In “Blake in the Marketplace 1852: Thomas
Butts, Jr. and Other Unknown Nineteenth-Century Blake Collectors,” I examined
the history and significance of an unrecorded auction catalogue that included
23 biblical watercolors and six Paradise
Lost designs of 1808 by William Blake. It has been widely assumed that
these works, sold at Sotheby's on 26 June 1852, once belonged to Blake's first
patron, Thomas Butts. But the vendor, curiously, was Charles Ford of Bath, a
miniature painter. Nine of the watercolors, including three illustrations from Paradise Lost, were acquired by
“Fuller,” and 19, including three from Paradise
Lost, were acquired by Butts Jr. I shared this information with Martin
Butlin, who suspected that I had found the Butts auction that he had been
seeking since 1968 (see his “William Rossetti” 39). He had inferred the
existence of such an auction from William Michael Rossetti, who, in his
catalogue raisonné of Blake's works, identifies Fuller's acquisitions as being
“from Mr. Butts” and quotes descriptions of the works “from the sale-catalogue”
(Rossetti's lists are in Gilchrist's Life
of Blake 2: 199-264). Rossetti's
“sale catalogue” and Butts Jr.'s selling 18 of his 19 works the following year,
on 29 June 1853 at Foster and Son, support Butlin's suspicion: the Blakes in
Ford's auction appeared to have been works that Butts Jr. put up for sale
anonymously but bought in when they
failed to meet their reserve, and not works that he acquired from a third
party.
But I had doubts. Admittedly, the sale
raises the possibility that Butts Jr. owned the Blakes sold because, according
to the catalogue's title page, the auction included a few works by an
“Amateur,” perhaps Butts Jr. But the structure of the auction clearly included
the Blakes among Ford's lots and not the Amateur's, which were tacked on at the
end of the sale. Moreover, why would Butts Jr. buy in 19 of 29 paintings,
two-thirds of what he put up? Did Blake fail to sell in June when he had sold
well at the Foster auction only 12 months later and, more significantly, very
well just three months earlier (with no Blakes bought in), in what was the
first major auction of Blake works, the anonymous sale at Sotheby's on 26-27
March 1852? The vendor of the March
1852 sale has also been assumed to have been Butts Jr., because it too included
Blakes that once belonged to Butts. Hence, by questioning the basic rationale
of attributing Ford's auction to Butts Jr. because it included works once
belonging to Butts, I was also questioning the attribution of the March 1852
sale.
Was it possible that Butts Jr. actually
bought works from Ford that had once belonged to his father but which had left
his father's collection through avenues unknown to us? This, it seemed, was my
primary question, which led in turn to questioning the firmly held assumption
that Thomas Butts Jr., upon the death of his father in 1845, inherited the
Blake collection in its entirety and was solely responsible for its dispersal
at Sotheby's on 26-27 March 1852 and at Foster's on 29 June 1853 (see Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake
p. 336, hereafter referred to as Butlin; numbers are catalogue entries unless
preceded by a “p”). The assumption
seems reasonable, since Butts Jr. was Butts's only living son in 1845, and he
inherited Butts's house on 17 Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square, which presumably
housed the Blake collection. The problem is that the Blakes are not mentioned
in Butts's very detailed 15-page will, nor is there mention of an art
collection or library. The will does mention, however, numerous other
relatives, friends, and houses.
In “Blake in the Marketplace 1852,” by
examining and comparing the three auctions of 1852 and 1853, I cast doubt on
the assumption that Butts Jr. inherited and dispersed all of his father's Blake
collection. All three auctions contained watercolors matted in a style that I
was able to date and associate exclusively with Butts, which means that the
Blake watercolors in the Ford auction did indeed belong to Butts and not to an
unknown Blake patron collecting at the same time as Butts. With the latter
possibility eliminated, I examined the tastes and behavior of the sales' three
vendors as reflected in their collections and in the number and type of items
bought in. I found that the differences strongly suggested three different
vendors. This approach to the problem yielded a detailed article on, among
other things, Blake's and Butts's different matting styles, Blake's value in
the marketplace in 1852, the provenance of Blake's late Milton designs, and a
few newly discovered Blake collectors. Its major conclusions, though, were that
the vendor of the March and June 1852 auctions was not Butts Jr., but an
unknown Blake collector and Charles Ford, respectively, and that the auctions
were traces of an even earlier dispersal of Blake material by one or more
unknown members of Butts's family.
To support these conclusions, and to
discover who these other members might be and when they might have had access
to—or interest in—the Blake collection, I began researching Butts's genealogy,
particularly his father's family, his own, and his son's. (Each of the three
paterfamilias was named Thomas, who, for clarity's sake, will be referred
to as Mr. Butts, Butts, and Butts Jr. respectively.) I discovered quickly
that
Butts
remains relatively unknown: when and why artist and patron met are unclear,
and the few facts that we do have, such as where he lived while collecting
Blake
and what happened to his collection when he died, are suspect. [1] Moreover,
Butts's family was far more extended and diverse than Blake scholars realize,
and
there were many opportunities for removing Blakes from the
collection without the assistance of Butts Jr.
Discussed here are the two most promising moments, in 1808 and 1845,
when Butts moved to Fitzroy Square and when he died. The former event requires
examining the London residence from which he moved and a residence in Hackney,
one of the “green suburbs” outside of London, which may have been his while
he was collecting Blake. The latter event requires examining Butts's will
and its
arrangements for his second wife, Elizabeth Delauney Butts. [2]
The following information about Butts's
family is based on an examination of various trade, court, and street
directories, Burke's Landed Gentry of
Great Britain (12th edition, 1914), Butts's will, the International
Genealogy Index (IGI), and the rate books, tax records, and baptism, marriage,
and burial registers of the parishes of St. John the Evangelist, Hackney, St.
Luke, Finsbury, St. Leonard, Shoreditch, St. Andrew, Enfield, and a few others. [3] I have also consulted a genealogy of the
Butts's family that was given many years ago to G. E. Bentley, Jr. by R. G.
Robertson, a great grandson of Edward Herrington Butts, who was a disenherited
grandson of Thomas Butts. Bentley kindly showed it to me with the warning that
it is “interesting but not reliable.” The unreliability became quickly evident;
the compiler depended heavily but not exclusively on Burke, which is itself
incomplete, excluded much information that is included in the IGI, while
including information that is not always possible to verify, because it is
either unrecorded in IGI or Burke, or is missing from the other records that
I
have consulted. I refer to this document as the genealogy and mention it only when it varies from Burke.
I
Blake's patron was the child of Thomas
Butts and Hannah Witham. [4] His father, according to the IGI, was
baptized on 14 August 1719 in the parish of St. Dustan, Stepney, as were a
brother Francis and a sister Sarah in 1721 and 1723 respectively. According to
the genealogy, which does not record
his syblings, he worked at the Customs House; according to Burke, he was once
in the Cornet 10th Hussars regiment. He married Hannah on 19 May 1746, in the
parish of St. Andrew by the Wardrobe, London (IGI). The couple's first child
was baptized Thomas on 13 March 1746, in the parish of St. Bartholomew the
Great, London (IGI). This child must have died by the middle of 1756, because
another child, born on 16 June and baptized on 12 July 1756 in the parish of
St. Luke, Old Street, Finsbury, was also named Thomas (parish baptism
register). This son must have died very young, for Blake's patron, the son of
“Thomas Butts, Gent. and Hannah,” was born on 15 December 1759 and baptized in
the same parish on 9 January 1760 (parish baptism register; Burke gives the
date of birth, while the IGI records the date of baptism). Hence, he was not
the same age as Blake (pace Bentley “Thomas Butts” 1052), but two years
younger.
