Complete works of willia.., p.814
Complete Works of William Morris, page 814
“Success in any of the three first of these aims, together with the last, will give a picture existence as a work of art. Most pictures that impress us seriously have achieved success in more than one of the three joined to the fourth, while great works of art have all the four qualities united, yet in due subordination to the master one of them, whichever it may be, which produces the greatest impression on us; this subordination is what is meant by the word ‘style.’
“Skill of execution is the first thing we must seek for, since without it a picture is incapable of expressing anything, is a failure and not a picture. Well, there are signs here and there on the walls of the Academy of skill of a certain kind, but what does it amount to? does it give us any reasonable hope of establishing by our present method of artistic life a workmanlike traditional skill, continuous and progressive, so that while there may be hope for a man of genius for pushing forward the standard of excellence, no one, be he of genius or not, need waste half the energies of his life in half-fruitless individual experiments, the results of which he cannot pass on to others? What signs are there of collective skill, the skill of the school, which nurses moderate talent and sets genius free? Scanty signs indeed: at best a plausible appearance of workmanlike execution, a low kind of skill which manages to get through the job, but in so dull and joyless a way that one’s eye almost refuses to rest upon the canvas, or one’s brain to take in any idea it may strive to express. That is all, I fear, that can claim to represent anything like traditional workmanlike skill. What other skill of execution is visible is chiefly, almost entirely, an amateur-like cleverness, experimental, uncertain, never successful in accomplishing a real work, in expressing a fact or an imagination simply and straightforwardly, but often enough succeeding in thrusting itself forward and attracting attention to itself as something dashing, clever, and — useless; the end, not the means. Of this kind of skill there is a good deal; and to speak plainly it is on this quality, such as it is, that most of the pictures must rest their claim to attention.”
Leccuring, in and out of London, had now become his most serious occupation. At Manchester he mournfully notes that “the workmen seem on the whole to identify themselves with the middle classes.” Elsewhere “there was a funny old ex-Chartist present, an old man of seventy; he said it made him feel twenty years younger.” At Edinburgh “a very good audience, and we fished two additional members, not much you will say, but things go slowly.” Bradford, Leeds, Blackburn, Leicester, Glasgow, were among the other provincial centres where he gave these addresses. “I am in a hurry, as I always am now,” is one unusual, and coming from him, even pathetic sentence in a letter. In March, writing to Faulkner about the formation of a branch of the Federation at Oxford, he expresses in a few strong words the uncompromising attitude he had taken up towards those who sympathized and hesitated, or whose tenets did not wholly coincide with his own. A number of liberal Churchmen — most of them belonging to the advanced High Church party in matters of ritual and doctrine — had once more taken up the Christian Socialism of Maurice and Kingsley. “Meantime,” he comments, “the Christian Church has always declared against Socialism; its mainstays must always be property and authority. A worthy Irish Catholic member of the S. D. F. resigned on those grounds when we declared for Socialism. Of course as long as people are ignorant, compromise plus sentiment always looks better to them than the real article.”
In April the weekly evening at Burne-Jones’s house, which had been the habit of so many years, finally ceased, crowded out by the multiplicity of new engagements. The one gleam of real pleasure that the year brought him was a reconciliation, of which one of his visits to Manchester was the immediate occasion, with Madox Brown. “You are aware,” he wrote of it to Mr. Rowley, “that there has been a cloud between him and me, and I am more than rejoiced it should be cleared off in such a pleasant way by my old friend himself, for whom I have always had the greatest respect and affection.”
A Hammersmith Branch of the Democratic Federation had been formed in June in order to organize work among the labouring population of the district. The manifesto which it issued was written by Morris. It is a striking instance of the belief which he then undoubtedly held, and from which it took long time and hard teaching to remove him completely, that the re-organization of society which he advocated was immediately practicable, and that it had only to be effected to make all the misery of the world cease. “There is now a constant war,” runs this leaflet, “between Capital, or the rich men who make profits out of work without working themselves, and Labour, or the poor men who produce everything and have no more share in what they produce than is necessary to keep them alive. While the rich enslave the poor, they themselves are not happy, and are always trying to ruin each other. Socialism will end this war by abolishing classes: this change will get rid of bad housing, under-feeding, over-work, and ignorance.” Such were the sweeping promises then held out by the Federation to a working class whom experience had made deeply incredulous of all promises, or of any great and sudden change in the existing order of the world.
At the great Franchise meeting in Hyde Park on the 21st of July Morris was one of the small knot of Socialists who tried to convert the enthusiasm of the occasion to their own uses, with little obvious success. In the main they were unnoticed and swallowed up in the vast crowd. They had provided themselves with a little cart with a red flag, from which they distributed their manifesto and tried to sell their newspaper. “We found it easy work getting rid of the gratis literature,” he wrote next day, “but hard to sell anything.” The attempts at speaking from the mound of the reservoir in the Park were little more successful. A contemptuous reference by one of the speakers to John Bright raised a storm of hooting in the audience; the crowd began to push and sway, and the ring of friends round the banner was broken up and dispersed. There was no factual violence; a suggestion that the unpopular speaker should be put in the Serpentine was not taken up: but the day was over as far as any attempt to influence the crowd was concerned.
By this time the internal jealousies and divergent aims of the Federation were leading up to a crisis that could not be much longer delayed. Its leaders profoundly mistrusted one another, and personalities and accusations of intrigue and duplicity were flying thick. The peacemaker’s task was plainly hopeless.
“The time which I have foreseen from the first,” Morris writes in August, “seems to be upon us, and I don’t see how I can avoid taking my share in the internal conflict which seems likely to rend the D. F. into two or more. More than two or three of us distrust Hyndman thoroughly: I have done my best to trust him, but cannot any longer. Practically it comes to a contest between him and me. If I don’t come up to the scratch I shall disappoint those who I believe have their hearts in the cause and are quite disinterested, many of them simple and worthy people. I don’t think intrigue or ambition are amongst my many faults; but here I am driven to thrusting myself forward and making a party within a party. However I say I foresaw it, and ’tis part of the day’s work, but I begin to wish the day were over.”
The affair dragged on for several months more. The mere idea of breaking up the party did not distress Morris deeply: “half-a-dozen people,” he says, “who agree and are friends, that is, can trust each other, are worth a hundred jealous squabblers.” But he was heartily annoyed and, to say the truth, frightened, at the prominence into which he found himself being pushed by his faction.
“My habits are quiet and studious,” he wrote, with an almost pathetic self-depreciation, to a colleague who was urging on him the duty of leadership,”and if I am too much worried with ‘politics,’ i.e., intrigue, I shall be no use to the cause as a writer. All this shows, you will say, a weak man: that is true, but I must be taken as I am, not as I am not.” With a great effort of self-effacement he had placed himself at their orders, in the indistinct hope that he might elude responsibility by simply doing loyally what he was told: now to his dismay he found himself called upon to become a leader, and responsible not only for his own action, but for the continued existence of his party.
What brought the quarrel to a point was a jealousy so trivial that it can hardly now move anything beyond a faint smile. A small knot of Socialists in Edinburgh (the same to which two further recruits were added by Morris’ visit and address that autumn) had been organized into a society by Mr. Scheu, whose business had taken him there during the summer. To give it a more imposing air, and also to conciliate the national susceptibility, it was not made a branch of the English Democratic Federation, but was started as a separate organization under the name of the Scottish Land and Labour League. The fat was in the fire at once. Mr. Hyndman called for the instant dissolution of the newly-founded league in the name of the Federation One and Indivisible. “Discord has arisen in this Council,” ran the reply of his opponents, “owing to the attempt to substitute arbitrary rule therein for fraternal Co-operation, contrary to the principles of Socialism.” The scenes of the Convention of the Year Two were repeated on a microscopic scale. Hyndman was denounced as a tyrant; Scheu was denounced in turn as certainly a foreigner, and probably a traitor in the pay of the police. Accusations were flung back and forward of underhand intrigue, of deliberately wrecking the work of colleagues, of being bribed by capitalist gold. The extreme men on both sides gave the impression that, if it had been possible, they would cheerfully have sent their opponents to the guillotine. Things were finally fought out at a full meeting of the Council of the Federation held in London at Christmas. The details and the result may be given in Morris’ own words.
