The Ghost of a Flea: William Blake’s bloodthirsty nightmare
Poet and painter William Blake first met John Varley in 1818. Varley, a painter and astrologer, didn’t seem the most natural friend for Blake. For one, he was 21 years older and towered over him, described once as a “genial 17-stone bear of a man”. A student of the stars, Varley was drawn to Blake because of his visions. Since childhood, Blake had apparently been haunted by an image of a tree covered in angels, complete with “bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars”. Varley never doubted the reality of this claim and was, in fact, quite jealous that Blake seemed to access the spirits he tried to communicate with effortlessly.
The pair went to Varley’s house at midnight, attempting to summon spirits of historical figures and mythic gods, which Blake would then sketch out. During one 1819 séance, a spirit loomed over the two men. As Varley would later write, this metaphysical being told them that the souls of men inhabited all fleas.
Even more alarmingly than that revelation was the follow-up that the fleas were drawn to the blood of men who were “by nature, bloodthirsty to excess”. Blake painted the horrifying vision on a small, eight-inch panel befitting the size of its subject. Blake’s flea walks through a cluster of stars with yellowed eyes and a snake-like tongue, making it look like a reptilian demon merged with a mortal man.
Its meaning could be taken in two ways. One that the abject horror of the creature was Blake showboating to Varley, who try as he might wasn’t able to see the spirits, so couldn’t exactly argue the ghost of a flea didn’t resemble the Gill Man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The second is that the fusion of man and monster seen in the painting what a considered critique of human nature, which is echoed in the moral judgement passed by the supernatural flea who only targeted violent men.
This was a typical line of thinking in his work. Blake often condemned social inequality, using his metaphysical figures as vehicles to promote equality, often invoking the imagery of the New Testament. But the essence of the painting was ultimately informed by a vision, which was convincing enough for Varley. As he wrote in Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy, he was anxious to ensure the depiction was accurate.
“On hearing of this spiritual apparition of a Flea, I asked [Blake] if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he saw: he instantly said, ‘I see him now before me,'” wrote Blake. “I therefore gave him paper and a pencil with which he drew the portrait, I felt convinced by his mode of proceeding, that he had a real image before him, for he left off, and began on another part of the paper, to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch, till he had closed it.”
