# William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement/6

CHAPTER VI
FIRST VISIT TO KELMSCOTT HOUSE
FROM the outset to the end of its career the Socialist League was harassed with internal trouble. The members of the League had, as my readers will remember, split away from the Social Democratic Federation, chiefly on the ground that as revolutionary Socialists they could take no part in parliamentary agitation—at any rate not until Socialism had so far ripened in the country that Parliament could be made the means of precipitating the social revolution. Nevertheless, almost as soon as the League was formed a considerable section of its members in London began a campaign inside its ranks to get parliamentary action included among its avowed means of agitation. And again, no sooner was this body of disturbers finally compelled to withdraw from the League after a few years of incessant strife than an Anarchist faction began to afflict the League in a kindred way by stirring up dissension in order to get the League to declare itself an Anarchist organisation.
These troubles, particularly as the dissentients pursued their agitation with acerbity and recourse to intrigue and personal accusation, worried and vexed Morris. So much so, indeed, that eventually the irritation of it all greatly lessened his pleasure in working inside the League, and so led to the breaking up of the League altogether.
It was in the Whitsuntide of 1888, when the parliamentarian faction had attained a sufficient following in London to give their efforts to capture the League some ​promise of success, that I went to London in order to attend the Annual Conference of the League, and visited Morris at his house in Hammersmith.
Several weeks before the Conference, Morris had become so much alarmed lest the dissentients should carry the day that he wrote me urging me to get the Glasgow branch to send me or some other delegate to the Conference to withstand the assault.
How paltry now seem the circumstances that caused Morris so much perturbation! How lamentable, one is inclined to exclaim, that the powers of one of the most richly gifted minds of modern days should have been tormented with such trivial and wholly distasteful wranglings! Yet too much has perhaps been made of that aspect of the matter. I am not at all convinced that Morris was really harmed by the experience. I think in some ways the intimate acquaintance which it gave him with the difficulties of political organisation and the recalcitrancy of some of his fellow-men, together with the sense of the helplessness of all his powers to meet the situation, produced a certain shade of work-a-day humility and patience in him that mellowed and enriched his character.
This is, I think, acknowledged by Mr. Mackail in his 'Life of Morris,' and while it is true that in the end these experiences contributed to his retirement from the active ranks of the movement, they were assuredly not the sole cause of his so doing. Besides, I am persuaded that in the six or eight years of his active apostleship he gave the best that was in him to give for the immediate propaganda of Socialism; and that had he continued to work in the movement as he had been doing he would have effected very little result, and might have suffered the loss of that high idealism which, happily as it was, he preserved to the end.
Nor let us forget that his experience of the faction wranglings in the movement (which are by no means so merely fractious or so sterilizing as they often appear to be) was one which has been ordained for all pioneers and re​formers. Think of St. Paul's heart-breaking worries with the Churches which were the 'children of his own loins.'
To come, however, to my visit to Morris at Hammersmith.
I arrived in London on the Saturday afternoon. Morris had suggested to me that as he would not be at home till about six o'clock in the evening, I might, should I arrive earlier in the day, look in and have a glance at the Art Exhibition in the New Gallery. This I did, and as we shall afterwards see, it led me into an extraordinary experience.
On my arrival at Kelmscott House, Morris immediately came from his study on the ground floor, and after welcoming me cordially, took me up to my bedroom on one of the upper floors, and, leaving me there for a few moments, returned to introduce me to the 'inhabitants.' 'Here is our Scotchman, but he hasn't come in kilts nor brought bagpipes with him,' said he to Mrs. Morris, who was seated on the famous settle which stood out from the fireplace, doing some embroidery work. She rose and greeted me. I had, of course, heard of her great beauty, and had seen her portrait in some of the reproductions of Rossetti's pictures, but I confess I felt rather awed as she stood up tall before me, draped in one simple white gown which fell from her shoulders down to her feet. She looked a veritable Astarte—a being, as I thought, who did not quite belong to our common mortal mould. After greeting me she resumed her embroidery and listened with amusement to Morris' playful chaff.
'It's lucky for us,' continued Morris, 'that Glasier is not a stickler for the ancient customs of his country; for in my young days we were told that Scotchmen ate nothing but porridge, drank nothing but whisky, and sang one another to sleep with the Psalms of David.'
