The Life of William Morris/Chapter 19
CHAPTER XIX
PASSIVE SOCIALISM: FOUNDATION OF THE KELMSCOTT
PRESS
1890-1891
While Morris's attention was becoming absorbed in other fields, the affairs of the Socialist League had been going on from bad to worse. Such part of their doctrines as was of essential truth or immediate practical value had been absorbed by, and was bearing fruit among, the larger body of persons who were interested in social theories, but more concerned about what was immediately possible than in dreams, however high or however bloodthirsty. The real battle-ground had been transferred to the Independent Labour Party, and, in the metropolis, the recently created London County Council. To these bodies a number of the best members of the League now transferred their energies. The remnant became more and more a group of impracticable visionaries whom the movement of things had left behind. In 1889 the control of the executive was captured by a group of professed Anarchists. One of their first acts was to depose Morris from the control of the Commonweal, replacing him by an extremist named Frank Kitz. "The League," says one of its members, "became a romping ground of more than dubious characters"—he gives names which I forbear to quote—"who, being suspected of relations with the police, drove the better elements away in disgust, and finally broke up what was left of Morris's organization." With infinite patience, Morris continued for some time yet to bear the demands made on his purse to meet the expenses of the Commonweal; and it was after his removal from the editorship that he contributed to it, from the 11th of January to the 4th of October, 1890, the successive chapters of his romance, "News from Nowhere." In the issues of July and August there was also printed in numbers a lecture by him on the Development of Modern Society. On the 12th of May he reappeared on the stage in support of the fast sinking funds of the journal, taking a part in a one-act play, "The Duchess of Bayswater and Co.," which was performed by members of the League in a hall in Tottenham Court Road. This was one of the last desperate efforts made to restore the League to solvency. Though the Commonweal never followed the example of a sister journal conducted by Communists and Anarchists at Buenos Ayres, for which any payment was purely voluntary, the number of copies sold was dwindling away almost to nothing, and the appeals repeated in nearly every number for renewal of lapsed subscriptions had little effect. As the task of keeping the League together became more impracticable, the interest taken in it by Morris, as a thoroughly practical man of business notwithstanding all his high idealism, also fell away. In July he writes, "I have been somewhat worrited by matters connected with the League, and am like to be more worrited; but somehow or other I don't seem to care much." Vague efforts were made from time to time to promote union with other Socialist bodies, but they were futile. The disintegrating forces were too strong to be stopped. The doctrine of freedom from dictation was worked out in the quaintest ways. At a Revolutionary Conference held in August "it was unanimously agreed"—so the official record runs—"to dispense with any such quasi-constitutional official as a chairman, and all red-tapeism and quasi-authoritarianism were banished." At the same time articles began to appear in the Commonweal gravely discussing the methods or putting up barricades in London streets.
Morris had learned his lesson. "Such finish to what of education in practical Socialism I am capable of," he wrote a few years later with a touch of acid humour, "I received from some of my Anarchist friends, from whom I learned, quite against their intention, that Anarchism was impossible, much as I had learned from Mill, against his intention, that Socialism was necessary." But before severing his connexion with the League, Morris made a final statement and appeal. It appeared in the Commonweal for the 15th of November, 1890, and summed up his attitude towards the cause which he had, in spite of all disillusionments, as deeply as ever at heart. He reviews the strange history of the movement with calmness and not without a certain pride.
"It is now some seven years," he writes, "since Socialism came to life again in this country. To some the time will seem long, so many hopes and disappointments as have been crowded into them. Yet in the history of a serious movement seven years is a short time enough; and few movements surely have made so much progress during this short time in one way or another as Socialism has done.
"For what was it which we set out to accomplish? To change the system of society on which the tremendous fabric of civilization is founded, and which has been built up by centuries of conflict with older and dying systems, and crowned by the victory of modern civilization over the material surroundings of life. Could seven years make any visible impression on such a tremendous undertaking as this?
"Consider, too, the quality of those who began and carried on this business of reversing the basis of modern society! A few working men, less successful even in the wretched life of labour than their fellows; a sprinkling of the intellectual proletariat, whose keen pushing of Socialism must have seemed pretty certain to extinguish their limited chances of prosperity; one or two outsiders in the game political; a few refugees from the bureaucratic tyranny of foreign Governments; and here and there an unpractical, half-cracked artist or author.
"Yet such as they were, they were enough to do something. Through them, though not by them, the seven years of the new movement toward freedom have, contrary to all that might have been expected, impressed the idea of Socialism deeply on the epoch.
"It cannot be said that great unexpected talent for administration and conduct of affairs has been developed amongst us, nor any vast amount of foresight either. We have been what we seemed to be (to our friends I hope)—and that was no great things. We have between us made about as many mistakes as any other party in a similar space of time. Quarrels more than enough we have had; and sometimes also weak assent for fear of quarrels to what we did not agree with. There has been self-seeking amongst us, and vainglory, and sloth, and rashness; though there has been at least courage and devotion also. When I first joined the movement I hoped that some workingman leader, or rather leaders, would turn up, who would push aside all middle-class help, and become great historical figures. I might still hope for that, if it seemed likely to happen, for indeed I long for it enough; but to speak plainly it does not seem so at present. Yet, I repeat, in spite of all drawbacks the impression has been made, and why? The reason has been given in words said before, but which I must needs say again: because that seemingly inexpugnable fabric of modern society is verging towards its fall; it has done its work, and is going to change into something else.
"So much at least we have to encourage us. But are not some of us disappointed in spite of the change of the way in which Socialism is looked on generally? It is but natural that we should be. When we first began to work together, there was little said about anything save the great ideals of Socialism; and so far off did we seem from the realization of these, that we could hardly think of any means for their realization, save great dramatic events which would make our lives tragic indeed, but would take us out of the sordidness of the so-called 'peace' of civilization. With the great extension of Socialism, this also is changed. Our very success has dimmed the great ideals that first led us on; for the hope of the partial and, so to say, vulgarized realization of Socialism is now pressing on us. I think that we are all confident that Socialism will be realized: it is not wonderful, then, that we should long to see—to feel—its realization in our own lifetime. Methods of realization, therefore, are now more before our eyes than ideals: but it is of no use talking about methods which are not, in part at least, immediately feasible, and it is of the nature of such partial methods to be sordid and discouraging, though they may be necessary.
