William Morris Part 9

"Apart from what was yet alive in him of mediaeval Communist tradition, the spirit of a.s.sociation, which amongst other things produced the Gilds, and which was strong in the mediaeval Catholic Church itself, other influences were at work to make him take up his parable against the new spirit of his age. The action of the period of transition from mediaeval to commercial society, with all its brutalities, was before his eyes; and though he was not alone in his time in condemning the injustice and cruelty of the revolution which destroyed the peasant life of England and turned it into a grazing farm for the moneyed gentry; creating withal at one stroke the propertyless wage-earner and the masterless vagrant (hodie 'pauper'), yet he saw deeper into its root-causes than many other men of his own day, and left us little to add to his views on this point except a reasonable hope that those 'causes' will yield to a better form of society before long.

"Moreover the spirit of the Renaissance, itself the intellectual side of the very movement which he strove against, was strong in him, and doubtless helped to create his Utopia by means of the contrast which it put before his eyes of the ideal free nations of the ancients, and the sordid welter of the struggle for power in the days of dying feudalism, of which he himself was a witness. This Renaissance enthusiasm has supplanted in him the chivalry feeling of the age just pa.s.sing away. To him war is no longer a delight of the well-born, but rather an ugly necessity to be carried on, if so it must be, by ugly means. Hunting and hawking are no longer the choice pleasures of knight and lady, but are jeered at by him as foolish and unreasonable pieces of butchery; his pleasures are in the main the reasonable ones of learning and music. With all this, his imaginations of the past he must needs read into his ideal vision, together with his own experiences of his time and people. Not only are there bond slaves and a king, and priests almost adored, and cruel punishments for the breach of marriage contract, in that happy island, but there is throughout an atmosphere of asceticism which has a curiously blended savour of Cato the Censor and a mediaeval monk.

"On the subject of war, on capital punishment, the responsibility to the public of kings and other official personages, and such-like matters, More speaks words that would not be out of place in the mouth of an eighteenth-century Jacobin, and at first sight this seems rather to show sympathy with what is now mere Whigism than with Communism; but it must be remembered that opinions which have become (in words) the mere commonplace of ordinary bourgeoise politicians were then looked on as a piece of startlingly new and advanced thought, and do not put him on the same plane with the mere radical life of the last generation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Study of Mrs. Morris_

_Made by Rossetti for pictures called "The Day Dream"_]

"In More, then, are met together the man naturally sympathetic with the Communistic side of mediaeval society, the protestor against the ugly brutality of the earliest period of commercialism, the enthusiast of the Renaissance, ever looking toward his idealised ancient society as the type and example of all really intelligent human life; the man tinged with the asceticism at once of the cla.s.sical philosopher and of the monk, an asceticism, indeed, which he puts forward not so much as a duty but rather as a kind of stern adornment of life. These are, we may say, the moods of the man who created _Utopia_ for us; and all are tempered and harmonised by a sensitive clearness and delicate beauty of style, which make the book a living work of art.

"But lastly, we Socialists cannot forget that these qualities and excellences meet to produce a steady expression of the longing for a society of equality of condition; a society in which the individual man can scarcely conceive of his existence apart from the commonwealth of which he forms a portion. This, which is the essence of his book, is the essence also of the struggle in which we are engaged. Though, doubtless, it was the pressure of circ.u.mstances in his own days that made More what he was, yet that pressure forced him to give us, not a vision of the triumph of the new-born capitalistic society, the element in which lived the new learning and the freedom of thought of his epoch, but a picture (his own indeed, not ours) of the real New Birth which many men before him had desired; and which now indeed we may well hope is drawing near to realisation, though after such a long series of events which at the time of their happening seemed to nullify his hopes completely."[1]

Morris's own hope was never completely nullified; nor was he ever indifferent to the questions which for nearly a decade had absorbed his energy. But there was to be little more writing for the sake of Socialism, save as some public incident called out a public letter. What he had done covered a wide field. Beside the works already mentioned he had collaborated with Mr. E. Belfort Bax in a history of the growth and outcome of Socialism, first published in the _Commonweal_ under the t.i.tle of _Socialism from the Root Up_, had written a series of poems called _Chants for Socialists_, and a series of lectures for "the cause" later published as _Signs of Change_, and had produced numerous short addresses to be scattered abroad in the form of penny leaflets that must have been typographical eyesores to him even before the rise of his enthusiasm for typography of the finer sort. In addition his bibliographer has to take into account any number of ephemeral contributions to the press and "forewords" as he liked to call them, to the works of others, a feature rarely present in his own books. In the spring of 1890 he wrote the romance ent.i.tled, _The Story of the Glittering Plain_ for the _English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine_. When it was brought out in book form the following year, it was printed at his own press.

CHAPTER X.

THE KELMSCOTT PRESS.