Butts had brothers and sisters. According
to the baptism register of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, Mr. Butts and Hannah of
Queen Street, Hoglane,” had a son named John (born 7 June and baptized on 17
June 1748). After John's birth, the couple appears to have moved from
Shoreditch to the neighboring parish of St. Luke, Old Street, Finsbury, where,
according to parish's baptism register and the IGI, they had seven children
baptized, including two of the Thomases. Elizabeth was baptized on 14 January 1750,
Samuel on 1 August 1751, Hannah on 1 January 1753, Sarah on 30 January 1754,
and Elizabeth on 21 September 1757. Butts was the last and youngest of the
brood.
Hannah Witham Butts is recorded in the
IGI as having given birth nine times, but apparently only Thomas and Sarah (who
is named in Butts's will and married a William Harris) lived long lives. [5] The
possibility that most of the children died in childhood corresponds with family
lore
as passed down by Ada Briggs, the sister-in-law of Butts's grandson,
Captain Frederick John Butts. She states that Blake's patron and his wife had
many children but most “died young” (93). This is probably not true of Blake's
patron (see below), but it appears to describe the family he was born into,
that of Hannah and Mr. Butts.
According to Burke, Hannah died in 1762;
the genealogy adds that Mr. Butts
remarried and had a son named Thomas, though it fails to record when and whom
he married. I have not been able to confirm the year of Hannah's death in a
burial register (see n5), but the fact that Mr. Butts remarried and had a son
is confirmed by Butts himself. In his will, Butts bequeaths “to each of the
children of my late half sister Mrs. Matilda Floyd (who resided at the time of
her death . . . on the Woolwich Road) who shall be living at the time of my
death the sum of nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and six pence. I give and
bequeath to Mr. Thomas Butts grandson of my deceased father and who is now
Master of the Kentish Town National School and Wardour at the said school house
the sum of three hundred pounds free of legary duty” (will 8). [6] From this passage we can safely infer that
Butts had a half-sister named Matilda and either a brother or, more likely, a
half-brother, whose son Thomas was Butts's nephew and his father's grandson.
The fact that Butts recorded Matilda's children as her children and not his
nephews and neices, and a grandson of Mr. Butts as such instead of as a nephew,
supports the hypothesis that Mr. Thomas Butts was the son of a half-brother.
The IGI strongly supports both
inferences. It records the baptism of a Matilda Butts on 3 January 1776 in the
parish of St. John, Hackney; she was the daughter of a Thomas Butts and an
unnamed woman. The IGI also records the baptism of a John Butts on 9 December
1776 in the same parish; he is recorded as the son of Thomas Butts and an
unnamed woman. The mother of Matilda and John is named Ann in the parish's
baptism register. This John Butts, then, is almost certainly Butts's
half-brother and the person the IGI records as having sired a son named Thomas,
who was baptized on 23 January 1803 in St. Mary Le Bow, London, and who,
presumably, became a school teacher. [7] The Thomas Butts
who sired John and Matilda Butts appears to have been Butts's father, and he
appears to have married
a woman named Ann and to have lived for
a little while in Hackney.
Hackney is an area of London just north
of Shoreditch, with Kingsland Road bordering it on the west. In the eighteenth
century, it belonged to the parish of St. John the Evangelist and, according
to the parish's church and poor rate books, was divided into ten districts:
Church
Street, Mare Street, Well Street, Grove Street, Kingsland, Homerton, Clapton,
Newington, Shacklewell, and Dalston (also spelled Dorleston). Mr. Butts is
recorded in the parish's poor rate books in 1775, but not before, which
corresponds with the births of Matilda and John, and as living in Homerton in
a
house (“late Rowlands”) assessed at £46 (tax collector’s rate book), which was
higher than most of his neighbors. According to the parish's burial register,
he died on 19 April 1778 (Burke gives the date of death as 7 April 1778 but not
the place). The parish's poor rate books reflect his death, in that the 1778
book for the summer quarter listed him as being deficient in payment, and the
book for the first quarter of 1779 listed his house as “empty.
But when did he remarry? The IGI records a marriage, five years after
Hannah Witham died, between a Thomas Butts and an Ann Cook on 16 May 1767 in
the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch. According to the marriage license,
Ann Cook
was a “spinster” of the parish of St. Leonard and Thomas Butts was a “widower
of the parish of St. Luke, a description which appears to fit Mr. Butts
exactly. Though the burial registers of the parish of St. Luke are in poor
condition, I have not found an entry for a Butts to suggest that there may have
been another widowed Thomas Butts in the parish. [9]
This couple is recorded in the IGI as
having had five children between 1769 and 1773, at least one of whom was
married in Hackney. According to the IGI, they had a daughter Ann, baptized 29
August 1769 in St. Marylebone, Marylebone Road. In the parish of St. Andrew,
Enfield, the couple had a son named John Timothy, baptized 5 August 1770, a
daughter named Caroline, baptized 25 August 1771, a son named John, baptized 13
September 1772, and a daughter named Lucy, baptized 24 October 1773. According
to the parish's burial register, John Timothy died on 5 October 1770. The
second John would seem to eliminate the possibility that the Thomas Butts and
Ann Cook who lived for a while in Enfield—or at least had children baptized in
that parish—are the same as the Thomas Butts and Ann who lived in Hackney,
since both have sons named John. But the burial register for St. Andrew records
that John died on 13 November 1772. Moreover, Lucy Butts, who was baptized in
Enfield, was married in Hackney. The marriage register for St. John, Hackney,
records her marrying Joseph Wartnaby on 12 September 1798. According to their
marriage license, they were both of the parish, he a “bachelor” and she a
“spinster,” and the witnesses were John Laverner(?) and Thomas Butts.
According to the Hackney rate books for
1786 through 1808, this Thomas Butts lived in Shacklewell and then in Dalston,
where he was Wartnaby's neighbor. Another woman with the surname Butts was also
married in Hackney: Diana Butts, “spinster” of the parish married the
“bachelor” Daniel Fearon of 11 Ely Place, Holborn, on 22 July 1802. She was
probably a daughter of Thomas Butts and Ann Cook, since the witnesses to her
marriage were Lucy and Joseph Wartnaby. The birth of Diana is not recorded in
the IGI. If she was a child of Thomas Butts and Ann Cook, as seems likely, she
might have been mistakenly recorded as "Ann" in the parish register
of St. Marylebone (the source for the IGI entry, where she is recorded as
"Ann," born 4 July 1769). Or she may have been born in 1774-75, after
Lucy, or in 1777-78, after Matilda and John. [10]
Though only one Thomas Butts is recorded
in the rate books, there is another Thomas Butts possibly living at this time
in one of Hackney’s 10 districts. According to the IGI, he married Sarah
Roberts in Ticehurst, Sussex, on 28 March 1785, and they had seven children baptized
in the parish of St. John, Hackney, between 1786 and 1798. According to their
marriage license, she was of the Ticehurst parish and he was of St. Botolph
parish, Bishopsgate Street. There is, however, no apparent connection between
him and Lucy and Diana Butts. Moreover, two men with the same name could be
living in Hackney at the same time but not both be recorded in the rate books.
If living just outside the parish or paying rent inclusive of rates to a
landlord, then his name would not appear in the church or poor rate books. The
parish's book of land tax assessments lists owners and occupiers of properties,
but the latter category often listed "house" or "cottage"
instead of a name. No Thomas Butts is
recorded in the Hackney 1811 census.