"There are two tendencies in this matter of methods: on the one hand is our old acquaintance palliation, elevated now into vastly greater importance than it used to have, because of the growing discontent, and the obvious advance of Socialism; on the other is the method of partial, necessarily futile, inconsequent revolt, or riot rather, against the authorities, who are our absolute masters, and can easily put it down.
"With both of these methods I disagree; and that the more because the palliatives have to be clamoured for, and the riots carried out, by men who do not know what Socialism is, and have no idea what their next step is to be, if contrary to all calculation they should happen to be successful. Therefore, at the best our masters would be our masters still, because there would be nothing to take their place. We are not ready for such a change as that!
"I have mentioned the two lines on which what I should call the methods of impatience profess to work. Before I write a very few words on the only line of method on which some of us can work, I will give my views about the present state of the movement as briefly as I can.
"The whole set opinion amongst those more or less touched by Socialism, who are not definite Socialists, is towards the New Trades' Unionism and palliation. Men believe that they can wrest from the capitalists some portion of their privileged profits, and the masters, to judge by the recent threats of combination on their side, believe also that this can be done. That it could only very partially be done, and that the men could not rest there if it were done, we Socialists know very well; but others do not.
"I neither believe in State Socialism as desirable in itself, nor, indeed, as a complete scheme do I think it possible. Nevertheless, some approach to it is sure to be tried, and to my mind this will precede any complete enlightenment on the new order of things. The success of Mr. Bellamy's Utopian book, deadly dull as it is, is a straw to show which way the wind blows. The general attention paid to our clever friends, the Fabian lecturers and pamphleteers, is not altogether due to their literary ability; people have really got their heads turned more or less in their direction.
"Now it seems to me that at such a time, when people are not only discontented, but have really conceived a hope of bettering the condition of labour, while at the same time the means towards their end are doubtful; or, rather, when they take the very beginning of the means as an end in itself,—that this time when people are excited about Socialism, and when many who know nothing about it think themselves Socialists, is the time of all others to put forward the simple principles of Socialism regardless of the policy of the passing hour.
"My readers will understand that in saying this I am speaking for those who are complete Socialists—or let us call them Communists. I say for us to make Socialists is the business at present, and at present I do not think we can have any other useful business. Those who are not really Socialists—who are Trades' Unionists, disturbance-breeders, or what not—will do what they are impelled to do, and we cannot help it. At the worst there will be some good in what they do; but we need not and cannot heartily work with them, when we know that their methods are beside the right way.
"Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, i.e., convincing people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles in practice. Therefore, I say, make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful."
This grave and reasoned statement drew forth a volley of shrill protest and abuse from the Anarchists of the League. "Our comrade lectures us!" one of them writes indignantly in the next number of the journal; and another replies by a frantic appeal to use dynamite and make open war upon society. But Morris had already left the League. The moment he did so it began to crumble away like sand. The offices of the League in Farringdon Road had been already given up for a year, and the Commonweal had been issued from small premises in Great Queen Street. Now the rent was not forthcoming for these; they were in their turn vacated, and for the remainder of its brief and restless life the Commonweal was issued from a temporary address in Lamb's Conduit Street, where some of the members of the League kept a small grocery store under the sounding name of the Socialist Co-operative Federation. The weekly issue of the Commonweal at once ceased. It continued a struggling life as a monthly for upwards of a year. Its preaching became more and more violent. At last the slow-moving arm of authority came down upon it. In April, 1892, certain men describing themselves as Anarchists had been arrested and tried as Walsall on the charge of manufacturing high-explosive bombs; and four of them were sentenced to long terms of penal servitude. A violent article appeared in the next issue of the Commonweal, declaiming against the Home Secretary, the Judge, and the Inspector of Police who had conducted the case, and asking if such men were fit to live. The authorities were weary of this perpetual recurrence of what was on the face of it incitement to murder, and determined to make an end of it once for all. C.W. Mowbray and D.J. Nicoll, the former registered as printer and publisher, the latter as proprietor, of the Commonweal, were arrested a few days later. When tried on the criminal charge, Mowbray, who asserted that he had disapproved of the particular article in question, and was able to prove that he had taken no active part in the publication of the Commonweal for two or three months back, was acquitted; Nicoll was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. This was the end of the Commonweal, and with it of the last remnants of the Socialist League.
By that time Morris was too busy with other things to be deeply concerned; nor had the treatment he had received from his unfortunate colleagues been such as a patience not absolutely inexhaustible could survive. One allusion to the matter is preserved in his correspondence. Writing to his daughter on the 21st of April, 1892, "You will be sorry to see," he says, "that Nicoll and Mowbray, two of our old comrades, have got into trouble with the Commonweal. It was very stupid of Nicoll, for it seems that he stuck in his idiotic article while Mowbray was away, so that the latter knew nothing of it. I think Mowbray will get off. I am sorry for him, and even for the Commonweal."
While therefore Morris's withdrawal in November 1890, from the membership of the Socialist League by no means meant that he had ceased to be a convinced Socialist or had in any important way modified his doctrine, it did imply an important change in the conduct of his own life. The weary work of militant Socialism was now over for him. To make Socialists, mainly by the quiet influence of ideas; to keep the flame alive till the slow advance of time and thought had prepared the fuel for it, remained still what he conceived of as his duty; but this was rather a way of living and thinking than an active struggle, an expenditure of time and money, or that expense of spirit which was even a heavier and a more wasteful drain. A small body of his own immediate circle, those connected with him by friendship or neighbourhood, had hitherto been organized as the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League. They now seceded along with him, and formed themselves into an independent body named the Hammersmith Socialist Society. The secession was resolved upon on the 21st of November. Two days afterwards they met, to the number of about a dozen, and organized themselves under a very simple body of rules. The circular, drafted by Morris, which they sent out to the other branches of the Socialist League in England and Scotland—by this time their number had dwindled to ten, four in London and six in the provinces—is studiously quiet in its wording.
"We think it proper," he wrote, "to write you a brief explanation of the action which the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League has thought it necessary to take in separating itself from the League.
