William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement/10
CHAPTER X
EDINBURGH ART CONGRESS AND AFTER
THE Art Congress held in Edinburgh in 1889 proved a somewhat memorable occasion for the Socialist movement in Scotland. The Art Congress was founded in London by a number of artists and craftsmen, with the object of 'advancing the interests of Art and Industry' by widening public knowledge of the work of present-day artists and designers. The first general gathering of the Congress was held in Liverpool the year previous to the Edinburgh meeting, and was attended by the President of the Royal Academy and a host of prominent artists and craftsmen, including Morris and Walter Crane, who read papers at the sectional meetings. Its proceedings were widely noticed in the press, the members were feasted at public banquets and entertained in the houses of wealthy citizens, and the gathering was reckoned a great success.
The Edinburgh meeting promised to be no less successful. With a view to enhancing the lustre of the gathering the promoters had secured the patronage of the Marquis of Bute as president for the occasion. Great attention was bestowed on the assembly by the Scottish press, and the fashionable portion of the Edinburgh citizens vied with one another in showing hospitality to the visitors.
But a blight fell upon the repute of the meeting almost at the outset, in quite an unexpected and absurdly inconsequent way. Again, as at the Liverpool gathering, Morris and Crane, together with Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, who, Socialists as they were, stood in the forefront of their respective branches of craftsmanship, were invited to give addresses at the sectional meetings. Much to their own surprise and to the no small annoyance of the promoters of the Congress, this little group of intransigents, because of the Socialist strain in their discourses, attained great prominence in connection with the proceedings—a circumstance that caused considerable commotion in the public mind. Their presence at the Congress was spoken of by a section of the press as a cleverly devised Socialist conspiracy to capture the Congress, while the promoters were rebuked for giving them a place on the official programme.
One newspaper accused Morris and his friends of having turned the Congress into a Socialist demonstration, while another lamented the regrettable intrusion of revolutionary Socialist politics into the peaceful republic of the Arts. The headline 'Art and Socialism' flourished in the columns of all the newspapers during the week, and the subject was alluded to in many pulpits on the following Sunday.
Needless to say, we rank-and-file Socialists in Scotland were in high feather over the affair. We could not have wished for a more desirable advertisement of our Socialist principles. Hitherto Socialism had been associated in the press mainly with troublesome free-speech and unemployed disturbances, and a few nugatory election candidatures in London. We had now the gratification of seeing Socialism flamed in the public eye as the tutelary divinity of the Muses, the true spiritual progenitor of genius and all the wondrous achievements of art and literature which adorn the ascent of humanity.
This was for us a great stroke of fortune. Nor was the exultation dictated by any want of consideration for the interest of art. Whether or not, as the Edinburgh Evening News alleged, 'the Socialists had spoiled the Congress,' the incident had at any rate given a big lift to the Socialist movement, and we all of us, Morris and his colleagues included, felt that the advance of the Socialist cause was of incomparably greater importance to the advance of art than was the success of an annual junketing of artists and fashionable dilettanti. Was it not self-evident that an Art Congress, especially one whose professed object was to promote 'the interests of Art and Industry,' which could be spoiled by the propaganda zeal of one or two of the foremost art craftsmen of the day, was already foredoomed to futility? Anyway, whether wittingly or unwittingly 'spoiled by the Socialists,' the Edinburgh meeting proved to be the last assembly of the short-lived Art Congress Association.
Morris commented briefly on the Congress in the next issue of the Commonweal:
'The Art Congress,' he wrote, 'was on the whole a dull affair, and would have been very dull indeed, but that to a Socialist its humours showed some signs of the times. It goes without saying that, though there were people present who were intent on playing the part of Art-philanthropists, all the paper readers, except the declared Socialists, showed an absurd ignorance of the very elements of economics; and also, of course, that the general feeling was an ignoring of the existence of the working class except as instruments to be played on.... Socialist artists and craftsmen (since there were none but Socialists capable of taking on the job) were set to lecture audiences of Edinburgh working men on the due methods of work for producing popular art, though both lecturers and workmen audiences knew but too well that such art was impossible for wage-slaves to make or enjoy.'
