Gates of Paradise (2 page)

‘You are kindness itself, sir,' Mr Blake said, giving a little bow.

Mr Grinder took the compliment as earned. ‘Let's have this gate open, then,' he said, lifting the latch, ‘an' we can get your boxes inside. 'Tis too cold a night to be standing about. If you'll be so good as to hold the lantern Mrs Blake, ma'am, so's we can see the way.'

There was rather a lot of luggage, sixteen boxes in all – the potboys counted them – and most so heavy it took four men to lift them and there were times when even Reuben had to lend a hand, even though he had a bandage on his foot as proof that overmuch labour was beyond him. But eventually all the boxes were struggled into the cottage, and the two women lit candles and stoked up the fire with fresh logs. Then there was only some sort of wooden contraption left to manhandle. It was wrapped in sacking and Mr Blake said to have particular care of it because it was his printing press and he couldn't work without it. And at last the job was done, the chaise gone and the four removal men could trudge back to the beery fug of The Fox.

‘What on earth d'he have in all them boxes?' Will wanted to know, as he damped down the fire. ‘They weigh'd a ton. My ol' back's fair creased in two.'

‘Copper plates, so he said,' Mr Grinder told him. ‘Being he's an engraver, I s'ppose. Leastways that's what he's come down to do, according to Mr Hosier. Engraving.'

‘Just so long as he don't go a-changin' his mind
and send fer us to carry 'em all out again,' Will said grimacing. ‘Oi've had enough a' luggin' ol' boxes about to last me a lifetime.'

‘He won't go back, yet awhile,' Mr Grinder said. ‘Leastways not for three years, that I
do
know, being as that's the lease he's took on the cottage an' he's paid good money for it.'

‘Aye, so Oi've heard,' Reuben said, looking sly. ‘Twenty pounds a year, so Hiram was a-tellin' me.' His face was so blown about by constant exposure to wind and weather that his features were all over sideways, one eye lower than the other and his nose squashed like a snout in a trough, and a sly expression made him look more grotesque than usual.

‘Well, yes,' Mr Grinder admitted, ‘that
was
about the size of it.'

‘Bit steep, wouldn't 'ee say,' Reuben teased. ‘Rents was a quarter a' that, last year.'

‘Last year was last year,' Mr Grinder said. ‘There are several cottages hereabouts that might have been let for four or five pounds last year but now they're being furbished up and whitewashed, with a little furniture and stair carpets put into them and they'll make twenty easy. If Londoners are prepared to pay, let 'em, that's what I say.'

‘Them's my sentiments an' all,' Reuben said. ‘We don't want strangers in our village. 'Tent healthy. Let 'em go back to Lunnon where they come from.'

‘Except for this one, eh?' Mr Grinder said and he winked at the potboys. ‘You two young fellers can
rest easy. You won't be shifting no more boxes for a year or two yet.'

‘Amen to that,' the potboys said, and the younger one added, ‘Will there be anything else Mr Grinder, sir?'

‘No, no,' Mr Grinder said. ‘You cut off.' Then he noticed that the boy was holding a crumpled paper in his hand. ‘What you got there?'

‘'Twas up against the garden wall when we come out,' the boy said. ‘There's some printin' on it. Look.' And he handed it to the landlord.

It took a while for Mr Grinder to decipher it. He could read well enough most of the time but that was when the paper was smooth and the print clear. This was so smudged and crumpled it required consideration. ‘Well, well, well,' he said, when he'd made sense of it. ‘Here's a thing.' And as his audience was standing about the dampened fire, agog to be enlightened, he read it aloud. “
Starved fellow creatures, Come Tomorrow Night with proper weapons in St George's fields, where You will meet friends to defend Your Rights Never mind the blood thirsty Soldiers We shall put them to flight, The Cause is honourable & ought to be prosecuted as such Rouse to glory ye slumbering Britons
.” My stars. I hope this ent the sort of thing our Mr Blake's thinking a' printing or he
will
be in trouble. That's too radical for the likes of us.'

‘We ought to show it to our Johnnie,' Will said, gazing at the crumpled paper with some awe. ‘Tha's what. He'd know what to do about it.'

‘You may do as you please,' the potboy said. ‘Oi'm for my bed. Tha's been a long night.'

‘Tomorrow,' Mr Grinder decided. ‘We'll show him when he comes in tomorrow. But we don't none of us say nothing to no one, mind. We don't want it getting back to Mr Hayley. There's no point courting disaster.'

Not that their celebrated neighbour would have taken much notice of anything that was said, for at that particular moment William Hayley Esquire was in floods of tears.

The library in his fine new house in Felpham was an elegant room, thirty feet long, furnished in perfectly matched mahogany, and built in the latest style with high curtained windows to let in the light and give a prospect of the sea. The walls were lined with bookcases, glass-fronted to keep out the dust, and his books were displayed in order of size and importance, Latin writers given prominence to the left of the fireplace and Greeks to the right, as behoved their even more impressive status, for it pleased him to be seen and known as a man fluent in both languages. He had designed the room himself and had spared no expense to achieve the effect he wanted. Not a single item had been omitted nor a single detail overlooked. There was a new mahogany table in the centre of the room rising richly from the blues and reds of a Turkey carpet and set about with four elegant matching chairs. The walls were a fashionable sage green, the
doors, windows and fireplace fashionably gilded, the fire well tended. There was a canterbury to hold his newspapers and journals, a Pembroke table for cards and two giltwood pier glasses to reflect the light. It only needed a set of portrait heads above the bookcases – which Mr Blake could start producing as soon as he was settled in – and then it would be complete. It was a room for comfort and display and erudition.

