IN a Lancashire town, doubly dreary in the rain, I read last Sunday of the death of William Morris. At first the words of the announcement seemed hardly to yield any meaning; it was only after a little that their mournful import stared full upon me, and I realised that they told how a great loss had fallen upon us all. To-day the rain pours miserably down in the town of Oldham, and an occasional flash of lightning startles the little room in which I sit. The world seems leaden, fruitless, and cold : and so, too, seems our Socialism, now that William Morris is gone. We had not thought of Socialism coming and William Morris not with us: in all the years we saw ahead William Morris and Kelmscott House dwelt in our vision.
Ten years ago, round a fireside in a little room in John Street, Glasgow, he sat amongst us—the little group of the Socialist League. The snow and sleet pelted down without, and it grew so dark that we had to light the gas at noon. But although we watched all chance of a good meeting, which was to be held in the evening in a large hall, disappear in the storm, never before to us youngsters had the world seemed so bright, so generous, so full of promise. For there sat Morris in our little circle, and to our starved souls he seemed almost as a god—one who created all things anew to our eyes. What stories he told, what life he dragged out of the pest, what largeness and certitude he gave us of the fellowship which to him was ever the beginning and end, the foundation and apex, of Socialism!
For several years he came to Scotland at least once a year, and we owe to these visits and to his writings perhaps more than to ourselves in Scotland—and may I not say in England also?—the circumstance that Socialism was held forth in the earlier days of the movement with a richness of promise and bigness of aim that has since made it so conquering in the land. We regarded him as the father of our principles and his song and spirit was, and will ever be, inseparably associated with our Socialist ideal.
And now as I write the sun has burst through the clouds, and even swarthy Oldham lifts up a smiling face to the sky. And I perceive that this should not be altogether a day of mourning, but that there is this to rejoice at, that by his death be is finally and for ever ours. For, even though we are dissuaded from hero worship, this we know, that it is not only a great thing for the world that William Morris was born into it, but it is a very great thing for Socialism that William Morris was a Socialist. There is no inevitability in Socialism outside the facts that make for it: our hope of its coming depends upon the signs that witness it. And of these facts and these signs one of the most prophetic is that William Morris was impelled and inspired as a poet, an artist, and a most uniquely and beautifully dispositioned personality to come and be an agitator in our ranks. Many victories at the ballotbox, many flourishing branches of Socialist organisations, would not count in the end so much for our cause as that one circumstance, that he, the master craftsman of our century, the most splendidly gifted and greatest marvel-worker with bis brain of these latter days, was a Socialist also.
It has been said that he did net belong to our century though he lived in it; nevertheless that he has lived in it will ever be one of its greatest glories. And if be was not of this century, neither was he of any century of the past. It is only in the future, when Socialism is as complete as commercialism is to-day, that the qualities of mind and character which have seemed so much of an anachronism in him will become plausible to, if not characteristic of, the time. As a man, where may we look for his like? So self-reliant, so large of nature, so frank and sturdy of conviction, so hating of meanness, shabbiness, and lies! So towsy, too, and rudely exuberant, so jolly, and humorous, and playful withal.
Some other pen must tell the younger generation of Socialists the story of his life as a propagandist, and especially of his six years' almost incessant toil and bounty for the movement. The knowledge of his zeal will be an inspiration to them now, as it was to us then—how he spoke at meetings night after night, oftentimes at noisy street corners and in out-of-the-way, noisome little halls, and not infrequently to mere handfuls of people; how he sat through weekly committee meetings for years, patiently bearing the long wrangling and weary iteration concerning formalities and details; how, indeed, he made himself literally a servant of his working-men comrades in all things that pertained to the work of the hastening of Socialism. It may be that I am wrong, but I cannot help thinking that the very happiest years of his life were during the period of his editorship of The Commonweal, when he devoted almost all his evenings and much of his daytime to the common rough-and-tumble work of propaganda. The enthusiasm with which he wended forth with the banner of the Hammersmith Socialist Society on Sunday mornings to the open-air meetings on the Bridge, the boisterous glee with which be would set out with half a dozen comrades to participate in a "rowdy" meeting, and his ever-readiness to mount the stool, sell literature, go round with the hat, or face up to a violent or molesting interrupter will be ever remembered by hie old comrades.
Nor would I presume, even were I qualified, as I am not, to attempt to catalogue or critically estimate the merits of his achievements in literature and art. For the moment gratitude, reverence, and love for the "large sweet soul that is gone" must suffuse all thoughts of him in those who were privileged to know him and serve by his side.
During the last three or four years he had little opportunity of witnessing for himself the astonishing growth of Socialism outside of London. One morning, however, a year ago, I spent an hour or two with him in his study, and he talked cheerfully of the progress that had taken place. The Independent Labour Party he admitted he knew little of, as he had hardly been in the provinces since its formation. His health, he said, forbade, or he would gladly have come North to see the great change that had been wrought since he used to visit us in the old days. He instanced the extraordinary success of "Merrie England" as a most hopeful sign, especially the fact that a book appealing to so many of the finer sentiments and wider sympathies of the mind should meet with such keen appreciation amongst the workers. He spoke kindly, too, of the political interest in our principles and the revolt from old party politics that had been excited by Hardie's attitude in the House of Commons.
Hereafter as he rests by his beloved Thames our host shall march on, and his great art shall blaze on our banners and his song shall roll in our midst. What sorrow we feel at his loss will pass away, and the gain that he was to us become a joyfull possession to the end. Some day the "Epoch of Rest" which he has written for us will be reached, and many a maid and many a man will chant his songs to the dip of the oars far up the river where his vision perished and his body has now been laid. Nevertheless, William Morris, our beloved comrade, is dead. His shaggy head and his noble face we shall never see again. No more song, no more romance, no more designs from his inspired hand. Ah, our earlier dreams, our toasts of the Social Revolution, our cheery pledges to meet at the barricades! Maybe there shall be no barricades, but and if there be, somehow we shall believe that William Morris will meet us there.
J. Bruce Glasier
William Morris
J. Bruce Glasier
Labour Leader, October 10, 1896 pp.4-5
Graham Seaman, September 2020.