gentlemen so ignorant of the land and the people who worked it?
It was time to get back to the country and do the best he could to repair the damages. Time to leave this corrupt city that cared for nothing but style, wealth, and pleasure, and had forgotten its roots. Time to turn his back on Lord Crashaw. And to forget about Phizz Marston.
But before he could leave London he had an errand to do.
The house at Three Fountain Court was shabby, the street itself rutted and muddy, without the raised wooden walkways that made walking easier in London's better districts. The tired-looking old lady who answered Lord Linseley's knock at the door smiled sweetly through wrinkles that years of care had etched on her face.
She'd read the morning newspapers too, and commended him for his "angelic" words in the "vicious" Parliament.
Unfortunately, though, her husband was currently entertaining another guest. But if Lord Linseley would be so good as to return in an hour, Mr. Blake would be happy to see him, and to show him the latest of his prophetic words and engravings.
The tavern just up the street, she added rather vaguely, was comfortable enough.
David had bowed and shaken her hand, bidding Mrs. Blake tell her husband that he'd return in an hour, and smiling to himself at the old lady's serene assurance that a peer of the realm would be happy to wait attendance upon her husband, a simple engraver.
Still, she was right, he thought, sipping watered ale at the Coal Hole Tavern a bit later. He'd wait all day if asked. He supposed the tavern was "comfortable enough," if one applied a very liberal definition to the notion of comfort. No matter. He'd endure considerably more discomfort than hard bench and bad ale, for the opportunity to buy a hand-colored book or manuscript by one of the most gifted and eccentric artists that England—or the world—had yet produced.
Hardly a student of the arts, David nonetheless found himself enthralled by Mr. Blake's strange poems and illustrations—of angels and biblical patriarchs, mystical beasts and meek, frightened orphans and urchins. A world unto itself and yet a familiar one, rendered in assured line and glowing color: muddy, filthy, corrupt London somehow reshaping itself and arising from Mr. Blake's imagination as a new Jerusalem.
He consulted his pocket watch. Yes, an hour had passed. He gazed out the window at the house where the Blakes rented their poor two rooms. And indeed, the door of Number Three swung open to reveal a gentleman taking his leave. David gazed intently at the man's gracefully crooked arm, a precious package carefully tucked beneath it. It seemed a book by the size and shape of it. He reached into his pocket for some coins to pay for his drink as he watched the man bid Mrs. Blake good-bye at the front door.
At first he felt only envy and resentment. What marvel had this gentleman purchased that he, David, might have taken home to admire and contemplate during his solitary evenings at Linseley Manor? Mr. Blake couldn't afford to have his work widely published. He created very small editions: some pieces were unique.
But on second thought, David knew that his initial response had simply been a cover for a far more distressing recognition—that the slender, simply dressed gentleman striding energetically and exuberantly through the muddy street was none other than Mr. Marston.
Energy
, Mr. Blake had written,
is Eternal Delight
.
And
Exuberance is Beauty
.
There was no doubt about it and no other word for it. Marston was beautiful.
David stared in a sort of trance: the pure perception overwhelmed him with shamed rapture. So these were the pleasures of vice, he thought. But the uninhibited moment soon passed, to be followed by his sure regret that he'd never abandon himself to such desires.
What was it Mr. Blake had once told him about vice?
What are called vices in the natural world are the highest sublimities in the spiritual world.
Which is all very
It was time to get back to the country and do the best he could to repair the damages. Time to leave this corrupt city that cared for nothing but style, wealth, and pleasure, and had forgotten its roots. Time to turn his back on Lord Crashaw. And to forget about Phizz Marston.
But before he could leave London he had an errand to do.
The house at Three Fountain Court was shabby, the street itself rutted and muddy, without the raised wooden walkways that made walking easier in London's better districts. The tired-looking old lady who answered Lord Linseley's knock at the door smiled sweetly through wrinkles that years of care had etched on her face.
She'd read the morning newspapers too, and commended him for his "angelic" words in the "vicious" Parliament.
Unfortunately, though, her husband was currently entertaining another guest. But if Lord Linseley would be so good as to return in an hour, Mr. Blake would be happy to see him, and to show him the latest of his prophetic words and engravings.
The tavern just up the street, she added rather vaguely, was comfortable enough.
David had bowed and shaken her hand, bidding Mrs. Blake tell her husband that he'd return in an hour, and smiling to himself at the old lady's serene assurance that a peer of the realm would be happy to wait attendance upon her husband, a simple engraver.
Still, she was right, he thought, sipping watered ale at the Coal Hole Tavern a bit later. He'd wait all day if asked. He supposed the tavern was "comfortable enough," if one applied a very liberal definition to the notion of comfort. No matter. He'd endure considerably more discomfort than hard bench and bad ale, for the opportunity to buy a hand-colored book or manuscript by one of the most gifted and eccentric artists that England—or the world—had yet produced.
Hardly a student of the arts, David nonetheless found himself enthralled by Mr. Blake's strange poems and illustrations—of angels and biblical patriarchs, mystical beasts and meek, frightened orphans and urchins. A world unto itself and yet a familiar one, rendered in assured line and glowing color: muddy, filthy, corrupt London somehow reshaping itself and arising from Mr. Blake's imagination as a new Jerusalem.
He consulted his pocket watch. Yes, an hour had passed. He gazed out the window at the house where the Blakes rented their poor two rooms. And indeed, the door of Number Three swung open to reveal a gentleman taking his leave. David gazed intently at the man's gracefully crooked arm, a precious package carefully tucked beneath it. It seemed a book by the size and shape of it. He reached into his pocket for some coins to pay for his drink as he watched the man bid Mrs. Blake good-bye at the front door.
At first he felt only envy and resentment. What marvel had this gentleman purchased that he, David, might have taken home to admire and contemplate during his solitary evenings at Linseley Manor? Mr. Blake couldn't afford to have his work widely published. He created very small editions: some pieces were unique.
But on second thought, David knew that his initial response had simply been a cover for a far more distressing recognition—that the slender, simply dressed gentleman striding energetically and exuberantly through the muddy street was none other than Mr. Marston.
Energy
, Mr. Blake had written,
is Eternal Delight
.
And
Exuberance is Beauty
.
There was no doubt about it and no other word for it. Marston was beautiful.
David stared in a sort of trance: the pure perception overwhelmed him with shamed rapture. So these were the pleasures of vice, he thought. But the uninhibited moment soon passed, to be followed by his sure regret that he'd never abandon himself to such desires.
What was it Mr. Blake had once told him about vice?
What are called vices in the natural world are the highest sublimities in the spiritual world.
Which is all very
Similar Books