The differences in the signatures on
Lucy Butts’s and Sarah Roberts’s marriage licenses neither prove nor disprove
the hypothesis that the Dalston Butts was Blake’s patron. Though only five letters long, the surname
as signed on Lucy’s 
license (illus. 1) and on Sarah’s license (illus. 2)
reveals significant differences in the B,
u, and s. In the former signature,
the Bs stem is slightly curved and
firmly connected to the top loop, which sits on a larger oval to form a 3, the u is round, and the s extends rightward, and both lower case letters are smaller than
the Bs bottom loop. In the latter signature, the Bs stem is sharp and straight, the top
loop is completely free of the stem and forms with its bottom loop an 8 rather
than a 3. The u is formed like a w, cut
very sharp and consists of five distinct strokes instead of three overlapping
ones. The tip of the s shares in the sharp left-to-right
slant as the other letters, and like the u
is larger than the Bs bottom
loop. The way the two ts are crossed appears similar, but this
style was quite conventional, as is evinced by the “Butts” and “Ditto” in the
Hackney 1797 tax collector’s record book (illus. 3)
and many other such entries
through the rate books. Closer still is
the minister’s hand on Butts’s 1826 marriage license (illus. 4).
But on closer inspection, even the crossed ts differ. In the Ticehurst signature (illus. 2), the pen moves half way up
the stem of the second t and curves
over and down in a loop to connect with the s. In the signature on Lucy Butts’s license
(illus.1), the loop begins from the top of the second t and two-thirds down curves under and over through the first t and down the second stem to form
another small loop that goes over to the s. The Ts
in the two signatures also reveal subtle differences. In the Ticehurst signature, the cross bar begins low, with a
large loop that forms an S-like curve and meets and extends the stem; the bar’s
loop rests on the bottom loop, which crosses the stem almost two-thirds
up. The T in the signature on Lucy
Butt’s marriage license is more conventional, with the cross bar, starting from
a tight curl, more horizontal and concave, forming more of an angle with the
stem, while the bottom loop crosses at the midway point.
Of these letters, the B is clearly the most distinct,
different in each hand. The B on Lucy Butts’s license is closest to
the way Butts made his B, and so too
are the u and s. Although no letters from
Butts to Blake are extant, save for the unsigned draft of one sent apparently
in September 1800 (see this article’s epigraph), 28 receipts in Butts’s hand
between 1805 and 1810 are extant. None
has a full signature, all are written in the fine round hand of the
professional clerk, and only one is more than several words long. That exception, though, from December 1805
(Bentley, Blake Records 573-74),
provides a few examples of the letters in question (illus. 5).
Butts consistently made his capital Bs in the number 3 style, with a small
top loop connected to a curved stem (illus. 6), 
and made round us (illus. 6) and ss whose top line hangs far to the right, over the downward stroke
(illus. 6). His ornamental flourish on
the Bs stem is missing in the 1798
signature, but it is also missing in Bs
in other receipts; more troubling is the absence of the straight line that
crosses his double ts and capital Ts whose cross bars are similar but
whose bottom loops do not cross the stem.
If signatures are to play a part as evidence—or if the possibility that
the style of the 1785 signature somehow evolved into that recorded on the 1798
document is to be ruled out—then Thomas Butts’s full signature from 1798 in
letters or documents written in something other than his professional business
hand must be found.
At this point in my research, it is the
evidence culled from rate books, marriage licenses, and parish registers that
suggests that the Dalston Butts may have been Blake’s patron, for it suggests
that the Enfield Thomas Butts and Ann Cook are the same Thomas Butts and Ann
who lived in Hackney. The presence of a Thomas Butts in Enfield during the
years Mr. Butts is known to have been in Hackney (1775-1778) would indicate
otherwise, but no Butts is listed in the poor rate books for the parish of St.
Andrew for the years 1777-1779, which are the earliest rate books I have been
able to locate for that parish, nor is a Butts listed in the parish's burial
registers after 1772. It appears, then, that Butts's father had started a
second family in 1767, which included Lucy Butts, moved to Enfield by 1770 and
to Hackney by 1775, where he died in 1778. If so, the Thomas Butts who
witnessed Lucy Butts's marriage and was living in Hackney between 1786 and 1808
may have been Blake's patron, who presumably had lived in Hackney with his
father and stepmother by 1775. As we will see, circumstantial evidence,
combined with new information about Mr. Butts, Butts's wife, and Butts's London
residence raises this possibility—or, at the very least, that Butts had a
residence other than 9 Great Marlborough Street while collecting Blake’s works.
The assumption that the Dalston Blake was not Blake’s patron requires numerous
highly improbable coincidences. If,
however, that should be the case, the pursuit, I believe, has been worth the
effort, for it has uncovered a few new facts about Butts and his family while
underscoring how little we know about the man behind so much of Blake’s
artistic production.
II
Butts's mother Hannah Witham died when he
was young, apparently when he was two (1762). He was her youngest child, and he
had at least one older sister who survived childhood. If the “Ann” with whom
his father had two children in Hackney was Ann Cook, then Butts was seven years
old when his father remarried (1767) and was presumably raised by his
stepmother. Ann Cook appears to have given birth seven or eight times, though
only three or four of her children are known to have survived into adulthood.
In this new extended family, Butts may have been the oldest boy, the older
half-brother to Lucy, Matilda, John, and possibly Ann (?Diana). And it appears that when he was around 15
years of age the family lived in Hackney, in the parish of St. John, where
Matilda and John were baptized in 1776 and where his father was buried two
years later.
Butts died relatively well off, but he
appears to have begun his life in more humble circumstances. In 1783, he “entered the office of the
Commissary General of Musters as assistant clerk” (Bentley, “Thomas Butts”
1053). According to Burke, he married Elizabeth Cooper and had three boys,
Joseph Edward, Thomas (i.e., Butts Jr.), and George, born 4 February 1784, 27
September 1788, and 22 September 1792, respectively. [11] The year of his marriage and the parish in
which he was married—traditionally that of the bride—are not recorded in Burke,
the genealogy, or the IGI, nor is the
parish in which his children were baptized. The absence in the IGI indicates
that these events may have occurred in one of over 40 parishes not yet included
in the IGI. On the other hand, their absence may be due to Butts's having been
a nonconformist, as his great granddaughter Mary Butts implies in her memoir, The Crystal Cabinet (164), in which case
there may not be any official or surviving records of his marriage or of the
births and baptisms of his children. [12]
Thomas Butts's familial connection with
Hackney may have extended into his adulthood, possibly as late as 1808. The
Thomas Butts who was Wartnaby's neighbor is first listed in the parish's church
and poor rate books in 1786 in Shacklewell, at number 3 Godfrey Row, where he
paid the taxes on a house assessed at £18 1s.7d.. [13] He moved from there in 1790 to another
dwelling in Shacklewell and from there to Dalston in 1793, where he remained
till 1808. [14] Dalston, the smallest of Hackney's
districts, is at the south-west corner of Hackney and adjacent to the parish
of St. Leonard, Shoreditch. Like Lambeth, it was a village or “green suburb”
on
the outskirts of London. Butts paid the tax on a house assessed at £20; the tax
collector's books list him as the occupier and the Tyson heirs as owner. [15] In 1808, the house was assessed at £40, an
increase suggesting improvements made to the house. The person recorded as
occupying the residence by June of that year, however, is Robert Butts. [16] Who Robert is will be discussed momentarily;
for now we need to recognize that his replacing Thomas in 1808 corresponds
exactly to Butts's move to 17 Grafton Street, Fitzroy Square. Butts is first
recorded at the Fitzroy Square address in Boyle's
Court Directory for 1808. Before that date, the residence was inhabited by
a Mrs. Curtis.
