William Morris Part 7

It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper cla.s.ses, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men.... We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilised invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men--divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail.... And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture everything there except men.... And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only ... by a right understanding on the part of all cla.s.ses, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman." But Ruskin was altogether too much of an aristocrat, too much of an egoist, to root out cla.s.ses. We can hardly imagine him preaching as Morris finally came to preach a revolution which should make it impossible for him to condescend. He could devote seven thousand pounds of his own money to establis.h.i.+ng a St. George Society, but it would probably never have occurred to him to head a riot in Trafalgar Square.

When Morris, under the influence of old theories and new a.s.sociations, came to consider not only the desirability but the possibility of establis.h.i.+ng a social order in which men could work quite happily and art could get loose from handcuffs welded and locked by commercialism, it was a necessity of his temperament that he should turn his back on halfway methods and urge drastic reforms. His way was not the way of compromise, and he seriously believed that if "civilisation" could be swept out of the path by a revolution which should destroy all cla.s.s distinctions and all machinery and machine-made goods, which should do away with commercialism and strip the world to its bare bones, so that men could start afresh, all equal and all freed from the superfluities of life, there would grow up a charming communism in which kind hearts would take the place of coronets, and cheerful labour the place of hopeless toil. We find him writing in a private letter--madly, yet with the downright force that kindled where it struck--that he has "faith more than a grain of mustard seed in the future history of civilisation," that he now knows it to be doomed to destruction, and that it is a consolation and joy to him to think of barbarism once more flooding the world, "and real feelings and pa.s.sions, however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies." It was thus he thought, or felt, about the new field of labour upon which he was entering, and it is from this point of view that he must be defended against the slurs that have been cast at him as a "Capitalist-Socialist."

He did not ignore the ideal of renunciation which had tempted him in his youth, and which he again thought of in his middle age--though less tempted, perhaps. But he reasoned, logically enough, that for one man or a few men to divide his or their wealth with the poor would not advance the world by a furlong or a foot toward the state of things which he had at heart to bring about. It might raise the beneficiaries a little higher in the ranks--in other words, bring them a little closer to the dangerous middle-cla.s.s, from which came the worst of their troubles, and it might also have the effect of making them a trifle more content with existing conditions. Neither effect was desirable in his eyes. A divine discontent to be spread throughout all cla.s.ses was the end and aim of such Socialism as he accepted. Nothing could be done except through the antagonism of cla.s.ses, which seemed in itself to provide a remedy. In _News from Nowhere_, his best known Socialistic romance, the name of which was perhaps suggested by Kingsley's Utopian and anagrammatic _Erewhon_, he puts into the mouth of an old man who is himself a survival from the days of "cla.s.s slavery," a description of the imaginary change to an ideal Communism. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it is a.s.sumed, a federation of labour made it possible for the workmen or "slaves" to establish from time to time important strikes that would sometimes stop an industry altogether for a while, and to impose upon their "masters" other restrictions that seriously interfered with the systematic conduct of commerce. The resulting "bad times" reached a crisis in the year 1952, when the "Combined Workers" determined upon the bold step of demanding a practical reversal of cla.s.ses, by which they should have the management of the whole natural resources of the country, together with the machinery for using them. The upper cla.s.ses resisting, riots ensued, then the "Great Strike." "The railways did not run," the old man recalls; "the telegraph wires were unserved; flesh, fish, and green stuff brought to market was allowed to lie there still packed and peris.h.i.+ng; the thousands of middle-cla.s.s families, who were utterly dependent for the next meal on the workers, made frantic efforts through their more energetic members to cater for the needs of the day, and amongst those of them who could not throw off the fear of what was to follow, there was, I am told, a certain enjoyment of this unexpected picnic--a forecast of the days to come in which all labour grew pleasant." Out of all this came civil war, with destruction of wares and machinery and also the destruction of the spirit of commercialism. With the removal of the spur of compet.i.tion it is admitted that there was a temporary danger of making men dull by giving them too much time for thought or idle musing. How was this danger overcome? By a growing interest in art, to be sure. The people, all workmen now, and providing very simply for their simple needs, "no longer driven desperately to painful and terrible overwork," began to wish to make the work they had in hand as attractive as possible, and rudely and awkwardly to ornament the wares they produced. "Thus at last and by slow degrees," the old man concludes, "we got pleasure into our work; then we became conscious of that pleasure, and cultivated it, and took care that we had our fill of it, and then all was gained and we were happy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HONEYSUCKLE DESIGN FOR LINEN]

