CHAPTER XIV
CONCENTRATION
1882
Of the year between the establishment of the works at Merton Abbey and the return of Morris to active political life as a member of the Socialist party at the beginning of 1883, it so happens that there are unusually few records. Perhaps their scarcity is not altogether accidental. He was working out new theories of life; he was doing this very much alone; and he had less leisure than usual, and perhaps less inclination than leisure, for correspondence, or for holiday-making, or for anything beyond work and thought. "I feel a lonely kind of a chap," he says of himself, half humorously and half self-pityingly. Early in the year he had gone down with his elder daughter to the little house at Rottingdean which Burne-Jones had bought the year before. From there he wrote to Mrs. Burne-Jones on the 10th of January:
"Here we are: having just come back from an expedition to Brighton: we spent an hour or more in the aquarium (where our presence caused astonishment, YE Old English Fair not having begun till the afternoon, nor the other damnations which are strung on the much neglected fish). I think I saw more ugly people in Brighton in the course of an hour than I have seen otherwise for the last twenty years: as you justly remark, serves me right for going into Brighton: but you see we went there to do a little shopping. Yesterday was a lovely day, and we took a trap and drove to Lewes: you have to go a long way round, as the wheel-roads across the downs are doubtful it seems: it is very beautiful when you get on to the brow of the hill above Falmer: a long way off to the right you can see Lewes lying like a box of toys under a great amphitheatre of chalk hills: the whole ride is very pleasant: Lewes when you get there lies on a ridge in its valley, the street winding down to the river (Ouse) which runs into the sea at Newhaven: on the whole it is set down better than any town I have seen in England: unluckily it is not a very interesting town in itself: there is a horrible workhouse or prison on the outskirts, and close by a hideous row of builders' houses: there are three old Churches in it, dismally restored, but none of them ever over-remarkable: there is the remain of a castle, 14th century: but it is not grand at all. Never the less it isn't a bad country town, only not up to its position.
"The house is very pleasant and agreeable and suits me to a T; and I am in very good order, and quite satisfied, bating a little unavoidable anxiety, though J. has been hitherto quite well and seemingly very happy. I am hard at work on my Birmingham lecture: I don't feel as if I had much left to say, but must do all I can to say it decently, so as not to discredit the cause."
To write a new lecture was still immense labour and pain to him: "I know what I want to say, but the cursed words go to water between my fingers"; and the discouragement in which he writes to Mrs. Burne-Jones again on his return to London a week later is partly no doubt the effect of this struggle over the lecture on "Some of the Minor Arts of Life," which he was now preparing. It was delivered at the Midland Institute, Birmingham, on the 23rd of January, and was afterwards printed, under the title of "The Lesser Arts of Life," in the volume of lectures on Art published that year in aid of the funds of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings. In both letters it will be noticed that the "cause" still means to him primarily and specifically that of art, though the name of art has taken to him a new and a more profound meaning.
"I am just going to finish my day with a couple of hours' work on my lecture, but will first write you a line, since pen, ink, and paper are at hand, and seeing withal that to-morrow I shall not have any time at all to myself.
"May came to hand safely this morning, thank you kindly for having her. As to Jenny, she has been to my joy very well and in bright spirits all the week, so I have no doubt our sojourn there did her good: it was her birthday on Tuesday: 21 my dear old Jenny was.
"I have perhaps rather more than enough of work to do, and for that reason or what not, am dwelling somewhat lowdown in the valley of humiliation—quite good enough for me doubtless. Yet it sometimes seems to me as if my lot was a strange one: you see, I work pretty hard, and on the whole very cheerfully, not altogether I hope for mere pudding, still less for praise; and while I work I have the cause always in mind, and yet I know that the cause for which I specially work is doomed to fail, at least in seeming; I mean that art must go under, where or how ever it may come up again. I don't know if I explain what I'm driving at, but it does sometimes seem to me a strange thing indeed that a man should be driven to work with energy and even with pleasure and enthusiasm at work which he knows will serve no end but amusing himself; am I doing nothing but make-believe then, something like Louis XVI.'s lock-making? There, I don't pretend to say that the conundrum is a very interesting one, as it certainly has not any practical importance as far as I am concerned, since I shall without doubt go on with my work, useful or useless, till I demit.
" Well, one thing I long for which will certainly come, the sunshine and the spring. Meantime we are hard at work gardening here: making dry paths, and a sublimely tidy box edging: how I do love tidyness!"
A letter to Mr. George Howard of about the same date shows that he had not yet wholly dissociated himself from the Liberal party, nor given up the hopes which had excited him after the General Election of 1880. He had then looked eagerly to the formation of an independent Radical wing which might force the Whigs to move forward on penalty of being thrown out of office. The amalgamation of Whigs and Tories as a powerful constitutional or Unionist party, to prevent such a result, had not yet occurred to him as the natural outlet from this position; though soon afterwards, and long before the thing actually happened, he foresaw it with much clearness.
"Jan. 10th, 1882.
"My dear George,
"You see I am away for a few days, which accounts for my not answering your letter at once: we had a letter from the parson's wife of Brampton asking for patterns for that same: I bid them send a big worsted pattern which I thought would be best, as 'tis mostly blue, which I fancy the Church wants: only you must think that under that very bright window all woven stuffs will look grey. If the blue looks too grey, I fear there is nothing for it but the brightest red: we have a woollen stuff very bright and telling (3-ply pomegranate), or would red damask silk be too costly?
"I suppose your election is the North Riding: I haven't seen a paper for four days, so don't know how it's going; so can only wish you good speed: I make, with all apologies for my impudence, the unpolitical remark, that I hope you have got a good candidate: 'tis better to be beaten with a good one than be successful with a bad one. I guess there will be a fine procession of rats before this parliament is over: that will teach us, I hope, not to run the worst man possible on all occasions. Excuse the spleen of a kind of Radical cobbler.
"Yours affectionately,
"William Morris."
Two months later he writes again to Mr. Howard in a much less philosophic vein. A sudden risk had arisen that the works at Merton Abbey might be ruined by the cutting off of the water-supply of the Wandle.
"March 16th, 1882.
"My dear George, "I am in a fix—for look here; I took this place muchly for the sake of its water-power, and for the water of the Wandle; and now the Wandle is going to be dried up—no less—there is a bill before a committee on Monday, as I hear suddenly, to enable the London and South Western Water Company to tap the head springs of the river at Carshalton: the river is almost wholly fed from these springs, and tapping them thus would reduce it to a muddy ditch. As to myself I don't much care, as I always said we ought to have gone into the country, but on public grounds I could burst when I think of it: the Wandle from here upwards is a most beautiful stream as perhaps you know. I shall try to see you on Saturday morning; but meantime can you do anything in the House to help to stop such a damned iniquity?
"William Morris."
He unburdens himself on the same subject in the letter to Ellis which follows. The first part of it relates to alterations in the channel of the upper Thames recently made by the Conservancy, which had the effect of draining off the Kelmscott backwater and making the boat-house there useless. Ellis had just brought up some perch from Kelmscott to stock the water at Merton Abbey.
"March 22nd, 1882.
"My dear Ellis,
"Thank you for your note: I imagine I understand what they are going to do, although your explanation would have been helped by a plan: I had heard something of this before, but hoped it would not take place in our time. However something they will leave behind them so long as the old house stands; only strange it is that we are tumbled just into the time when these things go quickest: after us in a while I think things will mend; before us change was slower. Meanwhile I ought to have thanked you for your perch before, especially as I know what a trouble it is to bring such wet goods up to town: only, news for news, nay, water news for water news, I have suddenly discovered that it may not be long that they will have water to swim in; whereas a society, calling itself the London and South Western Spring Water Company, has a bill in Parliament to enable them to sink a well at Carshalton which will drain the Carshalton Wandle, and give us a muddy ditch instead of my water and water-power: jolly isn't it? there are 7 miles of Wandle and 40 mills on that 7 miles, and here we are to be landed without compensation just to put some money into promoters' pockets, unless we can manage to get the bill thrown out in Committee. You see that 'tis jobbery (not mastery) that mows the meadow: what compensation we should have got, if this had been public money that was in question! However there is a strong opposition to the thieves, so perhaps my perch may die a natural death (by hook to wit) after all. I was up the water to-day to see about this matter, and at Carshalton for the first time; a pretty place still in spite of the building.
