MINUTE PARTICULAR

The Image of Canada in Blake’s America a Prophecy

Warren Stevenson

Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, Volume 27, Issue 3, Winter 1993-1994, pp. 72-74 11 BLAKE/ANILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1993/94

Nor wandering thought. We thank thee, 1 6 vols. (London: John Murray, 1830) 2: gracious God! 140-79. The Image of Canada For all its treasured memories! tender 2 Henry Crabb Robinson records reading in Blake's America a cares, Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Ex- Fond words, bright, bright sustaining perience to Wordsworth on 24 May 1812 Prophecy looks unchanged and notes, "He was pleased with some of Through tears and joy. O Father! most of them, and considered Blake as having the all elements of poetry a thousand times more Warren Stevenson We thank, we bless Thee, for the than either Byron or Scott." priceless trust, 3 Some early reviews did take notice of Through Thy redeeming Son the unreliability of certain aspects of he theme oi America a Prophecy' vouchsafed, to those Cunningham's account. See, for instance, is less the emergence of a new That love in Thee, of union, in Thy sight, The Athenaeum for Saturday, 6 February T And in Thy heavens, immortal!—Hear 1830 and the London University Magazine nation—about whose post-revolu- our prayer! for March 1830. John Linnell also made no tionary course, involving as it did the Take home our fond affections, purified secret of his dismay at the liberties Cunning- persistence of slavery, Blake had To spirit-radiance from all earthly stain; ham took with the truth. [G. E. Bentley, Jr., major reservations—than the downfall Exalted, solemnized, made fit to dwell, BlakeRecords (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1969) of tyranny as a prelude to the millen- Father! where all things that are lovely 395.] Mona Wilson believes that the speech meet, beginning "I glory in dying" and the other nium. More than any of the other And all things that are pure—for beginning "I am a changing man" are English romantics, with the possible evermore, Cunningham's own inventions. See The exception of Shelley, Blake had a With Thee and Thine! Life of William Blake (New York: Cooper global perspective, reflected in his fre- Square Publishers, 1969) 191, 301, This melodramatic prayer of thanks- 370n372. quent use of the term "America" and giving changes the final emphasis of « Blake died in 1827, and was 69, not 71. its cognates with reference to a hemi- the poem from a celebration of 5 She also draws on Cunningham's later sphere comprising two continents. Catherine/Teresa to a more conven- observation: "The affection and fortitude Blake's earliest such reference is the of this woman [Catherine Blake] entitle her tional celebration of God the Father— one in The Marriage of Heaven and to much respect. She shared her husband's Hell (pi. 13) to the "North American from a matriarchal to a patriarchal lot without a murmur, set her heart solely vision, from the human to the divine. upon his fame, and soothed him in those tribes"; in Visions of the Daughters of The painter/poet now becomes priest hours of misgiving and despondency Albion(\ :20) Bromion, epitome of Bri- as well. Hemans revises Cunning- which are not unknown to the strongest tish imperialism, exclaims to Oothoon, intellects." "Thy soft American plains are mine, ham's construct this second time to 6 One of her earliest books was The and mine thy north & south"; and in reflect the way in which her own agen- Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy: a da and notion of her poetic role had Poem, 1816. Milton (35:17) the similar phrase changed toward the end of her life. But 7 Disconcertingly, life has a way of im- "America north & south" occurs, con- in both of her retellings, Blake is itating art. Only three years after the first tinuing the continental emphasis. neither the wild eccentric nor the mad publication of "The Painter's Last Work," Compare Jerusalem (58:43): "Britain is Hemans was herself dying, writing until painter, but a sensitive, generous, and Los' Forge; / America North & South nearly the end. Biographers and contem- 2 talented artist/poet with a nobility of porary readers would make much of her are his baths of living waters." spirit and an enormous capacity for last poem, "Sabbath Sonnet," dictated from In America a Prophecy, notwith- love. That Felicia Hemans, a poet who her deathbed, amid fever and delirium. standing the poem's revolutionary bias, 8 probably sold more books than Byron, Published in 1834, in