'However,' continued Morris, 'the said lecturers did not hide this fact under a bushel; and since, as a reactionary Edinburgh evening paper angrily declared, the Socialists had ruined the Congress, it is probable that their plain speaking had some effect. It must also be said that the working-men audiences received any allusions to Socialism, or any teaching founded on it, with more than assent, with enthusiasm rather. The definitely Socialist meetings, held under the auspices of our Edinburgh friends, were very successful, and the local Socialists are well satisfied with the result of the week.'
The Rev. Dr. John Glasse bore similar testimony in the pages of the Commonweal:
'The presidential address (to the Crafts section) by our comrade Morris drew the largest gathering of the week. Nothing could have been better than the effect produced, for the audience not merely admired its ability, but were moved by its reasoning. The most successful of all, however, were perhaps the lectures given to working men. They were led off by Morris and Crane, and finished by Walker and Sanderson. We were not only much gratified by the reception given to our comrades, but proud to think that they had been found most competent to address the workers on matters relative to their handicrafts.'
Such were the circumstances and nature of the alleged Socialist 'Conspiracy' that 'ruined the Art Congress,' and incidentally invested the Socialist agitation in Scotland with a modest glamour of intellectual prestige. It is now quite forgotten, I suppose, in the Socialist movement itself, but at the time it was a great windfall to us, 'the feeble band and few,' who were striving by means of our hoarse shoutings at forlorn street corners, and our lecturings in shabby out-of the-way halls, to rouse our million-fold fellow citizens from centuries of ignorance and prejudice, and persuade them that in our 'fantastic and impossible schemes' lay the only hope and means of the social redemption of mankind.
Thenceforth our propaganda was treated with greater respect by the public and the press. Our lecturers were invited to speak at public conferences and in the lecturecourses of polite religious and literary societies. And not the least gain was the part the affair played in bringing about the rapprochement between the Socialist and the younger art movements. It was from the Edinburgh Art Congress incident that we must date the beginning of that remarkable bent towards Socialism among the students of the Glasgow and other art schools which soon afterwards became one of the most significant facts in the culture of the period. Within half a dozen years fully more than a half of the art students in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and later in Manchester, Birmingham, and other centres, were either avowed Socialists or were largely influenced by Socialist ideas.
I must briefly relate the interesting experience we had in Glasgow with our Art Congress comrades during their visit.
On the Sunday following the Congress, the four 'culprits,' as Morris called them, were, as it happened, booked to address a meeting in Glasgow under the auspices of the Glasgow branch of the Socialist League. Crane was to give his lecture on 'The Educational Value of Art,' with blackboard illustrations, Morris was to preside, and Cobden-Sanderson and Walker were to give short addresses. This was a big catch for us, and it grieved us sorely that we could not obtain the City Hall for the meeting, and had to be content instead with the Waterloo Hall, which held at most only some 800. As it turned out, however, this hall proved large enough for the meeting—the rainy evening and the charge for admission, 1s. and 6d., yielding us an audience that just comfortably filled the hall.
Our visitors arrived from Edinburgh on the Saturday evening, and about a dozen of us improvised a little gathering with them in the hotel. They were all in good spirits over the success of the Edinburgh gatherings, and Morris hit off amusingly the crudities of some of the 'old Duffers,' as he called them, who had been pompously speaking of art as a kind of mumbo-jumbo fetishism for the working class. 'Just the sort of tommy rot that curates talk about religion at mothers' meetings, and Oxford professors say about education at Cutlers' Feasts.' He instanced, I think, Sir William Richmond's address in one of the sections, and a paper sent in by G.F. Watts, as among the few Congress utterances that showed any grasp at all of the real bearing of art on the lives and work of the people.
