Complete works of willia.., p.811
Complete Works of William Morris, page 811
On New Year’s Day he writes again:
“I duly went to Merton on Thursday, and found the wheel by no means finished as they had promised: indeed it all looked like a boy who has pulled his watch to pieces and can’t put it together again; however I expect to find all going to-day. I am going to sleep at Merton to-night I fancy: because on Wednesday I have to go to an Icelandic meeting at 12 (noon). There will be no contested election here: I could have wished a real Radical could have been found to stand against Dilke, but then the Tories would have run a man, and probably got him in. Do you see the Pope is going to canonize Sir Thomas More? the Socialists ought to look up, if that is to be their (late) reward.”
More’s “Utopia “ had been one of the books he had read aloud at Kelmscott during his melancholy autumn holiday, and it had no inconsiderable influence over him; much more, it seems, than the professedly Socialistic treatises — Marx’s “Capital,” Wallace’s “Land Nationalization,” and the like — which he had been rather dispiritedly ploughing through. Socialists more versed in abstract economic theories than himself were inclined to accuse him of sentimentalism; and in this, as in other spheres of activity, the demands of the romantic imagination were as imperious in him as ever. A fairly complete list happens to be extant in a private diary of what he read aloud at the Grange, where he still regularly spent Sunday morning and one other evening every week, during the year just ended. The only new book in the list is “Erewhon,” one of the first and ablest of those modern Utopias which were coming into fashion, and a book that Morris greatly admired. The rest are all old and tried friends; Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Redgauntlet, David Copperfield, Great Expectations Tales of Old Japan, and on the last evening of the year his earliest love of all, the Arabian Nights.
CHAPTER XV. THE DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION. 1883-1884
FOR the two years during which Morris was a member of the Democratic Federation, there is little in his life to chronicle which is not directly connected with that organization, and with his own development under its influence into a more logical and uncompromising type of Socialist. For reasons which are easy to appreciate, and of which his own statement will be given later, he did not, either when he joined it as an active member or afterwards, abandon his own profession as a manufacturer, or his own status as a man of letters. But it took up a principal, and, as time went on, an absorbing share of his time, thought, and energy. His production in pure literature, whether prose or verse, fell for these years wholly into abeyance: his production as a designer was greatly curtailed; and his management of his business became more and more perfunctory. Fears were often expressed by his friends that the effect on the business might be grave, if not disastrous. But it had been solidly founded, and was kept up by the skill and energy of his managers, Mr. George Wardle and Messrs. F. and R. Smith, who were now practically partners as well. Morris himself was nearly always ready to respond to the call for new designs that were really needed, and to apply his strong common sense to questions that were submitted for his decision.
There are several indications that when he now plunged into politics, he was on the brink of a new departure in the field of romance. One may even conjecture the path it would have taken. The heroic cycle of Iran had long held in his mind a place next to those of Greece and Scandinavia. “He loved everything Persian,” Sir Edward Burne-Jones says, “including the wild confusion of their chronology.” His profound study of Oriental design in its application to pottery and textiles had recently reinforced his interest in the Persian epic. At the beginning of 1883 he was deep in Mohl’s French translation of the Shah Nameh, and had begun a version of his own from the French into English, of which a considerable fragment was executed. But now, under a constraining sense of social duty, this and all other literary plans were given up by him for the service of the Federation. It was nearly three years later before he once more returned to imaginative work — though still with a political aim and inspiration — in “The Dream of John Ball.” In those three years he had indeed produced a large volume of writing. But it was not of a kind which possessed literary value, or was meant for permanence. With the exception of some dozen fragments of poetry, and as many lectures on the relation of art to social conditions, and to the life of mankind, it was professedly and even ostentatiously journalism.
An interesting light is thrown on his attitude of mind at this time by a letter written in January to Mr. Manson, his old colleague on the executive of the National Liberal League. It was in answer to some question which Mr. Manson had put to him in connexion with the exhibition of Rossetti’s pictures and drawings which was then being held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Rossetti himself had died in the previous April.
“I can’t say,” he writes, “how it was that Rossetti took no interest in politics; but so it was: of course he was quite Italian in his general turn of thought; though I think he took less interest in Italian politics than in English, in spite of his knowing several of the leading patriots personally, Saffi for instance. The truth is he cared for nothing but individual and personal matters; chiefly of course in relation to art and literature, but he would take abundant trouble to help any one person who was in distress of mind or body; but the evils of any mass of people he couldn’t bring his mind to bear upon. I suppose in short it needs a person of hopeful mind to take disinterested notice of politics, and Rossetti was certainly not hopeful.”
