Each collector provides Blake with a new critical context for his work which can suggest differing possibilities for Blake studies. Thus Francis Douce puts Blake into a context of popular literature, popular prints and emblem books, suggesting one critical approach, while Rebekah Bliss, who adds Blake to her collection of Illuminated manuscripts, flower-plate books, Persian manuscripts, and so on, each book in her Bibliotheca Splendidissima an exquisite gem, suggests another. There have been individual studies of some of Blake’s collectors, but little attempt has been made to view them as forming a network or set of networks—linked by consanguinity, friendship, shared religious sympathies, or geographical proximity.
Rebekah Bliss can be seen as the original source of Blake-collecting by her intervention in the social networks of otherwise male bibliophiles. Richard Twiss was introduced to Blake’s work by Rebekah Bliss, when Mrs Bliss was staying with her friends Sally and John Walker at Arnos Grove. Twiss and Walker were both part of a local bibliophile circle (the “Castle of Antiquaries”) made up of friends of Richard Gough. Other members were Isaac d’Israeli and John Sherwen, and d’Israeli went on to become a significant Blake collector. I have suggested that Twiss acquired at least a copy of Gates of Paradise, lost following his bankruptcy. Twiss’s correspondent Francis Douce was to become an important Blake collector, and also acquired at least one medieval manuscript with a “Mrs. Bliss” provenance from her 1826 sale. Furthermore, Douce, a former trustee of the British Museum, knew Frederic Madden (1801-1873) keeper of manuscripts from 1837 to 1866. The British Museum acquired many of its Blakes in Madden’s time. If one objects to the chronological gap between Mrs Bliss showing her Blakes to Twiss, and Douce and d’Israeli actually purchasing works by Blake, one can be equally puzzled that Blake’s close friend George Cumberland did not purchase any of the works in Illuminated Printing until quite late in his life.
From the Blake collectors personal papers (particularly correspondence, both to and from) one can reconstruct their social circle and in particular discover links to other Blake collectors and to friends and acquaintances of William Blake himself. For example, Samuel Boddington’s diary not only makes reference to his nephew Thomas Fremaux Boddington (who owned a Songs) and to Thomas’s wife Hannah (who purchased a “Job”) but also records meetings with the collector Samuel Rogers and with Blake’s friend and patron John Linnell. There were connections of kinship between Mrs Bliss and the later collector William Fuller Maitland; and of teacher and pupil between Benjamin Heath Malkin and Edward Fitzgerald, both of whom owned copies of the Songs. (Fitzgerald, the translator of Omar Khayyam, was at Bury school 1819-26, during Dr. Malkin’s headmastership.) It is also important to see to what extent Blake’s collectors were professionally linked through the book trade (e.g. Thomas Edwards), or were fellow artists (e.g. John Flaxman), or were radical in politics (e.g. Francis Douce). And in the subscription list to Blair’s The Grave one can observe family relationships between subscribers. Not only do the three brothers Boswell, Josephus and Samuel Beddome subscribe but so does their brother-in-law Samuel Favell (married to Elizabeth Beddome). This group are all dissenters (and with a possible link to the Independent Chapel at Carey Street New Court favoured by Rebekah Bliss).
Ever since the publication of Gilchrist’s Life with its subtitle “pictor ignotus”, there has been a widely held assumption that Blake lacked any significant contemporary audience. In fact, it was larger in numbers than is generally recognised, & more diverse. Bentley’s Blake Books by my rough calculation lists some sixty-one contemporary owners of Blake’s Illuminated Books & of plates from the books.
What overlap might there have been between Rebekah Bliss’s circle and that of Blake? Could Blake, perhaps, have been a fellow worshipper at the Carey Street chapel? New Court is conveniently near Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Blake would have known the chapel from his apprenticeship days with Basire when he lived at Great Queen Street. Although Blake is said not to have attended public worship for the last forty years of his life (1788 1827), he could have met Rebekah Bliss through the social circle of the Carey Street chapel. Robert Winter, the minister at New Court, was born 25 March 1762 at Brewer Street, Golden Square, just around the corner from the Blake family. Blake then might have known Dr. Winter from childhood. Blake’s friend Alexander Tilloch had business premises at 1 Carey Street between 1795 and 1805. It is tempting to think that Tilloch too may have attended the chapel in New Court, though Tilloch is known to have worshipped in Islington in later years.
Some collectors acquired work by Blake through the book trade (as P. H. Hanrott acquired Mrs Bliss’s copy of For Children: The Gates of Paradise); a few by inheritance (as William Upcott inherited Ozias Humphry’s, his father’s, Blake books); but the overwhelming majority acquired them directly from Blake himself or his agents (perhaps Joseph Johnson in the 1790s, certainly John Linnell in the 1820s). It looks very likely that Mrs Bliss, and others of Blake’s contemporary collectors, acquired her books directly from the printer/poet. This might also be a suggestive context for Blake’s comments, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, about the “Prolific” and the “Devourer”, as well as his more elaborated comments in the Public Address about the contemporary art market. Did Blake know the other works his collectors already owned? The Books of Hours and other medieval illuminated manuscripts in the collections of Mrs Bliss, of Thomas Edwards, and of E. V. Utterson are possible sources for Blake’s combination of text and illustration in the works in Illuminated Printing.
