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'For Friendship's Sake': Some Additions to Blake's
Sheets for Designs to a Series of Ballads
(1802)
by
Karen G. Mulhallen
The history of Blake's association with the poet, biographer and patron William Hayley is well known.[1] Blake executed a number of projects for Hayley, perhaps the most entrepreneurial of which was a collection of ballads entitled Designs to A Series of Ballads (1802).[2] The series of ballads, as Hayley notes in his preface, was to be a periodical publication. Every month for fifteen months Blake proposed to publish a ballad accompanied by three engravings. The whole series would ultimately be a quarto volume of forty-five engravings and fifteen ballads, "which indeed I wish to be considered as vehicles contrived to exhibit the diversified talents of my friend for original design and delicate engraving."
The venture was not a success. Blake received the printed sheets from Joseph Seagrave and when sales failed cut up the sheets and used the generous margins — especially the inner margin of approximately twelve centimetres (the outer is seven centimetres) — for sketch paper.
Blake's association with Hayley has been carefully documented in a
number of articles and monographs. Blake used the proof sheets of
Designs to A Series of Ballads as scratch paper for more than
two decades. Ten of these proofs have been identified by G. E. Bentley,
Jr., in "The Date of Blake's Pickering Manuscript or The Way of a Poet
with Paper," Studies
(1) Preface, pp. iii-iv. This sheet has no sketches or writing by Blake and is used as the inner wrapper for the Job sketches, Folio 2, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England. The recto of iv is inscribed by John Linnell, "These are Mr Blakes reduced Drawings | for the book of Job | done for me | John Linnell."[3] The verso is blank. The subject indicates a date of c. 1823.
(2) Ballad the First, pp. [9]-10. This sketch of a nude woman lying with her back toward the viewer is on the back last page, page 9, of the first ballad, The Elephant. The colophon and the last two lines of stanza 24 show through from page 9. Blake used a similar female figure in his drawings for Young's Night Thoughts on the last page of Night V (1929.7.13.108). The figure is also similar to one in a sketch of "Paolo and Francesca" done for his Dante illustrations (reproduced in Drawings of William Blake [1970] as No. 86). The sketch is now in the British Museum Print Room (1867.10.12.192). The probable date of composition is c. 1826. Vouched by Frederick Tatham, bottom left.
(3) Ballad the Second, pp. [19]-20, 25-26. A man with arms outstretched, palms open outward, runs from a gothic church with a closed door. On the page is visible the catchword With and a t shows through from page 26 ([breas]t). This sketch is catalogued as No. 87 in the Kerrison Preston edition of The Blake Collection of W. Graham Robertson (1952), and it is now in a private collection. About 1809 Blake experimented with the church form as the central organizing motif in a number of his sketches, for example in the "Descent of Peace," which is reproduced in Drawings (1970) as No. 49. The probable date of composition therefore is c. 1809. Vouched by Tatham, bottom left.
(4) Ballad the Second, The Eagle, pp. [21]-22-[23]-24. On page 24, with the catchword Run, is a sketch for "The Death of the Strong Wicked Man," for Blair's Grave (1808), which is reproduced in Drawings (1970) as No. 39. On the verso, identified as page 22 by the catchword It, is a sketch for "The Ascension" (?1805). This sheet is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the dates of use therefore are 1805 and 1808.
(5) Ballad the Second, pp. [21]-22-23-[24.] A man, with his hands raised in horror, looks up at a circle containing a church. Above is a man, upside down, running toward the left. On the sheet, at the bottom left, is visible the catchword It from page 22, and showing through from page 24 is the catchword Run. The sketch is catalogued as No. 86 in The Blake Collection of W. Graham Robertson (1952). On its verso is a rough sketch of a woman weeping over an infant, there are two standing figures with bowed heads at the side, over the woman is a building from which hang two flags (?) and above them is a crescent moon. Because of the similarity between the running man in this sketch and that in number (3), the probable date of composition is c. 1809. Vouched by Tatham, bottom left.
(6) Ballad the Second, pp. [25]-26. A wave of people rises up from the ground whilst in the background are a couple and a gothic church sketchily outlined. The letter t of the word breast identifies the sheet as page 26. The sketch may be for Dante (c. 1826) for "The Circle of the Lustful," but the couple embrace as in the design for Blair's Grave of "A Family Meeting in Heaven" (c. 1808) and the church suggests the earlier attribution as well. Reproduced in Drawings (1970) as No. 87, this drawing is now in the Rosenwald Collection, Washington, and the probable date of use is either c. 1808 or c. 1826.
