BIB_ID
157417
Accession number
MA 2618
Creator
Blake, William, 1757-1827.
Display Date
[1800 September 12].
Credit line
Gift of Tessie Jones, 1968.
Description
1 item (2 pages, with address) ; 19.5 x 15.7 cm
Notes
The place of writing has been inferred from biographical information.
Address panel with seal and postmarks: "Mr Flaxman / Buckingham Street / Fitzroy Square."
The date of writing has been drawn from the postmark.
With a poem of twelve lines on the second page, "To my Dearest Friend John Flaxman," in which Blake references his influences and friends, among them Milton, Shakespeare, Paracelsus, Jakob Böhme, William Hayley, and Henry Fuseli, and concludes with an apocalyptic vision involving the French and American Revolutions: "And My Angels have told me that Seeing such visions I could not Subsist on the Earth / But by my conjunction with Flaxman who knows to forgive Nervous Fear."
Address panel with seal and postmarks: "Mr Flaxman / Buckingham Street / Fitzroy Square."
The date of writing has been drawn from the postmark.
With a poem of twelve lines on the second page, "To my Dearest Friend John Flaxman," in which Blake references his influences and friends, among them Milton, Shakespeare, Paracelsus, Jakob Böhme, William Hayley, and Henry Fuseli, and concludes with an apocalyptic vision involving the French and American Revolutions: "And My Angels have told me that Seeing such visions I could not Subsist on the Earth / But by my conjunction with Flaxman who knows to forgive Nervous Fear."
Provenance
Gift of Tessie Jones in memory of her father, Herschel V. Jones, 1968.
Summary
Writing of his gratitude to Flaxman: "It is to you I owe All my present Happiness. It is to you I owe perhaps the Principal Happiness of my life"; telling him that he and his wife Catherine will call on Ann Flaxman on Sunday afternoon, and that their preparations for moving to Felpham are nearly completed; adding that he is sending "a few lines" of poetry: "And As the time is now arrivd when Men shall again converse in Heaven & walk with Angels, I know you will be pleased with the Intention & hope you will forgive the Poetry"; asking in a postscript that Flaxman "read & then seal the Inclosed & send it on its much beloved Mission."
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