"William Morris."
The opposition to the Bill, in which Morris had, of course, the hearty support of the other thirty-nine mill-owners immediately concerned in the Wandle as a source of water-power, was successful. "The water company," he writes at the end of March, "terrified by our bold front, has climbed down and has agreed not to meddle with the Wandle: so this time I am quit for the fright, and whatsoever part of ₤50 the lawyers' conscience will let them grab of me. Cheap at the price both for me and the public I think, since I have seen more of the river. On Wednesday Wardle and I went up the river and saw as much as we could get at: a wild day of storm and bitter wind it turned out, yet I think we enjoyed it. As we got to Wallington I thought I would go and call on Arthur Hughes, and did so to my pleasure: we were very glad to see each other, though perhaps when we got to talking were somewhat gravelled: he lives in a beautiful place, and the Croydon branch of the Wandle sweeps round his bit of close.
"I went up the water again on Friday with G. Howard and R. Grosvenor and had a pleasant half rainy day, seeing a great deal of the water, much of it quite quiet and unspoiled; it is really very beautiful, crystal clear in spite of all the mills. When you come on the ponds at Carshalton, where it rises or seems to rise, the surprise is most delightful and strange: a village green, only the green is the pond, quite bright and clear, the road across the fall of it from one level to another, and springs bubbling up amidst it all over. The whole river swarms with trout."
This peril over, work at Merton went on pleasantly and successfully. "I have just twice as much to do since we began at Merton," he writes in June. "At the same time I think it likely enough that my carpet business may fail commercially. I shan't like that; but as to giving up the whole affair because of it, if I say so it is mere ill-temper on my part, always supposing we can struggle on somehow." But his daughter's severe and repeated illnesses during the summer and autumn upset the whole year for him. It is not putting the case too strongly to say that for the time they thoroughly shattered his nerve, though the private correspondence in which this appears is neither meant nor suited for a wider public.
This household anxiety coloured all the world to him: and even Kelmscott that year could not charm away his melancholy. The sense of change seemed brooding everywhere, and a dim shadow of unhappiness clung about the "sweet-looking clean waterside." He felt it even at Godstow, "less changed than any beautiful place I know, the very fields that stretch up to Wytham much the same as they always were with their wealth of poplar and willow trees, the most beautiful meadows to be seen anywhere.""So it will be," he goes on, "till civilized life is quite changed, every alteration in the material world will be for the worse."
The same desperate concentration of mind, the feeling of one thing, and one thing alone, being needful, reappears in another letter which is one of the extremely rare instances of his criticism of a contemporary writer. It was written soon after the publication of Mr. Swinburne's "Tristram of Lyonnesse."
"As to the poem, I have made two or three attempts to read it, but have failed, not being in the mood I suppose: nothing would lay hold of me at all. This is doubtless my own fault, since it certainly did seem very fine. But, to confess and be hanged, you know I never could really sympathize with Swinburne's work; it always seemed to me to be founded on literature, not on nature. In saying this I really cannot accuse myself of any jealousy on the subject, as I think also you will not. Now I believe that Swinburne's sympathy with literature is most genuine and complete; and it is a pleasure to hear him talk about it, which he does in the best vein possible; he is most steadily enthusiastic about it. Now time was when the poetry resulting merely from this intense study and love of literature might have been, if not the best, yet at any rate very worthy and enduring: but in these days when all the arts, even poetry, are like to be overwhelmed under the mass of material riches which civilization has made and is making more and more hastily every day; riches which the world has made indeed, but cannot use to any good purpose: in these days the issue between art, that is, the godlike part of man, and mere bestiality, is so momentous, and the surroundings of life are so stern and unplayful, that nothing can take serious hold of people, or should do so, but that which is rooted deepest in reality and is quite at first hand: there is no room for anything which is not forced out of a man of deep feeling, because of its innate strength and vision.
