To Breathe

To Breathe

London 1822

"So", Doctor Benson said, "do you see these angels in the trees all the
time or only sometimes?"
The old man he'd spoken to was not an inmate of Benson's asylum. Benson
was compiling a case history on him, though, for the archive of his
mental hospital. Through their mutual friend, Mr Robinson, Benson had
offered the impoverished old man a guinea to be interviewed. He
regarded the old man as a most interesting case.

The old man looked at Benson kindly. It was almost a look of pity and
the thought came to Benson that the poor fellow actually felt sorry for
him. An intolerable thought or at the very least a discomfiting
one.
"I see angels when they're there," the old man said, reasonably.
His white hair stood out around his head and shafts of light from the
window illuminated it so that he seemed to have a halo himself. There
was in any case something luminous and strange about the fellow. His
clothes were worn but not worn out and his large brown eyes were shrewd
and full of life. What was it about him that made him seem so odd?
Dammed if he could put his finger on it but the mad always looked
strange. Whether it was because they knew they were mad or suspected
others knew, he couldn't say. All his years of experience had never
answered that question - and many others.

"Are you a spiritual man?" Doctor Benson asked.
The old man smiled and looked out the window. He seemed not have
heard.
"The word spiritual comes from the Latin, spirare, to breathe," he
said.
"We cannot avoid breathing can we? Spirituality is our natural state;
how then can I avoid it?"
Those extraordinary eyes. The fellow had done those violent and
blasphemous paintings. They were like nothing Benson had ever seen
before,
full of nude bodies and strange colours, but were they the work of a
genius or a madman? As soon as he saw those paintings he wanted to meet
the man who'd painted them. Especially when he heard from others that
he was regarded as a mad genius. Madness and genius were closely
allied, he knew that; but could anyone be both? The thought came
unbidden that society could not and would not permit anyone to be both.
It was too disruptive of the idea of an orderly society. The genius was
a sort of hero and a hero could not be mad.

"Your paintings are very unusual. Very striking indeed. How do you
paint them?"
"Well," the old man was looking out the window again. "I take a
millboard, thick is best for my purpose. Then I take ink or colour and
I make a design very quickly so that no colour has time to dry. This I
print on to paper and then I colour it up in watercolour." He looked at
Benson and his eyes were gleaming, he gestured excitedly as he spoke.
"The advantage of this method, for my purpose at least, is that each
print can be varied slightly so that no two are the same. That's the
way it is with human beings is it not?
No two the same?"
He smiled and now his eyes gleamed with mischief. Benson felt
uncomfortable and off balance somehow.
"And your themes? Are they always biblical?"
"There is much to learn in the bible and much to unlearn."
The old man's eyes were now focused on something, perhaps some scene
from the Old Testament, just to the right of Benson's head.

"Do the angels tell you what to paint?"
"Not that I'm aware of. I've never spoken to them or attempted to
communicate with them in any way."
"Why not?"
"Because, my dear sir, it's enough for me that they exist. I ask
nothing more of them," he laughed softly and looked straight at Benson.
The doctor flinched and looked away. Who could bear the scrutiny of
eyes that saw angels? Benson had to check himself at this point. Thinks
he sees angels, he told himself firmly. Delusional. He reached for the
word and held on to it.
The old fellow's face had an expression of exceptional sweetness when
it was not animated by some strong emotion.
"Are you happy with your life?" Benson asked him.
"I live for art, as I always have. I wanted no other trade and I have
had no other. Yes, I'm happy. Though it is a happiness few understand.
You yourself would find it as impossible to understand my happiness as
the camel would find it to pass through the eye of the needle. I don't
hold it against you though, nor should you hold my strange happiness
against me."
The old man was thinking as he spoke that to tell this doctor, this
imprisoner of the mad, that he spoke regularly with a being he thought
of as "the Spirit" or that he was assailed constantly by visions which
the doctor would see as hallucinations would be most unwise. He would
not be unwise.