Although Morris turned with what seemed a sudden inspiration to the study of typography, it was, as we have already seen, no less than his other occupations a direct outcome of his early tastes. As long before as 1866 he had planned a folio edition of _The Earthly Paradise_ with woodcut ill.u.s.trations to be designed by Burne-Jones, and printed in a more or less mediaeval fas.h.i.+on. Burne-Jones made a large number of drawings for the projected edition, and some thirty-five of those intended for the story of Cupid and Psyche were cut on wood by Morris himself. Specimen pages were set up, but the result was not technically satisfying and the idea was allowed to drop. Later, as we have seen, he had in mind an ill.u.s.trated and sumptuous edition of _Love is Enough_, which also came to nothing, although a number of marginal decorations were drawn and engraved for it.

After that, however, he apparently had been content to have his books printed in the usual way on machine-made paper with the modern effeminate type, without further remonstrance than emphatic denunciation of modern methods in printing as in other handicrafts. About 1888 or 1889, his Hammersmith neighbour, Mr. Emery Walker, whose love of fine printing was combined with practical knowledge of methods and processes, awakened in him a desire for conquest in this field also. He began again collecting mediaeval books, this time with the purpose of studying their type and form. Among his acquisitions were a copy of Leonard of Arezzo's _History of Florence_, printed by Jacobus Rubens in 1476, in a Roman type, and a copy of Jensen's _Pliny_ of the same year. Parts of these books Morris had enlarged by the hated process of photography, which in this case aided and abetted him to some purpose. He could thus study the individual letters and master the underlying principles of their design. He then proceeded to design a fount of type for himself with the aim of producing letters fine and generous in form, solid in line, without "preposterous thicks and thins," and not compressed laterally, "as all later type has grown to be owing to commercial exigencies." After he had drawn his letters on a large scale he had them reduced by photography to the working size and revised them carefully before submitting them to the typecutter. How minute was his attention to detail is shown in the little reproduction of one of his corrected letters with the accompanying notes. This first type of his, having been founded on the old Roman letters, is of course Roman in character and is very clear and beautiful in form. The strong broad letters designed on "something like a square" make easy reading, and there is nothing about the appearance of the attractive page to suggest archaism. The fount, consisting of eighty-one designs including stops, figures, and tied letters, was completed about the beginning of 1891, and on the 12th of January in that year, a cottage was taken at number 16 Upper Mall, near the Kelmscott House, a compositor and a pressman were engaged, and the Kelmscott Press began its career. The new type, which Morris called the "regenerate" or "Jenson-Morris" type, received its formal name, "Golden type," from Caxton's _Golden Legend_, which Morris had intended to reprint as the first work of the Press, and which was undertaken as soon as _The Glittering Plain_ was out of the way. Caxton's first edition of 1483 was borrowed from the Cambridge University Library for the purpose and transcribed for the Press by the daughter of Morris's old friend and publisher, F. S. Ellis. No paper in the market was good enough for the great venture, and Morris took down to Mr. Batchelor at Little Chart a model dating back to the fifteenth century and had especially designed from it an unbleached linen paper, thin and tough, and somewhat transparent, made on wire moulds woven by hand for the sake of the slight irregularities thus caused in the texture, and "pleasing not only to the eye, but to the hand also; having something of the clean crisp quality of a new bank-note." For the three different sizes Morris designed three watermarks, an apple, a daisy, and a perch with a spray in its mouth. To print his strong type upon this handmade paper it was necessary to dampen the latter and use a hand-press, the ink being applied by pelt b.a.l.l.s, insuring an equable covering of the surface of the type and a rich black impression. The quality of the ink was naturally of great importance and Morris yearned to manufacture his own, but for the time contented himself with some that he procured from Hanover and with which he produced excellent results. One of his happiest convictions in regard to his materials was that heavy paper was entirely unfit for small books.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KELMSCOTT TYPES]

Concerning s.p.a.cing and the placing of the matter on the page he had p.r.o.nounced theories derived from his study of ancient books, but directed by his own sound taste. He held that there should be no more white s.p.a.ce between the words than just clearly cuts them off from one another, and that "leads" (strips of metal used to increase the s.p.a.ce between the lines of type) should be sparingly employed. The two pages of a book, facing each other as it is opened, should be considered a unit, the edge of the margin that is bound in should be the smallest of the four edges, the top should be somewhat wider, and the front edge wider still, and the tail widest of all. The respective measurements of the most important of the Kelmscott books are, one inch for the inner margin, one and three-eighths inches for the head margin, two and three-quarter inches for the fore edge, and four inches for the tail. "I go so far as to say,"

wrote Morris, "that any book in which the page is properly put on the paper is tolerable to look at, however poor the type may be (always so long as there is no 'ornament' which may spoil the whole thing), whereas any book in which the page is wrongly set on the paper is intolerable to look at, however good the type and ornaments may be."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAGE FROM KELMSCOTT "CHAUCER." ILl.u.s.tRATION BY BURNE-JONES.