There is little here to charm the logically constructive mind, acquainted with human nature, and in the lectures setting forth in more detail and with more attempt at practical teaching the methods by which society could be enlightened and raised to his standard of excellence, Morris boldly invites the scorn of the political economist by the wholly visionary character of his pathetically "reasonable" views. Nevertheless, he was not without an instinct for distinguis.h.i.+ng social evils and suggesting right remedies. Strip his doctrines of their exaggerated conclusions from false premises, and it is possible to find in them the seeds of many reforms that have come about to the inestimable benefit of the modern world. In his lecture on _Useful Work versus Useless Toil_, the very t.i.tle of which is a flash of genius, he advocates the kind of education that is directed toward finding out what different people are fit for, and helping them along the road which they are inclined to take. He would have young people taught "such handicrafts as they had a turn for as a part of their education, the discipline of their minds and bodies; and adults would also have opportunities of learning in the same schools." He preaches the necessity of agreeable surroundings, claiming that science duly applied would get rid of the smoke, stench, and noise of factories, and that factories and buildings in which work is carried on should be made decent, convenient, and beautiful, while workers should be given opportunities of living in quiet country homes, in small towns, or in industrial colleges, instead of being obliged to "pig together" in close city quarters. Not one of these considerations is ignored by the organisations now endeavouring in the name of civilisation to raise the standard of the community. Manual training schools, free kindergartens, health protective a.s.sociations, model tenement societies, have all arisen to meet in their own ways the needs to which Morris was so keenly alive. It was not the word reform, however, but the word revolution, that he constantly reiterated, and declined to relinquish in favour of any milder term. His friend William Clarke has summed up in a single paragraph the substance of many conversations held with him on the subject of social progress. "Existing society is, he thinks, gradually, but with increasing momentum, disintegrating through its own rottenness. The capitalist system of production is breaking down fast and is compelled to exploit new regions in Africa and other parts, where, he thinks, its term will be short.

Economically, socially, morally, politically, religiously, civilisation is becoming bankrupt. Meanwhile it is for the Socialist to take advantage of this disintegration by spreading discontent, by preaching economic truths, and by any kind of demonstration which may hara.s.s the authorities and develop among the people an _esprit de corps_. By these means the people will, in some way or other, be ready to take up the industry of the world when the capitalist cla.s.s is no longer able to direct or control it."

The expression "in some way or other" very well indicates the essential vagueness underlying Morris's definite speech. He had no idea of the means by which the people could be educated to the a.s.sumption of unfamiliar control. The utmost that he could suggest was that they should be awakened to the beauty of life as he saw it in his dreams. This beauty he continually set before them in phrases as simple and as eloquent as he could make them. Nor did he s.h.i.+rk the responsibilities raised by his extreme point of view. Nothing testifies more truly to his fidelity of nature and devotion to his ideal than his readiness to put aside the pursuits he loved with his whole heart and take up activities detested by him for many years of that gifted, interesting life of his, in the hope of bringing about, for people whom he really cared for only in the ma.s.s, who did not understand him and whom he did not very well understand, an order of things which should in time, but not in his time, make them--so he thought--quite happy. The extent to which he renounced was not slight.

