MIA > Archive > Hyndman > Adventurous Life
It shows how little was known of William Morris by the ordinary man who was deeply interested in literature, that it was not before 1865 that I became acquainted with his writings, though Swinburne, with his Atalanta in Calydon and other poems, had swept me away years before. I have never been able to understand this; for Morris was easily intelligible, the charm of his verse is attractive to all, and the fact that he was so closely associated with and so much admired by the men who were then greatly influencing the world of art and letters ought to have secured for him a wide public. Yet it was not until Swinburne spoke of him as a great poet that the majority even of reading men were aware that so fine a genius was living unappreciated among us.
He was much better known for his persistent revolutionary assaults upon the commonplace domestic decoration and furniture of the mid-Victorian period than for his delightful verse; and few, indeed, were aware that in politics he was, so far as he cared about or understood them, far ahead of the Radicals with whom he ordinarily associated himself. In fact, it was always a marvel to me, after I got to know Morris well, how he contrived to get on with those Radicals as well as he did, and how he came to back Russia against Turkey. But one thing is quite certain, he was always against autocracy, class authority and domination of any kind, long before he became a Socialist.
I first met Morris at the offices of the Trade Union Parliamentary Committee, then under the control of our old enemies and friends, Henry Broadhurst, Burt & Co: I went at their request in 1879 to deliver an address upon India, and Morris was present. We had a friendly chat after the meeting, but I was supposed at that time to be friendly to the Tory Party, in spite of my strong opinions about the misgovernment of India, and I think Morris himself regarded me as rather “suspect.” However that may be, he cordially agreed with me about India and, as he frequently told me years afterwards, was greatly disappointed when all the promising agitation of 1877 to 1880 failed to produce a permanent effect, or to relieve India in any way from the pressure of our ruinous foreign control. I did not meet Morris again until I opened the discussions on Practical Remedies for Pressing Needs at Westminster Palace Chambers in January 1882, referred to elsewhere. The Democratic Federation had then been in existence nearly a year.
After listening to the discussions and taking part in them, Morris decided, having put a few questions, to throw in his lot with the Federation. This was really a very plucky act on his part; for it was one thing to be suspected of heterodox opinions, as a genial eccentricity allowable to a man of his note, and quite another thing to be mixed up actively with an extreme organisation which made no attempt to hide its revolutionary tendencies. There is no doubt, however, that Morris’s adherence to the cause at this time added greatly to our strength as well as to our confidence in the possibility of bringing over the more enlightened and capable of the educated class to our side.
For in 1882 Morris was at the height of his great reputation. He had already succeeded in everything he had attempted. Not only was he a distinguished man of letters, an artist, a craftsman, a designer, a decorator, with a thorough knowledge of architecture and all connected therewith; but in addition to, and in spite of, all these remarkable capacities embodied in one person he had actually built up a successful business when his own considerable fortune ran short. Here, obviously, was no needy and greedy proletarian, no embittered revolutionist, no disappointed politician or cynical publicist. Morris was a University man who had achieved for himself a European fame, and was universally regarded as one of the few living Englishmen who would be accorded willingly a leading position among the most celebrated men of his time.
The world at large did not quite know what to make of it; for we had attracted to us at the same time others, men and women, who were entitled to be regarded with respect. Socialism was no longer the creed only of the scum of the earth: there must be something in this subversionist movement for it to call down a personality of so much knowledge and refinement from his library and studio and workshop to the crowded meeting and the rough-and-tumble gathering at the street corner. For Morris was even too eager to take his full share in the unpleasant part of our public work, and speedily showed that he meant to work in grim earnest on the same level as the rank and file of our party. That was Morris’s way from the first. He was never satisfied unless he was doing things which, to say the truth, he was little fitted for, and others of coarser fibre could do much better than he. But then in those days we were all full of zeal, enthusiasm and revolutionary confidence. We may have known in our hearts that we had taken up with a long and trying and difficult job, but we certainly felt that we were the champions of a great and glorious cause that could not but be victorious in the long run.
I got to know William Morris very well indeed during those first months and years of his close connection with our movement. And I never think of our friendship in those early days without the deepest regret at its breaking off for a time, and the manner in which the rupture was brought about. Morris’s was a remarkable face and figure. I always recall him in that blue tweed sailor-cut suit which someone unkindly said made him look like the purser of a Dutch brig. But you very soon forgot all about his rough clothes or his soft hat when he began to talk upon any subject which interested him. His imposing forehead and clear grey eyes, with the powerful nose and slightly florid cheeks, impressed upon you the truth and importance of what he was saying, every hair of his head and in his rough shaggy beard appearing to enter into the subject as a living part of himself. His impulsive, forcible action, allied to an admirable choice of words, gave almost a physical force to his arguments, which was not lessened by the sturdy vigorous frame from which they proceeded.
Morris was always active, always at work, always filled with ideas of what he should do next. I have never met any man whose life was one of such persistent, never-ceasing exertion of faculty. Even when in what ought to have been repose, the same unfailing activity of mind was at its height as some sudden remark showed. It seemed quite impossible, even when he was seated quietly in his own home, dealing with his own favourite subjects, or running over the designs at his factory at Merton Abbey, or considering new projects for the splendid printing at his Kelmscott Press to think of him as the “idle singer of an empty day” he calls himself in his Earthly Paradise.
In fact, though at the back of Morris’s mind, quite remote from the busy haunts of men, there lay a great lake of receptivity and imagination, ready to reflect on its reposeful surface all of beauty and charm that lay around its margin or floated above its waters, so that in its peaceful mirror successive scenes of the past were depictured with all the vivid colouring of the present, and the life of the present with all the glory of the past; yet the outward expression of Morris’s intellect was anything rather than the sweet and almost dreamy cadence of his delightful verse. His quick, sharp manner, his impulsive gestures, his eager agreement or disagreement with what was said or done, his hearty laughter and vehement anger, his active hatred of the mean and delight in the noble, were all personal characteristics of a man of action, rather than of a sensitive poet, or of a thoughtful creator and inspirer of artistic conceptions.
Only when smoking his pipe at his own fireside, and in his garden, or at some gathering of familiar friends, did the Morris of reflection and profound knowledge make his appearance quite unwittingly, without the slightest air of superiority. The extent and depth of his acquirements were a matter of constant wonder to me. He not only knew many things, and knew them well, but his accuracy in detail was as astonishing as his imaginative presentation and realisation of the whole were entrancing.
How easily I recall those evenings spent with him in that fine room at Kelmscott House on the Mall, Hammersmith. Morris had had the ceiling removed which separated the large room where we were to have supper or dinner from the two rooms above, giving the apartment quite an unusual height. This height was taken advantage of to display on one side, hanging down from a curtain-pole, as if it were a great picture, a magnificent Oriental carpet, whose gorgeous, yet harmoniously combined and contrasted colours, made it a picture indeed. On the other side of the room were a number of paintings by Rossetti. Here, after a lecture in the stable which he had turned into a hall, or an address in the open-air outside by the river, some of us used to gather, and a delightful time we had.
It was on such occasions that Morris’s remarkable knowledge of this country and its history made itself felt. He was talking, for example, of Sussex, a county with which both my wife and myself were well acquainted from childhood. We saw it as we had never seen it before. In a few minutes Morris gave us a masterly sketch of the county when its seaports and monasteries, castles and ironworks were in their prime, and Sussex itself was to a great extent cut off from the rest of England by Ashdown Forest. The whole life of the period passed before our eyes: the arrivals at Rye, or Winchelsea, or Hastings, the journeyings to Bodiam, Pevensey, or Hurstmonceaux, the receptions at Lewes Monastery and Castle, or at Battle Abbey and Fortress, the cavalcade making its way along the roads, or threading its path through the dangerous forest tracks northwards. All the bravery and majesty of the old times came out, as Morris talked to us: much as though Chaucer himself had returned to earth and was holding forth again beneath the glimpses of the moon.
