Blake's Leavetaking

One of the casualties of the packed nature of the schedule in this particular course is that we often can't stop to reflect on the authors' biographical stories and details in any significant way, which is unfortunate considering how interesting (and, often, how (melo)dramatic) these life stories tend to be. Blake is already fast receding as we move into Wordsworth and then on to Coleridge later this week, but you might look up accounts of his final years when he was weak with illness and then finally slipped away in February of 1827. He was bed-ridden -- often shivering and tormented -- by the summer of 1825 with what he referred to as "this abominable Ague." Feeble as he was, though, and wracked by chest infections, he continued to work on his paintings and watercolors. His devotion to his wife Catherine (whom he married when he was 24 and she 20), which was lifelong, was also on display in his last years, months, and days. It is said that on the day of his death he stopped his work and turned to Catherine (who was in tears), and said, "Stay Kate! Keep just as you are -- I will draw your portrait -- for you have ever been an angel to me." It was recorded that he put the completed portrait down and then began to sing verses and hymns (out of palpable gladness). He died at 6:00 that evening in what was described as a "glorious manner": his eyes were said to have brightened and he burst out into singing of the things he saw in heaven. He was buried the day before their 45th wedding anniversary. It sounds like a departure worthy of a Romantic poet, no?!

By the way, you may really want to seek out high quality renditions of his various plates, engravings, watercolors, etc. You can find a whole archive of them here at the Blake Archive, including the various plates that accompanied the Songs of Innocence and Experience. Some of his latest works, I believe, which he was working on right up until the time of his death, were water color illustrations for Dante's The Divine Comedy. One critic, noting his visual artistry, went so far as to designate him as "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced."