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 story-teller, 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's 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's 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's 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's 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 subjects 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."
Of Merton 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.
"At Merton there are some daffodils out already. The almond tree is blossoming there beautifully: some of these fine days the place has looked pretty, the water sparkling among the twigs. We are getting tidy now, but haven't quite cleared up about the big filtering bed, which still wants something doing to it, as the tail was red with madder the other day. We are not getting on quite as fast as we should with the printing; it is very tough work getting everything in due order, the cloths seem to want so much doing to them before they can be printed, and then so much doing to them after they are printed. We have had a grand cleaning of the blue Persian carpet at Merton. My word, wasn't it dirty: caked with dirt: it looks very much better, the pattern being quite plain to see except just at the end for about a foot. I was frightened though at first: for after we first put it into the river it cockled up like a sheet of crumpled paper, the cotton warp shrinking with the wet. I thought my £80 had gone down the Wandle: but all came right when it was dry. In about a fortnight we shall have finished the Goose-Girl tapestry: Uncle Ned has done me two lovely figures for tapestry, but I have got to design a background for them; I shall probably bring that down next time I come for my holiday task. Tell dear May that I have devoted about twenty minutes to the lace—it is a drawback to have to be always washing one's hands for a fidgety person like me. Neither have I done much to the Shah Nameh: you see the lecture has swallowed up my literary time."
Under the pressure of opposition which, at Manchester and elsewhere, he was now beginning to feel, a hardening of his tone about this time begins to be perceptible. "I am tired of being mealy-mouthed," he breaks out in a letter. In April he was lecturing regularly, "preaching my sermon" as he calls it, in different parts of London, and becoming more plain-spoken in each fresh draft of his message. In May he was put, rather against his will, on the executive of the Democratic Federation; "so I am in for more work. However I don't like belonging to a body without knowing what they are doing. Without feeling very sanguine about their doings, "they seem certainly to mean something; money is chiefly lacking, as usual."
To meet this lack of money among a small and struggling group of enthusiasts, the drain on his own resources was already heavy, and became heavier as time went on. "You have no revolution on hand on which to spend your money," he wrote to Ellis in the same week. "By the way," he adds, suddenly turning to another and an earlier interest, "the May-fly does not visit Wandle: they are eating the alder and the cocktail now. Wardle got a fish (not in our water) on Monday evening, a 2 lb., I heard." Himself now he found no time for fishing or for any relaxation. The absorption of his time by his new work amounted to two full working-days, besides odd evenings, out of every week. "I haven't had two consecutive hours to call my own since I saw you three weeks ago," he writes to Mrs. Burne-Jones later in the summer; "my time has been a mere heap of chopped straw."
So far as concerns his attitude at this point towards politics and the ideas of that middle class which he had not yet renounced, two long and clearly reasoned letters written this summer to Mr. C.E. Maurice give his thought fully and frankly.
"June 22, 1883.
"Dear Mr. Maurice,
"I think you might be able to help a friend of mine with advice in the following case: A poor woman comes to her asking for a ticket for her son for the Consumptive Hospital: son obviously ill, but not with consumption: woman herself ill, sore throat and out-of-sorts: husband ill also; very bad smell in the house; the rent-collector, or landlord, when asked to mend matters by the tenant, won't do anything; won't even give his address; inspector when written to by tenant don't answer: Can you tell me who is the proper inspector or board to apply to? and forgive my troubling you on such a simple question.
"I should have been glad to have continued our conversation last Friday night; as I so much desire to convert all disinterested people of good will to what I should call active and general Socialism, and to have their help: I think that you, like myself, have really been a Socialist for a long time, and I know you have done your best, as you would be sure to do, to carry out your views. For my part I used to think that one might further real Socialistic progress by doing what one could on the lines of ordinary middle-class Radicalism: I have been driven of late into the conclusion that I was mistaken; that Radicalism is on the wrong line, so to say, and will never develope into anything more than Radicalism: in fact that it is made for and by the middle classes and will always be under the control of rich capitalists: they will have no objection to its political development, if they think they can stop it there: but as to real social changes, they will not allow them if they can help it: you may see almost any day such phrases as "this is the proper way to stop the spread of Socialism" in the Liberal papers, the writer of the phrase never having taken the trouble to find out what Socialism meant, and also choosing to ignore the discontent, dumb indeed for the most part, which is widely spread even in England. Meantime I can see no use in people having political freedom unless they use it as an instrument for leading reasonable and manlike lives; no good even in education if, when they are educated, people have only slavish work to do, and have to live lives too much beset with sordid anxiety for them to be able to think and feel with the more fortunate people who produced art and poetry and great thought. This release from slavery it is clear cannot come to people so long as they are subjected to the bare subsistence wages which are a necessity of competitive commerce; and I cannot help thinking that the workmen will be soon finding out that for ourselves: it is certain that Henry George's book has been received in this country and in America as a new Gospel: I believe that Socialism is advancing, and will advance more and more as education spreads, and so believing, find my duty clear to do my best to further its advance, and in the same time, in what poor way I can, to soften the ruggedness, and refine the coarseness which centuries of oppression have hammered into it, so to say.