I never thoroughly understood Agincourt until Morris described it to us one night at our little Supper-Club. The great mass of French cavalry with their bowmen in the near distance, the marsh below the hill, the small, worn, half-fed band of the English King’s followers gathered on the rising ground, the English Archers pulling their arrows out of their quivers and sticking them in the soft earth like little palisades around them. Then the charge of the French Knights in all their blaze of glory, the volleys of arrows, the floundering of the horses and their riders in the morass, crushed down and suffocated by the pressure of the other lines of knights who were rushing on behind them. It was all most vivid, and I saw the battle as it was fought, and the victory as it was won.
Again, I had gone down with Morris to Oxford, where he was to take the Chair for me in an Address on Socialism I had agreed to give at the Russell Club. Those, by the way, were the days of small things for us all, and, confident as I felt in my knowledge of my subject, I knew that Henry George had made a failure of his visit and speech the week before, and I felt just a little apprehensive of what might befall me; though Morris and his old friend, Faulkner of University, with whom we dined, were kind enough to say I had not the least reason to be afraid. Nervous I was, none the less, when I rose to speak after Morris’s opening words, as several of the University Professors were present, and my reception, though not precisely cold, was scarcely encouraging. But, although there was no applause, I had not spoken for ten minutes before I had the assurance to bend down and whisper to Morris, “I shall capture this lot.” And so it came about, for I sat down to very warm cheering, and only a few quite clear and fair questions were asked, which I did my best to answer.
The following morning we went together to the Bodleian or Radcliffe Library, I really forget which, to look up some interesting point, and we had hardly got the book we asked for, when the head librarian, passing along, espied Morris, and at once came up to him. “Oh, Mr. Morris, I am so delighted to find you here. We have just bought a large parcel of illuminated missals. You must come and identify and catalogue them for us.” “That is quite impossible,” said Morris in his quick way. “I have not come here to pore over missals. Besides I am with my friend, and we have something else to do. I positively can’t come.” “Really, Mr. Morris, I am quite sure your friend won’t mind a little delay. You will be doing a public service, and we may not be able to get you again.” “Well,” replied Morris, “if my friend, Mr. Hyndman, here, does not mind, and you are so anxious about it, I will see what I can do.”
So we went into an inner room, where a great pile of old illuminated missals lay upon the table. Morris seated himself by them, and, taking them up one by one, looked very quickly but very closely and carefully at each in turn, pushing it aside after inspection with “Monastery So and So, date Such and Such,” “Abbey this in such a year,” until he had finished the whole number; his decision being written down as he gave it. There seemed not to be the slightest doubt in the librarian’s mind that Morris’s judgment was correct and final, and though Morris hesitated here and there, and devoted more time to some of the missals than to others, eventually his verdict was given with the utmost certainty. These missals, I believe, stand in the catalogue to-day with the verifications of place and time that Morris then gave them, and I have no doubt he was right in every case.
I sat by and watched him with amazement, and I think any one who reflects upon the extent and accuracy of the knowledge which was needed thus to identify elaborate artistic work emanating from many centres in many countries will feel as much surprised as I did. And this, of course, was only one department of which he was a master. Going through Norwich Cathedral he insisted upon disclosing to the unbelieving sexton, who was showing us round, some fine hidden carvings, all record of which had apparently been lost. And yet in reference to his own art there was, perhaps, some truth in the remark of Craib Angus, the old picture-dealer of Glasgow, who once said to me, “Morris in everything is a high table-land, but there are no peaks in him.”