"In all this I may be quite wrong and the lack may be in myself: I only state my opinion, I don't defend it; still less do I my own poetry."
He was thinking in these last words, no doubt, of his own unwritten poem on the same subject, the story of Tristram and Iseult: the one which his "soul yearned to do" twelve years before, when he had just completed "The Earthly Paradise," and which was the episode of the whole Arthurian cycle that held his imagination most strongly.
On the 23rd of August he writes more cheerfully to Mrs. Burne-Jones:
"We went on Saturday to call on the De Morgans at Witley and found them lodging in a newish red brick house, the surroundings of which rather reminded one of Mrs. Bodichon's Scalands: afterwards we drove down with them and the Allinghams through woodland lanes upon to the great commons and Hind Head Hill on the Portsmouth Road: covered it was, much of it, with heather and ling, all in blossom at this season, and seeming to me not the best chosen of colours though so very bright; but the place is very beautiful, and amazingly free from anything Cockney-base, considering how near it is to London: the best part of it the beauty of the oaks, now in their new foliage hanging about the rare cornfields; for the tilth is scanty in this sandy woodland country. Allingham's dwelling is in a very pleasant and beautiful spot, but the house highly uninteresting though not specially hideous, nor the get up inside of it very pleasant (though not very bad), as you might imagine: the garden too that discomforting sort of place that a new garden with no special natural gifts is apt to be: I should like to have made them better it. As to that country in general, in spite of all its beauty, it didn't quite touch me (except as pleasant hills and meadows and lanes). For one thing it is very thinly inhabited, and looks more than most countrysides as if it were kept for the pleasure of the rich, as indeed it is: but I don't know anything of it but this one visit. I must take a turn of walking through it one day: for this thing interests me in it, that if ever I am to live out of London (as I don't suppose I ever shall), and Merton goes on, somewhere thereabouts I should have to pitch my tent.
"I am much encouraged by your interest in our Merton Crafts, and shall do my best to make it pay so that we may keep it going, though, as I have told you, I can't hide from myself that there is a chance of failure (commercial I mean) in the matter: in which case I must draw in my horns, and try to shuffle out of the whole affair decently, and live thereafter small and certain if possible: little would be my grief at that same. This is looking at the worst side, which I think one ought to do; but I think we shall on the whole succeed; though a rich man (so-called) I never either can or will become: nay, I am trying in a feeble way to be more thrifty—whereof no more, lest I boast now and be disgraced at Christmas.
"I have been reading more of Carlyle's life, and find it deeply interesting in spite of Froude; usually I find biographies dull to extremity, I suppose because they are generally a mass of insincerities and platitudes: but in this book is a man speaking who can say what he thinks even in a letter (I wish I could). I like him much the better for having read this book, after that other mass of moodiness, and I fare to feel as if he were on the right side in spite of all faults.
"I have to go now to Oxford Street and then to the Mansion House to the Icelandic Relief Committee, which I am afraid owing to the time of the year is like to be a dead failure."
A week later he writes again:
"I have not been well, and there have been other troubles also of which I won't speak, and the sum of all has rather made me break down.
"I hope I am not quite unhumble, or want to be the only person in the world untroubled; but I have been ever loth to think that there were no people going through life, not without pain indeed, but with simplicity and free from blinding entanglements. Such an one I want to be, and my faith is that it is possible for most men to be no worse. Yet indeed I am older, and the year is evil; the summerless season, and famine and war, and the folly of peoples come back again, as it were, and the more and more obvious death of art before it rises again, are heavy matters to a small creature like me, who cannot choose but think about them, and can mend them scarce a whit.
"However, to stand up for oneself and tip them Long Melford, as Miss Berners says (and also in his way old Carlyle), is the only cure; and indeed I try it at whiles."
