A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Vintage Illustrated Verses for Innocent and Experienced Travelers

“William, William, writing late by the chill and sooty grate, what immortal story can make your tiger roar again?”

As an admirer of literary personification, a lover of vintage children’s books — especially ones with a literary slant and especially illustrated children’s verses by famous poets — and a longtime fan of Alice and Martin Provensen, I was instantly taken with A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers (public library) — a 1981 collection of playful poems by Nancy Willard that take us on a tour of Blake’s imaginary inn, inspired by Blake’s beloved Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience and tenderly illustrated by the Provensens in their signature mid-century sensibility of vibrant vignettes and expressive creatures.

This inn belongs to William Blake
and many are the beasts he’s tamed
and many are the stars he’s named
and many those who stop and take
their joyful rest with William Blake.

Two mighty dragons brew and bake
and many are the loaves they’ve burned
and many are the spits they’ve turned
and many those who stop and break
their joyful bread with William Blake.

Two patient angels wash and shake
his featherbeds, and far away
snow falls like feathers. That’s the day
good children run outside and make
snowmen to honor William Blake.

THE KING OF CATS
SENDS A POSTCARD TO HIS WIFE

Keep your whiskers crisp and clean.
Do not let the mice grow lean.
Do not let yourself grow fat
Like a common kitchen cat.

Have you set the kittens free?
Do they sometimes ask for me?
Is our catnip growing tall?
Did you patch the garden wall?

Clouds are gentle walls that hide
Gardens on the other side.
Tell the tabby cats I take
All my meals with William Blake,

Lunch at noon tea at four,
Served in splendor on the shore
At the tinkling of a bell.
Tell them I am sleeping well.

Tell them I have come so far,
Brought by Blake’s celestial cat,
Buffeted by wind and rain,
I may not get home again.

Take this message to my friends.
Say the King of Catnip sends
To the cat who winds his clocks
A thousand sunsets in a box,

To the cat who brings the ice
The shadows of a dozen mice
(serve them with assorted dips
and eat them like potato chips),

And to the cat who guards his door
A net for catching stars, and more
(if patience he abide):
Catnip from the other side.

THE KING OF CATS
ORDERS AN EARLY BREAKFAST

Roast me a wren to start with.
Then, Brisket of Basilisk Treat.
My breakfast is “on the house”?
What a curious place to eat!
There’s no accounting for customs.
My tastes are simple and few,
a fat mole smothering in starlight
and a heavenly nine-mouse stew.

I shall roll away from the table
looking twice my usual size.
“Behold the moon!” you will whisper.
“How marvelous his disguise.
How like the King of Cats he looks,
how similar his paws
and his prodigious appetite–
why, in the middle of the night
he ate, with evident delight,
a dozen lobster claws.”

TWO SUNFLOWERS
MOVE INTO THE YELLOW ROOM

“Ah, William, we’re weary of weather,”
said the sunflowers, shining with dew.
“Our traveling habits have tired us.
Can you give us a room with a view?”

They arranged themselves at the window
and counted the steps of the sun,
and they both took root in the carpet
where the topaz tortoises run.

THE MARMALADE MAN
MAKES A DANCE TO MEND US

Tiger, Sunflowers, King of Cats,
Cow and Rabbit, mend your ways.
I the needle, you the thread –
follow me through mist and maze.

Fox and hound, go paw in paw.
Cat and rat, be best of friends.
Lamb and tiger, walk together.
Dancing starts where fighting ends.

THE TIGER ASKS BLAKE FOR A BEDTIME STORY

William, William, writing late
by the chill and sooty grate,
what immortal story can
make your tiger roar again?

When I sent to fetch your meat
I confess that I did eat
half the roast and all the bread.
He will never know, I said.

When I was sent to fetch your drink,
I confess that I did think
you would never miss the three
lumps of sugar by your tea.

Soon I saw my health decline
and I knew the fault was mine.
Only William Blake can tell
tales to make a tiger well.

Now I lay me down to sleep
with bear and rabbit, bird and sheep.
If I should dream before I wake,
may I dream of William Blake.

EPILOGUE

My adventures now are ended.
I and all whom I befriended
from this holy hill must go
home to lives we left below.

