William Blake

There was an exhibition of the work of William Blake at Tate Britain in London last year. I joined the crowds going to it, but was stopped in my tracks in the first room by a reference to Edward Francis Burney (a favourite cousin of Fanny’s).

There, beside portraits of William Blake, was a book of drawings attributed to Edward Burney. The two had been at the Royal Academy of Art together in 1779. Their styles were very different. Edward was a virtuoso draughtsman doing delicate book illustrations and portraits (including one of Fanny) quite the opposite of Blake’s dramatic, brilliant, fiery work.

The Waltz – Watercolour by Edward Burney

William Blake born at 28 Broad Street in 1757 (now corner of Broadwick and Marshall Street) lived there until his marriage in 1782. Broad Street ran parallel with Poland Street, described as an unpretentious but respectable neighbourhood. In the 1760’s Soho had bustling streets filled with horse drawn carriages, narrow alleys and Georgian buildings.

His father was a hosier with five surviving children. William had no formal schooling and was allowed to wander the streets of London until he was ten, when he went to PARS’ Drawing School, he was apprenticed at fourteen to an engraver. In 1779 he was at the Royal Academy of Art where he met Edward Burney.

William returned to Soho after his marriage and opened a printing shop next door to his late father’s shop, now run by his brother. Another Blake brother opened a bakery across the road at 29 Broad Street, (maybe where Patisserie Valerie now is) giving the Blakes three businesses at the southern end of Broad Street.

Did the Blakes know the Burneys?

I would like to think they did as William would have been cheered from what sounds like a lonely childhood by the lively Burney children. When Edward and William were at art school in 1779, the Burneys were no longer in Poland Street. However another connection could be made.

“Art is the tree of life, Science is the tree of Death”

When first married in 1782, William and his wife Catherine lived in a house in Green Street, (now Irving Street) next to St. Martin’s Street, Leicester Square where the Burneys then lived. In fact the Burneys lived in the house in which Newton had lived until his death. Newton, however, was one of the targets of Blakes dislike of scientists. Blake claimed:

Then in 1784 William and Catherine moved to 28 Poland Street. At the end of the street nearer to Oxford Street which is where my mother speculated in her account (see Poland Street) about the activities of the women.

Peter Ackroyd in his biography of Blake describes it as “a narrow house of 4 stories and a basement, with a single front and back room on each floor.”

For Christmas this year, I was given a copy of an old Pelican edition of William Blake by J.B. Bronowski. It concentrates on Blake’s writing and his rabble rousing on behalf of the poor. There is a reference to Fanny Burney being shocked that there was revolutionary feeling in England as “her friends Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke had praised English law with such assurance that she could think of no cause for discontent.” Blake, however, had very different thoughts, especially at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Wheel without wheel,

To perplex youth in their outgoings & to bind to labours in Albion

Of day & night the myriads of eternity: that they may grind

And polish brass & iron hour after hour, laborious task,

Kept ignorant of its use: that they might spend the days of wisdom

In sorrowful drudgery to obtain a scanty pittance of bread.