With the exception of two lectures given on behalf of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Iceland Famine Relief Fund was the only public matter in which Morris took any part during the year. In the depths of his own household anxiety this work came as a kind of relief; and during August and September he was busy over it, writing letters to the newspapers and making personal appeals to all his acquaintance. "For those," he wrote to the Times on the 5th of August, "who have never been in Iceland nor read its ancient literature there still remains the undoubted fact that they are a kindly, honest, and intelligent people, bearing their lot, at the best a hard one, with singular courage and cheerfulness, and keeping up through all difficulties in their remote desert (for such indeed is the land in spite of its beauty and romance) an elevation of mind and a high degree of culture, which would be honourable to countries much more favoured by nature." But the work could not distract him long from his own thoughts. "I have had a bad time of it lately and feel ten years older than I did in June," he writes again six weeks later. "I saw to-day about a book written by an Italian peasant (near Verona) complaining of their misery. How shocking it seemed to me that all the riches of rich lands should be wasted till they are no better than the poorest for most men. Think what the constitution of civilized society must be when the Italian peasant is not better off, but worse off (taking one year with another), than his brother of Iceland!"
In connexion with this Icelandic famine and the work of the Mansion House Committee there is a most characteristic note to Ellis written from Kelmscott on the 29th of September. It should perhaps be explained that there had been correspondence in the London papers making little of the distress in Iceland, and questioning whether there were in fact any famine at all there. Mr. Magnusson had just started for Reykjavik with the money and provisions already collected, in order to investigate matters on the spot.
"I am so vexed that you should have had all this trouble; except for the circumstances which you know of, I would have made a point of staying in London and seeing the matter through. I cannot find that beastly letter. When I saw you Monday week I put what letters I thought would be wanted into an envelope which I intended to give you, but I was so muddled by my own troubles that I daresay I did not; nor can I be sure that the letter was in it. Meantime I have written a letter to the bloody Times which I also inclose; if you think it worth while please send it on; after which I really don't see what any of us can do till Magnusson comes back. I repeat I am so vexed that you should have been let in for such worrits—I am reminded of Swinburne's view of providence when he said that he never saw an old gentleman give a sixpence to a beggar, but he was straightway run over by a 'bus."
But apart from all private anxieties, the pressure on Morris's mind during these autumn and winter months seems from several indications to have been greater than it was either before or since. It is a curious sign of his loneliness and self-absorption at this time, that no two of his friends (so far as I am able to ascertain) agree in their view of the steps by which he became a convinced Socialist and the main influences—whether men or events or books—that served to shape his course at this time precisely in the way it took. His own letters of the time, so far as they exist, give little clue to any changes which were going on in his mind. The account which he himself gave some ten years later is no doubt abstractly accurate. "A brief period of political Radicalism," he then wrote, "during which I saw my ideal clear enough, but had no hope of any realization of it, came to an end some months before I joined the Democratic Federation, and the meaning of my joining that body was, that I had conceived a hope of the realization of that ideal." But for the growth of this hope no one cause can be assigned. He once said to Mr. G.B. Shaw that he had been converted to Socialism by Mill, in his posthumously published papers analyzing the system of Fourier, in which he "clearly gave the verdict against the evidence." In the article already quoted, Morris alludes to these papers, and says that they put the finishing touch to his conversion. It may be doubted whether even this modified statement is not an unconscious over-statement, and whether Morris does not here mix up the causes of his conversion with the reasons by which that conversion could be justified. For some considerable time after he became a professed Socialist, he worked hard at the task of proving his belief. "I put some conscience into trying to learn the economical side of Socialism, and even tackled Marx, though I suffered agonies of confusion of the brain over reading the economics of that work." But the belief, while it was not unreasoned, was not the outcome (if any belief be) of abstract economic reasoning.