The combined court and commercial
directories published by William Holden support the hypothesis that the Thomas
Butts in Shacklewell and Dalston was Blake's patron. The directories of the
day, such as those published by Kent, Lowndes, and the post office,
alphabetically listed merchants, laborers, professionals et al. at their
business addresses; some commercial directories, such as the Universal Director (1763), also
organized these addresses by occupation to create classified directories, and
others, such as Boyle's General London
Guide (1792), organized them alphabetically and by street. All of them,
however, excluded London's “environs,” i.e., the surrounding villages and
towns. The Holden triennial directories, however, included both commercial
lists and “House-keepers Resident in London, and Ten Miles Circular, in Private
Life.” There was, of course, much overlap between the commercial and private
sections, with merchants and other professionals listing both their business
and private addresses. [18]
In the commercial section of the 1805-07
edition of Holden's and its 1808 supplement we find:
Butts,
Tho, Commissioner of Musters, Whitehall
Butts,
Jn, Gunpowder Office 74 Lombard St
Butts
J, Engineer, Tottenham Str, Fitzroy Sq
Butts
James, Smith, etc. Croydon
Butts,
Mrs. School 9 Great Marlborough St
In the “Private Residence” section of the
same directory and its supplement, we find:
Butts
John, esq 6 Chatham-pl Blackfriars
Butts
John, esq Kensington Terrace
Butts,
Mr. 6 Paragon, Kent Road
Butts
Mr. Tho. Dalston
The Thomas Butts in the commercial
section is, of course, Blake's patron, listed at his office. The second Butts listed is John Butts, who
lived at 6 Chatham-place; he is listed as “Gunpowder Merchant” at both
addresses in the Post Office Annual
Directories for 1804-1809. He
appears to have first entered the London commercial directories in 1797, in Boyle's City Guide, where he is listed
at the Chatham-place address, and the location of his office was first given
in
the 1801 Holden's Supplement of Names
as 1 Savage Gardens. He moved to Lombard street by 1803, where he is listed in
the Kent directories for that and subsequent years till at least 1820. This
John Butts is, I believe, Butts's half-brother John. His profession is
interestingly aligned with that of the Commissary General's Office of Musters,
where Butts made sure that the army's “equipment was in order” (Bentley,
“Thomas Butts” 1053). [19] The third Butts, who is recorded
as “engineer,” is probably
the John Butts of
Kensington Terrace, who is listed earlier in the Universal British Directory (vol. 3) for 1794 in the Kensington
section, under the heading “The following are the principal inhabitants,
Gentry, etc.” There he is listed as “Butts, John, Gent.,” but without a
profession. James Butts is a misspelling of James Butt, as he is listed in
other directories, including the subsequent edition of Holden's. And Mrs. Butts
is Butts's wife, listed at her business address, the address heretofore assumed
to have been the Butts's residence and which, as we will see, was a boarding
school for girls, though it may also have been used as a city apartment for the
Buttses.
In the commercial section, then, there are just four Butts listed. In the private residence section, there are actually only three Butts listed, for the Mr. Butts of Paragon, Kent Road, is a misspelling for Butt, as he is listed in the earlier and subsequent editions of Holden's and earlier editions of Boyle's. These three Butts appear to correspond with the four Butts in the commercial section, that is, they do if the Dalston residence of Mr. Thomas Butts is that of Butts and Mrs. Butts.
“Butts Mr. Thomas, Dalston” is first
listed in the private section of Holden's
Triennial Directory for 1802-04. (Most houses in London's outlying villages
did not have numbers, and most streets were not given names until the
nineteenth century.) The possibility that the Dalston Butts is Blake's patron
is suggested by the relative rarity of the surname (Butt was common, Butts very
much less so, according to private and commercial listings in the directories
and the IGI), and by the company he keeps. The only other Butts listed in the
1802-04 edition are his half-brother John at Chatham-place and the other John
Butts at Kensington Terrace, and no Butts are listed in the commercial section.
The similar manner in which John and Thomas Butts entered the Holden directory
also suggests that the Dalston Butts is Blake's patron. They both enter in the
private section of the 1802-04 edition. They stay in that section in the
1805-07 edition and its 1808 supplement, and add their commercial addresses,
along with Mrs. Butts's, who, as we will see, was listed at this address in an
earlier edition of Holden's and earlier than that in other directories. [20] John Butts, as noted, was also listed in
Boyle's and Kent's directories, and starting in 1803 in the Post Office Annual Directories as well.
Thomas Butts regularly listed his business address in this directory starting
in 1806, after he was dual listed in Holden's, which may explain why he did not
list it in 1809-11 of Holden's. He continued to list his private residence,
however. In Holden's 1809-11 edition, he is listed as “Butts T. Esq. 17 Grafton
st. Fitzroy square,” where he moved in 1808. No other Thomas Butts is listed
at Dalston after this date. For two men with the same name to exit and enter
the
same directory at the same time would be a remarkable coincidence; it seems
more likely that Butts gave Holden's a change of address for the new edition.
Joining him in the private section of the directory's 1809-11 edition were two
other Butts, John of Kensington Terrace and “Butts Rob. Esq., Dalston.”
III
The 9 Great Marlborough Street address,
which is about four miles from Dalston, is much closer to where Butts worked
in Whitehall. This is where Blake sent his letters from Felpham, between
1800 and
1803. [21] Butts is recorded in the Westminister rate
books as paying the taxes on a house “rated at 44 pounds” in 1789. From this,
Bentley reasonably infers that the Buttses lived “in a fine large house” (Blake Records 560 and n1) and that Butts
and Blake may have met in 1789, because the house was just down the street from
Blake, who, between 1785 and 1790, lived at 28 Poland Street. But were Blake and patron really
neighbors—or neighbors who knew one another this early? And did Butts have two
residences?
The first account of Thomas Butts was
written in 1907 by Ada Briggs, whose sister was the second and much younger
wife of Captain Frederick John Butts, the grandson of Thomas Butts and son of
Butts Jr. The article appeared two years after the Captain died, and perhaps
too many years after the events in question for her to have distinguished fact
from family lore. Like Gilchrist (1: 115), she states without proof that Butts
and Blake first met “about the year 1793” (93) and is silent about how and
why. Mary Butts, the Captain's novelist
daughter, suggests in her memoir that her great grandfather “was an early
follower of Swedenborg” (164), raising the possibility that he and Blake met in
1789, the year Blake attended meetings of Swedenborgians hoping to establish a
New Jerusalem Church (Bentley, Blake
Records 34-35). But there is no evidence to prove this association. Unlike the
Blakes', Butts's name does not appear in the register of the 1789 meeting or of
any subsequent meeting.
Given the makeup of his Blake collection,
Butts seems unlikely to have patronized Blake as early as 1789—or 1793. His copies of Visions of the Daughters of Albion, America, Europe, and The Song of Los were acquired from the
Cumberland auction of 1835 and not directly from Blake, and his copy of Songs of Innocence and of Experience was
acquired in 1806 (Bentley, Blake Books
657, 414). Unless Butts's patronage emerged slowly from a friendship with
Blake, it appears likely that the two had met after Blake's most creative
book-making period, 1789-95. The
earliest Blake works traceable to Butts are the biblical temperas (Butlin
379-432), to which Blake appears to be referring in his 1799 letter to
Cumberland: “My Work pleases my employer, & I have an order for Fifty small
Pictures at One Guinea each, which is Something better than mere copying after
another artist” (Keynes, The Letters
11).
The building at 9 Great Marlborough
Street was listed in the 1801 Westminister census as having 22 people, 19 of
whom were female. [22] From this Bentley infers that Mrs. Butts may
have run a boarding school for girls (“Daughters” 116). The inference is
correct, as is evinced by entries for Mrs. Butts in Holden's Triennial Directory for 1805-07 and its 1808
supplement. As noted, she is recorded
under the commercial section but not the private residence section as “Butts
Mrs. School, 9 Great Marlborough Street.”
Her school appears to have been in operation from at least 1790, since
she is recorded in the Universal British
Directory for 1790-92 as “Butts Mrs. 9 Great Marlborough Street.” She is
listed the same way in the 1793 Directory
to the Nobility, Gentry, and Families of Distinction, in The New Patent London Directory for 1795
(a reprint of the Universal British
Directory for 1790-92, and in the Universal
British Directory (vol. 5) for 1798.
