Milton: titlepage or frontispiece

The Blake Society Zoom meeting of October 15, 2021, was devoted to MILTON AND THE COTTAGE. The following notes are a response to the first part of the discussion and are concerned with the titlepage (some think of it as a frontispiece; it has elements of both) to Blake’s Milton a Poem in 2 Books (1804).

Milton plate 1; copy A, British Museum.

Plate 1 of Milton presents a nude man, the spiritual form of the poet John Milton, against a background of smoke and flames. In copy A, the vortex of billowing smoke is clearly shown emerging from Milton’s left palm and, to a lesser extent, from his right wrist. (It is not so obvious in some later impressions; and is ignored by many commentators.) At the bottom is Milton’s motto from Paradise Lost: To Justify the Ways of God to Men.

Blake's Cottage at Felpham

The Blake Society’s Zoom meeting on Wednesday 20 October was devoted to MILTON AND THE COTTAGE. This is my belated response.

The climactic moment of Blake’s Milton is precipitated when the female figure Ololon appears as “a Virgin of twelve years.”

For Ololon step'd into the Polypus within the Mundane Shell
They could not step into Vegetable Worlds without becoming
The enemies of Humanity except in a Female Form
And as One Female, Ololon and all its mighty Hosts
Appear'd: a Virgin of twelve years

Ololon is the spiritual form of Milton’s Sixfold Emanation; she is the truth underlying his errors about woman. And there’s that striking designation of Ololon as “a Virgin of twelve years,” with its Biblical resonance and its evocation of the Virgin Mary. Ololon, like Mary, is a bearer of deliverance.

Benjamin Heath Malkin, 1769-1842 : a Bio-Bibliography.

PREFATORY NOTE

This “bio-bibliography”—a chronology of principal events in Malkin’s life and incorporating a list of his publications—was prepared many years ago for an abortive web project. It is presented here with additions and amendments, but remains a work in progress.

Benjamin Heath Malkin, antiquary and author, born in London in 1769, was headmaster of King Edward's School, Bury St Edmunds for many years, and later, more briefly, Professor of History at London University. He lived part of each year in Cowbridge, his wife’s home in the Vale of Glamorgan, from where he pursued his interests in local history and topography, and died there in 1842.

G.E. Bentley Jr. suggests that Malkin made the acquaintance of William Blake in 1803, soon after Blake returned to London from his three years in Felpham. But it is also possible that the two men were previously acquainted through the publisher Joseph Johnson for whom Blake had worked. William Godwin reports meeting Malkin at dinner at Horne Tooke’s in 1796 and 1797 and at Fuseli’s Milton Gallery in 1800, which suggests that Blake and Malkin may have shared some political and artistic sympathies. Malkin also lived close to Blake’s patron Thomas Butts in Hackney, and knew George Cumberland, another friend.

William Blake’s Cat

Mary Ann Linnell, wife to John Linnell and mother-in-law to Samuel Palmer, recalled in a letter of 1839 that “Mr Blake … used to say how much he preferred a cat to a dog as a companion because she was so much more quiet in her expression of attachment”.

It was perhaps in vague recollection of Mrs Linnell’s words that Tim Heath, two weeks ago, just before the Blake Society Zoom meeting, asked me if the Blakes, Catherine and William, ever had a cat. The answer is yes.

The Blakes moved to a cottage at Felpham in Sussex in September 1800 where Blake could work under the often burdensome patronage of the wealthy writer William Hayley. There he made the acquaintance of Hayley’s friend John Marsh (1752-1828) of Chichester, attorney, musician, prolific gentleman composer (thirty-nine symphonies), and diarist. Marsh recorded most of his long life in minute detail, in a journal that survives in thirty-seven volumes at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

In his Journal for 5 April 1802, Marsh wrote: “On Monday the 5th our white Cat produced 4 white Kittens, one of which we saved for Mr Blake of Felpham (Mr Hayley’s friend) but had great difficulty in rearing it, the Cat seeming to have very little Milk—”, and then repeated in his marginal summary: “Bred a White Kitten for Mr Blake”. It is pleasant to picture the white kitten playing with Catherine’s embroidery wool, or William, sitting quietly for once, dozing with a white kitten on his lap. (My understanding is that the gene that causes cats to have completely white fur is also linked to congenital hearing impairment. White cats with blue eyes are commonly deaf. One hopes that the Blakes’ white kitten escaped that disability.) Marsh’s journal also reports visits to Blake on 9th May and 26th June 1801, and gifts of white kittens to others in December 1801. Three years later, on 22th May 1805, he wrote again: “We drove to Felpham & carried our little white kitten to Mr Hayley”.