Farewell cow and farewell cat,
rabbit, tiger, sullen rat.
To our children we shall say
how we walked the Milky Way.

You whose journeys now begin,
if you reach a lovely inn,
if a rabbit makes your bed,
if two dragons bake your bread,
rest a little for my sake,
and give my love to William Blake.

Gracing the very last page is a piece of heart-warming, aphoristic advice:

A Visit to William Blake’s Inn received the Caldecott Honor Medal, the highest recognition in children’s literature, in 1982. Five years later, Martin passed away. Alice, currently in her nineties, continues to draw.

Thanks, Wendy

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The Green Beads: Edward Gorey and the “Disturbed Person”

“How it knocks my heart!”

Mid-century illustrator extraordinaire Edward Gorey has a wealth of gems under his belt — his legendary grim alphabet, exquisite letters, illustrations for H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, fairy tale adaptations, naughty adult entertainment, and then some. But hardly do any of Gorey’s magnificent stories get more tender, heartening, and heartbreaking than The Green Beads (public library). Originally published in 1978 as a limited edition of 426 signed copies — 400 numbered copies for sale and 26 lettered A-Z reserved for Gorey’s inner circle — it tells the story of Little Tancred who, en route to the store to buy tapioca, meets “a disturbed person whose sex is unclear, wearing a string of green beads around “its” neck. A characteristically grim adventure involving the beads ensues.

But what makes the book particularly poignant is that it’s hard not to see a piece of Gorey himself — old, eccentric, a defiant spirit and sensitive soul, an oft-speculated gay man — in the Disturbed Person, whom only Little Tancred truly sees and who inhabits that elusive neverland between the real and the imagined.

I was fortunate enough to hunt down one of the surviving copies — number 136, to be precise — and have preserved it here for shared enjoyment:

Complement The Green Beads with the charming The Shrinking of Treehorn and consider supporting the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust with a donation to the Edward Gorey House.

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Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:

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Illustrators and Visual Storytellers Map the World

“Cartography can be an incredible form of escapism, as maps act as proxies for experiences.”

“Could it have been the drawing of maps that boosted our ancestors beyond the critical threshold which the other apes just failed to cross?,” Richard Dawkins famously speculated. Maps have undoubtedly changed the world as both objects of art and tools of political power. They help us understand time and make sense of the universe. At their most beautiful, they reflect a level of stunning subjectivity.

In A Map of the World According to Illustrators and Storytellers (public library), the fine folks of Gestalten — who have a knack for pictorial magic and visual storytelling — collect more than 500 maps by artists, illustrators, and designers representing the creative zeitgeist of modern cartography around the world, ranging from the astoundingly accurate and detailed to the marvelously abstract and utopian.

Antonis Antoniou writes in the preface:

Only few graphic representation devices have been such a fountainhead of wonderment, controversy, and utility as maps have. What seems to have begun on a more intuitive level has evolved over time into a sophisticated visual instrument. Maps have proven to be a versatile medium through which to express our inquisitive nature and make sense of our physical world. Within a singular visual, we are able to impose order by appropriating reality and its complex layers. It is an endeavor that emanates an intoxicating sense of power in harnessing knowledge.

[…]

Maps make compelling promises. … They grasp greater concepts, detect patterns, prognosticate, and reveal new layers of meaning. … Cartography can be an incredible form of escapism, as maps act as proxies for experiences, real or fabricated. Whatever their purpose or subject matter, even the most rudimentary of maps have an inherent beauty, an attraction in their way of ordering things.

Vesa Sammalisto

Mallorca

João Lauro Fonte

Boots Adventures in London (Converse)

Martin Haake

Cruising Around Africa

Vic Lee

London

Vesa Sammalisto

Hartwall Lapin Kulta

Masako Kubo

Green Map

Masako Kubo

Kyushu Train All Stars

Mike Lemanski

Mediterranean Summer (Monocle, 2011)

Harriet Lyall

3.2 Miles / 9 Bridges

Famille Summerbelle

London cut-paper map

Vesa Sammalisto

Island of Manhattan

Dorothy

LA Film Map

Complement A Map of the World According to Illustrators and Storytellers with these favorite masterpieces of creative cartography.

Images courtesy Gestalten

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Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner:

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Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.