Gerald Eades Bentley, Jr (23 August 1930—31 August 2017)

I first met Jerry Bentley in 1992 or 1993. I had drafted a paper on William Muir and the Blake Press at Edmonton and sent it off to Blake Quarterly. The journal wrote back to say that G.E. Bentley, Jr had also sent them a paper on Muir and could we sort out two complementary papers for publication. We met up in Oxford where Jerry and Beth had rooms at Merton College and agreed a split. Jerry would provide a transcript and commentary on Muir’s correspondence with the bookseller Bernard Quaritch. And I would provide a biography of Muir with his letters to Kerrison Preston.

Actually it was Beth I met first. Jerry had been delayed somewhere so Beth got me to help with the laundry.  I wonder now if, say, years earlier it had been Sir Geoffrey Keynes at the door, would Beth have sought his assistance in folding sheets? Probably yes.

Jerry was the first distinguished literary scholar I had ever met. Our two papers appeared in Blake Quarterly in Summer 1993, and his had a note

Mr. Keri Davies has generously allowed me to see his essay on Muir, coincidentally written at the same time as my own, and to improve mine on the basis of his.

Naively, I thought this was the generous courtesy one would receive from Blake scholars as a matter of course. Alas!

The piece on Muir was my very first Blakean publication but I doubt if it would have taken me any further. Jerry recognised, more perhaps than I did, the significance of the local to my research approach. He wrote to me around that time pointing out that the art historian Joan Stemmler had recently published a paper drawing on the correspondence of Francis Douce with Richard Twiss and suggested that maybe I, with my local knowledge, could find out more about Twiss, who lived at Bush Hill, and about “a lady here” who had shown Twiss two books by Blake as early as 1794. Out of this grew not just my discovery of the book-collector Rebekah Bliss but my whole career as Blake scholar. If it hadn’t been for Jerry, nothing. No publications. No subsequent PhD. Nothing.

Then in 1998, now embarked on my PhD at St Mary’s Strawberry Hill, I was involved with David Worrall in organising a conference (Blake and the Book: The Materiality of Books in the Life and Times of William Blake). The conference was run on the tiniest of budgets and when our proposed key speaker made difficulties about payment of expenses, disaster loomed. Jerry stepped in at the last minute and saved the day.

I also remember about that time being contacted by the Secretary of the Hafod Trust with an enquiry about the work Blake did for George Cumberland’s Attempt to Describe Hafod (1796). Of course I referred her to Jerry. He replied promptly and helpfully. “What a gent!” she commented.

I was honoured to be asked to contribute to Jerry’s Festschrift (Blake in our Time) in 2010 and delighted to attend the celebrations in Toronto marking Jerry and Beth’s eightieth birthdays, with book launch, garden party, symposium, exhibition, and formal dinner. Here’s a photo of the latter. Jerry is in white tie and tails on the right, I’m the little fat chap in a dinner jacket on the left.

His beloved Beth died in 2011. The work continued to appear, including a short but important note recording a receipt (for quantities of ribbon and silk handkerchiefs) issued to Sir Joseph Banks by James Blake, the poet’s father. It was still in draft form and awaiting illustration when I intervened to point out that the receipt had already been published albeit in a rather obscure source. Basically I was being an interfering busybody but nevertheless Jerry dedicated the published paper to me.

I should like to dedicate this note to Keri Davies, who tells me that the Joseph Banks invoice is dealt with on pp. 95-99 of David Jenkins-Handy, “Visual Culture and Visionary Satire: The Bodies Politic of William Blake,” Birmingham PhD, 2005.

Again we see Jerry’s kindness and generosity of spirit. What a gent!

Blake Quarterly papers cited

Volume 26, Issue 1 (Summer 1992)

“Undisturbed above once in a Lustre”: Francis Douce, George Cumberland and William Blake at the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum by Joan K. Stemmler
http://bq.blakearchive.org/pdfs/26.1.stemmler.pdf

Volume 27, Issue 1 (Summer 1993)

“Blake . . . Had No Quaritch”: The Sale of William Muir’s Blake Facsimiles by G. E. Bentley, Jr.
http://bq.blakearchive.org/pdfs/27.1.bentley.pdf

William Muir and the Blake Press at Edmonton with Muir’s letters to Kerrison Preston by Keri Davies.
http://bq.blakearchive.org/pdfs/27.1.davies.pdf

Volume 50, Issue 2 (Fall 2016)

William Blake of the Woolpack & Peacock by G. E. Bentley, Jr.
http://www.blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/article/view/bentley502/pdf (paywall)