Edinburgh, by one notes the continental drift of such William Blackwood and in London by T. identified with Blake and mythologized Cadell. lines as, "Then had America been lost, his death in such a positive way to a o'erwhelm'd by the Atlantic" (14:17). large general reading public only four And in the text of the Preludium, in and a half years after the event, sug- which the "shadowy daughter of Ur- gests that the story of Blake's early thona" confronts Ore, her sibling posthumous reputation may be far more ravisher, in addition to the former's complex and interesting than biogra- curious use of the Bromionesque phrase phers have so far acknowledged. "my American plains" (2:10), there is reference to Canada (twice), Mexico, Peru, and Africa. The atypical doubling of the Cana- dian reference is particularly intrigu- ing. In his most pointed overture during the aforementioned verbal ex- change, Ore tells the unnamed "Dark virgin," his sister-love, "anon a serpent Winter 1993/94 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY 73

folding / Around the pillars of Urthona, daughter of Urthona's response to Ill and round thy dark limbs, / On the Ore's incestuous overture: "I see a ser- propos of liberty, the first British Canadian wilds I fold. . ." (1:15-17). pent in Canada, who courts me to his territory to legislate against She is not slow to respond: "I see a love" (2:12). One of the two tiny A slavery was the newly formed (1791) serpent in Canada, who courts me to figures on the back of the praying fig- province of Upper Canada (now On- his love" (2: 12). It will be the conten- ure is both kneeling on one knee and tario), which had been settled almost tion of this article that these hints as to pointing skyward as well as north— entirely by those leaving the revolting the poem's overall meaning are probably to the North Star (the dark Colonies to come to loyal British land: developed in the pictorial symbolism coloration of the sky suggests that it is that is, those who came to be called the of the final Plate. nighttime), which is presumably in- United Empire Loyalists. The Lieuten- visible because located beyond the ant-Governor, John Graves Simcoe, a n upper right margin of the design. The Loyalist who had fought in the Revolu- northward momentum of the plate is tionary War and was opposed to avid V. Erdman, in an influential also indicated by the curious white slavery, led the attack. Simcoe, who Darticle entitled "America-. New mass sloping up and off to the right arrived in Upper Canada in July 1792, Expanses" and in The Illuminated beyond the Falls, adumbrating both chose Newark (later Niagara, now Blake, astutely observes that the hair Urizen's "icy magazines" (16:9) and Niagara-on-the-Lake) as his capital, of the mysterious bowed, praying fig- the glacier which caused the formation and the province's first elected as- ure on the last Plate (16) of America a of the Niagara escarpment thousands sembly met there in September of that Prophecy creates a "Niagara Falls" ef- of years ago, still as it were receding. year. Simcoe and his Attorney- fect, which "can be seen as a confla- The diagonal inclinations of the tiny General, John White, wanted to tion of the worshipful male of 14 and pointing figure's arm (the only one abolish slavery outright; this was bit- the bowed female of 15 (compare the visible), the praying figure's right fore- terly opposed among the mercantile conflation of persons toward the end arm (the only one clearly visible), the 3 and farming classes, and a com- of Jerusalem) . . . " That is tantamount slope of the white mass, and the ser- promise bill was arranged, which es- to saying that the bowed figure is pent's forked tongue—a possible hint tablished that any slave who came into meant to be androgynous, a sugges- of ambivalence (compare the tiny buoy- the province—whether brought by his tion with which I find myself in happy like woman walking over the thorny master or fleeing from his master— accord. Further, the Niagara Falls ef- branch away from the phallic rose past would be considered legally free. fect to which Erdman refers is created the serpent's mouth)—and the forked, There was also provision for the not only by the bowed figure's hair, headless tree arching over the praying gradual freeing of slaves born to those but also by his/her tears. Compare figure, are all approximately the same, already in the province.8 Urizen's tears as described on the same pointing in the "North Star" direction.5 Plate:"... his tears in deluge piteous / North is of course a pivotal direction The catalyst