"A word about the Democratic Federation: as far as I know it is the only active Socialist organization in England: under the above mentioned circumstances therefore I found myself bound to join it, although I had heard beforehand (to speak plainly) that it was a sort of Tory drag to take the scent off the fox. From all I can hear I believe that to be a calumny: or, to speak English, one of those curious lies for which no one seems responsible, but which stick very tight to the object they are thrown at. However that may be, I cannot see how a Society which has declared openly for Socialism, including Land Nationalization, can serve the Tory cause, whatever the Tory intention may be: for the rest, from what I can see of their proceedings the Executive seem to me to mean work; and if their opinions hurt the Liberal party (where is it by the way?) it is the fault of the Liberal party for allowing itself to stiffen into Whiggery or practical Toryism, as it seems to me it is fast doing.
"I won't make any excuses for this long letter, as I know you are deeply interested in the matter, and I believe your uprightness of thought will see through my clumsy sentences into what I have in my mind.
"Yours faithfully,
"William Morris."
"July 1st, 1883.
"Dear Mr. Maurice,
"I am sitting down to write my promised letter to you, but to begin with find it somewhat difficult to do more than define my own position a little more than I did in my last. You see I think we differ to start with in this, that you think that the present system of Society has certain hitches in it; certain wrongs resulting from blunders persisted in, till they have become very difficult to deal with, but which hitches and blunders are removable, and when removed will leave us a society which can be kept straight by careful attention to the general duties of good citizenship. I confess I go much further than that: true it is that I cannot help trying to remove obvious anomalies or helping what I can to palliate the effects of the obstinate blunders which we both see, but I do so with little hope, because I believe that the whole basis of Society, with its contrasts of rich and poor, is incurably vicious: I might be content that the change which I think must come about before this can be righted should be a gradual one—or say I must be content; but I do not see that those who are at the head of the political advance have any intention of making a real change in the social basis: for them it seems a part of the necessary and eternal order of things that the present supply and demand Capitalist system should last for ever; though the system of citizen and chattel slave under which the ancient civilizations lived, which no doubt once seemed also necessary and eternal, had to give place, after a long period of violence and anarchy, to the feudal system of seigneur and serf; which in its turn, though once thought necessary and eternal, has been swept away in favour of our present contract system between rich and poor. Of course I don't do you the injustice to suppose that you defend the finality of any system, but I am quite clear that the ordinary Radical of to-day does do so, and there I join issue with him.
"Also of course, I do not believe in the world being saved by any system,—I only assert the necessity of attacking systems grown corrupt, and no longer leading anywhither: that to my mind is the case with the present system of capital and labour: as all my lectures assert, I have personally been gradually driven to the conclusion that art has been handcuffed by it, and will die out of civilization if the system lasts. That of itself does to me carry with it the condemnation of the whole system, and I admit has been the thing which has drawn my attention to the subject in general: but furthermore in looking into matters social and political I have but one rule, that in thinking of the condition of any body of men I should ask myself, 'How could you bear it yourself? what would you feel if you were poor against the system under which you live?' I have always been uneasy when I had to ask myself that question, and of late years I have had to ask it so often, that I have seldom had it out of my mind: and the answer to it has more and more made me ashamed of my own position, and more and more made me feel that if I had not been born rich or well-to-do I should have found my position unendurable, and should have been a mere rebel against what would have seemed to me a system of robbery and injustice. Nothing can argue me out of this feeling, which I say plainly is a matter of religion to me: the contrasts of rich and poor are unendurable and ought not to be endured by either rich or poor. Now it seems to me that, feeling this, I am bound to act for the destruction of the system which seems to me mere oppression and obstruction; such a system can only be destroyed, it seems to me, by the united discontent of numbers; isolated acts of a few persons of the middle and upper classes seeming to me (as I have said before) quite powerless against it: in other words the antagonism of classes, which the system has bred, is the natural and necessary instrument of its destruction. My aim therefore being to spread discontent among all classes, I feel myself bound to join any organization whose object seemed to me really to further this aim: nor in doing so should I be much troubled by consideration of who the leaders of such an organization might be, always supposing that one believes them genuine in their support of certain principles. It has always seemed to me that the worship of leaders has been a sign of the lifelessness of ordinary Radicalism of late, and that opinion has received fresh confirmation in my mind by last year's events in Ireland and Egypt (especially the latter, where the Liberal 'leaders' 'led' the party into mere Jingoism).