He pursued this playful vein for a little, giving Mrs. Morris an exaggerated account of some of his experiences in Scotland of the 'wild ways of the Picts.' Mrs. Morris ​glanced at me occasionally, as if to assure me that she was not being taken in by his stories. 'He is quite naughty sometimes,' was her only remark. He then snowed us an old book he had just bought, containing a diary, cooking receipts, and domestic accounts of some Squire's lady of the sixteenth century, and read with amusing comments some of the items.
While listening to him I was scanning with great interest the furnishings of the room. I had observed on entering its large size, its five windows looking over the Thames, and the simplicity and beauty of its furnishings. I experienced, as every visitor I am sure must have done, a delightful sense of garden-like freshness and bloom in the room. Noticing my interest in the things about me, Morris briefly described some of them. The handsome canopied settle on which Mrs. Morris was sitting was, he said, one of the earliest productions of the firm of Morris & Company, and the highly decorated wardrobe at the end of the room with painted figures was painted by Burne-Jones, and was his wedding gift to Morris.
Jenny, the eldest daughter, now came in, and we were served with a cup of tea, after which Morris took me downstairs to the library to have a smoke and talk about League business before supper.
Well do I remember the joy I felt as I sat down with him in that incomparable room. Destitute of furniture, except the big plain table and a few chairs, the floor of bare boards without any carpet, and bookshelves all round the room laden with all manner of books, new and old, and great antique tomes on the lower row, the place seemed to me a perfect realisation of a poet's and craftsman's den. The table itself was a joy for ever: a bare, white polished board, upon which were spread in fine disarray books, manuscripts, designs, a large ink-bowl with quill pens, tobacco pipes many, a tobacco jar filled with his favourite Latakia, drawing instruments, engraved blocks, and other delightful things. It was the sheer ​antithesis of a housemaid's pride. Morris invited me to help myself to a pipe and tobacco, doing so himself by way of example. The pipes were of various kinds, cherrywood, briar, and clay; he himself preferred the briar.
So here I was with William Morris in the room where he had written so many of his famous poems, and worked out so many of his famous designs. How happy I was! I felt an enchantment in the place. Morris talked of the morrow's Conference, informing me of the most recent tactics of the dissentients to carry their parliamentary resolution. He spoke without anger, but with a sense of depression.
'For the life of me,' he said, 'I can't see what possible object they can have in all this business of theirs. If they succeed (as of course they won't, this time at any rate, for we are assured of a majority), then I and our side will leave the League: and what then? We have all the speakers that count, we have the Commonweal, and I have the money—more's the pity, maybe. They will have a few penniless branches, and no object or policy to justify their existence separate from the S.D.F.It is a sheer faction racket—just such as school-boys indulge in when they split into factions in order to fight each other for no rhyme or reason, save the love of the squabble; all of which is perhaps natural enough as a means of self-development on the part of school-boys, as doubtless Herbert Spencer has taken the pains somewhere in his books to explain; but it is rather disconcerting to find foolishness of this kind among grown-up and otherwise intelligent men, masquerading as service for the Socialist cause.'
He turned then to interest me in some of his books, and explained to me the history of the Dürer wood-engravings and other prints on the walls.
May Morris now arrived. I was greatly interested to meet her; I had heard so much about her beauty and her activities in the movement. She resembled her ​mother, I thought, more than her father in face, and was strikingly handsome. Her manner was quiet, and she was, I observed, inclined rather to ask questions or listen than to offer opinions of her own. She worked at a piece of embroidery as she sat with us.
Then came one or two friends, including Emery Walker, the well-known engraver, an intimate friend and secretary of the Hammersmith Branch of the League, Philip Webb, the architect, and Tarleton, a leading member of the branch, and we went into the dining-room for supper.
The dining-room—(the ceiling two floors high) lit up with large candles on brass or copper candlesticks (Morris used candles only in the house—he detested gaslight)—was magnificently grand in its glow of colour derived from the Morris Acanthus wall-paper, and a great gorgeous Persian carpet hung up like a canopy on one side of the room. Opposite, over the fireplace, was Rossetti's noble portrait of Mrs. Morris, and on one side of the large window crayon drawings by Rossetti of Jenny and May Morris. There were one or two other Rossetti crayon drawings on the wall. These, I think, were the only pictures in the room, and indeed there were few pictures on the walls, so far as I observed, anywhere in the house, other than the Durer and a few other engravings and sketches in the entrance and library, for Morris did not 'believe in' making houses look like art galleries. The decorations of a room should be part of their needful architectural furnishings only.
