Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/420

 CHAPTER XXXIV.

PERSONAL DETAILS.

intelligent sympathy and candour animating the life-like portraiture of the Letter which concludes the foregoing chapter need no comment on my part. I will here simply add a few additional details, characteristic of Blake personally, and of his manner of life in Fountain Court; gleaned from the recollections of others who knew him there.

Blake's two rooms on the first floor were approached by a wainscoted staircase, with handsome balustrades, such as we find in houses of Queen Anne's date, and lit by a window to the left, looking out on the well-like back yard below. Having ascended, two doors faced you, opening into the back and front rooms. That in front, with the windows looking out on Fountain Court, its panelled walls hung with frescos, temperas, and drawings of Blake's, was used as a reception room. From it a door opened into the smaller back room, the window of which (a side one) looked down a deep gap between the houses of Fountain Court and the parallel street; in this way commanding a peep of the Thames with its muddy banks, and of distant Surrey hills beyond. This was, at once, sleeping and living room, kitchen and studio. In one corner was the bed; in another, the fire at which Mrs. Blake cooked. On one side stood the table, serving for meals, and by the window, the table at which Blake always sat (facing the light), designing or engraving. There was an air of poverty as of an artisan's room; but everything was