The conversation then, to our younger folks' delight, turned to literature and art topics, Mavor, Craibe Angus, and R.A.M. Stevenson keeping up the Scottish end of it. Morris, I remember, mentioned the forthcoming publication of his 'Roots of the Mountains,' which was to be printed and bound in a new style, and this led to a talk about typography, mainly between Morris and Emery Walker. In the course of this talk Morris told us how he had first broached the idea in 1885 of setting up as a printer himself, an idea which eventuated in his founding of the famous Kelmscott Press. But the subject was highly technical, and I doubt if any of us ordinary chaps realised the important project that was then well on the way to success.
Thinking that the visit of our distinguished comrades would afford a good opportunity of bringing into touch with the movement a number of outsiders who might be in sympathy with Socialist ideas though not inclined to join any political Socialist body, we had arranged to hold a sort of reception gathering and conference on the Sunday afternoon. It would, at any rate, we thought, be an interesting way of gauging to what extent interest in Socialism was spreading among the more intelligent of our fellow-citizens.
Our invitation list included several of the university professors, a number of architects, artists, and literary people, a number of town councillors and public men associated with social reform schemes, and a number of leading trade unionists, co-operators, land restorers, Ruskin Society members, and the like. We calculated that the presence of our four visitors would attract a fairly large gathering, and had booked one of the Waterloo rooms, capable of seating 200 to 300, for the occasion. But the attendance, partly, no doubt, because of the blustering wet weather, proved disappointing, only some fifty or sixty people making an appearance. None of the professors came, and only one, Edward Caird, I think, sent a sympathetic apology. A few artists, D.Y. Cameron, John Guthrie, John Lavery, R.A.M. Stevenson, and Francis Newbery among them, if I remember rightly, formed almost the only representation of the 'brain workers,' apart from the little group of university scholars in our own branch. Of the rest, the Single Taxers and trades council members made the best show, and the co-operators the poorest. The meeting, nevertheless, proved quite an instructive and enjoyable gathering. Morris, Crane, and Cobden-Sanderson gave short addresses and answered a wide variety of questions; and some outspoken comments on Socialists and their methods of agitation were made from the benches.
Several Trade Union speakers complained that Socialists adopted a too preceptorial attitude towards Trade Unionism, and failed to appreciate the immediate needs and demands of the working class. This objection Cobden-Sanderson fully endorsed, but pointed out that the lead of Socialist thought came almost wholly from middle-class thinkers, owing to the general indifference or hostility of working-class leaders towards Socialism. It was only by an effort of the imagination that men like his colleagues and himself could visualise the situation and outlook of working men. We would not have a real Socialist movement in this country until the working class abandoned Liberal and Tory politics and became a great Labour and Socialist Party, moulding Socialist ideals and principles into practical shape for themselves.
A good deal of criticism was levelled against the anti-Parliamentary policy of the Socialist League, and the general feeling of the meeting, apart from our own members, was that the League's attitude in this respect greatly weakened its Socialist appeal to the working class. A veteran Glasgow Green debater, 'Old John Torley,' as fiery in speech as in the colour of his hair, but withal brimful of good-humour, made a breezy onslaught on those 'High Art Socialists who designed silk curtains and velvet cushions, and got out hand-printed books bound in Russian leather, which only the idle spongers on the toil of the workers could afford to buy.'
In reply to this and several other questions relating to art, Morris made a personal statement in which he reaffirmed in substance what on many previous and after occasions he found it necessary to say respecting his own position. He acknowledged that under present-day conditions of wealth and labour the pursuit of art and literature was to men like himself a mere sort of truant boy's pastime—a fiddling while Rome was burning. 'For myself,' he said, 'I often feel conscience-stricken about it, and if I knew any corner of the world where there was social equality I should pack up and go there at once. But I am not attracted, as some good men both in present and bygone times have been, with the idea of going out into the wilderness, either as an anchorite or as one of a group of Socialist Fifth Monarchy men. I don't want to get out from among my fellow men, for with all their faults—which are not theirs only but our own—I like them and want to live and work among them. My Utopia must be pitched square in the midst of them or nowhere. But, as I say, I often feel conscience-stricken about enjoying myself, and enjoy myself much I confess I do in my art and literary work, while the mass of my fellows are doomed to such a sordid and miserable life of servitude around me. Were it not for my work and the hope of Socialism, I believe life would be positively unendurable to me—as in truth it should be to every man possessed of any aesthetic or moral feeling at all.'
