William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement/3
CHAPTER III
FIRST MEETING WITH MORRIS
Long before I first met William Morris, or had any notion of what manner of man he was personally, my imagination had invested him with a somewhat mysterious glamour, and he loomed as a star of large but misty splendour on my mind's horizon. When deep in poetry reading in my earlier manhood days, his name was familiar to me as the author of 'The Earthly Paradise' and 'Jason,' though as yet the only work of his that I had read—the only one I could find in any public library in Glasgow at that time—was 'Love is Enough, or The Freeing of Pharamond.' I knew also that, besides being a poet of acknowledged high rank, he was famed in art circles as a designer and reformer of the decorative arts, but I had seen none of his designs, and had little idea of what was the nature of his craftsmanship. In the Athenæum, the Literary World, and the architectural journals, I had seen occasional allusions to his poetry, art-work, and art lectures, and from these sources I further gathered that he was reckoned a man of uncommon mould among men of genius; something of a prophet or heresiarch as well as a poet and artist. What the nature of his propagandism was, I did not know. A vague something, however, about him, or rather about his repute, gave me the feeling that on fuller knowledge I should approve and warmly admire him. I surmised that I should discover in him one who, somewhere on the higher altitudes of literature and art, was striking out towards new hopes and endeavours for mankind.
But in those days, before the advent of free public libraries and popular art exhibitions, young men, like myself, of the common people, had scant opportunities of acquainting themselves with the works of any but the more orthodox and popular writers and artists of their own day. Controversial writings, such as, for example, those of Ruskin, Mill, and even Matthew Arnold, were rarely on the catalogues of libraries accessible to the working-class. Indeed, I hardly know how so many of us young enquirers got hold of them at all. For the most part, therefore, we had only dim ideas, mainly derived from magazine literature, concerning the new currents of thought that were agitating academic art and literary circles.
Morris was thus a sort of half-mythical being to me when, early in 1883, paragraphs in the newspapers announced that the author of 'The Earthly Paradise' was about to take an active part in the Socialist movement, and had enrolled himself a member of the Democratic Federation. The newspapers spoke of the remarkable genius and personality of the man, regretting that so distinguished a representative of arts and letters should have become obsessed by wild and impracticable revolutionary ideas, and ascribing his conduct to the eccentricity of genius.
The following paragraph, which appeared among a series of notes which I was contributing at that time to a little Radical and 'Land for the People' weekly in Glasgow, edited by my friend Shaw Maxwell, has a far-away sound to-day:
'William Morris is a remarkable man. By the publication of "The Earthly Paradise" he achieved fame as one of the most original poets of our age. He is the head of the celebrated firm of decorative artists "Morris & Co," and has created a new school for that important branch of art. Some years ago he startled his aristocratic and wealthy patrons by betraying unmistakable democratic proclivities. Up till recently, however, his practical sympathy with the proletariat was confined mainly to occasional and unobtrusive visits to the London democratic clubs, and contributing to their funds. Now he has begun addressing public meetings, and it is announced that he has designed a card of membership for the Democratic Federation, and has written "A Chant for Socialists." Like Mazzini, Mr. Morris evidently believes it to be his duty, despite all other considerations, to "hold aloft his banner and boldly promulgate his faith."
'Glasgow, October 27, 1883.'
That paragraph summed up all the knowledge I then had of Morris. I can remember picturing to myself, when writing it, the wonderful world (as it seemed to me) of poetry and art in which he and his companions, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Swinburne, lived their Arcadian lives, and from which, like a prince in a fairy story, he appeared to be stepping down chivalrously into the dreary region of working-class agitation.
There was at that period no Socialist group in Glasgow, and although I had been giving lectures on Socialism during the past two or three years to Young Men's Debating Societies, Radical Associations, and Irish Land League branches, I did not know of anyone who was inclined to take part in forming a Socialist society. My friend, Shaw Maxwell, however, then an ardent Land Restorationist and sympathetic towards the new Socialist ideas, was as eager as myself to see and hear Morris, and he wrote him, inviting him to lecture in Glasgow under the auspices of the Sunday Lectures Society, of which he was the secretary. Morris to our delight agreed to come; and about a year later, Sunday, December 14, 1884, came and gave his lecture on 'Art and Labour' in the St. Andrews Hall. It was in connection with this visit that I first met Morris.
Meanwhile, before the date of Morris' coming, a few of us had at last got together in Glasgow and had formed (early in the summer of 1884) a branch of the Social Democratic Federation. Andreas Scheu, a member of the Council of the Federation in London, who had recently removed to Edinburgh in connection with his profession as a furniture designer, and who had at once founded a branch of the Federation in that city, visited our Glasgow branch, and gave us a glowing account of Morris, boldly idolizing him—alike as the beau-ideal of a poet-artist, and as an archetype of a Socialist comrade. We were, of course, exceedingly desirous that Morris should address a meeting under the auspices of the branch when he came to speak for the Sunday Lecture Society, but his engagements would not allow his doing so. He readily, however, agreed to meet the members of the branch on the Sunday evening after his lecture in the St. Andrews Hall.
