STERLING AND FRANCINE

CLARK

ART INSTITUTE

LIBRARY

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-

THE ART OF WILLIAM MORRIS

THIS EDITION IS LIMITED TO 220 COPIES, OF WHICH 210 ARE FOR SALE. THIS IS NO. !o->

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THE ART OF WILLIAM MORRIS* A RECORD BY AYMER VALLANCE fr WITH REPRODUCTIONS FROM DESIGNS AND FABRICS PRINTED IN THE COLOURS OF THE ORIGINALS^EXAMPLES OF THE TYPE AND OR- NAMENTS USED AT THE KELMSCOTT PRESS * AND MANY OTHER IL- LUSTRATIONS *ALSO A CLASSIFIED BIBLIO- GRAPHY BY TEMPLE SCOTT * PRINTED AT THE CHISWICK PRESS AND PUBLISHED BY GEORGE BELL & SONS LONDON MDCCCXCVII*

MICO SVPER OMNES DILECTO VIX VNVM ANNVM COGNITO ^JAM EHEV EHEV .... DEDI- CAT INTER LACRYMAS ADOMARVS

LOVE WHILE YE MAY ; IF TWAIN GROW INTO ONE 'TIS FOR A LITTLE WHILE ; THE TIME GOES BY, NO HATRED 'TWIXT THE PAIR OF FRIENDS DOTH LIE, NO TROUBLES BREAK THEIR HEARTS— AND YET,

AND YET- HOW COULD IT BE ? WE STROVE NOT TO FORGET; RATHER IN VAIN TO THAT OLD TIME WE CLUNG, ITS HOPES AND WISHES ROUND OUR HEARTS WE

HUNG, WE PLAYED OLD PARTS, WE USED OLD NAMES— IN

VAIN, WE GO OUR WAYS, AND TWAIN ONCE MORE ARE

TWAIN ; LET PASS— AT LATEST WHEN WE COME TO DIE THUS SHALL THE FASHION OF THE WORLD GO BY.

FROM "THE DOOM OF KING ACRISIUS," IN " THE EARTHLY PARADISE," BY W. MORRIS.

PREFACE.

HOUGH it was not my intention to write a preface, circumstances have made it necessary that I should do so. In the first place I wish it to be noticed that I chose purposely to call my book "The Art of William Morris " so as to show that it makes no claim to be a biography nor a record of any of his private and family affairs. Such a work I was neither asked nor authorized to write. It is true, of course, that I had the privilege of knowing the late Mr. Morris personally — from the year 1883 onwards until his death. At the same time I submit that, with two or three very trifling exceptions, I have not introduced into the book any details of his life which were not already common property — which could not just as well have been strung together by any one who knew where to find the scattered references in Mr. Morris's own writings, and in various other publications, without ever having met Mr. Morris face to face ; nor more than such as were necessary to link together the contents of the book in some sort of consecutive order.

I must state that when I first approached Mr. Morris, in the autumn of 1894, on the question of the proposed book, he told me then frankly that he did not want it to be done either by myself or by anybody else so long as he was alive, but that if I would only wait until his death I might do it. Thus I have now Mr. Morris's express sanction for bringing out a work upon himself; nor need I point out that he could have stopped its preparation at the outset, had he chosen to withhold his permission to reproduce his designs. Whereas, on the contrary, he insisted that if the work came out at all, it must be illustrated ; he gave me a general permission to reproduce a selection from the property of the firm of Morris and Co., provided I obtained the consent of his partners (which was accorded, I am bound to say, with a courtesy coupled with the kindest assistance, for which I do not know how to express all the thanks that are due) ; he gave me specific authority to reproduce a number of ornaments of the Kelmscott Press, some of which he suggested and chose for me himself, only stipulating that the blocks for this purpose should be prepared by Mr. Emery Walker ; he referred me to Mr. Fairfax Murray, who is the owner of a few early cartoons of great value from the artist's hand ; and lastly, when he lay on his

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death-bed, Lady Burne-Jones having asked him, on my applica- tion to be shown the illuminated books in her possession, whether he approved of her doing so, he replied that it was quite right, and himself told her about my forthcoming book. Accordingly, Lady Burne-Jones was kind enough to let me see all the books I de- sired, and moreover, she entrusted me, complete stranger as I was, alone in the room with them for more than an hour, to allow me the opportunity of making what notes of them I pleased for publication. For the rest, neither the members of Mr. Morris's family nor his friends have made themselves responsible for what I have written.

I should state that my original purpose was to have included an account of Mr. Morris's literary and political work as well — indeed he himself remarked to me, when he and I were discussing the plan of this book, that it would not be fair to slur over nor to suppress the subject of Socialism. But, the limits of time and space allowed me by my publishers having been reached by the middle of the fifth chapter, I was compelled to confine myself thereafter to an account of Kelmscott Manor (for the section whereon the blocks had been already prepared at no small cost from photographs kindly lent me by Mr. Frederick H. Evans), and to the two chapters that follow, which deal with indispensable phases of Mr. Morris's art work. The omissions will not, it is hoped, impair the unity of the book as a study of William Morris's artistic side. It seemed to me better, on the whole, to leave the material I had in hand relating to the other subjects in abeyance (to be published, I trust, at some future date), rather than, by summarizing, to render it disproportionate to the rest.

The fifth chapter treats connectedly of what, I believe, is so far new ground ; nothing beyond incidental notices having been made by previous writers to this, the most important movement in the history of modern art. This, then, I venture to name as perhaps the distinctive feature of the present work — of my share of it— I mean.

In conclusion I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to my friend, Mr. Temple Scott, for supplying, at infinite pains, the bibliography which I, no expert, could not myself have under- taken, and to all others, more especially to Mr. C. Fairfax Murray, who by their advice and information, or by furnishing the re- quisite leave to reproduce objects in their possession, have con- tributed to lighten the responsibilities of my task.

February, 1897.

Vlll

LIST OF CONTENTS.

Page

CHAPTER ONE: THE BEGINNING OF DAYS .... I

CHAPTER TWO: OXFORD TO LONDON 7

CHAPTER THREE: ART AND POETRY 14

CHAPTER FOUR: BETWEEN WHILES : THE RED HOUSE. 26 CHAPTER FIVE: OF THE FIRM OF MORRIS AND CO.,

DECORATORS 38

CHAPTER SIX: KELMSCOTT MANOR no

CHAPTER SEVEN: SOCIETIES 121

CHAPTER EIGHT: BOOK DECORATION AND THE KELM- SCOTT PRESS 132

BIBLIOGRAPHY 169

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

I. IN BLACK AND WHITE.

Page PORTRAIT of William Morris, in photogravure . . . Frontispiece The Red House, Upton. From the Garden. From a drawing by H. P.

Clifford 29

The Red House, Upton. The Well. From a drawing by H. P. Clifford 30

The Red House, Upton. The Staircase. From a drawing by H. P.

Clifford 31

The Red House, Upton. Panels of Early Morris Glass. From a drawing

by H. P. Clifford 32 and 33

The Red House, Upton. Buffet in the Dining-Room. From a drawing

by H. P. Clifford 34

The Red House, Upton. TheLanding. From a drawing by H. P. Clifford 35

The Red House, Upton. Wall Paintings, by Sir E. Burne-Jones, Bart. Facing 36 Painted Glass in St. Martin's Church, Scarborough. Designed by D. G.

Rossetti Facing 47

Painted Glass in St. Giles's Church, Camberwell. With figure of St. Paul.

Designed by William Morris Facing 48

Painted Glass in Jesus College, Cambridge. Designed by Sir E. Burne- Jones, Bart. (2 plates) Facing 54

Painted Glass in Christ Church, Oxford. Designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones,

Bart. (2 plates) Facing 56

The Works at Merton Abbey. From a drawing by H. P. Clifford . . 95

Angels in Adoration. Cartoons for Wall Decoration, in the possession

of Mr. C. Fairfax Murray 100

Kelmscott Manor. Entrance Front. The Frontispiece of the Kelmscott

Press edition of " News from Nowhere." Drawn by C. M. Gere in Kelmscott Manor. From the Garth. From a drawing by R.J. Williams 112 Kelmscott Manor. Back of the House. From a drawing by R.J. Williams 113 Kelmscott Manor. From the Meadow at the back. Drawn by E. H.

New for " The Quest " 114

Kelmscott Manor. The Tapestry Room. From a drawing by R.J.Williams 116 Kelmscott Manor. Bed with hangings designed by Mrs. Sparling. From

a drawing by R. J. Williams 117

Kelmscott Manor. The Attics. From a drawing by R. J. Williams . 118 Kelmscott House, Upper Mall, Hammersmith. From a drawing by H. P.

Clifford 119

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Kelmscott Press. Kelmscott Press. Kelmscott Press. Kelmscott Press.

Kelmscott Press Mark

Page 133 145 147 150 151 151 153 154 155 158

Two pages from the Chaucer 162 and 163

166

Device on the title-page of " The Earthly Paradise " .

Exterior of the Kelmscott Press. From a drawing by H. P. Clifford

Kelmscott Press. First page of " Poems by the Way "

Kelmscott Press. Title-page of " The History of Godefrey of Boloyne

Kelmscott Press. Part of page from " Godefrey of Boloyne " .

Kelmscott Press Mark

Kelmscott Press. Title-page of " A Tale of Over Sea "

Title-page of "The Tale of Beowulf" . Page from " The Well at the World's End " Title-page of " Hand and Soul " ....

II. REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR, FROM DESIGNS BY

WILLIAM MORRIS.

EXECUTED BY MORRIS AND CO.

Plate I.

II. III. IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

Angel with Scroll. Cartoon for decorative Painting, from the original

in the possession of Mr. C. Fairfax Murray. Hand-Painted Tiles. Rose Pattern. Hand-Painted Tiles. Daisy Pattern. Wall-Paper. The Daisy Design. Wall-Paper. The Trellis Design (the Birds designed by Philip

Webb). Wall-Paper. Wall-Paper. Wall-Paper. Wall-Paper. Ceiling Paper. Wall-Paper

The Marigold Design. The Vine Design. The Acanthus Design. The Apple Design.

Specially designed for St. James's Palace. Specially designed for St. James's Palace.

Wall-Paper. The Wild Tulip Design.

Wall-Paper. The Bruges Design.

■Wall-Paper. The Pink and Rose Design.

Chintzes. The Bird and Anemone, and The Strawberry Thief

Designs. Chintz. The Honeysuckle Design. Chintz. The Wandle Design. Chintz. The Wey Design. Printed Velveteen. The Acanthus Design. Printed Velveteen. The Cherwell Design. Velvet Broche with Gold Tissue. Silk. The St. James Design. Silk. The Kennet Design. Silk. The Cross-twigs Design.

Woven Wool Tapestry. The Tulip and Rose Design. Woven Silk and Wool Tapestry. The Anemone Design. Woven Wool Tapestry. The Bird and Vine Design. Woven Wool Tapestry. The Peacock and Dragon Design. Woven Silk and Wool Tapestry. The Dove and Rose Design. Kidderminster Carpet. The Lily Design. Sketch Design for Hammersmith Carpet. Small Bar Pattern.

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Plate XXXII. Sketch Design for Hammersmith Carpet. The Little Flowers Pattern.

XXXIII. Sketch Design for Hammersmith Carpet. Buller's Wood Pattern.

XXXIV. Hammersmith Carpet. The Black Tree Pattern. XXXV. Hammersmith Carpet. The Little Tree Pattern.

XXXVI. Hammersmith Carpet. Detail of the Redcar Pattern. XXXVII. Arras Tapestry. The Orchard. XXXVIII. Arras Tapestry. The Woodpecker.

XXXIX. Embroidered Hanging. Executed in coloured silks upon yellow linen. XL. Bookbinding in Gold Stamped Leather.

The drawings of Kelmscott Manor were made from photographs taken by Mr. Frederick H. Evans, by whose kind permission they are here included. Those of the exterior of The Red House, from photographs, and of the interior, on the spot, by the courtesy of its present owner, Mr. Charles Holme.

The coloured plates have all been prepared by Messrs. W. Griggs and Sons, from original drawings (or the actual fabrics), kindly lent by Messrs. Morris and Co. and Mr. C. Fairfax Murray.

The collotypes (namely, " Angels in Adoration " and the six Windows) are produced by Mr. James Hyatt ; the photogravure portrait is by the Swan Electric Engraving Co., from a negative by Messrs. Elliott and Fry.

The reproductions in collotype from painted glass are from negatives specially taken by Messrs. Sarony and Co., Scarborough, Mr. Wheeler, Oxford, Mr. Lord, Cambridge, and Mr. James Hyatt.

The end papers are reduced from a design made by the author for the Spitalfields Silk Association, by whose permission it is here reproduced.

The Initials of the Dedication, the Preface, and Chapters One and Eight were designed by the author specially for this work. The rest of the initials are from a volume entitled, " Preservation of Body, Soul, Honour, and Goods," printed at Nuremberg in 1489.

XI

THE ARTOF WILLIAM MORRIS: CHAP TER ONE: THE BEGINNING OF DAYS

HAT are you ? "

" I am an artist and a literary man, pretty well known, I think, throughout Europe."

It was on 21st September, 1885, when some few members of the Socialist League and others, having tried on the previous day to test the right of public speaking, were charged at the Thames Police Court with resisting the police whilst in the execution of their duty, and also with obstructing the highway. Mr. William Morris was present during the hearing of the case and subsequently was placed at the bar for alleged disorderly behaviour in court. The prosecution failing to make out a case against him, beyond the fact, which he himself confessed, that he was carried away by his feelings so far as to exclaim "shame" on the passing of the sentence upon the prisoners, he was dismissed accordingly. The above is the description Mr. Morris gave of himself in the course of his examination by the magistrate on this same occasion. In the daily press at the time there were not wanting some sneering remarks about the artist's " European reputation." Neverthe- less Mr. Morris's was no empty boast. Rather his own estimate was considerably below the mark. For there needed not the past ten years to spread his fame so much more widely but that, even in 1885, he might justly have claimed, had he so chosen, to be known in the four continents. No quarter of the globe but contains either stained glass, carpets, tapestries, or other works of art from the firm of Morris and Co., and as for Mr. Morris's numerous writings in prose and verse, the extent of their circula- tion is certainly not confined to the limits of the English-speaking peoples.

How widely his 'works are studied and esteemed in the United States of America, the numerous articles that have appeared in different periodicals and reviews in New York and in Boston, in Baltimore, in Cambridge, Mass., and in New Haven bear witness. And as to France, which has so long assumed itself, and has by too many among ourselves been accepted as being the most artistic nation in the world, there is a growing dissatisfaction with its own performances, and a

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corresponding recognition of the superiority of the English school of decoration with Mr. Morris at its head.

In this regard a significant fact may be noted. A well- known French critic, in a notice of the new postage stamp and its designer, suggests that now, in the person of Eugene Grasset, a fitting object of artistic homage may be found nearer home than William Morris. So completely does the writer treat it as beyond question that, but for the genius discovered thus tardily in their midst, his countrymen must yield the highest place of honour to the English master before any of their own people.

Of Welsh extraction, William Morris, the eldest son of his parents, was born in Clay Street, in the village of Walthamstow, Essex, in the year 1834. As many a one beside must with gratitude own to having done, he imbibed his first impressions, acquired his first taste for art and romance, from Sir Walter Scott. For this writer he always cherished an enthusiastic admiration, wherein he would not submit to be outdone even by John Ruskin. Mr. Morris could not recall a time when he was unable to read, and, by the early age of seven, had read the greater part, if not indeed every word of Scott's works. From Scott it was, in the first place, that he learned to love Gothic architecture, though not, be it remarked, to apologize for loving it. But since it is best to convey Mr. Morris's association of ideas in his own words, let him speak for himself. '.' How well I remember as a boy," he says, " my first acquaintance with a room hung with faded greenery at Queen Elizabeth's Lodge, by Chingford Hatch, in Epping Forest, and the impression of romance that it made upon me ! a feeling that always comes back on me when I read, as I often do, Sir Walter Scott's 'Antiquary,' and come to the description of the green room at Monkbarns, amongst which the novelist has with such exquisite cunning of art imbedded the fresh and glittering verses of the summer poet Chaucer."

Elsewhere Mr. Morris speaks of other pleasant reminiscences, when, referring to the late Dr. Neale's carol of " Good King Wenceslas," he says, " The legend itself is pleasing and a genuine one, and the Christmas-like quality of it, recalling the times of my boyhood, appeals to me at least as a happy memory of past days." On the other hand the influences surrounding him in his public school career, previously to which he had been sent to Forest School in his native place, left a less agreeable if not less enduring impression. " I was educated at Marlborough under clerical masters, and I naturally rebelled against them."

William Morris was not above fourteen years old when, about the year 1845, according to his own reckoning, was wit- nessed "the first general appearance of the Pre-Raphaelites before the public." But the time for him to come under their influence was not yet. On the contrary he considered his early training to have been that of a layman in the matter of painting and the other arts. " I remember distinctly myself, as a boy, that when I had pictures offered to my notice I could not under- stand what they were about at all. I said ' Oh, well, that is all right. It has got the sort of thing in it which there ought to be in a picture. There is nothing to be said against it, no doubt. I cannot say I would have it other than that, because it is clearly the proper thing to do.' But really I took very little interest in it, and I should think that would be the case with nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of those people who had not received definite technical instruction in the art, who were not formally artists."