BORDER AND INITIAL LETTER BY MORRIS]

_The Golden Legend_, with its ornamented borders, its handsome initials, its woodcuts, and its twelve hundred and eighty-six pages, kept the one press busy until the middle of September, 1892. Before it was completed Morris had designed another fount of type greatly more pleasing to him than the first. This was called the Troy type from Caxton's _Historyes of Troye_, the first book to be issued in its larger size, and was the outcome of careful study of the beautiful types of Peter Schoeffer of Mainz, Gunther Zainer of Augsburg, and Anthony Koburger of Nuremberg. It was Gothic in character, but Morris strove to redeem it from the charge of unreadableness by using the short form of the small _s_, by diminis.h.i.+ng the number of tied letters, and abolis.h.i.+ng the abbreviations to be found in mediaeval books. How far he succeeded is a disputed question, certainly not so far as to make it as easy reading for modern eyes as the Golden type. As time went on, however, the use of the Golden type at the Kelmscott Press became less and less frequent, giving place in the case of most of the more important books to either the Troy type or the Chaucer type, the latter being similar to the former, save that it is Great Pica instead of Primer size.

Morris's success in the mechanical application of his theories was surprising, or would have been surprising had he not constantly proven his genius for success. Mr. De Vinne quotes a prominent American typefounder as declaring after a close scrutiny of his cuts of type that he had triumphantly pa.s.sed the pitfalls that beset all tyros and had made types that in lining, fitting, and adjustment show the skill of the expert. "A printer of the old school may dislike many of his mannerisms of composition and make-up," adds Mr. De Vinne, "but he will cheerfully admit that his types and decorations and initials are in admirable accord: that the evenness of colour he maintains on his rough paper is remarkable, and that his registry of black with red is unexceptionable. No one can examine a book made by Morris without the conviction that it shows the hand of a master."

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tLE-PAGE OF THE KELMSCOTT "CHAUCER"]

Upon the artistic side it was natural that he should excel. His long practice in and love of design, his close study of the best models, and his exacting taste were promising of extraordinary results. None the less there is perhaps more room for criticism of his book decoration than of his plain bookmaking. He was convinced, as one would expect him to be, that modern methods of ill.u.s.trating and decorating a book were entirely wrong, and he argued with indisputable logic for the unity of impression to be gained from ornaments and pictures forming part of the page, in other words, being made in line as readily printed as the type itself and corresponding to it in size and degree of blackness. He argued that the ornament to be ornament must submit to certain limitations and become "architectural," and also that it should be used with exuberance or restraint according to the matter of the book decorated. Thus "a work on differential calculus," he says, "a medical work, a dictionary, a collection of a statesman's speeches, or a treatise on manures, such books, though they might be handsomely and well printed, would scarcely receive ornament with the same exuberance as a volume of lyrical poems, or a standard cla.s.sic, or such like. A work on Art, I think, bears less of ornament than any other kind of book (_non bis in idem_ is a good motto); again, a book that _must_ have _ill.u.s.trations_, more or less utilitarian, should, I think, have no actual _ornament_ at all, because the ornament and the ill.u.s.tration must almost certainly fight." He designed all his ornaments with his own hand, from the minute leaves and flowers which took the place of periods on his page, to the full-page borders, t.i.tles, and elaborate initials. He drew with a brush, on a sheet of paper from the Press marked with ruled lines, showing the exact position to be occupied by the design. "It was most usual during the last few years of his life,"

says Mr. Vallance, "to find him thus engaged, with his Indian ink and Chinese white in little saucers before him upon the table, its boards bare of any cloth covering, but littered with books and papers and sheets of MS. He did not place any value on the original drawings, regarding them as just temporary instruments, only fit, as soon as engraved, to be thrown away." Time and trouble counted for nothing with him in gaining the desired result. But though his ornament was always handsome, and occasionally exquisite, he not infrequently overloaded his page with it, and--preaching vigorously the necessity of restraint--allowed his fancy to lead him into garrulous profusion. Despite his mediaeval proclivities, his designs for the borders of his pages are intensely modern. Compare them with the early books by which they were inspired, and their flowing elaboration, so free from unexpectedness, so impersonal, so inexpressive, suggests the fatal defect of all imitative work and fails in distinction.

But he was individual enough in temper if not in execution, and he brooked no conventional restriction that interfered with his doing what pleased him. For example, the notion of making the border ornaments agree in spirit with the subject matter of the page was not to be entertained for a moment when he had in mind a fine design of grapes hanging ripe from their vines and a page of Chaucer's description of April to adorn.

