MAKING BLAKE

PART V

CHAPTER 8

BLAKE, MRS. BLAKE, AND POSTHUMOUS PRINTING

Put in Introduction. This is the first of three related, sequential essays, in which I have tried to answer basic questions: which of Blake’s works were produced after his death? Who produced them? Where and when were they produced? Why do so many posthumous copies of Songs seem incomplete? Why did posthumous production stop? Are they worth studying? These questions require examining closely and thoroughly the bibliographical evidence provided by posthumous prints as well as new biographical facts about Mrs. Blake, Frederick Tatham, and Tatham’s father, Charles Heathcote Tatham.

Blake, Posthumously Printed

His widow, an estimable woman, saw Blake frequently after his decease; he used to come and sit with her two or three hours every day. These hallowed visitations were her only comforts . . . he advised with her as to the best mode of selling his engravings. . . .

(BR2 493)

Writing to William Michael Rossetti on 9 November 1862, Anne Gilchrist described Frederick Tatham as coming “into possession of so large a stock of Designs and engraved Books, that he has, by his own confession, been selling them ‘for thirty years’ and at ‘good prices’” (130). Mrs. Gilchrist, however, was grossly mistaken if she thought that Tatham was or had been selling Blake’s illuminated books, as though Blake’s stock of illuminated prints and books was so large that it took thirty years to deplete. From the known provenances of Blake’s illuminated books and the pattern of production of his late copies, c. 1818 to 1827, and of the copies printed posthumously between c. 1827 through 1832, we can safely infer that Blake left few complete illuminated books. Mrs. Blake inherited Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy N, Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy W, the Small and Large Book of Designs copies B, the highly finished Jerusalem copy E, and possibly monochrome copy D and/or F. She also inherited four copies worth of There is No Natural Religion impressions, a copy of All Religions are One, possibly loose impressions of Ghost of Abel and On Homers Poetry, two or three copies of For the Sexes, and perhaps 100 proofs and discarded impressions of illuminated plates from 1789 to 1827. Blake appears to have left no copies of America, a Prophecy, Europe, a Prophecy, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Book of Thel, The Book of Urizen, The Book of Ahania, The Book of Los, The Song of Los, or Milton, a Poem. Surely, Linnell was not exaggerating when he told Cumberland, 18 March 1833, that not even Blake had copies of all the titles (BR2 554).

Mrs. Blake sold Blake’s last copies of Visions and Songs in 1829 and 1830 respectively (BB 00, 00), leaving Tatham with the other books and loose prints. Indeed, Tatham’s stock of “engraved books” consisted almost exclusively of posthumously printed impressions, which, in terms of number of individual images or leaves, came to comprise the bulk of his “inheritance.”[1] America, Europe, and Jerusalem were each printed posthumously three times, For the Sexes was printed five or more times, Songs was printed nine times in two or three printing sessions, with enough impressions to form ten copies, and Innocence was printed at least once in one of these sessions. These works account for nearly 1250 posthumous impressions, which represent much time, labor, and materials, and raise critical questions. Who printed them and why? When and where? The general consensus has been that Frederick Tatham, who inherited the copper plates, was primarily responsible for printing them, and printed most of them in 1831 and 1832, presumably in his studio at 20 Lisson Grove North. This supposition has been recently challenged by Angus Whitehead, whose research into Mrs. Blake’s last residences has led him to suggest that Mrs. Blake was the primary posthumous printer, that in her two-room apartment on Upper Charlton Street, in which she resided the last two years of her life, she “continued her husband’s trade, printing, coloring, and selling works up until her death” (89-90). In another essay, he and Mark Crosby imagine the widowed Mrs. Blake as an independent artisan who continued the “firm” of “Wm. Blake” (106). These radically different views of who printed most of the posthumous copies alter our understanding of both Mrs. Blake and Blake. But are they true? Was she in her widowhood the primary posthumous printer?

I believe we can answer this important question and even determine who printed what when and where by examining the posthumous books bibliographically and by tracing the location and movement between 1827 and 1832 of the rolling press used to print them.

I. 1827-28

Blake died on 12 August 1827 and was buried five days later. On 18 August, John Linnell contacted James Lahee about Blake’s rolling press. According to Bentley, Linnell asked Lahee, the printer of the Book of Job engravings, “if he wanted to buy Blake’s press” (BR2 467). Linnell presumably intended to raise money for Mrs. Blake. According to Angus Whitehead, however, in an essay revising much of our knowledge of Mrs. Blake’s last years and residencies, Linnell sought to trade Blake’s press for a smaller one (00). Whitehead argues that Mrs. Blake intended to print Blake’s illuminated plates to support herself and establish her financial independence. Lahee’s letter to Linnell supports the idea of a trade:

Sir,

In answer to your note as to Mrs Blakes press I beg to say that I am not in want of a very large press at this moment, but if it happens not to be larger than Grand Eagle, and it is a good one in other respects I have on idle which would answer Mrs B’s purpose, and which I would exchange with her for but the fact is that wooden presses are quite gone by now & it would not answer me to give much if any Cash; notwithstanding the circumstances you mention would prevent my attempting to drive a hard bargain…

(BR2 467)

The phrases “would answer Mrs B’s purpose” and “I would exchange with her” do suggest that Mrs. Blake “appeared intent on continuing to print from a rolling press, presumably in an effort to market her husband’s works and support herself” (Whitehead 77). George Cumberland Jr., thinking that was her intention, wrote his father on 16 January 1828 that Mrs. Blake “intends to prin[t] with her own hands . . . [her] late husbands works. . . and trust to their sal[e] for a livelihood” (BR2 482). As she was a good printer and had printed “the whole number of the Plates for Cowpers work,” which earned her “Twenty Guineas” (E 726-7), perhaps she hoped also to pick up some free-lance printing work from the print and book publishers.[2] Before we can ascertain how much of her intentions she realized in practice and how realistic they were, we need to locate where Mrs. Blake set up the press.

Lahee warned Linnell that “wooden presses are quite gone by now” (BR2 467). After sending an assistant to look at it, he declined Linnell’s offer. About 12 days later Linnell moved the press from Blake’s residence at 3 Fountain Court, the Strand, to his own studio at 6 Cirencester Place, Fitzroy Square (BR2 00). Mrs. Blake followed two weeks later, presumably with her belongings and all of Blake’s books, manuscripts, copper plates, large color prints and their matrixes, portfolios of sketches and drawings, temperas and watercolors, frames and stretchers, canvases, the large painting Blake was working on at the end of his life, and printing and painting supplies, materials, and tools. The move, no doubt, involved “a great deal of Luggage,” as Blake termed their belongings when moving in 1800 from Lambeth to Felpham, but, given that Blake had sold his print collection to Colnaghi in 1821, probably fewer than the “Sixteen heavy boxes & portfolios full of prints” that they took to the cottage, in addition to the rolling press (E 710, BR2 00). At Linnell’s studio, Mrs. Blake was to be granted a nominal income as paid housekeeper (BR2 468). These arrangements were, according to Gilchrist, “in part fulfillment of the old friendly scheme” (Life I 364).[3]

Linnell, of course, had been actively trying to help Blake and Mrs. Blake financially since June of 1818, when he hired Blake to assist him in engraving the portrait of James Upton, pastor of the Baptist Church, Church Street. Linnell found Blake customers for his illuminated books and designs, bought copies of illuminated books and the illustrations to Milton’s Paradise Regained, and commissioned a second copy of The Book of Job water colors and then the Dante water color illustrations as well as the engravings after both series. But he was now also looking out for their physical well being. According to Gilchrist, in the summer of 1826, Linnell had begun urging the Blakes to move nearer to him, first near his cottage in Hampstead (Life I 350), then, when that failed, to Fitzroy Square. On 7 February 1827, Linnell wrote in his journal: “to Mr Blake, to speak to him @ living at CP [Cirencesther Place],” which was at Fitzroy Square (BR2 455), the neighborhood of their old friend, John Flaxman, who had just two months earlier, and Thomas Butts.[4] As Bentley notes, “The reference does not make clear whether the Blakes were to move into Linnell’s studio, into independent lodgings, or into the building where Blake’s brother James lived” (BR2 455). Exactly where probably did not matter to Blake, because moving required changes and that alone elicited terror and terrible anxiety. He writes to Linnell a few days later: “I have Thought & thought of the Removal & cannot get my Mind out of a State of terrible fear at such a Step, the more I think the more I feel terror at what I wished at first & thought it a thing of benefit & Good hope” (E 782). The Blakes spent Blake’s last year in their two-room apartment at Fountain Court, where they had been since 1821.

The Cirencester Place residence appears to have been used primarily as Linnell’s studio, in which case Mrs. Blake’s housekeeping would have entailed far less work than at the family’s Hampstead residence, where Linnell and his wife were raising five children between 1 and 9—a brood that would eventually become nine by 1835.[5] Setting up the rolling press at Linnell’s studio would have been an asset to Linnell. In addition to being a portrait and landscape painter (preferring the latter but needing the former to support his growing family), Linnell was an accomplished graphic artist, despite the absence of formal training. He was recorded in the Royal Academy exhibition catalogues as “painter and engraver” (Graves 5:64). By June of 1818, Linnell had already engraved and etched 21 portraits and landscapes after his own designs. His first engraving, in 1813, was after his portrait of John Martin, pastor of the Baptist Church, Keppel Street, Bloomsbury, which he had joined in 1812. This is where he met Charles Heathcote Tatham, the neoclassical architect and furniture designer and father of Frederick (Story 241-42), who was to play an important role in the posthumous printing narrative (see Chapter 11). While Mrs. Blake was staying in Linnell’s studio, Linnell was probably still etching—or proofing—eight heads for John Varley’s Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy and/or six facsimile copies of old line engravings after figures in the Sistine Chapel, both published in 1828. A working rolling press would have been to his advantage and appears certainly to have been set up and not merely stored.[6]

As Blake acknowledged to Hayley, Mrs. Blake printed the relief-etched broadside, Little Tom the Sailor (26 November 1800, E 714). This was no easy task, because the work comprised four plates: head and tail pieces etched in white line, long text etched in relief, and a wide, narrow colophon etched in relief. These needed to be inked, printed, and aligned on the sheet of paper to reconstruct the composition.[7] Mrs. Blake could also print intaglio plates, as Blake acknowledged to his brother James, noting that she did so “to admiration & being under my own eye the prints are as fine as the French prints & please every one” (30 Jan. 1803, E 726). Printing intaglio plates well, which in the 18^th and early 19^th century meant producing images with sharp, distinct lines and without any plate tone or traces of ink along the plate’s beveled edges, took skill and experience in both inking the plate and wiping the ink from the plate, first with muslin rags and then with the palm of the hand covered with whiting. It also required cutting and dampening paper for printing, aligning the leaves onto the plates correctly, and pulling plates through the press with the right pressure.[8] She may have helped Linnell with some proofing or printing, and/or Linnell may have helped her print some of Blake’s intaglio plates. Bentley has suggested that the proofs of the Dante engravings recorded by Linnell for 5 September 1827 were pulled by her, possibly to proof the press as well as the plates, and that she may have printed copies of Canterbury Pilgrim also recorded by Linnell at that time (BR2 790-91). These may have included the three impressions she sold on 8 January 1828 to Crabb Robinson and Barron Field (BR2 00).[9]

With press and studio set up for intaglio printing, Mrs. Blake seems likely to have also printed the posthumous impressions and copies of For the Sexes. Linnell owned three copies of the work: copies A and B were printed by Blake, but copy K was posthumously printed (BB 197).[10] That Linnell should own it, in addition to two complete copies, suggests that he had a hand in making it—perhaps the price for his assistance—because it is very unlikely that he would have acquired it of (or to have been given it by) Tatham, who inherited the plates, prints, and copies of For the Sexes with all of Blake’s other effects and, as noted below, was on adversarial terms with Linnell beginning early in the last year of Mrs. Blake’s life. [11] About 115 posthumous impressions of the For the Sexes plates are extant and form two distinct groups. Seventy impressions are on paper 34 x 24 cm and watermarked J Whatman / 1826; these form copies G and I, which are missing plate 19 (“The Keys to the Gates”), copy F, missing plates 19 and 20, and copy H, which has 12 plates. The impressions in copies K, J, and L are on unmarked leaves approximately 37 x 26 cm and appear to constitute a different printing session. According to Bentley, copies F through L, the prints from both sessions, were printed posthumously but sold in 1831 and later (BB 196-97). The impressions printed on Whatman paper were stabbed like pages in illuminated books, which suggests Mrs. Blake’s involvement.