"You write poetry too I've heard."
"Yes."
"Can I hear a poem?"
The old man immediately spoke in a clear, pleasant voice, "When he
hath tried me I shall come forth like gold. Have pity on me O ye my
friends for the hand of God hath touched me."
"But surely that's..."
"From the Bible. Yes, it is. You asked to hear a poem and that's what
the Old Testament is." The man sniffed and looked away.
While Doctor Benson remained convinced that the old man was mad, he
felt as if he (the sane one, the physician) was floundering and being
tested somehow.
"What are you working on at the moment?"
"An engraving of Dante's "Inferno". My poems are mostly very long," he
said as if apologizing for his former behaviour. "And difficult," he
added. "I'll be using some of the guinea you're paying me, in the
making of my engraving, I expect."
Benson felt pleased and despised himself for it. "You realize you'll
probably die poor, don't you?" he told the old man by way of revenge,
though he wouldn't have called it that. He would have called it
research.
"I'll die and I'll certainly be poor when I do it but the imagination
lives forever and art and money are bad bedfellows. Do you know of
Thomas Lawrence."
"I don't, no."
"Nor will you. He's a rich man, like you. A fashionable portrait
painter. His name will die with him. Mine will not die with me. One day
the world will know my achievements for what they are. You know, Mr
Thomas gave me twenty pounds because he felt sorry for me, but," he
leaned forward, eyes bright, "I feel far sorrier for him. Poor fellow."
He shook his head.

Benson thought that one of the advantages of being mad was that one's
delusions gave certainty - something no amount of rational thought
could give. The old man had faith. He believed that even his poverty
was a sign of his future greatness.
"So, you're laying up riches in heaven," Benson couldn't keep the
smirk out of his voice, though he managed to keep it off his
face.
"Not at all. I'm simply doing what I was meant to do with my life. I
agree with you in one respect - I was not meant for this world. Indeed
not. This world and I are not friends; I've known that since I was a
child. I saw my first angels when I was a child of eight. They filled
an entire tree and they shone like stars. Their wings were so bright
they blinded me. It was some time before I could see again and when I
could the angels had gone. I sat down on the ground and wept. I wanted
them to come back. I'm sure the memory of their beauty is what led me
to art."
"You were obviously a child of powerful imagination," Benson spoke
smoothly and calmly and the old man turned to him with that sweet
expression.
"Of course I was. But I didn't imagine it. No, not at all."
His face was closed now. His mouth stubborn. Benson decided he'd gone
too far. The last thing he wanted was a distressing scene or even a
collapse that would necessitate admitting the old man to the asylum. He
was not someone that Benson wanted to have to see or know about while
he went about his business with his lunatics. The man was not only
disturbed, he was disturbing.
Or at least Benson found him so. He had dealt with all kinds of
lunatics - cursing, spinning, raving, violent and catatonic but he had
never been as disturbed by these as he was by this man.

But now it was suddenly obvious to Benson why this old man saw angels.
When one thought about his life it was easy to understand. Here was a
man who craved the beautiful and the sacred and how did he live?
Surrounded by the ugliness of the modern city and the sordidness of its
inhabitants; constantly assailed in ear and eye and even in thought by
the profane. The life of the impoverished artist could be a long
suicide - it could lead to despair - yet this man seemed happy and
fulfilled. Dissatisfied with the world he lived in he had created
another world of angels, sacred deeds, great sin and a hope of
redemption that many of the poor who lived on London's streets and in
its hovels had lost. His world was one of delusion but it had saved him
from despair and defeat. He had re-created the world. He was his own
Messiah. The dangers in this were obvious to Benson though he had to
admit there were no signs of "delusions of grandeur" in this man. He
was humble and sweet natured.

In a last attempt to stamp his authority on the proceedings Benson
asked him, "Where did you train as an artist?"
"When I was ten my parents sent me to Henry Par's Drawing School which
is at 101 The Strand. It's on the right hand side as you go into the
city, as you probably know."
Benson didn't and began to feel that there were probably a large number
of things this old man knew that he didn't. He twisted away from the
feeling.
"Even Michelangelo," the man went on, "once remarked that it was
necessary to learn to draw correctly in youth. Many people have told me
I'm an exceptional draughtsman. I was taught at the right age, you
see."
Benson nodded. "Were your parents religious?" he asked him.
"My parents were dissenters and they espoused radical politics. Don't
seek an answer there to the course my life has taken. Shakespeare has
one of his characters say that a man is author of himself and knows no
other kin.
That is certainly the case with myself. My mother even beat me once for
speaking of my visions." The sweet expression slipped briefly and
bitterness took its place. "Only once but I never forgot it."
Soon after Benson terminated the interview and paid the old man his
guinea.
"Thank you, Sir, it's been most interesting," the old fellow said, as
if Benson had been the subject of his research and not he of Benson's.
Then with a slight bow he went on his way.