"But further I earnestly wish that the middle classes, to whom hitherto I have personally addressed myself, should look to all these matters, and become discontented also, as they certainly should be, since they themselves suffer from the same system which oppresses the poor; their lives made barren and dull by it; their hopes for a higher standard of life repressed: besides I am quite sure that the change which will overthrow our present system will come sooner or later: on the middle classes to a great extent it depends whether it will come peaceably or violently. If they can only learn the uselessness of mere overplus money, the poisonousness of luxury to all civilization, they will not be so likely to cry out 'confiscation and robbery and injustice' at a system which, while it proposes to give to every man what he really needs, will have no call to take from any man what he can really use: in short, what we of the middle classes have to do, if we can, is to show by our lives what is the proper type of a useful citizen, the type into which all classes should melt at last. I remember a little time ago meeting a clever man in a train who enlarged (without letting me get a word in edgewise) on the woes of the middle class, and how they suffered in comparison with the pampered working classes. I am sorry to say that I was not ready enough to say to him what I afterwards thought: 'my friend, if you would only allow yourself to become a member of this pampered working class, then would all your woes be at an end, by your own showing.' His line of argument is common enough, and is founded on the assumption that one class must be masters of the other: but to my mind no man is good enough to be any one's master without injuring himself at least, whatever he does for the servant. Well, I don't know if I have explained myself at all; I daresay I haven't, but I have told you of certain things which were on my mind; and you will at least see that I am your ally in trying to deal with the lives of our own class.
"I much agree with what you say about the shopkeeping class, and think with you that they have been very unjustly scolded at for a position which they cannot help, and which is I know very often hard enough for them: whatever political grievances they lack, I think they have a social grievance heavy enough: for instance, the more refined classes do usually assume in their dealings with them that they will as a matter of course cheat the buyer, though all the while the buyer is eager for what he calls a 'bargain,' i.e., that he should cheat the seller. Doesn't this bring home to us all the waste and disgrace which is the essence of our present system of Commercial War?
"Well, I have spun you a very long yarn, and have not attempted to answer your objections directly; because I saw from your letter that you could not be expected to join in such a Society as ours at present, though I cannot help thinking that you one day will take some such step.
"Meantime I have begun a little essay on the subject you were good enough to suggest to me: when it is finished I will send it you, and if you approve of it I would read it somewhere and be prepared to answer further questions on the subject—which however I cannot help feeling will eventually lead us back to Socialism by another road.
"By the way a friend sent me Hampstead paper cuttings, containing 1st, an irate letter from someone who was 'touched up' by my lecture; and 2nd, a very handsome answer to him by yourself, for which I thank you heartily, especially as it made clear to me that you quite understood what I had been saying on that occasion. You must remember by the way again that I was sent by the Democratic Federation to lecture there; so I thought I was acting within my rights in distributing their circular, and speaking for them.
"Yours faithfully,
"William Morris."
In more touching and intimate words he wrote on the 21st of August to Mrs. Burne-Jones, who had made a renewed effort to urge him back to writing poetry:
"I am touched by your kind anxiety about my poetry; but you see, my dear, there is first of all my anxiety, which I am bound to confess has made a sad coward of me; and then, though I admit that I am a conceited man, yet I really don't think anything I have done (when I consider it as I should another man's work) of any value except to myself: except as showing my sympathy with history and the like. Poetry goes with the hand-arts I think, and like them has now become unreal: the arts have got to die, what is left of them, before they can be born again. You know my views on the matter; I apply them to myself as well as to others. This would not, I admit, prevent my writing poetry any more than it prevents my doing my pattern work, because the mere personal pleasure of it urges one to the work; but it prevents my looking at it as a sacred duty, and the grief aforesaid is too strong and disquieting to be overcome by a mere inclination to do what I know is unimportant work. Meantime the propaganda gives me work to do, which, unimportant as it seems, is part of a great whole which cannot be lost, and that ought to be enough for me."