Blake used a Whatman 1826 paper of a slightly larger size in his Genesis Manuscript (c. 1826-27). For the Sexes copy I has 20 leaves with six watermarks, indicating that these leaves were cut from larger sheets of paper. They appear to have been quarters of 68 x 48 cm (26.5 x 18.5 inches), the size of Super Royal paper. Because Blake normally cut leaves for his books from larger sheets (see Viscomi BIB 00), perhaps the twenty-one or so sheets required for copies F, G, H, and I were already on hand, acquired by Blake in preparation of printing the plates in their final states, which he appears to have established in c. 1826. The sheets, though, probably remained uncut till Mrs. Blake quartered them. The unmarked leaves of paper used for Linnell’s copy and others may have been quarters of a dozen or so sheets 74 x 52 cm and may have come from Linnell. Apparently, Mrs. Blake took all the plates and most of the copies and separate impressions she printed, along with all of Blake’s stock of works and materials that she had moved from Linnell’s to Tatham’s, her subsequent residence, because Tatham gave For the Sexes copy F to Mr. Bird after the funeral of Mrs. Blake (BB 202) and sold copy D to Thomas Boddington by 1833. That posthumous copies were given away and sold in 1831 and later (along with life-time copies) suggests that most—if not all—of the late and posthumous copies were printed on speculation and not commissioned and that the monies went to Tatham and not Mrs. Blake.[12]

II. 1828 – 1829

The press’s location after Mrs. Blake left Linnell’s is not documented textually, but its presence is evinced materially, in the prints themselves. The nearly 1250 extant posthumous relief etchings, etchings, and engravings, their embossments and blemishes from the shallows, evince a rolling press—presumably Blake’s—as opposed to a loose press used for pressing paper or hand burnishing paper over plates. When Mrs. Blake left Linnell’s studio to reside with Tatham, she appears to have printed intaglio works but not yet any of the illuminated books. Cumberland Jr.’s comment in early 1828 about her intending to print her husband’s works, by which he appears to have meant the illuminated books, suggests that, at the very least, she hadn’t done so as of mid January 1828. When she left later that year for Tatham’s, she presumably took her press, but it is not clear from Gilchrist when she left Linnell’s, nor is it clear from the bibliographical record that she printed any of the relief etched plates while she resided with Tatham.

According to Gilchrist, Mrs. Blake remained at Linnell’s for

some nine months; quitting in the summer of 1828, to take charge of Mr. Tatham’s chambers. Finally, she removed into humble lodgings at No. 17, Upper Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, in which she continued till her death; still under the wing, as it were, of this last–named friend. The occasional sale to such as had a regard for Blake’s memory, or were recommended by staunch friends like Mr. Richmond, Nollekens Smith and others, of single drawings, of the Jerusalem, of the Songs of Innocence and Experience, secured for her moderate wants a decent if stinted and precarious competence.

(Life I 364-65)

Mrs. Blake may have benefitted from the sale of Jerusalem copy D and/or F, the earliest provenances of which are unknown, but Tatham benefitted from the sale of Jerusalem copy E, valued by Blake at £20 and possibly the most valuable artifact she had owned. But that is the least of the many confusions and ambiguities in this oft quoted passage.

According to Story, Linnell moved from Hampstead to 26 Porchester Terrace, Bayswater, in April 1828, at which time he vacated “the house which he had kept on as a studio in Cirencester Place” (248). Whitehead dates Mrs. Blake’s departure from Linnell’s studio a bit earlier, as “c. March 1828” (80), noting that Linnell’s poor health due to overwork may have figured into her decision to move to Tatham’s (80 n42). She appears, then, to have stayed with Linnell less than seven months, not nine. And rather than staying with Tatham for two years, as is generally thought, she appears to have resided with him for only one year. Tatham implies a one-year residency in a letter of 11 April 1829, in which he states that she had already moved to her own place. Writing to an unknown patron who had inquired about Blake’s books, Tatham apologized for his delayed response, explaining that as a “consequence of Mrs. Blake’s removal from Fountain Court to No. 17 Upper Charlotte St Fitzroy Square, a wrong address was put on the letter at Fountain Court and it was only received by her the day before yesterday” (BR2 495). Tatham does not explicitly mention Mrs. Blake’s year-long-stay with him (or the almost seven months with Linnell), implying, intentionally or not, that Mrs. Blake had been living independently since the death of her husband.[13]

Bentley correctly records that Mrs. Blake left Tatham’s residence in spring of 1829, but he also dates her stay with Tatham as 1828-1830, that is to say, as being concurrent with her lodgings at 17 Upper Charlotte Street (BR2 754-55). But as Whitehead’s impressive detective work has shown, Mrs. Blake moved directly from Tatham’s to 17 Upper Charlton—not Charlotte—Street, where she stayed from April 1829 till her death on 18 October 1831.[14] This was a two-room apartment (Whitehead 00) in her old neighborhood of Fitzroy Square, where she presumably had friends. She did not maintain concurrent residencies. Whitehead also discovered that Mrs. Blake had inherited £20 in early 1829, along with some furniture from her brother-in-law Henry Bane, which enabled her to move and to begin living independently.[15]

According to Bentley, Mrs. Blake “moved in with the Tathams in Lisson Grove to look after them” (BR2 755). But recently discovered information reveals that Frederick Tatham and Louisa Keen Viney, of Essex, were married 25 April 1831—by which time Mrs. Blake had been in her own place at 17 Upper Charlton a full two years.[16] She never “looked after” Tatham and his wife; the idea that she had and took her own place only after Tatham married appears to have originated with Tatham himself. In his “Life of Blake” manuscript, written c. 1832 and signed “Lisson Grove North, London,” he writes:

after the death of her husband she resided for some time with the Author of this, whose domestic arrangements were entirely undertaken by her; until such changes took place that rendered it impossible for her strength to continue in this voluntary office of sincere affection & regard. She then returned to the lodging in which she had lived previously to this act of maternal loveliness—in which she continued until she was decayed by fretting & and devoured by the silent Worm of grief….”

(BR2 690).

Bentley’s reading of the phrase “domestic arrangement” to mean marriage appears to have been wide spread. According to Henry J. Curtis, the historian of the Tatham family and whose typescript Notes for a Pedigree of the Tathams of co. Durham, England (1921; rev. 1927) was the basis of much of the genealogy in the Tatham Family History website, as well as the current DNB entries for Tatham, C. H. Tatham, and George Richmond: “It would appear, from the facts recorded by Gilchrist, therefore, that Mrs. Blake removed from Fredk. Tatham's chambers on his marriage, and to lodgings almost certainly near at hand. . . .” (Curtis @ Saxonlodge.net./F. Tatham).[17]

Tatham’s explanation for Catherine’s departure is ambiguous. She took care of his domestic arrangements, he says, “until such changes took place that rendered it impossible for her strength to continue in this voluntary office,” adding that she “returned to the lodging in which she had lived previously to this act of maternal loveliness—in which she continued until she was decayed by fretting etc. and devoured by the silent Worm of grief….” (my emphasis, BR2 690). As noted, Mrs. Blake did not have an apartment concurrent with her residency with Tatham—and she did not return to Linnell’s. Perhaps Tatham meant that she returned to her previous Fitzroy Square neighborhood. The “changes” that “took place” were most likely in Mrs. Blake’s physical condition during 1830 and 1831. By mid 1830, Tatham appears to have moved to 20 Lisson Grove North (see Chapter 11). Nor is it clear what the phrase “in which she continued” modified; was it the “act of maternal” kindness in the form of house keeping without boarding or wages, “still under the wing” of Tatham, as Gilchrist said, or was it her health and “strength” that continued to decline? The distance between her Fitzroy Square residence and 20 Lisson Grove North was about 4 miles round trip, which seems unlikely to have been routinely undertaken by the increasingly frail Catherine.[18]

Tatham signed his c. 1832 “Life of Blake” manuscript “Lisson Grove North, London” (BR2 691). He signed his 11 April 1829 letter, however, from “34 Alpha Road, Regent’s Park, London” (BR2 495). This was the same neighborhood but the house of Charles Heathcote Tatham. In Clayton's Court Guide to the Environs of London, 1830, Tatham appears as "F. Tatham Esq., Alpha Road, Paddington." At the Alpha Road residence at this time, in addition to his parents, Harriet and C. H. Tatham, who was just 56 years old in the spring of 1828, were seven of his younger brothers and sisters: Robert, Edmund, Georgiana, Maria, Augusta, Harriet, and Julia, all between the ages of 4 and 17.[19] Frederick’s unmarried 25 year-older sister Caroline was presumably still in residence as well. Only Tatham’s brother Arthur, b. 1808, the future clergyman, was out of the house, at Magdalene College, Cambridge (1827-31).[20]

Tatham Sr. was recorded in the Royal Blue Book for 1825 as "Charles Heathcote Tatham Esq., 1 Queen St., Mayfair, and 35 Alpha Road, Regents Park." The Queen Street location, a house near Curzon Square rated at £66, about half that of the other houses on the street, was used as his office and studio (see Chapter 11). From 1809 through 1831, he listed this address—which appears never to have been a family residence—for the Royal Academy exhibition catalogues (Graves, VII 324-25).[21] F. Tatham listed the same address in 1825 (Graves VII 325), in 1828 and 1829 for the British Institution exhibitions (Graves, Brit. Inst. 528), and in 1829 for the Royal Society of British Artists (Whitehead 83). F. Tatham used the Lisson Grove address for the Royal Academy shows from 1830 to 1832.

