Gray and Walpole
And then . . .Wood s lot ferreted out The Thomas Gray Archive. Gray is a favorite of mine. The most "major" of the "minor" poets, as one of my professors described him. His complete works can be read in an afternoon.
This reminded me of one of those fun little bits of Blake scholarship. The two small figures in the corner of Blake's illustration for Night The Second of Edward Young's Night Thoughts are the grandfather of Gothic, Horace Walpole, and Thomas Gray.
The subtitle, "Time, Death, Friendship" is applicable to those two in an interesting way. Walpole was rumored to be gay, and rumor also has it that he made a pass at Gray during their continental tour. They were great friends before that, but Gray quickly and inexplicably returned to England. They were not that close afterward. Blake seems to have agreed with this assessment of Walpole's character, as evidenced by his playful modifications of the plate.
It was really hard for me to track down a copy of the Oxford two-volume edition of Blake's complete designs for Night Thoughts. All the copies available in the US were over $1,000— I finally found one in England for $200, but it cost nearly a hundred to ship because it is so massive.
This is a great excuse to pull it out
The final version, shown here in its watercolor form, is fairly respectful. Walpole, in the red toga, takes Gray's hand. But in the earlier stages, there are definite bits of satire.
Notice that in the first stage drawing, Walpole's lips are rather pouty, and the positioning of the hands is, um, rather suggestive.
And in the second, Walpole has a bit of a leer and seems to have grown breasts.
This rather different approach to friendship remains in the third stage drawing, with slightly diminished breasts. It also retains Gray's rather phallic pointing finger.
Of course, Blake discretely censored himself for public consumption eventually, removing the pointer, and the bulbous protuberances.
For more of Blake’s take on Gray matters, as I recall I posted his watercolor illustrations for one of Gray’ s poems as a tribute to one of my favorites, Shauny many months ago.
I'd also like to point out what's missing from the figure that Walpole is standing upon -- an item to which (coincidentally??) Gray's phallic finger would have been pointing. In the final version Walpole's drapery sort of fudges the question.