William Blake and Cricket

When reading Blake’s earliest surviving writings, I find myself tantalised by the roads not taken: the precocious Augustan poet of the Poetical Sketches; or the broad comedy of the manuscript known, from its opening paragraph, as “An Island in the Moon”.

In the Moon, is a certain Island near by a mighty continent, which small island seems to have some affinity to England. & what is more extraordinary the people are so much alike & their language so much the same that you would think you was among your friends.

“An Island in the Moon” is a 17 page fragment written in pen and ink in Blake’s hand, and now in the Fitzwilliam Museum. It notably contains the earliest extant drafts of “Nurse’s Song”, “Holy Thursday”, and “The Little Boy Lost”, which were to make their first published appearance in his Songs of Innocence (1789).

Alternative universes are simply devices for embarrassing the one we have: the point is not to go elsewhere, but to use elsewhere as a reflection on where you are. Blake’s invitation to see the real England and hear the voices of real people is unmistakeable. The action takes place at the home of the central figure, Quid the Cynic, the domestic settings—study, parlour, garden—for a sendup of middle class London’s social and intellectual life distilled into eleven brief chapters of “Great confusion & disorder”. Some early commentators saw it as a satire on public figures—on Joseph Priestley and other members of the Joseph Johnson circle. More recently, it’s been realised that the work makes most sense if viewed as a boisterous caricature of Blake’s own immediate friends. The philosopher-trio Suction the Epicurean (whom I identify as Blake’s business partner James Parker, 1757-1805), Quid the Cynic (usually thought of as William Blake himself, after all what else would you call someone with a younger brother Bob), and Sipsop the Pythagorean (I’m looking for a vegetarian friend of Blake—an adherent to a Pythagorean diet) join such companions as Inflammable Gass the Wind Finder (Samuel Varley, 1744-1842), Etruscan Column (obviously the hunch-backed John Flaxman, 1755-1826—a cruel joke but there we have it), and Mrs. Nannicantipot (often identified as Catherine Blake) in a swirl of gossip, recitation, joking, singing, and passionate wrangling about topics of current interest. A song about the game of cricket is featured on page [15] of the manuscript (pages 463-464 of David Erdman’s Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake):

Here nobody could sing any longer, till Tilly Lally pluckd up a spirit & he sung.

          O I say you Joe
          Throw us the ball
          Ive a good mind to go
          And leave you all

          I never saw saw such a bowler
          To bowl the ball in a turd
          And to clean it with my handkercher
          Without saying a word

          That Bills a foolish fellow
          He has given me a black eye
          He does not know how to handle a bat
          Any more than a dog or a cat
          He has knockd down the wicket
          And broke the stumps
          And runs without shoes to save his pumps

In line 6 “turd” has been deleted and the less objectionable “tansey” written in. The correction is in Blake’s hand but a different ink—presumably much later second thoughts. The singer “Tilly Lally” I identify as Alexander Tilloch (1729-1825), journalist and publisher—even though it feels slightly counter-intuitive to have a Scotsman singing about cricket. Tilloch arrived in London from Glasgow in 1787, which is why I date “An Island in the Moon” to circa 1788. I suggest that Blake himself may have sung “O I say you Joe” at one of Mrs Mathew’s gatherings and amended the words to avoid giving offence.

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For Blake, cricket is a game played by small boys. Cricket and bowling hoops are amongst the games and pastimes he illustrated. Many years ago, the Blake Society used to meet at The House of St Barnabas, No 1 Greek Street, on the corner with windows looking into Soho Square. I remember thinking after Blake Society meetings that if one had stood at the corner window in 1765 and looked north-east into Soho Square, one might have noticed a forlorn little boy of five standing at the window of No 22. The little boy was William Beckford, waiting for his music lesson. And if one looked down into Greek Street itself one would have seen his music teacher, the 9-year old W.A. Mozart, hurrying by. And the 7-year old bowling his hoop across the square—why that’s William Blake! Three precocious children of genius in the same small space in 1765. And only William would have a real childhood, playing cricket with his chums in Soho Square.

In 1789, soon after apparently abandoning work on “An Island in the Moon”, William Blake printed the first copies of a most unusual book. The first of his books in “illuminated printing”, Songs of Innocence consisted of thirty-one etched plates combining poetry and design, delicately washed with watercolour (later printings were more elaborately hand-coloured). His poem “The Ecchoing Green” is accompanied by illustrations showing children at play including boys with cricket bats.

Here’s the first page.

And a detail from a monochrome printing.

Here’s the second page.

And a further detail. The boy is carrying a curved bat, the standard shape in the eighteenth century.

          The Ecchoing Green

          The Sun does arise,
          And make happy the skies.
          The merry bells ring
          To welcome the Spring.
          The sky-lark and thrush,
          The birds of the bush,
          Sing louder around,
          To the bells chearful sound.
          While our sports shall be seen
          On the Ecchoing Green.

          Old John with white hair
          Does laugh away care,
          Sitting under the oak,
          Among the old folk,
          They laugh at our play,
          And soon they all say.
          Such such were the joys.
          When we all girls & boys,
          In our youth-time were seen,
          On the Ecchoing Green.

          Till the little ones weary
          No more can be merry
          The sun does descend,
          And our sports have an end:
          Round the laps of their mothers,
          Many sisters and brothers,
          Like birds in their nest,
          Are ready for rest;
          And sport no more seen,
          On the darkening Green.