But there was no comfort in it that evening. The celebrated poet sat before the fire in one of his elegant chairs with his handkerchief to his eyes and wept like a child. ‘Two of the best and dearest gone in a single year,' he mourned. ‘First my dearest Cowper taken so cruelly, and then my own dear darling cripple, my dearest Thomas Alphonso – may his darling name be blessed – my one and only darling son, the apple of my eye, nineteen years old and gone in May of all months – oh, it is too cruel! – gone in May in the first flush of his exemplary youth. And I know you will say 'tis September now but I miss him more keenly than I can express. His loss is insupportable. I cannot bear it.' He looked the very picture of grief, his dark eyes wet and soulful, his long aristocratic nose dripping with distress, that tender mouth as soft and pink as a girl's.

‘Try not to grieve so, Mr Hayley, my dear,' his housekeeper said soothingly, mothering him as she so often did. ‘You will undermine your constitution.' She knew that was what he required
her to say because he liked to be reminded that his constitution was precious and needed care, but if she had given her honest opinion she would have told him she had a great deal more sympathy for the poor child than she had for his father. Poor dear brave Thomas, with that awful twisted spine that pained him so much, he'd not had much of a life of it. Fathered on a young housemaid – and a poor silly creature
she'd
been – and then raised as though he were a motherless child and with far too much expected of him. She could have wept for him in earnest, but this was not the time or the place. ‘It's past midnight,' she reminded her master. ‘Would you not be better to get some rest?' The warming pan had been in his bed for over an hour now and if he didn't retire soon she would have to set it with hot coals all over again.

‘And there's another thing,' Mr Hayley cried, dabbing his soulful eyes, ‘here's Mr Blake come and me not there to greet him. What will he think of me? It is most remiss. Most remiss.'

‘He'll understand, I'm certain sure,' the housekeeper said, ‘for I'm told he's a Christian soul.'

‘The best,' his patron cried, ‘and excellent company. Think how highly our dear Thomas regarded him. Our poor dear Thomas.'

‘Well, there you are then.'

‘I must set him to work at once,' William decided, recovering into thoughts of philanthropic action, ‘and find others to offer him commissions.
There is no time to lose if I am to establish him. I think I shall teach him to paint in miniature. That would be a great help to him. I see no reason why he should not make as good a living here as in London, if he engraves and teaches drawing to the right families and is prepared to make neat drawings of appropriate size. Of course, if he places any dependence on painting large pictures – for which, according to Mr Flaxman, he is not qualified, either by habit or study – he will be miserably deceived. Oh, most miserably. But he is a man of good sense and will be advised, I'm sure. Flaxman speaks well of him.'

The housekeeper was encouraged by his shift to cheerfulness. Maybe she wouldn't have to reheat the warming pan after all. ‘Well, there you are then,' she said again, standing back so that he could rise from his chair. ‘You just think what a lot you've got to look forward to now he's come here. Always look forward, Mr Hayley, sir, that's my advice. No point in looking back. That only brings grief. Now you try and get a good night's sleep and then we'll send young Johnnie to Chichester in the morning to get your papers and everything will look quite different by dinner time. You see if I'm not right.'

April 17
^th
1852. Felpham

My dearest Annie
,

I have just returned from my visit to Blake's cottage, which was every bit as illuminating as I hoped it would be. It is a simple dwelling, thatched, as are all the cottages hereabouts, the thatch set high on the southern wall, where the windows give out to a fine prospect of the sea, but sloping low on the northern side to keep out wind and weather. There are three rooms on each floor, leading into one another in the cottage style, three bedrooms above and a kitchen and two other rooms below, with a spiral staircase hidden behind a cupboard door in the kitchen and a proper staircase rising steeply between the other two rooms. The door and windows on the ground floor are protected by canopies of thatch, which makes the rooms rather dark but the inside walls are cleanly whitewashed and there are stout brick chimneys to carry away the smoke from the fires and to accommodate the kitchen stove. The coastguardsman was hospitable and answered all my questions patiently, although like so many of the young men hereabouts he had no personal knowledge of his famous predecessor. But he showed me round the house and the garden, demonstrated the purity of the
well water, preened when I praised his vegetable plot, and confessed that the place could be damp in bad weather and could ‘give you the rheumatics something chronic if you don't watch out, which I daresay your poet feller found out
.'

I took him across to the inn later to treat him to a pint of porter by way of thanks for his kindness and naturally we fell a-talking. He told me my friendly farmer had a brother who must have known
‘a fair deal about Mr Blake, on account of he worked up at Turret House and the two poets was very thick together, as I daresay you knows.'
I asked him where I could find this brother, assuming he still lives in the village, but he couldn't tell me. All he knew was that he was a young man at the time and must have known a fair deal. A visit to Mr Boniface's farm is indicated I think, for if there is something to be discovered from this brother, I must discover it, must I not
.

Write to me soon, my dearest. I grow anxious if I do not hear from you
.

This from your loving husband
,

Alexander
.

Johnnie Boniface was a handsome lad, not quite eighteen but already tall and muscular with the strong arms and sturdy legs of his ploughman father and the wide brow, thick fair hair and gentle
grey eyes of his mother Annie. Not that he paid much attention to his appearance. Even when he passed one of Mr Hayley's great hall mirrors on his way into the house with the vegetables, he did little more than take a peak at himself to see that his neck-cloth was neat and his waistcoat buttoned, in case the housekeeper was there to see him and rebuke him for untidiness. Although she was more like to scold if he brought mud into the place. Very particular about mud was Mrs Beke. You had to leave your boots at the door and enter in your stockinged feet.