When I returned this morning from following the hearse which carried William Morris's body from that old house on the Mall at Hammersmith, where so many Socialists have gathered to hear the charming conversation of our dead comrade and leader, it was with the feeling common to us all that we have lost one whose place can never be filled. The last time I had seen him there was on a bright Sunday morning, just before his sea trip to the North. He seemed to me much better than he had been on my previous visit, and he talked almost as quickly and vigorously as of old on the various topics which interested him, working the while with pencil and brush on a design that lay before him. With that frank, open-hearted expression of his feelings about himself to his friends which was habitual with him, he in nowise disguised how irksome his illness, with its inevitable restriction of his activity, was to him. "If it merely means that I am to be laid up for a little while it doesn't so much matter, you know; but if I am to be caged up here for months, and then it is to be the end of all things, I shouldn't like it at all. This has been a jolly world to me and I find plenty to do in it." And then he went on to speak of the work before him and the many things he had to complete. As, later, we took a turn or two round the garden together, and he still seemed to have gained strength, I hoped, in spite of his wasted frame and somewhat pinched face, that modern science might save for us for yet a few more years one Of the greatest men of his time. But the end has come—too soon for the lovers of his work and himself; too soon, also, in view of what he was still in process of doing, for the world of art and letters; too soon, certainly, for that newer world of Socialism for which he had worked so hard and had already accomplished so much.
It is not my purpose to speak here at any length of William Morris as a writer and an artist. I doubt whether anyone can judge adequately at present of the value of what he has done. That his poetry and his prose were both exquisite in their kind even critics acknowledge who just now seem to me inclined to belittle him with faint praise. To those of us to whom "The Life and Death of Jason" and "The Earthly Paradise," not to speak of "The Defence of Guenevere," were among the chief literary delights of early manhood, this sort of depreciatory comment appears altogether out of place. After the cold classicism of Tennyson, and the tumble and turmoil of Swinburne's vigorous early poetry, these charming volumes of Morris's came as a sweet and delicious music. If it all seems too easy and too musical, we can only wish that a few of the versifiers we have still with us could be too facile and too tuneful in the same way. The charm which steals over the reader of Morris's verses may well enthrall the lovers of poetry of the next and succeeding generations more than it attracts the hasty critics of our own. It is true that neither in his prose nor in his verse do you find a trace of that genial and almost boisterous humour which frequently broke out in his familiar conversation. And that seems strange; for that he had much that was Chaucerian in his humour, as in his rhythm, is beyond all question. The verses which he wrote from time to time for the Socialists are in quite another style. Naturally enough, their great merit is overlooked by men who think that his reputation would have been greater if he had died before he became active in the Socialist movement. To such people the "Dream of John Ball"—the Times calls it the "Dream of John Bull"—is doubtless a weak and ineffective piece of prose! We know better.
As an artist, however, Morris had a greater influence than as a man of letters. That love, appreciation, and accurate reflection of nature and beauty of form which comes out at every turn of his poetry—the twittering of birds, the sighing of the wind among trees, the splendour of the sunshine, the cool pleasantness of evening, was ever with him, and he couldn't keep still for desire to give expression to that which he felt. What was inartistic and untrue jarred upon him so acutely that he was driven to try and put it right all at once. This accounts for the complete revolution which he brought about—aided by others, it is true, but in great part of his own initiative—this accounts, I say, for the revolution which he wrought not in one but in many departments of art. Furniture, decoration, wall-paper, coloured glass, block-printing, bookprinting, tapestry, ironwork, "restoration" of ancient buildings—his influence was greatly felt in all of them, and in some he lived to see a complete change in the taste of the educated classes and even of the public at large. Of such a man as this, with his marvellous versatility and genius in all arts but one, it may be truly said that death is but an incident, and not the most important incident, in his career. His life as expressed in his work is as living to us to-day as when he himself sat chatting and smoking in that lofty room at Hammersmith with the glorious Eastern cat pet hanging down on the one side and the equally splendid portraits by Rosetti standing out from the wall on the other.
It was many years after I had enjoyed Morris's poetry, and mocked a little, as ignorant young men will, at his aesthetic armchairs and wall-papers did he not say himself, "There are no greater fools than those who buy my papers—except those who don't?"—that I met the man himself. What a shock the first meeting was. It was in 1879. I had written some articles on India in the Nineteenth Century which had made a little stir, and Mr. Henry Broadhurst invited me to deliver an address on India to a committee of some sort of which Morris was a member, at 19, Buckingham Street, Strand. Morris had been more active than perhaps anybody else against the Turks. I, as it chanced, though having no love for the Turks, had worked hard on the other side against Russia. I imagined him as a refined and delicate gentleman easily overwrought by his sentiments. That was not his appearance in the flesh as we all know. Refinement undoubtedly there was in the delicate lines of the nose and the beautiful moulding of the forehead. But his hearty voice, his jolly vigorous frame, his easy sailorlike dress—the whole figure gave me a better opinion of the atrocity-mongers, as I considered them, than anything I have seen before or since. Not until the end of 1882 or the beginning of 1883 did I see Morris again. Then the S.D.F. (as the Democratic Federation) was holding a series of meetings on "Practical Remedies for Pressing Needs" in the large hall at Westminster Palace Chambers. The subjects were the now familiar Eight Hours Law, Free Meals for Children, Nationalisation of Railways and so on. Morris came to the first discussion and forthwith joined the body. It is difficult, perhaps, for men who have come into the movement of late years to understand how we welcomed capable recruits in those days of very small things. True we had with us Helen Taylor, Joynes, Champion, Burrows, Quelch, Williams, James Murray and more active people; but, even so, we were few and Socialism was new. Morris, with his great reputation and high character, doubled our strength at a stroke, by giving in his adhesion. And how he worked! He was as ready to do anything as the youngest and least known of us. In fact he resented attempts being made to keep him back from doing things which he really ought not to have done. Writing, speaking in and out of doors, conferring, full of zeal and brimming over with good humour and suggestion —it all seems but as yesterday. When JUSTICE was started with Edward Carpenter's money, in January, 1884, he threw himself into it with vigour, and wrote frequently. We then thought and said that we should all work on together in harmony to the end. Alas! that was not to be. Happily, however, the differences which arose in the autumn of 1884 were composed, and for many years past the relations of the S.D.F. and all its branches with William Morris, were as cordial as they ever had been before. Again he wrote poems for JUSTICE, again he lectured for our branches and kindly contributed to our funds. He spoke, also, most vigorously and generously in support of our Parliamentary candidates in Burnley and Walworth; and his last appearance on a public platform was at our New Year's meeting in the Holborn Town Hall in January last. He then met with a reception from the crowded audience so hearty and so enthusiastic that I know, from what he said afterwards, that he felt that his work for the cause was fully understood and appreciated by the men whom he was endeavouring to serve. He was ill at the time, and I fear that even coming to this meeting was an overtaking of his strength. None who were present will ever forget the touching appeal that he then made or the words of counsel and good cheer that he then spoke.
And now we have lost the man whom we all loved and respected—the great poet and artist who devoted his high faculties to the service of the race. William Morris we shall see no more; but the memory of what he was will ever remain with us—sweet as the music of his verse, and encouraging as the hearty welcome with which he never failed to greet his comrades in the cause.
H. M. HYNDMAN. October 6th, 1896.
William Morris
H. M. Hyndman
Justice, 10th October 1896
Graham Seaman, September 2020.