Within the ranks of the Democratic Federation meanwhile, which had set out so gaily to conquer working-class opinion and use it as a lever against the established order of things, disruptive tendencies were already showing themselves, and its middle-class leaders were already beginning to mistrust one another.
"I am like enough to have some trouble over my propagandist work," Morris writes at the end of August, "let alone that I am in for a many lectures: for small as our body is, we are not without dissensions in it. Some of the more ardent disciples look upon Hyndman as too opportunist, and there is truth in that; he is sanguine of speedy change happening somehow, and is inclined to intrigue and the making of a party; towards which end compromise is needed, and the carrying people who don't really agree with us as far as they will go. As you know, I am not sanguine, and think the aim of Socialists should be the founding of a religion, towards which end compromise is no use, and we only want to have those with us who will be with us to the end. But then again, if the zealots don't take care they will blow the whole thing to the winds; all the more as the religious or theological difficulty is on us, or threatening to be so. In the midst of all this I find myself drifting into the disgraceful position of a moderator and patcher up, which is much against my inclination.
"Meantime it is obvious that the support to be looked for for constructive Socialism from the working classes at present is nought. Who can wonder, as things now are, when the lower classes are really lower? Of vague discontent and a spirit of revenge for the degradation in which they are kept there is plenty I think, but that seems all. What we want is real leaders themselves working men, and content to be so till classes are abolished. But you see when a man has gifts for that kind of thing he finds himself tending to rise out of his class before he has begun to think of class politics as a matter of principle, and too often he is just simply 'got at' by the governing classes, not formally, but by circumstances I mean. Education is the word doubtless; but then in comes the commercial system and defends itself against that in a terrible unconscious way with the struggle for bread, and lack of leisure, and squalid housing—and there we go, round and round the circle still."
It was not only the business of moderating and patching up that was now beginning, but the equally endless task of explaining to a quite light-hearted and careless world distinctions which perpetually became more crucial as their scope was narrowed, but which those beyond the circle could never be induced to see as distinctions at all. "The manifesto spoken of in to-day's Daily News," he wearily writes, "is not ours; nor is it Social Democratic, which is what we are, but Anarchist. We consider them dangerous; for you see they have no programme but destruction, whereas we are reconstructive. People in general are quite ignorant of the whole matter."
At the beginning of September he wrote the first of those hymns of the new movement which were issued under the title of "Chants for Socialists." The fine and stirring verses, entitled "The Day is Coming," are included in the volume of "Poems by the Way." In sending a copy of the newly-written poem to Mrs. Burne-Jones he once more recurs to the objection, urged by her and by many of those whose sympathy he sought to enlist, that education was the primary necessity, and that it was hopeless to attempt to reconstruct society with the existing materials.
"As to the D.F., you need not be anxious about me. I went into the affair quite with my eyes open, and suspecting worse things of it than are likely to happen: for you understand I by no means suppose Hyndman or any of the leaders not to be in earnest, though I may not always agree with them. I naturally find it harder work to understand the subject of Socialism in detail now I am alongside it, and often get beaten in argument when I know all the same I am really in the right: but of course this only means more study. Every one who has thought over the matter must feel your dilemma about education; but think of many not uneducated people that you know, and you will I am sure see that education will not cure people of the grossest social selfishness and tyranny unless Socialistic principles form part of it. Meantime I am sure it is right, whatever the apparent consequences may be, to stir up the lower classes (damn the word) to demand a higher standard of life for themselves, not merely for themselves or for the sake of the material comfort it will bring, but for the good of the whole world and the regeneration of the conscience of man: and this stirring up is part of the necessary education which must in good truth go before the reconstruction of society: but I repeat that without laying before people this reconstruction, our education will but breed tyrants and cowards, big, little and least, down to the smallest who can screw out money from standing by to see another man working for him.