He was booked to speak for the Edinburgh branch of the Federation on the Saturday evening before coming to Glasgow, and so eager was I to see and hear him, that instead of waiting until he came to Glasgow on the Sunday, I made a special journey to Edinburgh on the Saturday evening.
The Edinburgh meeting was held in a little hall in Picardy Place, which the branch had recently acquired as its club-room. The hall had been newly 'carved out' of a first-floor dwelling, and was decorated with fine taste and furnished with specially designed cane-bottom chairs—the joint result of Andreas Scheu's artistic skill and the bounty of an Edinburgh merchant who was friendly to the cause.[1] I remember on seeing the club-room how envious I felt at the good fortune of our Edinburgh comrades in having such a handsome meeting-place, while we in Glasgow had to be content with a dingy little hall in the slummiest quarter of the city for the meetings of our Socialist group.
Morris had not yet arrived when I took my seat in the hall, and I recall how anxiously I awaited his appearance lest for any reason he should not turn up. When a few minutes later he entered the room with Scheu and the Rev. Dr. John Glasse (his host and chairman), I at once knew it was he. No one else could be like that. There he was, a sun-god, truly, in his ever afterwards familiar dark-blue serge jacket suit and lighter blue cotton shirt and collar (without scarf or tie), and with the grandest head I had ever seen on the shoulders of a man. He was detained near the door for several minutes, while various people were being introduced to him, and I noticed that he was slightly under middle height, but was broadly and sturdily set. A kind of glow seemed to be about him, such as we see lighting up the faces in a room when a beautiful child comes in.
When the pressure of friends around him was over, Scheu, who had noticed me in the hall—I was a complete stranger to all our Edinburgh comrades save himself—beckoned me from my seat and introduced me to Morris, telling him that I was from Glasgow, and was 'one of the most enthusiastic propagandists in Scotland.' At this extravagant commendation Morris cast a scrutinising glance in my face, and with a friendly word proceeded with Dr. Glasse to the platform at the end of the room.
I now set my eyes full upon him seated on the platform. He appeared a larger man than when on his feet, so that Dr. Glasse, who was taller and hardly less stout than he, appeared small by comparison. He seemed in a remarkable way to open wide his whole being to the audience. This impression of his expanding or opening out when facing his hearers often struck me afterwards as very characteristic of him. He always sat with his broad shoulders held well back, his knees spread well apart, and his arms when not employed spread wide upon his knees or upon the table; his loose, unscarfed shirt front, his tousy head, and his ever restless movements from side to side adding to the impression of his spaciousness. He was then fifty-one years of age, and just beginning to look elderly. His splendid crest of dark curly hair and his finely textured beard were brindling into grey. His head was lion-like, not only because of his shaggy mane, but because of the impress of strength of his whole front. There was in his eyes, especially when in repose, that penetrating, far-away, impenetrable gaze that seems to be fixed on something beyond that at which it is directly looking, so characteristic of the King of the Forest. This leonine aspect, physiognomists would doubtless say, betokened in Morris the same consciousness of strength, absence of fear, and capacity for great instinctive action which gives to the lion that extraordinary dignity of mien which fascinates observers. I noted, also—but not until afterwards was I aware of the inveteracy of the habit—the constant restlessness of his hands, and indeed of his whole body, as if overcharged with energy.
In introducing him, Dr. Glasse spoke of the significance of the fact that the most gifted artistic genius of our day had associated himself with a movement that was everywhere condemned as being but the expression of sordid and uncultured discontent. Yet no one could say that William Morris was uncultured or had any reason in a worldly sense to be discontented with his lot. It was because of his extraordinary gift of political and artistic insight that he realised more keenly than did the men of his class the hopeless ugliness and injustice of our present social system and was in revolt against it. William Morris was not only a prophet of Socialism but was himself a prophecy of Socialism.
The subject of Morris' lecture was 'Misery and the Way Out,' one of his best and most characteristic lectures, which, however, he but rarely repeated. I was too deeply interested on this occasion, once he rose to deliver the lecture, in the matter of his discourse, to observe or indeed be conscious at all of the style of his speaking or mannerism on the platform, concerning which I may offer some descriptive notes later on when I come to speak of the general characteristics of his propaganda work. Enough to say for the present that I listened to him with more than delight. His lecture was, as himself, to me a thing of great joy. I saw no fault whatever in him—I felt as one enriched with a great possession. In him my ideal of man was realised. I fell incontinently into a hero-worship which has, as the reader will now have realised, lasted till this day, and of which I am neither ashamed nor unashamed.
- ↑ The donor of the gift of £100 was a Mr. Millar who had warm sympathy with Socialism and working-class interests. He also gave £1000 for the holding of an Industrial Remuneration Conference, to consider the best means of improving working-class wages. This Conference, which was held in Edinburgh, January 1886, created considerable public interest at the time. Among those who attended and spoke at the Conference were Alfred Russel Wallace, A.J. Balfour, Bernard Shaw, John Burns, Professor Leone Levi, Robert Giffen, Sir Thomas Brassey, Professor Marshall, and Dr. G.B. Clark. The proceedings were afterwards published in a special volume.