According to Whitehead, Mrs. Blake most likely resided with Tatham at his father’s Mayfair office and studio. Placing Mrs. Blake and the press there are reasonable deductions. Though smaller than the dwellings around it, it was certainly large enough for a studio, a press, and lodgers. C. H. Tatham, who knew the Blakes since at least 1799, when he acquired copy B of America, would presumably have welcomed the opportunity to provide the widow of an old friend studio as well as living space. From this living arrangement, Whitehead infers that “Frederick Tatham in all probability spent his working hours at his studio on an upper floor in Queen Street but stayed with his parents and siblings at Alpha road at weekends and an occasion overnight during the week. If this was the case, Catherine Blake may have spent only a limited amount of time in Tatham’s company” (83). While in residence, she appears also to have spent little time at the press. She probably printed an impression of The Man Sweeping the Interpreter’s Parlour (c. 1822), which Evans listed as “a Stereotype design for Pilgrim’s Progress, presented by Mrs. Blake to Mrs. Tatham, 1828, rare.”[22] Its date suggests that Mrs. Blake printed it while at Mayfair as a gift, because the only “Mrs. Tatham” at the time was Tatham’s mother Harriet. Mrs. Blake may have expressed her gratitude to Tatham’s parents for their assistance in providing a clean place to stay—and perhaps ironically alluding to her assistance in keeping it that way. Mrs. Blake also made a gift of an impression of Blake’s engraving of the Rev. Robert Hawker to Mr. Tatham, inscribing it: “Mr C Tatham / the humble is formed to adore; / the loving to associate / with eternal Love / C Blake” (BR2 398).[23]

III. 1829 – 31

The next of Blake’s works printed by Mrs. Blake appears to have been America copies N and Q and Europe copies L and M. They appear, however, to have been printed in 1829 but after Mrs. Blake left the Mayfair studio for her apartment in Fitzroy Square. America copy N and Europe copy L may have been the works acquired by the person Tatham wrote on 11 April 1829. This person, after reading in Smith’s Nollekens that Mrs. Blake was alive and needed to sell copies of Blake’s books—and was doing so “at their original prices of publication” (BR2 626)—offered “to purchase Blake’s books” (BR2 495). Tatham replies:

In behalf of the widow of the late William Blake, I have to inform you that her circumstances render her glad to embrace your Kind offer for the purchase of some of the works of her departed husband. . . . This elevated widow is now seeking a support during the remainder of her exemplary course, through the medium of the enlightened and the generous with no other hope than that she will ultimately be joined to that partner once more . . . . I can only add, that, should you, Sir, be inclined to possess, for the embellishment of your own collection, and the benefit of the widow, any of the enumerated works, they shall be carefully sent to you upon your remitting the payment, and I will take proper care that your Kindness shall be rewarded with the best impressions….

(BR2 495)

Tatham’s letter is known only in a transcript, which records the fact that “enumerated works” were for sale without identifying them. The patron is not known, though Bentley has suggested that it may have been either James Ferguson or Lord Egremont.[24] Both bought Blake works from Mrs. Blake around this time, but Ferguson bought illuminated books, presumably what Tatham meant as “impressions,” whereas Lord Egremont bought Blake’s painting of Spenser’s The Fairie Queene that August (Butlin 811).

According to Gilchrist, Ferguson was “an artist . . . from Tynemouth, who wrote shortly after Blake died and “took copies of three or four of the Engraved Books” (Life I 366). Ferguson was in Tynemouth between 1824-30, with a stay in London in 1827 (Bentley, “Peripatetic” 19). One of Ferguson’s books, Rossetti says, may have been “a work called Outhoun. 12 Plates, 6 inches more or less, Price _2.2s.6d” (II 262). The list of works for sale is not extant and neither is a work called Outhoun. Blake, did, however, create a character named “Oothoon,” the main character of his Visions of the Daughters of Albion, apparently listed by Tatham from memory. [25] Ferguson’s copy of Visions appears to have been copy N, a beautiful late copy, printed in c. 1818 with copies O and P.[26]

The idea that Ferguson (1791-1871) bought Visions copy N from Mrs. Blake is inferred from an inscription on posthumous copy N of America, which was bound with posthumous copy I of Europe.[27] Their owner, Sir George Grey (1799 – 1882), inscribed on the front flyleaf of America copy N:

I purchased this book at the sale of the

Effects of a deceased artist, (I now forget his

name), who had obtained it direct from

Blake. The paper bears the paper mark

Of 1812. This copy therefore although

Purporting to be printed in 1793 and

1794 – was probably printed after 1812, when

he was living in South Moulton Street.[28]

Sir George clearly thinks his copies were life-time impressions, but they came from Mrs. Blake, presumably through Ferguson, who died in 1871, in Middleton-in-Teesdale, in the general vicinity of Sir George Grey, of Falloden, Northumberland (Bentley, “Peripatetic” 13). The sale of these three “Engraved Books” was presumably facilitated by Tatham, who, as noted, identified himself in the 11 April 1829 letter as acting “In behalf of the widow of the late William Blake” and as able to reward patrons “with the best impressions.”

America copy N and Europe copy I were printed as a matching pair in the same printing session, probably with America copy Q and Europe copy L, which were also printed as a pair. They appear to be the first posthumously printed relief-etched illuminated books, with one pair probably commissioned and the other printed on speculation. Both pairs were printed in black ink with full borders on quarto-size leaves, 32.6 x 23.6 cm in size for America copy N and Europe copy I, and 29.5 x 22.1 cm for America copy Q and Europe copy L. Blake advertised America as folio in the 1793 Prospectus and both America and Europe as folio in his 1818 letter to Dawson Turner (E 771), and all copies were printed that size except America copy O and Europe copy K, printed in 1821 for Linnell. To print copies of America and Europe as matching pairs implies that one or both titles were no longer in stock.[29]

The paper and ink of these four copies differentiate them from all the 16 copies of five titles printed on J Whatman 1831 and 1832 papers. First, consider the paper. All 18 leaves of America copy N and all 17 leaves of Europe copy I are marked either R & T or ruse & turners / 1812 (BB 89, 142). The 18 leaves of America copy Q and 16 of the 17 leaves Europe copy L are marked T Stains or T Stains / 1813 (BB 89, 142). Because printing papers did not come this size (Turner 209ff), the leaves for both pairs of copies had to have been cut from larger sheets. For all the pages but one to have the watermark is unique among the illuminated books. Normally, an illuminated book has at most 25% of its leaves marked, because Blake cut his leaves by quartering sheets and sometimes halving or quartering the quarters too (see below and Viscomi, BIB 00). For example, America copy O and Europe copy K have 36 quarto size leaves (trimmed to 30.3 x 24.0 cm) of J Whatman 1818, 1819, 1820 paper, but just ten watermarks, indicating that Blake probably quartered ten sheets of paper.[30] We see the same pattern of paper preparation in the ten copies of six books that Blake printed c. 1818. The leaves, about 25% marked ruse & turners / 1815, appear to have been quarter sheets with some quarters halved to produce the leaves for Songs copies T and U.[31]

Mrs. Blake appears to have continued this practice in quartering the J Whatman 1826 sheets to produce the leaves of For the Sexes copies F, G, H, and I. As noted, the J Whatman 1826 sheets were probably part of Blake’s stock. The ruse & turners / 1812 or the T Stains / 1813 papers were most likely not part of that stock, since Blake’s practice of cutting sheets did not produce separate/segregated stacks of watermarked leaves. Moreover, Blake never printed on T Stains papers, and the ruse & turners papers were laid, whereas Blake printed on wove paper (including the ruse & turners / 1815 paper)—and he made a big point of doing so in his 1793 Prospectus (E 693).[32] Mrs. Blake appears to have used two different piles of leaves that had already been cut from larger sheets, with all the marked quarters set aside into one pile.[33] Someone, perhaps C. H. Tatham or Linnell, may have given her remnants of sheets lying around his studio, because Mrs. Blake is very unlikely to have purchased from a stationer just the sections of the leaves with the watermark, especially a mark dated 1812 and 1813 in c. 1829.[34] The oddity here is not the use of old paper. Blake used a ruse & turners / 1810 writing paper for 15 of the last 17 letters he wrote between 31 Jan. 1827 and 3 July 1827 (BB 273, 274n27).[35] What was unusual, in fact unique, was printing on T Stains paper, laid paper, and exclusively on watermarked leaves.

While the stacks of T Stains / 1813 and Ruse & Turners / 1812 papers were unlikely to have belonged to Blake, the leaves were prepared and printed in a manner that connects them to Blake and differentiates them from impressions on the J Whatman 1831 and 1832 papers. The 1812 and 1813 papers, like all of Blake’s papers, were printed damp, whereas the J Whatman 1831 and 1832 impressions, which reveal no shrinkage in the image, were printed dry. Consequently, life-time impressions, because they shrank upon drying, are slightly smaller than the impressions on J Whatman 1831 and 1832—regardless of the book. The America and Europe impressions on T Stains / 1813 and ruse & turners / 1812 papers are the size of life-time impressions and consistently 2 to 4 or 5 mm. smaller than those printed in the copies of America and Europe on J Whatman 1832 papers.[36]

Mrs. Blake, like Blake, dampened the leaves before printing. She also printed the plates in an intaglio ink, the result of which was a more reticulated and less smooth or flat image than was produced by relief ink (Viscomi BIB 00). Reticulation, usually most noticeable in flat relief areas, can be obscured by washes. In monochrome works, like Jerusalem copies A and F, America copies B and E, and Europe copy H, Blake painted over the printed ink in black water-based washes, deepening the black outlines and plate borders and smoothing out splotchy areas. Mrs. Blake used this finishing technique in Europe copies I and L and America copies N and Q. The ink she used and the manner in which she finished the impressions further differentiate the copies she printed from all other posthumous copies. For example, the ink used in Jerusalem copies H, I, and J, America copy P and Europe copy M, and Songs copies b, c, and j, all printed on J Whatman 1831 and 1832 papers, was dark reddish brown, a hue never used by Blake; it transferred more solidly, because it was an ink designed for relief printing, and it was not touched up in a matching wash.

Though Mrs. Blake used different stacks of paper to produce America copies N and Q and Europe copies I and L, she probably printed them in the same printing session, probably in Spring of 1829, assuming the request for books that Tatham answered in April 1829 was from Ferguson. America copy Q and Europe copy L are probably the copies Samuel Palmer claimed belonged to Sir Robert Peel (BB 105). Once the press had been readied, paper prepared, and the ink made, Blake could print plates to produce a second or third copy of the commissioned book. By using leaves from different stacks, Blake could create copies of the same book in different sizes during the same printing session. In the last two years of his life, for example, Blake printed Songs copies W and Y at the same time but used different stacks of paper, one octavo and the other quarto.[37] The materials and the timing of the production of the four copies of America and Europe suggest Mrs. Blake’s hand in that they follow her husband’s typical practices, whereas other posthumous copies, those on 1831 and 1832 papers, do not. Moreover, the type and color of ink, the type and preparation of paper, and the way the impressions were finished or not finished, differentiate the black ink copies of America and Europe from all the books printed on J Whatman 1831 and 1832 papers.

Both pairs of America and Europe in black ink appear to have been produced together in Spring of 1829, or at least before August, when Lord Egremont “put Catherine out of need by his payment of £84 for Blake’s design from Spenser’s Faerie Queen.” This was probably enough “to have kept Catherine out of want for the rest of her life” (BR2 499). This was a goodly sum considering Blake’s “yearly income does not seem to have gone much above £100, and sometimes it was probably not much more than £50” (BR2 812). Indeed, Mrs. Blake’s financial situation improved enough that she withdrew her application for assistance from the Artist General Benevolent Institution, 5 January 1830 (BR2 501-2). With financial security for “the widow of the late William Blake” met, the incentive to print more monochrome copies of the books—which could earn only a few pounds at most (see below)—apparently disappeared. The first period of posthumous printing appears to have ended in or by the summer of 1829, by which time Mrs. Blake appears to have produced four copies and many loose impressions of For the Sexes, two copies each of America and Europe, a few impressions of Dante engravings and Canterbury Pilgrims, and at least single impressions of The Interpretor’s Parlor and the Rev. Hawker portrait.