“My merry Christmas “ — this is written on Christmas Eve— “is like to be enlivened by a scene or two at all events. Last night came off to the full as damned as I expected, which seldom happens: and the worst of it is that the debate is adjourned till Saturday, as we couldn’t sit any later than midnight yesterday. It was a piece of degradation, only illumined by Scheu’s really noble and skilful defence of his character against Hyndman: all the rest was a mere exposition of backbiting, mixed with some melancholy and to me touching examples of faith. However, Saturday I will be out of it. Our lot agreed beforehand, being I must say moved by me, that it is not worth fighting for the name of the S. D. F. and the sad remains of ‘Justice’ at the expense of a month or two of wrangling: so as Hyndman considers the S. D. F. his property, let him take it and make what he can of it, and try if he can really make up a bogie of it to frighten the Government, which I really think is about all his scheme; and we will begin again quite clean-handed to try the more humdrum method of quiet propaganda, and start a new paper of our own. The worst of the new body, as far as I am concerned, is that for the present at least I have to be editor of the paper, which I by no means bargained for, but it seems nobody else will do.
“I went to Chesterfield and saw Carpenter on Monday, and found him very sympathetic and sensible at the same time. I listened with longing heart to his account of his patch of ground, seven acres: he says that he and his fellow can almost live on it: they grow their own wheat, and send flowers and fruit to Chesterfield and Sheffield markets: all that sounds very agreeable to me. It seems to me that the real way to enjoy life is to accept all its necessary ordinary details and turn them into pleasures by taking interest in them: whereas modern civilization huddles them out of the way, has them done in a venal and slovenly manner till they become real drudgery which people can’t help trying to avoid. Whiles I think, as in a vision, of a decent community as a refuge from our mean squabbles and corrupt society; but I am too old now, even if it were not dastardly to desert.”
On the 28th he resumes, writing from Merton Abbey:
“Saturday evening did see the end. We began at 6 and ended at 10.30. I don’t think it would interest you to go through the affair in detail, and to say the truth I am so sick of it that I don’t think I could write it all down. There was a good deal of speaking, mostly on their side, for Hyndman had brought up supporters, who spouted away without in the least understanding what the quarrel was about. It finished by H. making a long and clever and lawyer-like speech: all of which, as in the House of Commons, might just as well have been left out, as either side had made up their minds how to vote from the first. Accordingly we voted, and the result was as expected, ten to eight, majority of two on our side. Whereon I got up and after a word or two of defence of my honour, honesty, and all that, which had been somewhat torn ragged in the debate, I read our resignation from the paper prepared thereto, and we solemnly walked out. This seemed to produce what penny-a-liners call ‘a revulsion of feeling,’ and most of the other side came round me and assured me that they had the best opinion of me and didn’t mean all those hard things: poor little Williams cried heartily and took a most affectionate farewell of us. Of course we did right to resign; the alternative would have been a general meeting, and after a month’s squabble for the amusement of the rest of the world that cared to notice us, would have landed us first in deadlock and ultimately where we are now, two separate bodies. This morning I hired very humble quarters for the Socialist League, and authorized the purchase of the due amount of Windsor chairs and a kitchen table: so there I am really once more like a young bear with all my troubles before me. We meet to inaugurate the League to-morrow evening. There now, I really don’t think I have strength to say anything more about the matter just now. I find my room here and a view of the winter garden, with the men spreading some pieces of chintz on the bleaching ground, somewhat of a consolation. But I promise myself to work as hard as I can in the new body, which I think will be but a small one for some time to come.”