It is a little strange to recall now that in 1883 or 1884, I forget which year at the moment, I proposed an out-and-out Socialist Resolution at the Cambridge Union, of which I am a member, and Morris and J.L. Joynes came down to support me. It was not a bad debate, and we actually took thirty-seven men into our Lobby. What has become of those revolutionary undergraduates of more than a quarter of a century ago? And how is it that, whereas on the Continent of Europe the students at the Universities are the most progressive and daring of the whole community, or at any rate a very large minority of them are, the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge, to say nothing of the Professors, seem to revel in reaction? What chance would an Erasmus or a Giordano Bruno of to-day have at our “Seats of Learning”? Very little, I fear. At Cambridge it was, by the way, that Morris pointed out to me how the decorations of Kings College Chapel got poorer and poorer as money ran short.
So it will be seen my personal relations with William Morris, at this time, were very close and it might even be said intimate. In fact our friendship was so cordial that I thought it would be permanent; the rather that I could in no way interfere or compete with him in anything he wished to do, even if such had been my wish. Our co-operation in The Summary of the Principles of Socialism, the draft of which I wrote and we revised together, brought us into even closer contact and it has been an amusement to me sometimes to challenge a reader of it to pick out a passage for which Morris was specially responsible. Almost invariably the two pages are chosen which I wrote in imitation of Morris and which he laughingly refused to touch, though a few other paragraphs he wrote himself. When Justice was started also, myself being the editor, Morris wrote for it regularly, and some of his finest Socialist poetry and prose appeared in its columns during the few months that we worked together in that little sheet. I was justified, therefore, in believing that our co-operation would be lasting, and that the growing Social-Democratic group in this country would for many years enjoy the advantage of his invaluable assistance.
None, also, could fail to see how useful such co-operation was, as I think I may now say, to both sides. Some of us were able to supply the economic and political knowledge, which Morris had no great turn for, as well as to provide the speaking faculties, which also did not lie in Morris’s line. Nobody could have taken keener interest in the success not only of the cause but of the individuals who were working for it. He seemed to take a new pleasure in life now that he had found a revolutionary party with which he could steadily work. When I had my first debate with Bradlaugh Morris wrote for Justice that week for the copy which we distributed at the meeting, the fine poem All For the Cause which moved us all deeply then, and has been a joy to the whole English-speaking Socialist movement ever since. Yes, it did indeed seem that Morris would work on with us to the end and that the Fabians having left us to pursue their policy of permeation unhampered by any truth of economic doctrine, we should be spared the harassing differences in our own ranks which had so much hindered the progress of Socialism in France.
But this was not to be. I now know all the causes which led to the most deplorable quarrel between Morris and myself; that the influence which brought about the split at the end of 1884 was the malignant lying of a despicable married woman, whom none of us knew well, on a purely domestic question. This was the real reason of Morris’s extreme bitterness at the time, though, strangely enough, considering that Bax, Scheu and the Avelings were among those who withdrew with him from the Social-Democratic Federation the grounds for the secession were stated to be the objection Morris had to political action Those who were present at the last bitter discussion, when Morris and his supporters took themselves off, though they were actually the majority, will never forget the scene. The remarkable part of it to me was that I had in my pocket letters from Morris marked “private” which would have entirely destroyed his contentions both personal and political. After listening for three solid hours to the most virulent abuse of myself without speaking a word, I confess I was strongly tempted to bring those letters out and read them. However, I thought the whole matter over as I sat there, and although I felt quite convinced that under the circumstances – private letters of my own having been read and private conversations repeated and garbled, I was quite justified in disclosing what had been written to me in confidence – I nevertheless decided that I would not allow myself to be provoked into such action. If I did, those who might be disposed to rely upon me in future would feel some hesitation in telling me dangerous secrets, not being quite sure that I should not reveal them under personal pressure. At any rate, those letters, which I destroyed years afterwards, remained in my pocket, and I was glad in the end that I had refused to gain a temporary victory by reading them out.
