work in good spirits, making his plans as always. But I am filled with uncertainty and have had no angel’s visit to tell me I am with child so there is only the strangeness, the feeling that somehow in ways I cannot describe things are changing inside me.

  He asks me if it will be a boy or a girl and I tell him it is only God’s will can decide that. And he says he hopes for a boy but then changes his mind and says best it will be a girl. When I ask him why he tells me that she will be a companion to me in all my days. And he says that if it’s a girl he wants to call her Catherine and I laugh and tell him that we cannot have the name that is his mother’s, his sister’s and his wife’s. So he thinks again and decides he favours the name Ruth but suddenly insists she be called Eve because she shall live eternally in the garden of our love and when I consent he skips about as if he himself has become a child.

  And there is nothing that drives him to greater fire and fury than to see a child misused. So once in Lambeth I watch him stand at the window and see him stiffen into anger and when I ask him what the matter is, he calls me to watch with him and down in the courtyard below is a boy who has been hobbled with a log as if he is some wayward animal that needs chained to prevent it running free.

  ‘I cannot allow it,’ he says and his whole body shakes with fury and he talks of those who would bring slavery to our shores and I try to caution him not to act in reckless temper as on occasions he is wont to do when provoked. But he repeats again, ‘I cannot allow it,’ and for a second as his hand presses against the glass it feels as if all his fury will smash it into pieces. I lay my hand on his shoulder but it brings no calm and I feel the throb and thresh of his overflowing anger as if it is a living thing inside him that must find release. And then without his coat he is taking the stairs, his feet rattling them the loudest I have ever heard, and I try to follow but he tells me to stay where I am and in my own fear I have to watch what unfolds from the window.