1. Family and Early Life. 1757 – 1771.

William Blake was born in London on 28 November 1757 to a middle class family with a hosiery shop at 28 Broad Street near to Oxford Street London. His mother Catherine Blake nee Boucher was a member of The Moravian Church and community in London. It is likely that young William would have attended the Moravian Church and was familiar with their customs.

He was not academic and was given basic education at home. This was characteristic of Moravian tradition, also his father was reluctant to send him to school due to his fear of being given beatings and also him having a daring and impetuous temper and a strong dislike for restraints and rules.

Thank god I was never sent to school

To be flogged into following the style of a fool.

When he was about ten while walking on Peckham Rye he claims he saw a tree filed with dancing angels. When he got home and related this story his father was ready to give the boy a beating for making up such a thing and it was only the interception of his mother that saved him. bbr1

At age 10, due to his interest in drawing, he was sent to Mr Pars Drawing School in the Strand. He studied there until he was 14.

During this period at the age of 12 there is evidence that he started to write poetry and one piece written at around this time, called Song, was later published in 1783. as Poetical Sketches.     Verse 1 of 4.

         How sweet I roamed from field to field

          And tasted all the summers pride,

         Till I the price of Love beheld,

           Who in the sunny beams did glide!

When it came time for him to leave Pars School his father had to make a decision as to his future. To consider him being apprenticed to an established artist would be expensive and at the end would not guarantee an income. He therefore decided that if he was apprenticed to an engraver he would be involved in the art world but would also have a living. He arranged for William to be interviewed by some engravers. The first of these was a very famous engraver and artist William Wynne Ryland.  After the interview Blake said to his father “ I do not like that mans face , it looks as if he will live to be hanged”. This became significant as Ryland was the last man to be hung at Tyburn in 1783. bbr2

At age 14 from 1773-78, he was apprenticed to an engraver named Basire who had a house and workshop in Lincoln Inn Fields.

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2. Apprenticeship 1771 – 1778.

Basire was an important engraver with several leading poets and writers including Goldsmith, using his services for plates in their works. Blake was privileged to carry out work associated with them and to meet them.

During this time he studied the classical works of Raphael, Michael Angelo and Durer.

He visited auction rooms including Langfords and Christie's and saw many important paintings but also was able to buy prints many at low prices as he got to know the auctioneers.

He used to get teased by some of the other apprentices regarding his studies of the masters and probably because he stood out even at this early stage as different. There is evidence of him having a fight with one of them in Westminster Abbey when Blake was making copies of tomb engravings and ornaments. This resulted in them all

being banned from The Abbey. bbr3

3. The Royal Academy and life with young friends. 1778 – 1781.

After completing his apprenticeship in 1778 he enrolled at the newly formed Royal Academy School. Sir Joshua Reynolds was the President. Blake disliked Reynolds and his paintings and also criticised many that were displayed in the Academy gallery. This made him unpopular and may have led to him leaving the Academy before completing the course.

At around this time he made friends with Thomas Stothard a promising young artist, along with Oglvie, Parkes, and Flaxman, all budding artists who Blake met at the Academy.

The group used to go out together and on a few occasions some, including Blake and Stothard, hired a sailing boat on The Medway near Rochester. They went off for several days of expeditions camping on the banks and to go sketching. The river was navigable up to Tonbridge . These trips probably took place around 1780 after they had finished at the Royal Academy for the summer recess. Blake also liked to go on long walks of up to 50 miles into the countryside, some to Dulwich and Ashdown Forest and south to Croydon and beyond. ( Note. I will return to this later.)bbr4

He left the Academy after about one year and living at his fathers house started to work on his own as an engraver.  He managed to get sufficient work to make a small living mainly engraving plates for magazines and novels.

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4. Marriage and new friends 1782 – 1789.