(7) Ballad the Third, The Lion, pp. [27]-28. A back view of Satan with a sword is shown, similar to the tiny winged figure of plate 4 of Blake's Job (1826). The sketch is executed on page 28, showing the word [tr]uth. Now in the Keynes collection, it is reproduced in Drawings (1970) as No. 75, and it should be given a date of c. 1826.
(8) Ballad the Third, pp. [29]-30-31-[32]. A pencil drawing of an angelic female with mandala-like wings and a large fan. On the page is visible the catchword But and the last two words, ]r[each and ]m[ore, of the final lines in stanza 10 on page 31. Showing through is the catchword Soon from page 32. This design is for the figure found in Jerusalem, plate 14. The sketch is now in the British Museum Print Room (1874.12.12.150). The date is 1804-?1820.
(9) Ballad the Third, pp. [31]-32. A man with a halo, holding in his outstretched hands either two globes of light or two urns, balances on the edge of an abyss. Behind him, on his left, is a bird with gigantic claws who eats an entrail from the man's right side. The bird and man are flanked by two observant angels. The right hand angel holds a book; the left hand angel holds a chain. The sketch is executed in pencil and ink sideways on page 32 which shows the word [drea]d;. Catalogued in The Blake Collection of W. Graham Robertson, No. 92, this drawing is untraced.
(10) Ballad the Third, pp. 37-38. This sheet is used as the outer wrapper of the Job sketches in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and it is folded so that page 38 faces outward. The recto of page 38 has thirty attempts at a monogram wB or WB in Blake's hand. The verso of page 38 has nineteen attempts to write WB, plus Blake's signature and date "inv & sc/ WB/ 1823".
Page 37 (verso) has a sketch of Job's head for plate 8 of Job in the inner margin plus stanza 31 of page 37 and a list of the twelve apostles. The recto of page 37 has two sketches of a dog's head for plate 1 of Job and four lines of stanza 29 plus line one of stanza 30. These sheets are catalogued in William Blake: An Illustrated Catalogue of Works in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, edited by David Bindman (1970), as No. 18B1 and No. 1B10 (Fol. 1 = page 38r and 37v; Fol. 34 = 37r and 38v).
(11) Ballad the Fourth, The Dog, pp. 42-43, 44-[45]-46. This sheet contains several sketches and stanzas 6 and 7 of "The Dog." The sketches include, from lower left to upper right: "Cain fleeing" from "Adam and Eve find the Body of Abel"; a sketch for the Paradise Lost series; two sketches for "The Archangel Michael Binding The Dragon"; and a mirror sketch of the frontispiece to "The Dog." The sheet is now in the British Museum Print Room (1929, 7. 13. 272). The date is probably c. 1805. Vouched by Tatham, upper left.
There are now some twenty-one instances of Blake using his proof sheets from Designs to a Series of Ballads. Undoubtedly more will come to light.
Notes
Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake (1863), vol. I, especially pp. 145 ff; G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Records (1969), especially pp. 92-99; G. E. Bentley, Jr., "William Blake as Private Publisher," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 61 (1957), 539-560; G. E. Bentley, Jr., "The Date of Blake's Pickering Manuscript or The Way of a Poet with Paper," SB 19 (1966), 232-243; G. E. Bentley, Jr., and Martin K. Nurmi, A Blake Bibliography (1964), item 375.
The volume consulted for this study is that contained in the Princeton University Library (Ex 3776. 3. 314. 11). The title page reads: 'Designs | To | A Series of Ballads, | Written | By William Hayley, Esq. | And founded on | ANECDOTES RELATING TO ANIMALS, | Drawn, Engraved, and Published, | By | William Blake. | With the Ballads annexed, by the Author's Permission. | Chichester: | Printed by J. Seagrave, and sold by him and P. Humphry; and by R. H. Evans, | Pall-Mall, London, for W. Blake, Felpham. | 1802.' The volume has been considered bibliographically by N. J. Barker in "Some Notes on the Bibliography of William Hayley: Part III," Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 3, pt. 4 (1962), 342-347. The book is complex and the findings of Barker are reexamined and extended in William Blake, Book Illustrator, by Roger R. Easson and Robert N. Essick (1972), pp. 31-35, and twelve of the fourteen plates designed and engraved by Blake are reproduced in volume one.
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