The Ghost of a Flea

A Poetry Tale about William Blake, told by Hello Doggo.

London, around eighteen nineteen. Late at night. Two grown men sit in a room, waiting for the dead to drop by.

One is John Varley, a landscape painter and a devoted astrologer. The other is William Blake. Varley would name a ghost, and Blake, pencil ready, would draw whoever turned up. Kings. Warriors. Prophets.

And one night, a flea.

Varley later wrote it all up. Blake began drawing the head, and then the creature opened its mouth. So Blake stopped, moved to another part of the paper, and drew the mouth on its own, until the spirit closed it again. Varley took that as proof. Blake, he said, clearly had a real image before him.

And while Blake worked, the flea talked. It explained that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of men who were, in Varley’s words, by nature bloodthirsty to excess. That was why they were kept so small. A flea the size of a horse, it said, would empty a great part of the country.

Now. Was Blake really seeing a ghost? Or was he quietly having Varley on? Scholars still argue about it, and nobody can prove it either way.

Whatever was going on, Blake painted him. A tiny panel, tempera and gold on mahogany, now in the Tate. A muscled, scaly figure stalking across a stage, tongue flicking out, clutching a cup for blood.

This is the poet who asked what immortal hand or eye could frame the tiger’s fearful symmetry. Turns out he could do it for a flea. In gold.