For the time being, however, the outcome was most disastrous to the Social-Democratic Federation and to me. Morris and his group departed. We were left very short of funds, with a general impression outside that we were wholly in the wrong, and with a natural feeling of exasperation on our side that a valuable organisation should be broken up in this unfortunate way. Our unwearying and noble champion of the proletariat, Jack Williams, who had been a military Socialist before any of us came into the movement, said to Morris as he left the room at Westminster Palace Chambers after the vote had been taken, “Whatever you may think now, Morris, you are making the mistake of your life.” That same evening Michael Davitt came in haste to our house in Devonshire Street and said directly he got inside, “I have come up to congratulate you, Hyndman. You are the luckiest man I ever knew. You have got rid of all your enemies at once.” I told him in reply I could not look upon the matter from that point of view at all, and that I regarded the breaking away of such a set of people, in so bitter and unreasonable a frame of mind, as nothing short of a national disaster. This it proved to be, and we have not recovered even yet from the effects of Morris’s impetuous error.
So Morris, Bax, Scheu, the Avelings and others went off, founded the Socialist League and established the Commonweal. This most deplorable result of slander and lying set the movement back fully twenty years, and gave the opportunity for the commencement of that very course of compromise and political intrigue in the Socialist movement which Morris himself was most anxious to avoid. It was the saddest episode in the entire course of my Socialist career; and though during the whole of the eight years that the League and its organ lasted I refrained from attacking Morris or replying in Justice to the virulent diatribes against us which appeared in the Commonweal, feeling sure that one day he would see that he had been quite mistaken; yet writing now, seven-and-twenty years after the original dispute and with the coolness which such passing of time brings with it, I cannot exonerate Morris and his group from the responsibility of having done more to hinder the progress of genuine Socialism in England than any people who have ever opposed it or been connected with it. The Labour Party could never have existed, as a virtually subsidised wing of the Liberal Party, had Morris and his friends remained with us throughout.
So much use has been made of Morris’s difference with me to make out that I am an impossible man to work with; that Morris was altogether opposed to my opinions; and that I have been, in short, the curse of Socialism in Great Britain, as was proclaimed by Marx and Engels in their Letters to Sorge referred to elsewhere, and has been reaffirmed by Hardie, Macdonald and Snowden – all this, I say, has been so unscrupulously used against me personally, even by Mr. Mackail, William Morris’s biographer, who knew better perfectly well at the time he penned his misrepresentations, that I feel it incumbent upon me to give here the finish of this business. The Socialist League and the Commonweal fought on against us up to 1892; the worser elements which traded upon Morris’s generosity and high-mindedness steadily getting the upper hand. At last Morris himself got tired of the strange people who had gathered around him, and the whole thing broke up after they had done some good but far more mischief in their bootless campaign. I not long afterwards wrote to him and received from him the following letter:-
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December 22 |
MY HEAR HYNDMAN – I hope you will excuse me for not answering your letter, for which I heartily apologise. The fact is that it was difficult to answer at the time, because nothing was definitely settled as to Commonweal, and afterwards I let the matter slip out of my memory amidst my multifarious businesses. I now thank you for your friendly letter, but really I have come to the conclusion that no form of journalism is suited to me, and I shall not write at present in any journal. I want to pull myself together after what has been, to me at least, a defeat; and I have got a lot of literary work on hand including two works more or less propagandist; to wit my News from Nowhere and the book that I have been working at with Bax which I am at last going to tackle. - With best wishes from
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Yours very truly, |
From that time onwards our old relations were gradually restored. He went down to Burnley to support my candidature in that town, and addressed a large public meeting in my favour. Morris made this meeting the occasion for one of the most generous actions I ever heard of. At the commencement of his speech he said in his impulsive way: “Now before I talk about Hyndman and his candidature I want to tell you people something: In 1884 Hyndman and I had a great quarrel and I have to say this: that he was quite right and I was quite wrong.” That was very noble of Morris. I believe it to be the precise truth; but certainly I should never have asked him or expected him to put it in that way.