So we seated ourselves on either side of the huge grey oaken dining-table, with Morris at the head, who saw to it that we partook liberally of the feast, while he enticed us into his happy mood with amusing chat and stories, addressing one or other of us in turn, so as to share the conversation round. Mrs. Morris rarely spoke, but Morris constantly referred his remarks to her with gentle courtesy and affection.
​After supper Morris brought us back to the library, where we smoked and chatted till towards eleven o'clock, when the other guests departed. He sat with me about half an hour longer, then filling my hands with books to have something to read in my bedroom, he expressed his pleasure at my coming up to the Conference, and wished me a jolly night's rest.
The next morning—Whit-Sunday—I was wakened with the singing and trumpetings of steamer-loads of holiday seekers making for Kew Gardens, Hampton Court Palace, and Richmond, and the merry tumult of boating parties on the river. The sunshine was streaming across my bed and seemed laden with the festive din. This was my first Whit-Sunday experience in London, and I recall the impression of public joyousness in English life which the sound of this outside merriment made upon my Scottish mind. Morris himself was early astir, and came to see that I was all right and getting up. 'This is the morning of battle for us,' he said; 'miserable kind of battle though it be, it is imposed upon us, and we must not be late for the fray.'
Breakfast over, we were joined in the library by Walker, Tarleton, and several other comrades, delegates from the Hammersmith and neighbouring branches, and were soon, including May Morris, on our way, journeying by 'bus from the Broadway to Farringdon Road, where the headquarters of the League then were, and where the Conference was held. It is not my intention to give an account of the Conference proceedings, the details of which have passed from my memory, and, in any case, now possess no interest. It is enough to say that the discussion, or rather wrangling, continued the whole day from 10.30 in the morning till nearly 10 o'clock at night, with a break at lunch-time and tea-time. Ernest Radford was, I remember, chairman, and among those present was Belfort Bax.
Almost every delegate present put in one or more ​speeches. I cannot remember if Morris spoke in the debate, but when the parliamentarian resolution was eventually voted down about nine in the evening, he rose and made a deeply earnest appeal for unity and good-will all round. Mrs. Morris had expressed misgivings lest he should lose his temper at the Conference. He had promised her, however, that he would really behave himself and be a model 'good boy,' and he unquestionably kept his word—though, as he admitted, not without difficulty at times.
On our homeward journey he was in high spirits, partly as a reaction from the strain of the long day's wrangling and his self-repression, and partly because, as he said, 'the damned business was over at least for another year.' At supper table he requested May Morris and myself to bear testimony to Mrs. Morris that he had 'never once lost his temper or said a choleric word.' Mrs. Morris expressed herself as very glad of it.
Morris and the rest of our male selves sat up till midnight in the library, chatting over the events of the day and considering how to improve the propaganda work of the League. When the others had gone, Morris proposed that he should accompany me to my bedroom and read a bit of 'Huckleberry Finn' to me before going to sleep. 'It will get the nasty taste of to-day's squabbling out of our minds,' he said. Needless to say I welcomed the proposal gladly, not dreaming what a tempestuous experience it was going to bring upon me.
Closing the bedroom door, and seating himself by the large candle on the dressing-table, Morris began turning over the leaves of the book in order to select a chapter to begin with. Having fixed upon a page, he was about to start off reading when he said abruptly: 'By the way, I forgot to ask you about your visit to the New Gallery Exhibition yesterday afternoon. What did you think of the Burne-Jones' pictures?'
Now the fact was that in those days I knew very little ​about modern paintings: and of Burne-Jones' paintings I had only seen one or two photographic reproductions, and knew really nothing about his style or principles of art. As it happened, the only one of his pictures in the New Gallery which I had particularly noticed was his 'Sea Nymph'—a picture which, I think, exceeds any other of his works in its challenging unconventionality. The sea is depicted in quite an archaic fashion—as a child might do, by mere curved interlacing bands of green colour, without any attempt to represent the actual form of water or wave. So I said in a blundering kind of way that I had observed this picture, but hardly knew what to say about it. It seemed to me as if the artist was trying to imitate some very early style of art rather than nature itself.
Then the heavens burst open, and lightning and thunder fell upon me. Hardly had I completed my sentence than Morris was on his feet, storming words upon me that shook the room. His eyes flamed as with actual fire, his shaggy mane rose like a burning crest, his whiskers and moustache bristled out like pine-needles.