However, with Mr. Morris's undergraduate days he was destined to undergo a great development. The 2nd June, 1852, the date of his matriculation at Exeter College, Oxford, must be regarded as marking one of the most momentous events in his life. True, neither in his own time at the University, nor yet for a considerable number of years later, was there any sort of aesthetic tradition with regard to decoration of the rooms or the surroundings of the men. But for all that the genius of the place was more powerful then in the pre-aesthetic period of the early fifties to leave a lasting impress on the sympathetic and receptive than, as Mr. Morris never ceased to regret, it is now or probably ever will be again. The early zeal of the Tractarian movement had scarcely had time to cool, or to become diverted into side issues ; the University Commission, the Gaul within the gates, had not begun to carry out their reforming work. And as for the old city itself, it was still, comparatively speaking, untouched by modern "improvements" in the shape of new college build- ings and new schools. His own college did not present a new front to the Broad, neither had its homely old chapel been re- placed by a brand-new travesty of St. Louis's thirteenth century "Sainte Chapelle." Magdalen bridge had not yet been widened ; neither did tramcars, only less obnoxious in such a place than steamers on the Grand Canal at Venice, desecrate the High. Mr. Morris has on more than one occasion expressed his opinion quite candidly on the subject : " It is a grievous thing to have to say, but say it I must, that the one most beautiful city of England, the city of Oxford, has been ravaged for many years

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past, not only by ignorant tradesmen, but by the University and College authorities. Those whose special business it is to direct the culture of the nation have treated the beauty of Oxford as if it were a matter of no moment, as if their commercial interests might thrust it aside without any consideration. . . . There are many places in England where a young man may get as good book-learning as in Oxford; not one where he can receive the education which the loveliness of the gray city used to give us. Call this sentiment if you please, but you know that it is true." In another lecture he records how, while an undergraduate at Oxford, he " first saw the city of Rouen, then still in its outward aspect a piece of the Middle Ages : no words can tell you how its mingled beauty, history and romance took hold on me ; I can only say that, looking back on my past life," — after a lapse, that is, of between thirty and forty years — " I find it was the greatest pleasure I have ever had : and now it is a pleasure which no one can ever have again : it is lost to the world for ever. . . . Though not so astounding, so romantic, or at first sight so mediaeval as the Norman city, Oxford in those days still kept a good deal of its earlier loveliness ; and the memory of its grey streets as they were has been an abiding influence and pleasure in my life, and would be greater still if I could only forget what they are now — a matter of far more importance than the so-called learning of the place could have been to me in any case, but which, as it was, no one tried to teach me, and I did not try to learn." In another place Mr. Morris supplies further autobio- graphical details relating to the same period. " Not long ago," — it was in February, 1856, that these words appeared — " Not long ago I saw for the first time some of the churches of North France ; still more recently I saw them for the second time ; and, remembering the love I have for them and the longing that was in me to see them, during the time that came between the first and second visit, I thought I should like to tell people of some of those things I felt when I was there." However, as a matter of fact, he does not describe in detail any church beside that named in the sub-title of his article, viz., " Shadows of Amiens," wherein he strikingly anticipates by many years Mr. Ruskin's " Bible of Amiens." It was by the northernmost door of the great triple porch of the west front that Mr. Morris made his first entrance. " I think I felt inclined to shout when I first entered Amiens Cathedral ; it is so free and vast and noble, I did not feel in the least awestruck or humbled by its size and grandeur. I have not often felt thus when looking on architecture, but have felt, at all events at first, intense exultation at the beauty of it ; that, and a

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certain kind of satisfaction in looking on the geometrical tracery of the windows, on the sweeping of the huge arches, were, I think, my first feelings in Amiens Cathedral." Proceeding to describe the magnificent choir-stalls and the figure-subjects sculptured upon them, he says that those he remembers best are the scenes of the history of Joseph, and in particular that which represents the dream of Pharaoh. " I think the lean kine about the best bit of carving I have seen yet, . . . the most wonderful symbol of famine ever conceived. I never fairly understood Pharaoh's dream till I saw the stalls at Amiens."

But to return to Oxford. It was surely something more than mere chance that there should have matriculated on the very same day at the same college with William Morris the man whose name must ever be associated with his, viz., Edward Burne-Jones, "of whom indeed," said Mr. Morris, in 1891, at Birmingham, the native place of the former, " I feel some difficulty in speaking as the truth demands, because he is such a close friend of mine." The two freshmen quickly became acquainted, and, discovering how many tastes and aspirations they had in common, were drawn together in intimate com- radeship, a bond which has continued fast and unbroken to this day. They shared one another's profound enthusiasm, it is scarcely necessary to say, for the art and literature of the middle ages. But that was not all. The Pre-Raphaelite movement, which was by this time steadily making its way, was not wholly unrepresented in the city of Oxford, where Mr. Combe, the director of the Clarendon Press and a liberal art patron, had already gathered together the nucleus of a Pre-Raphaelite collec- tion. Amongst other works of which he acquired possession were Holman Hunt's famous " Light of the World," and his less known picture, "A family of Converted Britons succouring Christian priests," and also Dante Gabriel Rossetti's beautiful water colour, " Dante celebrating the anniversary of Beatrice's death." The work of the latter artist only needed to become known to Morris and Burne-Jones to find at once a responsive chord in the breasts of the two friends ; for them to recognize in him the truest exponent living of their own high ideals. It is difficult to say which of the two conceived the more passionate admiration for the great Pre-Raphaelite master. In the mind of either no doubt remained as to his proper vocation, and both decided to devote themselves to an artistic calling; and that notwithstanding the prevailing bias of University opinion was decidedly adverse to such a course, if we may accept what one of their friends wrote in the "Oxford and Cambridge Magazine" in an Essay entitled

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" Oxford." " The fine Arts," the writer remarks, " wherein Truth appears in its most lovable aspect, where are they? Mr. Ruskin says, bitterly, that only they who have had the blessing of a bad education can be expected to know anything of painting. Cer- tainly Oxford must bear a large share of the shame that in England the fine Arts are considered only as ' accomplishments ' for ladies, and Artists are held to follow only a superior trade." It was some time after Christmas, 1855, that Burne-Jones first sought out Rossetti in London, with the intention of becoming his pupil. Nor did long time elapse before he introduced his friend Morris to his new-found master. Following the latter's advice, Burne-Jones went down from Oxford without waiting to take his degree, in order to begin his artistic studies without loss of time. William Morris on the contrary, in no hurry to leave Oxford, preferred to complete his University course, and took his B.A. degree in 1856.

CHAPTER TWO: DON.

OXFORD TO LON

ORRIS was, as has been stated, only a boy at Marlborough College at the date of the original formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, nor was he at any time later on enrolled formally in their ranks. Yet he did not hold himself so far aloof but that he became associated, like Ford Madox Brown, who neither belonged to the Brotherhood, with the most prominent members of the school in more than one early enterprise. In fact, to so large an extent was he influenced by them, that, if not in absolute accord with their aims and theories in every detail, it cannot be said that the standpoint from which he started differed in any material degree from theirs. Now their principles, as understood by Mr. Morris, and as set forth by him in the already referred to address at Birmingham, are briefly as follows : — Firstly, " the root doctrine, Naturalism," by no means to be confounded with Realism in the modern sense, for " pictures painted with that end in view will be scarcely works of Art." The Naturalism of the Pre-Raphaelites meant the deriving in- spiration direct from Nature, instead of allowing themselves to be fettered by the lifeless conventions of Academical tradition. In the second place, their work must have an epical quality; in other words, they "aimed, some of them no doubt much more than others, at the conscientious presentment of incident." The third necessity is the ornamental quality. " No picture, it seems to me," says Mr. Morris, " is complete unless it is something more than a representation of nature and the teller of a tale. It ought also to have a definite, harmonious, conscious beauty. It ought to be ornamental. It ought to be possible for it to be part of a beautiful whole in a room, or church, or hall. Now, of the original Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti was the man who mostly felt that side of the art of painting ; all his pictures have a decorative quality as an essential, and not as a mere accident of them." But to add, for the fuller development of the school, what was lacking of "the element oiperfeEl ornamentation," to vindicate its position as representing " a branch of the great Gothic art which once pervaded all Europe," one other distinguishing feature was neces- sary, viz. : Romance ; " and this quality is eminently characteristic of both Rossetti and Burne-Jones, but especially of the latter." Is it permissible to go a step further and to affirm that all

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these excellent qualities were yet inadequate, so long as the con- summating quality, too apt to be overlooked just because of its very humbleness, was lacking? that one which, in default of a better name, may be called the domestic element ? Perhaps the difference it made was not so much one of kind as of degree, of the extent to which Pre-Raphaelite principles were capable of application, or ought properly to be applied, to other arts beside painting. It is due to William Morris that all arts were brought within the comprehension of one and the same organic scheme ; and herein he proved himself in advance of the Pre-Raphaelites, that he succeeded in making the revival of art comprise a wider and a profounder scope than they. True, one of them was a sculptor, others men of letters ; but excepting the production of the short-lived magazine " The Germ," until Mr. Morris joined the movement the function of art in their hands had been confined practically to the making of pictures ; and thus the best of their works, in the nature of the case, could affect the public taste but indirectly and to a limited degree. For a number of years such pictures as were exhibited by the painters of the Pre-Raphaelite school were to be found, as a rule, only in obscure galleries; many were not shown to the public at all, but passed direct from the artists' studios into the hands of private purchasers. In any event, not the many but the few could possibly become the fortunate possessors of original paintings. It is, therefore, a supreme achievement of William Morris's to have brought Art, through the medium of the handicrafts, within reach of thousands who could never hope to obtain but a transitory view of Pre- Raphaelite pictures ; his distinction, by decorating the less pre- tending but no less necessary, articles of household furnishing, to have done more than any man in the present century to beautify the plain, every-day, home-life of the people.

That was a fitting tribute, paid in his official capacity of Vice- President of the Society of Arts, when, taking the chair at the reading of Mr. Morris's paper on the wood-cuts of Gothic Books, Sir George Birdwood thus introduced the lecturer : — " It is not only as a poet and an art critic that he is one of the first English- men of the Victorian age. When the decorative arts of this country had, about the middle of the present century, become denationalised, it was Mr. William Morris ' who stemmed the torrent of a downward age,' and, by the vigour of his characteristic English genius, upraised those household arts again from the degradation of nearly two generations, and carried them to a perfection never before reached by them. ... A born decorator, he knew that it is decoration that animates architecture, and all

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form, with life and beauty. But being also a trained architect, he from the first recognized that ornament was but an accessory to construction of every kind, from the vessels turned on a potter's wheel to the grandest creations of the builder's master art. Thus, and by his commanding intellectual and moral personal influence with his contemporaries, the future of English decorative design, in all its applications, was redeemed by Mr. Morris."

But, not to anticipate, one must trace, step by step, the various stages by which this came about. Referring to the time when Mr. Morris found himself at the outset of his artistic career, the late Mr. William Bell Scott wrote : " Morris's first step in this direction was to article himself to George Edmund Street, then located in the University town as architect to the diocese " of Oxford. The very fact of his electing an architect's training proves how thoroughly William Morris, as compared with the others of the movement, had grasped the fundamental idea of the nature and essence of Art. If not the first of them to recognize in theory, he was at any rate the first to act logically upon what is involved by the principle that all true ornament must be derived from and allied to some archetypal form of architecture, not necessarily in so pronounced a manner as to be obvious at first sight, yet always in such a way as may be disclosed on analysis. To William Morris architecture is at once the basis and crowning- point of every other art, the standard by which all the rest must be dominated and appraised : again and again has he insisted that no sound art can exist as the common practice and possession of a nation which has lost its architectural traditions. Thus he him- self puts the case; — "A true architectural work is a building duly provided with all the necessary furniture, decorated with all due ornament, according to the use, quality and dignity of the building, from mere mouldings or abstract lines, to the great epical works of sculpture and painting, which, except as decora- tions of the nobler form of such buildings, cannot be produced at all. So looked on, a work of architecture is a harmonious, co- operative work of art, inclusive of all the serious arts, all those which are not engaged in the production of mere toys, or of ephemeral prettinesses."

This, then, is the keynote of Morris's art doctrine, the secret of his own masterful power of constructive ornament. Whether or not he intend to devote his life to an architect's profession, no better education for an artist can be desired than that he should be strengthened at the beginning with an architectural back-bone. Consider for instance the one continental decorator who, beside the honourable exception of M. Serrurier of Liege, may be said

9 d

to share in any notable degree the aesthetic qualities of the English school, that is, of the school of Morris. Although it is true that neither does Eugene Grasset any longer practise as an architect, still when one contrasts his work with that which generally passes for decoration in the modern French school, the remark- able breadth and versatility of his designs must be attributed to the early discipline of his architectural training.

Judged by the standard of the present day, Mr. Morris's choice of a master may be indeed not a little surprising. Nay, in view of Mr. Street's neo-thirteenth century platitudes, more particu- larly in view of his largest and most conspicuous performance, the Courts of Justice in Fleet Street, it is hard to imagine how, save by way of warning what at all hazards to avoid, there could have been anything to be learnt from such a teacher by the pupil so gifted. Mr. Morris, with generous loyalty, has indeed written : " As to public buildings, Mr. Street's law-courts are the last attempt we are likely to see of producing anything reasonable or beautiful for that use." And in addition it is only fair to recall the fact that time was when in cases of proposed " restorations " of ancient churches, etc., cautious and discriminating judges of these matters used to consider Street, among the contemporary architects, the most capable and the safest man to be entrusted with the responsibility of dealing with these precious handiworks that our fathers have bequeathed to us. Moreover, for upwards of five years, from May 1852, the date when, by the advice of Mr. J. H. Parker, he migrated from Wantage, Mr. Street had been quartered in Oxford. Thence he eventually moved to Montague Place, Bloomsbury ; but his residence in the University city coincided exactly with the space of Morris's undergraduate period. During that time and onwards Mr. Street continued to maintain the kindliest attitude towards the leaders of the aesthetic revival. " The Pre-Raphaelite movement," to quote the memoir written by his son Arthur Edmund Street, " found in him a hearty and earnest adherent, and one who on many occasions, by writing and speaking, impressed on his brethren the importance and propriety of their giving it all the moral support in their power. He felt truly that the aim of the young enthusiasts, who were striving for truth before everything, was, in their particular field, identical with the aim of the leaders of the Gothic revival in the field of architecture. His known views speedily brought him into relations of friendship with many of those who belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite group, or were in sympathy with it." So after all it is not difficult to account for the fact of Mr. Morris having been drawn to look for the realization of his hopes under Mr.

10

Street's tuition. For a time, at least, he entered with enthusiasm into his master's projects. For instance, there happened an open competition of designs for a Cathedral to be erected at Lille. The announcement had been made in the previous year, 1855. The chief condition stipulated on was that the building must be in the French Gothic style. Morris's principal was one of the English architects who prepared and sent in designs. Contrary to usual custom, the several drawings were shown to the public before being submitted to the jury for selection. Mr. Street, accompanied by William Morris, took the occasion to run over to Lille for a few days' visit, and wrote home thence with reference to the designs. " We have had about three hours at the Exhibition. We

are agreed naturally that I ought to have place No. 1 I

really think I shall have one of the prizes. Morris says the first." The pupil's over sanguine, yet pardonable, expectations were not destined to be fulfilled ; for as a matter of fact Street's design, though not passed over altogether, was awarded only the second prize.

It was a comparatively short time that Morris continued under Street's tuition. Not the least of Morris's characteristics was his remarkable gift of concentration ; and this, together with the astounding rapidity with which he used to go straight to the root of a matter and mastered in the space of a few months, or even weeks, that of which it would take an ordinary mortal as many years of laborious application to learn may be the bare rudiments, fortunately made it unnecessary for him to submit to be hampered overlong by the irksome routine of office-work. He preferred to sacrifice the premium he had paid, if by so doing he might strike out an independent line of action for himself. He never qualified nor entered the formal profession of architect.

One circumstance, of no little importance in his subsequent career, Mr. Morris owed to the period of his brief discipleship, namely his becoming acquainted with his friend Philip Webb, at that time employed in Mr. Street's office, at the present day well known as an architect in practice in Raymond Buildings, Gray's Inn.

On going down from Oxford in 1856, Mr. Morris settled in lodgings with his friend Burne-Jones at 17, Red Lion Square, where they shared a studio in common. There was, indeed, at the beginning of the next year, some idea of extending the menage so as to form a sort of college of artists working together with kindred tastes and aims, but for some reason or other, the plan was not found to be practicable, and so nothing came of it.

Another event of 1856 was the appearance of "The Oxford

n

and Cambridge Magazine," in the preparation of which, under the direction of Rev. Canon R. W. Dixon and Mr. William Fulford, Mr. Morris took a prominent part. Conducted by members of the two Universities, the magazine was issued in London from the house of Messrs. Bell and Daldy. This serial lasted exactly a year, being published in monthly numbers from January to December inclusive. Originally sold at one shilling per part, it has now become both scarce and valuable. Mr. Morris's own copy is kept secure under lock and key ; while that in the British Museum is to be seen only by the reader who, passing through a barrier into an inner room, remains under the immediate obser- vation of one of the library officials. The contents of the magazine consist of essays, tales, poems, and notices of books, all the matter except the verse being printed in double columns. One or two contributions are initialled, but not one appears with the full signature of its author. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who, however, was not connected with the " Oxford and Cambridge Magazine " for the first half year of its existence, contributed " The Burden of Nineveh" to the August part, "The Blessed Damozel," a version of which already had appeared in " The Germ," to the November part, and "The Staff and Scrip" in December. Among other writers were Vernon Lushington, Jex-Blake and Burne-Jones. But the largest contributor was William Morris, who furnished a series of short prose romances, and a certain number of poems, which immediately signalized their author as a man of extra- ordinary talents, on the strength of which it was not rash for his friends and others to whom his identity was known to augur that a brilliant future in the world of letters awaited him. It was evident that Ruskin had influenced him to no small extent, and also that he was imbued very deeply with the spirit of mediaeval romance. " Perhaps the best of Morris's tales in the ' Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,' " says the late William Bell Scott, " were ' Gertha's Lovers ' and the ' Hollow Land,' but all of his contribu- tions were unmistakable in imaginative beauty, and will some day be republished." The poems which first saw the light in the magazine, with the exception of that entitled " Winter Weather," did in fact appear in the volume which Mr. Morris published two years later. But as regards the prose writings, unhappily the day for the fulfilment of Bell Scott's prediction has not yet arrived. Nor, seeing how severe a critic Mr. Morris was of his own work, and how sensitive he was on the subject of whatever he deemed immature experiments of his, was it probable that he ever would have consented to reprint any of his early writings in prose that were included in the "Oxford and Cambridge Magazine."

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And so they still lie buried, these " wonderful prose fantasies " of Mr. Morris's, " these strangely coloured and magical dreams," as Mr. Andrew Lang not inaptly calls them. If " Lindenborg Pool " may not be accounted among the best or the most original of Morris's tales, nevertheless there attaches to it a peculiar interest, because of its opening passage, " I read once in lazy humour Thorpe's ' Northern Mythology ' on a cold May night when the north wind was blowing; in lazy humour, but when I came to the tale that is here amplified, there was something in the tale that fixed my attention and made me think of it ; and whether I would or no, my thoughts ran in this way, as here follows. So I felt obliged to write, and wrote accordingly, and by the time I had done the grey light filled all my room ; so I put out my candles, and went to bed, not without fear and trembling, for the morning twilight is so strange and lonely." The above should not fail to be noted as the earliest published reference to its author's being attracted to a branch of study — Norse folk-lore and language, to wit — the knowledge of which he has done so much to extend amongst us that he may be said to have imparted additional distinction to the olden literature, and to have given it a fresh lease of life that shall endure, coupled henceforward with his own illustrious name, as long as the English tongue is spoken.

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CHAPTER THREE: ART AND POE- TRY.

OT more than nine months had expired when Morris, having thrown up his articles with Mr. Street, came to Town. Established there with his friend Edward Burne-Jones, at an age when, on looking back after ten or eleven years, he deemed | himself as having been "pretty much a boy," it was only natural that Morris should begin to enlarge his circle of literary and artistic acquaintances. In a letter to William Bell Scott in 1875, acknowledging the gift of a book of verse by that writer, Morris refers to these early days and thanks him for " the poems that I first found so sympathetic when I came up to London years ago." Rossetti, "the greatest man in Europe," as Burne-Jones then regarded him, writes thus to Bell Scott in the spring of the year 1857, " Two young men, projectors of ' The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine,' have recently come to town from Oxford, and are now very intimate friends of mine. Their names are Morris and Jones." (How commonplace a sound has this introductory men- tion, and how little suggestive of the celebrity they were ulti- mately to attain !) " They have turned artists instead of taking up any other career to which the University generally leads, and both are men of real genius. Jones's designs are marvels of finish and imaginative detail, unequalled by anything unless perhaps Albert Durer's finest works ; and Morris, though without practice as yet, has no less power, I fancy. He has written some really wonderful poetry too." That " the powers of the two men were very distinct" is the judgment which, when Bell Scott came to know them, himself formed and left on record in his " Autobio- graphical Notes."