Thomas Butts may be paying the taxes on the place, but he is not listed
in any directory that I have examined as living there. [23]
The entry for Mrs. Butts not only
confirms Bentley's suspicions, but it may also explain Blake's choice of
metaphor in his letter to Butts, 22 November 1802. Blake states that he has
“now given two years to the intense study of those parts of the art which
relate to light & shade & colour” and asserts that he understands them
completely, “or Else I am Blind, Stupid, Ignorant and Incapable in two years'
Study to understand those things which a Boarding School Miss can comprehend
in
a fortnight” (Keynes, The Letters
40-41). [24] More significantly, of course, the
identification of 9 Great Marlborough Street as a school indicates that it was
not solely a private residence, which in turn suggests that it might not have
been a family residence at all, or at least not the family's only or primary
residence. The possibility that the location was only a boarding school and not
a family residence is supported by the absence in court directories of a
Westminister address for the Buttses, that is, for Thomas and Mrs. Butts, as
well as the absence of number 9 among the private house residences in Boyle's
street directories in the 1800s (listed are . . . 7, 8, 10, 11 . . .). [25] And, as noted, the baptismal records for
the
Butts children, two of whom (William and George) were born in 1791 and 1792
according to Burke, are not listed in the IGI, and thus the hypothesis that
they were born in Westminister, or that the family belonged to a parish in
Westminister, cannot be proved or disproved at this time.
The 1801 Westminister Census records the
presence of three males, who may have been servants but may also have been
Thomas Butts and his sons Tommy and George, who were 13 and 9 respectively. The
problem here is that Butts’s eldest son, Joseph Edward, born in 1784, was 17
years old at the time of the census and a bit young to be living on his own.
Perhaps Joseph lived primarily in the Dalston residence, or the three sons
lived with their mother and Butts stayed—or for legal reason was listed—in
Dalston. At any rate, the presence of
three males raises the possibility that Butts used the school as a city
apartment and the Dalston residence as a country cottage. The idea that the
Butts family lived in town, at least during the week, is suggested by a letter
of Blake's and an entry in Tommy's diary. On Tuesday 23 September 1800, the day
after arriving in Felpham, Blake writes Butts: “God bless you! I shall wish for
you on Tuesday Evening as usual” (Keynes, The
Letters 24), suggesting that the Blakes and Buttses had met regularly on
Tuesdays, though apparently not always in the evening. Bentley states that one
of these meetings was briefly “recorded by twelve-year-old Tommy Butts in his
diary for Tuesday, May 13th [1800]: 'Mr. and Mrs. Blake and Mr. T. Jones drank
tea with mama'“ (Blake Records 67).
Tommy's diary is untraced, but Briggs quotes two more entries from 1800. On
“September 10th, Mr. and Mrs. Blake, his brother, and Mr. Birch came to tea,”
and on “September 16th, Mr. Blake had breakfast with mama” (96). [26] The latter entry would have been on the
Tuesday before Blake left for Felpham. Where they met is not indicated. They
could have met at Dalston (see n21), but the presence of the 12 year-old with
his mother on a school day and the apparent absence of Butts suggests that they
met at the school, which supports the hypothesis that the school doubled as a
city apartment.
IV
The Commissary of Musters Office closed
as a separate entity in 1818, when it was absorbed into the War Office, and
Butts appears to have retired that year. [27] Years of complaints about the office being
ineffectual and overstaffed had led to an official inquiry in 1812, which
terminated in a recommendation that the office be abolished (Bentley, “Thomas
Butts” 1064). Perhaps the news of such an inquiry or fears of imminent closing
curtailed Butts's Blake acquisitions, c. 1811. The historical record does not
dispute the possible connection: after December 1810, there are no receipts or
documentary evidence to prove that Butts continued his patronage of Blake. [28] Another possible reason for the cessation
of
commissions is the closing of Mrs. Butts's school (see below). Gilchrist states
that Butts eventually “grew cool” to Blake and that he “employed him but little
now, and during the few remaining years of Blake's life they seldom met” (1:
282). The absence of receipts by a professional clerk, whose other receipts
from Blake appear to have been meticulously kept, supports Gilchrist's latter
claim. Blake makes only one reference to Butts after 1811, noting in April of
1826 that Butts had paid him a visit (Erdman 777) and was to receive a proof
copy of the Job engravings (Bentley, Blake
Records 274, 599). They must have also met in September 1821, when Blake
borrowed the Job watercolor illustrations for Linnell to trace, and again in
May 1822, when he borrowed three of the Paradise
Lost designs (Bentley, Blake Records
Supplement 105-06). Though there are no records, Butts must have lent Blake
The Wise and Foolish Virgins and The Vision of Queen Katherine (Butlin
478, 548) as well, because the late versions executed for Thomas Lawrence and
John Linnell (Butlin 479, 549), c. 1822 and c. 1825, are based on tracings from
them. The most one can say, perhaps, is that after 1820 Butts and Blake were
on
good terms but Butts seems not to have been actively adding to his collection
or trying to support Blake financially. [29]
Butts collected the lion's share of his
Blakes between 1799 and 1810. Between 1811 and 1820, contact between the two
men probably never ceased altogether, if, as Bentley argues, Butts had assisted
Blake's brother James in obtaining work as a clerk in “the office of the
Commissary General of Musters in 1814, 1815, and 1816” (“Thomas Butts” 1058).
But there is no hard evidence that Butts commissioned Blake during this time,
the c. 1816 series of Milton illustrations notwithstanding (see Viscomi
“Marketplace” 58 passim).
If Butts maintained a second residence in
Dalston between 1793 and 1808, then the main period of his collecting coincides
with his residency in Dalston. His having had more than one location for
displaying his Blakes, Dalston and Great Marlborough Street, may explain why
there are duplicates in the Butts collection, like the tempera and watercolor
of the Baptism of Christ (Butlin 415,
475) or watercolors of St. Paul and the
Viper (Butlin 509, 510). Perhaps Blake's audience even then was heavily
academic, with Mrs. Butts displaying Blakes in her school as well as in the
Butts's own rooms. Blake finished his biblical watercolors in a style suitable
for display, and they were afterwards matted for display. In this latter style,
the watercolors were trimmed of their wide margins, laid in windows cut out of
large sheets of crayon board, and had inscriptions written on the board below
them in copperplate hand. When this style was first employed is in question,
because the crayon board, which was manufactured by “Turnbull,” could have been
made as early as 1802 or as late as 1819 (Viscomi, “Marketplace” 48 passim). But whatever the date of their rematting,
the watercolors, as received from Blake, were perfectly displayable. They had
wide margins with three or more colored bands framing the image. Works in such “washline mounts” (48) could
be stored in portfolios, but they could also be placed in wooden frames without
front mats. Could the desire to decorate Mrs. Butts's school have motivated the
commission for 50 biblical temperas? Could it have motivated Blake's washline
mounts or Butts's in-laid mounts that were used in the subsequent series of
biblical watercolors?
