“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 circumstances 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 title 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 entitled, The Story of the Glittering Plain for the English Illustrated 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 illustrations to be designed by Burne-Jones, and printed in a more or less mediæval fashion. 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 illustrated 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 mediæval 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 balls, 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.