Morris now set to work in real earnest, the preparation of his first volume of poems occupying no small portion of his time and attention. Nevertheless, he did not devote his energies exclusively to literature. In June, 1857, Rossetti writes again to Bell Scott, " Morris has as yet done nothing in art, but is now busily painting his first picture, ' Sir Tristram after his illness, in the garden of King Mark's Palace, recognized by the dog he had given to Iseult,' from the ' Morte d'Arthur.' It is being done all from nature of course, and I believe will turn out capitally."

Rossetti was mainly instrumental, with others of Morris's

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friends, in founding the Club known as the " Hogarth," a name of evil promise — so one might have supposed — to any who seriously entertained hopes of the regeneration of English art. Mr. William Michael Rossetti is the authority for saying that " the original Hogarth Club was so named on the ground that Hogarth was the first great figure in British art, and still remains one of the greatest. Madox Brown (not to speak of other projectors of the Club) entertained this view very strongly, and I think it probable that he was the proposer of the name." But for this statement one would have believed that the choice of style could only have been one of those audacious whims wheretoward youthfulness, prone to paradox, will sometimes be drawn. Be that as it may, from its foundation and first meeting in July, 1858, down to April, 1861, when it was dissolved, the Hogarth Club proved a select resort of many distinguished men of the advanced artists and litterateurs of the time. It counted among its members, beside William Morris and the two brothers Rossetti, Mr. F. G. Stephens, who was Honorary Secretary, Lord Houghton, Sir Frederick Leighton, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Col. Gillum, and Messrs. J. Ruskin, Ford Madox Brown, Spencer Stanhope, G. F. Watts, Arthur Hughes, Thomas Woolner, Hungerford Pollen, A. C. Swinburne, the Lushingtons, R. B. Martineau, Henry Wallis, P. A. Daniell, G. F. Bodley, John Brett, Eyre Crowe, Jun., Michael F. Halliday, W. Holman Hunt, Edward Lear, Val. Prinsep, W. Bell Scott, George Edmund Street, Philip Webb, Benjamin Woodward, and various other men of mark. At the picture exhibitions held under its auspices from time to time, works of the Pre-Raphaelite school were sure of finding a welcome. Moving, after no long while, from its original premises at 178, Piccadilly, the Hogarth then continued for the remainder of its existence at 6, Waterloo Place. It had no connection of any sort — it may be observed — with the Club which at present bears the same name, in Dover Street. The year 1858 was one "which seems," says Mr. George Saintsbury in " Corrected Impressions," " to have exercised a very remarkable influence on the books and persons born in it," since " the books (as biographers and bibliographers have before noticed) were unusually epoch-making." It was in this year that Morris published his first book. To be quite accurate one must not omit to record that the earliest work to bear the name of William Morris for author was a short poem, " Sir Galahad : a Christmas mystery " (Messrs. Bell and Daldy) ; but seeing that it only preceded " The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems " by a few months, and was incorporated in that volume, there is no need here to treat of it as a separate work. The significance of

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" The Defence of Guenevere," all things considered, has never perhaps been appreciated as was due. A young man, but twenty- four years old, Morris must be regarded for all intents and pur- poses as a pioneer in his kind. Tennyson's " Idylls of the King" had not as yet appeared ; nor ought it to be forgotten that at this date the published poems of Rossetti, who is generally accredited as standing to Morris in the relationship of master to disciple, did not consist of above a few occasional pieces contributed to perio- dicals. One has no desire, of course, to deny that the older poet had already written a number of poems that Morris must have heard or read privately. Indeed, he himself was only too ready to acknowledge his indebtedness to Rossetti ; whereof the dedi- cation of " The Defence of Guenevere," " to my friend, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter," is evidence enough and to spare, if such were wanted. But at the same time it must be borne in mind that Morris was before him in making the venture of pub- lishing a collection of poems that should court success or failure openly before the world. " This book was and is," says William Bell Scott, " the most notable first volume of any poet ; many of the poems represent the mediaeval spirit in a new way, not by a sentimental-nineteenth-century-revival-mediaevalism, but they give a poetical sense of a barbaric age strongly and sharply real. Woolner wrote to me at the time of publication, ' I believe they are exciting a good deal of attention among the intelligent on the outlook for something new.' " So recently, however, as 1895, Mr. Saintsbury could write on the subject of Mr. Morris, " It has always seemed to me that not merely the general, but even the critical public, ranks him far below his proper station as a poet." An appreciative writer, the late Mr. Walter Pater, in an essay on " Esthetic Poetry " (1868), while as yet only the first part of " The Earthly Paradise " had appeared, accounts Morris as the type and personification of the poetry of the revived romantic school. This new poetry, according to him, takes possession of a trans- figured world, " and sublimates beyond it another still fainter and more spectral, which is literally an artificial or ' Earthly Para- dise.' It is a finer ideal, extracted from what, in relation to any actual world, is already an ideal. Like some strange, second flowering after date, it renews on a more delicate type the poetry of a past age, but must not be confounded with it." The earliest of the modern romanticists, as represented by Scott and Goethe, had dealt with but one, and that the most superficial, aspect of mediaeval poetry, viz., its purely adventurous side. Later the elements of mediaeval passion and mysticism were embodied in the works of Victor Hugo in France and of Heine in Germany.

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But in "The Defence of Guenevere " Mr. Pater discerns "a refinement upon this later, profounder mediaevalism " and " the first typical specimen of aesthetic poetry." The book was in truth phenomenal. Its like had not before been known in England ; where hitherto, as Mr. George Saintsbury rightly remarks, " only one or two snatches of Coleridge and Keats had caught the peculiar mediaeval tone which the pre-Raphaelites in poetry, following the pre-Raphaelites in art, were now about to sound. Even ' La Belle Dame sans Merci,' that wonderful divination, in which Keats hit upon the true and very mediaeval, ... is an exception, a casual inspiration rather than a full reflection." The strange gift of insight displayed in the just named poem of Keats, and less fully in Coleridge's " Christabel," has perhaps no parallel in history, nor one in fiction, save in Rudyard Kipling's " Finest Story in the World." Even in the case of the two poets in whom it was manifested it was, as it were, an inspiration vouchsafed for the occasion only, to be immediately afterwards withdrawn. Neither of them was able to follow it up consistently : and Coleridge wittingly left "Christabel" a fragment. But with Morris the exact opposite v/as the case. His " Defence of Guenevere " and the three poems next in order in the volume were satu- rated through and through with the true and vital essence of Arthurian romance ; while the remaining poems savoured not less thoroughly of the very atmosphere of the middle ages. There was nothing that had found its way into these pages by haphazard, nothing sporadic ; but the whole book from end to end v/as alive with the antique spirit of the days of chivalry, recreated and quickened by the hand of genius. Withal there was some indefinable quality superadded of the poet's very own. And so, possessing as they did " the bizarrerie of a new thing in beauty," the " imperishable fantasies " of " The Defence of Guenevere " " did fill a fresh page in English poetry." Nor was he yet, it has been observed, under the influence of Chaucer, whose narrative manner v/as to inspire the poems Morris published later.

Of the poems contained in " The Defence of Guenevere," &c, the following had appeared previously in " The Oxford and Cam- bridge Magazine," viz., " The Chapel in Lyoness ; " the concluding part of " Rapunzel," under the title " Hands ; " " Riding Together," and " Summer Dawn." This last, in its original form, lacked a title ; while the first line of it, " Pray but one prayer for us 'twixt thy closed lips," was now altered to " Pray but one prayer for me," &c. The poem " Golden Wings " is not to be confounded with the prose tale which Morris contributed with the same title to the Magazine.

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It is interesting, moreover, to note the interchange of ideas consequent on the intimacy of the group of artist friends ; their common studies acting and reacting upon them, and supplying some with themes for poems, some for pictures. Often it is a problem to determine whether it was the verse of one that suggested the painting of the other or vice versa. Thus the Arthurian legend, rhymed by Morris in " The Defence of Guenevere," was with Rossetti and his friends at this time a favourite for illustration. Not only are the wall paintings in the Debating Hall, the present Library, of the Union Society at Oxford, a case in point ; but a certain number also of sketches and water-colours of Rossetti's, belonging to this period, bear the identical titles borne by poems of Morris's, e.g., " King Arthur's Tomb," or the last meeting of Lancelot and Guenevere ; " Sir Galahad ; " " The Blue Closet," and " The Tune of Seven Towers ; " while other drawings, such as that of " Lancelot in the Chamber of Guenevere," are obvious representations of incidents described in the poetry of Morris. Some of these works of Rossetti's were actual commissions executed by him for Morris, from whom afterwards they were purchased by Mr. George Rae. Again, " Burd Ellayne," the central figure in Morris's spirited ballad of " Welland River," was pictured by Rossetti and became the pro- perty of the late Mr. J. Leathart of Gateshead on Tyne. In the way of reading, Pastor William Meinhold's wonderful romance of " Sidonia the Sorceress " was, to use Morris's own words, " a great favourite with the more literary part of the pre-Raphaelite artists in the earlier days of that movement." Their common delight in it produced, for immediate result, " two beautiful water-colour pictures of Sidonia and Clara von Dewitz " by Sir Edward Burne- Jones ; while on Morris's imagination it took powerful hold, as no one could fail to be assured who had once had the privilege of hearing him read aloud a passage such, for instance, as that which relates how Lord Otto von Bork received the homage of Vidante von Meseritz and his feudal vassals. Morris simply revelled in the description of the knights riding into the hall, each with his blazoned banner displayed ; and one can imagine how he would have relished giving the order, " the kinsman in full armour shall ride into the hall upon his war-horse, bearing the banner of his house in his hand, and all my retainers shall follow on horses, each bearing his banner also, and shall range them- selves by the great window of the hall ; and let the windows be open, that the wind may play through the banners and make the spectacle yet grander." This final direction was one which Morris knew how to appreciate to the full. Nor did the deep

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impression fade from his mind with the lapse of time, but was destined to take practical form years afterwards in a reprint of the book from the Kelmscott Press. Indeed, throughout the career of the two friends nothing is more striking than the close parallel presented in the subjects chosen by them for treatment in their several ways, by Morris for poetry, by Burne-Jones for pictorial illustration. But these are points which will have to be detailed later on.

Meanwhile, to resume the consideration of " The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems." Strong as is the temptation to quote largely, one must be content with a verse or two to demon- strate certain charming characteristics of the poet. " The Eve of Crecy " contains two magnificent examples of that mode of poetic expression, dubbed "echolalia" by Max Nordau, and as such condemned by him ; a mode which, if few may attempt it with safety, is yet, in the hands of so consummate a master as Morris, unsurpassed for the peculiarly soothing and satisfying sense of beauty it produces.

" Gold on her head, and gold on her feet, And gold where the hems of her kirtle meet, And a golden girdle round my sweet ; —

Ah! qiielle est belle La Marguerite."

And again, a few stanzas lower down we read : —

" Yet even now it is good to think *****

Of Margaret sitting glorious there, In glory of gold and glory of hair, And glory of glorious face most fair ; —

Ah ! qiielle est belle La Marguerite"

The refrains are always melodious and grateful, whether, as in the case of " Two red roses across the moon," they seem to have no necessary connection with the body of the poem, or whether, as in the case of " The Sailing of the Sword," on the other hand, they form, with slight variations from verse to verse, an integral part in the progress of the ballad-story. The same poem may illustrate Morris's gift of conveying, and that too from a point of view as fresh as it is convincing, the most graphic impression in the shortest number of words : e.g.,

" The hot sun bit the garden beds," and

" Grey gleamed the thirsty castle-leads ; " 19

or this night-scene : —

" The while the moon did watch the wood," from " Riding Together ; " or this :—

" After these years the flowers forget their blood,"

from the poem "Concerning Geffray Teste Noire." Yet again take the refrain of the poem called " The Wind" :—

" Wind, wind ! thou art sad, art thou kind ?

Wind, wind, unhappy ! thou art blind,

Yet still thou wanderest the lily-seed to find."

What an exquisite thought is enshrined in the last line ! Here is a picture from " King Arthur's Tomb " : —

" I gazed upon the arras giddily,

Where the wind set the silken kings a-sway."

And, once more, how perfect a description is the following, from " Golden Wings " :—

" No answer through the moonlit night ;

No answer in the cold grey dawn ;

No answer when the shaven lawn Grew green, and all the roses bright."

Nothing is wanting here. No paraphrasing of words, no further detail could express the sense more vividly or more completely than the poet has done in these four short, simple lines.

It may not be amiss, before leaving the subject of " The Defence of Guenevere," to gather from the writings of some com- petent critics a few judgments concerning the work ; dismissing, before the rest, that estimate which is the least favourable. Mr. Henry G. Hewlett, in the " Contemporary Review " for December, 1874, is of opinion that " Quaint archaisms of diction, forced and bald rhymes, wilful obscurity, harshness, not to say ugliness of metaphor, disfigure nearly every page." Having said this much, however, the very worst that anyone with any show of fairness could possibly say, he continues: " But a just and careful critic could not fail to discern that the singer was worthier than his song. He had so saturated his imagination with the glow of chivalric romance and Catholic mythology as to be incapable for the moment of anything beyond reproduction. But the receptive and assimilative power which enabled him to apprehend thus intimately the spirit of so remote an age, and imitate thus faith- fully the relics of its living literature, required only time and

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training to mature into one of the richest of poetic faculties. No sign of this power is more marked in the volume than the tone of naif unconsciousness which the writer has caught from his models. His personality is never visible ; he never preaches ; dispenses praise and blame but rarely, and then in accordance with a standard not of his own raising. With calm impartiality he sets forth in successive pictures the double aspect in which the love of Guenevere for Lancelot seems to have presented itself to mediaeval imagination, — the view adopted by Chivalry, and the view sanctioned by the Church. In 'The Defence of Guenevere' she is a Phryne, voluptuous, imperial, irresistible ; in ' King Arthur's Tomb,' a Magdalen, tortured by remorse and tempted by passion, but sustained by penitence and faith unto the end. In ' Sir Galahad ' the portrait of the saint-knight is painted with a truthfulness that atones for whatever clumsiness of handling may at first repel us. He is represented as setting out in his quest of the San-Greal with sharp misgivings of spirit as to the career of chastity to which he must vow himself. He witnesses the tender leave-taking of a lady and her knight, and thinks sorrowfully that for him no maiden will mourn if he falls. He recalls the loves of Lancelot and Guenevere, of Tristram and Iseult, and is tempted to envy their happiness and forget their sin. But in the chapel where he passes his first vigil, he has a vision of

" ' One sitting on the altar as a throne, Whose face no man could say he did not know,

And though the bell still rang, He sat alone,

With raiment half blood-red, half white as snow.'

" Overpowered with shame, he sinks nerveless on the floor." Then are heard the tender accents of the Divine Wisdom con- descending to reason with His wavering servant. " The struggle in the youth's soul ceases ere the voice dies into silence, and the vision of the San-Greal is then revealed to eyes fitted to perceive it.

" The minor poems, of which the greater number are ballads, bear the same marks of the writer's thorough sympathy with a particular era of history and type of literature. . . . His attempts seem to us as successful as any that have since been made. ' The Sailing of the Sword,' which is the least imitative, and therefore the freest from affectations, approaches, perhaps, as nearly as a modern ballad can hope to do, the genuine simplicity of the antique."

Of the latter portion of the work Mr. Andrew Lang writes, " Leaving the Arthurian cycle Mr. Morris entered on his specially sympathetic period — the gloom and sad sunset glory of the late

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fourteenth century, the age of Froissart, and wicked wasteful wars. To Froissart it all seemed one magnificent pageant of knightly and kingly fortunes ; he only murmurs ' a great pity ' for the death of a knight or the massacre of a town. It is rather the pity of it that Mr. Morris sees hearts broken in a corner, as in ' Sir Peter Harpdon's End,' or beside 'The Haystack in the Floods.' . . . The astonishing vividness, again, of the tragedy told in ' Geffray Teste Noire ' is like that of a vision in a magic mirror or crystal ball, rather than like a picture suggested by printed words. ' Shameful Death ' has the same enchanted kind of present- ment. We look through a ' magic casement opening on the foam ' of the old waves of war. Poems of a pure fantasy, unequalled out of Coleridge and Poe, are ' The Wind ' and ' The Blue Closet.' Each only lives in fantasy. Motives and facts and story are unimportant and out of view. The pictures arise distinct, un- summoned, spontaneous, like the faces and places which are flashed on our eyes between sleeping and waking. Fantastic too, but with more of recognizable human setting, is ' Golden Wings.' " Another critic, Mr. Buxton Forman, in " Our Living Poets " (1871), says of" The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems," the " volume has very striking affinities with the poetry of more than one contemporary writer. Mr. Rossetti's influence is the easiest to discern ; but there are also several attempts at psychological art, clearly indicating Browning's influence. . . . Connected mainly with the age of Chivalry in subject, every page is full of an ex- quisite tender feeling; and in many instances there is great splen- dour of imagination. . . . Several small poems are master-pieces in their way ; and every poem in the book is full of beauties. But such pieces as ' Shameful Death,' ' The Judgment of God,' and ' Old Love,' monologues dealing subtly with the soul, have more real analogy with ballad poetry than with monologue poetry of the modern type, and would probably have been more perfect had they been executed in ballad form. In ' The Judgment of God ' in particular, the actual point of time whereat the monologue is spoken is anything but clearly distinguished from points of past time referred to. It is interesting to compare this piece with ' The Haystack in the Floods,' which is admirably graphic in narration, and as complete and excellent in its degree as are some later higher flights of Mr. Morris. 'The Judgment of God ' is spoken by an evil-hearted knight about to engage in single combat with a good knight, who, as he fears, is to over- come him ; the mental material is the series of thoughts passing through the false knight's mind immediately before engaging in the combat ; and so mistily are some of the verses framed,

22

that it is hard to know whether the facfts referred to in them have just taken place or are from the storehouse of old memories. . . . With Mr. Morris this want of perspicuity finds its preventive in direct narration, as in ' The Haystack in the Floods.' The subject of the poem is not in itself so simple as the other ; but, instead of either of the principal actors being com- missioned with the narrative, the whole is given to us in Mr. Morris's own clear objective style. . . . The physiology and psychology in the sketch of Jehane are alike excellent. ... It is probable that, were Mr. Morris treating a similar subject to this now, we should miss a certain fierceness that exists in it as matters stand. . . . ' Sir Peter Harpdon's End ' is an excessively clever little play in five scenes ; but it falls as far short of dramatic excellence as the monologues fall short of technical excellence in their kind."