The hypothesis that the biblical
watercolors may have been painted for the school is worth pursuing, but even if
true it does not mean that the walls and study of the Dalston house were
Blakeless. Countering Butts's reference to his house as a “dung hill,” Blake
described it as a “Green House.” In a
letter of 10 January 1803, Blake states: “But whatever becomes of my labours, I
would rather that they should be preserv'd in your Green House (not, as you mistakenly
call it, dung hill) than in the cold gallery of fashion.—The Sun may yet shine,
& then they will be brought into open air” (Keynes, The Letters 47-48). Through mixed metaphors, Blake complains about
being an ignored artist, about his work having to remain indoors and thus
private during the miserable weather in which he finds himself. But while they
are indoors, in the privacy of Butts's collection, they are safe and
preserved—and are even sure to grow—till he obtains a genuinely appreciative audience
as opposed to the fashionable crowd and exhibition halls of his day. Blake
informs his patron that he prefers his work to remain outside London's
indifferent eye, to be preserved in a living environment rather than to be
shown in a fickle one. Blake's description of Butts's house as “Green,” the
color of living vegetation and the place where vegetation grows indoors all
year long in spite of the weather, appears to have generated the explicit and
even more positive weather metaphors of sun and open air, as well as their
opposition in the adjective “cold,” connoting both the indifference of fashion
and the marble characteristic of the “galleries” of connoisseurs and amateurs,
or as Blake referred to them, “Cunning sures & the Aim at yours” (Erdman
510).
“Green House” suggests the open space of
a free-standing country home or cottage—one with or without extra land—and not
a London row house (see n35). Nor does Butts's description of his house as a
“dung hill” bring to mind a “fine large [London] house.” It does, however,
suggest both country living and his dissatisfaction with it, which perhaps
prompted his move to the more fashionable Fitzroy Square. Blake's description,
on the other hand, supports the hypothesis that the house was located in
Dalston, for it appears to play on Dalston's reputation for having “several
extensive nursery grounds.” [30] At the very least, Blake's description,
combined with the fact that the London residence was a boarding school,
suggests that Butts had a second residence in the early 1800s. By the time he
died, in 1845, he appears to have owned sixteen properties (will), an interest
in real estate that was already present by 1808. [31]
The year Butts moved to Fitzroy Square,
Thomas Butts drops out of the Hackney St. John tax books and his residence is
occupied by Robert Butts, who could be one of two people recorded in the genealogy. The first Robert is listed
as
Butts's third cousin, who was about his age, and the second is listed as a
fourth cousin closer in age to his children. [32] A Robert Butts was listed in Holden's Triennial Directory for
1799-1800 at 16 Field-gate Street, Whitechapel, along with “J. Butts” at 9
Great Marlborough Street. These were the only two Buttses listed. His
profession, like hers (or his, see n23) is listed as “Private.” Robert Butts
is
missing from the directories until Holden's
Triennial Directory for 1809-11, which lists a “Butts Rob. Esq. Dalston.”
As noted, this edition of the directory is the first to list Butts as “Butts
T. Esq. 17, Grafton st. Fitzroy square.” Dalston has no extant poor rate books
for
1810-12, 1815-26, and 1833-42, but the Hackney Census of 1811 lists Robert
Butts in Thomas Butts's house (identified by its proximity to Joseph Wartnaby's
house and place in the record books). The house was inhabited by one male and
two females, presumably a wife and daughter. According to their marriage
license, Robert Butts, “bachelor,” married Mary Hill, “spinster,” both of the
parish of St. John, Hackney, on 1 July 1806; the witnesses were Joseph and Lucy
Butts Wartnaby. [33] Robert and Mary had a daughter named Mary
and a son named Robert, baptized in the parish of St. John, Hackney, on 15
December 1807 and 14 December 1809 (IGI). Presumably, baby Robert died before
the 1811 Census, though I have not been able to find a record of the baby's
death in the burial register for St. John, Hackney. [34]
By 1811, the street was called “Bath
Place,” which was along Dalston Lane, where the present Graham Road
begins. Under “Landholders” in the 1814
rate book, the residence is described as: “Butts Brick ground and Cottage
opposite Cat. and Mutton.” [35] Robert Butts is listed in the 1828 rate
books, still next to Wartnaby, whose house is recorded as “empty”; the location
is now called Graham Place (probably the origin of the present Graham Road),
probably because, as indicated in the 1831 “Plan of the Parish of St. John at
Hackney” (illus. 7),
the
land was adjacent to land once belonging to Baron Graham. Robert Butts is still
listed at Graham Place in the 1832 rate books, but
is listed as being in “Kingsland Ward Dalston.” [36]
Robert Butts is probably the same person
listed in the London Post Office
Directory for 1835 to 1842 as an auctioneer, appraiser, and house agent,
with an office at “Church Street, Hackney,” the name of the north end of what
is now Mare Street. At least for three years (1835-38) his business was listed
as Butts & Owen; according to the genealogy,
Butts had third cousins named Owen, who were Robert's first cousins or first
cousins once removed. [37] After 1843, he is no longer listed in the
LPOD or any of the other directories. [38] If the
Dalston Robert is the person listed in Holden's 1799 directory, married in
Hackney
in 1806, as well as the appraiser and auctioneer (no other Robert
is listed in the directories), then he would have been born c. 1780, about
20
years younger than Butts and eight years older than Thomas Butts, Jr.
Butts was 48 years old when he moved to
Fitzroy Square in 1808, the last year that Mrs. Butts listed in the
directories. While the school might have been vacated, the Dalston residence
was not. If the Dalston residence was Butts's “Green House,” then it follows
that the house almost certainly displayed or “preserv'd” works by Blake. And
since the house was inhabited immediately after Butts by a member of his
extended family, the question of how much of the Blake collection Butts moved
to Fitzroy Square must be asked. If in the Dalston residence some of the
watercolors were displayed, as the original and subsequent matting styles
encouraged, and not stored in portfolios, then possibly some of the
collection-as-furniture remained in Dalston, and quite possibly remained in
Robert Butts's or his descendant's possession, not a difficult thing to imagine
if Robert was an “Appraiser” of art.
V
The idea that the Blake watercolors might
have been furniture is not as demeaning as it sounds. As noted, the works were
finished and then mounted in styles that encouraged display. More important,
“furniture” is apparently how Blake's art works are referred to in Butts's
will. Butts makes no mention of an art collection, let alone a Blake
collection, but he mentions the house in which the collection was kept and gave
it to Butts Jr., along with all its “fixtures and furniture.” [39] Butts
bequeathed to his son the “leasehold dwellinghouse situate No 17 Grafton Street
Fitzroy Square and my Coach house and stable in Grafton Mews in the
parish of Saint Pancras in the County of Middlesex with their respective
appurtenances and also my leasehold dwellinghouse with the appurtenances
situate No 5 Upper Fitzroy Street Fitzroy Square aforesaid wherein my said son
now resides, together with all the fixtures and furniture therein which belong
to me” (will, 6). Seymour Kirkup, a
childhood school friend of Thomas Butts Jr. and frequent guest at his parent's
Fitzroy house between 1810 to 1816, records that he “neglected sadly the
opportunities the Buttses threw in [his] way” to study Blake, adding, though,
that “They (Butts) did not seem to value him as we do now” (Bentley, Blake Records 220n2).
The categorization of Blake's paintings
as furniture and the move to Fitzroy Square from both Dalston and Great
Marlborough Street in 1808 create the first potential rupture in the Blake
collection's line of descent from Butts to Butts Jr. As noted, it seems
possible that a few Blakes from this collection remained in the Dalston house
after 1808 and/or were purchased by Robert Butts. If so, is it possible that the works left behind or purchased are
those that sold at Sotheby's on 26-27 March 1852, whose anonymous vendor is, I
believe, mistakenly assumed to have been Butts Jr., or on 26 June 1852, as part
of Charles Ford's auction?