I was seated on the edge of the bed, and was too astounded at first to comprehend what he said, or what had aroused his extraordinary passion. But I soon realised that I had been guilty of a mortal offence in what I had said about Burne-Jones' picture, though whether the offence lay wholly, or chiefly, in my seeming disparagement of Burne-Jones, or, as is quite likely, in the display of what he conceived to be my own and the popular ignorance about art, I do not to this day know.
He poured forth an amazing torrent of invective against the whole age. 'Art forsooth!' he cried, 'where the hell is it? Where the hell are the people who know or care a damn about it? This infernal civilisation has no capacity to understand either nature or art. People have no eyes to see, no ears to hear. The only thing they understand is how to enslave their fellows or be enslaved by them ​grubbing a life lower than that of the brutes. Children and savages have better wits than civilised mankind to-day. Look at your West End art—the damnable architecture, the damnable furniture, and the detestable dress of men and women. Look at the damnable callosity of the rich and educated who swill themselves in the rottenness of their wealth in the face of the horrible want and misery of the poor: and the poor who not only suffer the misery and insult of it, but grovel before the ruffians who souse them in it. They haven't the sense or pluck of rabbits. But we must "think about environment!"—oh, must we! Damn environment! Don't think if the devil pulls me by the ears I'm going to hell with him without kicking his shins.'
In this strain he continued for I don't know how long, flashing his wrath in my face, and moving round the room like a caged lion. For a time I felt as though I had in some way merited his terrible outburst, but I remember recovering my wits and sitting back in the bed, saying to myself 'Well, be he ever so much a great man of genius, he is really misbehaving badly towards me as his guest. I simply won't mind him—let him blaze away.' But I believe he was for the time being oblivious of me except that I was one of mankind. He was really in a sort of 'prophecy' against the scarlet woman of civilisation, and although I had been unwittingly the cause of his frenzy, I was not the object of it. Eventually there was a tap at the bedroom door, and it was opened slightly from the outside, and a voice expostulated: 'Really, the whole house is awakened. What is the matter? Do speak more quietly and let us get to sleep.'
This interruption acted as an exorcism. Morris quietened down as suddenly as he had flared up. He lifted 'Huckleberry Finn,' which he had tossed on the bed in the course of his fulmination, and making a turn round the room, he offered me his hand in a most friendly manner, remarking simply: 'I have been going it a bit ​loudly—don't you think? I hope I have not upset you—I didn't mean to do that—and that you will have a sound sleep. Good night and good luck.'
Next morning he came again to waken me at seven o'clock, and was as cheery and charming as man could be. Later on in the drawing-room I prostrated myself before Mrs. Morris, pleading:
'Forgive him—I was really not the culprit, though it seems most unchivalrous on my part to say so.'
'Oh, I know it was not your fault, you don't need to tell me,' she said, and added half-reproachfully, looking at her husband: 'I knew when I heard him boasting last night of his good behaviour at the Conference that somebody would have to pay for it.' Morris looked a bit shamefaced, but affected not to acknowledge his delinquency, and appealed to me that we were merely having 'a little chat over art matters.' His daughter Jenny said 'Oh, you wicked, good father,' and put her arms round his neck.
And now observe the characteristic sequel. An excursion of the Hammersmith Branch was to take place that day to Box Hill. Morris had agreed to go; many of his personal friends were joining in the expedition, and he was set for one of the sides in a cricket match. On the previous evening he had explained about it to me, and had asked me to join the party; but as I had to be back in Scotland early on the Tuesday morning, and was bound to leave London by six in the evening at latest, I could not go. Whereupon he expressed his regret at having to leave me alone by myself, and invited me to make the freest use of his library and his writing material if I wished to do so, and alternatively offered me tickets for several Art Exhibitions in the town.
But he had decided to change his plans. On being reminded by his daughter May that it was time he was getting ready for the outing, he informed her that he was not going.
​'But you promised to go, and they are all expecting you,' she urged.
'Yes, my dear, but man, as you know, is a self-willed animal, and I have decided 'tis my duty no less than my pleasure to stay here and play the host properly to my guest, who has come all the way from a foreign country at my request and goes back to-night.'