Now indeed was the time when his friends might justly lament that he was being kept labouring at what he could not do, with work all round that he could do so well. First he joined the Democratic Federation and was promptly put on its executive committee. We find him writing that it is naturally harder to understand the subject of Socialism in detail as he gets alongside of it, and that he often gets beaten in argument even when he knows he is right, which only drives him to more desperate attempts to justify his theories by the study of other people's arguments. While he was a member of the Federation (a definitely Socialist body at the time) he delivered a lecture at Oxford with the effect of rousing consternation in the University despite the fact that he had taken pains to inform the authorities of his position as an active Socialist. They did not understand the extent of his activity, and when he wound up an agreeable talk by frankly appealing to the undergraduates of the Russell Club, at whose invitation he was speaking, to join the Democratic Federation, the Master of University was brought to his feet to explain that nothing of the kind had been foreseen when Mr. Morris was asked to express there "his opinion on art under a democracy."

Besides his lecturing, which went on in London, or at Manchester, Leeds, Blackburn, Leicester, Glasgow, and anywhere else where a hopeful opportunity afforded, he was writing for the weekly paper of the Federation, the little sheet called _Justice_, and also writing pamphlets for distribution among the people. The measures urged in _Justice_ for immediate adoption as remedies for the evils of existing society were:

Free Compulsory Education for all cla.s.ses, together with the provision of at least one wholesome meal a day in each school.

Eight Hours or less to be the normal Working day in all trades.

c.u.mulative Taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding 300 a year.

State Appropriation of Railways, with or without compensation.

The Establishment of National Banks, which shall absorb all private inst.i.tutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit.

Rapid Extinction of the National Debt.

Nationalisation of the Land and organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on Cooperative principles.

The objects of the Federation were: "To unite the various a.s.sociations of Democrats and Workers throughout Great Britain and Ireland for the purpose of securing equal rights for all, and forming a permanent centre of organisation; to agitate for the ultimate adoption of the programme of the Federation; to aid all Social and political movements in the direction of these reforms." Morris believed himself to be in full sympathy with the fundamental principles of the Federation, and faithfully resented the a.s.sumption of a kindly intentioned critic who stated that his imperfect sympathy with them must in charity be supposed. To the implication that he cared only for art and not for the other side of the social questions he had been writing about, he responded: "Much as I love art and ornament, I value it chiefly as a token of the happiness of the people, and I would rather it were all swept away from the world than that the ma.s.s of the people should suffer oppression"; but he continued with the familiar challenge, opportunity to utter which was seldom lost, "At the same time, Sir, I will beg you earnestly to consider if my contention is not true, that genuine Art is always an expression of pleasure in Labour?" In explaining his point of view to the public before whom he placed his little collection of Socialist lectures, he expressed his conviction that all the ugliness and vulgarity of civilisation, which his own work had forced him to look upon with grief and pain are "but the outward expression of the innate moral baseness into which we are forced by our present form of society." The ethical and practical sides of the problem he was trying to face honestly, grew up in his mind as he dwelt upon its artistic side, and he made n.o.ble efforts to evolve schemes of practical expediency. In his reasonableness he went so far as to admit the possible usefulness of machinery in the new order toward which he was directing the attention of his followers; but he is swift to add, "for the consolation of the artists," that this usefulness will probably be but temporary; that a state of social order would lead, at first, perhaps, to a great development of machinery for really useful purposes, "because people will still be anxious about getting through the work necessary to holding society together"; but after a while they will find that there is not so much work to do as they expected and will have leisure to reconsider the whole subject, and then "if it seems to them that a certain industry would be carried on more pleasantly as regards the worker, and more effectually as regards the goods, by using hand-work rather than machinery they will certainly get rid of their machinery, because it will be possible for them to do so." "It isn't possible now," he adds; "we are not at liberty to do so; we are slaves to the monsters we have created. And I have a kind of hope that the very elaboration of machinery in a society whose purpose is not the multiplication of labour, as it now is, but the carrying on of a pleasant life, as it would be under social order,--that the elaboration of machinery, I say, will lead to the simplification of life, and so once more to the limitation of machinery."