"It has been impossible for us to be blind to the fact that there have been once more growing up two parties in the League, one of which has been tending more and more to Anarchism, and the other has been opposed to that tendency; the paper of the League, the Commonweal, has, by a vote of the last Conference, been put into the hands of those who represent the Anarchist views: and the majority of the Council are of that way of thinking. Several articles have appeared in the Commonweal with the approbation of the majority of the Council, which we have felt did not represent our opinions. Under these circumstances there were two courses for us to pursue; first to remain in the League, and oppose whatever seriously thwarted our views, and secondly to withdraw from it and carry on our propaganda independently. We have chosen the second course; because we believe in the sincerity of our comrades with whom we disagree; and we think that however much they might be disposed to yield to us and to keep articles which we should not approve of out of the paper, they could not do so without looking upon us as a drag upon their freedom of speech and action. And moreover a great part of our time which should be spent in attacking capitalism would have to be wasted in bickering with our own comrades. Therefore we think it much better to retire in a friendly way, keeping our own freedom and not interfering with that of others, and thus have formally withdrawn ourselves from the League.
"We have reconstituted ourselves under the name of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, and hope and believe that our efforts in pushing forward Socialism will be rather stimulated than retarded by the new position that we have been forced into, and that we shall take every opportunity, whenever we feel ourselves able to do so, of acting cordially with all bodies of Socialists both in and out of the Socialist League."
The conditions of membership in the Society were limited to a general agreement with the principles of Socialism, as explained in the manifesto to be issued by it, and a payment of a shilling as annual subscription. Its object was defined, or was left undefined, as the spreading of the principles of Socialism. Its place of meeting was named as being at Kelmscott House, and a few simple regulations as to officers and candidates made up the remainder of its constitution. Mr. E. Walker was, and still is, the secretary of the Society. Morris himself was treasurer. The old room in Kelmscott House continued to be at the service of the members for meetings, which were held twice a week for several years. As time went on they became more intermittent; and at last the Society continued to exist only in the sense that it never was formally dissolved.
"I have got to rewrite the manifesto for the new Hammersmith Society," Morris writes on the 9th of December, 1890, "and that I must do this very night: it is a troublesome and difficult job, and I had so much rather go on with my Saga work."
The manifesto does not throw any fresh light on his principles or methods. It is in the main a re-statement of the case against a capitalist system of society; to which a further definition of the aims of the newly-founded body is added, disclaiming State Socialism as a final ideal, but repudiating with much greater energy any doctrine which tends towards Anarchism. "It is not the dissolution of society for which we strive, but its re-integration. The idea put forward by some who attack present society, of the complete independence of every individual, that is, of freedom without society, is not merely impossible of realization, but when looked into, turns out to be inconceivable." Passive resistance is proclaimed as the limit of opposition to the existing order, however tyrannical; and the hope of the future is indicated as a general combination of labour which will slowly drive capitalists from position after position, until at last they find themselves in possession of responsibility without privilege, and voluntarily abdicate an untenable position.
Throughout the year the project of his new printing press and the work to be done in connexion with it had swallowed up all other interests. Even his own work in romance-writing and translating Sagas from the Icelandic took a second place to it. But at these employments, and at his Merton Abbey work, he was also fairly busy, and well contented with them all. In February the magnificent Arras tapestry of the Adoration of the Kings winch now hangs in Exeter College Chapel was finished to his complete satisfaction; nothing better of the kind, he said, had ever been done, old or new. The admission to partnership in the firm of Morris & Co. of Messrs. F. and R. Smith, the two principal sub-managers after Mr. George Wardle's retirement, had relieved Morris from a great deal of the purely mechanical or commercial details of management. The romance entitled "The Story of the Glittering Plain" was written this spring, and was published in the English Illustrated Magazine, in the four numbers for the months of June to September. It is perhaps best known as the first book printed at the Kelmscott Press. But it is likewise notable as marking the full and unreserved return of the author to romance. In "The House of the Wolfings," and even to some degree in "The Roots of the Mountains" also, there had been a semi-historical setting, and an adherence to the conditions of a world from which the supernatural element was not indeed excluded, but in which it bore such a subordinate place as involved no violent strain on probability. Here the imagined world is of no place or time, and is one in which nothing is impossible. The dreamer of dreams has returned to that strange Land East of the Sun, mingled of Northern Saga and Arabian tale, through which the Star-Gazer had passed two and twenty years before in the days of "The Earthly Paradise": a land in which, like Odysseus and his comrades in the isle of Circe, "we do not know where is the dusk nor where the dawn." The book which the King's daughter shows to Hallblithe in his dream on the Acre of the Undying is a sort of figure of that glittering world, rich with all imagined and unimaginable wonders, into which Morris had entered long ago, and the door of which always remained open to him.
"She had in her hand a book covered outside with gold and gems, even as he saw it in the orchard-close aforetime: and he beheld her face that it was no longer the face of one sick with sorrow; but glad, and clear, and most beauteous. Now she opened the book and held it before Hallblithe and turned the leaves so that he might see them clearly; and therein were woods and castles painted, and burning mountains, and the wall of the world, and kings upon their thrones, and fair women and warriors, all most lovely to behold, even as he had seen it aforetime in the orchard when he lay lurking amidst the leaves of the bay tree.
"So at last she came to the place in the book wherein was painted Hallblithe's own image over against the image of the Hostage; and he looked thereon and longed. But she turned the leaf, and lo! on one side the Hostage again, standing in a fair garden of the spring with the lilies all about her feet, and behind her the walls of a house, grey, ancient, and lovely: and on the other leaf over against her was painted a sea rippled by a little wind and a boat thereon sailing swiftly, and one man alone in the boat sitting and steering with a cheerful countenance; and he, who but Hallblithe himself. Hallblithe looked thereon for a while and then the King's daughter shut the book, and the dream flowed into other imaginings of no import."
"News from Nowhere," had been revised about the same time and was published as a cheap volume in paper covers, which had a large circulation. It is a curious fact that this slightly constructed and essentially insular romance has, as a Socialist pamphlet, been translated into French, German, and Italian, and has probably been more read in foreign countries than any of his more important works in prose or verse. The romance itself—if it would not be more correct to speak of it as a pastoral—is of such beauty as may readily win indulgence for its artificiality. A pastoral, whether it places its golden age in the past or the future, is by the nature of the case artificial, and perhaps as much so, though not so obviously, as when it boldly plants itself in the present. The immediate occasion which led Morris to put into a connected form those dreams of an idyllic future in which his mind was constantly hovering was no doubt the prodigious vogue which had been obtained the year before, by an American Utopia, Mr. Bellamy's once celebrated "Looking Backward." The refined rusticity of "News from Nowhere" is in studied contrast to the apotheosis of machinery and the glorification of the life of large towns in the American book; and is perhaps somewhat exaggerated in its reaction from that picture of a world in which the phalanstère of Fourier seems to have swollen to delirious proportions, and State Socialism has resulted in a monstrous and almost incredible centralization.