During the life of the Kelmscott Press, a period of some half dozen years, Morris made six hundred and forty-four designs. The ill.u.s.trations proper, all of them woodcuts harmonising in their strong black line with the ornaments and type, were made, with few exceptions, by Burne-Jones. His designs were nearly always drawn in pencil, a medium in which his most characteristic effects were obtained. They were then redrawn in ink by another hand, revised by Burne-Jones, and finally transferred to the block again by that useful Cinderella of the Kelmscott Press, photography. It is obvious that the Kelmscott books, whatever fault may be found with them, could not be other than remarkable creations with Morris and Burne-Jones uniting their gifts to make each of them such a picture-book as Morris declared at the height of his ardour was "one of the very worthiest things toward the production of which reasonable men should strive."

The list of works selected to be issued from the Press is interesting, indicating as it does a line of taste somewhat narrow and tangential to the popular taste of the time. Before the three volumes of _The Golden Legend_ ("the Interminable" it was called) were out of his hands, Morris had bought a second large press and had engaged more workmen with an idea in mind of printing all his own works beginning with _Sigurd the Volsung_.

He had already, during 1891, printed in addition to _The Glittering Plain_, a volume of his collected verse ent.i.tled _Poems by the Way_, the final long poem of which, _Goldilocks and Goldilocks_, he wrote on the spur of the moment, after the book was set up in type, to "plump it out a bit" as it seemed rather scant. During the following year, before the appearance of _The Golden Legend_, were issued a volume of poems by Wilfrid Blunt, who was one of his personal friends; the chapter from Ruskin's _Stones of Venice_ on "The Nature of the Gothic," with which he had such early and such close a.s.sociations, and two more of his own works, _The Defence of Guenevere_ and _The Dream of John Ball_. In the case of the four books written by himself he issued in addition to the paper copies a few on vellum. All these early books were small quartos and bound in vellum covers. Immediately following _The Golden Legend_ came the _Historyes of Troye_, two volumes in the new type, Mackail's _Biblia Innocentium_, and Caxton's _Reynarde the Foxe_ in large quarto size and printed in the Troy type. The year 1893 began with a comparatively modern book, Shakespeare's _Poems_, followed in rapid succession by Caxton's translation of _The Order of Chivalry_, in one volume with _The Ordination of Knighthood_, translated by Morris himself from a twelfth-century French poem; Cavendish's _Life of Cardinal Wolsey_; Caxton's history of G.o.defrey of Boloyne; Ralph Robinson's translation of Sir Thomas More's _Utopia_; Tennyson's _Maud_; a lecture by Morris on _Gothic Architecture_, forty-five copies of which he printed on vellum; and Lady Wilde's translation of _Sidonia the Sorceress_ from the German of William Meinhold, a book for which both Morris and Rossetti had a positive pa.s.sion, Morris considering it without a rival of its kind, and an almost faultless reproduction of the life of the past. The year ended with two volumes of Rossetti's _Ballads and Narrative Poems_, and _The Tale of King Florus and Fair Jehane_, translated by Morris from the French of a little volume that forty years before had served to introduce him to mediaeval French romance and had been treasured by him ever since.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SMALLER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LARGER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRAWING BY MORRIS OF THE LETTER "h" FOR KELMSCOTT TYPE, WITH NOTES AND CORRECTIONS]

"After this continuous torrent of production," says Mr. Mackail, "the Press for a time slackened off a little," but the output in 1894 consisted of ten books as against the eleven of the previous year. The first was a large quarto edition of _The Glittering Plain_, printed this time in the Troy type and ill.u.s.trated with twenty-three pictures by Walter Crane. Next came another little volume of mediaeval romance, the story of _Amis and Amile_, translated in a day and a quarter; and after this, Keats's _Poems_.

In July of the same year the bust of Keats, executed by the American sculptor, Miss Anne Whitney, was unveiled in the Parish Church of Hampstead, the first memorial to Keats on English ground. The scheme for such a memorial had been promoted in America, Lowell being one of the earliest to encourage it, and a little notice of the ceremony was printed at the Kelmscott Press with the card of invitation. Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_ followed _Keats_ in a large quarto edition. Next came the third volume of the French romances containing _The Tale of the Emperor Constans_ and _The History of Oversea_. At this point Morris returned again to the printing of his own works, and the next book to be issued from the Press was _The Wood beyond the World_, with a lovely frontispiece by Burne-Jones representing "the Maid," the heroine of the romance, and one of the most charming of the visionary women created by Morris. _The Book of Wisdom and Lies_, a Georgian story-book of the eighteenth century, written by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, and translated by Oliver Wardrop, was the next stranger to come from the Press, and after it was issued the first of a set of Sh.e.l.ley's _Poems_. A rhymed version of _The Penitential Psalms_ found in a ma.n.u.script of _The Hours of Our Lady_, written in the fifteenth century, followed it, and _The Epistola de Contemptu Mundi_, a letter in Italian by Savonarola, the autograph original of which belonged to Mr. Fairfax Murray, completed the list of this prolific year. The year 1895 produced only five volumes, the first of them the _Tale of Beowulf_, which Morris with characteristic daring had translated into verse by the aid of a prose translation made for him by Mr. A. J. Wyatt. Not himself an Anglo-Saxon scholar, Morris was unable to give such a rendering of this chief epic of the Germanic races as would appeal to the scholarly mind, and his zeal for literal translation led him to employ a phraseology nothing short of outlandish. At the end of the book he printed a list of "words not commonly used now," but his constructions were even more obstructive than his uncommon words. In the following pa.s.sage, for example, which opens the section describing the coming of Beowulf to the land of the Danes, only the word "nithing" is defined in the index, yet certainly the average reader may be expected to pause for the meaning:

So care that was time-long the kinsman of Healfdene Still seethed without ceasing, nor might the wise warrior Wend otherwhere woe, for o'er strong was the strife All loathly so longsome late laid on the people, Need-wrack and grim nithing, of night-bales the greatest.

Morris himself found his interest wane before the work was completed, but he made a handsome quarto volume of it, with fine marginal decorations, and an exceptionally well-designed t.i.tle-page. A reprint of _Syr Percyvelle of Gales_ after the edition printed by J. O. Halliwell from the MS. in the library of Lincoln Cathedral, a large quarto edition of _The Life and Death of Jason_; two 16mo volumes of a new romance ent.i.tled, _Child Christopher and Goldilands the Fair_; and Rossetti's _Hand and Soul_, reprinted from the _Germ_, brought the Press to its great year 1896. This year was to see the completion of the folio _Chaucer_, which since early in 1892 had been in preparation, and had filled the heart of Morris with anxiety, antic.i.p.ation, and joy. Before it came from the press three other books were issued. Herrick's _Poems_ came first. Then a selection of thirteen poems from Coleridge, "a muddle-brained metaphysician, who by some strange freak of fortune turned out a few real poems amongst the dreary flood of inanity which was his wont!"

The poems chosen were, _Christabel_, _Kubla Khan_, _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_, _Love_, _A Fragment of a s.e.xton's Tale_, _The Ballad of the Dark Ladie_, _Names_, _Youth and Age_, _The Improvisatore_, _Work without Hope_, _The Garden of Boccaccio_, _The Knight's Tomb_, and _Alice du Clos_. The first four were the only ones, however, concerning which Morris would own to feeling any interest. The Coleridge volume was followed by the large quarto edition of Morris's latest romance, _The Well at the World's End_ in two volumes, and then appeared the _Chaucer_, the mere printing of which had occupied a year and nine months. The first two copies were brought home from the binders on the second of June, in a season of "lots of sun" and plentiful apple-blossoms, during which Morris was beginning to realise that the end of his delight in seasons and in books was fast approaching.

Mr. Ellis has declared the Kelmscott _Chaucer_ to be, "for typography, ornament, and ill.u.s.tration combined, the grandest book that has been issued from the press since the invention of typography." Morris lavished upon it the utmost wealth of his invention. The drawing of the t.i.tle-page alone occupied a fortnight, and the splendid initial letters were each an elaborate work of art. The ornament indeed was too profuse to be wholly satisfactory, especially as much of it was repeated; nevertheless, the book was one of great magnificence and the glee with which Morris beheld it is not to be wondered at. The Chaucer type had been specially designed for it, and Burne-Jones had made for it eighty-seven drawings, while Morris himself designed for it the white pigskin binding with silver clasps, executed at the Doves Bindery for those purchasers who desired their elaborate and costly volume in a more suitable garb than the ordinary half holland covers which gave it the appearance of a silken garment under a calico ap.r.o.n.

During the remainder of the year 1896 the Press issued the first volumes of the Kelmscott edition of _The Earthly Paradise_, a volume of Latin poems (_Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis_), the first Kelmscott book to be printed in three colours, the quotation heading each stanza being in red, the initial letter in pale blue, and the remaining text in black: _The Floure and the Leafe_ and _The Shepherde's Calender_. Before _The Shepherde's Calender_ reached its completion, however, Morris was dead, and the subsequent work of the Press was merely the clearing up of a few books already advertised. The first of these to appear was the prose romance by Morris ent.i.tled _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_: this was issued on the first day of April, 1897, with borders and ornaments designed entirely by Morris save for a couple of initial words completed from his unfinished designs by R. Catterson-Smith. To this year belong also the two trial pages made for the intended folio edition of _Froissart_, the heraldic borders of which far surpa.s.s any of the _Chaucer_ ornaments, and the two old English romances, _Sire Degravaunt_ and _Syr Ysambrace_. In 1898 came a large quarto volume of German woodcuts, and three more works by Morris, a small folio edition of _Sigurd the Volsung_, which was to have been a large folio with twenty-five woodcuts by Burne-Jones; _The Sundering Flood_, the last romance written by Morris, and a large quarto edition of _Love is Enough_. These were followed by a "Note" written by Morris himself on his aims in starting the Kelmscott Press, accompanied with facts concerning the Press, and an annotated list of all the books there printed, compiled by Mr. S. C.