While it is true to say that during these months Morris was moving towards Socialism, it would also be true to say that Socialism was moving towards him. It was "the consciousness of revolution stirring," he says himself, which "prevented me, luckier than many others of artistic perceptions, from crystallizing into a mere railer against progress on the one hand, and on the other from wasting time and energy in any of the numerous schemes by which the quasi-artistic of the middle classes hope to make art grow when it has no longer any root." His own beliefs and sympathies changed little, while the tendency of public thought was changing fast, and he might reasonably claim that, both before and after this so-called parting of the ways, he had, since he first began to think for himself, been consistent throughout his life. The history of the Socialist movement in England during the years which succeeded the war of 1870 has yet to be written; and a biographer would be straying far beyond the limits of his appointed task if he became an analyst of social conditions or a historian of institutions. But it must be noted that just at this time, that spirit of profound discontent, which is also a spirit of hope—which, unable to rest in the present, looks forward and not backward—was widely in the air. "All countries and all individuals hang to the past, but seem hardly to think of the future. I suppose we should, like the Jewish prophets, get the habit of looking onwards to the future and not backwards to the past." Such, a generation earlier, had been the words of one of the great formative intelligences of the age, as he observed, not without a large degree of sympathy, the Chartist movement and the Christian Socialism of Kingsley and Maurice. It seemed now as if the spirit were once more in the ascendant. "The era of administration has come" was a phrase much in the mouths of economic writers. The Irish legislation of successive Governments had already, in the judgment of dispassionate observers, committed one, if not both, of the two great political parties to what might be properly called a Socialist programme. The International, though as an organized force it had been broken up in 1872, had even in its dispersion scattered widely the seeds of a cosmopolitan revolt against the domination of capital and of the middle classes. Its doctrines had to some extent permeated the leading English Trades Unions. Intelligent London artisans had in large numbers familiarized themselves with the doctrines of Karl Marx and the more recent theories of Henry George. At meetings of working men there were shouts for Revolution. The repressive measures taken in France and Austria after the Commune, and in Germany by Bismarck some years later, had incidentally filled London with foreign refugees, whose influence spread silently in many directions. The position may be summed up in Morris's own words by saying that there was no longer, among the mass of the working class in London, any decided hostility to Socialism, and that the working man who took an interest in politics was generally in favour of Socialist tendencies so far as he understood them.
In 1881 an effort had been set on foot to organize the various Radical clubs of working men in different parts of London, and to give the organization a definite bias in favour of what were becoming known as Socialistic principles. The result was the formation of a body known as the Democratic Federation. Its programme was, broadly speaking, that of the political Radicalism of the time, and directed towards alterations in the mere machinery of government—annual Parliaments, payment of Members, abolition of the House of Lords, and the like. The only distinctively "Socialist" article in its creed was a claim, not further defined, for the nationalization of land.
But as time went on the Federation became, partly by the secession of members who belonged to the older school of Radicalism, partly by a new enthusiasm among the younger men, more and more Socialist in general tendency and sympathy: and the practical changes which it advocated all went in the direction of setting up a State Socialism of a somewhat drastic kind. The "Democrat without ulterior views" of the previous generation was becoming a Social Democrat; was asking what was the use of democratic institutions, and whether they were an end or only a means. Once this question was fairly raised, the whole existing system of society began to rock and waver. To the new analysis, the status of a middle class was as artificial, and therefore as capable of removal, as all the privileges and anomalies which had been swept away by that middle class itself, when once it took the pains to organize itself and set hand to the work. People were even beginning to ask themselves, with a sudden shock of disenchantment, what reason there was for the existence of a middle class at all.
"Numbers of young men," such was the account given some seven years later by one of the most thoughtful leaders of the movement, which had then parted with some of its unreasoning enthusiasm and lost the dazzle of its earlier hope, "pupils of Mill, Spencer, Comte, and Darwin, roused by Mr. Henry George's 'Progress and Poverty,' left aside evolution and free thought; took to insurrectionary economics; studied Karl Marx; and were so convinced that Socialism had only to be put clearly before the working classes to concentrate the power of their immense numbers in one irresistible organization, that the Revolution was fixed for 1889 (the anniversary of the French Revolution) at latest. The opposition we got was uninstructive: it was mainly founded on the assumption that our projects were theoretically unsound but immediately possible, whereas our weak point lay in the case being exactly the reverse."