"The one thing I want you to be clear about is that I cannot help acting in the matter, and associating myself with any body which has the root of the matter; and you know, and it may ease your kind heart respecting me, that those who are in the thick of it, and trying to do something, are not likely to feel so much of the hope deferred which hangs about the cause as onlookers do."
In the same spirit, though from a somewhat different position, and in a rather more militant tone, he wrote about the same time to Mr. Horsfall:
"I have long felt sure that commercialism must be attacked at the root before we can be on the road for those improvements in life which you and I so much desire. A society which is founded on the system of compelling all well-to-do people to live on making the greatest possible profit out of the labour of others, must be wrong. For it means the perpetuating the division of society into civilized and uncivilized classes: I am far from being an anarchist, but even anarchy is better than this, which is in fact anarchy and despotism mixed: if there is no hope of conquering this—let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.
"Of course I do not discuss these matters with you or any person of good will in any bitterness of spirit: but there are people with whom it is hard to keep one's temper; such as the philistine middle-class Radical; who think, or pretend to, that now at last all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds."
"I am working at lectures and chintz-patterns hard," he writes a fortnight later; "perhaps poems will come too." But this was hardly meant seriously, or if it was, represented a momentary lapse from the tension up to which he had worked himself, and which his new colleagues naturally took no pains to relieve. At the end of October Mr. Charles Rowley, who was then still personally unknown to him, though it only needed a first meeting to make them friends, had written to ask him to come to Manchester and give a Sunday lecture to the Ancoats Brotherhood. Morris's reply was prompt and straight:
"Oct. 25th, 1883.
"My dear Sir,
"I have only one subject to lecture on, the relation of Art to Labour: also I am an open and declared Socialist, or to be more specific, Collectivist, and whatever I say would be coloured by my opinions on these matters: if you think under these circumstances a lecture from me would come within the scope of your scheme, and be acceptable as an expression of opinions for which of course you would not be responsible, I should be very happy to be one of those who lecture to you.
"Yours faithfully,
"William Morris."
Mr. Rowley was not frightened by this reply: and the lecture which Morris gave was the first of many that he delivered in the New Islington Hall at Ancoats, and the beginning of an intimate cordiality and affection between the two men.
The manifesto of the Democratic Federation, issued in June and signed by Morris together with the rest of the Executive Committee, had gone far in advance of anything that was in his mind, or in the minds of most of his colleagues, when he had joined it at the beginning of the year. For the rapid development of doctrine there were several causes, any of them sufficient. In an association which is itself formed by the detachment of the Extreme Left (to use the convenient French term) of a great party, the inevitable tendency is to become more and more extremist. Waverers relapse on to the main body, and the control of the movement passes more and more into the hands of enthusiasts. Such a situation gives a terrible power to logic. Friends and enemies alike are quick to detect and eager to pounce upon inconsistencies; and in human affairs, inconsistency can only be avoided by falling back from compromise after compromise to the extreme limit of abstract theory. Nor does the evil stop here. As an abstract logic becomes more and more the dominant guiding force, the refined distinctions to which logic lends itself become articles of faith over which divisions are multiplied. The more a party holding extreme doctrines defines the consequences of its principles; the more it purges itself of the ambiguities of an unformulated creed and the inconsistencies of moderate opinion: the more violent does the conflict become among the remnant left, on points that have only arisen in the course of argument. The path between right-hand heats and extremes and left-hand defections is always narrowing. In the seventeenth chapter of "The Heart of Midlothian" the master-hand of Scott has drawn an imperishable picture of the disintegration that ensues, and the loss, first of moving power on the world without, and then of vital energy within, that has overtaken so many kingdoms of the Saints. The world takes its own way, regardless of logic, impatient of theory, merciless to failure: nor is it until the years have heaped their dust over the asperities of the conflict that understanding comes with pity. Yet in the simple faith of such a despised remnant, and not in the facile contempt of the majority, may have lain that seed of spiritual ardour which has kept the soul of man alive.
On the same day that Morris declared himself an open Socialist with only one subject on which he could give public utterance, he wrote to Mr. Horsfall in reply to a letter of anxious and amazed questioning:
"In few words what I have to say about the manifesto is, that, though I may not like the taste of some of the wording, I do agree with the substance of it (or I should not have signed it). This does not however prevent me from agreeing with you that the rich do not act as they do in the matter from malice. Nevertheless their position (as a class) forces them to 'strive' (unconsciously most often I know) to keep the working men in ignorance of their rights and their power.