c.o.c.kerell, who, since July, 1894, had been secretary to the Press. This was the end.[2]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Specimen Page from the Kelmscott "Froissart"_

(_Projected Edition_)]

Although Morris not only neglected commercial considerations in printing his books, lavis.h.i.+ng their price many times over in valuable time and labour and the actual expenditure of money to secure some inconspicuous detail; but defied commercial methods openly in the character of his type, the quality of his materials, and the slowness of his processes, the Kelmscott Press testified, as most of his enterprises did testify, to the practical worth of his ideals. Quite content to make just enough by his books to continue printing them in the most conscientious and desirable way he knew, he gradually obtained from them a considerable profit. The Press had early been moved to quarters larger than the first occupied by it, and three presses were kept busy. By the end of 1892 Morris had become his own publisher, and after that time all the Kelmscott books were published by him except in cases of special arrangement. A few copies, usually less than a dozen, of nearly all the books were printed on vellum and sold at a proportionately higher price than the paper copies. The volumes were bound either in vellum or half holland, these temporary and unsatisfactory covers probably having been chosen on account of the strength and slow-drying qualities of the ink used, a note to the prospectus of the _Chaucer_ stating that the book would not be fit for ordinary full binding with the usual pressure for at least a year after its issue. The issue prices charged for the books were not low, but certainly not exorbitant when time, labour, and expense of producing them are taken into consideration. They were prizes for the collector from the beginning, the impossibility of duplicating them and the small editions sent out giving them a charm and a value not easily to be resisted, and Morris himself and his trustees adopted measures tending to protect the collector's interests. After the death of Morris all the woodblocks for initials, ornaments, and ill.u.s.trations were sent to the British Museum and were accepted, with the condition that they should not be reproduced or printed from for the s.p.a.ce of one hundred years. The electrotypes were destroyed. The matter was talked over with Morris during his lifetime and he sanctioned this course on the part of the trustees, its aim being to keep the series of the Kelmscott Press "a thing apart and to prevent the designs becoming stale by repet.i.tion." While there is a fair ground for the criticism frequently made that a man urging the necessity of art for the people showed inconsistency by withdrawing from their reach art which he could control and deemed valuable, it must be remembered that in his mind the great result to be obtained was the stirring up the people to making art for themselves. Morris rightly counted the joy to be gained from making a beautiful thing as far higher than the joy to be gained from seeing one. He was never in favour of making a work of art "common" by reproducing or servilely imitating it. He had shown the printers of books his idea of the way they should manage their craft, now let them develop it themselves along the lines pointed out for them. And whether he was or was not consistent in allowing the works of the Kelmscott Press to be cut off from any possibility of a large circulation, his was the temperament to feel all the delight to be won from exclusive owners.h.i.+p. He had the true collector's pa.s.sion for possession. If he was bargaining for a book, says his biographer, he would carry on the negotiation with the book tucked tightly under his arm, as if it might run away. His collection of old painted books gave him the keenest emotions before and after his acquisition of them. Of one, which finally proved unattainable, he wrote, "_Such_ a book! _my_ eyes! and I am beating my brains to see if I can find any thread of an intrigue to begin upon, so as to creep and crawl toward the possession of it." It is no matter for wonder if in imagination he beheld the love of bibliophiles for his own works upon which he had so ardently spent his energies, and was gratified by the prevision.

Whether the Kelmscott books will increase or decrease in money value as time goes on is a question that stirs interest in book-buying circles.

They have already had their rise and ebb to a certain extent, and the prices brought by the copies owned by Mr. Ellis at the sale of his library after his death indicate that a steady level of interest has been reached among collectors for the time being at least; only five of the copies printed on paper exceeding prices previously paid for them. The presentation copy on vellum of the great _Chaucer_ brought five hundred and ten pounds, certainly a remarkable sum for a modern book, under any conditions, and nearly a hundred pounds more than the highest price which Morris himself up to the summer of 1894 had ever paid for even a fourteenth-century book. The paper copy of the _Chaucer_ sold at the Ellis sale for one hundred and twelve pounds and a paper copy in ordinary binding sold in America in 1902 for $650, while a paper copy in the special pigskin binding brought $950 the same year. The issue price for the four hundred and twenty-five paper copies was twenty pounds apiece, and for the eight copies on vellum offered for sale out of the thirteen printed, a hundred and twenty guineas apiece. The posthumous edition of _Sigurd the Volsung_, the paper copies of which were issued at six guineas apiece, brought at the Ellis sale twenty-six pounds. _News from Nowhere_, issued at two guineas, has never yet brought a higher price than the five pounds, fifteen s.h.i.+llings paid for it in 1899, while Keats's _Poems_ issued at one pound, ten s.h.i.+llings, rose as high as twenty-seven pounds, ten s.h.i.+llings, also in 1899. As a general measure of the advance in the Kelmscott books since the death of Morris, it may be noted that the series owned by Mr. Ellis, excluding duplicates, and including a presentation copy of _Jason_ and two fine bindings for the paper and the vellum _Chaucer_, represented a gross issue price of six hundred and twelve pounds, ten s.h.i.+llings, and realised two thousand, three hundred and sixty-seven pounds, two s.h.i.+llings. For one decade of the life of a modern series that is a great record, and it would be a rash prophet who should venture to predict future values.