Although the discussion of methods and external forms was entirely foreign to Morris's habit of mind, he was not averse to discussing the history of society. He was not much more an historian than he was an economist in the strict sense. He ignored, idealised, and blackened at will, always perfectly certain that he was setting forth the contrast between the past and the present in its true light; but his delight in the mediaeval past, which was the only past to which he gave much attention, lends to his pictures of it a charm most appealing to those who have not too prodding a prejudice in favour of historical accuracy. He is at his best when he breaks from his grapple with the subject of the commercial cla.s.ses and their development to evoke the visions which neither history nor economics could obscure in his mind. "Not seldom I please myself with trying to realise the face of mediaeval England," he says to the motley audience gathering at a street corner or in some dingy little hall or shed to listen to him, "the many chases and great woods, the stretches of common tillage and common pasture quite unenclosed; the rough husbandry of the tilled parts, the unimproved breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine; especially the latter, so lank and long and lathy, looking so strange to us; the strings of packhorses along the bridle-roads; of the scantiness of the wheel-roads, scarce any except those left by the Romans, and those made from monastery to monastery; the scarcity of bridges, and people using ferries instead, or fords where they could; the little towns, well bechurched, often walled; the villages just where they are now (except for those that have nothing but the church left to tell of them), but better and more populous; their churches, some big and handsome, some small and curious, but all crowded with altars and furniture, and gay with pictures and ornament; the many religious houses, with their glorious architecture; the beautiful manor-houses, some of them castles once, and survivals from an earlier period; some new and elegant; some out of all proportion small for the importance of their lords. How strange it would be to us if we could be landed in fourteenth-century England; unless we saw the crest of some familiar hill like that which yet bears upon it a symbol of an English tribe, and from which, looking down on the plain where Alfred was born, I once had many such ponderings, we should not know into what country of the world we were come: the name is left, scarce a thing else."

CHAPTER VIII.

PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM (_Continued_).

By the latter part of 1884 the political agitations and internal differences in the Federation, now called The Social Democratic Federation, became so violent as to force Morris to leave the a.s.sociation in which he had had no desire to be a leader, but had been unable to keep the position of acquiescent follower. In his connection with this and other public organisations, the underlying gentleness and real humility of his nature was clearly to be seen. He learned patience through his conflict with unsympathetic minds. From the weary experience of working in constant intercourse with men whose temper and practice and many of whose theories were directly antagonistic to his own, although identified with them in the public mind by a common responsibility, he learned to subdue those elements of his temperament that worked against the success of what he had most loyally at heart. From self-confidence, a critical habit, an overbearing positiveness of a.s.sertion, he pa.s.sed to comparative reticence, tolerance, even docility. To his equals it was painful to see ignorant men a.s.sign to him his task, but he never failed to comply instantly with their orders.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MERTON ABBEY WORKS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAs.h.i.+NG CLOTH AT THE MERTON ABBEY WORKS]

It could not, however, have been an education in which he could take conscious pleasure, and at this juncture he doubtless would have been happy indeed could he have gone quietly back to the weaving and dyeing and writing of poetry with which his new preoccupation had seriously interfered. His conscience, however, was too deeply involved to permit a desertion, which would, he said, be dastardly. The question now constantly in his mind was how he would have felt against the system under which he lived had he himself been poor. He was convinced that he would have found it unendurable. Therefore, with a longing glance at his chintz bleaching in the sunlight and pure air of Merton Abbey, he put his shoulder to the wheel again, and, gathering together a few of his sympathisers, inaugurated a new party, the Socialist League, with the famous little _Commonweal_ for its organ, a monthly paper now the joy of collectors on account of the beautiful headings of Walter Crane and the remarkable quality of the contributions by Morris himself. In this new society, for which he was primarily responsible, Morris found his work redoubled. He was editor of the _Commonweal_ as well as contributor to it. He continued his lecturing, often under the most depressing conditions, speaking to small and indifferent audiences in small and miserable quarters. At Hammersmith he inst.i.tuted a branch of the League in the room previously given up to his carpet-weaving, and there he gave Sunday evening addresses. On Sat.u.r.day afternoons and Sunday mornings he spoke at the outdoor meetings which were to be the insidious foes of his health, and which more than once brought him into personal notoriety of a disagreeable kind.