Indeed a merely materialist Earthly Paradise was always a thing Morris regarded with a feeling little removed from disgust. That ideal organization of life in which the names of rich and poor should disappear, together with the things themselves, in a common social well-being, was in itself to him a mere body, of which art, as the single high source of pleasure, was the informing soul. "Mr. Bellamy worries himself unnecessarily," he had said in an article in the Commonweal on this very book and its ideas in June, 1889, "in seeking, with obvious failure, some incentive to labour to replace the fear of starvation, which is at present our only one; whereas it cannot be too often repeated that the true incentive to useful and happy labour is, and must be, pleasure in the work itself." That single sentence contains the sum of his belief in politics, in economics, in art.
The thought is thus expanded in the same article. "It is necessary to point out," he writes, "that there are some Socialists who do not think that the problem of the organization of life and necessary labour can be dealt with by a huge national centralization, working by a kind of magic for which no one feels himself responsible. that on the contrary it will be necessary for the unit of administration to be small enough for every citizen to feel himself responsible for its details and be interested in them; that individual men cannot shuffle off the business of life on to the shoulders of an abstraction called the State, but must deal with it in conscious association with each other: that variety of life is as much an aim of true Communism as equality of condition, and that nothing but an union of these two will bring about real freedom: that modern nationalities are mere artificial devices for the commercial war that we seek to put an end to, and will disappear with it: and finally, that art, using that word in its widest and due signification, is not a mere adjunct of life which free and happy men can do without, but the necessary expression and indispensable instrument of human happiness."
On the 10th of June Morris writes from Kelmscott House to Mrs. Burne-Jones:
"I have had three outings,—no, four—two of them business though. Item to Chislehurst after a job: villas (some desperately ugly, others according to the new light) in the beautiful woods with lots of oak growing in them which to me is a treat, as I see so little oak about Kelmscott. Yes, villas and nothing but villas save a chemist's shop and a dry public house near the station: no sign of any common people, or anything but gentlemen and servants—a beastly place to live in, don't you think?
"Next place was better—in a way—a house of a very rich—and such a wretched uncomfortable place! a sham Gothic house of fifty years ago now being added to by a young architect of the commercial type—men who are very bad. Fancy, in one of the rooms there was not a pane of glass that opened! Well, let that flea stick on the wall. Stanmore is the name of the place: it is really quite pretty about, though only about ten miles from London (near Harrow), great big properties all about, the wall of one park next to the wall of another, which has at any rate preserved the trees. Smith and I walked thence to Edgware over most beautiful meadows with scarce a house to be seen till you come to Edgware, which is a little melancholy town or large village; old, not ugly, but too visibly the home of most abundant poverty.
"The next outing was an Anti-Scrape one to Lincoln. That was exceedingly delightful to me. The town has a terrible blot on it, a great factory for machines down by the river, which seems to take a pleasure in smoking; indeed I suppose its masters are practically the masters of the whole town. However that is the worst of it: there is a longish oldish street on the flat, and at the end of it a beautiful gate across, now the Guildhall, and it rises steeper and steeper till before you come to the close you almost have to crawl, and most of the way the long leaden roof of the minster is the horizon; the houses mostly oldish red brick and pantiles. There is another most beautiful gate into the close, over which show the different planes of the minster most wonderfully. The whole place is chock full of history: there is work of the first Norman bishop, Remigius, who strangely enough moved his see there from Dorchester on the Thames, so well known to me. The rest (and almost all) is in gradated periods of Early Pointed; outside one may perhaps find fault with parts, especially the East Front (only I had a pleasing feeling that I was not responsible for them). But when we got inside all criticism fell, and one felt—well, quite happy—and as if one never wanted to go away again. I had seen it all more than twenty years ago, but somehow was much more impressed this time: the church is not high inside, though it is long and broad, but its great quality is a kind of careful delicacy of beauty, that no other English minster that I have seen comes up to: in short a miracle of art, that nowhere misses its intention. There is a little stained glass (early thirteenth century) as good as the best, and some of the sculpture at least belongs to the best work of the time. Outside the church and close to it is a huge Norman Castle, the enceinte quite complete, a piece of the keep left: a horrible modern prison and court house inside the old walls. Five minutes from the close gate towards the open country you come on the gate of the Roman town, quite unornamented, but sound and well-built. Down the slope of the hill are still left two twelfth-century houses. One of them, in honour surely of little Sir Hugh, is called the Jew's House; I cheapened an old chest there of a lady somewhat of Mrs. Wilfer's type, who received us with the dignity of a fallen Queen."
The fourth outing was a brief visit to Kelmscott. "I am steadily at work," he writes ten days later, "reading my own poems, because we are really going to bring out a one-volume 'Earthly Paradise' this autumn. Some people would say the work was hard. 'The Glittering Plain' I have finished some time, and begun another."
On the 8th of July he writes again: "I have undertaken to get out some of the Sagas I have lying about. Quaritch is exceedingly anxious to get hold of me, and received with enthusiasm a proposal to publish a Saga Library: item he will give me money (or perhaps I ought to say old books). We have got six letters of our new type done and have even had a scrap printed."
This type, the first produced for the Kelmscott Press, cost Morris almost infinite pains. "What I wanted," he writes of it himself in the Note on his aims in founding the Kelmscott Press, "was letter pure in form; severe, without needless excrescences; solid, without the thickening and thinning of the line which is the essential fault of the ordinary modern type, and which makes it difficult to read; and not compressed laterally, as all later type has grown to be owing to commercial exigencies. There was only one source from which to take examples of this perfected Roman type, to wit, the works of the great Venetian printers of the fifteenth century, of whom Nicholas Jenson produced the completest and most Roman characters from 1470 to 1476. This type I studied with much care, getting it photographed to a big scale, and drawing it over many times before I began designing my own letter; so that though I think I mastered the essence of it, I did not copy it servilely; in fact, my Roman type, especially in the lower case, tends rather more to the Gothic than does Jenson's."