CHAPTER XVI. THE SOCIALIST LEAGUE. 1885-1886
“I CANNOT yet forgo the hope,” Morris had written in July, 1884, when the disruption of the Democratic Federation was already looming ahead, “of our forming a Socialist party which shall begin to act in our own time, instead of a mere theoretical association in a private room with no hope but that of gradually permeating cultivated people with our aspirations.” After the first spasm of disheartened disgust at the break-up of December was over, he was not disinclined to set to work again to form such a party out of what he believed was a thoroughly loyal remnant. To this task he now set himself in fresh courage and with even higher hope. The conflict had made him examine his own ground more carefully: he was more satisfied than ever of the truth of his principles, and of the reasonableness of his position. But the prominence now forced upon him as a leader at once exposed him to a redoubled storm of misrepresentation and obloquy. Socialism had once been regarded by ordinary middle-class opinion as a thing that went on abroad. When there was no longer any doubt that it had reached England, it was still looked on for a time as a silly or perhaps even an interesting craze. But now it had roused a genuine fear among a large body of people. The attitude of Gallio was passing away, and a strong feeling arising in its place which regarded the new Gospel, in the words applied by the Rome of Nero to the not wholly dissimilar doctrine of the early Christian Church, as a destructive superstition which drew upon itself the natural hatred of the human race.
But this was not all. In the curious imbroglio into which politics were then drifting, the name, and some at least of the doctrines, of Socialism had been seized by various parties as weapons of attack and defence. The famous speech in which Mr. Chamberlain laid down the doctrine of “ransom” was delivered a few days after the foundation of the Socialist League. On the part of both the Radical and the Tory-Democratic wings of the two great political parties there was a tendency to believe that Socialism in some sense or another was a real force, and a desire to attach that force and use it for all it was worth. Overtures were made from both sides by persons who might fairly be regarded as responsible politicians. Attacked by some and courted by others, the Socialist party became an object of widespread and increasing interest. It was enough to upset many Socialists who were not old hands in politics, and make them believe that a great movement of public opinion was about to take place towards Socialism.
On Morris personally the attack was a double one. It consisted on the one hand in renewing, with additional zest and less attention to ordinary manners, the familiar sneers at the strange figure of a poet-upholsterer; and on the other, of denouncing him for inconsistency or hypocrisy in being a Socialist who was also a capitalist manufacture. In his first public utterance after the formation of the Socialist League, he had expressed his hope and his aim in words of studied moderation. He spoke of the social re-organization which he advocated as something not only desirable in itself, but involving a high conception of duty, and containing in it the elements of solid permanence. “When the change comes, it will embrace the whole of society, and there will be no discontented class left to form the elements of a fresh revolution. It is necessary that the movement should not be ignorant, but intelligent. What I should like to have now far more than anything else, would be a body of able, high-minded, competent men who should act as instructors. I should look to those men to preach what Socialism really is — not a change for the sake of change, but a change involving the very noblest ideal of human life and duty: a life in which every human being should find unrestricted scope for his best powers and faculties.” The Saturday Review, with characteristic suavity, seized this occasion to point its finger at “this spectacle of the intellectual disaster of the intelligence of a man who could once write ‘The Earthly Paradise ‘ and can now formulate these two propositions about the disappearance of all discontented classes and the change involving a life in which every human being finds unrestricted scope for his best powers and faculties.” This last phrase, indeed, to judge by the number of times it recurs in the article, was found humorous to an uncommon degree. That such a life should be conceived of as possible, that any attempt should be made to realize it, seemed quite preposterous to the critic and to the large body of opinion which he represented. The laws of nature were invoked to sustain the conclusion that a state of things in which the larger number of the human race were permanently poor, ignorant, and brutal was certainly necessary and in all probability desirable.