By one of those large and gradual changes of opinion which are seldom traceable to any distinct cause, the middle class had just then become deeply discredited. Matthew Arnold, after a lifetime spent in persistent efforts to arouse it to a sense of its own shortcomings, had abandoned the task in despair and given utterance to a new creed, that of hope in the working class; the creed which he formulated in an address delivered to the Ipswich Working Men's College under the title Ecce convertimur ad Gentes. The change—so far as it was a change—that had passed over Morris was somewhat parallel, but led him towards utterance more violent in proportion to his imaginative ardour and the impatience of his temperament.
"I have no very ardent interest," Arnold said in that address," in politics in their present state in this country. What interests me is English civilization; and our politics in their present state do not seem to me to have much bearing upon that. Both the natural reason of the thing and also the proof from practical experience seem to me to show the same thing; that for modern civilization some approach to equality is necessary, and that an enormous inequality like ours is a hindrance to our civilization. Our middle classes know neither man nor the world; they have no light, and can give none." So far the two men are in complete agreement; and though Morris might have expressed himself in phrases less lucidly temperate, there is even a curious and quite unpremeditated likeness in the language which they use. "Can the middle class regenerate themselves?" Morris asks, and answers the question essentially as Arnold answered it. "At first sight," are his words, "one would say that a body of people so powerful, who have built up the gigantic edifice of modern commerce, whose science, invention, and energy have subdued the forces of nature to serve their everyday purposes, and who guide the organization that keeps these natural powers in subjection in a way almost miraculous; at first sight one would say, surely such a mighty mass of wealthy men could do anything they please. And yet I doubt it. Why do not you—and I—set about doing this to-morrow? Because we cannot."
"For twenty years," Arnold went on in the Ipswich address, "I have been vainly urging this upon the middle classes themselves. Now I urge it upon you. Carry it forward yourselves, and insist on taking the middle class with you." But Morris could not stand aloof to give counsel; he must needs be in the thick of the conflict. A passage in a lecture delivered at the beginning of 1884 seems to express his attitude precisely in the way that he felt and meant it. "The cause of art," he there says, "is the cause of the people. We well-to-do people, those of us who love art, not as a toy, but as a thing necessary to the life of man, have for our best work the raising of the standard of life among the people. How can we of the middle classes, we the capitalists and our hangers-on, help? By renouncing our class, and on all occasions when antagonism rises up between the classes, casting in our lot with the victims; those who are condemned at the best to lack of education, refinement, leisure, pleasure, and renown; and at the worst, to a life lower than that of the most brutal of savages. There is no other way."
There can be little doubt that this passage, though not written till after he had joined a Socialist organization, expresses with great accuracy the frame of mind which made him take the step of joining it. In addressing middle-class audiences this was the offer which he distinctly made them: "To these I offer a means," were his words, repeated again and again on public platforms, "of renouncing their class by joining the only body in this country which puts forward constructive Socialism as its programme."
That, if the privileged classes became merged in a Third Estate, national equality and national unity would be the result, is a thesis which may be variously argued either in abstract logic or from the lessons of history. But it is perhaps more to the point to ask how far it is possible in the nature of things that a man should renounce his class. Into that class he was born: in it he has grown and lived: it environs him with the constant pressure of an atmosphere: he clings to it and draws his daily life out of it by a thousand filaments of inherited tradition and acquired habit. To many it may seem that Arnold, and not Morris, in this instance pointed out the true path. Morris's own language with regard to the matter, while not always strictly consistent, often indicates that he saw as clearly as any man the hopelessness of any attempt to elevate the working class from without. He never deceived himself into thinking that, by taking his stand thus on the side of those whom he called the workers, he had ceased himself to be a professional man, a hanger-on (for so he defined the term "professional man") of the capitalist class. His hope was that at the touch of an external impulse leaders among the workers themselves might arise, with whom or under whom he might himself be permitted to work. It was only after years of disappointment that he realized that the time for this had not yet come. But his whole life bore witness to the sincerity and self-sacrificing devotion with which he followed the path he conceived to be that of his highest duty.