IV. 1831-32

There are no further signs of posthumous printing until 1831, at the earliest, when J Whatman 1831 paper was used in Jerusalem copies H, I, and J and in ten copies of the Songs. Jerusalem copies H and I also have 8 leaves watermarked J Whatman 1832 of the same weight and texture as their 1831 leaves. America copy P and Europe copy M are exclusively on J Whatman 1832 paper, the same weight and texture as the 1831 leaves.[38] Innocence copy T is on undated J Whatman paper but probably produced in 1832, because, like posthumous copies of Songs printed in black ink, it is missing plate 15 and thus appears to have been printed after the reddish brown and orangish brown copies (see below and Chapter 10 for why plate 15 was missing).

Mrs. Blake died in the fall of 1831, so an 1831 watermark in a book does not rule out her participation in that book’s production. But an 1832 watermark does. And so do books with leaves of 1831 and 1832 paper that were printed dry in dark reddish brown relief ink. Books sharing these material characteristics share the same printer, and that printer was not the person who printed copies of America and Europe in black intaglio ink on damp leaves of T. Stains and R&T papers. The material evidence points to two distinct printers, to Mrs. Blake and to Frederick Tatham. Tatham printed on J Whatman 1831 and 1832 papers, with the sheets of the latter paper probably purchased on a need to print basis, supplementing what was already on hand and continuing what was in progress. This continuity reflects a larger-scale and more ambitious printing project than Mrs. Blake’s. Tatham’s project extended into 1832 and entailed 16 or more copies of five titles. The project reflects a commitment in time, money, and labor that would not have been in Mrs. Blake’s physical or financial best interests. Moreover, Tatham seems very unlikely to have printed Blake’s plates on dry paper in a red-brown relief ink if Mrs. Blake were collaborating with him. Since, as we have seen, Mrs. Blake used Blake’s printing method, it is unlikely that Tatham would have used a different one if she were collaborating with him.

The amount of paper that Tatham used reflects different motivations and represents different objectives than the first round of posthumous printing. Tatham was now acting “in behalf of” Tatham and presumably supplementing his earlier list of Blake’s “works for sale” with posthumous copies of the books. Posthumous printing, in other words, appears to have begun in earnest only after Mrs. Blake died, in late fall of 1831, when we see different printing materials, practices, and objectives.[39]

The untrimmed leaves of Jerusalem copy J, all on J Whatman 1831 paper, are 30.4 x 24.3 cm. These leaves have 17 watermarks among them. Copies H and I, with 1831 and 1832 papers, have 22 and 15 watermarks respectively. One expects, however, 25 watermarks, as in Blake’s copy A of Jerusalem (BB 226), which signifies 25 sheets quartered to produce 100 leaves.[40] Where are the missing watermarks in Jerusalem copy J? They are in Songs. The leaves in the three posthumous copies of Jerusalem vary from 28.5 to 30.4 cm in height and 24.3 to 25.3 cm in width. The leaf sizes for all of the posthumous copies of Songs and Innocence range from 18 x 11 cm (copy c) and 18.2 x 13.1 cm (Innocence T) to 24.2 to 24.5 x 19.0 to 20.2 cm (copies a, g, i). The evidence here points to Tatham purchasing a stack of Whatman 1831 papers of two weights (see below) to print copies of Songs and Jerusalem; he appears to have quartered Royal sheets of 63.5 x 50.8 cm to produce the quarto size leaves in the three copies of Jerusalem, and he cut the same Royal sheets in sixes to yield leaves of 24 x 20 cm, in nines to yield 19 x 16.6 cm, and in twelves to yield leaves of 19 x 12 cm. In 1832 he bought sheets of Whatman paper the same size and weight to continue printing Jerusalem and to print America and Europe. A few leaves of the 1832 paper were also used in copies of Songs.

Tatham printed Jerusalem copies I, J, and H in reddish brown ink, as well as America copy P and Europe copy M. The last three works were acquired by Samuel Boddington by 1833. Jerusalem copy I apparently went to—or through an intermediary to—Thomas Butts, from whose collection it sold at Sotheby’s in 1852 with his other illuminated books (four bought from the Cumberland sale in 1835, BB 00). Copy J, which appears to have been printed exclusively on J Whatman 1831 paper and perhaps finished before the others, was acquired by James Vine. Linnell had introduced Blake in 1822 to Vine, who over the next few years bought Milton copy D, Thel copy O, Songs copy V, and the Job engravings. Linnell seems unlikely to have steered business to Tatham; these former patrons of Blake’s somehow learned of Tatham’s project, or perhaps Tatham sought them and others out, hoping they would want to add a copy of Blake’s masterpiece to their collections of illuminated books.

Tatham printed posthumous Songs copy b in reddish brown ink on J. Whatman 1831 paper and sold it to Hannah Boddington, c. early 1830s (BB 426). Songs copy c was produced in similar manner and style as copy b and sold to her brother Samuel Boddington, presumably around the same time. Copy f, also in reddish brown, is untraced, but that is probably because it was “sophisticated into copy j” (BB 427), a very fine facsimile/forgery modeled after Songs copy U (Viscomi, BIB 00). Tatham also printed Songs in orangish brown (e, h) and black (a, d, g, i, p).[41] Songs copies a, g, and i were printed in light black ink (many very lightly and unevenly) on leaves watermarked J Whatman 1831 that are heavier with a rougher surface than the 1831 Whatman paper in Jerusalem and other copies of Songs. These heavier weight leaves are approximately 24.4 x 19.3 cm, all with uneven edges, as though they were torn from sheets along a ruler rather than cut. They appear to be sixths of approximately 27 Royal sheets (63.5 x 50.8 cm).[42] The impressions printed on these thicker leaves were heavily embossed and are slightly larger than life-time impressions, signaling that they were printed dry, like the other leaves printed by Tatham.[43] These heavier sheets comprised a different stack of paper and probably enabled Tatham to continue the printing then in progress (copies d and p were printed in black ink but on the same paper used in the reddish brown and orangish brown copies). Despite the different type of paper, the manner in which the copies a, g, and i impressions were printed indicates that Tatham was the printer.

Plate 23 (2^nd plate of “Spring”) of Songs copy i was washed very simply, reminiscent of the first copies of Innocence, 1789, and thus superficially resembles Mrs. Blake’s work. As Essick notes in his Sales review for 2014, he and I were doubtful but entertained that possibility, although “coming to no firm conclusions.”[44] Now, after spending much time and effort analyzing the materials, practices, and styles of the posthumous printers, I am convinced it is not Mrs. Blake’s work—nor could it be. I agree with Essick that it is not colored by either of the two hands responsible for washing three of the impressions in his Songs copy h. They, along with this hand, are not up to the standards of Mrs. Blake’s coloring—or Tatham’s.[45] First, the coloring of plate 23 (illus. 00) was essentially washing within the lines (blue, pink, yellow) and over the lines (tendrils, in green). A grey wash of diluted ink was placed over the neck and lower face and on the chest to define the arm, which merely follows the printed hatching (illus. 00).

Illus. 00, 00

While that wash hides or distorts the child’s face, the faces of the sheep lack the fine pen and ink outlining required of their forms—and which is present in all copies colored by the Blakes.[46] This lack of outlining eliminates details of chin, nose, ears, and eyes, and in the case of the sheep on the left, the head itself. The colorist may have had a very early copy in mind, or simply allowed the printed lines and masses to define the forms, but he or she clearly did not know the design or have a feel for it. Second, it is extremely unlikely that Mrs. Blake would collaborate with Tatham in this way but then color just one of the 165 or so impressions printed on these heavier leaves. And it seems unlikely that she would have permitted Tatham to print so heavily (and poorly) on dry paper. Third, it is nearly inconceivable that Mrs. Blake would resort to a style of coloring that she hadn’t used in 35 years in place of the more sophisticated style that she and Blake had evolved over the years. And fourth, there is the circumstantial evidence demonstrating that the posthumous impressions divide into two coherent but sequential and mutually exclusive groups, the latter printed by Tatham after Mrs. Blake’s death”? Hence, it is safe to conclude that Tatham produced copy i but its plate 15 was colored by an unknown hand.

Mrs. Blake appears to have played no part in producing posthumous copies of Songs. These copies were printed by Tatham and advertised in his “Life of Blake” manuscript. At first, he appears to have written his biographical sketch, at least in part, “to recommend the sale of Jerusalem” (BB 259-60). Jerusalem copy E was certainly one of the most valuable works he inherited from Mrs. Blake, and the three copies of Jerusalem that he printed were valuable assets as well, but he could have relied on the biographies of Smith (1828) or Cunningham (1830) to introduce Blake to Jerusalem’s purchasers. Tatham appears to have intended to publish his “Life of Blake” manuscript, because he was also advertising Songs and himself as the source of new copies of books and more. He states that from Mrs. Blake herself he has the “Type plates” of Songs “as well as all of his Works that remained unsold,” which included “writing, paintings, & a very great number of Copper Plates, of whom Impressions may be obtained” (BR2 688).

Tatham sounds like he has taken full ownership of all the copper plates, which in turn implicates him as the person who altered at least four of the plate designs in Songs. In plate 9, the first plate of “The Little Black Boy,” the mother’s back and hair have been cut back, presumably with a burin. The bag of the chimney-sweeper in Experience (plate 37) has also been trimmed back. Essick has pointed out similar tool work in the general title plate, where “some of the relief surfaces left of the upper figure’s left upper arm, above his head (thereby eliminating part of his left hand), and along the lower edge of his left leg and foot” have been cut away (“Blake in the Marketplace, 2013”). Essick has also found white-line work on the adult figure’s left leg in the Experience frontispiece in copy h. By altering the plates, Tatham placed them into new states. Essick has speculated that these “2^nd st. alterations” may have been made by Mrs. Blake or Tatham “after Blake’s death” (“Marketplace 2013”). Because altering an artist’s original design is such a drastic thing to do, and because Mrs. Blake appears to have had no hand in printing the Songs and thus no hand in preparing the plates for printing, Tatham appears the most likely suspect. The plates were now fully his, and he was prepared to print them on speculation and on order. Such behavior further supports the idea that posthumous printing began in earnest after Mrs. Blake died.

V. 1829-31 Revisted

Whitehead traces Mrs. Blake’s residencies in her last years with great precision. He is cautious, though, about locating her press, even questioning its existence: “Whether by early 1829 Catherine still possessed her husband’s press, had replaced it with a smaller one. . . or had no press, has yet to be established conclusively” (89 n137). Yet, throughout his essay he portrays Mrs. Blake as printing Blake’s plates during the last two years of her life in her two room apartment: “For the majority of her widowhood (spring 1829 – October 1831) Catherine lived independently. With her financial security ensured by the bequest from Banes and the gift purchase from Lord Egremont, she was able to support herself by printing, coloring, and selling her husband’s works, not merely for a few months but for approximately two and a half years” (86). Whitehead repeats this idea but again without identifying the works supposedly produced: “The residence and the duration of her stay provided her with the opportunity to sell Blake’s works, finish and color others, and perhaps print posthumous copies of the illuminated books, and thereby live independently for the last two and a half years of her life” (89). Despite questioning the press’s existence in 1829, Whitehead believes that Mrs. Blake probably moved it from the Mayfair studio to her new apartment, that she wanted full time access to it, and that she used it consistently over the next two and half years: “on an upper floor at 17 Upper Charlton Street, she appears to have continued her husband’s trade, printing, coloring, and selling works up until her death, over a year into the reign of William IV” (89-90).

