AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY O Briider: Keith Schuchard and Keri Davies Revisit the Moravians VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3 WINTER 2006-07 £%Uae AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY www.blakequarterly.org VOLUME 40 NUMBER 3 WINTER 2006-07 CONTENTS Articles Minute Particular Young William Blake and the Moravian An Analogue to the "Greatest Men" Passage Tradition of Visionary Art in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell By Marsha Keith Schuchard 84 By Thomas R. Frosch 110 Jonathan Spilsbury and the Lost Moravian History of William Blake's Family By Keri Davies loo Newsletter Events to Celebrate the 250th Anniversary of Blake's Birth 111 ADVISORY BOARD G. E. Bentley, fr., University of Toronto, retired Nelson 1 lilton, University of Georgia Martin Butlin, London Anne K. Mellor, University of California, Los Angeles Detlef W. Dorrbecker, University of Trier Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Robert N. Lssick, University of California, Riverside 1 )avid Wbrrall, The Nottingham Trent University Angela bstei hammer, University of Western Ontario CONTRIBUTORS Alexander S. Gourlay, Department of English, Rhode Island School of Design, 2 College Street, Providence RI 02903-2717 Email: [email protected] MARSHA KEITH SCHUCHARD ([email protected]) David Worrall, Faculty of Humanities, The Nottingham has recently published Why Mrs. Blake Cried: William Blake Trent University, Clifton Lane, Nottingham NGl 1 8NS UK and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision (London: Century- Email: [email protected] Random House, 2006). She is currently completing a sequel to Restoring the Temple of Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2002), which will cover British and international Masonic developments and their political and cultural ramifications from 1689 to 1750. INFORMATION KERI DAVIHS ([email protected]) is secretary of the Blake Society. He is currently research fellow in the Department of English, Nottingham Trent University. BUKE/AN ILLUSTRATED QUARTERLY is published under the spon• THOMAS R. FROSCH ([email protected]) is professor of Eng• sorship of the Department of English, University of Roches• lish at Queens College (CUNY) and is the author of a book ter. Subscriptions are $60 for institutions, $30 for individu• on Blake, The Awakening of Albion (Cornell University Press, als. All subscriptions are by the volume (1 year, 4 issues) and 1974) and a forthcoming book, Shelley and the Romantic begin with the summer issue. Subscription payments received Imagination: A Psychological Study (University of Delaware after the summer issue will be applied to the current volume. Press). Addresses outside the US, Canada, and Mexico require a $15 per volume postal surcharge for surface delivery, or $20 for airmail. Credit card payment is available. Make checks pay• able to Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. Address all subscription orders and related communications to Sarah Jones, Blake, De• partment of English, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627-0451. Back issues are available; address Sarah Jones for information on issues and prices, or consult the web site. EDITORS MANUSCRIPTS are welcome in either hard copy or electronic form. Send two copies, typed and documented according to forms suggested in the MLA Style Manual, and with pages numbered, to either of the editors. No articles will be returned EDITORS: Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley unless accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope. BIBLIOGRAPHER: G. E. Bentley, Jr. For electronic submissions, you may send a disk, or send your REVIEW EDITOR: Alexander S. Gourlay article as an attachment to an email message; please number ASSOCIATE EDITOR EOR GREAT BRITAIN: David Worrall the pages of electronic submissions. The preferred file format is RTF; other formats are usually acceptable. PRODUCTION OFFICE: Department of English, Morey 410, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627-0451 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD SERIAL NUMBER: 0160-628X. Blake/An MANAGING EDITOR: Sarah Jones [email protected] Illustrated Quarterly is indexed in the Modern Language Asso• TELEPHONE: 585/275-3820 FAX: 585/442-5769 ciation's International Bibliography, the Modern Humanities Research Association's Annual Bibliography of English Lan• Morris Eaves, Department of English, University of guage and Literature, American Humanities Index, Arts and Rochester, Rochester NY 14627-0451 Humanities Citation Index, Current Contents and the Bibli• Email: [email protected] ography of the History of Art. Morton D. Paley, Department of English, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-1030 Email: [email protected] © 2007 Copyright Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley G. E. Bentley, Jr., 246 MacPherson Avenue, Toronto, Cover: Der Christen ABC (1750), letter O (detail). Ephrata Ontario M4V 1A2 Canada