Of these two sales, the latter is more
likely, because all 29 of the Blake watercolors in the Ford auction were
executed by or in 1808. The 23 biblical watercolors and six Paradise Lost designs are in the same
medium and period, about the same size, and were probably all uniformly matted
(see “Marketplace 1852”). The technical, thematic, and historical coherence of
these 29 works strongly suggests that Ford acquired the works together, as a
small collection, and not one at a time, which is to say, it seems more likely
that they were once together, pared early on from the larger Butts collection,
rather than randomly chosen from the larger collection by Butts Jr. for the
June 1852 auction. Put another way, if chosen in 1852 by Butts Jr., then it is
fair to ask why these works and not others, why this kind of coherence when the
Butts collection was so technically and historically diverse? And why an even split of the 12 Paradise Lost designs? Ford, of course,
may have acquired the Blake watercolors as a group from someone other than
Robert Butts (two other possible sources are Butts's sons Joseph Edward and
George, who died, according to Burke, in 1827 and 1837; see below), but the
possibility of the group's leaving the collection in 1808 and remaining for
years in Robert Butts's possession cannot be ruled out. Nor can the possibility
that they were sold by the auctioneer Robert Butts, either at his Church Street
office or by private contract.
The 39 Blakes in the March 1852 sale
(including six designs to Milton's “Nativity Ode,” watercolors, engravings,
illustrated books, and illuminated books) were more representative of the Butts
collection as a whole than those sold in the Ford auction. As a group, however,
they could not have exited the Butts collection in 1808 and are not likely to
have any connection with Robert Butts. Seven of the ten illuminated books could
not have been left in Dalston, since America,
Europe, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and The Song of Los were acquired by a “Butts” (presumably Thomas) in
1835 from the George Cumberland sale at Christie's (Bentley, Blake Books 657), Milton was not finished until c. 1811, The Ghost of Abel was printed in 1822, and the copy of Jerusalem in the sale was posthumous.
In “Marketplace 1852,” I argue that most
of the Blakes in the March 1852 sale came from the Butts collection but that
the vendor of the sale was not Butts Jr. The collection that sold consisted of
over 1500 prints and drawings and was apparently built by a connoisseur whose
tastes do not coincide with what we know of Butts, or what is revealed by his
will, or with the tastes of Butts Jr., as revealed by his June 1853 auctions
and his 1862 will. It seems likely that the collector may already have had a
few works by Blake, such as Night Thoughts,
The Grave, and the Job engravings, the most accessible of
Blake's works and in numerous libraries and art collections of the day. But
from whom could have come the watercolors and illuminated books that were
unquestionably from the Butts collection? The primary candidate is Mrs. Butts,
Butts's second wife.
As a 66-year-old widower, Butts married
Elizabeth Delauney, a 56-year-old widow, on 15 June 1826 in St. Pancras, Old
Church (IGI). [40] They lived at 17 Grafton Street, Fitzroy
Square, from 1826 to 1845, when Butts died. According to Butts's will, she was
required to vacate the premises after three months. Butts began his will by
bequeath[ing] to my beloved wife
Elizabeth Butts the sum of one thousand pounds of lawful money of the United
Kingdom and also all articles of plate jewelry trinkets and furniture whether
useful or ornamental whatsoever which belonged to her at the time of our
marriage or which I may have since presented her with. . . . And I do declare
it to be my will and desire that my said wife shall be allowed to retain
possession of and reside in the house I may occupy at the time of my decease
and to have the use of the furniture and all other things that may be there
therein for three calandar [sic] months from the time of my death and that the
usual establishment be kept up and paid and maintained out of my personal
estate during the said period of three calandar months and that none of such
furniture or other things shall be removed from the said premises until the
expiration of that period without the previous consent of my said wife. (will
1-2)
As noted, the Blakes owned by Butts
appear certainly to have been among the “furniture” and “other things” in his
house. The will raises the possibility that some of these household items,
including watercolors and/or books by Blake, were among the “trinkets and
furniture” that he presented to Mrs. Butts. Perhaps the four illuminated books
and The Grave purchased from the
Cumberland sale of 1835 were just such presents, purchases motivated by his
wife's fancy for these kinds of Blake works. It is interesting to note that the
illuminated books from the Butts collection remained together, selling only in
the March 1852 auction and not in Ford's, Butts Jr.'s, or Captain Butts's
auctions. The idea that they stayed together because Butts gave them to his
wife does not seem unreasonable. He did give her—or she inadvertently
inherited—Blake's poem “The Phoenix to Mrs. Butts,” even though it was probably
addressed to the first Mrs. Butts. The manuscript poem, which resembles a page
from Innocence, passed through her
side of the family, surfacing in 1981 (see Viscomi “Phoenix”).
The will also raises the possibility of Mrs. Butts's taking Blakes and furniture while they were still under her supervision, within the first three months after Butts's death (i.e., the summer of 1845). In other words, the stipulation that nothing was to leave the Grafton residence without Mrs. Butts's permission created a window of opportunity. After that, the house and everything in it became the sole property of Butts Jr. This change of title required that Butts Jr., his wife Mary Ann, and their three children (Frederick John, Aubrey, and Mary Ann Blanch) vacate their house at 5 Upper Fitzroy Street and that Mrs. Butts vacate her house of the past 19 years. Whether she and her stepson, Butts Jr., came to some living arrangement is unknown, but it seems unlikely, since she had two daughters, one living a few doors away.
Mary Ann and Caroline Matilda Delauney
are mentioned in Butts's will as “daughters of his wife” and by their married
names, Mary Ann Long and Caroline M. Baker.
Mary Ann Delauney married Charles Long on 24 November 1827, and Caroline
Matilda Delauney married Henry Baker, an architect, on 24 June 1837. [41] Both
daughters were married in St. Pancras, Old Church. In the 1840s, according
to
the postal directories, the Bakers lived at 25 Grafton Street, a few doors
down from the Buttses. Mrs. Butts apparently moved in with the Bakers; she died
in their residence at 11 Upper Gower Street on 24 December 1851 at the age of
81. [42]
The need to move often motivates the sale
of household goods; Butts Jr.'s 1853 sale at Forster and Son appears to have
been motivated by his “Removal from his Residence” (title page of sale
catalogue). Soon after the death of Thomas Butts in April 1845, Butts Jr. moved
in and Mrs. Butts apparently vacated the house. These events are wrought with
opportunities for Blake material given to or claimed by Mrs. Butts to have
exited the Butts collection. Butts Jr.
may not have minded Mrs. Butts taking “furniture,” “whether ornamental or
useful,” that she had been given or wanted, either out of generosity, to keep
the peace, or to help make room for his furniture. He may not have had strong
emotional or aesthetic ties to the works, which were not, as the 1852 and 1853
auction prices of around one pound per watercolor indicate, financially
lucrative possessions. At any rate, it seems reasonable to suspect that Mrs.
Butts had her own small collection of Blakes when she vacated the Grafton
Street residence and began living with her daughter, Caroline Baker.
The titles of the illustrated books in
the March 1852 auction add to the likelihood that most of the Blakes in that
sale came from Mrs. Butts—and lessen the likelihood that Butts Jr. was the
vendor at that auction. The sale included two copies of Night Thoughts (one was colored), a copy of The Grave, and a copy of the Illustrations
to the Book of Job. If we assume that these works came from the Butts
collection, then we must also assume that Butts collected multiple copies of
them, for copies of Night Thoughts
and The Grave sold at Butts Jr.'s
June 1853 auction (lot 143), and a copy of the Job engravings sold at Captain Butts's 1903 auction.
Duplicates may be characteristic of a
connoisseur—or to a person with more than one residence—but would be very
surprising for a man who does not even mention his art collection in his will.
The duplicate most troubling is The Grave,
because Butts Jr. bought a copy at E. V. Utterson's 5 July 1852 auction for 18
shillings (see “Marketplace” 53 passim). This is the copy I believe he apparently
sold at his June 1853 auction, along with the material he acquired from the
Ford sale. But the assumption that Butts Jr. was the vendor of the March 1852
auction requires us to believe that he had just sold a copy of The Grave in that auction for five
shillings only to buy one a few months later for 18 shillings. If, however,
Butts Jr. was not the vendor of the March sale, then The Grave that sold for five shillings may have been the one Butts
acquired in 1835 from Cumberland and presumably gave to his wife. Butts Jr.
acquired Utterson's copy of The Grave
for 18 shillings because he did not have a copy of his own.