As the strange old man was walking away Doctor Friars came out of the
adjoining room. The connecting door had been left slightly ajar so that
Friars could take notes for his own research purposes. Friars had a
chilling presence (which was most unfortunate since he had a first
class mind) and he often had an unsettling effect on the patients. When
he swept down the halls of the asylum in the long black cloak he
favoured he looked like a large bat.
The lunatics had been known to fall to their knees and address him as
"God".

Benson turned to Friars and said, "Well he's certainly mad but he's
harmless."
Friars did not agree and would have locked him up in an instant.
Friar's eyes narrowed. "What's his name?"
Benson told him and he wrote it neatly at the top of the file that he
held in his hand. "William Blake" he wrote in his beautiful
handwriting.

Being in possession of a guinea, the old man was able to travel back
to his house in Fountain Court by coach. He paid the coachman, walked
up to his front door and knocked. His wife opened it. She was very pale
and looked
Almost ready to faint.
"Oh my dear!" she gasped. "I thought I'd never see you again. The
thought of you in that horrible place was more than I could
bear."
Her husband helped her to a chair. "Sit down Catherine," he said in a
kindly way and went to fetch her a tumbler of water.
` "What did he say? The Doctor? And did he pay you?"
"So many questions my dear. Don't distress yourself. He was very
pleasant and yes, he gave me a guinea. Now I can begin the
engraving."
"But what did he say?" his wife insisted.
"He said I was harmless," he shouted, suddenly furious. He threw the
tumbler of water across the room and swept their already cracked and
chipped dishes off a sideboard on to the floor where they made a
satisfying smash. His wife looked at him in surprise and then she
started to laugh. He found he had to laugh too.
"Harmless!" he laughed and shouted.
He threw the word out the open window as if it was a lighted flare or a
dagger.
The people in the neighbouring houses heard the shouting and laughing
but they were used to strange goings on in that house.

The angels in the tree outside his back door smiled at each other.
Their man was in fine form today. Soon, they knew, he would pick up pen
or brush and go on with his work. They liked to watch him work. They
liked to toss ideas his way and then watch the passion they aroused at
work in him.
Incapable of passion themselves they still had an appreciation of it.
They knew it was what moved the planets; that the whole incredible
machinery of creation had been born of it and that this man also needed
it to create. He existed between two worlds, as they did. His was the
mind that would have been theirs had they been matter and not
spirit.

That night in bed with his wife asleep beside him the old man
remembered going down the steps of the lunatic asylum, quite happy and
a guinea richer, when he became aware of something moving at one of the
barred windows. He looked back and saw one of the lunatics rocking
backwards and forwards, his eyes upraised and his mouth moving as if in
prayer or perhaps in conversation with someone who existed only in his
mind. The old man watched the rocking man behind the barred window and
as he did he put into the lunatic's mouth the words he himself had
written:
O why was I born with a different face?
Why was I not born like the rest of my race?
He had hurried down the steps then, afraid that he had seen a vision of
his own future.

Now lying awake in the dark he knew that he had to think of something
else or he would never sleep, so he remembered himself at the age of
ten.
It was high summer and he had eaten blackberries from some bushes on
the edge of the road. He saw himself on that golden day; red haired and
rosy cheeked, sturdy and joyous as he tramped along the road. Then he
saw all the moments of his life as if they were beads on a string and
felt for the first time that he could make sense of them. He watched
his ten-year-old self sitting at the kitchen table with a piece of
paper he had found in a drawer, with pen and ink. He marvelled at the
innocence and, above all, the hopefulness of the boy as he started to
write his poem. All the old man's faith in his past and in his destiny
came back as he read the first two lines the boy had written:
How sweet I roam'd from field to field.
And tasted all the summer's pride.
Soon he slept. And dreamed no dreams.

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