CHAPTER XI.

LATER WRITINGS.

The writings of Morris's later years consist, as we have seen, chiefly of prose romances. The little group beginning with _The House of the Wolfings_ and ending with _The Sundering Flood_ were written with no polemical or proselytising intention, with merely his old delight in storytelling and in depicting the beauty of the external world and the kindness of men and maids. Curiosity had never played any great part in his mental equipment; he cared little to know or speculate further than the visible and tangible surface of life. "The skin of the world" was sufficient for him, and in these later romances all that is beautiful and winning has chiefly to do with the skin of the world presented in its spring-time freshness. The background of nature is always exquisite. With the landscape of the North, which had made its indelible impression upon him, he mingled the scenes--"the dear scenes" he would have called them--of his childhood and the fairer portions of the Thames sh.o.r.e as he had long and intimately known them; and in his books, as in his familiar letters, he constantly speaks of the weather and the seasons as matters of keen importance in the sum of daily happiness. Thus, whatever we miss from his romances, we gain, what is missing from the majority of modern books, familiarity with the true aspect of the outdoor world. We have the constant sense of ample sky and pleasant air, and green woods and cool waters. The mountains are near us, and often the ocean, and the freedom of a genuine wildwood that is no enchanted forest or ideal vision.

Inexpressibly charming are such pictures as those of Elfhild (in _The Sundering Flood_) piping to her sheep and dancing on the bank of the river, on the bright mid-April day, whose sun dazzles her eyes with its brilliant s.h.i.+ning; and of Birdalone (in _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_) embroidering her gown and smock in the wood of Evilshaw. What could be more expressive of lovely open-air peace than this description? "Who was glad now but Birdalone; she grew red with new pleasure, and knelt down and kissed the witch's hand, and then went her way to the wood with her precious lading, and wrought there under her oak-tree day after day, and all days, either there, or in the house when the weather was foul. That was in the middle of March, when all birds were singing, and the young leaves showing on the hawthorns, so that there were pale green clouds, as it were, betwixt the great grey boles of oak and sweet-chestnut; and by the lake the meadow-saffron new-thrust-up was opening its blossom; and March wore and April, and still she was at work happily when now it was later May, and the harebells were in full bloom down the bent before her ... and still she wrought on at her gown and her smock, and it was well-nigh done. She had broidered the said gown with roses and lilies, and a tall tree springing up from amidmost the hem of the skirt, and a hart on either side thereof, face to face of each other. And the smock she had sewn daintily at the hems and the bosom with fair knots and buds. It was now past the middle of June hot and bright weather."

And only less delightful than these glimpses of the natural world are the recurring portraits of half-grown boys and girls, all different and all lovable. The sweetness of adolescent beauty had for Morris an irresistible appeal, and while his characters have little of the psychological charm inseparable in real life from dawning qualities and undeveloped potentialities, they are as lovely as the morning in the brightness of hair, the slimness of form, the freedom of gesture with which he endows them. The shapely brown hands and feet of Ursula, her ruddy colour, her slender st.u.r.diness, and brave young laugh are attractions as potent as the more delicate charm of Birdalone's serious eyes and thin face, or Elfhild's flower-like head and tender playfulness; and all these heroines are alike in a fine capability for useful toil and pride in it. When the old carle says to Birdalone, "It will be no such hard life for thee, for I have still some work in me, and thou mayst do something in spite of thy slender and delicate fas.h.i.+on," she replies with merry laughter, "Forsooth, good sire, I might do somewhat more than something; for I am deft in all such work as here ye need; so fear not but I should earn my livelihood, and that with joy." Ursula also knows all the craft of needlework, and all the manners of the fields, and finds nothing in work to weary her; and even in the Maid of _The Wood beyond the World_, with her magic power to revive flowers by the touch of her fingers, is felt the preferable human power to make comfort and pleasantness by the right performance of plain tasks.

Nearly if not quite equal to Morris's expression of love for the beauty of nature and of fair humanity is his expression of the love for beautiful handicraft, to which his whole life and all his writings alike testify.

