Henry James Sr. was one of the first critics of "The Little Vagabond." In the Socialist weekly, Spirit of the Age, James noted the poem's anti-clerical message: "the body's needs must be met before true worship is possible" (Habegger 292). Nearly sixty years later, Joseph Wicksteed read the poem as "the noblest conception of Blake's ever-recurring idea that forgiveness is the only power of salvation" (180).
"The Little Vagabond" resurfaced in 1963 in Hazard Adams's William Blake: A Study of the Shorter Poems. Adams calls attention to the poem's "rolling anapestic gait" which suggests an alehouse song, and thereby enforces "the irony of the child's situation" (267-68). The child's argument for physical gratification indicates "a marriage of heaven and hell, a rejection of the body-soul opposition" (268). Adams notes that although the "child's solution will be considered impertinent,... it is impertinent only in the mouth of an adult" (268). Still, the critic claims, the poem is ineffective because there is "not enough incisiveness in the child's speech. He is not...quite impertinent enough" (269). Taking a different tact, E.D. Hirsch reads "The Little Vagabond" as representative of Blake's children who, in "their lack of corruption and purity of heart...have direct access to a God who is a loving, not a threatening, father" (260). Hirsch underscores his reading by interpreting the top engraving as an embrace between God and the boy, which stresses their closeness (261). The poem is a clear example of the difference between Innocence and Experience: "the difference between a religious faith expressed in an apocalyptic vision of Eternity and a religious faith expressed in an apocalyptic vision of the natural paradise" (261).
Following earlier critics, D.G. Gilham understands the boy's attack on joyless religion to have "the force of being pointed and true. As he is a vagabond he has known charity administered as a duty by a cold hand, and has also observed, as anyone may, the austerities, repressions and disapprovals of religious bigots" (198-199). The "Little Vagabond" recognizes that if we would let our appetites alone, "they might have an opportunity to assert their divine nature" (199). Yet, Gilham claims, the poem's clumsy and juvenile rhythm forces us "to examine [the child's] sincerity despite our awareness of his misery" and the reader should recognize that "a church of drinking parsons and elated congregations does not seem more responsible or mature than one of 'fasting and birch'" (200- 201). Gilham reads the engraving as Hirsch does: the boy with "his head in the old man's lap is being comforted" (198).
Partially in response to Adams's suggestion that Dame Lurch indicates "the pernicious influence of the alehouse" (269), Rodney Baine points out that in Blake's time, "dame" generally indicated "the mistress of a private elementary school for children. Usually an old woman or widow." Dame Lurch's "bandied" children would result "from the children's sitting six or eight hours a day curved over their desks instead of participating in sports or other exercise proper for growing bodies." In "The Little Vagabond," Blake ties "up the debilitating and crippling influences of the school with those of the church."
In a brief note John Adlard recognizes the similarities between "The Little Vagabond" and "the terms of indenture that must have been signed when Blake was apprenticed" (214).
Later critics have scrutinized the poem more closely. Zachary Leader's Reading Blake Songs contests Gilham's complaint that "the vagabond's vision is too earthy" (174). The boy's view of Heaven is one, Leader suggests, "repeatedly endorsed by Innocence" (174), yet even so, his innocence appears affected; he is "distanced and calculating, much too knowing to be truly innocent" (175). The boy's vision of God as Urizen rather than Christ (in the engraving) is another indication that he is not to be trusted. Stanley Gardner's reading differs from Leader's, yet is similarly astute. Gardner contextualizes "The Little Vagabond" with a discussion of (Mrs.) Sarah Trimmer's 1787 book, The Oeconomy of Charity. In an attempt to supervise the poor and separate them from the rich, Trimmer suggests the lower classes meet in "Free Chapels" "built in convenient situations...of London and Westminster" (in Gardner 114). Although Trimmer would read Blake's "Little Vagabond" as an impudent rascal who lacks submission, the child also subversively points out that his "birthright in Innocence...[has] been judiciously withdrawn" (116). Gardner interprets the bottom engraving as portraying each member of the family "withdrawn into a conclusive isolation. It has ceased to be a family and is exiled from the community" (117). The top engraving depicts "Urizen receiving the supplicant he has created, administering a hallowed consolation to the victim of the condition he sanctifies" (118).
Katherine Montwieler (December 1995)
Bibliography
Adams, Hazard. William Blake: A Reading of the Shorter Poems. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963.
Adlard, John. "Blake's Indenture and 'The Little Vagabond." Blake Newsletter. 5 (1971-1972): 214.
Baine, Rodney. "Blake's The Little Vagabond." The Explicator. 27 (1968), item 6.
Gardner, Stanley. Blake's "Innocence" and "Experience" Retraced. London: The Athlone Press, 1986.
Gilham, D.G.. Blake's Contrary States: The "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" as Dramatic Poems. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 1966.
Habegger, Alfred. The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
Hirsch, E.D.. Innocence and Experience: An Introduction to Blake. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964.
Leader, Zachary. Reading Blake's Songs. Boston: Routledge, 1981.
Lindsay, David W.. Songs of Innocence and Experience [sic]. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1989.
Wicksteed, Joseph H.. Blake's Innocence and Experience: A Study of the Songs and Manuscripts. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1928.