By the middle of August eleven punches had been cut for the new fount, and Morris had determined that Caxton's "Golden Legend" should be the first large work produced by his press. He himself had recently acquired a copy of the edition of 1527 printed by Wynkyn de Worde. The Kelmscott "Golden Legend" was, however, set up, not from this, but from Caxton's own first edition of 1483. The almost priceless original was borrowed, under a heavy bond in case of loss or injury, from the Cambridge University Library for this purpose. It was transcribed for the press—a work of such laborious magnitude, and one executed so patiently and carefully as to deserve commemoration—by Miss Phillis M. Ellis, the daughter of his old friend and collaborator. Ellis himself took the chief part in superintending the accuracy of the text, a work of no small difficulty.
On the 29th of August, 1890, Morris writes to him from Kelmscott:
"Please pardon me for not answering your letter sooner; you know my little ways. Also I did want to weigh between the Golden Legend and the Troy book for reprinting: now I have borrowed a Recueil of the Histories of Troy (the Wynkyn de Worde of course) from Quaritch, and have no doubt that the G.L. is by far the most important book of the two: so I accept your kind offer with many thanks indeed, and will begin printing as soon as the type is free from the Glittering Plain, which I take it will be the first book printed in the regenerate type or Jenson-Morris.
"I inclose a specimen (over-inked) of as far as we have gone at present. I hope you admire its literature—due of course to the compositor. Kind regards to the young she-scribe that is to be."
The idea of becoming a publisher as well as a printer was one which had not yet occurred to him. An experiment was talked of later, but never carried out, of dispensing with a publisher by printing off a book and then selling the whole edition by auction. For "The Golden Legend" an agreement for publication was entered into with Mr. Bernard Quaritch. "I don't mind having a publisher," Morris said, "so long as he has nothing whatever to do with any question except purely business ones. As to the 'prophet' I want none of him: I only want not to have to drop much, say not above ₤100." On this footing it was arranged. The agreement, signed on the 11th of September, 1890, provides that the publisher shall pay for the expenses of paper, printing, and binding, and that Morris is to have sole and absolute control over choice of paper and type, size of the reprint, and selection of the printer. The last-named provision indicates that Morris was then still uncertain whether to start a press of his own or to have his new type printed from by some existing firm of printers. The following two letters to Ellis continue the details of the enterprise.
"Sept. 7th, 1890.
"My dear Ellis,
"I gave Quaritch your letter in person, and we had a talk about the matter: by this time you will have had a letter from him. It seemed to me a matter of course to agree, as far as I am concerned, with his proposition to take the whole expense on himself and do what he can with the 250 copies, since it will then cost us nothing but our work: only it seems to me that your share of the work will be so much the heaviest that I feel rather uncomfortable about it, and think it somehow ought to be made up to you. What I have now chiefly to do is to push on the type-founding side of matters: I will do all I possibly can on this side, so that we may begin as soon as possible. I should think that we might get some type about Christmas time; but of course I cannot be sure. Wishing you good luck (I had little with the gudgeons),
"William Morris."
"Sept. 14th, 1890.
"My dear Ellis,
"I have sent on Q.'s copy and now send back yours. Of course I should like the reprint to be of the same form as the original if the Roman type can do it, which I doubt, as black letter takes up less room: in any case some kind of folio it will have to be. As to paper I have heard of two people who may help us, one whom Walker knows and whose mill I propose to visit with Walker almost at once; and one employed by Allen, Ruskin's publisher. We can do nothing with Whatman but take what he has on the shelves. In one thing I think I differ from you a little, i.e., about the joined letters or queer signs: since our book is to be a reprint, not a fac-simile, I do not think that we need reproduce these: indeed I should extend the abbreviations in order to make the book more readable. However I am open to correction on this point. Don't rest too much on my date of Christmas for the type: we seem to be getting on very slowly with it at present, and I have only eleven letters cut yet. I can only hope for the best.
"William Morris."
By the middle of October "the type is getting on: I have all the lower case letters (26), also I have been designing ornamental letters, rather good I think." His excitement over the work was so great that for once he left Kelmscott, when autumn ended, with little regret. "We are coming to London to-day," he writes from there on the 16th of October. "The weather has been very good; our best day was Monday, when I hear you had a fog; it was a miracle of a day here: the sort of day when you really can do nothing but stand and stare at it. I am not sorry to come to town. I want to cease from being bumbled up and down. I want to work hard at my easy work."
The breaking up of the Socialist League and the constitution of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, though it took up a measure of his time for the next six weeks in London, hardly disturbed him materially, and did not check the progress of his other work. By the end of the year all but two of the punches for the type, both upper and lower case, were completed, and a compositor and pressman, Mr. William Bowden, had been engaged. The paper was made from linen rag by Messrs. Batchelor & Son of Little Chart, near Ashford, after an Italian pattern of the fifteenth century, which Morris supplied. Such care was taken in its manufacture, that the wire moulds were woven by hand to reproduce the slight irregularity in the texture of those used by the earliest printers. Morris went down to Little Chart himself with Mr. E. Walker to see about this paper. With unabated interest in any form of manual art, he must take off his coat and try to make a sheet of paper with his own hands. At the second attempt he succeeded in doing very creditably what it is supposed takes a man several months to master.
In the course of the year Morris had made one more experiment in the use of type other than his own. This was a small edition of his own translation of the Gunnlaug Saga, which he had printed at the Chiswick Press in a Gothic type copied from a fount used by Caxton. The initials in this little book were left blank in order to be rubricated by hand; and Morris put them in himself on two or three copies: but the whole project went no further, and the little book was never published.
On the last day of the year he writes to Ellis:
"I am very glad that you are getting on so well and like the work. As for me I expect to have my type in a month, and shall take a room and see about comps. at once. The paper also will not be later, though this matters less as to our date of beginning. One thing may disappoint you—to wit, that we cannot make a double-column page of it, the page will not be wide enough. For my part, I don't regret it: double column seems to me chiefly fit for black letter, which prints up so close. Jenson did not print even his Pliny in double column. But it is a case of a fortiori in modern printing: because we have no contractions, few tied letters, and we cannot break a word with the same frankness as they could: I mean we can't put whi on one side and ch on the other. This makes the spacing difficult, and a wide page desirable.