Whatever is omitted from his stories of love and adventure, he never omits to familiarise his readers with the ornament lavished upon buildings and garments and countless accessories; hardly a dozen pages of any one of the romances may be turned before the description of some piece of artistic workmans.h.i.+p is met. Osberne's knife in _The Sundering Flood_ is early introduced to the reader as "a goodly weapon, carven with quaintnesses about the heft, the blade inlaid with runes done in gold and the sheath of silver," and the gifts he sends to Elfhild across the flood are "an ouch or chain or arm-ring" fas.h.i.+oned "quaintly and finely," or "fair windowed shoon, and broidered hosen and dainty smocks, and silken kerchiefs"; much is made of his holiday raiment of scarlet and gold, of his flowered green coat, and of the fine gear of gold and green for which Elfhild changes her grey cloak. In _The Story of the Glittering Plain_, filled as it is with the sterner spirit of the sagas, there is still room for much detail concerning the carven panelling of the shut-bed, in which was pictured "fair groves and gardens, with flowery gra.s.s and fruited trees all about," and "fair women abiding therein, and lovely young men and warriors, and strange beasts and many marvels, and the ending of wrath and beginning of pleasure, and the crowning of love," and for the account of the painted book, "covered outside with gold and gems" and painted within with woods and castles, "and burning mountains, and the wall of the world, and kings upon their thrones, and fair women and warriors, all most lovely to behold." As for the fair Birdalone, her pleasure in fine stuffs and rich embroideries is unsurpa.s.sed in the annals of womankind. The wood-wife with canny knowledge of her tastes brings her the fairy web, declaring that if she dare wear it she shall presently be clad as goodly as she can wish. Birdalone can be trusted to don any attire that meets her fancy (and to doff it as willingly, for she has a startling habit not uncommon with Morris's heroines of stripping off her garments to let the winds of heaven play upon her unimpeded). The wood-wife places the raiment she has brought on Birdalone's outstretched arms, "and it was as if the sunbeam had thrust through the close leaf.a.ge of the oak, and made its shadow nought a s.p.a.ce about Birdalone, so gleamed and glowed in s.h.i.+fty brightness the broidery of the gown; and Birdalone let it fall to earth, and pa.s.sed over her hands and arms the fine smock sewed in yellow and white silk, so that the web thereof seemed of mingled cream and curd; and she looked on the shoon that lay beside the gown, that were done so nicely and finely that the work was as the feather-robe of a beauteous bird, whereof one scarce can say whether it be bright or grey, thousand-hued or all simple of colour. Birdalone quivered for joy of all the fair things, and crowed in her speech as she knelt before Habundia to thank her." Thus Morris carried into his "pleasure-work of books" the "bread-and-b.u.t.ter work" of which he was hardly less fond.

But in the deeper realities of life with which even romantic fiction may deal, and must deal if it is to lay hold of the modern imagination, these romances are poor. Not one of his characters is developed by circ.u.mstance into a fully equipped human being thoroughly alive to the intellectual and moral as to the physical and emotional world. His men and women are eternally young and, with the physical freshness of youth, have also the crude, unrounded, unfinished, unmoulded character of youth. They have all drunk of the Well at the World's End, and the scars of experience have disappeared, leaving a blank surface. The range of their emotions and pa.s.sions is as simple and narrow as with children, and life as the great story-tellers understand it is not shown by the chronicle of their days.

In many of the romances, it is true, the introduction of legendary and unreal persons and incidents relieves the writer from all obligation to make his account more lifelike than a fairy-tale; but Morris is never content to make a fairy-tale pure and simple. Marvellous adventures told directly as to a child are not within his method. One of his critics has described _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_ as a three-volume novel in the environment of a fairy-tale, and the phrase perfectly characterises it. A sentimental atmosphere surrounds his figures, and suggests languor and soft moods not to be tolerated by the writer of true fairy-tales, for while love is certainly not alien to even the purest type of the latter, with its witch and its princess and its cruel step-mother and rescuing prince, it is not love as Morris depicts it any more than it is love as Dante or Shakespeare depicts it. In Morris's stories the lovers are neither frankly symbolic creatures of the imagination whose loves are secondary to their heroic or miraculous achievements, and who apparently exist only to give a reason for the machinery of witchcraft, nor are they, like the lovers of the great novels, endowed with thoughtful minds and spiritual qualities. They are too sophisticated not to be more complex. The modern taste is unsympathetic to their endless kissing and "fawning" and "clipping," nor would ancient taste have welcomed their refinements of kindness toward each other or the lack of zest in their adventures. Morris seems to have tried somewhat, as in the case of his handicrafts, to start with the traditions of the Middle Ages and to infuse into them a modern spirit that should make them legitimate successors and not mere imitations of the well-beloved mediaeval types. That he did not entirely succeed was the fault not so much of his method as of his deficient insight into human nature. He could not create what he had never closely investigated.