" Over the first fortunes of a newly-born work of art," writes Algernon Charles Swinburne, who, as an undergraduate at Balliol, had made Morris's acquaintance at Oxford in 1857, " accident must usually preside for good or for evil. Over the earliest work of the artist . . . that purblind leader of the blind, accident, presided on the whole for evil. Here and there it met with eager recogni- tion and earnest applause; nowhere, if I err not, with just praise or blame worth heeding. It seems to have been now lauded and now decried as the result and expression of a school rather than a man, of a theory or tradition rather than a poet or student. . . . Such things as were in the book are taught and learnt in no school but that of instinct. Upon no piece of work in the world ■was the impress of native character ever more distinctly stamped, more deeply branded. ... In form, in structure, in composition, few poems can be . . . faultier than those of Mr. Morris, which deal with the legend of Arthur and Guenevere. ... I do not speak here of form in the abstract and absolute sense. ... I speak of that secondary excellence always necessary to perfection but not always indispensable to the existence of art. These first poems of Mr. Morris are not malformed ; . . . but they are not well-clad ; . . . they have need sometimes of combing and trimming. Take that one for example called ' King Arthur's Tomb.' It has not been constructed at all ; the parts hardly hold together. . . . There is scarcely any connection here, and scarcely com- position. . . . But where among other and older poets of his time and country, is there one comparable for perception and expression of tragic truth, of subtle and noble, terrible and piteous things ? Where a touch of passion at once so broad and so sure ? The figures here given have the blood and breath, the shape and

23

step of life ; they can move and suffer ; their repentance is as real as their desire ; their shame lies as deep as their love. They are at once remorseful for the sin and regretful of the pleasure that is past. The retrospective vision of Lancelot and of Guenevere is as passionate and profound as life. Riding towards her without hope, in the darkness and heat of the way, he can but divert and sustain his spirit by the recollection of her loveliness and her love, seen long since asleep and waking, in another place than this, on a distant night. . . . Retrospect and vision, natural memories and spiritual, here coalesce ; and how exquisite is the retrospect, and how passionate the vision, of past light and colour in the sky, past emotion and conception in the soul ! Not in the idyllic school is a chord ever struck, a note ever sounded, so tender and subtle as this. Again, when Guenevere has maddened herself and him with 'wild words of reproach and remorse, abhorrence and attraction, her sharp and sudden memory of old sights and sounds and splendid irrevocable days finds word and form not less noble and faithful to fact and life. . . . Such verses are not forgetable. They are not, indeed, — as are the ' Idylls of the King,' — the work of a dexterous craftsman in full practice. Little beyond dexterity, a rare eloquence, and a laborious patience of hand, has been given to the one or denied to the other. These are good gifts and great ; but it is better to want clothes than limbs."

Mr. Pater, in the work already quoted, says : " The poem which gives its name to the volume is a thing tormented and awry with passion, like the body of Guenevere defending herself from the charge of adultery, and the accent falls in strange, un- wonted places with the effect of a great cry. . . . Reverie, illusion, delirium : they are the three stages of a fatal descent both in the religion and the loves of the Middle Ages. . . . The English poet, too, has learned the secret. He has diffused through ' King Arthur's Tomb ' the maddening white glare of the sun, the tyranny of the moon, not tender and far-off, but close down — the sorcerer's moon, large and feverish. The colouring is intricate and delirious, as of ' scarlet lilies.' The influence of summer is like a poison in one's blood, with a sudden bewildered sickening of life and all things. In ' Galahad : a Mystery,' the frost of Christmas night on the chapel stones acts as a strong narcotic : a sudden shrill ringing pierces through the numbness : a voice proclaims that the Grail has gone forth through the great forest. It is in the ' Blue Closet ' that this delirium reaches its height with a singular beauty, reserved perhaps for the enjoy- ment of the few. . . . Those in whom what Rousseau calls les frayeurs nocturnes are constitutional, know what splendour they

24

give to the things of the morning. . . . The crown of the English poet's book is one of these appreciations of the dawn : • Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,' &c. It is the very soul of the bridegroom which goes forth to the bride : inanimate things are longing with him : all the sweetness of the imaginative loves of the Middle Age, with a superadded spirituality of touch all its own, is in that ! "

Lastly, in " The Academy," just a week after William Morris's death, Mr. Robert Steele wrote : " Living as we do in surround- ings so modified by the efforts of its author, we cannot fully estimate the worth of this little volume. It is totally unlike any other of his works." This is perfectly true. " The Defence of Guenevere and other Poems " is but a small book, and were its bulk alone to be the measure of value, the amount of space devoted to it in these pages might well seem disproportionate. It is, on the contrary, altogether inadequate. For this remarkable collec- tion of poems stands alone not only in the literature of our age and of our country, but, what is more to the present purpose, alone also among its author's own productions.

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CHAPTERFOUR: BETWEENWHILES. THE RED HOUSE.

IS " Defence of Guenevere " finished and sent to press, William Morris did not rest idly. Before the work was yet issued he had applied himself, with his wonted industry, it must not be said to the composing — for the very idea of any- thing forced and artificial was foreign to the spontaneity of his nature — but to the inditing of more poetry ; the greater part of which, however, was suffered to re- main unpublished. Nor would it, maybe, have survived at all, but for the friendly intervention of Mr. Charles Fairfax Murray, who preserves the manuscript among the most valued of his treasures. Of the number of Morris's poems that belong to this early period, nothing has appeared beside " The God of the Poor," printed in " The Fortnightly," 1868, and the song, " In the white-flowered hawthorn brake," which was introduced into the story of " Ogier the Dane " in " The Earthly Paradise." According to the author's original plan, this lyric was to have formed part of a long poem entitled " Scenes from the Fall of Troy," of which, as projected, not more than about a third was ever written. Among the other unpublished MS. in the possession of Mr. Murray is an additional scene to " Sir Peter Harpdon's End." Morris's old friend, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, in an obituary notice in " The Athenaeum," says, " Morris could and did write humorous poetry, and then with- held it from publication. For the splendid poem of ' Sir Peter Harpdon's End,' printed in his first volume, Morris wrote a humorous scene of the highest order, in which the hero said to his faithful fellow-captive and follower, John Curzon, that, as their deaths were so near, he felt a sudden interest in what had never interested him before — the story of John's life before they had been brought so close to each other. The heroic but dull- witted soldier acceded to his master's request, and the incoherent, muddle-headed way in which he gave his autobiography was full of a dramatic and subtle humour. . . . This he refused to print, in deference, I suspect, to a theory of poetic art."

And, moreover, Mr. Edmund Gosse writes in the " St. James's Gazette," within a few days after Morris's death : " It is said that vast sections of ' The Earthly Paradise' remain unpublished; and I can vouch for it that more than twenty years ago I heard

26

the poet read, in his full, slightly monotonous voice, a long story of ' Amis and Amylion ' (I think these were the names), which has never, to my knowledge, appeared in print. Rossetti used to declare that there was a room, a 'blue closet,' in the Queen's- square house, entirely crammed with Morris's poetry from floor to ceiling. This was a humorous exaggeration of that wonder- ful fluency which was a characteristic of Morris's genius."

But the fact of the existence of certain unpublished verse- writings of Morris's, if not indeed known widely, was by no means a secret confined to the circle of his personal friends. Thus Mr. George Saintsbury, while avowing himself an absolute stranger to William Morris, declares that he has " been told that all the defaulting poems exist ; " and, in addition, a writer in " The Sunday Times," on the day following the poet's death, understands " that there is a large mass of unpublished material which may be found more or less available for future issue." This, no doubt, has reference to prose writings of Morris's as well as poetry ; but Mr. Saintsbury is clearly alluding to those poems which were advertised shortly beforehand but did not eventually make their appearance in " The Earthly Paradise."

Further MS. poetry, owned by Mr. Fairfax Murray, com- prises a prologue to " The Earthly Paradise " in four-line stanzas, and a set of verses for the months of the year. All these portions of the work were re-written and other passages substituted in their room when the poem assumed its final state. From the MS. it would appear that even the very name was changed, the author having at one period an idea of calling it " The Fools' Paradise."

Another unpublished fragment is extant, being part of a poem " The Romance of the Wooers ; " and yet another work, in this case completed, a version of one of the most beautiful legends of Christian martyrology, viz., " The Story of Dorothea," dating from the time when Mr. Morris began to write again after the space of seven silent years or more that ensued upon the appearance of " The Defence of Guenevere." For so dis- couraging to the young author was the reception accorded to his first work that he had little enough heart to keep up his writing continuously, but turned his hand to other and more grateful occupations. His poems had, it is true, " found a few staunch friends," but, for the rest, " were absolutely neglected by the ' reading public' " It is on record that only some 250 copies of the first issue of the work were sold. Therefore in stating, as he does in his " Reminiscences," that the publication of " The Defence of Guenevere " was " what gave Morris his proper position,"

27

Bell Scott must be taken as referring to the judgment of their own limited set. For he has to admit that, in spite of everything, " the book was still-born. The considerable body of perfectly- informed but unsympathetic professional critics are, strange to say, so useless as directors of public taste that they have never yet lifted the right man into his right place at once. After repeated volumes had attracted public favour," but not till then, a demand arose for Morris's earliest volume, and it had to be reprinted, the stock of " the original impression having been returned to the paper-mill."

"At one time," says a writer who is described by Max Nordau as "an Anglo-German critic of repute," Dr. Francis Hueffer, the author of the memoir prefixed to the Tauchnitz selection from Morris's poems, " little was wanting to make Morris follow his friend Burne-Jones' example, and leave the pen for the brush. There is indeed still extant from his hand an unfinished picture evincing a remarkable sense of colour." The work referred to, which is a portrait study, depicts a lady in the act of unfastening her girdle. It is a wonder that this painting is yet intact, for its history, a somewhat curious one, is as follows. Left at Ford Madox Brown's, it was conveyed thence by his son, Oliver Madox Brown, and given to Rossetti, who kept it by him with the view of repainting it, because he was not satisfied that it did justice to the lady it portrayed. However, he never carried out his intention, and, after his death, the picture passed, with other property of the deceased painter, into the hands of his brother, William Michael. In this gentle- man's possession it might possibly have still remained, but that he, being informed of its rightful ownership within a few months of the death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, took steps to have the painting returned to Mr. Morris.

While staying temporarily in Oxford in the autumn of 1857 William Morris met the lady, who, two years later, became his wife ; the marriage, appropriately enough in the case of so eminent a scholar of English as the bridegroom, taking place in the old Saxon-towered Church of St. Michael in the Corn. There is no need to attempt any description of Mrs. Morris, since her features have been immortalized in numerous drawings and paintings from the hand of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Morris's engagement necessitated the providing a suitable home, with the preparation of which he was now busily occupy- ing himself. The house was not got ready in time for him to take up his residence there at his marriage, so he had to wait awhile, and moved in shortly after. In the meantime, a company

28

THE RED HOUSE. FROM THE GARDEN.

of ladies, friends of Mr. Morris, used to meet at the studio in Red Lion Square, and, while he himself was doing decoration in oil colour, they, under his superintendence, embroidered hangings, &c, for the adornment of his future home. One of these pieces of needlework was taken eventually to Kelmscott Manor and hung there. It was powdered all over with a repeated pattern, a design of Morris's of the quaintest description, — birds, for all the world like those in a Noah's ark, trees as stiff-looking as the clipped trees in a Dutch garden or a child's toy-box, and scrolls inscribed with the motto " If I can." The whole of it was executed in Berlin wool (the only medium available, except silk, in those days before crewels and Tussore-silks had been intro- duced), not of course in the fashion which then prevailed and, it is to be feared, is not yet extinct, to wit, cross stitches on a canvas foundation ; but with a very different manner of working, in long and coarse stitches, as bold as effective. Another strip of em- broidery executed for the same purpose, of a floral pattern, drawn likewise by Mr. Morris, was given by him, after its removal from its original position, to Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and is now at his house at Rottingdean.

The site Morris chose for his new house was an orchard at Upton, near Bexley Heath, amid "the rose-hung lanes of woody Kent." The highways of the county were dear to the poet through their having been trodden by the feet of Chaucer's

29 1

Canterbury pilgrims ; while its historic memories were illus- trious in his eyes, because it was there had sprung up and spread among carles and yeo- men the popular movement led by valorous John Ball.

Morris was not his own architect. To build his house he employed his friend Philip Webb, who, however, in effect was merely carrying out Morris's directions, more par- ticularly in the design of the internal fixtures. The build- ing was given the appropriate name of "The Red House." It is remarkable as being the first example of the artistic use revived of red brick for do- mestic purposes. Picturesque and irregular of construction, it had an architectural char- the red house. the well, acter that distinguished it

among its contemporaries of the ugly, square-box order which at that date seemed to be accepted almost universally. It was, for its time, a bold innovation, which cannot be said to have been without extraordinary results for good. Nay, as an experiment on the part of a man who had both the hopefulness and the dauntless will necessary to enable him to make a stand against the tyranny of custom, to William Morris is owing the credit of having initiated, with his Red House, a new era in house- building.

Morris set forth his views on the subject of architecture in a paper he contributed to " The Fortnightly Review " in May, 1888. " The revival of the art of architecture in Great Britain," he says, " may be said to have been a natural consequence of the rise of the romantic school in literature, although it lagged some way behind it. . . . Up to a period long after the death of Shelley and Keats and Scott, architecture could do nothing but produce on the one hand pedantic imitations of classical architecture of the most revolting ugliness, and ridiculous travesties of Gothic build- ings, not quite so ugly, but meaner and sillier ; and on the other hand, the utilitarian brick-box with a slate lid which the Anglo-

30

Saxon generally in modern times considers as a good sensible house with no non- sense about it." But, he continues further on, " Were the rows of square brown brick boxes which Keats and Shelley had to look on, or the stuccoed villa which en- shrined Tennyson's genius, to be the perpetual con- comitants of such masters of verbal beauty ; was no beauty but the beauty of words to be produced by man in our times ; was the intelligence of the age to be for ever so preposterously lop-sided ? We could see no reason for it and accordingly our hope was strong ; for though we had learned some- thing of the art and history of the Middle Ages we had not learned enough. . . . Any- how, this period of fresh hope and partial insight produced many interesting buildings and other works of art, and afforded a pleasant time indeed to the hopeful but very small minority engaged in it, in spite of all vexations and disappointments." How that hope was dissipated he goes on to show : " At last one man, who had done more than any one else to make this hopeful time possible, drew a line sternly through these hopes founded on imperfect knowledge. This man was John Ruskin. By a marvellous inspiration of genius (I can call it nothing else) he attained at one leap to a true conception of mediaeval art, which years of minute study had not gained for others. In his chapter in ' The Stones of Venice,' entitled ' On the Nature of Gothic and the Function of the Workman therein,' he showed us the gulf which lay between us and the Middle Ages. From that time all was changed. ... I do not say that the change in the Gothic re- vivalists produced by this discovery was sudden, but it was effective. It has gradually sunk deep into the intelligence of the art and literature of to-day."

3i

THE RED HOUSE.

STAIRCASE.

The above passages were written, it is important to note, some thirty-five years after the appearance of " The Stones of Venice." In the interval Morris had had time to recover from the shock of disillusionment. It had become evident to him that the splendid monuments of architec- ture of the Middle Ages, as well as all the minor arts, had been produced under, and owed their very existence to, circumstances totally different from our own — ■ to a set of traditions and a con- currence of forces, such that, if one or other of them could con- ceivably be resuscitated, would yet assuredly never again be found together in the same proportions and the same com- binations as of old. However unwelcome the truth, the logic of facts and of history was not to the red house, small panel of be gainsaid save bv " those who

EARLY MORRIS GLASS (I2j in. x 7* in.) ..*? ,, , ... . „ at>

in window of hall corridor. wilfully shut their eyes." To abandon oneself, nevertheless, to unprofitable bewailings for a vanished past that could not be recalled were sheer cowardice, as Morris perceived. So, once convinced that the causes of the dearth of sound art amongst us lay deeper than he had at first suspected, viz., in the very conditions of our modern social and industrial system, he determined to think the matter out and to devise, if it might be, a remedy for existing evils. Hence he learned to look for the fulfilment of his aspirations in the ideal of a future, wherein a reconstructed society should even surpass anything hitherto achieved in the most glorious of days bygone. " The hope of our ignorance has passed away," he wrote, " but it has given place to the hope born of fresh knowledge." Experts indeed were slow to grasp the full significance of the teaching of Ruskin, as Morris did not fail to record. And he himself, young and ardent as he was at the time, would naturally be as loth as any among them to accept conclusions so tremendous. Had the consequent lesson come home to him, and had his reluctance given way earlier than it did, it is scarcely too much to assert

32

that the Red House might not have existed at all. At any rate, Morris built that once only, but never afterwards.

The date of the Red House is 1859, as the vane on the top of the roof shows. " The only thing you saw from a distance," says Bell Scott in his " Reminis- cences," "■was an immense red- tiled, steep and high roof; and the only room I remember was the dining-room or hall, which seemed to occupy the whole area of the mansion. It had a fixed settle all round the walls, a curious music-gallery entered by a stair outside the room, break- ing out high upon the gable, and no furniture but a long table of oak reaching nearly from end to end. This vast, empty hall was painted coarsely in bands of wild

foliage over both wall and ceil- :„„ ,„t,:„i, „..„,, «^«« *;™i,„« „„^ the red house, small panel of ing, which was open-timber and early morris glass (124 in. x 74 in.) lofty." (There are some obvious IN window of hall corridor. mistakes here. Bell Scott, though right enough in his impres- sion of the general effect of the furnishing and so on, is decidedly wrong in detail. In fact, he confounds the features of two separate rooms, and would lead one to suppose, from the way he speaks of them, that all were to be found together in one apart- ment.) "The adornment," he continues, "had a novel, not to say striking, character. . . . Morris did whatever seemed good to him unhesitatingly, and it has been very good."

The following account is based on notes supplied by one who used to know the house in the old days. " The first sight of the Red House in 1863," says this writer, "gave me an astonished pleasure. The deep red colour, the great sloping, tiled roofs ; the small-paned windows ; the low, wide porch and massive door ; the surrounding garden divided into many squares, hedged by sweetbriar or wild rose, each enclosure with its own parti- cular show of flowers ; on this side a green alley with a bowling green, on that orchard walks amid gnarled old fruit-trees ; — all struck me as vividly picturesque and uniquely original." In the

33 k

grass-plot at the back of the house is a covered well, with a quaint conical roof. " Upon entering the porch, the hall appeared to one accustomed to the narrow, straight ugliness of the usual middle-class dwell- ing of those days as being grand and severely simple. A solid oak table with trestle-like legs stood in the middle of the red-tiled floor, while a fireplace gave a hospitable look to the hall place." To the left, close to the foot of the stairs, is a wooden partition, panelled with leaded panes of plain glass of antique quality. This screen divides the main

TH* RED HOUSE hal1 fr°m S leSSel* h&11 OT

buffet in the dining-room, corridor, which leads, at right angles, into the garden and is lighted by windows of glass quarries decorated with various kinds of birds and other devices. In the centre of two of these windows are single figure panels ; the one representing Love, in a rich red tunic, flames of fire at his back, and a stream of water traversing the flowery sward at his feet ; the other, Fate, robed to the feet in green, with a wheel of fortune in her hand.