"Would you kindly give me the Initial letters of the first few sheets of our copy; I mean state whether they are A's B's and what not; I want this for our 'blooming-letters,' so that I may get ready those which are most wanted."
With the beginning of 1891 the Kelmscott Press actually started working. Its first premises, a cottage on the Upper Mall of Hammersmith a few yards from Kelmscott House, were taken possession of on the 12th of January. A proof-press and a printing-press were got and set up there. The first sample of the paper arrived on the 27th, and the first full trial page was set up and printed on the 31st. During February a sufficient working stock of both type and paper was delivered, and the regular working of the Press began. Mr. Bowden's son, who continued to work at the Press until it was closed, was engaged as compositor, and a third workman as pressman.
Meanwhile his research after fine specimens of fifteenth-century printing went on with unabated zeal. The following letter to J.H. Middleton refers to some of his most recent purchases, made from a dealer named Olschki, whose prices Morris thought rather exorbitant. Middleton was also in dealings with Mr. Olschki on behalf of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, of which he was then Director.
"Jan. 20th, 1891.
"My dear Middleton,
"One of those books of Olschki's is a fine book otherwise (John Zeiner, Ulm, 1474) and rare doubtless, and has moreover a very fine woodcut border to first page and some curious initials: I am not buying it because there is, oddly enough, the same border in another of his books (by the same printer, 1475) which is much cheaper. This border is however so fine and so very well printed that I thought you might like it for the Fitzwilliam, since though I think it Jew-dear, I should have kept it if I had not got the other. The price is ₤15, but I daresay O. would take less. Shall I send it you to look at? I have just bought a very fine and interesting book: Speculum Humanæ Salvationis (in Dutch), Culembourg, Veldener, 1483. That says little; but the point of it is that it has in it all the cuts from the block-book Speculum (116) and 12 more seemingly of the same date. These are not recut, but are printed from the original blocks sawn in two down the columns of the canopies: some of these cuts are to my mind far away the best woodcuts ever done, and generally the designs are admirable: at once decorative, and serious with the devotional fervour of the best side of the Middle Ages. The date of the cutting you know is probably about 1430.
"Do you know if they have a copy at the University Library? If they have not I should like to show Mr. Jenkinson the book when I come your way. My copy belonged to the Enschede people, who you may know were a very old firm of typefounders.
"By the way I expect my press will be at work in about a month.
"William Morris."
On the 11th of February he writes to Ellis:
"This is the state of things. The punches all cut, and matrices all struck: I had a little lot of type cast to see if any alterations were required, and set up a page of the 4to as there was not enough for the folio; I had the g recut because it seemed to me too black. I then ordered five cwt. of the type, which I am told is enough, and am expecting to have it towards the end of this week or beginning of next. As soon as I get it I will set up a trial page of the G.L.
"Then paper—the trial lot turned out not quite right, not sized quite hard enough, though I think better than any modern paper I have come across. He is going to size it harder. But it is only a little lot (9 reams), therefore I intend printing a little edition of the Glittering Plain on it. Moreover we had better not be too cock-sure about the paper, we might find it desirable to make a bigger sheet. In any case however we might set up a section or so of the G.L. and let the type be till we had got the paper right. I was not going to send you a specimen of the type till we could set up a page of the G.L. But I can sympathize with my pardner's anxiety; and accordingly send him a page of the G.P., of course full of defects, but on the paper and with the types. I don't know what you will think of it; but I think it precious good. Crane when he saw it beside Jenson thought it more Gothic-looking: this is a fact, and a cheerful one to me."
The first sheet of "The Story of the Glittering Plain," which owing to this accidental collocation of circumstances was the first book printed at and issued from the Kelmscott Press, was printed off on the 2nd of March, and the last on the 4th of April. Only two hundred copies on paper, besides six on vellum, were printed. It was issued in May by Messrs. Reeves and Turner, Morris's ordinary publishers. The printing had been carried through under great difficulties. Towards the end of February Morris was laid up for several weeks with a severe attack of gout, attended by other symptoms of an alarming kind. On consultation the kidneys were found to be gravely affected; and he was told that henceforth he must consider himself an invalid to the extent of husbanding his strength and living under a very careful regimen.
In the height of the attack, and before he was able to hold a pen,—"my hand seems lead and my wrist string"—he writes to Ellis with unconquerable spirit:
"And now as to the joint enterprise: I have got my type and am hard at work on the Glittering Plain, which I hope to get out in about six weeks time; about the same time I expect the first instalment of my due stock of paper; and I don't see why we then should not be ready to go ahead with G.L., only I certainly must see you before we settle matters. Meantime, as soon as I can stand up, or before, I will get a mere trial page or two of the G.L. set up, and then you can get some idea of the number of pages.
"Yes, 'tis a fine thing to have some interesting work to do, and more than ever when one is in trouble—I found that out the other day."
From Folkestone, where he had gone to pick up his strength after this illness, he writes a month later, "I think I shall make some scratch of a border to each life or section. I want to make it grand. I have a specimen of the new paper this morning, it is admirable—couldn't be better." While there, he designed the ornamental border for the first page of "The Golden Legend," and several of the large floriated initials, or "bloomers," as they are called in the traditional slang of the press. As soon as he came back to London, a regular pressman was permanently engaged (the one got in to help in the printing of "The Story of the Glittering Plain" had only been taken for the job) and the printing of "The Golden Legend" began to go steadily on. The first sheet was printed off by the middle of May: and before the end of that month the Press had been removed into larger premises in Sussex House, next door to the cottage first occupied by it.
"The new printed sheets of the G.L. look very well indeed," says a letter of the 20th of May.
"Pleased as I am with my printing, when I saw my two men at work on the press yesterday with their sticky printers' ink, I couldn't help lamenting the simplicity of the scribe and his desk, and his black ink and blue and red ink, and I almost felt ashamed of my press after all. I am writing a short narrative poem to top up my new book with. My wig! but it is garrulous: I can't help it, the short lines and my old recollections lead me on."