The first of these occasions was on the 21st of September, 1885, when a number of people were arrested for gathering together that Sunday morning at the corner of Dod Street and Burdett Road against orders from the authorities to the effect that meetings at that place--a favourite spot with open-air speakers--must be stopped. Morris, with other members of the League, was present in court when the prisoners were brought up, and joined in the hisses and cries of "Shame!" when one prisoner was sentenced to two months' hard labour and the others were fined. Morris was arrested, subjected to a little questioning from the magistrate, and dismissed. The following Sunday another meeting, comprising many thousands of people, was held on the forbidden corner; nothing occurred, and they dispersed victoriously. The next year a Sunday-morning meeting in a street off Edgeware Road was interfered with by the police, and Morris was summoned to the police court and fined a s.h.i.+lling and costs for the offence of obstructing the highway.

Out of these experiences resulted, we may very well imagine, the farce ent.i.tled: _The Tables Turned; or, Nupkins Awakened_, given at an entertainment in the Hall of the Socialist League, at Farringdon Road, on October 15, 1887. Copies of it are still in existence--sorry little pamphlets in blue wrappers, bearing no kins.h.i.+p to the aristocratic products of the Kelmscott Press so soon to follow, but extremely entertaining as showing Morris in his least conventional and most aggressive public mood. As the pamphlet is quite rare, a brief description of its contents is not, perhaps, superfluous, although its literary merit amounts to as little as possible considering its authors.h.i.+p. It opens with a scene in a court of justice, Justice Nupkins presiding, in which a Mr.

La-di-da is found guilty of swindling and of robbing the widow and the orphan. He is sentenced to imprisonment for the s.p.a.ce of one calendar month. Next Mary Pinch, a poor woman (the part was taken by Morris's daughter May), is accused of stealing three loaves of bread, and, after absurd and contradictory testimony by witnesses for the prosecution (constables and sergeants), is sentenced to eighteen months of hard labour. Next, John Freeman, a Socialist, is accused of conspiracy, sedition, and obstruction of the highway. The Archbishop of Canterbury (this role enacted by Morris), Lord Tennyson, and Professor Tyndall are called as witnesses and give testimony, the manner and speech of the renowned originals being somewhat rudely parodied. After contradictory evidence by these witnesses and the former ones, the prisoner is sentenced to six years' penal servitude with a fine of one hundred pounds, his offence having been an open-air speech advocating the principles of Socialism. As his sentence is p.r.o.nounced the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_ is heard, and a Socialist ensign enters with news that the Revolution has begun.

It is in the second part that the tables are turned upon Nupkins. The scene this time is laid in the fields near a country village, with a copse close by. The time is after the Revolution. Justice Nupkins is found skulking in the copse, half mad with fear at the reversal of social conditions, his past cruelty giving him small reason to hope for gentle treatment at the hands of the former "lower cla.s.ses," who are now running affairs to suit themselves. He meets Mary Pinch, who pities his deplorable aspect and invites him to her house, now a pleasant and prosperous home.

He cannot believe in the sincerity of her apparent kindness, and flees from her in a panic, only to meet other of his former victims who further alarm him by pretending to arrest him and give him a mock trial, during which he thinks he is to be sentenced to death. He learns at last that under the beautiful new order he is free to do what he pleases, and may dig potatoes and earn his own living by such tilling of the soil. The citizens dance about him singing the following words to the tune of the _Carmagnole_:

What's this that the days and the days have done?

Man's lords.h.i.+p over man hath gone.

How fares it, then, with high and low?

Equal on earth they thrive and grow.

Bright is the sun for everyone; Dance we, dance we the Carmagnole.

How deal ye, then, with pleasure and pain?

Alike we share and bear the twain.

And what's the craft whereby ye live?

Earth and man's work to all men give.

How crown ye excellence of worth?

With leave to serve all men on earth.

What gain that lords.h.i.+p's past and done?