Immediately to the right as one enters the hall is a wooden structure, the lower part projecting to form a bench seat ; the upper part being a press or cupboard, with unfinished colour decorations. On the outside of the two doors of it are figure compositions, sketched in, and begun in oils, but left in- complete : while inside are some interesting experiments in diapering in black on a gold ground, by Mr. Morris's hand. Beyond this press is "the door of the dining room, the living room in fact. This is a long room and lies parallel to the hall. The fireplace stands out in the middle of the wall facing the entrance." It is of brick and, like the rest of the fireplaces in. the house, is not provided with a mantelshelf, the chimney-breast of brick going straight up to within a short distance of the ceiling,

34

where it finishes off with a coved top. Near the door, and occupying the greater part of the wall space to the left as one enters the room, a promi- nent feature " was a wide dresser which reached to the ceiling and was ornamented richly with painted decoration. By the fireplace stood a mov- able settle, with high back, the panels of it filled with leather, gilt and coloured. The chairs were plain black, with rush seats." Commonly accepted as is the use of this simple and picturesque form of chair at the present day, its revival is due to Mr. Morris's example. "The walls were tinted with pale distemper, and the ceiling ornamented by hand in yellow on white." The manner in which the ceiling decoration is carried out in this room and other parts of the house is most ingenious and effective. The pattern, a conventional repeat of the simplest form, was pricked upon the plaster, while yet moist and unhard- ened, the spaces between the pricked outlines being after- wards filled in with a flat tint _ of distemper colour, bright, but THE RED house. not so strongly pronounced as landing at the head of the stairs. to be staring, or in any degree disagreeable.

Opposite to the front door, beneath an open pyramidal sort of lantern roof, rises the wide oaken staircase, with Gothic newel- posts at the angles; the underneath part of it not boxed in, as the ordinary custom is to conceal the construction, but left open and showing the form of the steps from below. " Upstairs — only one floor — above the dining room is the drawing room, with a decorated, open roof." The fireplace of brick with an open

35

hearth, was provided with a brick hood, which sloped narrowing to the roof. " To the left of the fireplace was a dais alcove with windows and window-seats. But the chief means of lighting was a large window at the end of the room furthest from the door. Facing the window was the most important feature of the room, viz., a great bookcase or cabinet — one scarcely knows how to describe it correctly. This painted cabinet, of which the effect was gorgeous, nearly filled the end of the room, while at one side was a wooden ladder stair-way by which one could mount to the upper part of it and find room to sit or move about on the top, as on a balcony. From this stage another short ladder led into a storage-loft in the roof beyond."

" The walls of the principal bedroom were hung with em- broidered serge. Here also stood a splendid wardrobe," decorated all over with gilding and colour, a wedding present painted and given by Burne-Jones. Morris himself executed part of the decoration on the inner folds of the doors. The subject which covers the front of this wardrobe is " The Prioress's Tale " from Chaucer ; perhaps to the modern reader the most familiar of all the " Canterbury Tales," through Wordsworth's popularized version of it. The legend is not to be confounded with that of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln, though there are certain points in common. The various scenes of the story are represented, as was customary with mediaeval artists, all in the same picture, the principal subject being on a larger scale than the rest and occupying the foremost place in the composition. It depicts the Blessed Virgin stooping over the pit which contains the body of the murdered boy, and placing on his tongue a grain which should enable him in death to continue singing " Alma Redemp- toris Mater " to her praise.

Towards the end of the year i860 Burne-Jones, while on a visit at the Red House, commenced a series of paintings in tempera upon the end wall of the large drawing-room there ; Morris also himself contributing somewhat to the decorative work, of which, however, the more important share was neces- sarily that undertaken by Burne-Jones. The subject was the mediaeval story of Sir Degravaunt, another of those romances which, like " Sidonia the Sorceress," had begun to exercise a powerful charm upon both the painter and his host. The charm, indeed, survived to the end, as was testified by the fact that a Kelmscott Press edition of " Sire Degravaunt," with a wood-cut frontispiece designed by Burne-Jones, had for some time past been in preparation, although unhappily Mr. Morris did not live to see it issued, dying as he did before it was ready. Only three

36

THE RED HOUSE, UPTON. WALL-PAINTINGS BY SIR E. EURNE- JONES, BT. THE ROMANCE OF SIR DEGRAVAUNT.

panels, and these forming the last out of the set, were ever painted at the Red House. In one of them Burne-Jones introduced the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Morris, seated side by side, in robes of state and crowned with coronets, in the characters of Sir Degra- vaunt and his bride in the scene of the wedding banquet. These paintings are not in a good position for light, but they are in good hands and well cared for, having been covered with glass to insure their preservation.

Near about the same time, i.e., the latter part of i860, in a letter to Bell Scott, Rossetti writes to say that his wife has " gone for a few days to stay with the Morrises at their Red House at Upton, and I am to join her there to-morrow, but shall probably return before her, as I am full of things to do, and could not go there at all, but that I have a panel to paint there." The work was in oils, and it is said that one week sufficed for its execution. The subject of one of Rossetti's compositions for the Red House was the Garden of Eden. He also painted the first meeting and the last meeting of Dante and Beatrice ; in the middle, between the two scenes, being an allegorical figure of Love, holding a dial-plate in his hands. These panels were eventually removed when Morris parted with the Red House, and were framed in the form of a diptych. Morris did not occupy the Red House above six years. He gave it up at the end of that space and came back to live in London in 1865.

i

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CHAPTER FIVE. OF THE FIRM OF MORRIS AND CO., DECORATORS.

3T was remarked by Mr. William Michael Rossetti in the work contain- ing his brother's life and letters that a " detailed history of the firm of Morris, Marshall and Faulkner, or Morris and Co., would by this time" (1895) "be an interesting thing," but that such a record had " not yet been written." Nor maybe among those that now survive, except to Sir Edward Burne- Jones and Mr. Philip Webb, who, if any, should be in possession of the necessary particulars, must it be looked to furnish a full account ; especially of facts and incidents relating to the earlier days, when the firm was more of the nature of an informal association of friends working together than a business partnership in the ordinary sense of the term.

To whom belongs the credit of having been the first to conceive the idea of the artistic venture that has developed since into the business of Messrs. Morris and Co., may not now perhaps be determined with absolute certainty. The initiation of the project has been attributed at various times to various members of the original firm ; but the balance seems rather to incline in favour of Ford Madox Brown as one of the patriarchs of the revival. However, one thing at any rate is beyond doubt, that the whole undertaking owes its success to the patience and energy, to the enthusiasm, the originality, in a word, to the genius of William Morris, whose name it bears.

It has been shown how the furnishing of his own house at Bexley Heath had been made by Morris the occasion for exercis- ing his ingenuity in embroidery design, in ceiling and mural decoration, and in several other ways, and generally of acquiring practical experience in different branches of domestic art. But what he began then by doing on a small scale, was destined to engage him from that time forward for the remainder of his life.

There is but slight necessity to enumerate the horrors proper to the early Victorian period — the Berlin woolwork and the bead mats ; the crochet antimacassars upon horsehair sofas ; the wax flowers under glass shades ; the monstrosities in stamped brass and gilded stucco ; chairs, tables, and other furniture hideous with veneer and curly distortions ; the would-be naturalistic vegetable-patterned carpets with false shadows and misplaced

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perspective ; and all the despicable legion of mean shams and vulgarities which have been exposed and held up to ridicule times without number. The memory of them, indissolubly associated with the geranium and the crinoline, is only too painfully vivid to the minds of many of us. It is sufficient to say that love nor money could procure beautiful objects of contemporary manu- facture for any purpose of household furnishing or adornment when William Morris undertook the Herculean and seemingly hopeless task of decorative reform, and wrought and brought deliverance from the thraldom of the ugly, which oppressed all the so-called arts of this country.

Two years and more elapsed from the time the proposition was first mooted ; and during that interval not a few preliminary meetings were held, not a few times merely was the scheme dis- cussed, before anything like a definite working plan was deter- mined on. At one time two or three of those who originally constituted themselves members of the firm would assemble to discuss their plans at Madox Brown's house at 13, Fortess Terrace, (now Junction Road,) Kentish Town ; at another time at Burne-Jones's rooms in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square ; at another time again at Morris's own studio in Red Lion Square. Morris is described by one, who met him first on one such occasion, as keenly alert and full of energy and move- ment,— altogether a most striking personality. There were other meetings, or, as they used to be called, " gatherings of the clans," at Madox Brown's house, for instance when himself took the chair and a larger number were present. Several ladies also who were interested as taking part in the work were present on certain occasions. At one of the general meetings, which took place about the middle of the year 1861, it was announced that rooms, for business premises, had been taken at No. 8, on the north side of Red Lion Square, W.C. " With a view," writes Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, in his record of the life and works of Ford Madox Brown, " of starting a sort of co-operative agency for supplying artistic furniture and surroundings primarily to them- selves, but also to the general public, each of those present," it was agreed, " should lay down a stipulated sum. . . . The rules of incorporation were briefly : that each member should con- tribute designs for the various articles of use and ornament for which demand arose, and should be paid for his work in the usual course of events, before the profits, if any, were shared." Moreover, at the same time it was mentioned that Mr. Bodley, the architect, had promised to commit the execution of certain orders for stained glass and other decorations to the firm,

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provided they were organized so as to be able to undertake them. Proposals as to ways and means having thus already been formulated, the business, under the style of Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., was now definitely set on foot. A strangely assorted group were they who comprised the original members of the firm. Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and Arthur Hughes, painters, the last of whom shortly withdrew ; Philip Webb, architect ; Peter Paul Marshall, district surveyor at Tottenham and engineer ; and Charles Joseph Faulkner, an Oxford don— these were Morris's partners in the firm. He himself was to undertake the business management and general direction of the affair. His father, before him, had been a man of business, and William Morris had inherited presumably some measure of his father's capacity. " Mr. Morris," says Mr. W. M. Rossetti, " came much the fore- most, not only by being constantly on the spot, to work, direct and to transact, but also by his abnormal and varied aptitude at all kinds of practical processes." Beside the partners, of whom all, as it has been stated above, were to give active assistance according to their ability, the staff at the outset was of the smallest. There was Mr. George F. Campfield, subsequently appointed foreman, whom Madox Brown and Burne-Jones had met some two years previously among the students in Ruskin's class at the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street ; and there was also a man engaged to do the rough work of packing and so on. He, by the way, is the same who figures as one of the labourers in Madox Brown's " Work " at the Corpora- tion Art Gallery at Manchester. As the business of the firm expanded, others were engaged, as required, through the means of advertisements in a Clerkenwell local paper, in " The Builder," &c. But the scheme indicated in the circular, as below, was so unusual from its utter disregard of established conven- tions, and had caused so much dismay among trade circles, that men on the look-out for employment were for a long time afraid to come forward in response, being wary of identifying them- selves with an undertaking on the face of it so hazardous, and such that obviously was foredoomed to failure. The firm, on their part, were anxious to exclude the merely commercial element, and required of all who joined in their work fair evidence, at least, of artistic appreciation beyond the ordinary standard.

The first step the firm took to make their existence known to the public was to send forth a circular stating their aims. The purport of this document was that "a company of historical

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artists had banded themselves together to execute work in a thoroughly artistic and inexpensive manner ; and that they had determined to devote their spare time to designing for all kinds of manufactures of an artistic nature." In our days — so far have conditions been modified and views progressed — a notice of this sort would excite but little comment. Yet in the period when the decorative arts, as then practised, were understood to be a mere polite accomplishment for young ladies who had no better occupation to keep them amused ; and when also the line of demarcation between the gentleman, the man, that is, who did nothing to earn his bread, and the business man was drawn with uncompromising sharpness, it was not to be wondered at if the announcement came with the provocation and force of a challenge, and dumbfounded those who read it at the audacity of the venture. The amount of prejudice it aroused would scarcely be believed at the present time. Professionals felt themselves aggrieved at the intrusion, as they regarded it, of a body of men whose training had not been strictly commercial into the close preserves of their own peculiar domain ; and, had it been possible to form a ring and exclude Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. from the market, the thing would infallibly have been done. But if from without there was much bad blood to encounter and live down, the enthusiasm that reigned among themselves and inspired the courageous little band of pioneers — for they were indeed no less than that — was such, that it is difficult to form any con- ception of it at this distance of time. Pioneers ! Nay, Morris and his fellow-workers must have felt themselves to be something far exceeding that ; — no mere Columbus was Morris, guiding the helm of his craft to the discovery and exploitation of some already existing land : — no, but since he and they that followed his leadership were actually constructing by their own efforts a new and unknown territory which before had had no being, theirs was rather the divine joy of creating, a joy that is given to none but to an artist, himself a creator, to appreciate. " Ah ! but those were grand times," remarked one who has worked with the firm from the very commencement. Furthermore, a thing rarer then than nowadays, there was an all but unlimited freedom of cri- ticism admitted on both sides, between employers and employed, a freedom that virtually amounted to equality of condition between them.

The approaching International Exhibition in London, 1862, and the prospect of being represented worthily there, gave the newly-founded firm a definite motive for rallying together and, if it were possible, an extra incentive to strenuous exertion. To

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meet the pressure of work thereby entailed, the staff of Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. was increased towards the end of 1861 ; the new-comers being Messrs. Albert and Harry Goodwin and Weigand. The latter assisted Rossetti in the decoration of Mr. Seddon's cabinet, and was taken on ultimately as a regular worker in the firm. Finding themselves also in need of additional help in preparing the glass in hand for exhibition, the firm advertised in " The Builder " of gth November, 1861, for " a first-rate fret glazier wanted." This led to the engaging of Mr. Charles Holloway, who has since become a painter.

Practically no particulars of the exhibits of Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. are to be gathered from the Official Illustrated Catalogue of the Exhibition of 1862, printed for her Majesty's Commissioners. It contains but two meagre entries of objects shown by the firm, viz., "Exhibit No. 5783: Decorated furniture, tapestries, &c," and " Exhibit No. 6734 : Stained glass windows." The report of the juries and list of awards witnesses that a medal (United Kingdom) was bestowed on the firm for their 'work in either class. In the case of the stained glass the award was given " for artistic qualities of colour and design," and in the case of their contributions to the class for furniture and upholstery, paper-hangings, &c, the record runs : " Messrs. Morris and Co. have exhibited several pieces of furniture, tapestries, &c, in the style of the Middle Ages. The general forms of the furniture, the arrangement of the tapestry, and the character of the details are satisfactory to the archaeologist from the exactness of the imitation, at the same time that the general effect is excellent."

This recognition, scanty and inadequate as it was, from the authorities was not allowed to pass unchallenged. The hostility displayed in certain quarters was of the most determined character. Opponents of the firm even went the length of starting a petition to get the work disqualified, on the ground that it was other than it professed to be. In particular they maintained, and that with a dogged obstinacy which did little credit to their own acquaintance with technique, that Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co.'s stained glass was not new work or new material at all, but in reality old glass touched up for the occasion — that it was, in plain language, a fraud. But misunder- standings on the part of brother-artists and more bitter jealousy on the part of the trade were of little avail. The awards of the official judges were upheld. And perhaps, after all, the animosity of rivals afforded really testimony the strongest, just because it was involuntary, to the very remarkable qualities of the work

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which the firm, during so brief a period of existence, had succeeded in producing. At least one expert, Mr. Clayton, of the firm of Clayton and Bell, and formerly a fellow-student with Rossetti at the Royal Academy Schools, when he came to adjudicate, pronounced the work of Messrs. Morris and Co. to be the finest of its kind in the Exhibition.

Before the close of the Exhibition orders were received through Mr. Bodley, then a generous friend and supporter of the firm, for glass for St. Michael's, Brighton, and also for another new church, built in 1862, viz., All Saints', Selsley, a fresh district formed out of the parish of King Stanley in Gloucestershire. The design for the latter church comprised some square quarries with fine circular ornament and delicate yellow stain, in the execution of which quarries Morris personally bore a share. To help in this work an ordinary glazier was engaged to cut and glaze the glass. Another order that followed shortly after was for glass for Bradford, Yorkshire.

During their first year Mr. J. P. Seddon, the architect, had commissioned Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. to decorate a cabinet made from his own design. This was one of the earliest works undertaken by the firm, and was included among the furniture shown at the Exhibition of 1862. It is still in Mr. Seddon's possession. "The subjects proposed for the decoration of this cabinet," says a note by the editor of "The Century Guild Hobby Horse," October, 1888, " being Architecture, Painting, Sculpture and Music, Mr. Ford Madox Brown suggested a series of imaginary incidents in the ' Honeymoon ' of King Rene by which to express them, that king having been skilled in all these arts ; Mr. Madox Brown himself designing the ' Archi- tecture,' while the other subjects were invented by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Mr. Burne-Jones. . . . The cabinet ... is Gothic in character, and made of oak, polished and inlaid with woods of various colours ; the hinges being of metal, painted. The face of the lower portion, which rests immediately upon the ground and forms the greater bulk of the cabinet, contains four panelled doors, the central two of which project slightly beyond those which are at either end. On the panel of the door to the extreme left is painted in oils the design significant of Architec- ture. . . . Upon the gold background is a pattern of lines and dots, and above the figures is set the kind of canopy represented in mediaeval manuscripts," a trefoiled arch, the spandrils of which contain, within circles, shields with the arms of King Rene, &c. " This background and canopy is repeated in the three other panels. The dress of the king is of a purplish red, lined with

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blue, his shoes of scarlet ; while the white dress of the queen is edged with dark fur, and embroidered with red and blue flowers done in outline. The two panels of the projecting central portion of the cabinet were painted by Mr. Burne-Jones. In the first of these, the king is shown drawing the figure of a woman, as his queen stands over him ; in the third panel he is at work carving a statue, while the attitude of the queen would seem to express astonishment at his art. The remaining panel on the right, representing 'Music,' was designed by Rossetti. Here the queen is seated, playing at a kind of regal, or chamber organ, the bellows of which are blown by King Rene. She is in a dress of green ; and, as she is playing, a cloak of fur, lined with orange, falls from her shoulders, as the king bends over the instrument to kiss her. In the upper portion of the cabinet are four little square panels, painted with the half-lengths of girls variously engaged : one of them is at a frame, embroidering ; another, wearing a wimple, weaves a chequered cloth." Part of the decoration also was done by Mr. Val Prinsep. Yet another cabinet, produced later, should be mentioned ; a high one, for the design and execution of which the firm was responsible; the subject of the panel decora- tion, " Green Summer," being the work of Burne-Jones.

But of Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co.'s exhibits at the Exhibition of 1862 neither the least interesting nor the least beautiful was a piece of furniture, now in private ownership, a cabinet, raised on a stand and furnished with doors, both the designing and the painting of the four panels being the work of William Morris's own hand. His original pen-and-ink studies belong to Mr. Fairfax Murray. The subject is the legend of St. George, the series beginning with the royal proclamation and surrender of the victim to the dragon, and ending with the triumphal return of St. George with the rescued maiden ; it does not, however, include the oft-repeated subject of the combat with the dragon. While Morris was engaged upon this work at Red Lion Square, he received a visit from the master of his old school at Walthamstow, Mr. Guy, who was not only delighted but astonished at the work offered for the inspection of himself and the friends who accompanied him ; a fact which goes to prove what has already been stated, viz., that there was no tradition of the extraordinary artistic powers Morris developed when he grew up having been manifested or even suspected in him in boyhood.