The material and bibliographical evidence provided by the extant copies of posthumously printed illuminated books and other plates do not support the claim that she printed many of Blake’s illuminated books or the claim that she colored any of them. The evidence indicates that she was not the primary posthumous printer. It also indicates a hiatus in posthumous production that corresponds with Mrs. Blake’s residency at 17 Upper Charlton Street, 1829 to 1831. At most, she printed six or seven copies of For the Sexes with proofs, possibly with the assistance of Linnell; she appears also to have printed a few impressions of Dante engravings, Canterbury Pilgrims, and the engraved portrait of Rev. Hawker. She also printed relief plates, possibly a few copies of Interpreter’s Parlor, two copies of America, and two copies of Europe. She printed approximately 200 intaglio and relief impressions between 1827 and 1829—perhaps a month or two of work at most. Tatham appears to have printed three copies of Jerusalem, copies of America and Europe, at least one copy Songs of Innocence, and nine copies of Songs along with enough discarded impressions that enabled him to compile Songs copy h (see Chapter 10). Tatham’s stock of “engraved books,” which comprised the bulk of his inheritance, he created for himself from Blake’s copper plates, printing over 1000 posthumous impressions to form 16 copies of five illuminated books.[47]

According to Gilchrist, Mrs. Blake “was an excellent saleswoman, and never committed the mistake of showing too many things at one time. Aided by Mr. Tatham she also filled in, within Blake’s lines, the colour of the Engraved Books; and even finished some of the drawings—rather against Mr. Linnell’s judgment” (Life I 366). These statements appear to be the primary sources for thinking that Mrs. Blake colored posthumous impressions. Gilchrist, however, is conflating her earlier assistance and practices in the production of illuminated books with her posthumous printing of a few books—or there are many posthumous impressions missing. No coloring of posthumous prints can be traced to Mrs. Blake. The “drawings” that Gilchrist mentions her coloring were almost certainly the 28 illustrations to Pilgrim’s Progress, and her hand is suspected in finishing because the finishing, while professional, is not as fine as Blake’s usual work (Butlin 829, Rossetti, in Gilchrist, Life, II 235-6). Moreover, Pilgrim’s Progress did not benefit Mrs. Blake; it was inherited by Tatham and appears to have been sold as part of the “portfolio of Blake drawings” that Tatham sold to the print seller Joseph Hogarth and that John Ruskin acquired but returned c. 1843. That portfolio, or much of its original contents, appears to have been sold to an unknown collector who acquired other works from Tatham’s Blake collection—all of which came from Mrs. Blake—and who sold the Blakes at Sotheby’s on 29 April 1862 (see Viscomi, Printed Painting, Chapter 12).

Nor is there evidence that she moved the press to her apartment. As will be discussed in Chapter 11, she more likely left it in Tatham’s care at the Mayfair studio, where she appears to have printed the two pairs of America and Europe in Spring of 1829. After these works were printed, the press appears to have remained idle—at least in terms of producing Blake prints—till after her death, and to have remained in the Mayfair studio till C. H. Tatham vacated the premises in 1832. The idea that Mrs. Blake continued to print Blake’s works from her apartment, which Whitehead refers to as her “studio,” is based on precedent and analogies. She was indeed Blake’s assistant in the production of early illuminated books and knew how to print and color impressions. Tatham notes that “she even labored upon his Works[,] those parts of them where powers of Drawing & form were not necessary, which from her excellent Idea of Colouring, was of no small use in the completion of his labourious designs. This she did to a much greater extent than is usually credited” (BR2 690). Again, like Gilchrist, Tatham was referring to a skill set utilized earlier in her life—and perhaps to her careful touching up and strengthening of lines in black wash in the copies of America and Europe that she printed in c. 1829. Whitehead summarizes the case that Mrs. Blake knew how to color and print illuminated plates (78-79), and having made that case myself on her behalf years ago in Blake and the Idea of the Book, I am not contesting it—though, unlike Tatham, I would not refer to her idea of coloring as “excellent.” But the fact that she “could print, color, and finish her husband’s works” (80) does not mean she did. The potential was there, but the works demonstrating it are not.[48]

Whitehead imagines Mrs. Blake wanting her living arrangement to mirror hers and Blake’s, where studio and living quarters were one and the same: “…their days and nights were passed in each other’s company, for he always painted, drew, engraved and studied, in the same room where they grilled, boiled, stewed, and slept” (Gilchrist, Life I 00).[49] Because Mrs. Blake’s new apartment was similar in size to what she had with Blake, Whitehead imagines that she “may have organized her space, almost certainly an upper floor apartment, along the lines of her and her husband’s rooms at 17 South Molton Street and 3 Fountain Court” (89). Again, the potential is there:

In the front room, with Tatham’s assistance, she may have printed posthumous copies of Blake’s illuminated books. The scaled representation of the footprint of no. 17 on the 1872 survey map reveals that the front rooms on the upper floors measured approximately 5.49 meters (18 feet) in width and 3.66 meters (12 feet) in depth. This means that for over two years, Catherine, living independently, had space to color and sell her late husband’s works and could also resume her role in printing copies of his illuminated books.

(89)

But again, the physical evidence in the form of extant posthumously printed and colored works does not support this image or level of productivity. After Blake’s death, she is known to have produced only one drawing, a head in the fire (Butlin 00).

Whitehead seeks to “revise our view of Catherine. She was not a dependent Blake relict, reliant upon his old friends and passed from Ancient to Ancient” (89). Rather, in his view, she was an active artisan independent of Blake and more than the “excellent saleswoman” that Gilchrist called her. Whitehead wishes to counter Anne Gilchrist’s view that she “retained one trait of an uneducated mind—an unreasonable suspiciousness” (130-31), and Hogarth’s view that she was often unreasonably difficult in sales transactions and not always appreciative of genuine assistance (BR2 493-94.)[50] However, we do not need to transform Mrs. Blake into an artisan to see that she was remarkable in her own right. Whitehead’s meticulous research into the last residences of Blake and Mrs. Blake, in which he details the amount of studio space they had, has indeed reminded us of her crucial roles in the production of Blake’s works and, in the context of how other artists lived and work, how remarkable she must have been.[51]

For example, Whitehead discovered that 17 Upper Charlton Street in 1807 was similar to—and may have actually been—the studio space of Linnell’s friend and former mentor, the painter Edward Mulready. According to Whitehead and Crosby, “the fact that Mulready could use a floor of this residence as a painting studio suggests that Catherine had enough room here to print as well as colour and sell her husband’s works. From spring 1829 until her death in October 1831, Catherine, living independently, coloured and sold her late husband’s works, also printing copies of Blake’s illuminated books and other works” (104-5). Whitehead, citing Graves (5:323), claims that Mulready used the space as “lodgings and studio” (88). Graves, however, records the address given by the artist, which in most cases was their studio space, presumably for the benefit of prospective buyers or clients. As noted, Tatham Sr. gave as his address 1 Queen Street while living at 34 Alpha Road, and in 1835 he gave 18 Charles Street while living at 19 Montpelier Square; Linnell gave 6 Cirencester Place while living in Hampstead, Frederick Tatham gave 1 Queens Street while living at 34 Alpha Road; the sculptor John Rossi used 21 Lisson Grove as his studio while living in a large house elsewhere in the neighborhood. Of course Rossi, who went bankrupt in 1834, had 16 kids?? from two wives and needed time out of the house. Tatham Sr. had lots of kids at home and needed an office; and so too Linnell, so did Palmer and Richmond. Mulready in 1807 was married to the elder of John Varley’s two sisters, who was herself an accomplished watercolorist, with twin 2-year old boys and an infant son, and almost certainly used his two rooms as workspace, not living quarters, which, between 1806 and 1808, were located at 9 Upper Cleveland Street.[52]

Artists using studios outside the home or separated from the living and eating space was the norm and still is. Painting studios are marked by the smells of linseed and walnut oils, mastic, darmar, and other varnishes, gums, glues, turpentine, alcohol, and other solvents, earth and other pigments, and are filled up with mortar and pestles, whiting and other chalks, canvas, stretchers, papers, sketch books, rags, portfolios, bladders, shells, cans, quills, brushes, folders, palettes, bins, easels, tables, stools, cabinets, benches, shelves, plaster models; add printmaking to the mix, as Linnell and Blake did, and there were also waxes, etching grounds, asphaltum, rosins, acids, tools, dabbers, whetstones, pumice stones, leather pads, tabors, copper plates, brazier, coals, anvils, hammers, marble slabs, presses, etc.. Any assortment of these materials, let alone all of them, can easily compromise domestic tranquility. And, of course, artists at work do not want children under foot or spousal interruptions, and few spouses would accept such encroachment on their and their children’s private living space—or tolerate the accidental but inevitable oily stains and colors that do not wash out of clothes.[53] That Mrs. Blake lived with Mr. Blake in just two rooms between 1803 and 1827, as assistant and wife, made her remarkable indeed. She must have been extraordinarily tolerant, loving, empathetic, and accepting, and to have participated in Blake’s life and works in ways too deep and profound for most of us to understand. Hayley was surely right telling Lady Hesketh that she was “perhaps the only female on Earth, who could have suited Him exactly” (BR2 140).

Mrs. Blake used her apartment at 17 Upper Charlton to live and from which to sell Blake’s works, but not as a studio where she produced posthumous prints. That does not diminish her or render her an appendage of Blake’s. Whitehead succeeds in revising her image, though not necessarily as he intended. Indeed, he proves the opposite of what he intended. He discovered that Mrs. Blake received a small inheritance and some furniture that enabled her to take on her own apartment. That gift and the “stock of designs” she inherited from Blake—which was much more than she actually sold—gave her the confidence to live independently. Among the works inherited were 12 large color prints, which Blake had priced at _5.5.0 in 1818, copies of Canterbury Pilgrims, which sold for _5.5.0 in 1827 and 1828, Jerusalem copy E, which Blake had estimated at 20 guineas, the beautiful Songs copy W finished in gold leaf and elaborately colored with beautiful ornate frames around each design, priced by Blake in 1827 at _10.10s, an equally beautiful late copy of Visions [N], the Tiriel drawings, Small Book of Designs copy B, a few late paintings, including the watercolor of Spenser’s Fairie Queene and a version of The Last Judgment that Blake was working on when he died, and much more. She had all the works that would fill Tatham’s “portfolio of large Blake drawings” that Hogarth had sold to Ruskin for £100 (initially valued at _150, though returned) and that was only a portion of what Tatham inherited (see Viscomi Printed Paintings Chapter 12). Whitehead makes an excellent case that Mrs. Blake did not need to print books because she had other high quality works to sell and by fall of 1829 had become financially independent, two years before the lion’s share of the posthumous books were printed. In effect, she was able to retire from the business of printing in 1829.