"Where I think I differ from you of the means whereby revolution may be attained is this: if I do not misrepresent your views, you think that individuals of good will belonging to all classes can, if they be numerous and strenuous enough, bring about the change: I on the contrary think that the basis of all change must be, as it has always been, the antagonism of classes: I mean that though here and there a few men of the upper and middle classes, moved by their conscience and insight, may and doubtless will throw in their lot with the working classes, the upper and middle classes as a body will by the very nature of their existence, and like a plant grows, resist the abolition of classes: neither do I think that any amelioration of the condition of the poor on the only lines which the rich can go upon will advance us on the road; save that it will put more power into the hands of the lower class and so strengthen both their discontent and their means of showing it: for I do not believe that starvelings can bring about a revolution. I do not say that there is not a terrible side to this: but how can it be otherwise? Commercialism, competition, has sown the wind recklessly, and must reap the whirlwind: it has created the proletariat for its own interest, and its creation will and must destroy it: there is no other force which can do so. For my part I have never under-rated the power of the middle classes, whom, in spite of their individual good nature and banality, I look upon as a most terrible and implacable force: so terrible that I think it not unlikely that their resistance to inevitable change may, if the beginnings of change are too long delayed, ruin all civilization for a time. Meantime I must tell you that among the discontented, discontent unlighted by hope is in many places taking the form of a passionate desire for mere anarchy, so that it becomes a pressing duty for those who, not believing in the stability of the present system, have any hopes for the future, to lay before the world those hopes founded on constructive revolution."
An opportunity soon occurred for him to announce his attitude more dramatically to a larger audience. In November he had been invited to Oxford to give an address to the Russell Club, a society of Liberal undergraduates with a tendency towards the newer developments of Radicalism. Social questions, under the stimulating influence of Arnold Toynbee and his disciples, had at that time risen to the first place among the intellectual interests of younger Oxford. Toynbee's recent death had only given a fresh impulse to the movement. The so-called University Settlements were in the air. Social reform was the current subject of discussion in College debating societies and filled the pages of the Oxford magazines. Mr. Henry George had lectured at Oxford in support of his scheme of land nationalization, and had been received with a studied incivility which aroused a strong reaction in his favour.
The authorities, always willing to follow the lead of any strong undergraduate feeling, and not averse from allowing the new movement to spend its force in vague discussion, threw no obstacles in the way of the meeting. When Morris accepted the invitation of the Russell Club, the hall of University College was lent to them for the evening. The title announced for the address was "Democracy and Art"; two subjects not obviously explosive when brought into contact. The College hall was crowded, and all went smoothly till at the end of his address Morris boldly passed from theoretic ground, announced that he spoke as the agent of a Socialist body, and appealed to his audience to join it. The platform sat aghast; and the Master of University at once rose to explain that the College when they lent their hall had not known that Mr. Morris was the agent of any Socialist propaganda, and that all they had meant was to give to an eminent man the opportunity of expressing his opinions on art under a democracy: "a subject with which" (so the report of the meeting gives Dr. Bright's words) "he was unusually well acquainted, and a knowledge of which, in the existing condition of social questions in England, was a most desirable part of the education of every young man."
For the misunderstanding, if misunderstanding there were, Morris at all events was in no way to blame. He had taken the utmost pains to explain his position clearly before he came. To Faulkner, through whom as one of the Fellows the request for the use of the College hall had been made, he had written as follows on the 23rd of October. The original proposal had been that he and Mr. Hyndman should both speak; but Mr. Hyndman's doctrines were known to be revolutionary, and the methods he advocated were believed to be violent.
"As to Hyndman lecturing in your hall I would ask you to lay before the Master the fact that I am quite as much a Socialist as he is; that I am an officer of the same Association, and am distinctly going to lecture as a delegate from it: also that if the subject is to be stirred at all, it is surely worth while to listen to a man who is capable of giving a definite exposition of the whole doctrine. I am rather anxious about this matter, as if Hyndman is shut up I shall feel rather like a fool, and as if I were there on false pretences. For the rest, Hyndman is an educated man if Trin: Coll: Camb: is capable of educating (which is doubtful), and though he is perhaps not as polite as the Devil is usually said to be, is at least politer than I am: neither has he horns and hoofs, as I am prepared to swear: neither (as a Secretary of the S.P.A.B.) will I allow him to blow up any old building in Oxford. Would it be any good my writing to the Master stating these facts in conventional language; and also stating what seems to me to be true, that people do seem just at this moment to want to know something about Socialism? though to tell you the truth I misdoubt me that that may be but a passing wind of fashion."