After the breakdown of the Socialist League, Morris was very anxious to bring about Socialist Unity. To that end a series of gatherings of delegates of the Social-Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society and Morris’s followers was arranged at Kelmscott House. Morris had an idea that we of the Social-Democratic Federation should be the difficult ones to arrange with. I assured him we should not; but that the trouble would come from Shaw, Webb and the Fabian Society. This Morris would not believe. At first, and even throughout and to the end of the sittings, we got on swimmingly. We were all agreed on essentials, and our unanimity now that we did agree was certainly wonderful. At last I was deputed to draft a Manifesto on lines discussed and determined. I did so, and with little alteration it was issued to the world as the unanimous declaration of English Socialists, with the signatures of all the delegates and secretaries of the bodies represented, including that of Bernard Shaw, who was present at all the meetings and discussions. Morris was delighted. His dearest hope was, as he thought, realised; for the Independent Labour Party, not at that time a Socialist organisation, would, he believed, be compelled to come along with us. He even twitted me with my pessimism, I recall, when we were chatting in his house. “Wait a bit,” I rejoined, “we haven’t done with Shaw and the Fabians yet.”
Sure enough, the ink was scarcely dry on the Manifesto they had signed, pledging all Socialists to act together as an independent party in a revolutionary though pacific sense, than, as I anticipated, the Fabians upset the whole agreement and carried their policy of permeation to that point of permanent effacement which they have pursued ever since. It is not too much to say that this to him most exasperating failure to bring about a fusion of Socialists, coming on top of the collapse of the Socialist League, shortened Morris’s life. I rarely saw him afterwards without his referring to it. As a result he practically rejoined the Social-Democratic Federation, to which Bax, the Avelings, Scheu and the rest of the dissentients also returned, and it is a consolation to some of us who, in spite of his sad action in 1884, still cherish his memory, that the very last speech which he ever delivered from a public platform was at the Annual New Year’s Meeting of the Social-Democratic Federation on January 3, 1896, in St. Martin’s Hall, of which the following is an account:
William Morris, who was received with tremendous applause, in seconding the resolution, said he had to congratulate those present on their meeting and on the work which the Social-Democratic Federation had done; they had always kept the revolutionary principle before them, had always made it clear that they understood that no amelioration was any good, that no patching up was possible, that nothing could be accomplished until the workers were really free, until they had control of their own means of life. The condition of things into which the present Government seemed to have got itself was due entirely to the general position of labour and capital throughout civilisation. (Cheers.) As far as America was concerned they were in that position that at any time a quarrel might arise and we could not face it because we chose to hang on with such desecration to the colony we happened to have over there. If it were not for Canada what should we care about America? He had never believed in any solid danger with reference to America at the present moment. In some way or another we should “back down,” and they would do the same, because we were each other’s customers, and we could not afford to go out and buy “shooting-irons” to kill our own customers. (Cheers.) As far as Africa was concerned there was a kind of desperation egging on all nations to make something of that hitherto undeveloped country; and they were no doubt developing it with a vengeance. (Laughter and cheers.) When he saw the last accounts about the Transvaal he almost wished he could be a Kaffir for five minutes in order to dance around the “ring.” laughter and cheers.) He thought it was a case of a pack of thieves quarrelling about their booty. The Boers had stolen their land from the people it had belonged to; people had come in to help them to develop their stolen property and now wanted to steal it themselves. (Laughter and cheers.) The real fact, however, that we had to deal with was that we lived by stealing – that was, by wasting – all the labour of the workmen.
Not long after this he was taken seriously ill and a long trip to Norway did him no good. I went to Kelmscott House several times to see him. He had been deeply engaged for some time in bringing out those fine works which came from the Kelmscott Press and gave a new impetus to the art of printing and the decoration of books. When I sat and talked to him on these visits he was, as a rule, engaged in designing some illustration, or border, or initial letter, for those splendid reproductions.
