Walter Morris is dead. How hard it is for those who knew that great and forceful personality to realize the meaning of those words! Those, especially, who only saw him the picture of health and energy, who associate him with all kinds of activities, artistic and social, how difficult it is to think that never more will that bluff and restless but kindly presence, that emphatic voice and hearty manner be felt and heard among us!
Perhaps no man of our time stands out so distinctly as a strong individual type, a clear and marked personality, as did William Morris, and yet even he wondered (and I thought it at the time one of the most remarkable things I had heard from him) "which of six distinct personalities he himself really was."
We all knew him as a man of many sides, of distinction and accomplishment in many different fields, and no doubt to the world in general very distinct and different conceptions of his character were formed.
Those who only knew him from his poetry and his prose romances thought him a dreamer of dreams born out of his due time—as, in fact, he had described himself in his "Earthly Paradise." Those who only knew him as an artist and craftsman thought of him as a very refined designer of very decided aims and exclusively medieval proclivities, the producer of a wealth of wall-paper, simple oaken furniture and rich carpets, embroideries and tapestries. There are even some who thought of him as a keen man of business and manufacturer!
Those who only knew the products of the Kelmscott Press thought of him as a master printer who worked his press in the spirit of an artist. Those who only knew him as a Socialist knew him as an enthusiastic and ardent champion of the cause, as an eloquent lecturer, and as a vehement debater and untiring propagandist.
Every one of these might probably have a distinct and different conception of the man and his character; but, for all that, in William Morris the man all these different activities were united and harmonised, and, to close observers, the same golden threads of character—like the colours of his own tapestries-can be traced throughout all his works.
Seldom, indeed, amid the complexities and disguises, the reserves, unrealities, insincerities, and trivialities of modern life has one met a more real, honest, and wholesome character.
His very directness and sincerity, perhaps, may have caused occasional misunderstandings, as when, in heat of mood, he would, in no minced terms, give his opinion in his strenuous way. But it must not be supposed he was insensible to argument, or not open to conviction. His views were straight and vision distinct, alike upon art or politics, and he hated anything like looseness or vagueness in either. He was always a strong man with strong convictions.
We who now mourn his loss may not be able yet to see him and his work in true perspective, in true relation to his time and his contemporaries—but what of that ? It is of far more importance the impression a man leaves upon his time, upon his friends and fellows, is that of greatness, of thoroughness of character. And while we praise the beauty of his invention and craftsmanship, whether as a poet, craftsman, or a designer, we feel that his noblest work was, after all, done for Socialism, when he threw all the weight of a strong personality and an enthusiastic spirit (not to speak of his ripe fame as a poet and artist) on the side of the laborer, seeing the true and honorable basis of life, seeing how it was bound up with the welfare of the world and the hope of the future—that future of which he has left so distinct and beautiful a vision in "News from Nowhere" of a perfect Communist state.
William Morris
Walter Crane
Freedom, Vol X No 110, November 1896
Graham Seaman, September 2020.