appears to have been an Falling into the deep sublime!" (16: in Blake's myth, as well as in Canada's incident involving Chloe Cooley, a 4-5). In addition to epitomizing the mythology. Convenient examples of slave who put up such spirited and androgynous sublime, the bowed fig- the latter are the line that runs "the vigorous resistance when her owner ure may be seen as a conflation of the True North strong and free" from had her bound and transported across "shadowy daughter of Urthona" Canada's national anthem—a line in- the Niagara River to be sold to the referred to in the poem's opening line, advertently contributed by Tennyson, Americans that the matter was 4 Urizen, Los-Urthona, and (by prolep- who had the new Dominion in mind reported in the first meeting of the sis) his emanation Enitharmon as an when he wrote in The Idylls of the King Executive council, on 21 March 1793 aspect of Jerusalem. of "that True North, whereof we lately (Winks 96). On Simcoe's instructions, Erdman's perception of Blake's heard"—and contemporary poet Al Attorney-general White introduced to Niagara Falls allusion seems worth ex- Purdy's remark that "the North is the House of Assembly the aforemen- ploring. The bowed figure is pointing Canada's true identity."6 In Blake's tioned bill for the gradual abolition of both upward and north, in the direc- myth, as Foster Damon points out, "the slavery. White guided the bill through tion of Canada, which as we have seen NORTH symbolizes the Imagination. It the lower house against, as he wrote, is significantly mentioned twice in the is the compass-point of Los-Urthona "much opposition but little argu- 9 Preludium. Pointing in the same direc- . . . Urizen always wants to usurp the ment." This opposition came mainly tion—upward and to the right of the North." Compare Blake's listing in from the farmers who had brought Falls (which flow north)—is the head- Jerusalem (72:41) of Canada as the their slaves north with them. "White less, forked tree curving over the back twenty-fifth of the 32 nations which was skillful and Simcoe was persistent, of the bowed figure, and the serpent shall guard liberty and rule the world.7 however, and within two weeks [i.e., with its flicking tongue at the bottom by early April 17931 the bill received of the plate. Compare the shadowy 74 BLAKE/AN ILLUSTRA TED QUARTERL Y Winter 1993/94

unanimous passage" (Winks 97). It ly prompted [Urizen's] 'snows poured Governor of Upper Canada, 1792-96 was given royal assent on 9July 1793-10 forth, and. . . icy magazines' [16:9]" fails to (Toronto, 1926) 193, quoting from White's take into account the possibility of a diary for 14 March—subsequently cited as The same year the American Con- providential reading of this passage ac- "Riddell." gress passed its first Fugitive Slave cording to which "Urizen is necessary." 10 The unpopularity of the Antislavery Law, which provided for the reclama- (Northrop Frye, in conversation with the Bill can be gauged from the tone of a tion of slaves who fled states within the author at the International Blake Exhibi- contemporary letter by Mrs. Hannah Jarvis American union, with the result that tion and Conference in Toronto, Feb. 1983. from Newark (Niagara) to her father. Rev. Frye's remark was about the role of Urizen "virtually from [its] very beginnings. . . Dr. Samuel Peters: "[Simcoe] has by a piece in Blake's myth, and was not apropos of of chicanery freed all the negroes." This Upper Canada. . . existed as a haven any one work or critic.) The concept of piece of indignant inaccuracy is followed for runaway slaves who could not Manifest Destiny would not have appealed by the more accurate prediction that "the remain with security in the United to Blake. Attorney-General . . . will never come in 5 States."11 Blake's America a Prophecy "headless tree": a probably andro- again as a representative" (quoted by Rid- was announced for sale in his prospec- gynous (cf. the breasts) allusion to the dell 202). White never won a seat in any guillotining of the French King (Jan. 1793) subsequent parliament. When Simcoe, tus of October 1793, but, according to and Queen (Oct. 1793), as it were pointing who had earlier (1790) voted against Erdman, "perhaps the final version. . . the way to something better. Cf. The Book slavery in the British House of Commons, was completed a year or two later."12 of Ahania, Pi. 5, showing severed heads died in 1806, his grateful county, Devon, Thus Blake would have had time to and decapitated trunks, and Erdman's commissioned Blake's sometime friend respond with evident