This renunciation of his own class at all events, so far as such a thing could be actually done, presented itself to him as a step which now more than ever would have, so far as he himself was concerned, real value and significance. His position in the eyes of the world was more than respectable; it might even be described, within limits, as famous. He had a recognized place in the first rank of living poets. He had no less recognized an authority on all matters relating to the theory and practice of the decorative arts. He was a well-known and (in spite of the temporary embarrassments which attended the first year of the work at Merton Abbey) a prosperous manufacturer, whose goods travelled far, and carried their own guarantee of excellence in design and workmanship. He might speak of renunciation as one who had something not inconsiderable to renounce. Just at the moment when he was making up his mind to take some decisive step, he was unanimously elected an Honorary Fellow of his College at Oxford; a distinction which, always rare, is generally reserved for old members who have attained the highest official rank in their profession, and implies a tribute to very special distinction in one who is not a Bishop or a Privy Councillor. This honour was conferred on him on the 13th of January, 1883. He had gone down to Bournemouth that day to see his daughter. "Such a pile of letters I found waiting me," he wrote to her on the 17th, after coming back to London, "some of them like those of David Copperfield after he had become an author." That same day he enrolled himself as a member of the Democratic Federation.
On his card of membership, which is signed by H.H. Champion, he is described as "William Morris, designer." It was on his status as a workman that he based his claim to admission into the fighting rank of a working-class movement. The step, which in a sense cut him definitely away from respectability, was in no way a merely formal one. He took it with a full sense of its import. "I am truly glad," were his words, with something of the grave joy of a convert, "that I have joined the only society I could find which is definitely Socialistic." His support of the new movement, even before he formally joined it, had not been confined to theoretical sympathy. In the previous October he had sold the greater part of his valuable library, in order to devote the proceeds to the furtherance of Socialism. Though he was not exactly a bibliophile, many of these treasures cost him a pang to part with, from the "De Claris Mulieribus," which had been his first purchase among the masterpieces of the early printers, down to oddly printed collections of Sagas from the Skalaholt Press, which he had acquired in Iceland. "If the modern books are unsaleable," he wrote to Ellis, "perhaps you would let me take them out after your valuation, as I have no idea what they are worth to sell (though beastly dear to buy), and though I hate them and should be glad to be rid of them as far as pleasure is concerned, they are of some use to me professionally—though by the way I am not a professional man, but a tradesman."
A few letters to Bournemouth during the winter indicate how his daily work went on, notwithstanding the excitement of the new departure. "Yesterday," he writes on the 6th of December, "I spent the day at the South Kensington Museum. My opinion was wanted as to the value of a set of textiles which old Canon Bock has offered them: there were some very interesting pieces among them: a noble piece of Sicilian woven stuff of a pattern I haven't seen before; a fine piece of 13th century Syrian silk with (real) Arab writing in it: some fragments of the very early cloths also, and a great quantity of good 17th century patterns; also a good collection of printed goods from the 14th century till the beginnings on the Wandle. I had also to decide as to whether the Museum should buy three large pieces of tapestry (of about 1530), but I refused them, as they were not really good, and had been gammoned badly: also they were too dear, ₤1,200 for the three and not worth more than ₤400 at the most. I have made three new patterns for embroidery, two small table-cloths, and one cushion."
And on the 19th from Merton:
"It is a lovely day here, though ft was dark and thick in town; but I cannot get about the works, for the gout has made another grab at me: it feels so queer to be here and a kind of prisoner to the house: however I have ordered the cab to be here at 6 to take me back to Hammersmith, and I have plenty of small designing work to do meantime. As to our printing, we are really not quite straight yet: I am quite ashamed of it: however they are doing Brother Rabbit successfully, and the Anemone will go on now, and when we are once out of this difficulty, I really think we shall have seen the worst of it. Item, we are going to get our wheel set straight during the Christmas holidays, so as not to stop work; the poor critter wants it very badly, for every now and then when there is not much water on, it really seems as if he stopped to think, like a lazy boy turning a grindstone. Well, here is an end of my paper, and Mr. Barret the wood-cutter come to see about cutting the design I made down there—I shall call it Christchurch, not Bournemouth."
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.