When Flaxman was full grown he did all in his power to show his gratitude. Mrs Mathew was desirous to turn her back parlour into a Gothic chamber. Here was an opportunity. Flaxman modelled little figures of sand and putty and placed them in niches. Another protégé, Oram, son of old Oram and Loutherbourg's assistant, painted the windows, and between them they made the book-cases, tables, and chairs to match. With such a room, Mrs Mathew might ask whom she would and not be ashamed. To her tea parties came Mrs Montagu, Mrs Carter when staying in Clarges Street, Mrs Barbauld, Mrs Chapone, Mrs Brooke, and many others.
Blake and Flaxman first met in 1780 and soon became friends. Flaxman, by native bent and Mrs Mathew's teaching, was steeped in Greek. By this time he had shown himself wonderful alike in his designs and sculptures, and already held a high place in what has been called the Second Renaissance.
Blake was a romantic rather than a Greek, but as a later Greek, Goethe, has assured us that there is no antagonism between a true romantic and a true Greek, it is not surprising that the two men found a deep congeniality of spirit. There was an even deeper fellowship, which became explicit later on when both concurred in admiring Swedenborg.
Flaxman, generously anxious that his friend should get on, introduced him, in 1782, to Mr and Mrs Mathew, who asked him and Mrs Blake to their evenings. And so at last we see rebel Blake and his illiterate wife in the midst of a charmed circle of Blues who were mistresses of everything that was learned, cultured, elegant, decorous, and _du bon ton_.
Our first glimpse of Blake in Society we owe to John Thomas Smith, Keeper of the Prints at the British Museum and frequent visitor at Mrs Mathew's. He says in his _Book for a Rainy Day_: "At Mrs Mathew's most agreeable conversaziones I first met the late William Blake, the artist, to whom she and Mr Flaxman had been truly kind. There I have often heard him read and sing several of his poems. He was listened to by the company with profound silence, and allowed by most of the visitors to possess original and extraordinary merit."
That is a pleasant picture. Would that we had been there! But as time went on several things became clear to Blake and likewise to the company, only their interpretation of the situation differed. Mrs Blake proved a touchstone to the other ladies. They of course could see at once that she was not a lady, but that they must be kind to her. She, not having read Mrs Chapone on the improvement of the mind or practised the elegancies, was quite unable to imitate their manners and catch their tone. She was throughout a simple, direct, noble woman set down in the midst of an artificial society, and she was made to suffer accordingly. These things sank deep into Blake, to reappear again as poems in his _Ideas of Good and Evil_. Many times he himself felt the same discomfort both at Mrs Mathew's and later at Mr Hayley's. The words he puts into Mary's (Catherine's) lips he speaks in his own person in lines that he afterwards addressed to Flaxman: