6. What Happened to Blake, and to Miss Dave
Betty Rayment had the strictest morals. A passing remark by the English master of Ashford Grammar School, Mike Thickett, threatened a crisis in Community norms. The remark, made en passant while discussing something quite different, was that Blake intended Jerusalem to symbolize “something like sexual freedom”. Since Caldecott’s termly Meeting always included the singing of Parry’s famous setting of Blake’s words, I thought I might get a rise out of Betty by repeating this to her. The results were beyond anything I could have imagined. After an initial tirade that it could not possibly be true, I should not listen such nonsense, she concluded that “if it is true, we must never sing ‘Jerusalem’ again and it will have to be erased from every copy of the hymn book”. Her next step was Miss Dave, who duly called me and told me that “It’s the fashion today to debunk everything. Don’t follow that fashion”. In truth, I did not think I was debunking anything – and I was only repeating what the English master had said. To my young mind, if Blake, by Jerusalem, meant something far more revolutionary than the jaded patriotic message this poem seems, on its face, to express, then one up to him. My next move was to borrow Blake’s “Prophetic Books” from Ashford Library (“Jerusalem” is part of a much larger work) and try to work out for myself what Blake meant. “I admire your persistence”, said Miss Dave. I had to conclude that it would need more than persistence to prove anything from Blake’s “Prophetic Books” which, like Nostradamus, are so confused you can make them mean anything you like. The issue rumbled on until someone spotted that a play called “What Happened to Blake” was to be given in Canterbury. A party of us – myself, Betty Rayment, Miss Dave and, I imagine, Effie Devenish, who had a car and usually acted as chauffeur for cultural expeditions – went to see it. It was a minimal, experimental production with practically no scenery and just three actors. At a certain point, the actor playing Blake slowly divested himself of all his clothing. I sensed a certain tension in the Caldecott party. “Well”, said Miss Dave at the end, in a tone between amused and bemused, “I’ve seen my first nude”. Miss Dave knew, though, and I think none of the others did, that the nude was not gratuitous porn but a tableau based on an engraving by Blake held in the British Museum. I forget if there were further developments, but “Jerusalem” remained in the hymn book and was sung at Meeting for as long as Meeting remained in the system.
Perhaps this is the place to mention that, somewhat incongruously with her Victorian morals, Betty Rayment had a considerable number of novels on her shelf by D. H. Lawrence, hardly one to hold back where affairs of the flesh were concerned. I never discussed this with her but I realized, when I started to visit her in Nottingham after her retirement, that she had a strong, almost patriotic, attachment to that city, so perhaps the local aspect overrode any others.