If Morris's position at the head of affairs at Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co.'s had hitherto not been appreciated, the mark that, owing to his guiding genius, the firm made at the Exhibition left no doubt as to his importance. At a social gather-

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ing at the Red House, to which, after the close of the Exhibition, Morris invited all the members of the firm, partners and staff in a body, he seemed instinctively to be acknowledged with one accord as occupying the leading place. The entire direction thenceforward was virtually in his hands, and he applied himself unremittingly to the task. When, in 1865, the firm removed from their original quarters to No. 26, Queen Square, Bloomsbury, Mr. Morris left Upton and took up his residence under the same roof. The house being a large one, the accommodation was sufficient, and, by living thus on the spot, he was enabled to devote still more of his time to superintending the industries carried on by the firm. But although he was, for all intents and purposes, in command of the whole business, he did not become the formal and official head until 1874. In the summer of that year, the original partnership was dissolved, Mr. Theodore Watts taking an active part in the arrangement of the affair. Mr. Morris then bought out the other partners and himself remained as sole repre- sentative of the Company, styled thenceforward simply Morris and Co. A fresh notice was issued to announce the change in the firm and to explain that the character of its work would remain unchanged, Burne-Jones continuing as before to furnish cartoons for stained glass. But one must not anticipate. Towards the beginning of 1865 Mr. Warrington Taylor came into the business, in the capacity of acting manager under Mr. Morris, and was of great service to the firm, while he lived ; for, un- happily, in a few years' time he was carried off by consumption. He was succeeded by Mr. George Wardle, who had formerly acted as his assistant, and who remained in conduct of affairs from the death of Mr. Taylor for a considerable time — in fact, until within about six or seven years ago, when he resigned and went abroad. The names of some others who have, in the past, been workers in or on behalf of the firm may be mentioned : Messrs. Fairfax Murray, Charles Napier Hemy, James Egan, Fletcher, and the Misses Faulkner.

With reference to the remarks in the official report of the Exhibition of 1862, it should be observed that in the early days of Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., their productions, though far from being merely imitative, presented a greater degree of resemblance to mediaeval work than they came to have in later times, when the distinctly characteristic style of Morris had matured. Thus, in the powderings and diaperings of draperies, backgrounds, &c, for stained glass, the firm, about the middle of the sixties, made some use of a collection of ancient examples of decorations copied from different churches in Norfolk

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and Suffolk. These patterns and details of ornaments from paint- ings on walls and roofs, mouldings and carved woodwork, &c., including a series of figures of the angelic hierarchy from the rood-screen of St. Michael's Church, Barton Turf, Norfolk (date c. 1430), and some figures of saints, also of the fifteenth century, from Cawston Church in the same county, were selected and drawn by Mr. G. Wardle. Executed in pencil, and in many instances coloured, with a rare mastery of draughtsmanship, upon tracing paper, mounted on cards and enclosed in three portfolios, this valuable set of designs was acquired in the years 1866 and 1867 for the National Art Library at the South Kensing- ton Museum.

When first the firm started to execute stained glass, Mr. Morris himself had no practical experience of the technicalities of the art. Madox Brown had previously made but one design for the purpose, viz., the Transfiguration, for Messrs. Powell and Sons; while Burne-Jones, it is true, had already projected a course of instructions on the subject at the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street, and had even designed a small quantity of glass, e.g., for Waltham Abbey Church, as well as the St. Frideswide window in the Latin Chapel at Christ Church. It fell, however, to the lot of neither of these, but to another member of the firm, Mr. Webb, to test the proficiency of their foreman, Mr. Campfield, who, having been employed for a short time by a firm of stained glass manufacturers, was entrusted with the getting together the necessary plant and with the arrangement of the working details at the commencement. A small kiln for firing the glass was constructed on the premises at Red Lion Square, and they set to work. Of course Mr. Morris was not content to stand by and watch other people engaged in a craft in which himself had no part. So he took up the work, and practised paint- ing glass quarries, with the rest. It came to be the custom for the choice of the particular diapers and borders for draperies, &c, to be left to the artist who actually executed the glass-painting, but it was reserved for Morris to determine the scheme of colour- ing in each case. And when also it is remembered that Burne- Jones was not in the habit of inserting the lead-lines in his cartoons, and that Madox Brown did so only occasionally, one can understand how much remained over and above for Morris and his assistants to do to adapt the designers' drawings in mono- chrome for practical working purposes.

The stained glass shown by the firm at the Exhibition con- sisted of some few pieces for domestic purposes, ornamental quarries, and a set of seven panels, designed by Rossetti, to illus-

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ADAM AND EVE IN PARADISE. Painted Glass in St. Martin's, Scarborough; designed by D. G. Rossetti.

trate the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen in the Vineyard. This series was erected eventually in the east window of St. Martin's on the Hill, Scarborough, through the recommendation of Mr. G. F. Bodley, who built the church, and entrusted a con- siderable part of the internal decoration to Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. The pulpit was decorated by the firm, two panels in it being painted by Rossetti himself. The mural painting above the altar was also, in its original state, the work of the firm, but having fallen into a ruinous condition, it has since been completely repainted by local painters. " The first impression," says M. Olivier Georges Destree, a Belgian writer, in " The Savoy " of October, 1896, " given by the window of the Parable of the Vineyard, which lights the choir, is an impression of colour, dazzling and magnificent, velvety and harmonious, resembling the Flemish stained glass windows decorating the Gothic cathedrals. From the point of view of stained glass, this is the one I consider to be the most perfect. It has all the quali- ties which . . . were considered essential by Madox Brown, . . . and all these qualities are united in a high degree of perfection. In fact, when we approach this window and examine it in detail, we perceive that it is no less remarkable for its ingenious and original composition than for the sensation of opulent colour which it at first gave us. . . . Sumptuous in colour, ingenious in composition, the window of the Parable appears to be of a design more entirely and peculiarly Rossetti's than that of Adam and Eve, of which certain details seem to show the influence of Madox Brown." The subject of the " most beautiful and im- pressive " lancets, which are situated at the west end of the church, should be described more correctly as Adam and Eve in Paradise before the Fall. The date of them is 1862. " One is struck by the ingenious arrangement of the branches and leaves by which Rossetti veils the nudity of the bodies of Adam and Eve, for the rosy colours of the flesh look brighter in the violent con- trast with the uniform blue of the sky seen behind them ; and these ingenious contrasts give to these two nude bodies a vivid- ness of life which is rendered by no other stained glass window which I have ever seen. These resplendent bodies of Adam and Eve illuminate the church, and seem to give it some of their own life. The composition is no less original and new in its details than in the beauty of its colouring. Adam is depicted standing, picturesquely leaning on a branch of a tree with large sombre leaves, a fig-tree I think ; with the tip of his foot he amuses him- self by tickling a small bear curled up at his feet ; the blue sky is seen behind him, and sunflowers, flowering at the end of their

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long stems, expand at his right hand ; in the branches of the tree above him a curious and familiar squirrel watches him. Standing also, Eve has stopped in the middle of a field richly studded with small flowers and red poppies ; of the same fairness as the hair and beard of Adam, her unbound hair falls in an opulent stream over her shoulders. In her arms she holds, tenderly pressed to her bosom, a white dove, and in the sombre tree above, his eyes fixed and shining, an owl surveys her. The predominant colours of this admirable window are flesh colour, dark green and light gold." Mr. William Sharp, describing the same windows, says, " A strict harmony of colour is maintained between the rich brown of the bear and squirrel, the varying green of the trees and foliage, the light golden hair and the flesh tints of Adam, the yellow sunflower, &c. ; the same being observed in the Eve picture, where also one or two red flowers give a deeper contrast." On the ground, close behind Eve, crouch two tawny- brown rabbits. " Above the windows of Adam and Eve," says M. Destree, " the Annunciation, by Burne-Jones, which decorates the large rose-window, and the ' Angels playing musical instru- ments ' of the nine smaller roses which surround it, form with the windows of Rossetti a remarkable and charming con- trast. . . . White, azure blue and ruby are the colours principally and almost exclusively used " in this group of ten openings which form the rose. There is altogether an abundance of Morris glass in St. Martin's, including, on the north side, figures of characters of the Old Testament, and, on the south, of saints of the Christian dispensation.

Rossetti's designs for stained glass, however, were not very numerous. He produced a specially fine cartoon, which was executed by the firm, the subject being Christ in majesty, sur- rounded by angels ; but " his last composition of this class," writes Mr. William Sharp, was a memorial to his aunt, Miss M. M. Polidori, who died in 1867. It was erected in Christ Church, Albany Street, Regent's Park, and is the second window from the bottom of the nave on the right as one faces altarwards, " the colouring throughout being rich and harmonious." The subject is the Sermon on the Mount. It is divided into three compartments, each panel being surrounded by small square panes of white glass, ornamented uniformly with a many-petalled rose, painted with great delicacy in sepia, with yellow stain introduced here and there to heighten the effect of leaves and stalks.

In the north transept of St. Giles's Church, Camberwell, is a two-light window, erected in December, 1864. An early example it is of unusual interest, not only because of the introduction of

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SS. PAUL AND JOHN BAPTIST.

Painted Glass in St. Giles's Church, Camberwell.

The figure of St. Paul designed by William Morris.

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canopies, a feature not too common in the glass of the firm, but also because, what is more important, the figure on the left was designed by Mr. Morris himself. It represents St. Paul, clothed in a blue robe, with white cloak, lined with green ; the diapered background being of rich red glass. The figure of St. John Baptist on the right, against a blue background, diapered in similar manner, has a red-lined white cloak over his camel-hair vest. The small groups below represent severally St. Paul preaching and St. John baptizing. Besides ornamental quarries, of which he produced a great variety, Mr. Morris's own designs for stained glass were but few. One of his larger cartoons for this purpose is in the collection of Mr. Fairfax Murray. The subject is St. Mary Magdalene, the pattern upon her robe being remarkably elaborate and beautiful. Far more prolific as a designer of glass than either Rossetti or Morris was Ford Madox Brown, who between 1862 and 1875 must have supplied, accord- ing to Mr. F. M. Hueffer's estimate, over 150 designs for the use of the firm. Among Madox Brown's cartoons for glass, beside two subjects from the Legend of St. Martin, for the church of that dedication at Scarborough, may be mentioned Christ blessing little Children (1862) ; Abraham and Isaac, Isaac blessing Esau, SS. Paul, Elizabeth, John, and Matthew (1863) ; a magnificent set of six scenes (designed in 1864 and 1865) from the life and death of St. Oswald, now occupying the west window of St. Oswald's Church, Durham ; a series representing the Legend of St. Edith, for Tamworth Church (1873) ; and two more subjects, the Incre- dulity of St. Thomas (1874), and Christ appearing to St. Mary Magdalene in the Garden (1875).

The church of St. Michael at Brighton, the very first which Mr. Bodley ever built, contains, in his opinion, some of the finest specimens of early Morris glass, designed, with the exception named below, by Burne-Jones. By the font, at the west end of the south transept of the original church — that is, of the church as Mr. Bodley built it ; for it has since been enlarged — is a two- light window, a memorial to Dr. Bodley, representing the Baptism of Christ. At the east end of the south transept is a small chapel containing two low windows of two lights each, the subject of the first being three Angels conducting Mary and Joseph and the Holy Child into Egypt ; the subject of the other the Angel with the three Maries at the Sepulchre. Above is a small circle with the emblematic pelican. But the most interesting and important glass is that in the west wall of the nave. The upper part is a rose window, which comprises a seven-foiled circle, containing the Madonna and Child, surrounded by seven smaller circles,

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each with an angel, robed in dark green, striking a bell, upon a background of white quarries with yellow stained ornament. The lower part consists of two double lancets, each pair sur- mounted by a six-foiled circle, containing respectively St. Michael and the Dragon on the left, and the Annunciation on the right. The lancets represent four Archangels in the following order, reckoned from left to right : St. Michael, with shield and lance, St. Raphael, St. Uriel, and St. Gabriel holding a lily. The figures of these four lights, which have, it has been observed, a " mysterious witch-like glamour " about them, were executed from designs by Ford Madox Brown in 1863. Other early Morris glass is at Coddington Church, Newark-on-Trent. The east window was erected in 1865, and one more at the same time ; while others have been inserted at various subsequent dates. The figures are upon a quarried ground, without canopies.

Mr. Madox Brown, in the preface to a catalogue of his ■work entitled " Cartoons for Stained Glass " (1865), sets forth the general rules followed by the Pre-Raphaelite painters in the designing of stained glass and the customary method employed by Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. in the execution of the same. " With its heavy lead lines," he says, " surrounding every part, (and no stained glass can be rational and good without strong lead lines)," — a fundamental condition which, by the way, entails the condemnation of Sir Joshua Reynolds's glass pictures, howsoever admired by American visitors, in the west window of New College Chapel, Oxford, — " stained glass does not admit of refined drawing ; or else it is thrown away upon it. What it does admit of, and what above all things it imperatively requires, is fine colour," (Sir Joshua Reynolds's glass, mentioned above, is mostly brown and drab :) " and what it can admit of, and does very much require also, is invention, expression and good dramatic action. For this reason work by the greatest historical artists is not thrown away upon stained glass windows, because, though high finish of execution is superfluous, and against the spirit of this beautiful decorative art, yet, as expression and action can be conveyed in a few strokes equally as in the most elaborate art, on this side therefore stained glass rises to the epic height. . . . The cartoons of this firm are never coloured, that task devolving on Mr. Morris, the manager, who makes his colour (by selecting the glass) out of the very manufacture of the article. The revival of the mediaeval art of stained glass dates back now some twenty years in the earliest established firms ; nevertheless with the public it is still little understood ; a general impression prevails that bright colouring is the one thing desirable. . . . The

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result of this is that the manufacturers, goaded on by their clients, and the fatal facility of the material, (for all coloured glass is bright,) produce too frequently kaleidoscopic effects of the most painful description."

In some interesting notes on " Stained Glass, Ancient and Modern," in the " Century Guild Hobby Horse " of October, 1887, Mr. John Aldam Heaton writes, " In Keble College the other day, a friend remarked, ' We shall soon want a fresh set of Church restorations — to get rid of modern stained glass ; ' and certainly the specimens before us justified the remark— a remark which brought to one's mind all the gross vulgarity of colour, feebleness of execution, poverty of design, and general inanity of scheme, all overshadowed by a strong tendency towards greenish-jaundice, which characterizes ninety per cent, of all the glass now being made for cathedrals, churches, and alas ! also for houses."

" I am far indeed from wishing to include Mr. Morris's work in this condemnation, and as he doesn't make anything like a tenth of what is produced, I leave room for some respectable work by other makers : but this does not even veil the fact that the production of this splendid item of the decorator's art has fallen into most incompetent hands, and has become a prominent source of ofe-decoration to our buildings, and of annoyance and vexation to all men of cultivated taste. . . . The mere fact of modern glass being drawn on paper only, even by such accomplished designers as Mr. Burne-Jones, and then transferred to glass by copyists, — copyists whom one feels inclined to class as ' clerks,' — points at once to an inevitable and fatal element of inferiority. What would a man think, having given an order for a picture to an eminent artist, when he discovered that the eminent artist had only drawn it in chalk on paper, and then handed it over to his ' young man ' to copy it in colours on canvas ! Yet this is done universally in stained glass ; whereby we at once lose ' touch,' sparkle, breadth and originality of handling, and get in exchange the mechanical monotony of the copyist ; with this further mis- chief, that whereas the canvas or the panel may bear, and often with great advantage, the most minute detailing and stippling, as witness the work of Memling or Van Eyck, such work is fatal on glass, where translucency should be a prominent characteristic. . . . The copyist delights in a hard, wire-like, mechanical line, and is proud of it : the artist avoids it as he would a plague. The copyist, if he has projection to express, knows no way but stippling the whole surface — now light maybe, now dark, but everywhere stippled, suffering always from that most inartistic fault of not knowing where to stop : the mediaeval artist, who

5i

always appears to have known and felt the qualities and capabi- lities of the material he was working in, saw at once that sparkle, translucency — life — disappear under excess of stippling, and so stopped very far short indeed of the whole surface — often didn't stipple at all. Indeed, stained glass, theoretically, should be very much of the nature of a sketch by an able hand, vigorous in con- ception, strong in the handling of the principal forms, and slight as possible in mechanism of detail ; practically, the glass should be variable in thickness, ribby, and full of air bubbles, so as to produce gradation of colour and enhance the jewel-like effect of its translucence : at least half of its surface should be left clean glass for the sun to shine through : no lines should be used and no ' matting ' more than is absolutely necessary to express the intention ; and the lead, broad and plentiful, should supply the place of darks."

Now, tested by these canons, the glass of the firm is pre- eminently satisfactory. It fulfils even that condition for which Mr. Heaton seems scarcely to recognize that credit is due to it. That Mr. Morris felt as keenly as anyone could feel the danger of glass executed by one man from the paper cartoon of another losing its spirit and finer qualities in the process of reproduction is a fact. And accordingly he made a special point of insisting on the literal preservation of every characteristic of the original design with the minutest fidelity possible. In every case for the faces and hands and the more important features, if not invariably for the remaining portions, he employed none but accomplished artists like Mr. Fairfax Murray, for example, or Mr. Campfield. It is not too much to assert that Mr. Murray's rendering of the Vyner memorial window at Christ Church, Oxford, from Sir Edward Burne-Jones's cartoons, could not have been surpassed had the execution of it been the actual work of the designer. If the system that prevailed at the time that Mr. Morris took the art in hand was that of mere dead copyism and obliteration of all character the originals might possess, he certainly was the leader to a more excellent way when he introduced the reform, now adopted, in theory at any rate, by all the best firms of stained glass manufacturers. The quality of the material employed was another important consideration with Morris, the pot metal being selected with the utmost care from the stock of Messrs. Powell and Sons, of Whitefriars. In the early days exception was taken frequently to the greenish hue of the white glass in the windows of the firm. Mr. Morris, however, was not to be persuaded to deviate from the course he had adopted. It was not his fault if the inartistic custom of modern glass-makers had used the public

52

to prefer a cold and harsh white to the subtler-toned and mellower effects of the tinted glass he employed of deliberate purpose. He trusted that they would, in course of time, understand and approve what he did ; as indeed it would seem that they have.