In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher a lady slightly below his family status. Both his and her family were opposed to the union. Blake and his wife moved out of his fathers house and took up lodgings at 23 Green Street, Leicester Fields. Blake's close friend Flaxman who had recently married also took up residence close by. bbr5

At about this time Flaxmen introduced Blake to his friends Rev Henry and Mrs Mathews who lived in a nice house in Rathborne Place. Mrs Mathews entertained the leading poets authors and artists to her frequent soirées in her drawing room. She liked to hear Blake perform his poetry usually by singing. As a result of these meetings Blake became well known in the London  society with artist and poet friends. These included  Palmer,  Fusili  and Flaxman.  Mrs Mathews persuaded her husband along with Flaxman to pay for publication of Blake's Poetical Sketches. bbr6

All said he was a very nice affable man who liked to talk both art and religious subjects and he showed empathy with the working people of London. However he was at times known to show a temper. He was not actually very religious possibly agnostic and despised the Established Church and Monarchy. Both he and his wife became members of the New Jerusalem Church, originally founded by Emanuel Swedenborg. bbr7

Blake expressed concern over the treatment and suffering of workers in the early days of The Industrial Revolution and he was worried about the new machines that made workers slaves to the work place.  His views were made clear in poems such as London, The Little Vagabond, The Little Black Boy, The Chimney Sweeper and Tyger.

Our most famous hymn known to us as Jerusalem uses Blake's poem from his introduction to his great work Milton .In this he wants to rid the country of dark Satanic Mills returning it to Green and pleasant lands.

In Jerusalem Plate 6 he shows Los sitting on an anvil in front of a furnace with large leather chain operated, bellows. Suggestion of a blast furnace. bbr8

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5. Blake's Early Poems.

In the period from his teens about 1768 to 1787 when his brother Robert died of tuberculosis, Blake's works were in the main of a pleasant pastoral earthly nature.

And His Poetical Sketches published by his friend Flaxman were mostly pleasant light reading.

During the period 1775 – 1800.there was considerable public concern regarding the exploitation of child labour both in the mills of the north of England but the child chimney sweeps seen in London by Blake. Parliament discussed the conditions of child sweeps in1784. The first Act to Control this was The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802. Blake would have been well aware of both this and also the conditions of the Northern Mills.

He went on to write Songs of Innocence for children followed later by Songs of Experience for adults. These were published as one book in 1794.

The poems in Songs of Innocence are simple and naive whereas in Songs of Experience however we see a more hardened mature interpretation of life. However his dreams and visions which dominate his later works are not very evident until a period from well after the early 1790s a few years after he wrote The Tyger.

This very popular and fairly early poem from the 1780s is written in his note book.

Although the majority of commentators offer religious, mythological and allegorical interpretation to the verses, it is my opinion there is another way of looking at the poem. Blake had not reached his extreme visionary period at this stage. The poem is included in Songs of Experience where all relate to earthly subjects, not unworldly or supernatural ones as most of his later works do. This why in my opinion the poem can be interpreted in real life terms and this is as the workings of a blast furnace. I will explain my logic on this later in section 8.

6. Blake's Melancholia.

In the 18/19th century, people with degrees of depression were diagnosed with Melancholia. In the 20th century it was linked with Bi-Polar and Schizophrenia.

Blake in his 20/30s often complained he had been in a state of meloncholy, however at other times he saw visions and heard voices. These symptoms are similar to bi-polar/ schizophrenia diseases. These diseases often manifest itself in males at around 20-30 years of age. nhs9 Blake's writings and art became more visionary and somewhat unworldly after he reached 30. Then proceeded to be very mythological and allegorical the older he became. In later years , Southey and Wordsworth who were acquainted with Blake's works expressed the view that he was a man of insane genius. gb10

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7. William Blake , Emanuel Swedenborg and Moravianism.

Blake's mother Catherine came from a family of Moravians and it is possible that as a child started his religious education at the Moravian Church.

It is likely that he was aware of their ways and customs. Some of the influence may be seen in his works, particularly involving sex and nudism.