The March 1852 sale had an uncolored copy
and a colored copy of Night Thoughts
(lots 58, 59), but it is doubtful that both came from the Butts collection,
since that would have given Butts at least three copies of this book, because
Butts Jr. sold an uncolored copy in June 1853. [43] It seems more likely that Butts owned two
copies, giving Mrs. Butts the colored copy that sold in the March 1852 sale and
his son the copy he sold the following year. That Butts Jr. had a copy would
explain why he passed up two (presumably monochrome) copies at the Utterson
sale. Utterson was a collector who owned duplicates of many items, but it seems
unlikely that Butts would have acquired two uncolored copies of the same book.
Butts Jr. also passed up copies of The
Book of Ahania and America, the
only two illuminated books in that sale. Perhaps he was outbid (£1 13s. and £2
7s. respectively; see “Marketplace” 54, 66)—or perhaps, as suggested above, he
was interested in Blake's watercolors and not his books.
Butts acquired a proof copy of the Job engravings from Linnell in April
1826 (Bentley, Blake Records 591,
599). This copy was almost certainly the one that stayed in the family, selling
in Captain Butts's 1903 auction as “the superb india proof copy (no. 1),
morocco” (lot 21). The copy that sold in March 1852 was “Choice India Proofs”
(lot 60); it was either a duplicate in the Butts collection, or it was one of
the works that already belonged to the anonymous collector of the March 1852
sale. The latter seems more likely; Butts is not recorded as acquiring two
copies in the Linnell receipts, and the “Amateur” who acquired Butts's Blakes
was apparently devoted to engravings and proofs (see lots 62-88, 187-337 of the
March 1852 sale).
VI
The small collection of Blake’s
illuminated books, illustrated books, and biblical watercolors that sold in the
March 1852 auction came from the Butts collection. Could Butts Jr. have sold
them to the vendor of that auction when he moved in 1845,
taking them either from the Grafton residence or from his own residence at
Upper Fitzroy Street? Possibly, but given Butts’s will, Mrs. Butts seems
unlikely to have left Grafton Street empty-handed when she departed in 1845 for
her daughter's house. She may have sold the collection privately between 1845
and 1851 to an unknown print and drawing connoisseur or dealer. Or, possibly,
the collection was sold by her daughter or son-in-law, who presumably inherited
the Blakes upon Mrs. Butts's death in December 1851. It is interesting to note
that the “Phoenix” manuscript was passed down through her other daughter's
family—and perhaps for that reason never made it to the auction halls.
Nearly all the Blakes that sold at
Charles Ford's Sotheby auction on 26 June 1852 came from the Butts collection.
Butts Jr., however, seems very unlikely to have been behind this sale, since
he
was there as a buyer. If the Dalston
Butts was Blake's patron, then it is possible that the collection of Blake
watercolors, all executed in or before 1808, was formed when Butts left Dalston
for Fitzroy Square in 1808, when the Dalston residence was inhabited by Robert
Butts. [44] On the other hand, Ford may have acquired
his Blakes from one of Butts's other sons, either his eldest Joseph, who died
in
1827, or youngest, George, who died
in Toulouse in 1837 (Burke). [45] This possibility is
raised
by Ford's having acquired exactly half of the 1808 Paradise Lost illustrations, a division
that suggests two brothers sharing the series. Butts Jr. did own six of the
illustrations, and two of the three designs that Linnell borrowed in 1822 (Bentley, 275) were eventually in Ford's
collection, which suggests that the series was still intact in 1822.
There were many other opportunities for
Blakes to have exited Butts's collection before Butts died and by hands other
than Butts Jr. (For a list of Blakes that did exit by private sale at unknown
dates, see “Marketplace” 52-53) Joseph's four children were adults by the time
of their grandfather's death in 1845: Edward Herringham Butts, Henry Wellington
Halse Butts, William George Butts, and Elizabeth Butts, born in 1810, 1813, and
1818 respectively. [46] He also had stepdaughters, Mary Ann and
Caroline Delauney, and possibly a stepson, Cornelius Delaney (see Viscomi,
“Phoenix” 13-14). He had a nephew Thomas, the son of his half-brother John, and
unnamed nephews and nieces, the children of his half-sister Matilda. His sister
Sarah and her husband William Harris lived in a house that Butts owned in Stoke
Newington (will 5) and were bequeathed an annuity of £85, to be paid out of the
rent from another of his properties, “No 7 Argyll place (formerly known as No
39
Argyll Street)” (will 2). The possibility cannot be dismissed of a Cooper,
Delauney, Long, Baker, Harris, Floyd, or other members of the Butts family,
including possibly a Fearon or Wartnaby, having acquired Blakes from Butts's
collection. They, or a son other than Thomas Butts Jr., may have acquired
Blakes as gifts or by sale, before Butts died, and sold them to Ford or to
another party from whom Ford purchased them.
As we can see, Butts's family was larger
than Rossetti and Briggs realized, and the provenance of the collection more
complicated. Yet, with 16 houses and many relatives, and moments like weddings
and births for gift giving, it is surprising that so much of the Butts Blake
collection stayed intact. Perhaps it did so because Blake had little economic
or aesthetic value to other members of the family. But we cannot assume that
Butts's other sons or grandchildren other than Captain Butts were not given
Blakes. We mistakenly make that assumption about Butts Jr.'s daughter, Mary Ann
Blanch, who probably owned at least 13 temperas that Rossetti recorded as
belonging to her brother, Captain Butts, and which appear to have been lost in
a fire (see “Marketplace” 45). If either of Butts's sons who died before him
had owned Blakes, that fact would not necessarily have been known to Rossetti,
who used the 1852 and 1853 sale catalogues and Butts Jr.'s Blake collection as
constituted in January 1863, after Butts Jr.'s death, as his base.
My intention here is to challenge the
assumption that Butts Jr. was behind the 26-27 March and 26 June 1852 auctions
at Sotheby's, and that he alone was responsible for bringing into the “open
air” over 160 works by Blake that had long been “preserved” in his father's
“house,” and thereby almost single-handedly providing the grounds for a
reevaluation of Blake in mid-nineteenth-century England. There were more
collectors interested in Blake and interested earlier than previously
recognized, including E. V. Utterson, Charles Ford, the anonymous vendor of the
March 1852 sale, probably Mrs. Butts, and possibly Robert Butts. The case for
Mrs. Butts seems stronger than that of Robert Butts, which is based primarily
on new information about Butts’s father, 9 Great Marlborough Street, and
circumstantial evidence linking Butts to Hackney. Engaging in such speculation,
though it is sure to be extended, corrected, or proved by biographers and
professional genealogists to be merely “numerous highly improbable
coincidence,” is a necessary first step to clarifying the relation between
patron and artist and eventually locating Butts's “Green House.”
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Signature of Thomas Butts as witness on marriage license of Lucy Butts and Joseph Wartnaby, 12 September 1798.
2. Signature of T. Butts on his and Sarah
Robert’s marriage license, 28 March 1785.
3. Tax collectors rate book, Hackney, 1797.
4. “Thomas Butts” in the hand of the minister
on Thomas Butts’s second marriage, 12 April 1826.
5. Verso of 1805 receipt written in Butts’s and
Blake’s hands, with the former signing “Mr. Butts.”
6. A selection of Bs, s, and us from the 1805 receipt.
7. Map of Dalston, showing Bath Place, detail
from a map of Hackney, 1831.
WORKS
CITED
Atkins. P. J. The Directories of London, 1677-1977. London: Mansell, 1990.
DIRECTORIES
CONSULTED
Andrew's
London Directory.
London: J. Andrews, 1790-92.