Page:William Blake (Symons).djvu/71

 Rh There is a drawing of her head by Blake in the Rossetti MS. which, though apparently somewhat conventionalised, shows a clear aquiline profile and very large eyes; still to be divined in the rather painful head drawn by Tatham when she was an old woman, a head in which there is still power and fixity. Crabb Robinson, who met her in 1825, says that she had 'a good expression in her countenance, and, with a dark eye, remains of beauty in her youth.'

No man of genius ever had a better wife. To the last she called him 'Mr. Blake,' while he, we are told, frequently spoke of her as 'his beloved.' The most beautiful reference to her which I find in his letters is one in a letter of September 16, 1800, to Hayley, where he calls her 'my dear and too careful and over-joyous woman,' and says 'Eartham will be my first temple and altar; my wife is like a flame of many colours of precious jewels whenever she hears it named.' He taught her to write, and the copy-book titles to some of his water-colours are probably hers; to draw, so that after his death she finished some of his designs; and to help him in the printing and