Emanuel Swedenborg1688-1772 was a scientist and visionary. He lived his early life in Sweden where he became Chief Surveyor of Mines and Quarries. In this role he was involved with the development of blast furnaces and invented new designs which he published. His investigations took him to England and in 1734 he visited a blast furnace at Lamberhurst and made drawings later to be published iw12. When he was about 56 he saw visions and heard voices which he put into print in a book “Heaven and Hell”. Because he challenged the standard religion in Sweden he was expelled and went to several European countries but spent a lot of time in London where he lectured on his new religious views. A movement started as a result of this and formed into a religion called Swedenborgianism. Sa13. The associated church known as The New Jerusalem Church was opened in London in 1789. Blake and his wife were enrolled as some of the first members. Blake owned and had access to several of Sweedenborgs books and works.  He was influenced by Swedenborg but after several years became less involved with the movement. He did say in 1825 when interviewed by Crabb Robinson  that Swedenborgianisms sexual religion was dangerous. It is not clear what Blake inferred by this. There was probably some inference that praying in nudity was beneficial to the soul. In about 1790 Blake and Catherine were discovered naked in their garden at 13 Hercules  Buildings. However the religion could have had influence in his later works.

In my opinion there is a connection which possibly existed in Blake's mind between the appalling conditions of factory workers in the northern mills and the fact that he and his dear wife joined the New Jerusalem Church in 1789. bbr14.

He worked on his preface to Milton Book 1. around 1799 and 1800.when he wrote the words to the hymn we know as Jerusalem.

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8. Reinterpretation of Tyger by an Engineer.

As a Chartered Engineer I believe Tyger lends itself to a new interpretation. Before explaining the Poem, I will set a scene which I believe Blake may well have witnessed. This is of course my speculation. However there is no evidence that Blake ever explained his works to anyone particularly the early works most of which are easily understood..

Blake when young, went on lots of long exploratory walks some of up to 50 miles, taking in the countryside and the industrial works going on in and outside London and the living conditions he encountered. He perceived misery on children's faces in the London slums close to the Thames. He expresses this in his poem London. He was concerned about the terrible conditions that workers experienced in the early industrial revolution.

On one of Blake's sailing trips on The Medway,  they could have travelled 20 or more miles up river beyond Maidstone and on towards Tonbridge.

After mooring near East Peckham and going for a walk possibly 4 miles to find a hostelry they could well have come across a blast furnace. There were several in use in that area of the north Weald. Particularly near Lamberhurst and Tonbridge. It is interesting that during my research I found that Swedenborg visited the Lamberhurst furnace in 1734 and made drawings which he used in a publication on Blast Furnaces. The large furnace at Lamberhurst was still in use in 1780. iw11.  The Medway was used as the main means of transporting the iron goods particularly cannons down to London.

Another possibility is that on a different occasion, if he walked to the Dorking area about 20 miles, there were several working furnaces just south of there.

It is my opinion that on one day or evening on a walk, Blake came across a working Blast Furnace, probably in a wooded area where they were usually located.

He may have seen men working the Furnace and asked what they were doing. They would of course spoken in a broad local accent and said “We are feeding the tuyere” What they were doing was pumping air into the furnace with bellows, the air going through a metal nozzle into the furnace. The nozzle was and still is known as a tuyere. Blake possibly thought they said Tyger. This may have sparked the idea in his head for the poem based on the sweat and toil of the men working a furnace, using the hammers and tools and anvils to control the molten iron. He also spelt Tiger with a Y, Tyger. Similar to Tuyer. However  I accept at that period  I and Y were often interchanged.

Blake wrote Tyger after about 1787. He planned it in his brother Roberts note book which he is unlikely to have inherited until after his untimely death in 1787.

It then had to be engraved along with the other poems before being included in Songs of Experience published in 1794.

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The following picture illustrates a blast furnace and what it was like to work with them.