World's wealth for all and everyone.

This somewhat childlike but not too bland revenge on the powers of the law met with an enthusiastic reception at the Hall of the Socialist League; Mr. Bernard Shaw, who was present, declaring that there had been no such successful "first night" within living memory.

The year 1887 was marked, however, by events much more serious than the acting of a little farce. On the 13th of November,--"b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday" it was called,--the efforts of the Government to check open-air speaking culminated in an organised riot on the part of the Socialists in alliance with the extreme Radicals. Sir Charles Warren had prohibited by proclamation the holding of any meeting in Trafalgar Square,--a meeting having been announced to take place there to protest against the Irish policy of the Government. Thereupon it was agreed by the Socialist League, the Social Democratic Federation, the Irish National League, and certain Radical clubs that their members should a.s.semble at various centres and march toward Trafalgar Square. Morris put himself at the head of the Clerkenwell contingent, first delivering a short speech mounted on a cart in company with Mrs. Besant and others. He declared that wherever it was attempted to put down free speech it was a bounden duty to resist the attempt by every possible means, and told his audience that he thought their business was to get to the Square by some means or other; that he intended to do his best to get there, whatever the consequences might be, and that they must press on like orderly people and good citizens. Thus pressing on, with flags flying and bands playing, they were met at the Bloomsbury end of St. Martin's Lane by the police, mounted and on foot, who charged in among them, striking right and left, and causing complete disorder in the ranks. The triumph of law and order over the various columns of the demonstrators was soon complete, and the outcome consisted of the arrest of three hundred men or more (many of whom were sent to prison and a few condemned to penal servitude) and the killing of three.

The first to die was Alfred Linnell, for whom a public funeral was given--great ma.s.ses of men marching in perfect and solemn order to Bow Cemetery, where he was buried, the service at the grave being read by the light of a lantern. Such an event would inevitably stir Morris to sympathetic rage, and the dirge written by him to be sung as poor Linnell was buried has an inflammatory sound despite the obvious effort at restraint:

We asked them for a life of toilsome earning, They bade us bide their leisure for our bread; We craved to speak to tell our woful learning, We came back speechless, bearing back our dead!

Thus time was spent. Sometimes Morris was heading processions "with the face of a Crusader," says Joseph Pennell, describing one occasion on which he led a crowd, "among the red flags, singing with all his might the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_"--into Westminster Abbey to attend the Sunday services.

Sometimes he was bailing out his friends who had been "run in" by the police. Sometimes he was tramping, whatever the weather, at the head of the workless workers of Hammersmith to interview the Guardians of the Poor. Sometimes he was delivering his lectures among woful hovels in tumbledown sheds to a score or so of people of whose comprehension he felt most doubtful. Always he was preaching "Education toward Revolution," but with an ever-increasing consciousness that a vast amount of education was needed before revolution could be effectively reforming. His imagination had formed great ideals and had pictured those ideals in triumphant practice, but his practical sense was sufficient to show him the futility of unintelligent action. He had spent much money, not in profit-sharing among his workmen (although this obtained to a certain extent in his business), but in bearing the various and heavy expenses imposed by the publication of the organs of Socialism, which he supported almost as largely by his purse as by his pen, and by a thousand other needs of the cause to which in 1882 he had also sacrificed the greater part of his valuable library. He had spent much time, which, to one so deeply interested in pursuits for which any one life is far too short, meant infinitely more than the expenditure of money or the relinquis.h.i.+ng of property that, after all, may be got back again. And he had worked against the grain with all sorts and conditions of companions, from whom he was as widely separated as the east is from the west--never more widely than when he was marching by their side toward a goal that neither could see clearly. He was now longing more and more to get back to his own life and away from a life so foreign. As he had said in the first flush of his enthusiasm, "Art must go under," he was now prepared "to see all organised Socialism run into the sand for a while." It is not surprising that he "somehow did not seem to care much" when the Socialist League became disintegrated and insolvent. He had done his best for it, but its strongest members had drifted away from it, the executive control had been gained by a group of Anarchists, and Morris had been by these deposed from the editors.h.i.+p of the _Commonweal_. Before the society reached its lowest depths he resigned, giving expression in the _Commonweal_ for the 15th of November, 1890, to his feeling in the form it then took toward the movement which so long had carried him out of his course and kept him in turbulent waters. This movement had then been going on for about seven years. Those concerned in it had made, he thought, "about as many mistakes as any other party in a similar s.p.a.ce of time." When he first joined it he hoped that some leaders would turn up among the workingmen who "would push aside all middle-cla.s.s help and become great historical figures." This hope he had pretty well relinquished. In the beginning there had been little said about anything save the great ideals of Socialism, but as the Socialist idea had become more and more impressed upon the epoch a somewhat vulgarised and partial realisation of these ideals had pressed upon the friends of the cause. They began to think of methods, and mostly of "methods of impatience," as Morris from his ripened and moderated point of view now designated them. "There are two tendencies in this matter of methods," he said; "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 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!_" The time was favourable, he thought, for preaching the simple principles of Socialism regardless of the policy of the pa.s.sing hour, nor was any more active work desirable. "I say, for us _to make Socialists_," he concluded, "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 was practically the end of militant Socialism for Morris. Together with a handful of his true followers and sympathisers he did organise or reorganise under very simple rules a little society named the Hammersmith Socialist Society, which took the place of the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League. The manifesto explained that the separation had been made because the members of the new society did not hold the Anarchistic views of the majority of the old society's members, and would be likely to waste in bickering time "which should be spent in attacking capitalism."