The difference here touched, whether or not the explanation offered of it be right, was real and deep. Morris had himself always been one of the people to whom personal matters bear far less than their normal share in life. He was interested in things much more than in people. He had the capacity for loyal friendships and for deep affections; but even of these one might almost say that they did not penetrate to the central part of him. The thing done, the story, or the building, or the picture, or whatever it might be, was what he cared about in the work of his contemporaries and friends no less than in that of other ages or countries: and in his mind these things seem to have been quite independent of the storyteller, or the architect, or the painter, and not merely substantive things, but one might almost say substantive personalities. So too in the ordinary concerns of life he was strangely incurious of individuals. On one side this quality of mind took the form of an absolute indifference to gossip and scandal, and a capacity of working with the most unsympathetic or disagreeable colleagues, so long as they were helping on the particular work in hand. On another side it resulted in an almost equally marked inconsiderateness. He sometimes seemed to have the aloofness of some great natural force. For sympathy in distress, for soothing in trouble, it was not to him that one would have gone. The lot of the poor, as a class, when he thought of it, had always lain heavily on his spirit. “Indeed, the poor man is always much at the mercy of the rich “ — those noble and melancholy words, used just a century before by Johnson to Boswell, express a feeling which was at the root of all Morris’ social doctrine. But the sufferings of individuals often only moved him to a certain impatience. Many years before, Rossetti, in one of those flashes of hard insight that made him so terrible a friend, had said of him, “Did you ever notice that Top never gives a penny to a beggar?” Inconsiderate and even unscrupulous as Rossetti was himself in some of the larger affairs of life, this particular instinct of generosity was one which never failed him. For the individual in distress — were it a friend in difficulties, or some unknown poor woman on the street — he was always ready to empty his own pockets, and plunge deeply into those of his friends. Morris’ virtues were of a completely different type. Scrupulously just in his dealings, incapable of driving a hard bargain, liberal up to and even beyond his means in the support of an object which had gained his sympathy, he had not in his nature that touch of lavishness that gives a human warmth to generosity, and may elevate even inconsiderate profusion into a moral excellence. That habit of magnificence, which to the Greek mind was the crown of virtues, was Rossetti’s most remarkable quality. In the nature of Morris it had no place. “I am bourgeois, you know, and therefore without the point of honour,” he had written many years before to Madox Brown in a moment of real self-appreciation; and his virtues were those of the bourgeois class — industrious, honest, fair-minded up to their lights, but unexpansive and unsympathetic — so far as the touch of genius did not transform him into something quite unique and incalculable.
There is a pleasant sketch of one of his frequent visits to Paris, in company with Mr. Armstrong, on the affairs of the South Kensington Museum,in a letter to his daughter at the end of that January. They crossed together on a stormy moonlit night, “so that we could see the waves at any rate, and they were very fine indeed. We slept on the road to Paris after a fashion, but it was so cold that it was a sort of dog-sleep, and the inn-room and wood-fire and coffee and rolls were sweet to us when we got there. Armstrong took me to dine at a simple place he knew, where we were welcome and paid but moderately: by the way, seeing goujons on the bill, I insisted on having them, and very good they were. The trees in the Tuileries gardens have suffered very much even since we were there: it is sad to see, for I remember when I first came to Paris and was high up aloft with Aunt Henrietta at Meurice’s they were so thick they looked as if you could walk on their tops. We were very busy over our proper business both days, but managed to see the Cluny, being close by; also a new Museum of casts of Gothic sculpture at the Trocadéro, very interesting. As to the sale we were beat, a sort of French S.K.M. bought the things over our heads, but Armstrong thinks he can borrow the best book of the pattern books, which was very good, had a lot of old Indian and Persian printed cloths in it.”
Of Morris’ first appearance at a meeting of the Democratic Federation the following account is given by Mr. Scheu :
“In the early winter months of 1883 the Democratic Federation had arranged some meetings at the Westminster Palace Chambers. I attended the first of those meetings (I forget the exact date), Mr. Hyndman in the chair. The order of the day was the passing of some resolutions on the question of education, normal working-day, and the housing of the working classes. The business had scarcely been started when Banner, who sat behind me, passed me a slip of paper, ‘The third man to your right is William Morris.’ I had read of but never seen Morris before, and I looked at once in the direction given. I was struck by Morris’ fine face, his earnestness, the half searching, half dreamy look of his eyes, and his plain and comely dress.
“When the resolution re artisans’ dwellings was proposed, I rose and took exception to the notion that only artisans needed rational dwellings, and proposed to alter the wording into ‘people’s dwellings.’ The amendment was frowned upon by the chair, but when Morris got up and seconded it with a few sympathetic words, it was carried almost unanimously.”
That random shot — for such perhaps it was — struck home: for it was characteristic of Morris to welcome with almost exaggerated gratitude any remark from a stranger that pointed towards the same conclusions to which his own lonely thoughts had led him. The amendment was meant to protest against limiting the movement in favour of better dwellings to the class of skilled workmen. But to Morris the necessity of rational dwellings for the rich no less than the poor was a primary article of belief. “I have at least respect for the dwellers in the tub of Diogenes; indeed I don’t look upon it as so bad a house after all. I have seen worse houses to let for £700 a year.” So he said afterwards with perfect sincerity, and the housing of the rich was to him one of the most distressing features of modern civilization.
