Felicia Hemans and the Mythologizing of Blake's Death Paula R
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University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Faculty Publications English Language and Literatures, Department of 1993 Felicia Hemans and the Mythologizing of Blake's Death Paula R. Feldman University of South Carolina - Columbia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/engl_facpub Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Publication Info Published in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 27, Issue 3, 1993, pages 69-72. Feldman, P.R. (1993/1994). Felicia Hemans and the Mythologizing of Blake’s Death. Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 27(3), 69-72. © Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. This Article is brought to you by the English Language and Literatures, Department of at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Winter 1993/94 BlAKE/AN IUUS7RA1ED QUAR1ERLY 69 The very joyfulness with which this sin Felicia Hemans and gular man welcomed the coming of death, the Mythologizing of made his dying moments intensely mourn ful. He lay chaunting songs, and the verses Blake's Death and the music were both the offspring of the moment. He lamented that he could no Paula R. Feldman longer commit those inspirations, as he called them, to paper(.l "Kate," he said, "I am a changing man-I always rose and wrote down my thoughts, whether it rained, snowed, or shone, and you arose n February 1832, Felicia Hemans, at too and sat beside me-this can be no I that time Britain's most popular and longer." He died on the 12th of August, widely read poet, published in Black 1828,4 without any visible pain-his wife, wood's Edinburgh Magazine a short who sat watching him, did not perceive poetic drama entitled "The Painter's when he ceased breathing. Last Work.-A Scene," confiding in a conspicuous footnote that the piece While Cunningham emphasizes was "suggested by the closing scene in Blake's cheerfulness in approaching the life of the painter Blake; as beauti death and the technical achievement fully related by Allan Cunningham." of his last drawing ("a fine likeness"), Though Cunningham's early sketch of Hemans responded to another aspect Blake in The Lives ofthe Most Eminent of this account, one to which she was British Painters, Sculptors and Archi 1. Felicia Hemans (1828). Engraved by particularly attuned. Famous for tectsl has received attention from al Edward Scriven after a portrait by William celebrating the "domestic affections," most all of Blake's biographers, E. West. Harriet Hughes, the poet's sister, Hemans had only recently published used this engraving for the frontispiece Records of Woman (1828), high Hemans's poem has been entirely to her 7-volume, 1839 edition of overlooked; though it was frequently Hemans's Works. lighting the nobility and courage of reprinted throughout the nineteenth heroines in various difficult and often century in dozens of British and He had now reached his seventy-first melancholy circumstances; she was American editions of Hemans's Poeti year, and the strength of nature was fast herself still emotionally devastated yielding. Yet he was to the last cheerful and cal Works and was, therefore, a far from having nursed her mother in her contented. "I glory," he said, "in dying, and more widely disseminated account of last illness. So her attention was drawn have no griefbut in leaving you, Katharine; to the suggestions in Cunningham's Blake's death that Cunningham's, we have lived happy, and we have lived account of Catherine Blake's extraor modern scholars have been unaware long; we have been ever together, but we of it, in part because Hemans's com shall be divided soon. Why should 1 fear dinary character and the painfulness of plete Works have not been reprinted death? Nor do 1 fear it. 1 have endeavoured her situation; in Hemans's retelling, since they last appeared in an Oxford to live as Christ commands, and have the focus shifts from the painter and University Press edition in 1914. sought to worship God truly-in my own his remarkable skills even at "death's Hemans spent most of her life in house, when 1 was not seen of men." He door" to a valorization of his artistic grew weaker and weaker-he could no Wales and is unlikely ever to have met subject-the woman he loves and ad longer sit upright; and was laid in his bed, Blake. She visited London only briefly mires. William's declaration to with no one to watch over him, save his Catherine in Cunningham's account, as a child On the winters of 1804 and wife, who, feeble and old herself, required "you have ever