The business of the Hammersmith Society was to spread the principles of Socialism, the method so warmly recommended by Morris in his _Commonweal_ article. But it was obvious that his interest was no longer keen in even this pa.s.sive mode of advancing the cause for which he had laboured so long and, on the whole, so thanklessly. He set himself dutifully to work at writing the manifesto, but complained, "I would so much rather go on with my Saga work."

It cannot be said, however, that he was inconsistent. He had gone into militant Socialism as he went into everything, with a superabundant energy that must work itself off in activity. But there was more vehemence than narrowness in his partisans.h.i.+p. When his party forsook the principles for the sake of which he had joined it, he forsook the party. He learned of human nature much that was discouraging during his efforts to make many of his fellows work together in harmony, but he brought out of the fiery experience an unharmed ideal. And among the clas.h.i.+ng of creeds and the warring of minds he played the part of peacemaker to an extent remarkable in so impulsive a nature. "It seemed as though he wanted to have all his own way," says one of his acquaintances, "yet put him in the chair at a meeting and he was as patient as the mildest of us." His inmost belief was much the same at the end as at the beginning,--matured by study and tempered by practical failures, but holding to the fundamental idea that art is the great source of pleasure in human life as well as pleasure's best result, and must be made possible for everyone to practise with a free mind and a body unwearied by hopeless toil. The letter to the _Daily Chronicle_ of the 10th of November, 1893, on "Help for the Miners, the Deeper Meaning of the Struggle," sounds the familiar note as positively as ever, and contains all that is required to represent the creed of his later years. "I hold firmly to the opinion," he says in this letter, "that all worthy schools of art must be in the future, as they have been in the past, the outcome of the aspirations of the people towards the beauty and true pleasure of life. And, further, now that democracy is building up a new order, which is slowly emerging from the confusion of the commercial period, these aspirations of the people towards beauty can only be born from a condition of practical equality, of economical condition amongst the whole population. Lastly, I am so confident that this equality will be gained that I am prepared to accept, as a consequence of the process of that gain, the apparent disappearance of what art is now left us, because I am sure that that will be but a temporary loss, to be followed by a genuine new birth of art which will be the spontaneous expression of the pleasure of life innate in the whole people. This, I say, is the art which I look forward to, not as a vague dream, but as a practical certainty, founded on the general well-being of the people. It is true that the blossom of it I shall not see; therefore I may be excused if, in common with other artists, I try to express myself through the art of to-day, which seems to us to be only a survival of the organic art of the past, in which the people shared, whatever the other drawbacks of their condition might have been.... Yet if we shall not (those of us who are as old as I am) see the New Art, the expression of the general pleasure of life, we are even now seeing the seed of it beginning to germinate. For if genuine art be impossible without the help of the useful cla.s.ses, how can these turn their attention to it if they are living amidst sordid cares which press upon them day in, day out? The first step, therefore, towards the new birth of art must be a definite rise in the condition of the workers; their livelihood must (to say the least of it) be less n.i.g.g.ardly and less precarious, and their hours of labour shorter; and this improvement must be a general one and confirmed against the chances of the market by legislation. But, again, this change for the better can only be realised by the efforts of the workers themselves. 'By us, and not for us,' must be their motto.... What these staunch miners have been doing in the face of such tremendous odds other workmen can and will do; and when life is easier and fuller of pleasure people will have time to look around them and find out what they desire in the matter of art, and will also have time to compa.s.s their desires."