The volume of his own collected verses which, under the title of "Poems by the Way," was the second book issued from the Kelmscott Press, did not actually begin to be printed till July: but during May he was busy in collecting and passing judgment on those shorter unpublished poems of his own which were to form its main contents. He was habitually careless about his own manuscripts, and kept no record of what he had written or even of what he had published. Without the help of Mr. Fairfax Murray, into whose hands a number of the unpublished manuscripts had passed, and who had kept a record of all the poems which had ever been printed in magazines or elsewhere, the collection could hardly have been made. As it is, a number of his poems, which would have come within the general scope of the book, escaped his notice altogether. Apart from the longer narrative poems belonging to the period of "The Earthly Paradise," there are still sufficient of these yet unpublished pieces,—lyrics, sonnets, and ballads,—to make up a second volume of "Poems by the Way" as large as the first.
Among the pieces which had been rescued from total disappearance by Mr. Murray were a few belonging to the earliest years, the period of "The Defence of Guenevere." Of two of them he writes to Murray, "Catherine puzzles me: I have not the slightest recollection of any stanza of it. Did I write it? Is it a translation? I think not the latter; but it is devilish like. It is much too long, and I fear it is too rude to be altered. The Long Land I like in a fashion. But O the callowness of it! Item it is tainted with imitation of Browning, as Browning then was." None of these very early pieces were finally included in the volume published. The poem of "Goldilocks and Goldilocks," which concludes the volume, was the only one written for it now: the remainder of its contents, which are placed in a studied disarrangement, fall into two groups. One of these consists of poems written in the six or seven years between 1867 and 1874, the period which begins with "The Life and Death of Jason" and ends with "Love is Enough." The other is made up of poems of a period divided from the former by an interval of ten years. It begins with the first of the "Chants for Socialists" of 1884; and includes the political verses, as they might be called, of militant Socialism, the fragments which he thought most worthy of survival from his versified Socialist romance of the "Pilgrims of Hope," and the ballads and romantic pieces of the three or four years which had elapsed since the beginnings of his return to literature. Intermediate between the two main groups, and of very various dates, are the verses for his own tapestries, or for Burne-Jones's pictures, of which between thirty and forty are printed in the volume. Only one poem previously unpublished, "The Folkmote by the River," belongs to the more recent years.
Some of the poems of the earlier period have a special history or association. "The God of the Poor" (which had already been printed in the Fortnightly Review for August, 1868) was almost, if not quite, the first piece he wrote when he resumed the writing of poetry after he had left Red House. The two beautiful lyrics, "From the Upland to the Sea" and "Meeting in Winter," are songs from "The Story of Orpheus," which had been written for "The Earthly Paradise," but never published. "A Garden by the Sea" is a later version of the song of the waternymph to Hylas in the fourth book of "The Life and Death of Jason." The minute differences in language, in one of the most haunting and exquisitely finished of all his lyrics, are of no little interest. The lines "To the Muse of the North," it may be worth while to note, were written before his first visit to Iceland, and show more clearly than any comment how the land and all that had come from it filled his imagination. The curious poem entitled "Pain and Time Strive Not," which is of a date somewhere between 1871 and 1873, is remarkable as the single instance in which Morris, after the first enthusiasm of his early years in London had cooled, has distinctly imitated the manner and versification of Rossetti.
"The title of my new book," Morris wrote to his publishers in June, "will be Poems by the Way; the format the same as the Glittering Plain. It will be printed in red and black. The poems will include some recently written and some written many years ago. Some have appeared in magazines, but with the two exceptions of a little piece out of the Jason and one out of the Ogier, they will none of them have been printed in any book of mine."
The "little piece out of the Jason" is the one just mentioned; that from "Ogier the Dane," which was in the end not included, was one of the versions of the song beginning in the white-flowered hawthorn brake, in that poem. These two lyrics are, in the opinion of many judges, the most beautiful of all he ever wrote, and both are among the rare instances of lyrics which remained for years in his mind, and which he remodelled or retouched again and again. Two earlier versions of this latter piece are extant: its original form, as a lyric in the "Scenes from the Fall of Troy," has been already quoted. An intermediate version occurs in the cancelled and rewritten Prologue to "The Earthly Paradise." Whether the lyric which he proposed to insert in the new volume was one of these two earlier versions, or (as in the case of the lyric from "Jason") a later version than that already published, and in that case a fourth version of the same piece, there are now no means of discovering.
In this pleasant work, and in the active joy of returning health, the spring and summer passed easily away. "The blossom is splendid," he writes on the 10th of May. "London in the older parts like the Inns of Court really looks well in this spring-time with the bright fresh green against the smoky old walls. Spring over, it becomes London again, and no more an enchanted city."
"I have the usual complaint at my pen's end of nothing to tell," he adds two days later. "The weather is beautifully bright and quite hot; the pear and cherry blossom is going off, and spring will soon have slid into summer, though the lilac is yet to come."
"It is a hottish close morning," says a letter of the 3rd of June, "rather dull with London smoke. I have just been down the garden to see how things were doing, and find that they are getting on. Not so many slugs and snails by a long way, and the new planted things are growing now; the sweet peas promising well, the peonies in bud, as well as the scarlet poppies. All well at the press: we are now really getting on, so that finishing the Golden Legend is looking something more than a dream."
At the end of July he writes from Folkestone to Mrs. Burne-Jones just before starting on a tour in Northern France with his daughter Jenny:
"I am ashamed to say that I am not as well as I should like, and am even such a fool as to be rather anxious—about myself this time. But I suppose the anxiety is part of the ailment. I hope you are better, as I have still some anxiety left for the service of my friends.
"On Sunday we had a strange show: a sea-fog came on in the afternoon after a bright morning, which gradually invaded the whole land under the downs; but we clomb to the top of them and found them and all the uplands beyond lying under a serene calm sunny sky, the tops of the cliffs towards Dover coming bright and sharp above the fog, and throwing a blue shadow on it; below a mere sea of cloud, not a trace of the sea (proper), wave on wave of it. It looked like Long Jokull (in Iceland), only that was glittering white and this was goose-breast colour. I thought it awful to look on, and it made me feel uneasy, as if there were wild goings on preparing for us underneath the veil."
The French tour of three weeks in August was the renewal of one of his earliest affections: and he writes that his delight in the country, "the river-bottoms with the endless poplar forest, and the green green meadows," and in the beautiful churches, was as keen and as unclouded as it had been thirty-three years before. "I have given myself up to thinking of nothing but the passing day and keeping my eyes open."
