Catherine Blake (née Catherine Boucher) (1762–1831) was the wife of the poet, painter and engraver

Engraving

Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...

 William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

 (1757–1827), and a vital presence and assistant throughout his life as an artist.

Life

Catherine was born the daughter of a market gardener in Battersea

Battersea

Battersea is an area of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is an inner-city district of South London, situated on the south side of the River Thames, 2.9 miles south-west of Charing Cross. Battersea spans from Fairfield in the west to Queenstown in the east...

, then just outside London on the other side of the Thames. She met William here in 1781, during his brief visit to the area while recovering from an emotional upset following the failure of an earlier relationship. Their courtship was brief. According to early biographers of Blake, Catherine immediately recognised him as her future husband and when she sympathised with him over his earlier emotional troubles he replied "do you pity me? Then I love you."
Blake married Catherine – who was five years his junior – on 18 August 1782 in St. Mary's Church, Battersea

St. Mary's Church, Battersea

St Mary's Church, Battersea is the local Church of England parish church in Battersea, formerly in Surrey and now part of south London, England, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. The parish is now within the diocese of Southwark. Christians have worshipped there regularly for well over a...

. Illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an 'X'. They remained together until his death in 1827. Blake taught her to read and write, and also to use his printing-press.

The couple had no children, and it has been suggested that Blake wanted to bring a concubine into the relationship to act as a surrogate mother, which was consistent with the theories of Swedenborgianism by which Blake was influenced. Blake's earliest biographer Alexander Gilchrist

Alexander Gilchrist

Alexander Gilchrist was the biographer of William Blake. Gilchrist's biography is still a standard reference work on the poet....

 does not mention this, but speaks of unspecified troubles in the early years of the relationship. However, Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...

 later explicitly asserted that this was the case, but that Blake dropped the idea when he saw that it upset Catherine. No documentary evidence survives supporting this notion, but Blake is known to have stated that he "learned from the Bible that wives should be held in common."

Writers who knew the couple in their later years describe a very happy relationship. In 1802, William Hayley

William Hayley

William Hayley was an English writer, best known as the friend and biographer of William Cowper.-Biography:...

 wrote that William "and his excellent wife (a true helpmate!) pass the plates thro' a rolling press in their own cottage together". On his deathbed, Blake drew a picture of Catherine as his last work, stating "you have ever been an angel to me".

After her husband's death Catherine was taken in by Blake's admirer Frederick Tatham

Frederick Tatham

Frederick Tatham was a British artist who was a member of the Shoreham Ancients, a group of followers of William Blake.The son of Charles Heathcote Tatham, an architect, Tatham and his brother and sister were all associated with the Ancients...

, for whom she nominally worked as a housekeeper. At this period she continued to sell Blake's works. When she died four years later Tatham claimed that she had bequeathed all Blake's works to him. When he later converted to Irvingite beliefs, he destroyed a number of them, asserting that they were inspired by the devil.

Role in Blake's art

Throughout her husband's uneven career, Catherine not only took an active role in the production of William's engravings and illuminated books; she also ran the household finances and offered strong practical support. William's friend J.T. Smith

John Thomas Smith (1766–1833)

John Thomas Smith also known as Antiquity Smith was a painter, engraver and antiquarian. He wrote a life of the sculptor Joseph Nollekens that was noted for its "malicious candour" and was a keeper of prints for the British Museum....

 said that Blake "allowed her, to the last moment of his practice, to take off his proof impressions and print his works, which she did most carefully." Catherine's role in colouring at least some of William's illuminated books has been widely acknowledged, although her hand is usually attributed to some of the more clumsily rendered passages. Her work as a printer is held in higher regard.

Role in literature

It has often been suggested that the figure of Enitharmon

Enitharmon

Enitharmon is a major female character in William Blake's mythology, playing a main part in some of his prophetic books. She is, but not directly, an aspect of the male Urthona, one of the Four Zoas. She is in fact the Emanation of Los, also male. There is a complex verbal nexus attached. The Zoa...

 in Blake's mythology is partly inspired by Catherine. Enitharmon is the wife of the "eternal prophet" Los

Los (Blake)

In the mythological writings of William Blake, Los is the fallen form of Urthona, one of the four Zoas. He is referred to as the "eternal prophet" and creates the visionary city of Golgonooza. Los is regularly described as a smith, beating with his hammer on a forge, which is metaphorically...

 in Blake's writings. Catherine is explicitly identified as the poet's "shadow of delight" in the second part of Blake's Milton: a Poem

Milton: a Poem

Milton a Poem is an epic poem by William Blake, written and illustrated between 1804 and 1810. Its hero is John Milton, who returns from Heaven and unites with Blake to explore the relationship between living writers and their predecessors, and to undergo a mystical journey to correct his own...

.

Catherine appears as a model wife in William Hayley's writings on ideal marriages. In more recent literature she is the central character in Janet Adele Warner's novel Other Sorrows, Other Joys: The Marriage of Catherine Sophia Boucher and William Blake (2001) and also features in Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier is a bestselling historical novelist. She lives in London with her husband and son.Chevalier was raised in Washington, D.C and graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland. After receiving her B.A...

's novel Burning Bright (2007). She is an amateur detective in short stories by Keith Heller

Keith Heller

Keith Heller is the former chairman of the English, Welsh and Scottish Railway , who retired in late January 2011. Heller began with Canadian National in 1966. Heller had a Class 67 locomotive unit named in his honour, with a giant white maple leaf on the side.-References:...

.

Jack Shepherd's stage play In Lambeth dramatised a visit by Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine

Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...

 to the Lambeth

Lambeth

Lambeth is a district of south London, England, and part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated southeast of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:...

 home of William and Catherine Blake in 1789. It was first performed at the East Dulwich Tavern in July 1989. The play was later adapted for television in the BBC Two

BBC Two

BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

 Encounters series - which featured similar fictionalised meetings between historical figures - and was first broadcast on 4 July 1993. It was directed by Sebastian Graham-Jones, and featured Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance is an English actor, theatre director and playwright.As an actor, Rylance found success on stage and screen. For his work in theatre he has won Olivier and Tony Awards among others, and a BAFTA TV Award...

 as William, Bob Peck

Bob Peck

Bob Peck was an English stage, television and film actor.-Early life:He went to Leeds Modern School in Lawnswood...

as Paine, and Lesley Claire O'Neill as Catherine.