At the evening meeting Morris made only a short speech as chairman, alluding good-humouredly to the criticisms of the press on his own and his colleagues' addresses at the Art Congress. He had, he said, had the privilege of addressing Glasgow audiences quite a number of times during the past five years, and on this occasion he wanted them to hear his comrades Walter Crane and Cobden-Sanderson.
Crane was hardly what is called a good lecturer. He had little flow of language, no vigour of statement, and spoke in rather a jerky fashion. But there was a certain archness and occasionally an epigrammatical flavour in his remarks which, together with much gracefulness of gesture, made it pleasant to listen to him. In appearance he was almost ideally the artist. His finely shaped head, beautiful face with clear, kindly eyes and handsome moustache and short, pointed beard, together with his finely proportioned and mobile figure, gave him the look of a troubadour who had stepped out of some medieval page. After a few introductory remarks he asked for the blackboard, which was thereupon shifted from the side of the platform to the front, Morris, Cobden-Sanderson, and Walker meanwhile leaving their seats on the platform in order to witness his sketching from the body of the hall.
Crane's facility as a draughtsman was a matter of public repute. Most artists of ability are able to draw off-hand familiar objects with ease and considerable precision; but Crane's facility was exceptional. The audience were delighted to see him take his chalk, and, beginning at the tail, with a few rapid sweeps of his arm, and without once breaking his stroke, evolve the outline of a cow. A few more strokes and a maid with a milkpail and a farmstead in the distance were brought in. Then came, interspersed with comments, the 'Crag Baron,' the 'Bag Baron' (with a forest of smoking chimney stalks in the background), and the Capitalist elephant on the tortoise of Labour. There were a number of ingenious 'ideographs' symbolising the evolution of plant and animal life. A series of sketches giving his idea of how much more attractive dress, houses, and cities might be made completed his illustrations. He was heartily cheered at the conclusion of his lecture.
Cobden-Sanderson, like Crane, was a new personality to our Glasgow audiences, but his name was fairly well known from press notices of his beautiful work in bookbinding shown at Arts and Crafts Exhibitions, and from the circumstance that he had, on becoming a Socialist, given up his career at the parliamentary bar in order to practise in some degree his principles by engaging in work that might be honest, useful, and beautiful. The press, too, had but recently recorded his marriage with Annie Cobden, one of the daughters of Richard Cobden, the famous Free Trade advocate, herself well known as a suffragist agitator, noting also the fact that he adopted his wife's name with his own as a joint surname. He was an accomplished platform speaker, clear and crisp in phrase, keenly argumentative, and with fine animation in his delivery. He told how he had come to realise the wrongfulness of the present class system of society—its falsehood in commerce, in law, in politics, and in personal morality, and how he could no longer with self-respect participate in its deceptions, and had decided to devote himself to some kind of productive work that could be not only honest and useful but beautiful. The speech made a deep impression on the meeting.
Though announced as one of the speakers, Emery Walker did not address the meeting. Morris 'let him off' at his own request, as he shrank much from public speaking. Even on his own special subject of the printers' craft he only lectured on rare occasions. But he was well known in Socialist circles as the Secretary of the Hammersmith branch of the League, and as one of the unofficial art group of London Socialists. Morris esteemed him as one of his closest friends, and consulted him on matters of business and art, a thing he rarely did with others. He was personally known among us in Glasgow from visits he had paid us in our branch rooms when on business in Scotland.
We adjourned from the hall to our branch meeting rooms, where we had an hour's chat, chiefly about the internal affairs of the League. To us of the Glasgow branch the day had been a festival. We were full of joy in the companionship we had had with our London comrades, whose earnest zeal for Socialism and whose unaffected camaraderie and willingness to help and encourage us deeply impressed us all. We felt that there was something new and wonderful in the fellowship of the Socialist cause, and that we were veritably on the threshold of a new era of history. Was not the dawn already aglow on our brows and in our hearts?