A New Study of William Morris
William Morris, by A. Clutton-Brock. [Henry Holt and Company, New York.]
I dislike that method which many historians pursue, treating the past as a matter of death instead of life. For a baggage of rags and a jumble of bleached bones I have no concern. Yesterday is a thing I will not consider. History is a proof of one thing only:—that circumstance is a fraud, and that personality is a durability with eternity. The soul writes its autobiography, and those used for the syllables survive the seasons and the years. Rule and custom and people who are no more than these are for the scrap heap. Night comes and swallows the dead. History is nothing except for its exceptions. Nature’s royal men we discover despite their uniforms. We note not their habiliments; they have a natural tongue and true approach and are masters of the seconds. They breathe life lustily still. These are the verities. They are descriptive not of antiquity but of the mind which is now. They show us who we are. We love them because of this. Every time we read them we embark on a new voyage, and discover to ourselves a treasure island of which hitherto we had not the slightest knowledge. Trojans of truth, they lift their spears to the central sun, to proclaim the splendor of the individual, the great reality of the Now. Through them we are made aware how rich we are, we begin to realize somewhat of our depths; they provide a new courage, give a new hope, and inspire us for the struggle ahead with the quality of an unwonted self-reliance.
I have probably gone beyond my office in making these remarks, but the temptation provided by the biography of William Morris proved so strong that I could not forego them. Here is a man of whom we cannot know too much. An artist who gave his life for art—what shall we say of him?
Mr. Brock has told a little of the man, sometimes in an interesting way, but he does not make us intimate with him. However, as he tells us in his preface, he had no pretensions. He is lucid and thoughtful, he is excellent in his criticism of Morris’s poetry, and on the whole gives us a book well worthy of an hour’s quietude. The facts given are good by way of an introduction—sufficient to send one in quest for greater knowledge of the man.
One of Nature’s henchmen, fresh, bold, Viking in the marrow, with a spirit of steel, a man for whom the sea would smile, poet, painter, stainer of glass, weaver of carpets, spinning a world with the strains of his song, socialist and revolutionist, Morris comes as a teasing wind through the dank atmosphere of nineteenth-century commercialism, daring conventions and going his way a body all soul, a majesty supreme to the last.
We get a little of the air of the man when we read these lines from the Sigurd. I quote from the biography:
There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old,
Dukes were the door wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold;
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed the doors;
Earls’ wives were the weaving women, queens’ daughters strewed the floor.
And the masters of its song craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle adown the bickering blast.
One cannot but remark the manhood and courage of this. A Luxury of Life. A freedom here that would fill the winds. It is not to be wondered that such a man should chafe under the tyranny of skin-girt stupidity, and feel a loathing toward the flannel-souled people who in his time were already making machines of men and building a world around them of ugliness,—cities without bearing, without character, without mirth, without life. Cities of the dead, where ghosts might abide.
It is in the realm of art, however, that we must look for Morris would we view him in the light. Art gave the world a child who would lead it by the hand to the Princess Beautiful that the maiden should have a lover to woo. A child—yes; and a warrior too, who would do battle with any of her enemies. I would not say that he knew more of art in its relation to life than did Ruskin, Wilde, and Whistler; he was, however, far more active of the purpose. He saw that art was not a mere thing for the galleries, where Mediocrity can sniff and vaunt its conceits; for him it was serious of all nature, of the whole circle and the endless series of circles.
That which gives ear to the tongues of stones and from marble delivers its soul, he wanted Life to seek. There was a spice in art for Morris which made it dangerous for milk-sops. Art for him was a Reality; the existence around him a fraud, and Life a cowardice. He had Truth on his side; he hated shams and he joined the socialist movement because he saw here a means for their overturning. In a very interesting chapter Mr. Brock tells how Morris, after breakfasting with Burne-Jones, would go out to some street corner and lecture on socialism to a throng of workingmen, some dirty and in rags. He had his courage—this man.
There dwells in each of us a heroism of which the last has not been spoken. Carlyle was drunk with it, Emerson wrote it, Morris lived it. A great artist, but a greater man. Life for him was a cavalier extravagance—thus would he have all men live. To make the world live, we must give of our living. Breathe life into all things that they too will have manners and extend a friendship’s greetings.
For practical people Morris is still anathema; for human beings, however, he is yet a comrade in the struggle. Mr. Brock’s study of him is therefore welcome, coming as it does with fresh intelligence of his nature. His book most certainly is a thing to be read.
G. F.