At the same meeting “Rowland, for whom we voted for our School Board,” Morris writes, “was there, and spoke hugely to my liking; advocated street-preaching of our doctrines as the real practical method: wisely to my mind, since those who suffer (more than we, or they, can tell) from society as it is, are so many, and those who have conceived any hope that it may be changed are so few.” This belief, to which he clung against hope for several years, had momentous consequences in his life; for in the task of street-preaching outdoors, and work equivalent to street-preaching indoors, he broke down his health, and to some extent wore away the keen edge of his mind. But for the moment the new task seemed to lend him additional vigour. A month later there is a glimpse of him in the first flush of his enterprise in an entry from a private diary :
“Feb. 22. At Ned’s. Top came in to breakfast as usual on Sundays: was extremely brilliant as soon as he had shaken off a little drooping of spirits owing to bad news about Jenny: was very angry against Seddon for replacing old Hammersmith Church (‘ a harmless silly old thing’) by such an excrescence. He was bubbling over with Karl Marx, whom he had just begun to read in French. He praised Robert Owen immensely. He had been giving an address to a Clerkenwell Radical Club — found the members ‘eager to learn but dreadfully ignorant.’ ‘All Socialists are agreed as to education.’ Finely explosive against railways. Some imitation-Morris wall-paper was ‘a mangy gherkin on a horse-dung ground.’ Spent the evening at Top’s — a long talk on birds: T.’s knowledge of them very extensive: can go on for hours about their habits: but especially about their form.”
About the same time Morris wrote to Mr. T. C. Horsfall, who had made his acquaintance four years earlier in connexion with the formation of the Manchester Art Museum:
“I think on reflection that I have not much to add to what I have written in my little book “ (“Hopes and Fears for Art “). “I have, as you will note, guarded myself against the imputation of wishing to get rid of all rough work. I would only get rid as much as possible of all nasty and stupid work, and what is left I would divide as equitably as might be among all classes.
“You see it was not necessary in my lectures to tell people that I am in principle a Socialist, and would be so in practice if there should ever in my lifetime turn up an occasion for action: add to this fact that I have a religious hatred to all war and violence, and you have the reason for my speaking and writing on subject of art. I mean that I have done it as seed for the goodwill and justice that may make it possible for the next great revolution, which will be a social one, to work itself out without violence being an essential part of it.”
But economy of truth was never a thing possible for Morris, and any advance in his own views was reflected immediately in his public as much as in his private utterances. On the 6th of March he gave an address on “Art, Wealth, and Riches “ at the Manchester Royal Institution, in which the Socialist doctrine was so pronounced as to meet with much hostile criticism. On the theory of art people were willing to hear him gladly, much as they would hear a preacher from the pulpit on the theory of religion. They would even to some degree consent to translate his doctrine into practice in the decoration of their houses. But when he attacked the structure and basis of the life they led in these houses, there were murmurs of alarm and resentment. “Does not that raise another question than one of mere art?” they asked in perplexity or indignation. To a letter in the Manchester Examiner which put the question in these specific words Morris took the opportunity to reply thus:
“It was the purpose of my lecture to raise another question than one of mere art. I specially wished to point out that the question of popular art was a social question, involving the happiness or misery of the greater part of the community. The absence of popular art from modern times is more disquieting and grievous to bear for this reason than for any other, that it betokens that fatal division of men into the cultivated and the degraded classes which competitive commerce has bred and fosters; popular art has no chance of a healthy life, or, indeed, of a life at all, till we are on the way to fill up this terrible gulf between riches and poverty. Doubtless many things will go to filling it up, and if art must be one of those things, let it go. What business have we with art at all unless all can share it? I am not afraid but that art will rise from the dead, whatever else lies there. For, after all, what is the true end and aim of all politics and all commerce? Is it not to bring about a state of things in which all men may live at peace and free from over-burdensome anxiety, provided with work which is pleasant to them and produces results useful to their neighbours?
“It may well be a burden to the conscience of an honest man who lives a more manlike life to think of the innumerable lives which are spent in toil unrelieved by hope and uncheered by praise; men who might as well, for all the good they are doing to their neighbours by their work, be turning a crank with nothing at the end of it; but this is the fate of those who are working at the bidding of blind competitive commerce, which still persists in looking at itself as an end, and not as a means.
“It has been this burden on my conscience, I do in all sincerity believe, which has urged me on to speak of popular art in Manchester and elsewhere. I could never forget that in spite of all drawbacks my work is little else than pleasure to me; that under no conceivable circumstances would I give it up even if I could. Over and over again have I asked myself why should not my lot be the common lot. My work is simple work enough; much of it, nor that the least pleasant, any man of decent intelligence could do, if he could but get to care about the work and its results. Indeed I have been ashamed when I have thought of the contrast between my happy working hours and the unpraised, unrewarded, monotonous drudgery which most men are condemned to. Nothing shall convince me that such labour as this is good or necessary to civilization.”
OfMerton Abbey and his work going on there he writes to his daughter on the 28th of February. The tapestry of the Goose-Girl, from a design by Mr. Walter Crane, was the first figure-subject executed at Merton on the high-warp loom. It was succeeded by the Flora and Pomona pieces, in which the figures were designed by Burne-Jones.