VI. 1788-1827

The idea that printing copies of Blake’s books would have secured Mrs. Blake’s financial independence is itself suspect and recalls theories about Blake inventing illuminated printing to become financially independent.[54] But that was impossible at the prices Blake was asking in 1793. This he always knew, and it was still true late in his life when he began pricing his books not as poetry but as books of colored prints. He admits as much to Dawson Turner in 1818, stating the real purpose for printing the books was to make his name as an Artist. As demonstrated in Blake and the Idea of the Book, a print run of a dozen copies of Innocence or Thel would have made, after expenses for paper and copper and other materials, about _00 (00), IF he sold out the entire print run. Clearly, the critical rhetoric did not match Blake’s reality. Blake could have sold everything in stock at the time of his 1793 Prospectus and still made less than he would have for engraving one plate for Bowyer, Boydell, Macklin, or any of the other London book and print publishers. In his having to make a living wage doing one thing when he much preferred doing another, Blake was certainly not alone. Like Blake, Romney preferred “history” paintings, but painted portraits to survive, as did Gainsborough, though he preferred landscapes.

Had Blake through illuminated printing gained the financial independence to do what he really wanted to do, what would that have been? Write lyrical and narrative poetry? Design, illustrate, print his own books that incorporated calligraphy, drawing, printing, and painting? Paint visionary pictures? Illustrate the Bible, Milton, Dante, or other literary texts? Experiment with new print technologies and color printing? Create new kinds of paint and painting surfaces? What exactly would Blake have done differently had he been financially independent?

Blake tells us he would have painted large frescos, the size of walls (E 527), though Robin Hamlyn makes a very good case that that would not have been in his best interest aesthetically (00). He had the eye of the miniaturist, honed no doubt by the attention to details required of engraving. His frescos, which he likened to miniatures and enamels, were indeed miniatures writ large, some with many hundreds of figures and objects, as Visions of the Last Judgment and Spiritual Condition of Man attest. Had he not given engraving so much of his time and effort, he would have denied the world the Book of Job masterpieces. Blake did what he wanted, thanks to his tenacity, skills, talents, inspiration—and, of course, to Mrs. Blake. But innate abilities coupled with loving support, assistance, and inspiration would have gone for naught had he not been a good engraver. He had a trade he was good at and which earned him money, enough during the first part of his career to support himself and his wife. Engraving for the book and print publishers did not stifle or impair his imagination, vision, or inspiration. Resorting to engraving was probably less stressful and burdensome to him than portraiture was to so many other creative artists. For all her skills, the widowed Mrs. Blake could not rely on a trade, not even printing, since publishers who were not patrons, like Hayley, were likely to require larger print runs than she could deliver—and might have balked at hiring a small 66 year old female printer. She did not continue printing Blake’s illuminated books in any significant quantity, despite her initial intentions, and her not doing so is no more a mark against her than any of Blake’s unrealized intentions (of which there were many, e.g. E 726, 770) are a mark against him. After Blake died, she was more agent than artisan, but while she was with him, she was unquestionably the best printing “devil” he could have had—or, as he said on his deathbed, she was forever his “angel” (BR2 655). Living with a large rolling press in two two-room apartments for 24 years was evidence of that and much more.

Cumberland wrote to Mrs. Blake on 25 November 1828 to offer advice on selling Blake’s works. He noted that his Bristol friends thought the Book of Job engravings were priced too high at _3.3s and were not ordering illuminated books “on account . . . of the prices.” The book prices that Blake quoted him in 1827 were between _3.3s and _10.10s (E 784). He recommended that she “fix a place in London where all his works may be disposed of offering a complete set for Sale to the British Museum Print Room, as that will make them best known” (BR2 476 my emphasis). Cumberland was already pointing to the flaw in Mrs. Blake’s aspirations: there was very little money to be made from Blake’s printed works without his being better known. This he made explicit to his son, telling him that he wanted to use the Job engravings “to spread my old friends fame and promote his wifes Interest—by making him thus the subject of conversation and his works” (BR2 483). John Thomas Smith also knew the importance of reputation and believed he addressed it in his Nollekens in his Times. In November 1828, shortly after Nollekens was published, Smith wrote to Linnell: “What I have said of your worthy friend Blake I am fully aware has been servisable [sic] to his widow” (BB2 490). Or so he intended and hoped. But to make Blake’s books better known required “a complete set” of the books, which she did not have and would have been at a loss to produce.[55] The economic value of the kind of respected reputation that Cumberland and Smith had in mind was in full display in 1828 at the Flaxman auction at Christie’s, 1 July, where Blake’s 116 large watercolor illustrations to Gray’s Poems sold for a mere _8.8.0 (or 1.4 shillings a drawing) and Flaxman’s much smaller portfolio of 37 drawings from Hesiod, “handsomely bound in morocco, lettered, &c." sold for £210—75 times more per drawing than Blake’s drawings.

Blake’s reputation was growing, but it was slow and his works were not selling or reselling at high prices. When Blake was setting his last prices for Songs, with gold leaf in mind, copies twenty and more years old were coming to auction. In 1818, Blake priced Songs at _6.6.0; in 1827, he priced it at _10.10.0 (E 771, 784). Songs copy U, printed c. 1818, was offered in 1824 at Rivington’s and Cochran for _8.8. Four years later it sold with the property of Thomas Edward at Stewart, Wheatley, & Adlard for just _2.13 (BB 422). Songs copy P, printed c. 1805, sold in 2 volumes in red morocco, with gilt leaves as part of the Bibliotheca Splendidissima: A Catalogue of a Select Portion of the Library of Mrs. Bliss, for just £1.0.0 (Saunders & Hodgson, 26 April 1826). In July of 1833, it sold with the property of P. A. Hanrott for _2.1.0. Copy A of For Children: The Gates of Paradise sold for 8 shillings in the Bliss sale. Songs copy BB, a monochrome copy similar in appearance to posthumous copies sold with 55 plates for £1.0.0 in January of 1830 (BB 425).

Mrs. Blake’s posthumously printed copies of illuminated books could not have realized the prices of Blake’s last books, which Blake knew were “Expensive to the Buyer” because of the elaborate coloring that recast the pages of poetry as miniature paintings. He appears to have sold to collectors of prints and paintings as much as to collectors of rare books.” Nevertheless, they were, Blake says, “unprofitable enough” to him (E 771). Had Mrs. Blake printed copies of Songs, she could have expected only a few pounds at most for monochrome copies, as is evinced by the auction and sale catalogues at the time. Granted, she would have had the advantage of supply should there have been demand, but Cumberland’s note about the books’ “high . . . prices” and Songs copy BB’s low price—and the fact that she did not color any of the books she did print—must give pause. And given how much of Blake’s “stock of designs” Tatham inherited, one must also wonder how many works Mrs. Blake actually sold—or how many she needed to sell—to survive.

CONCLUSION

Mrs. Blake moved their rolling press with her to Linnell’s in September of 1827 and, presumably, in early spring of 1828 to C. H. Tatham’s Mayfair studio at 1 Queen Street, where she lodged till the end of March 1829. She appears to have printed about ten copies of three titles of intaglio and relief-etched books between 1827 and 1829 along with some individual plates, for at most 200 impressions. She may have moved the press with all of Blake’s effects to 17 Upper Charlton Street, but if so, evidence of use is absent. At first, the idea of the press in her apartment seems to explain the hiatus in printing, between Ferguson’s copies of America and Europe in c. spring 1829 and the resumption of printing in late 1831 by Tatham. But Tatham would probably not have printed the books in the manner and at the scale he did while they were her property, whether the press was left at the Mayfair studio or at Upper Charlton. It is possible, in other words, and it seems likely to me, as examined in Chapter 11, that she left the press in Tatham’s care and felt comfortable using the Mayfair studio when she needed or wanted to. But whatever she did with the press, her decision one way or the other does not explain why six copies of the Songs seem incomplete and why Tatham stopped printing in c. 1832, topics to be discussed in Chapters 10 and 11.

Linnell’s application to the Royal Academy for Mrs. Blake noted that Blake lived “in perfect harmony with his wife, never had but small prices for his works, & so though he lived with the utmost economy, he could not save anything--& has left nothing for his widow but a few Plates & drawings which if sold would produce nothing adequate to defray even present expenses” (BR2 463). Cumberland explained the highs and lows of demand, despite supplies: “for Blake I have spared no pains but have no success. They seem to think his prices above their reach, yet they seemed very anxious to have his works. . . . His Job I have placed with a third bookseller Mr Lewis of Clifton” (BR2 458). Blake left Mrs. Blake more saleable goods than Linnell let on—and of course they did not live in perfect harmony, at least not early in their marriage—but he and Cumberland were right about Blake’s works selling during Mrs. Blake’s last years for “small prices” and about the need to increase Blake’s reputation.[56] Mrs. Blake’s own reputation, as Crosby and Whitehead point out, “as needy, deserving, and grateful widow,” which is how she was portrayed “in Blake’s obituary in the Literary Gazette (1827), and later by Smith . . . and Cunningham,” “probably incrementally enhanced” her “potential customer base” (105).

Whitehead’s excellent detective work has corrected the historical record in numerous places. He located the last two residences of Mrs. Blake, discovered the date of Tatham’s marriage, clarified the relation between Mrs. Blake and Tatham, and recognized C. H. Tatham’s role in helping Mrs. Blake. Her last years were not spent house keeping or caring for the Tathams. Nor was it spent in what Crosby and Whitehead refer to as “helpless despairing poverty,” as though that was what critics thought, or was her only alternative if she did not continue what they term the “firm” of “Wm. Blake” (106). The “firm” they believe “would continue to trade for another two and a half years,” between 1829 and 1831, “through the efforts and improved material circumstances of Blake’s widow” (106). This implication of equal partnership in the “firm” is suspect. It appears predicated on a false equivalence of printing with the objects, designs, and texts already printed and the failure to recognize differences in painting abilities. Crosby and Whitehead, for example, state that “it is extremely difficult, although perhaps not impossible to identify accurately any specific illuminated books or indeed individual plates coloured by Catherine during Blake’s lifetime, largely due to the fact that their palettes are extremely similar, if not identical” (100). But this is really not the case—it is not difficult to tell the hands apart, not in an age of high-resolution digital images of multiple versions of plates set up for comparison.

For example, examine the versions of Visions of the Daughters of Albion in the Blake Archive compare window: look at copies I and J, plates 7, 9, and 10, and you can see that I is following J, generally, not note for note, and that J is the better colored of the two. Identifying the hand does not rely on the palette, which are similar but not really exact, but in how the colors are laid in. Mrs. Blake’s washes are flat and one- dimensional, that is, laid in without underlying tones that make modeling possible, and rarely with translucent washes or stippling brush work over the basic washes (Viscomi, BIB 00). Blake’s “touch,” as this sensitivity to one’s tools and medium was called, was finer than Mrs. Blake’s. She appears to have had little to no hand in finishing the color printed impressions of 1794 and 1795, with their surfaces and textures of indistinct “blots & blurs” necessitating the “powers of Drawing & form,” that is, the creator’s eye and hand to find and delineate forms. Mrs. Blake’s hand also seems absent in from? the finishing of the late copies, though the frames and marginal ornaments may have been her work.

