One of the central characters in Tracy Chevalier’s latest novel is William Blake, a man whose works seem to have followed the author wherever she’s gone. Chevalier was first introduced to the William Blake the writer when she was a teenager in Washington, DC, and was enchanted by his Songs of Innocence and Experience. Years later, Blake the painter made an impact when she visited Tate Britain and saw his dramatic and disturbing watercolours. Then, on a recent visit to Lambeth, she found the home of William Blake the printer and radical activist. For the author of the phenomenally successful Girl with a Pearl Earring, this extraordinary versatile and influential visionary was someone she simply had to learn more about.
"I’m fascinated by his work," says Chevalier enthusiastically. "It’s so challenging, it made me uneasy to look at because it’s so dramatic and crazed and it seemed to me that it was done in a sort of drug induced haze. And then years later I learnt a lot more about him as a person and realised he really was crazy and I knew I really wanted to write about this compelling yet appalling man."
As the American-born writer learnt more about the man and his work she became fascinated with the influence Blake has had on British life. "There are so many references to him in our daily lives from Jerusalem which is sung at wedding and sports matches, to the sculpture of Newton in the British Library which is after Blake’s painting of him. Then there’s Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright which is learnt by children at school. But really it’s what people don’t know about him that’s so fascinating," she continues. "Everyone knows something about him but they don’t know very much. I wanted to unpick him and see what made him tick. There’s so much of him in his work."
Burning Bright follows the Kellaways, a family that moves from Dorset to Lambeth where their lives become entangled with their neighbour, one William Blake. Blake had lived most of his life in both Golden Square in Soho and Leicester Fields (as the square was then known), only moving south of the river in middle-age. "I think he moved because he was doing quite well and wanted more space," muses the author. "He had bought a printing press and they weren’t small, so he needed to find a spacious house and Lambeth offered that."
Chevalier herself has some experience of moving to south London having lived Tooting, Putney and Wandsworth when she first arrived in England from the US over twenty years ago. "Coming from the States, there were certain elements of south London which were quite shocking," she recalls. "I was living in this small Victorian house in Tooting and to start with and everything from the rooms to the streets seemed to be so dark and cramped. Then gradually I got more used to it and started to appreciate the haphazard streets and the open spaces. It still wasn’t chic back then but you could see change was coming."
The same could be said of the land south of river in Blake’s day. "It certainly wasn’t a smart area," Chevalier explains. "Actually, it was pretty grim with lots of poverty and working-class slums down by the river." She pauses considering. "It was an area in transition, I suppose. Indeed, just few years before Blake moved there it was still fields and essentially just a village opposite Westminster. It was the coming of the Industrial Revolution that changed the area completely as factories grew up along the river. There was a mustard factory, timber yards, a vinegar factory, and plenty of cloth drying fields and warehouses."
Lambeth was not completely without culture though. The diverse range of people who collected in the area helped to establish London’s most notorious circus and a fantastic setting for several scenes in Burning Bright. Astley’s Circus was a permanent theatre originally built in 1770 and located at the southern end of Westminster Bridge where it remained until it burned down in the 1830s. "The circus had a huge effect on the area because for eight months of the year it provided a lot of employment for those living in Lambeth," explains Chevalier.
Researching the area’s past was a real challenge for Chevalier as so little of 18th century Lambeth remains to this day. "There really are only tiny pockets left, like St Mary’s Gardens," laments Chevalier. The problem she explains is that much of the history was destroyed to make way for the rail lines to and from Waterloo Station. "There are a couple of pubs which are still standing. Near Hercules Buildings there’s one called the Pineapple which is mentioned in literature about the time. And until 10 years ago there was a pub called the Artichoke on Lower Marsh which was also an original from Blake’s day."
For Chevalier, the real treasures of her research were two particular sources on Lambeth – a map by Richard Horwood which forms the inside cover of the book and On Lambeth Marsh an account of the area by local resident Graham Gibberd. "I walked around a lot as well," explains Chevalier," but it wasn’t entirely useful because you can stand on Hercules Street and where Blake’s house was is now a housing estate – actually it’s called the William Blake housing estate!" She laughs enjoying this original memorial to one of the area’s most famous residents. "How he would have loved that!"
The author’s explorations were not entirely in vain, however. "I knew that Blake lived at 13 Hercules Buildings – which had initially been built by Astley to house his circus workers – and that Astley himself lived in a mansion just behind these buildings. So
I went round the back of the estate to where Astley’s Mansion would have been and I paced out Blake’s garden and suddenly I realised how much smaller everything was that I’d expected." This is exactly the kind of meticulous research that Chevalier is celebrated for – in researching one of her previous novels Falling Angels she enrolled as a volunteer guide at Highgate Cemetery. The research for Burning Bright took over a year and even involved buying a button-making kit and attempting to make the Dorset buttons her characters sell. "Just being entertaining isn't enough," she confides. "I want my readers to learn something and have a better understanding of what it was like to live in 18th century England."