Read Online Gates of Paradise by Beryl Kingston - Free Book Online

goes without saying, Dante, Homer, Chaucer, Dryden, my dear friend Cowper, myself, naturally, and my dear Thomas Alphonso who would most certainly have been among the truly great had he been spared, poor dear talented boy, don’t you agree?’
    Blake didn’t agree with very much of it, but felt obliged to make the sort of vague noises that could be interpreted as acceptance. How was his work to be done if he had to paint eighteen pictures? It would take him months.
    â€˜There are sketches of most of these great men in my books,’ Mr Hayley went on happily, ‘which you shall borrow for your purposes. You can enlarge them into portraits as I require, can you not? Ah, my dear friend, what good fortune this is for you. It is a noble commission and will keep you occupied most handsomely.’
    Temper was rising in Blake’s chest, making it difficult for him to breathe and to control himself. I must say nothing, he thought. The man means well. He is trying to help me. It is a living. But he ached to write of Jerusalem and the four-gated city, to follow the progress of Eternal Man through thetribulations of the material world, through aspirations and fulfilments, until all the scattered fragments of his eternal nature are reconciled in the final glory of eternity. Having set himself such a monumental task, the thought of spending his time merely copying somebody else’s sketches was demoralising.
    â€˜He acts like a prince,’ he complained to Catherine when he was safely back home and could speak his mind. ‘You must needs agree with him whether you will or no.’
    â€˜Try not to mind it too much,’ Catherine said, kissing him. ‘’Twill pay the rent and keep us in vittles. That is how we must think of it, my dear. I will help you all I can.’
    But even with her help, it was well into November before he had completed the first two portraits – one of Shakespeare, surrounded by the ghostly figures of his imagination and the other of Milton wearing a wreath of oak leaves – and there were sixteen more to go.
    Winter and work progressed inexorably and often miserably. The cottage was damp and grew damper as the winds blew the sea mists straight across the fields and under their door. The chimneys smoked, the fires wouldn’t take, and when it rained, as it often did, the thatch dripped dirty water on them whenever they went out to the well or to empty their chamber pots in the privy. They both had fevers, with coughs and rheums and miserablyaching limbs, and, although William recovered after a week or two, Catherine grew worse and worse until her knees were so sore and swollen it was painful for her to walk. And the visions spoke with terrible regularity, rising from the shining pebbles of the beach to tower above the cottage, stern-faced and angry against the grey skies and the driven smoke of the chimneys.
    â€˜I am rebuked because I do not work upon the task they have set me,’ Blake mourned, agonised by what he saw and heard, ‘because I neglect the task to which I am called, because I have left the story of Eternal Man, of Albion and Jerusalem, to labour like a hired hand.’ It was not a happy time.
    â€˜â€™Twill be better come the spring,’ Catherine tried to encourage. But the spring was far away. As he started upon the next portrait, which was the picture of Thomas Alphonso, it was so bleak and cold he declared he was fast giving up hope of ever being warmed by the sun again. And to make matters worse, that picture was more difficult than all the others put together.
    Mr Hayley was impossible to please. The shape of the boy’s head was wrong, it would be better if he were depicted in profile, his nose was too long, his eyes were the wrong colour and lacked life. ‘You are inaccurate,’ he cried, when William presented his third attempt. ‘You have not caught the spirit of my darling boy. You detract from the grace of