The two letters which follow were written to Mr. Emery Walker on the journey. In the first, the reference at the beginning is to the fount of Gothic type which he had just designed for the Kelmscott Press, and which was now in course of being cut by Mr. Prince. "By the Way" in the second was the familiar and disrespectful title of his new volume of poems.
"August 13th, 1891.
"My dear Walker,
"Many thanks for your letter and inclosures. I chuckled over the upside down A. I have written to Prince: he has now done eihlnoprt. The t does not look well: I think I shall have to re-design it. The e also looks a little wrong, but might be altered. The rest look very well indeed. I shall be pretty certainly at home on August 30. I leave for Soissons to-morrow, and I suppose shall get to Reims on Saturday. But I don't think we shall find any place better than this: the town is delightful quite apart from the Cathedral and St. Stephen's. Also our inn is comfortable, which is something. We went a long drive yesterday (morning drizzly, afternoon, downright wet, but a jolly drive of near twenty miles and back) and saw the two churches of Gournay en Bray, and St. Germer en Fly: both early and interesting; the second exceedingly beautiful: a huge church, Norman, with vaulting and insertions of transitional, and a long lady-chapel with its vestibule, time of St. Louis (late thirteenth century). The chapel (not the vestibule) had been restored, pretty badly; but had three stained windows (of its own date) about as good as any I ever saw. The rest of the church quite unrestored: also there are grills of twelfth century round the choir. The west end, traditionally said to have been burned by the Burgundians (c. 1470), is very defective, but a plain (but good) abbey gateway remains. Altogether a wonderful church. Gournay, a much smaller church; the nave very early Norman (before the middle of century I should say), but with transition vaulting: transepts and choir mainly transition with each a big early decorated window in it: east end square and window coming low down. The carving on caps of nave very curious, no two alike; mostly rude (some very), but many beautiful. I am sorry to say that this admirable nave has been badly restored, even to the recutting of some of the caps: perhaps the French Society might stop this game, as those that are left are extraordinarily valuable. As to the west front it was thirteenth century; but is now nineteenth, and bad at that; they have even done new sculptures for the tympanums. As for the town of Gournay it is uninteresting, but they make cream cheeses of the very best: crede mihi experto.
"Certainly the Cathedral here is one of the wonders of the world; seen by twilight its size gives one an impression almost of terror: one can scarcely believe in it. But when you see the detail, it is so beautiful that the beauty impresses you more than the size.
"We are just going to read the late stained glass at St. Stephen's, which is very amusing, lots of it.
"The arms of the chapter are gules a cross argent with four keys of the same cantoned if I blazon it right: the arms of the town, gules a pale argent. The town has lost its walls, but they are in a way traceable, for the town ditch fed by two little rivers goes all round: there is a very big central place also, so that the plan of the town is very good.
"William Morris."
"August 16th.
"My dear Walker,
"We have just come out of the Cathedral, which, though a wonderful place, is, if I am right, not so great a work as Amiens, Beauvais, or Soissons. The latter was our last place on our way here. I thought the church there most extraordinarily beautiful. Except for the end of the north transept (which is early decorated) it is all of the earliest Gothic, not very big (but wide), of great simplicity and of the utmost refinement. The south transept is much lower than the north and apsidal; the interior of it, of two vaulted stages, comparable in beauty to Hugh's work at Lincoln (though not like it), Gothic at its best. There have been some bad restorations there, but it is not destroyed. The worst is the black lining of the ashlar of the choir down to the triforium. Here the outside has already been restored (including the work they are doing to the south transept, which looks very bad), but excepting the west front with its amazing wealth of imagery: though they do not here seem to touch the figure sculptures. Perhaps it might be of use to memorialize the French Society upon this and some other points.
"Here the whole of the clerestory (except the windows of the choir blocked up by the restoration at present) has its stained glass, of the most splendid quality, though a good deal patched. If Grant Allen should see it he would find it justified his views of jewellery completely; for no collection of gems could come within a hundred miles of it. All the way from Beauvais to Compiègne, Soissons and here, the churches seem very fine and mostly early. The country round Soissons is very beautiful. It is built on the side of the Aisne, a river about as big there as the Thames at Reading: we saw vines there for the first time this journey. The arms of Soissons city are azure a fleur de lys argent. The chapter carries, I think, under a chief of France a tower. The tinctures I did not see, as I take my information from a lamp-post, of Napoleon's time, I suppose, as the fleur de lys were bees. There are some fine tapestries hung up in the aisles here in very good preservation, c. 1520 I think. They make splendid ornaments. I intend studying them and the stained glass and the sculpture to-morrow properly.
"I heard from Bowden that he has sent on another sheet and some Golden Legend, but it has not yet come: will to-morrow, I suppose. Jacobi has sent me two sheets of the cheap By the Way: it looks well. I have not done one letter since I started, my work being mostly staring and walking and eating. We intend going on to Laon on Tuesday, which will probably mean getting to Folkestone on Saturday or Sunday next and home the day after. Get Hooper to do the colophon before he goes off if you can, as otherwise it might stick us.
"William Morris.
"St. Remy a very fine church: some glass there even finer than that in Cathedral, twelfth century."
On the 23rd of September he writes to his daughter Jenny at Kelmscott: "I expect the book"—the "Poems by the Way"—"will be all printed to-morrow, and will go to the binders on Monday. They are printing the colophon sheet to-day, which is exciting. Item, Mr. Quaritch has sent me in a specimen copy of volume 2 of the Saga Library, so I suppose I shall bring it along with me. I shall probably bring along a copy of the cheap 'Glittering Plain,' and the cheap 'Poems by the Way' will soon be out. So you see, my own, that if it doesn't rain 'blue elephants' it may almost be said to rain new books of mine. Do you know, I do so like seeing a new book out that I have had a hand in. Mr. Prince is also getting on with the new fount of type, but when I shall begin to print with it I really don't know.
"Before I finish the news, I must tell you that about 6 o'clock yesterday a stout man called (like a Scotch farmer) and announced himself as the keeper of the dogs at the Doggeries; he said he had wanted to take the house again, but I had forestalled him, and now he wanted to rent the kennels of me: he was so polite that all I could say was that I did not think I would, also that I would ask my wife. Of course I won't let him have them.
"I am going to give a dinner party on Friday to Ellis, Phillis and Cuthbert and Harry. And then on Saturday, ho for Kelmscott! I shall be so glad to see my dear again."