Another point to note in Morris glass is that, at the beginning, flesh-tint glass was used for faces, hands, etc., a pale pot metal which would readily take yellow stain and could be modified with enamel colour when it was desired to depict hair, shading, and so on. The extreme delicacy of handling is indeed the reason why the finer details of some parts in early Morris glass have perished. A short period succeeded, in the early seventies, when white glass for flesh predominated ; after which was resumed flesh-coloured metal again ; stronger and darker, however, than formerly, and such that of late years, up to the present time, has continued deepening in intensity rather than the reverse. It is said that Morris was confirmed in his preference for this usage on seeing the effect: of the large windows, when completed, of the Nativity and Crucifixion, executed by the firm in 1888, from Sir Edward Burne-Jones's cartoons, for St. Philip's, Birmingham : so struck was Morris with admiration for these splendid specimens of stained glass, held both by himself and by the designer for favour- ites among the many windows they had produced together. At St. Philip's the flesh tints are for the most part somewhat pronounced ; those of the male figures in particular being of a dark brownish colour, strongly marked. It is not to be pretended that in the course of years there has been no change or development in the style of Morris glass. Nowhere perhaps is the contrast, both in scheme and colouring, illustrated more strikingly than in St. John's Church, Torquay, where the east and west windows are separated by an interval of many years. Nor to an unprejudiced mind can there be any question as to which of the two accords the better with the traditional character of stained glass, or which is the more appropriate for its ecclesiastical purpose : the east window, of early date, with its stately figures in rich-toned robes against a light background, or the recent west window (repre- senting the nine choirs of Angels), crowded as it is with wings and draperies, of every gradation of colour from pink to lavender, a Burne-Jones picture every inch of it, albeit the material is glass. The same criticism applies, though perhaps in a lesser degree, to the glass at Morton Church, near Gainsborough, and particularly to a window on the north side of the church, the subject being the stoning of St. Stephen, and to the east window, in which the pictorial rendering of sky and landscape might almost suggest a parallel to Munich glass. Moreover these windows tend to

53 p

darken the church instead of admitting light. But happily this type is not the most general among the hundreds of windows produced by the firm from the designs of Sir Edward Burne- Jones, the artist who has supplied them with by far the largest proportion of cartoons for their stained glass.

Among the superb windows designed by Burne-Jones it seems invidious to single out any one as the best, in derogation as it were of the others. In 1866 he designed some splendid glass for the east window of All Saints' Church, built by Mr. Bodley at Cambridge. Afterwards there followed, in the seventies, a whole series of windows in the neighbouring Chapel of Jesus College. Of these the finest is undoubtedly the large window in the south wall of the south transept. The subject is the celestial hierarchy, of every grade, and, next after them, man made in the image of God, occupying the batement lights and two tiers of the five large lights, above the transom. Below are five virgin saints, viz. : SS. Ursula, Dorothea, Radegund, Cecilia and Catherine; and below these again, Bishop Alcock, founder of the College, between the four Latin Fathers, SS. Jerome and Gregory on the left, and SS. Ambrose and Augustin on the right. No reproduction can convey the glorious effect of colour, more especially of the yellows, which range from palest amber to fiery orange in wings and other details of the composi- tion. The south transept is lighted by two windows on either side, of three lights each ; the scheme of subjects being the four Evangelists, one in the middle of each window, between two Sibyls, and smaller groups beneath from the life of our Lord. There are other fine windows by the firm in the nave — some half-hidden by the organ — and in the north transept : in all eleven Morris windows. It may be mentioned here that the firm was also employed under Mr. Bodley, to whose hands was committed the restoration of the Chapel, to decorate the roof of the nave. For this purpose Morris himself designed a series of Angels holding scrolls inscribed with the Vexilla Regis. These were executed in tempera on either side of the coved roof.

Covering about the same period as the windows at Jesus College are those, also from Burne-Jones's designs, at Christ Church, Oxford ; and it would be difficult to find more magnificent examples of Morris glass than three out of the four. The earliest in date, a four-light window, contains large figures of Samuel, David, St. John and Timothy. All in white, relieved in parts with yellow diapering, they show up strikingly against a back- ground of dark green foliage showing over the top of a blue tapestry curtain. The pavement on which they stand is pale

54

ST. MATTHEW. Painted Glass in Jesus College Chapel, Cam- bridge; designed by SirE. Burne-Jones, Bart.

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ANGELS AND SAINTS. Painted Glass in Jesus College Chapel, Cam- bridge; designed by SirE. Burne-Jones, Bart.

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red, while their halos are of spoilt ruby glass, the effect of which, flecked with blood and flame colour, produced solely by the metal being coated without uniformity of surface, is remarkably rich and jewel-like. The flesh tints, perhaps by contrast to the white draperies, seem rather deep than otherwise. The colour scheme of the lower groups is mainly blue, bluish green, olive, amber and white. The next window, to the right of the last, is not less beautiful. It consists of three lights and represents St. Cecilia between two Angels. The red nimbuses the light flesh tints, the draperies all white except for the brownish purple lining of the robe of the right-hand figure, the Angels' wings of pale blue, splashed here and there with yellow stain, make an exquisite contrast to the rich green foliage and dark peacock-blue hangings draped in the background. The prevailing colours of the small groups below, from the life of the Saint, are blue, white and amber. To the south of the altar and, like the two foregoing, in the east wall also, is a window erected in 1877, representing St. Catherine between the Angel of Suffering and the Angel of Victory. Against a background of green foliage, of purple walls and dark blue curtains, the three figures stand all in white ; the figure of the Saint peculiarly majestic, the Angels having spoilt ruby halos, the mutilated hands of the Angel on the left being veiled in a cloth of light cinnamon hue, — the same colour as the flames which the Angel on the opposite side is combating. Deeper tones prevail in the lower compartments, one of the floating Angels who carry the body of St. Catherine to her burial being of a ripe orange ; while the glory of cherubim surrounding the Christ in the middle panel has an indescribable glow of ruby, purple and blue.

Among other windows of the firm may be named those in Peterhouse Combination Room at Cambridge, dating between 1869 and 1874. This room contains five windows of two lights each and a large bay window of six lights. The subject of the four windows on the north side is a series of poets from Homer to Milton, from designs by Madox Brown and Burne-Jones, upon a diamond quarried background. The two-light window on the south side represents King Edward I. and the founder, Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, designed by Madox Brown ; while the bay window, on the same side of the room, illustrates Chaucer's " Legend of Good Women " from designs by Burne-Jones, the figures being portrayed in colours on a grisaille and yellow- stained background. In 1864 there were purchased for the South Kensington Museum four panels, by Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., three of them identical with the Peterhouse

55

glass, viz., those which represent the poet Chaucer asleep, Dido and Cleopatra and the God of Love with Alceste. The fourth panel is a very beautiful head of Penelope, in the form of a medallion, within a wreath, upon a quarried ground of conven- tional floral pattern.

The west window of the Parish Church at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, is filled with Morris glass, designed by Burne- Jones, and erected in 1874. The three large lights are occupied by symbolical representations of Faith, Hope, and Charity, similar in drawing to those in the west window of the south aisle at Christ Church, only that the figures at Oxford are strong in colour, whereas at Bishopsbourne they are clothed entirely in white, which gives them a totally different effect. A richer colour tone is concentrated in the lower part of the window, which contains crouching figures symbolical of the vices opposed to the three theological virtues ; while in the two batement lights at the top are Angels playing on pipes.

Next may be mentioned the glass, designed by Burne-Jones, at Paisley Abbey : and also the window, designed by the same hand and executed by Morris and Co. in 1879, in the south choir aisle of Salisbury Cathedral ; — the subject being two ministering and two praising Angels. In the early eighties Burne-Jones designed windows for the Savoy Chapel and for St. Peter's, Vere Street, and in 1885 for St. Giles's, Edinburgh. Thenceforward, nay, even before that date (for it is a fact that the late Dean Stanley was an admirer of the work of the firm and that Morris, had he chosen, might have obtained the order to execute stained glass for Westminster Abbey itself), it became a rare thing to find Morris glass inserted in any ancient building. There were of course special exceptions, as in places where glass of the firm existed already, and Mr. Morris was pressed to supply more en suite with the previous work ; or where personal claims seemed to justify such a proceeding, as in the case of the village church of Rottingdean, the country home of Burne-Jones. It was indeed a matter of principle with Morris, who, in order to be in a position to protest against the terrible disfiguring of old buildings by the introduction of wretched modern glass, etc., by others, had to set a consistent example and refrain himself. The pity of it was that this policy of his could not be guaranteed to effect the object he desired. For, given a person who has formed the generous determination to present a stained glass window — a memorial as often as not — to any particular church : Suppose the capable firm has been offered and has refused the order, what is to hinder the intending donor from having recourse to some inferior

56

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Part of Window in Christ Church, Oxford ;

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firm of glass-makers, and thereby swelling the roll of deplorable defacements to ancient buildings. It is to be feared that Morris's conscientious scruples in this regard have made our land the poorer by the loss of many examples of stained glass which might else have been in existence.

A Morris window of importance and of recent date also — since it was erected only in 1895 — *s the east window of Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street. The glass was designed by Burne-Jones, but it must be confessed that, as a conception, it is far from deserving to rank among that great artist's most suc- cessful achievements. Here was a grand and, one may say, a unique opportunity; one of the largest window surfaces in London, and such that had the further advantage of Mr. Sedding's beautiful tracery to serve as a basis for the ornamental glass. But who is prepared to maintain that the glass bears any sort of relation to the tracery it fills? Does not it consist rather of a collection of figures, which, since they are designed by one and the same hand, have, it is true, a strong family likeness, but no homogeneity of plan beyond being all displayed similarly upon a background of tapestry-like foliage ? What material difference would a dozen more or less of such figures have made to the work as an ordered and cohesive composition ? Nay, a sampler, like this one, of sacred iconography, is capable of almost any number of additions or subtractions without increasing or impairing to an appreciable degree its completeness as an organic whole. It is scarcely necessary to observe that, regarded by itself, every single figure is beautiful, as whatever Burne- Jones draws is bound to be. But, taken into account the position they occupy, their scale is too small to be proportionate to the great size of the window, in which, surely, if anywhere, a large and broad treatment is what was required. These remarks are not intended to reflect in any sense upon the execution or quality of the glass, which is as perfect as one would wish and quite worthy of the renowned firm that produced it.

The ceramic art, or rather that branch of it represented by the ornamentation of tiles, is another industry which owes its rescue from degradation to William Morris. " All nations," said he, in his Lecture on " The Lesser Arts of Life " (published in 1882), "however barbarous, have made pottery; . . . but none have ever failed to make it on true principles, none have made shapes ugly or base till quite modern times. I should say that the making of ugly pottery was one of the most remarkable inventions of our civilization." A little further on Morris states the main principles that should regulate the ornamentation of

57 Q

fitftiles. " As to the surface decoration on pottery, it is clear it must never be printed ; . . . one rule we have for a guide, and whatever we do if we abide by it, we are quite sure to go wrong if we neglect it : and it is common to all the lesser arts. Think of your material. Don't paint anything on pottery save what can be painted only on pottery ; if you do it is clear that however good a draughtsman you may be, you do not care about that special art. You can't suppose that the Greek wall-painting was anything like their painting on pottery — there is plenty of evi- dence to show that it was not. Or, take another example from the Persian art ; it is easy for those conversant with it to tell from an outline tracing of a design whether it was done for pottery painting or for other work."

It was at the beginning of 1862, and some tiles were required for use at the Red House. But at that time there simply were no hand-painted tiles produced in this country. So Morris had to begin from the very beginning. Plain white tiles were im- ported by the firm from Holland, and Morris, Faulkner and others set about experimenting with various glazes, enamels, &c, until the desired results were obtained. The same kiln that was used for firing the stained glass was made to serve for the tiles also. An iron muffle with iron shelves carried the glass in the middle part, while the tiles were so placed as to be exposed to the greatest heat, at the top and bottom. A small wind-furnace was employed for slips and for colour-testing experiments. Burne-Jones furnished the figure designs that were painted on the earliest tiles of the firm. These figures having first been outlined by others, Mr. Morris, with Mr. Faulkner's help, tinted in the flat surfaces with enamel colour. After the first firing a soft glaze of the firm's own composition was applied to the surface of the tiles.

A set of tiles, with figures of Adam and Eve, was painted in readiness for the Exhibition of 1862, and was in fact delivered and unpacked with a view to being exhibited. But when Mr. William Burges, the architect, saw them, he failed to appreciate the decorative value of some scrolls, with verses by Morris, that had been introduced into the composition. Whereupon, in order to avoid misunderstandings, Morris had the tiles removed from among the exhibits, without submitting them to the inspection of the hanging committee as a body. Morris, however, was far from being deterred in any way by this incident, and the produc- tion of hand-painted tiles continued to be from thenceforward one of the regular crafts of the firm. Among Burne-Jones's designs for tiles were a series to illustrate Chaucer's " Good

58

Women," the story of Cinderella, a favourite subject which was reproduced repeatedly, and the legend of the Sleeping Beauty. Rossetti and Madox Brown also designed tiles for the firm. There was one set of designs — a joint production — representing the several occupations of the months and seasons of the year. Of these Madox Brown designed the pictures of tree-felling, seed-sowing, and sheep-shearing, while Morris himself designed a mower whetting his scythe. Morris designed in addition a number of tiles of conventional floral and other diaper patterns to surround the figure subjects for fireplaces, &c. Of these one which was used frequently was known as the " Swan pattern." It has been said above that at first Morris and Faulkner used to paint tiles themselves ; later Miss Lucy Faulkner undertook this branch of the work in place of her brother and Mr. Morris. Miss Kate Faulkner also painted tiles for the firm, and continued to do so until within a few years ago. After Miss Lucy Faulkner's marriage the firm produced but few figure-subject: tiles ; one of the last of these being a medallion tile presented by Mr. Morris to Baron Leys.

Effective use of tiles was made by Messrs. Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. for internal decorations. The firm supplied tiles of figure panels surrounded by diaper ornament for the fireplace in the hall of Sandroyd House, Cobham, Surrey, a house Mr. Webb built for Mr. Stanhope shortly after Morris's Red House at Upton. It so happened that both owners gave up their respective houses within a short period of one another.

The two fireplaces in Peterhouse Combination Room were fitted in 1870 with Morris tiles, in the shape of figure panels on a floral diaper ground. The larger of the fireplaces has representa- tions of the four seasons, with verses by Morris — the same which he published in " The Academy " of February 1st, 1871 ; while the panels in the smaller fireplace have figures of SS. Peter and George. The chimney-breast of the Hall at Queen's College, Cambridge, is decorated by the firm with hand-painted tiles, consisting of figure subjects upon a ground-work of blue diaper ornament, within a conventional border of the same colour. The figures represent the two royal foundresses, Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville, designed by Madox Brown in 1873 ; the tutelary saints of the college, SS. Bernard and Margaret, and allegorical figures of the twelve months of the year.

It was owing in great measure to Mr. Morris's initiative that Mr. William de Morgan, now of Chelsea and Great Marlborough Street, took up the art. He worked for a time in connection with Morris and Co., though his business is and was quite distinct

59

from theirs. How he has revived and developed the exquisite Hispano-Moresque lustre for the painting of tiles and other fictile objects is well known to all artists and connoisseurs. Some early Morris tiles having suffered through the excess of borax in the ordinary enamels of commerce, the only colours available at the time that the industry was revived, the firm abandoned the use of them, and latterly the only colours used by Morris and Co. for the purpose have been those prepared and supplied by Mr. de Morgan.

The firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. had been in existence scarcely six years when they were commissioned to carry out the internal decorations of the Green Dining-Room at the South Kensington Museum. In this room are two windows, containing in all six panels, with figures, robed in white, designed by Burne-Jones in 1866 and 1867. These panels form a horizontal band across the windows, with roundels — another form of win- dow decoration revived by Morris — above and below, of pale greenish white glass painted with a delicate pattern of conven- tional ornament. The walls of the dining-room are panelled with wood, painted green and rising to about half the height of the room from the floor. The upper panels are gilt, the majority of them being decorated with painted sprays of various trees and flowers, while at intervals, in place of these floral designs, are panels with decorative figures painted on them. It is charac- teristic of Mr. Morris's scrupulous thoroughness that, after the panels were finished, he came to the conclusion that the work, having been carried out by different painters, was not uniform enough in style to make a consecutive or harmonious scheme of decoration. Accordingly he was not satisfied until they had all been repainted almost afresh by the hand of Mr. Fairfax Murray. The wall-space above the panelling is covered with a conven- tional pattern of foliage in relief; and round the top runs a frieze with panels depicting a chase of animals.

From 1870 to 1873 Dr. Sandford, now Protestant titular Bishop of Gibraltar, held the living of Bishopsbourne (a country parish the associations of which possess an interest for some because Richard Hooker, called " the judicious," was a former rector ; the yew-trees planted by him being shown in the garden to this day), and Mr. Morris, as a friend of Dr. Sandford's, visited him at Bishopsbourne Rectory and decorated the dining-room there (the same room in which Hooker died). The decoration is of simple character, consisting of a delicate conventional pattern stencilled on the plaster between the moulded rafters ; a narrow scroll painted round the top of the wall immediately below the

60

roof-beams ; and a Gothic pattern, brighter in colour and more solid than the rest, stencilled upon the panels of the dado.

Of the many industries connected with the name of Morris, none has more universal celebrity than that of wall-paper hang- ings ; and rightly so. For it was Morris who made this a truly valuable branch of domestic ornamentation ; Morris, who ele- vated it from the level of a temporary expedient of no great account to be a craft of the first rank. If in some other instances he was rather the restorer and infuser of fresh life into arts fallen into degeneracy, he was nothing short of a creator in the case of wall-paper design, which, as a serious decorative art, owes its existence to him before anyone else. The youngest in point of date, it is yet, of all the art industries of the present time, not far from being the most satisfactory, regarded from the standpoint of taste. It commands the services of the very foremost of decorative artists amongst us, of Messrs. Voysey, Butterfield, Walter Crane, Lewis Day, Heywood Sumner, Mawson, Silver, and many more beside.