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Blake’s third cricketer appears in the Poems of Thomas Gray, decorated for Nancy Flaxman (c. 1760-1820), in 1797-1798. An octavo edition of Gray’s Poems was taken apart and each individual leaf mounted within a large folio page. Blake then decorated the thus enlarged margins with designs relating to the poems. A cross in the margin indicates the particular line illustrated.

The cricketing boy occurs on one of the pages illustrating “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”.

The full page. The human-like figure kneeling on the ground and facing right at the left edge of the design represents Jealousy. He bends his torso rightward and leans on his extended right arm, with his right hand flat on the ground. A snake coils its body around his lifted left arm. Gluttony appears as a pig’s head visible to the right of Jealousy’s lower body, facing right. The head is lowered so that its snout touches the ground. Three vulture-like beasts fly or hover in a row above the children, facing left. Together the three form a nightmarish mass of wings and claws out of which three heads clearly emerge. The text panel partially hides the body of the foremost vulture, who leans or bends down with human-like arms outstretched toward the boy with a bat, below. The wide mouth of what seems to be a cave yawns near the lower right corner of the design. It is dark with shadow. If this is a cave, then the hill in which it appears may extend leftward across the bottom half of the design. The colouring of the hill and the ground on which the children play suggests that both are covered with grass. Shadows fall on the ground to the right of the girl tossing a ball, the right foot of the boy leaping forward, and the right foot of the boy holding the bat. Wash in the top third of the design suggests the sky, perhaps at sunset. The illustration taken as a whole seems a dark threatening version of “The Ecchoing Green” where the “little victims” are still unaware of their fate.

Detail. A boy carrying a cricket bat walks to the right in the lower left corner, facing right but turning his head to look forward and to the left. His left arm is down by his side and he grasps the end of the bat with this hand. As in the other representations, the boy has long hair, is dressed in tight breeches with white hose and wears light pumps on his feet. I think of these repeated images as what Ed Sanders terms glyphs, graphic elements that carry the same meaning throughout Blake’s work.

The lines displayed are

          Theirs buxom health of rosy hue,
          Wild wit, invention ever-new,
          And lively cheer of vigour born;
          The thoughtless day, the easy night,
          The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
          That fly the approach of morn.

          Alas, regardless of their doom,
          The little victims play!
          No sense have they of ills to come,
          Nor care beyond today:
          Yet see how all around ‘em wait
          The ministers of human fate,
          And black Misfortune’s baleful train!
          Ah, show them where in ambush stand
          To seize their prey the murtherous band!
          Ah, tell them, they are men!

       * These shall the fury Passions tear,
          The vultures of the mind,

* The line illustrated.

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While Blake shows cricket played informally by schoolboys, elsewhere in the English counties something like the modern game was evolving. Miss Elizabeth Iremonger, who owned the copy of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience that introduced Henry Crabb Robinson to Blake’s poetry, wrote to her friend Mary Heber about cricket at Hambledon in July 1786. (The Hambledon Cricket Club in Hampshire was essentially social. From the mid-1760s, Hambledon’s stature grew till by the late 1770s it was the foremost cricket club in England. In spite of its relative remoteness, it had developed into a private club of noblemen and country gentry, for whom one of cricket’s attractions was the opportunity it offered for betting. Although some of these occasionally played in matches, professional players were mainly employed.)

We are a fine House-full here just now & shall sit down Sixteen to Dinner today. The Hambledon Cricket Match, a famous amusement in this County, has drawn to us for a Day or two Lord Winchelsea, Mr Delme, another Gentleman & Lord George & Lady Louisa Lennox, & her two Daughters are coming here to Dinner. They are very Pretty Girls, & the Eldest has the reputation of refusing Sir Godfrey Webster, Sir George Thomas & Mr Luttrell. It has been said for some Years past that She is firmly resolved against Matrimony; She has seen so much Unhappiness from Gallantries in her own Family that She does not believe it possible that a change of condition can produce Happiness.

Miss Iremonger herself never married. History does not record her batting average.

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Sources and Further Reading

Francis Bamford, ed.—Dear Miss Heber : an eighteenth century correspondence.—London : Constable, MCMXXXVI.
Letters to Miss Mary Heber, found at Weston Hall, Northamptonshire.

Anthony Bateman.—Cricket, literature and culture : symbolising the nation, destabilising empire.—Farnham : Ashgate, 2009.

William Blake.—Water-colour designs for the poems of Thomas Gray. Introduction and commentary by Geoffrey Keynes.—3 vol.—Clairvaux, Jura : Trianon Press, 1972.
A very beautiful and convincing facsimile. The water-colour designs were reproduced by the collotype and hand-stencil process.

Keri Davies.—‘“My little Cane Sofa and the Bust of Sappho”: Elizabeth Iremonger and the female world of book-collecting’, in Queer Blake, ed. Helen Bruder and Tristanne Connolly.—Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2010.—pages 221-35.

David V. Erdman.—The illustrated Blake.—New York : Doubleday, 1974.

Geoffrey Keynes.—William Blake’s water-colours illustrating the poems of Thomas Gray.—Chicago : O’Hara, 1974.
A catalogue with drastically reduced monochrome illustrations and a few in full colour.

Michael Phillips, ed.—Blake's An Island in the Moon.—Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1987.
With a facsimile of Blake’s manuscript.

Irene Taylor.—Blake’s illustrations to the Poems of Thomas Gray.—Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1971.
The designs illustrated in monochrome.

Frank A. Vaughan.—Again to the life of eternity: William Blake’s illustrations to the Poems of Thomas Gray.—Selinsgrove : Susquehanna University Press, 1996.
All 116 pages illustrated, half-size and monochrome.

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