interest and commentary in The Illuminated Blake Flaxman to sculpt a memorial for him, (213). Cf. also Erdman's remark in which stands in Exeter Cathedral. There is cautious enthusiasm to events in "America. New Expanses" (108) that also a statue of him in Queen's Park, Upper Canada emanating from the "January 1793 is at the center of the Toronto—where Simcoe had moved the Niagara Legislature. One may deduce prophecy." For the probable period of provincial capital prior to his departure in from all this Blake's low-keyed op- composition of America see note 12, 1796—with no Blakean associations. Is it timism, focused on what could be below, and text. too fanciful to suggest that the curious 6 Epilogue "To the Queen," from Idylls white mass slanting upward in front of the called for lack of a better term "the of the King, 1.14 and note, Tennyson's bowed figure on the last plate of America spiritual form of Canada," tending to Poetry, ed. Robert W. Hill, Jr. (New York: is Blake's passionate, eponymous tribute subvert the surface pessimism of the Norton, 1971) 430. Cf Alfred Purdy, North to John White's sacrifice of political ex- poem's ending; compare the two ver- of Summer: Poems from Baffin Island pediency on the altar of principle—a con- sions of the tailpiece design, one with, (Toronto/Montreal: McLelland and flation of Urizenic (colonial) ice and Stewart, 1967), Preface et passim. "O principled fire? Cf. the bowed figures— and one without the word "finis" Canada" was originally composed with particularly Job's wife—kneeling before emblazoned across the fork-tongued words in French by Alphonse Routhier and the triangular pyre in Blake's Illustrations serpent.13 music by Callixa Lavallee in 1880; the first to the Book of Job, Pi 18, and the white English version was written by R. Stanley rectangle of light toward which she is look- 1 Weir for Quebec's tercentenary in 1908. A ing immediately in front of her right knee. All references to the design of America modified form of this translation was ap- 11 a Prophecy unless otherwise indicated are James W. St. G. Walker, A History of proved by Canada's Parliament in 1980, to the Blake Trust facsimile of the work Blacks in Canada (Hull, Quebec: the French version having been approved (London, 1963). Canadian Government Publishing Center, 2 in 1967. Laureate Tennyson had the All quotations from Blake follow The 1980) 47. The courts in Lower Canada Dominion of Canada (as it was then Complete Poetry and Prose of William (Quebec) effectively abolished slavery known) in mind when he wrote the above- Blake, ed. David V. Erdman, New rev. ed. when Chief Justice James Monk in 1800 quoted line. Impressed with the sound and (New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1988)— gave the opinion that slavery was illegal sense of it, Stanley Weir improved on the subsequently cited as E. Plate numbers and refused to use state power to return phrase when he penned the line that still followed by line numbers are given in runaways. Similar developments took runs "the True North, strong and free" in parentheses. place in the Maritime provinces "by about 3 "O Canada." (From The Globe and Mail, 1 "America. New Expanses," Blake's 1800," with the result that "slavery had July 1991, A15.) Visionary Forms Dramatic, ed. David V. virtually died out in what is now Canada 7 See S. Foster Damon, A Blake Diction- Erdman and John E. Grant (Princeton: by the time slavery was legally abolished ary (Providence, RI: Brown UP, 1965) s.v. Princeton UP, 1970) 98; David V. Erdman, [throughout the British Empire in 1834: "North" and "Canada." annot. The Illuminated Blake (Garden legislation. 18331" (Walker 24-25). 8 W. R. Riddell, "An Official Record of 12 Erdman 802. City: Anchor-Doubleday, 1974) 155. 13 4 Slavery in Upper Canada," Ontario History A full discussion of Urizen's role in A serpent also of course appears on 25 (1929): 393-97; Robin W. Winks, The America a Prophecy would require a the revolutionary flag of Vermont, which Blacks in Canada: A History (Montreal: separate paper. Erdman's aforementioned borders on Canada, with the motto: "Do McGill-Queen's UP; New Haven and Lon- analysis of the bowed figure is useful, but not tread on me." Vermont was the first don: Yale UP, 1971) 96-98—subsequently his remark in "America. New Expanses" state in America to abolish slavery (July cited as "Winks." (98) that "[Joel] Barlow's focus on the 1777). December hailstorm which prevented the ^ William Renwick Riddell, The Life of revolutionists' capture of Quebec evident- John Graves Simcoe, first Lieutenant-