The extant works of Blake’s produced after Blake died do not support the image of Mrs. Blake as equal partner with Blake or as continuing the “firm.” They do not support the claim that Mrs. Blake, “on an upper floor at 17 Upper Charlton Street . . . continued her husband’s trade, printing, coloring, and selling works up until her death” (Whitehead 89-90). She was not the primary posthumous printer of Blake’s books. On the other hand, the known provenances of works she appears to have inherited do support the idea that she was Blake’s sales agent in London. The picture of Mrs. Blake’s last years seems closer to that provided by Smith and Gilchrist, of a woman having no debts and surviving on an “occasional sale” of a few of Blake’s designs, a small inheritance, the care of friends, and money from Lord Egremont. She appears not only to have retired from the trade, but for the first time in 24 years to have had a bit of space to herself—to have had living quarters uncluttered by a rolling press.

Crosby and Whitehead are among the best young scholars working today, both having done much to correct the historical record regarding Mr. and Mrs. Blake. They begin their co-authored essay with the astute observation that James Joyce’s comments about Catherine reveal more about Joyce than about her—and so too do our own, to a greater or lesser degree. The critical pendulum has swung from considering information about her as unnecessary to using her as a screen for our own projections, desires, and politics (83-86). Their attempt to recalibrate the pendulum, to “reclaim the historical Catherine,” required them to focus “closely on the few hard facts and contemporaneous accounts” and to jettison “the unreliable mythology and sentimental accretions on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” Their “digging harder and further into the archives” has indeed yielded “new material information concerning Catherine’s final years” and enabled them to present her “as a talented and loyal, as well as willful and complex woman” (86).

But if we are to understand Mrs. Blake more fully in her own right as well as in her many roles in Blake’s life, then, in addition to excavating the historical archives, we need also to examine Blake’s canon, thoroughly, honestly, and in detail. We need to inventory what Blake sold in his lifetime, to identify the works that Mrs. Blake assisted on in? and the nature and extent of that assistance, to inventory what she inherited, produced, and sold, and to inventory what Tatham inherited, produced, and sold. Only then will we be able to estimate accurately her activities and income during her widowhood. Only then will our picture of Mrs. Blake reflect the facts and not our needs to burnish her image—or reflect our discomfort with the ideas of “wife” and “assistant.” We do not need to make Mrs. Blake more interesting or creative to make her significant and important. She already is significant and important and interesting. We need a critical vocabulary that recognizes her as such and why, a vocabulary we can use without distortion or discomfort. Maybe then we would understand Blake’s recognition that “. . . Peace & Plenty & Domestic Happiness is the Source of Sublime Art…” (E 700). Maybe then, like Hayley, we too could value and embrace Mrs. Blake “as an invaluable Helpmate, perhaps the only woman on Earth, who could have perfectly suited Him as a wife . . . to watch over this singularly Endangered mortal, unfit in truth to take care of Himself in a world like this!” (BR2 205-6).

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[1] Tatham did not inherit the stock of Blake’s works in a legal sense; there was no will written by Mrs. Blake giving the works to Tatham. He acquired them by default, claiming them as his and presumably retrieving them from her apartment before Linnell was able to—or thought it pertinent to do so—and claiming what of hers was left in his father’s studio in Mayfair (see Chapter 11). For an overview of Mrs. Blake’s death and what transpired immediately afterwards, see BR2 00.

[2] Volume 1 of William Hayley’s The Life and Posthumous Writings of William Cowper, was published by J. Johnson, London, in 1803.

[3] The historical record regarding Mrs. Blake’s finances at the time of Blake’s death is confusing. She appears to need to borrow £5 from Linnell to help with the burial costs, though having just received from William Young Ottley through Linnell £5.5 for Jerusalem copy F. She is reputed to have received a gift of £100 from the king’s sister, Princess Sophia, which she returned, claiming others were in more need than she. Yet, at the time, encouraged by Constable, Linnell, who was very active in trying to secure charity monies for her, had taken up her cause with the Royal Academy, which proved unsuccessful (BR2 460-64). Returning Princess Sophia’s gift seems unlikely if it had actually been given. The source of the story about the Princess was Seymour Kirkup, who was in Italy at the time; that Linnell does not mention it makes the gift’s credence doubtful.

[4] Flaxman lived at 7 Buckingham Street, Fitzroy Square, and Butts lived at 17 Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square.

[5] William, James, John, and Hannah, ages 1, 4, 6, and 9. Whitehead also notes that there is no evidence that Mrs. Blake took care of Linnell’s children (77 n15).

[6] Linnell’s engraving of John Martin, according to Story, “found a ready market among members of the Baptist church” (241). He also made etchings, engravings, and mezzotints after his own portraits, and mezzotints after paintings by others (31 between 1828 and 1834 alone). He collected old master prints and had examples of Dürer, Holbein, Raimondi, and Bonasone. Blake’s examining “ancient” engravings with Linnell eventually led to his adopting some of Linnell’s burnishing techniques (see Essick, Printmaker 00) and to the pure engravings of the Book of Job illustrations (see Viscomi, Blake and his Followers 00).

[7] Because illuminated plates were not uniform in size, a uniform bottom sheet for the series marking the alignment of plate to paper could not be used. Consequently, paper had to be registered to the plate by eye to create the proper and pleasing margins, which was no easy task. The quality of plate registration in the early copies of illuminated books is uneven, with plates tilted left and right, off center, falling or raising on the page with too much top or too much bottom margin. (The Blakes apparently gave themselves a very wide margin of error.) These visual effects are obscured in the original artifacts themselves when the leaves are presented in mats or were cropped to the image. They are also obscured in reproductions, even in the Blake Archive, because designs are trimmed to the images, usually for economic reasons, since showing entire leaves require more paper or creates larger files). Such image editing affects the overall aesthetic experience (see Viscomi, “Digital Facsimiles”).

[8] Crosby and Whitehead note that the print-run for the first edition of Hayley’s Life of Cowper was 500 copies, indicating that Mrs. Blake pulled 2000 impressions—a very goodly number for one person printing at home. She might have printed twice that if, as they suggest, she printed the second edition as well (99-100). On the other hand, as they admit, the “plates in the first edition are poorly inked and wiped compared with the second edition,” which they read as “suggesting that Catherine improved her techniques with practice” (99) rather than as the work of another printer, which was also possible. Still, 2000 impressions merit the praise Blake gave her (E 726) and, as Crosby and Whitehead note, suggests the likelihood that she was able to help print other commercial engravings after 1800 (100).

[9] These are in the plate’s last state, which supports the idea that they were printed by Mrs. Blake. Had they been of an earlier state, then the likelihood of her having printed them diminishes significantly. Bentley also notes the possibility of Mrs. Blake having proofed some Job plates (BB 519), though these would have been pre-publication proofs presumably printed with Blake.

[10] The plates in copies A – D were in earlier states than the plates used in copies F - L. For example, the limb above the figure’s head in plate 18 of copy D is missing alterations present in copies F – L.

[11] In Blake and the Idea of the Book, I missed the significance of these biographical facts and recorded the posthumous impressions of For the Sexes as the work of Mrs. Blake and/or Tatham (367). I believe now that they are more likely the work of Mrs. Blake, possibly with the assistance of Linnell, and that Tatham did not print any of the intaglio plates.

[12] For the Sexes copy D, printed by Blake, was in Thomas Boddington’s collection by 1833 (BB 202). Loose posthumous impressions in what are designated as copies J and L were part of volumes of Blakeana that Tatham put together, the former containing Thel copy a and the latter the “Order of the Songs” manuscript (BB 00, 203; see Viscomi, Printed Paintings, Chapter 12).

[13] Mrs. Blake’s first forwarding address from Fountain Court was actually Linnell’s studio at 6 Circencester Place, where the unknown patron’s letter was probably forwarded, and from there forwarded by Linnell to Tatham (BR2 495n), either at 1 Queen Street, Mayfair, or 34 Alpha Road.

[14] For a summary of the confusion over Mrs. Blake’s last address, see Whitehead 86-88 and BR2 754 note.

[15] Henry Bane, who died in January 1829, was husband of Mrs. Blake’s sister and the Blakes’ landlord at 3 Fountain Court. He left her some furniture and twenty pounds. See Whitehead, “’I also beg Mr Blakes acceptance of my wearing apparel’: The Will of Henry Banes, Landlord of 3 Fountain Court, Strand, the Last Residence of William and Catherine Blake,” Blake / An Illustrated Quarterly, 39.2 fall 2005 86-9.

[16] The marriage register can be accessed in “The Tathams of County Durham” Website, under Frederick Tatham. http://www.saxonlodge.net/showmedia.php?mediaID=109&medialinkID=155.

This resource came online in the past decade and continues to grow.

[17] Curtis presumably read Tatham’s “Life of Blake” as first reproduced in Graham Robertson’s edition of Gilchrist’s Life of Blake, 1906.

[18] Whitehead notes that she appears to have walked from her lodgings to Grosvenor Square with Lord Egremont’s painting under her arm in August of 1829 (00). This appears odd for the Lord not to have sent for it by a servant or pay for her carriage upon delivery. But if she did deliver it by hand, that does not mean she was in equally spry shape in 1830 or 1831.

[19] C. H. Tatham’s last seven of his twelve children, starting with Julia, born 24 May 1811, and stopping with Robert Bristow, born 30 May 1824, were born at the Alpha Road residence, suggesting that it had become his main residence by 1811 (Tatham Family History website). See chapter 11 for other residencies for C. H. Tatham and family.

[20] Arthur Tatham (1808–1874) was for more than forty years rector of Broadoak and Boconnoc in Cornwall, and prebendary of Exeter Cathedral.

[21] C. H. Tatham’s first child was born 11 December 1802 at Park Street, Mayfair, the address he gave that year to the Royal Academy exhibition catalogue. His fourth child was born 27 February 1807 at York Place, Marylebone, the address he used that year for the Royal Academy exhibition. These residences appear to have been family residences as well. No births are recorded at the Queen Street premises, suggesting it was used exclusively as his work space from 1809 onward.

[22] This impression was listed in A. E. Evans & Son, 1845 catalogue; Bentley, Sale Catalogues, 00. It is not recorded in Essick’s The Separate Plates of William Blake and is presumably untraced.

[23] Essick thinks the note was written during her widowhood (Separate Plates 189). It may have been a fresh impression, as Whitehead notes (84).

[24] Bentley dates the letter as 11 April (BR2 755) and as 1 April (BR2 495). He dates it 11 April 1829 in BRS 90, n178. In private conversations, he confirms the date as 11 April 1829. To whom this letter was written is also unclear: BRS 90 n178 identifies the recipient as the engraver John Pye, but BR2 496 states that it was written to an unnamed patron who had read about Blake in Smith’s Nollekens and wrote to Mrs. Blake “offering to purchase Blake’s books.” Tatham’s original letter was transcribed by Thomas Hartley Cromek in his “Recollections of Conversations with Mr. John Pye, London 1863-64” (BR2 871n37).

[25] Visions has eleven plates, though in his letter to Dawson Turner Blake advertised it as “folio” with “8” designs for _2.2.0. But in his 1827 letter to Cumberland, Blake had priced it at _3.3.0. Ferguson’s copy of Visions was in A. G. Dew-Smith’s collection that sold at Sotheby’s in 1878 (Viscomi, “Two Fake Blakes Revisited”). Dew-Smith of Cambridge or his agent may have acquired the work at the 1871 “sale of the effects” of Ferguson.

[26] Visions copy O, which was sold for _1.1s to H. C. Robinson, presumably between 1825 and 1827 (BB 00), and copy N were printed on speculation. Visions copy P, Thel copy N, and Marriage copy G were printed and finished in the same style and bound together; they were presumably commissioned together by an unknown collector and possibly initiated the c. 1818 printings of illuminated books (see Viscomi BIB ch. 33).