Cloister, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. appealed to Boehler for membership in the congregation was ARTICLES indeed the brother of James Blake, Catherine's new husband, then William Muir's claim (made to Thomas Wright) that Wil­ liam Blake's "parents attended the Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane" gains new plausibility, for they could have attended the Young William Blake and the services which were open to the public (Wright 1: 2, Lowery 4 Moravian Tradition of Visionary Art 14­15, 210n57). Wright's further assertion that "Blake's fa­ ther had adopted the doctrines of Swedenborg, whose follow­ ers, however, did not separate from other religious bodies till later" gains a new historical context, for the Armitages and BY MARSHA KEITH SCHUCHARD Blakes could have known or heard about Swedenborg, who also attended services at Fetter Lane in the 1740s and, even The Scripture says that our entire work of the Gospel is after breaking with the Brethren, continued to have Moravian to portray Jesus, to paint Him before the eyes, to take the friends and to utilize Moravian publishers.' While the Mora­ spirit's stylus and etch—yes, engrave—the image of Jesus in vian­Swedenborgian milieu raises many questions and pro­ the fleshly tablets of the heart .... vokes many speculations concerning William Blake's spiritual Zinzendorf, Nine Lectures 81 and intellectual development, I will here focus on the possible Moravian influence—especially through his mother—on his I would choose Fancy rather than Philosophy. Feeling is early artistic development.'1 ascertained by Experience; Reasoning is hurtful, or makes us In 1828 John Thomas Smith recalled that Blake as a child lose ourselves. Zinzendorf in Rimius, Candid Narrative 48 showed "an early stretch of mind, and a strong talent for drawing," while also demonstrating the ability to compose Thank God 1 never was sent to school and perform "singularly beautiful" songs, despite being "en­ To be Flogd into following the Style of a Fool tirely unacquainted with the science of music" (Bentley, Blake (E 510) BR[2] 605­06). Two years later, Allan Cunningham wrote that "the love of art came early upon the boy," who "it seems, was privately encouraged by his mother." It was "his chief delight n the months following the publication of Davies and to retire to the solitude of his room, and there make draw­ I Schuchard, "Recovering the Lost Moravian 1 listory of Wil­ ings, and illustrate these with verses, to be hung up together liam Blake's Family," more material on Blake's mother and in his mother's chamber" (Bentley, BR\2] 628,631­32). From first husband was discovered in the Moravian Church Library, his earliest years, he also revealed his visionary tendency, re­ Muswell Hill, London. We learn that Catherine and Thom­ porting at age four that he saw God put his forehead to the as Armitage had a child, Thomas, who died in March 1751; window and, when he played outdoors, he saw a tree filled thus, William Blake is actually her fourth, not third, child.' with angels and the prophet Ezekiel under a tree. Despite his We also learn that the Armitages were intimately and practi­ mother's worry at such excited claims, she usually protected cally involved in Moravian affairs and that Peter Boehler, the him from a "thrashing from his honest father" (Gilchrist, charismatic leader of the Congregation of the lamb, made a quoted in Bentley, Stranger 19­20). Unfortunately, nothing special effort to help Catherine after her husband died on 19 2 more emerged about this important maternal influence, lead­ November 1751. An intriguing note on 20 March 1753 urges ing Alexander Gilchrist to lament in 1863 that after the death Brother West, an Armitage­Blake family friend, to speak to "Sr. of Blake's mot her at age seventy in 1792, "She is a shade to us, Arm." (Sister Armitage?) about some financial matter, thus suggesting that she continued her contacts with the Mora­ 3 vians even after she married James Blake in October 1752. ■I. Ken Davies is current}) investigating the many references to Blakes Perhaps she withdrew only from the highly selective, time­ in the archives, which suggest—but do not vet prove—that some of James consuming congregation and not from a less formal asso­ Blake's relatives were Moravians. 5. tor Swedenborg's Moravian experiences in London in 1744­45, see ciation with the Brothers and Sisters. If the lohn Blake who Swedenborg, Dream Diary 12 i­. 30 38,54­58. He wrote more about the I ondon Moravians m his Spiritual than '(1746­65). Swedenborg used the Moravian pubUlhei lohn 1 e\\ is and.attei I ewiss death in 1 "58, his Mora­ All citations from Wake are from The I omplete Boetry and Prow <>/ vian widow Mary 1 eWlS continued bO sell Swedenborg's works. Main ot his readers (in England and Sweden) had Moravian parents (such as C. William Make, ed David V. I rdman, newly rev. ed (New York: Anchor B. Waditrom and the Nordcnskjold brothers., while Dr. Husband Mes­ Doubkday, 1988), abbreviated "E" sitei, Jacob Hue he, and Richard ( oswav were interested in Zin/endorf's i.