The last time I saw him he seemed much better than he had been, and talked with almost his old vivacity and brightness. It was the last flicker of the lamp before final extinction. Leaning on my arm he walked with me round the garden at the back of his house, and I well remember his saying: “Of course if this is to be a temporary illness and I am to get the better of it and be able to take part in active life again I shouldn’t so much mind being laid up for a few months. But if this is the end of all things I shouldn’t like it a bit. This has been a jolly good world to me when all is said and I don’t wish to leave it yet awhile.” There was no feeling, therefore, at all that his end was approaching; nor could I have believed that we were within ten days of his death as he took again his seat in the chair he had risen from and went on with his drawing. But I never saw William Morris alive again.
If Morris, in full accord with his artistic genius and temperament, partly created for himself the queer sort of people who at one time gathered around him and the grievous disappointments which befell him, he stuck steadily to revolutionary Socialism from 1882 to the end of his life. He was an unconscious Socialist before, but he was a conscious Socialist ever after. It has always appeared to me that some of his relations and intimate friends who have tried their utmost to obliterate this portion of his career, have done his memory a very sad disservice. Millions will remember Morris as the brilliant reincarnation of mediaeval universality in art and craft and letters who, with ample means, living in the highest cultivation and surrounded by all that could make existence enjoyable, threw himself heart and soul into the thankless task of endeavouring to uplift the disinherited classes from their sad plight of overwork, anxiety, care and misery and suffering – millions, I say, will think of him as the poet and artist vainly speaking at the street corner, selling literature down the Strand and lecturing and writing day after day and year after year for the sake of an ideal of which he could scarcely hope himself to see the realisation, who could never appreciate his verse or his prose, or understand his efforts to revolutionise the arts of decoration and furnishing of
the home amid a Philistine and an ignorant generation. As a singer of the proletariat, a toiler himself, John Leslie wrote of him in Justice at his death:
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For this we love you and for this revere you; |
That is the feeling we all have about William Morris. And the reason for it is quite obvious. Though we are compelled to recall, as a matter of history, the mischief he did to the movement by his impulsive and unjustified action in December 1884, we recognise that even this is overshadowed by the great help he gave from the artistic and literary side. Brought up as even the best-educated are in this woefully depressing, gloomy and money-hunting nation, destitute alike of French gaiety and of German capacity for sober enjoyment, the inculcation of the ideal of culture and beauty and art and delight in nature for all was of overwhelming importance. This Morris brought home to us more than any other man, great and even splendid as Walter Crane’s services have been and are in the same field.
Last time I was in Vienna I strolled into the Cathedral of San Stefan. A service was going on, and I remained and looked and listened. I was impressed with the surroundings and the ceremonial: the semi-darkness, the candles, the vestments, the music, the colouring of the stained glass, the incense, the appealing prayers, all found an echo and a response within me. Though well acquainted with the history and origin of the Catholic Church, its deep undying indebtedness to the gorgeous trappings of Paganism, which it absorbed and was absorbed by, though I knew too that at the back of all this sumptuous magnificence and aesthetic beauty there stood that superstitious enslavement of the intellect and organised priestly domination we are bound to fight against for ever; yet for a time I gave myself up deliberately to the sentiment of the place, and for once in my life was wafted into the sensuous supernaturalism of a bygone age. Then as I rose and went out, I wanted it all in another and a higher form for us and for those who shall supremely enjoy where we have only toiled and suffered and hoped.
William Morris did much more than we perhaps yet know to put us on the right track to this consummation and fulfilment of the ideal side of our great material creed. Yet, strange to say, Morris had no knowledge of, or appreciation for, music. The art which is nearest to the realisation of Socialism, alike in its individual and collective expression, left him untouched as it did Wilhelm Liebknecht. But in all else he had the fullest conception of what mankind will attain to when, freed from the competitive meanness and squalor of our day, the higher faculties of our race will find their complete outlet and development. And that conception he imparted to others. This was, perhaps, the greatest of his works.
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