been an angel to me," 1805), never to return. What she knew help in such a touching duty. of Blake before reading Cunningham The Ancient of Days was such a forms the subtext to Hemans's retell s is unclear; but her friend William favourite with Blake, that three days before ing. To foreground this aspect of the Wordsworth might have mentioned his death, he sat bolstered up in bed, and drama, she takes her epigraph from Blake to her on one of their walks tinted it with his choicest colours and in his Thomas Campbell's "Gertude of together in the Lake District where she happiest style. He touched and retouched Wyoming:" it-held it at arm's length, and then threw vacationed during the summer of it from him, exclaiming, "There! that will Clasp me a little longer on the brink 1830, shortly before drafting her do! 1 cannot mend it. " He saw his wife in Of life, while 1 can feel thy dear caress; poem.2 Still, she was probably un And when this heart hath ceased to beat tears-she felt this was to be the last of his oh! think, ' aware of the errors, embellishments, works-"Stay, Kate' (cried Blake) keep just And let it mitigate thy woe's excess, and outright fabrications in Cunning as you are-I will draw your portrait-for That thou hast been to me all tenderness, ham's account.3 Cunningham had you have ever been an angel to me"-she And friend to more than human written of Blake: obeyed, and the dying artist made a fine friendship just. likeness. 70 BlAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERLY Winter 1993/94 Proficient in Italian, Hemans Teresa. probably set her poetic drama in Italy SCENES AND HYMNS OF LIFE. Oh, Francesco! because of her great admiration for What will this dim world be to me, Francesco, 6 Italian art and literature. It seems like When wanting thy bright soul, the life of ly that she gives the Italian name "Fran all- cesco" to the William Blake character RE LIG rous POEMS. My only sunshine!-How can I bear on? to underline his frankness, sincerity, How can we part? We that have loved so and openness ("franchezza"), to sug well, With clasping spirits link'd so long by gest the spiritual freedom he embo grief- dies, and perhaps to point towards the FELICIA lJEMANS. By tears--by prayer? reassurance he gives his wife ("fran Francesco. cheggiare"). Similarly, it appears she •• lin", IlCIIUI.rllltl'l" ,to:lle u( ~k~, Ev'n there/orewe can part, \ ,.d tht".H hill',m tlu(!luuion tls'll names the Catherine Blake character .H lh y romm.nd .h.......... rul! b h :dl t ~O() II I. With an immortal trust, that such high lIu " lIlI1l1l1d t MionAl, Iq_t o r 1"h(.'(1 "Teresa" to suggest at one and the same 1:; '·(' n l(Ulh.nlh~ ·" love time the earthly region ("terra") she Is not of things to perish. Let me leave must continue to inhabit and her fear One record still, to prove it strong as ("terrore") of approaching widowhood. death, FollOWing is the text of Hemans's dra \rll.l,IA:'I1 1:J.t\l'I\\roon•• ; UI~JU ' I{I ; II ; Ev'n in Death's hour of triumph. Once matization of the death of Blake as it .\1'\1) T. ('A HELl" I.O:"lIo~ . again, ~1IU'f'j · XX X I' ·. was ftrst published in 1832. It is worth Stand with thy meek hands folded on thy quoting in its entirety because all sub breast, And eyes half veil'd, in thine own soul 2. Title page to the first of Hemans's sequent appearances reprint a sub absorb'd, books to include "The Painter's Last stantially revised, inferior text. As in thy watchings, ere I sink to sleep; Work," a poem about the death of And I will give the bending flower-like Blake. This 1834 version differed sig Scene--A Room in an Italian Cottage. The grace nificantly from the text that appeared Lattice opening upon a Landscape at sunset. Of that soft form, and the still sweetness two years earlier in Blackwood's Edin throned burgh Magazine. Francesco--Teresa. On that pale brow, and in that quivering Teresa. smile Farewell to earth, Teresa! not to thee, The fever'S hue hath left thy cheek, Of voiceless love, a life that shall outlast Nor yet to our deep love, nor yet awhile beloved! Their delicate earthly being. There-thy Unto the spirit of mine art, which flows Thine eyes, that make the day-spring in head Back on my soul in mastery!-one last my heart, Bow'd down with beauty, and with work! Are clear and still once more. Wilt thou tenderness, And I will shrine my wealth of glowing look forth? And lowly thought--even thus--my thoughts, Now, while the sunset with own Teresa! Clinging affection and undying hope, low-streaming light- Oh! the quick glancing radiance, and The light thou lov'st-hath made the All that is in me for eternity, bright bloom All, all, in that memorial.