[27] Mrs. Blake may have already printed America copies N and Q and Europe copies L and I when Tatham wrote on her behalf on 11 April 1829, that is, she may have produced them on speculation in the Mayfair studio. America was initially designed as a monochrome work, with white line hatching creating textures and tones; so, too, was its sister work Europe, but the latter work was finished in 1794, after Blake had begun printing his books in colors. Europe copy H is the only life-time monochrome copy.

[28] Grey’s inscription is transcribed from a digital image of the flyleaf, as shown in the Auckland Public Library online digital gallery. There are three distinct passages on the flyleaf, and it is clear that original curators and Grey thought these copies of America and Europe were authentic.

[29] In 1825, Henry Crabb Robinson acquired copy D of America, which was printed in 1793 (BB 101). Linnell acquired Songs copy R, printed in c. 1794, in 1819, and Innocence copy I, printed in 1789, at an unknown date (BB 407, 420). Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794 – 1847), the painter, literary critic, and forger, appears also to have bought books printed early directly from Blake after 1820. Wainewright may have met Blake through Linnell or Thomas Phillips, having studied painting with both of them, starting in 1813 at the age of 19 (Hodgman). He owned copies of America (G), Europe (B), and Jerusalem (B), which were bound in one volume and sold at Wheatley’s on 4 August 1831, along with his uncle’s collection (Bentley, Sales Catalogues, section:1800-1899). He commissioned Marriage copy I and Songs copy X in early 1827 (BB 300, 424), but may have acquired these other illuminated books directly from Blake around 1822 (three fly-leaves in its Roxburghe binding are dated 1821), a purchase possibly facilitated by the £2250 that Wainewright obtained in July 1822 through forgery, the means by which he secured £3000 more two years later (V. W. Hodgman, 'Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths (1794–1847)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wainewright-thomas-griffiths-2762/text3919, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 12 December 2015).

[30] The paper was possibly Royal, approximately 63.5 x 50.8 cm. Quartering sheets was Blake’s usual practice for the larger illuminated plates.

[31]The paper was possibly Medium, approximately 58.4 x 45.7 cm sheets. The leaves for Visions copies N, O, and P, Milton copy D, Marriage copy G, Urizen copy G, and Thel copies N and O were approximately 28 x 23 cm untrimmed, and that leaf size halved (or the sheet cut into eights) produced leaves of 22 x 14 cm for Songs copies T and U.

[32] Before Blake wrote in his Prospectus, “The Illuminated Books are Printed in Colours, and on the most beautiful wove paper that could be procured,” he printed The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, copy L (plates 25-27, “A Song of Liberty”), on laid paper (with a C BALL watermark). This, the only illuminated book printed by Blake on laid paper, was etched in relief and printed c. 1790 in dark-brown ink on a single sheet folded to make a pamphlet of two leaves, each leaf 21.2 x 17.3 cm, with plate 25 in the first of two states (see Viscomi, “The Evolution of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” part I).

[33] Robert Essick suggested this possibility upon examining Europe copy L in the Huntington Library. Setting aside leaves so noticeably marked may have been an aesthetic decision, since such marks were visible in wash and watercolor drawings even when not viewed with a backing light.” The T Stains mark is quite large; it runs the width of the leaf, along the top or bottom margin; its “T” and “S” are 2.5 cm high, and the other letters are 1.7 cm high.

[34] The R & T and ruse & turners / 1812 papers are from different moulds and were possibly quarters of Royal sheets (63.5 x 50.8 cm); the T Stains and T Stains / 1813 papers are probably from the same mould, possibly Medium sheets (58.4 x 45.7 cm; Turner, 211), with the date cut from the former. Both papers are thinner than the Whatman Blake used more often. Blake had never printed on T Stains papers, nor had he printed on ruse & turners / 1812 paper, though, as noted, he printed on ruse & turners / 1815 paper in c. 1818, and possibly used the 1815 paper for two drawings, c. 1825 (Butlin 801, 816). He executed a wash drawing, c. 1819-20, on undated ruse & turners paper (Butlin 756).

[35] Three of these late letters have the watermark, suggesting that Blake had three sheets of writing paper with chain lines that he cut to produce leaves. The leaf used for the 25 April 1827 letter to Linnell is 20.9 x 16.8 cm., which is one sixth of Royal size paper (63.5 x 50.8 cm). He may have used the same 1810 paper for a pencil drawing from 1820 (Butlin 748).

[36] Dampened papers, wove and laid, shrink about 2 to 4%. Larger images reveal the difference between plates printed on damp and dry paper quite readily. For example, America plate 1 in proofs and in copies F, H, and O range between 23.3 to 23.4 x 16.9 cm (left margin x bottom); in America copy P, printed on J Whatman 1832 paper, it is 23.9 x 17.3 cm. Europe plate 1 in proofs and in copies K, L, and N ranges from 23.5 to 23.6 x 16.9 cm (right side x top); in Europe copy M, printed on J Whatman 1832 paper, plate 1 is 23.9 x 17.2 cm. Jerusalem plate 45 in copy A is 22.55 x 16.25 cm (right x top); in copy H, printed on J Whatman 1831, it is 22.9 x 16.5 cm.

[37] Songs copy Y was acquired by Calvert, presumably from Blake, and Songs copy W, the speculation copy, was inherited by Mrs. Blake. That Visions copies N and O sold long after they were produced indicates that they were produced on speculation.

[38] The Vivian Gallery proofs of Europe plates 6, 7, 12 are in reddish brown ink on unmarked paper; their proofs of America plates 2, 5, 15 are in the same ink on J Whatman 1831 (BB 143, 89).

[39] The group of works I’ve assigned to Tatham differ in quality; the reddish brown impressions are the best throughout, but the orangish brown and black impressions are so diverse one must wonder if an assistant or a second person was involved in their production. See Chapter 10, note 00.

[40] The leaves of Jerusalem copy A were trimmed to 32.7 x 26.5 cm. Blake’s larger sheets were possibly Royal (63.5 x 50.8 cm; Turner 211). The other five complete copies of Jerusalem printed by Blake have either 23 or 24 watermarks.

[41] The impressions in Songs copy d are mistakenly recorded as “sepia,” “brown,” “brownish black,” and “dark sepia” (Census 67, BB 00, BBS 00, Yale Literary Gazette 00). See Chapter 12.

[42] Robert Essick measured the one leaf of this paper in his Songs copy h using a micrometer: it is .36 mm thick, whereas the other leaves of 1831 paper are around .20 mm. Loose impressions on this heavy wove paper are also in Songs copies m and n.

[43] The Experience title plate in Songs copies A, T, and AA is 12.5 x 7.2 cm (left x top). In posthumous copies a and k, which were printed on the heavy and thinner J Whatman 1831 paper respectively, it is 12.7 x 7.4 cm (left x top).

[44] “The coloring of this impression is better, and more Blake-like, than one usually finds in tinted examples of posthumous copies of the Songs. The hand is distinct from the two coloring styles present in posthumous copy h. . . .Might Blake’s wife, Catherine, have been the colorist? Joseph Viscomi and I have speculated along those lines, but we have come to no firm conclusions” (“Marketplace 2014,” BIQ 48. No. 4, Spring 2015). Bentley has speculated that “the somewhat simplistic coloring could . . . have been added before 1831 by Catherine Blake . . . or by an anonymous hand before or after 1831” (Checklist, BIQ, 2014).

[45] Tatham was a portrait painter and miniaturist as well as a sculptor and had exhibited two portraits at the Royal Academy in 1825 and a study of orphans for a monument in 1831 (Graves VII 325), in addition to exhibiting drawings in the British Institution for 1828 and 1829 (Graves 528).

[46] See plate 23 in the Compare Window of the William Blake Archive to examine the kind of subtle touches that pull out the design’s forms and facial features and which make all the difference between a designer who knows the drawing and one who merely colors it in.

[47] Six copies of Songs were abridged to between 40 and 43 plates and their 10-14 extracted plates formed subsets of Experience, thereby extending Tatham’s saleable stock to 22 copies or sets of prints (see Chapters 10 and 11).

[48] Keynes and Wolf describe untraced Songs copy f as having its “first seven plates touched with water-colours, possibly by Mrs. Blake” (68). The description from the Sotheby’s auction catalogue, 19 December 1919, however, does not mention this (see Bentley’s Sales Catalogues). Mrs. Blake’s hand is very unlikely, since copy f was printed in the reddish brown of the other posthumous copies, the production of which appears not to have begun till after Mrs. Blake died.

[49] Bentley adds a note: “This was only true in their last residence, 3 Fountain Court, Strand (1821-27), where the space seems to have been painfully restricted. It was clearly not true, for instance, of their house in Hercules Buildings (1790-1800), which Tatham said had eight or ten rooms and a maid” (BR2 00).

[50] Apparently, Gilchrist thought the same: “Some of the characteristics of an originally uneducated mind had clung to her . . . an exaggerated suspiciousness, for instance, and even jealousy of his friends” (Life 00). According to Joseph Hogarth: “Mrs Blake was hardly the passive cre[a]ture here described—at all events Tatham did not find her so for she was opposed to everything he did for her benefit and when she submitted to his views it was always with the words she “Had no help for it” –that at last Tatham tired with her opposition threw the Will behind the fire and burnt it saying [“]There now you can do as you like for the Will no longer exists[“] and left her. Early the following morning she called upon [him] saying William had been with her all night and required her to come to him and renew the Will which was done and never after did she offer any objection to Tatham’s proceedings” (BR2 493-4). According to Bentley, however, the will was “nuncupative, and its validity was indignantly denied by Linnell” (BR2 546n). Still, some kind of dramatic gesture was made and some kind of contract that Tatham and Mrs. Blake apparently took seriously was thrown into the fire.

[51] See his articles on the last residences of Blake:

[52] Frederic George Stephens, author of Memorials of William Mulready, R. A. (1890), writes that in 1806 Mulready went to live at 9 Upper Cleveland Street and moved in 1809 to No. 25, Frederick Place, Hampstead Road. He rented a room for painting with Linnell at No. 30, Francis Street, Bedford Square 1808-9 (56-57; see Story 00).

[53] When printing and painting, one wears an apron or smock to protect clothing from ink and oil stains. The complications created by oils, varnishes, and solvents contributed to why oil painting and printmaking remained in the hands of professionals and occurred in special areas, unlike sketching, drawing, pastels, watercolors, and wash drawings. The late 18^th century invention of water colors in solid cakes made the medium unintimidating and very popular among amateurs, the ranks of which were swelling due to the interest in the picturesque and learning to draw to record one’s views/memories of nature.

[54] For a review of the critical theories attempting to explain the genesis and objectives of illuminated printing, see Viscomi, BIB, chapters 1-4, and “Origins of Illuminated Printing” Chapter 1 in this collection.

[55] Blake did not have a complete set of his books when he died (BR2 00), but he appears to have put together a set in 1795 for display purposes, when he printed copies of the books produced between c. 1790 and 1794 on large paper (see Viscomi, BIB 00).

[56] For an examination of visual and verbal expressions and evidence of possible discord between husband and wife, at least in the early 1790s and after their return to London from Felpham, see Morton Paley and Mark Crosby’s “Catherine Blake and Her Marriage: Two Notes” Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 78, no. 3, 479-91.