Just why Morris with his extreme independence stopped short of Anarchism is difficult to see unless it be attributed to an instinct for order inherited from the st.u.r.dy stock to which he belonged. The necessity of a public rule of action was always, however, quite clear to him. He contended that you have a right to do as you like so long as you do not interfere with your neighbour's right to do as he likes, a contention which not even a fairly conservative mind finds very difficult to uphold: he was not willing to admit the right of an individual to act "unsocially." Indeed all the charm of his pictures of the ideal life derives from the atmosphere of loving-kindness and mutual helpfulness with which he surrounds them. The Golden Rule was always in his mind as he built up in his imagination his Paradise on earth. He possessed the optimism of the kind-hearted, the faith in his fellow men that made him sure of their right acting could they only start afresh with a field clear of injury and abuse. He never dreamed in all his dreaming that these would again grow up and destroy the beautiful fabric of his new Society, so bright and unspotted in his mind. Of course there would be a social conscience "which, being social, is common to every man." Without that there could be no society; and "Man without society is not only impossible but inconceivable." Thus he argued and thus he believed. His militant Socialism had, while it lasted, a very dangerous side. His Socialist "principles" are easily torn to ribbons by the political economist in possession of facts showing the increasing prosperity of the working cla.s.ses and their increasing interest under existing conditions in the arts and in education; but regarding his views merely as representing one aspect of his impressive personality, it is easy to find them attractive.

To quote what the _Pall Mall Gazette_ said of the Sunday evenings at the Hammersmith Hall, "They are patches of bright colour in the great drab, dreary, dull, and dirty world." They bring with them such thoughts as Arnold had of the repose that has fled "for ever the course of the river of Time." The spirit breathed through them in strong contrast to the spirit of many of his co-workers, enn.o.bles all efforts toward true reform, diffuses the love of humanity among a cold people, and makes for the innocent and exquisite happiness which our human nature is so apt paradoxically to deny us. In Morris's world we should all be very happy if we were like Morris. He was not very happy in our world, yet perhaps he managed to get out of it as much of the joy of doing as it can be made to yield to any one man. His Socialism, from one point of view, was certainly a tremendous failure, but no other side of his life visible to the public at large showed so plainly his moral virtues, his generosity, his sincerity, his power of self-sacrifice, his effort toward self-control. It was significant that when, with a last rally of his forces to active work for the cause, he joined in a concerted effort to unite all Socialists into a single party, he was chosen as the best man for the purpose, all the societies having "a deep regard and respect for him." It is even more significant that his own employees in his large business also esteemed him highly, feeling the sincerity with which he tried to make his practices accord with his theories. If his business was a successful one it was not because he tried to get from his workmen the utmost he could claim in time and labour. The eight-hour working-day was in practice in the Merton factory, and the wages paid were the highest known in the trade. He was free from the self-complacency that gives to justice the name of charity, and he was not distinguished for civility toward the people under his direction, but he was, they said in their emphatic and expressive vernacular, "the sort of bloke you always could depend upon."