And stay for my sake he did, and gave up the whole day to entertaining me in all manner of ways. He took me for a row upon the river, and on our return after lunch he sat with me in the garden—a long orchard glade with lawn, fruit trees, and flowers behind the house—telling me of the change that had taken place in fruit and vegetable cultivation from the olden days, and giving me many curious instances of the feasting habits in the monasteries. Afterwards he sat smoking with me in the library, showing many of his rare book treasures, drawing my attention to the pages of illumination and typography, and reading to me one of the chapters in manuscript of his forthcoming first volume of prose romances, 'The House of the Wolfings,' upon which he was then engaged. He then settled himself down to tell me a number of droll experiences in connection with the business side of his work, and stories of Bell Scott, Swinburne, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and other of his more notable friends. Two of these I particularly recall. One was of Sir John Millais, and was intended as a sly dig at my Scottish vanity (Morris always believed, or pretended to believe, that I was intensely patriotic as a Scotsman, and liked to tease me about Scotland). Lady Millais, he explained, was a Perthshire woman, and was, he said, somewhat of a strict Sabbatarian, and, he added slyly, 'much addicted to the economical virtues of your countrymen.' One Sunday Sir John was playing in the garden with the children, when he heard Lady Millais' voice from one of the windows call 'John, John!' 'What is it, my dear?' asked he. The reply came, 'If you will break the Sabbath, you might as well be doing something useful, ​and come in and paint.' Morris chuckled as he emphasised the words. The other story was of Holman Hunt, who spent several years out in Palestine getting local colour for his Scriptural paintings. Hunt, Morris said, knew the Arabic tongue well, but for reasons of personal safety pretended not to know it, in order to hear the Mussulmans talk freely among themselves. One day, as he was encamped by the Dead Sea, painting in the mountain landscape of his picture 'The Scapegoat,' a number of Arabs gathered round him and watched him paint with great surprise and curiosity—for painting, or the making of images of 'anything in the Heavens above or the Earth beneath,' is strictly forbidden in the Mohammedan religion. They could not at all understand the purpose of Hunt's sitting there for hours, painting bit by bit the mountains beyond, and offered each other all manner of extraordinary explanations of the artist's conduct. At last one of them, with an air of triumph, exclaimed 'I understand it, I understand it! He has discovered that there is gold in the rocks, and he is putting the rocks into that frame so that when he takes it to England he may extract the gold out of them!' This quaint explanation (which Morris added had perhaps more truth in it than they were aware of!) was acclaimed delightedly by the Arabs.
One of his stories about his business affairs concerned a former manager of the firm, Warington Taylor, who was, Morris said, a strangely silent and reserved man. Until this manager came Morris had never, so he said, understood whether the business was paying its way or not; but this man every year at Christmas time gave him a statement of accounts, which always included a sort of 'budget,' or of what Morris' own outlays during the next year ought to be, even to quite personal details—such as so much for wine, so much for books, for benevolence, and so on. Morris never knew whether the manager was at all inclined favourably towards Socialism, but when he died suddenly a curious thing came to light. Morris had to examine ​some of the papers left in the manager's private desk, and among them noticed the draft of an estimate which he (the manager) had sent for some proposed decorations in a church. Morris had always wondered why the decorations had never been ordered from his firm, especially as the Vicar of the church was a personal friend of his own, so he now scanned the estimate with some curiosity to see if there was any very obvious overcharge in it. What was his surprise to find in the estimate, underneath the items: 'To providing a silk and gold altar cloth, so much,' the proviso, written in the manager's own hand:
'Note.—In consideration of the fact that the above item is a wholly unnecessary and inexcusable extravagance at a time when thousands of poor people in this so-called Christian country are in want of food—additional charge to that set forth above, ten pounds.'
'That,' said Morris, 'at once explained our not getting the order; but I was more than delighted that the chap had done it. You see,' he added with a chuckle, 'I had succeeded in making the dear old chap something of a Socialist after all!'
In this way the afternoon passed, Morris bestowing his whole attention upon me. I felt deeply touched to think how generously eager he was to make happy in every way my remembrance of my visit. When eventually I had to leave for my train, he insisted on stuffing my pockets inside and out with cigars and nuts and fruits; he wanted to give me a flask of whisky or brandy 'in case of accidents,' and that I should accept the loan of a rug for my night journey. He walked with me down to the Broadway and saw me off at the underground station, loading me with magazines from the bookstall, and assuring me that my visit had been a joy to him.
Thus ended my first visit to Kelmscott House, and aglow with the delight of it I returned as happy as though I had been endowed with the richest estate in the land.