But Rebekah Bliss also leads us to later Blake collectors by reason of consanguinity. She owned at least two copies of the Songs. A copy “printed in colours” shown to Twiss in 1794. And copy P, printed circa 1806, which appeared in her posthumous sale. Copy P is the source of two hand-made facsimiles Alpha and Beta made during Blake’s lifetime. William Fuller Maitland (1813-1876), her cousin Ebenezer’s grandson, was a frequent visitor to her house in Kensington. The teenage William Fuller Maitland is my suggestion for the facsimilist who produced Copies Alpha and Beta after Copy P of the Songs (the Bliss copy). William Fuller Maitland went on to acquire an important Blake collection, including Jerusalem Copy D, bought from Frederick Tatham along with the “Life of Blake” by Tatham. Other items in his collection he may have inherited from Rebekah Bliss.
In turn William Fuller Maitland’s nephew John Alexander Fuller Maitland owned some leaves of a colour-printed Songs (Copy G). This copy must be a survivor of the fire in 1836 that destroyed Loughton Hall, Ann Whitaker’s former home in Epping Forest, inherited from her by the Maitland family. There is a description of the fire by the lady of the house which specifically mentions the damage to “Mrs Whitaker’s library”. One might conclude that Copy G is the copy “printed in colours” that Rebekah Bliss showed to Richard Twiss in 1794.
J. A. Fuller Maitland recalls visiting his uncle at Stanstead Hall, Essex, some time before 1872
At Stanstead there were wonderful books and treasures of all kinds; above all, a collection of early Italian pictures, many of which are now in the National Gallery. My uncle, Margaret’s father, had gathered them together during journeys in Italy, at a time when the primitives were considered to be merely quaint. … There was a wonderful old chest where Margaret and I were allowed to forage, containing books by Blake that would now fetch their weight in gold. There was the unique copy of Jerusalem with the original portraits of Blake and his wife by George Richmond, and the MS. biography that has been used by the successive writers of the artist’s life. There were two copies of Young’s Night Thoughts, and when I referred to the fact in talking about the books to my uncle, he stoutly maintained that he possessed only one. I assured him that one was coloured and the other plain, but he was so sure that I was wrong that he said he would give me the second if it was there. It was, and the book is of course doubly precious to me now.In 1887 Christie’s sold Jerusalem (E), Thel (a) and coloured Night Thoughts (E) from the collection of William Fuller Maitland. He also owned at least two Blake drawings and the large colour print “Pity” now in the Metropolitan Museum. Can there be a connection between at least some of these Blakes and Mrs. Bliss? The only one of William Fuller Maitland’s Blakes for which we have a clear history, the coloured Jerusalem (Copy E) was clearly in Blake’s possession at his death—and he died after Rebekah Bliss. But it is certainly possible that Fuller Maitland’s Book of Thel and the Blake drawings in his collection came from Mrs. Bliss. It is clear that our knowledge of the full extent of Rebekah’s collection is still incomplete.
Finally, the possibility of simple geographical proximity. Robert John Thornton MD (1768-1837), botanical and medical writer, was the family doctor of Linnell who supposedly introduced him to Blake in September 1818. He commissioned Blake’s illustrations and woodcut engravings for a school edition of The Pastorals of Virgil published in 1821. But Thornton would already have known Blake’s work since he had been a subscriber to Blair’s Grave in 1808 ([London]: “Dr. Thornton”) long before he met Linnell. He went on to purchase a copy of “Job”, July 1824.
It's possible that Thornton lived next door to Mrs Bliss in Kensington at one time. Rebekah Bliss inherited Maitland House, Church Street, Kensington Parish, on the death of her uncle, John Gorham, though the rate books show her partner Ann Whitaker as paying the rates. We also see from the rate book entries that Bliss and Whitaker had Robert Thornton as next door neighbour, 1784-1802, and Elizabeth Thornton, 1805-1814. Whether Robert Thornton is our Robert John Thornton remains to be established.
Rebekah Bliss certainly bought Thornton's New Sexual System of Linnaeus. Indeed (realm of fantasy here) Mrs Bliss could have introduced Thornton to her friend William Blake. Furthermore Thornton contributed to the Philosophical Magazine whose editor, Alexander Tilloch, was an acquaintance of Blake from the mid-1780s. Thornton's various publishing schemes involve a broad conspectus of the London painting and engraving world including many artists known to Blake. Indeed, if Blake had not moved down to Feltham, it's perfectly possible he could have been one of the engravers employed by Thornton for his botanical publications.
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