"We must leave the matter in the hands of the Russell Club," he wrote to Faulkner again on the 25th; "I have undertaken to give my lecture and will not back out of it, but will deliver it where they think advisable. Please to thank the Master on my behalf when you see him; I don't doubt he has done his best for us."
Notwithstanding these repeated explanations, the College authorities appear to have been possessed by the fixed idea that Morris, as a man of means and a man of letters, could not be a Socialist in the same sense as his colleagues; and they persisted, with a sort of obstinate innocence, in believing that his address would be confined to generalities which could do no harm. When, they found that he had really meant what he said, their feeling was one which approached consternation. The meeting had, at all events, a success of scandal, and henceforth Morris was widely known as a declared Socialist.
In spite of all his labours as a peacemaker the year ended gloomily for him. The party had got rid of its moderate members. It had modified its name to that of the Social Democratic Federation in order to make its position as a Socialist body quite clear. It was about to start a weekly newspaper for the purpose of spreading its doctrines among the working classes. But internally it was already a distracted chaos. "I went to Merton for a little time on Thursday," says Morris's last letter of the year, "and found all well there. Now I'm off to see Fitzgerald (that's our editor) about 'Justice,' the prospects of which I am not sanguine over. The fact is, we really want a good steady business man over the D.F. affairs: a man who could give up most of his time and who wouldn't be excitable. For lack of it I fear we shall fall to pieces. I am much worried by the whole business just now: but in any case I shall try to save something out of the fire and keep a few together."
Throughout 1884 this desperate work of mingled proselytizing and patching up went on unceasingly. In January "he can talk about little else, and will brook no opposition." For a time there was almost a breach between him and several of his older friends.
"I was rather disconcerted," one of them has recorded, "when I found that an honest objection to Bulgarian atrocities had been held to be one and the same thing as sympathy with Karl Marx, and that Morris took it for granted that I should be ready for enrolment." Just at present Morris had quite lost his capacity for good-humoured argument. "I have a dim recollection," says Mr. William De Morgan, "of a discussion on Socialism which ended in a scheme for the complete reconstruction of society exactly as it is now, so as to meet the views of both revolutionaries and Conservatives: however, this was in the earlier days of Socialism—as he got more engrossed in the subject, this sort of chat became less and less possible."
The first number of the weekly paper of the Democratic Federation, "Justice: the Organ of the Social Democracy," appeared on the 9th of January. Besides practically paying out of his own pocket for the weekly deficit in its balance sheet, Morris contributed articles to one-half of the numbers which appeared up to the end of December. These contributions included three more of the "Chants for Socialists," and one brief article on that year's exhibition of the Royal Academy, expanded by him in a longer paper which was published in the July number of the secularist magazine "To-day." Like the single piece of literary criticism he had printed twenty-eight years earlier, this single piece of art criticism is more interesting as a fragment of unstudied autobiography than from its remarks on the special works singled out for praise or blame. A few sentences from it are worth quoting as summing up in brief and incisive words the view he held, and had held all his life, of the function and excellence of the painter's art.
"In considering such an exhibition it is necessary to have a clear idea of what the aims of a painter should be. Something like this, I think, will embrace them all:1st. The embodiment in art of some vision which has forced itself on the artist's brain.2nd. The creation of some lovely combination of colour and form.3rd. The setting forth a faithful portraiture of some beautiful, characteristic, or historical place, or of some living person worthy to be so portrayed; in either case so as to be easily recognizable by a careless observer, and yet to have a reserve of more intimate facts for a careful one. 4th. Mastery over material; the production of a finished and workmanlike piece, as perfect in all ways as the kind of work admits of.
"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."
Lecturing, 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 actual 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."
Into whatever faults of intrigue or ambition Mr. Hyndman may have been led by an undoubtedly jealous and imperious temper, those were not wanting who made it their business to foster distrust and exasperate grievances. When, ten years later, the two men stood once more side by side on the same platform, Morris generously acquitted his old colleague of all blame for the rupture. But the reconciliation could not reunite a broken party, and the history of English Socialism in the nineteenth century was then already a closed record.
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. 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's 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's 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 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 tomorrow 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."