The importance of paying due regard to the artistic treat- ment of our wall spaces is a matter on which Morris has insisted in his lecture on " The Lesser Arts of Life," wherein he says, " Whatever you have in your rooms, think first of the walls ; for they are that which makes your house and home ; and if you don't make some sacrifice in their favour, you will find your chambers have a kind of makeshift, lodging-house look about them, however rich and handsome your movables may be." Thus much for the general principle. Coming to details, " I sup- pose I am bound," writes Morris, "to say something on the quite modern and very humble, but, as things go, useful art of printing patterns on paper for wall hangings. But really there is not much to be said about it, unless we were considering the arrangement and formation of its patterns ; because it is so very free from those difficulties the meeting and conquering of which give character to the more intricate crafts. I think the real way to deal successfully with designing for paper-hangings is to accept their mechanical nature frankly, to avoid falling into the trap of trying to make your paper look as if it were painted by hand. Here is the place, if anywhere, for dots and lines and hatchings : mechanical enrichment is of the first necessity in it. After that you may be as intricate and elaborate in your pattern as you please ; nay, the more and the more mysteriously you interweave your sprays and stems the better for your purpose, as the whole thing has to be pasted flat on a wall, and the cost of all this intricacy will but come out of your own brain and

61 R

hand. For the rest, the fact that in this art we are so little helped by beautiful and varying material imposes on us the necessity for being specially thoughtful in our designs ; every one of them must have a distinct idea in it ; some beautiful piece of nature must have pressed itself on our notice so forcibly that we are quite full of it, and can, by submitting ourselves to the rules of art, express our pleasure to others, and give them some of the keen delight that we ourselves have felt. If we cannot do this in some measure our paper design will not be worth much ; it will be but a makeshift expedient for covering a wall with something or other ; and if we really care about art we shall not put up with ' something or other,' but shall choose honest white- wash instead, on which sun and shadow play so pleasantly, if only our room be well planned and well shaped, and look kindly on us." In the lecture, " Making the Best of it," with reference to the structure of patterns, Morris makes some general observa- tions, which, however, apply in a peculiar degree to wall-paper design: "Whereas it has been said that a recurring pattern should be constructed on a geometrical basis, it is clear that it cannot be constructed otherwise ; only the structure may be more or less masked, and some designers take a great deal of pains to do so. I cannot say that I think this always necessary. It may be so when the pattern is on a very small scale, and meant to attract but little attention. But it is sometimes the reverse of desirable in large and important patterns, and, to my mind, all noble patterns should at least look large. Some of the finest and pleasantest of these show their geometrical structure clearly enough ; and if the lines of them grow strongly and flow gracefully, I think they are decidedly helped by their structure not being elaborately concealed. At the same time, in all patterns which are meant to fill the eye and satisfy the mind, there should be a certain mystery. We should not be able to read the whole thing at once, nor desire to do so, nor be impelled by that desire to go on tracing line after line to find out how the pattern is made, and I think that the obvious presence of a geometrical order, if it be, as it should be, beautiful, tends towards this end, and prevents our feeling restless over a pattern. That every line in a pattern should have its due growth, and be traceable to its beginning ... is undoubtedly essential to the finest pattern work ; equally so is it that no stem should be so far from its parent stock as to look weak or wavering. . . . Everyone who has practised the designing of patterns knows the necessity for covering the ground equably and richly. This is really to a great extent the secret of obtaining the look of

62

satisfying mystery aforesaid, and it is the very test of capacity in a designer. Finally, no amount of delicacy is too great in draw- ing the curves of a pattern, no amount of care in getting the leading lines right from the first, can be thrown away, for beauty of detail cannot afterwards cure any shortcoming in this. Remember that a pattern is either right or wrong. It cannot be forgiven for blundering. ... It is ■with a pattern as with a fortress, it is no stronger than its weakest point. A failure for ever recurring torments the eye too much to allow the mind to take any pleasure in suggestion and intention."

" As to the second moral quality of design, meaning, I include in that the invention and imagination which forms the soul of this art, as of all others, and which, when submitted to the bonds of order, has a body and a visible existence. Now . . . form may be taught, but the spirit that breathes through it cannot be. So I will content myself with saying this on these qualities, that though a designer may put all manner of strangeness and surprise into his patterns, he must not do so at the expense of beauty. You will never find a case in this kind of work where ugliness and violence are not the result of barrenness, and not of fertility of invention. The fertile man, he of resource, has not to worry himself about invention. He need but think of beauty and simplicity of expression ; his work will grow on and on, one thing leading to another, as it fares with a beautiful tree. . . . No pattern should be without some sort of meaning. True it is that that meaning may have come down to us traditionally, and not be our own invention, yet we must at heart understand it, or we can neither receive it, nor hand it down to our successors. It is no longer tradition if it is servilely copied, without change, the token of life. You may be sure that the softest and loveliest of patterns will weary the steadiest admirers of their school as soon as they see that there is no hope of growth in them. For you know all art is compact of effort, of failure and of hope, and we cannot but think that somewhere perfection lies ahead, as we look anxiously for the better thing that is to come from the good. Furthermore, you must not only mean something in your patterns, but must also be able to make others understand that meaning. . . . Now the only way in our craft of design for compelling people to understand you is to follow hard on Nature ; for what else can you refer people to, or what else is there which every- body can understand ? everybody that it is worth addressing yourself to, which includes all people who can feel and think."

In the manufacture of hand-printed wall-papers it was Morris's original intention to use zinc plates prepared by a

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method somewhat akin to process engraving at the present day, which however proved too slow and laborious to be practicable. Morris therefore had to have recourse to the ordinary mode of block-cutting; and the firm engaged the services of a block- cutter named Barrett of Bethnal Green, who undertook to execute the blocks under the personal supervision of Mr. Morris. Again, in the matter of the printing, Morris's plan was to obtain more varied and artistic effects with transparent pigments instead of the solid body colours then in general use for the purpose. The production of paper-hangings has now reached so advanced a stage of development that there is not the smallest difficulty in the employment of wash tints, but in those early days the scheme could not be carried out. Indeed, but a brief period of trials on their own account convinced the firm of the expediency of trans- ferring the manufacture of wall-papers bodily — the block-cutting as well as the printing — from their own premises to the experi- enced hands of Mr. Metford Warner, the acting principal of Messrs. Jeffrey and Co., Essex Road, Islington. The result was so satisfactory that the arrangement has been allowed to continue to this day. Messrs. Jeffrey and Co. have a separate department which they reserve exclusively for the carrying out of the work entrusted to them by Morris and Co., the paper-hangings so produced remaining, as it is perhaps scarcely necessary to say, the sole property of the latter.

The designs, with comparatively few exceptions, have always been drawn by William Morris himself. The first wall-paper to be designed, though it came third in order of production, consists of a trellis, which gives its name to the pattern, intertwining roses, somewhat stiff in growth, and brown birds here and there among the branches. Morris diffidently refrained from designing the bird forms with his own hand, preferring to have them drawn by Mr. Philip Webb. The earliest Morris wall-paper issued was the " Daisy," a quaint pattern consisting of plant-groups of daisies, columbines, &c, dotted at regular intervals on the field, in a manner so formal as none but a master of design could have ventured to do, nor certainly anyone else have achieved success in doing. Here then, with a frankness which in a designer less gifted must have produced inevitably results both harsh and crude, Morris has accepted the mechanical limitations of his craft and has triumphed in that accepting. The dexterity involved in a design like this is such that few perhaps would suspect. Yet if that saying be true, Ars est cclare artem, then this is a consummate work of art. Some of Morris's patterns may possibly lend themselves to adaptation or— not to mince matters —

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to imitation, but this at least is out of reach, its virtues incom- municable. It has a delicacy of touch about it, a character all its own. The colours employed in it are neither few in number nor low in tone, and yet they are combined with such judgment that the harmony of the whole is perfect. There be Morris papers which, subordinate in scheme of colouring and undemonstrative of line, admit readily enough of accessory orna- ments in the way of china, pictures, and so on. But the " Daisy " pattern is not of the number of these. It gives a room in which it may be hung an air of distinction and completeness that seems to deprecate any further embellishment. In a word, the " Daisy " is a marvel of supreme cleverness ; and withal one of which the popularity declines no whit as time goes by. It is a startling evidence of the strength and original qualities of Morris's work that a design of his like this should have lost none of its charm and freshness after having been before the public for over thirty years. It is to this day among those most in demand, if not actually itself the most in demand of all his wall-papers. The second paper brought out by the firm was named the " Fruit," a design of stiff diagonal branches contrasting with the roundness of apples and pomegranates and the freer shapes of leaves and blossoms. After the " Trellis " Morris's next designs brought out were the " Diaper," the " Scroll," and the " Branch," of which none calls for any special remark. The " Larkspur " followed, in one print on a white ground, a very characteristic and beau- tiful pattern, with firmly-drawn leafage, the convolutions of which aptly illustrate Morris's remarks, quoted above, about the import- ance of getting one's curves true in a pattern. No more noble instance than this could be found of the value of careful draughts- manship. The design contains also larkspur flowers and roses, not however very conspicuous. The name of the "Jasmine" indicates sufficiently the subject of the next design, which is in several colours. Then comes a peculiarly beautiful, if severe, design called the " Marigold," a single print, the pattern showing light upon a deeper toned ground. It has certain qualities of drawing in common with the " Larkspur," and yet, set side by side, the two designs are quite distinct. Both, however, possess in a marked degree that indefinable sense of immortality which is the property of the best work in every age. Produced years ago they seem nevertheless as new as if they had been designed only yesterday. Though other designs should wax old and perish with the transient phases and fashions whose reflection they are, there is no danger of these at any rate ever becoming antiquated, or failing to fulfil the desire of human beings that

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crave for vital beauty ; and that just because they bear no label of place or period, but have in themselves a life that is free and independent of every change of time and circumstance. There is hardly need to say that it is not intended to limit the applica- tion of these remarks to the particular designs of Morris's which occasioned them. Only it happens that his wall-paper patterns, being both numerous and varied, furnish more typical instances than are to be met with in any one other branch of his art. After the " Marigold " came his " Lily " pattern, recalling in some sort the " Daisy ; " then the " Powdered," and after that the " Willow." The last is a handsome design of willow-sprays upon an under-printed background of hawthorn blossoms. Next in order is the " Vine," a fine design which later was reproduced with bronze colouring. The " Acanthus " is a magnificent design. The grand sweep of the foliage, the rich and varied gradations of its colouring combine to produce a sumptuous effect which indi- cates the highest attainable point in paper staining, and such that could scarcely be surpassed even in tapestry-weaving. The pattern is so elaborate that it requires a double set of blocks and cannot be produced with less than thirty-two printings. It was made first in red, afterwards in a similar combination of green tones, and still more recently in yellowish browns. The " Pim- pernel," the " Wreath," and the " Rose " preceded the " Chrysan- themum," a large and handsome pattern in many colours, and next the " Apple." The last has a leaf which forms a prominent feature together with the fruit upon a background of willow leaves. There followed next a ceiling-paper in one print, con- sisting of floral forms, necessarily rigid in arrangement. After- wards came the " Sunflower," the " Acorn," the " Poppy," and the " Carnation." Next an order for St. James's Palace evoked a very splendid wall-filling of conventional forms on a large scale and roses introduced in a less prominent manner, the whole printed in an elaborate scheme of colouring. The St. James's ceiling, designed to go with the last-named, is a large pattern, printed, however, in one colour only. The " Bird and Anemone " is a replica of a design for cretonne. The " Grafton " was suc- ceeded by a ceiling-paper in which boldness of effect is in no way sacrificed, in spite of its being in several colours and altogether of a less simple character than the former ones. The " Wild Tulip " followed, a striking pattern with a large leaf, of which the form is emphasized by the ingenious use of dots ; the background being also dotted. The composition includes a flower not unlike that in the above-mentioned "Poppy" pattern. Mr. Morris's next wall-paper was the " Fritillary," which has a very marked

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leaf and some points of resemblance to the " Wild Tulip " design. Next is the " Garden Tulip " pattern, which consists of a tulip spray strongly accentuated by the slight and almost thin treat- ment of the background ; next the '•' Lily and Pomegranate," a design which also includes marigolds — a stiff pattern in many colours with a dotted ground; next the "Willow Bough," a more naturalistic treatment than the earlier " Willow ; " and next one named the " Merton," of no particular importance. The above were followed by the " Bruges," a superb design which it is impossible to praise in terms too high. Though entirely original in detail, its general aspect is more thoroughly Gothic and tradi- tional than that of anything Morris ever produced in the way of repeated ornament. Conceived on broad mediaeval lines, it forms a decoration which, upon the walls of a fifteenth century building, is in perfect accord with its surroundings. More in its favour could not well be said. Itself diagonal in plan, the " Bruges " was followed by a doubled pattern called " Autumn Flowers ; " and then by the " Borage " ceiling-paper, a design in one print. The " Norwich " wall-paper is another instance of the effective use that may be made of dots in this class of design. Conven- tionalized peonies, roses, &c, are here rendered in an elaborate scheme of colouring. The " Wall-flower " again is an example of dotted ornament. The " Hammersmith " has a large conven- tional form repeated in smaller compass than the " Norwich," which, however, in many ways it resembles. The " Pink and Rose," in one print, is an example of flat and decorative treat- ment for wall-surfaces ; while the " Double Bough " introduces some familiar Morris forms and methods once more. The " Triple Net " is a light pattern on a coloured ground ; while the " Flora," on the other hand, in colours on a white ground, is somewhat thin in effect. The " Bachelor's Button " design is yet another instance in which boldly-treated foliage and other well- known Morris forms appear ; and the " Lechlade " is a large pattern in very light and delicate colouring, great concentric leaf-sprays and purely conventional flower forms being employed with admirable effect. The " Spring Thicket " is a large, set pattern with lilies, executed in soft and harmonious colouring. The " Compton," another very fine pattern in many colours upon a dark ground, has been reproduced also in the form of a cretonne. The " Net " ceiling-paper, in several colours, completes the list of Mr. Morris's designs for paper-hangings. Of the remaining patterns produced by the firm, amounting in all to no more than twenty, four were adaptations from various sources, while the rest were original designs by Miss Faulkner, Miss May Morris,

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and last, but not least, by Mr. H. Dearie, who has for some time past been resident manager of the works at Merton Abbey. It should be remarked that many of Messrs. Morris and Co.'s wall- papers have at different times been brought out by them in additional colourings, or with variations in their schemes of colouring subsequently to their original appearance ; and also that by far the largest majority of the papers are printed from hand-blocks alone, but an insignificant proportion being machine- printed, e.g., the " Loop Trail," " Merton," " Carnation," and the " Oak Tree." The latter, designed by Mr. Dearie, is the most recent of all Morris and Co.'s patterns in paper-hangings.

It was but two or three years after the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. came into being that Mr. Morris formed the project of adding weaving to their other undertakings. What he has to say on the subject of this craft will be found in the address on " The Lesser Arts of Life," included in the volume of Lectures on Art by various authors, published in 1882 ; in the lecture entitled " Textile Fabrics " (in which the subject is treated mainly from the historical point of view), delivered in the Lecture Room of the International Health Exhibition in London on July nth, 1884, and afterwards issued by authority as an official handbook ; and lastly in the Essay prefixed to the Catalogue of the first Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society in the autumn of 1888, and republished in 1893 in the volume of collected Essays. In the first of these works, after referring briefly to the making of plain cloth which is " not susceptible of ornament," Morris says : " As the designing of woven stuffs fell into degradation in the latter days, the designers got fidgeting after trivial novelties ; change for the sake of change ; they must needs strives to make their woven flowers look as if they were painted with a brush, or even sometimes as if they were drawn by the engraver's burin. This gave them plenty of trouble and exercised their ingenuity in the tormenting of their web with spots and stripes and ribs and the rest of it, but quite destroyed the seriousness of the work and even its raison d'etre. As of pottery-painting, so of figure- weaving : do nothing in it but that which only weaving can do : and to this end make your design as elaborate as you please in silhouette, but carry it out simply ; you are not drawing lines freely with your shuttle, you are building up a pattern with a fine rectilinear mosaic. If this is kept well in mind by the designer, and he does not try to force his material into no- thoroughfares, he may have abundant pleasure in the making of woven stuffs, and he is perhaps less likely to go wrong (if he has a feeling for colour) in this art than in any other. I will say

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further that he should be careful to get due proportions between his warp and weft : not to starve the first, which is the body of the web so to say, for the sake of the second, which is its clothes : this is done now-a-days over much by ingenious designers who are trying to make their web look like non-mechanical stuffs, or who want to get a delusive show of solidity in a poor cloth, which is much to be avoided : a similar fault we are too likely to fall into is of a piece with what is done in all the lesser arts to-day ; and which doubtless is much fostered by the ease given to our managers of works by the over-development of machinery : I am thinking of the weaving up of rubbish into apparently delicate and dainty wares. No man, with the true instinct of a workman, should have anything to do with this : it may not mean com- mercial dishonesty, though I suspect it sometimes does, but it must mean artistic dishonesty : poor materials in this craft, as in all others, should only be used in coarse work, where they are used without pretence for what they are : this we must agree to at once, or sink all art in commerce (so-called) in these crafts." In the Arts and Crafts Essay Morris writes : " Mechanical weaving has to repeat the pattern on the cloth within compara- tively narrow limits ; the number of colours also is limited in most cases to four or five. In most cloths so woven, therefore, the best plan seems to be to choose a pleasant ground colour and to superimpose a pattern mainly composed of either a lighter shade of that colour, or a colour in no very strong contrast to the ground ; and then, if you are using several colours, to light up this general arrangement either with a more forcible outline, or by spots of stronger colour carefully disposed. Often the lighter shade on the darker suffices, and hardly calls for anything else : some very beautiful cloths are merely damasks, in which the warp and weft are of the same colour, but a different tone is obtained by the figure and the ground being woven with a longer or shorter twill : the tabby being tied by the warp very often, the satin much more rarely. In any case, the patterned webs pro- duced by mechanical weaving, if the ornament is to be effective and worth the doing, require that same Gothic crispness and clearness of detail which has been spoken of before : the geo- metrical structure of the pattern, which is a necessity in all recurring patterns, should be boldly insisted upon, so as to draw the eye from accidental figures, which the recurrence of the pattern is apt to produce. The meaningless stripes and spots and other tormentings of the simple twill of the web, which are so common in the woven ornament of the eighteenth century and our own times, should be carefully avoided : all these things are

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the last resource of a jaded invention and a contempt of the simple and fresh beauty that comes of a sympathetic suggestion of natural forms : if the pattern be vigorously and firmly drawn with a true feeling for the beauty of line and silhouette, the play of light and shade on the material of the simple twill will give all the necessary variety."

Morris's attention is said to have been drawn to the industry of weaving in the first place by the mere accident of seeing a man in the street selling toy models of weaving machines, when it occurred to him to buy one and to practise upon it for himself. After some preliminary experiments more or less successful, he then began to endeavour to obtain a full-sized hand-loom. What he wanted was an old one of the old style, with hand-shuttle, &c, such as formerly had been in traditional use at Spitalfields, but had become by that time practically obsolete, save, it might be, among the very oldest weavers of the place. The matter was one in which, in default of an expert possessed of the necessary qualifications among his own colleagues or employes, Morris was obliged to turn to help from outside. It so happened he was most unfortunate in respect of the several agents whom he trusted, one after another, and employed to procure and set up a loom for him. A series of disappointments caused so much delay that it was not until towards the close of the seventies that, a Jacquard loom having been erected in Ormond Yard, Morris was enabled to organize weaving systematically as a branch of the firm's work. From that time the industry grew, and was carried on by the firm regularly without a break. At the present time the looms are situated at Merton Abbey, and have been ever since the works there came into the possession of Messrs. Morris and Co. Morris drew a number of designs for silk damasks and brocades and woven wool-tapestries, as well as a limited number for fabrics of silk and linen and of silk and wool. The latter combination, as in the case of the " Dove and Rose " material — quite apart from the beauty of the design — has an additional beauty of texture which is peculiarly delightful ; the weightier substance of the wool drawing the slighter-bodied surface of the silk into delicate ripples upon which the light plays with charm- ing effect. The " Bird and Vine " is a beautiful and characteristic design in woollen tapestry, while the " Peacock and Dragon," in the same material, is a large pattern for which the artist himself had a special liking. One more example may be selected, among productions of a later date, viz., the diagonal woollen tapestry named the " Trail." The unit of this pattern is as simple as can be — a conventional leaf and a single spray of flowers ; yet the

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richest effect is obtained by the simple but ingenious device of varying the colour of the woof threads, so that the flowers appear alternating horizontally in red, white, and pink. The general colour of the web is a warm green in several tones.

At one time Morris attempted to revive the art of weaving velvet with gold tissue, after the method of the superb and famous webs of Florence and Venice in the fifteenth century. It was an interesting experiment, and such that will in all proba- bility prove to have been unique in England during the present century. A loom was constructed especially for the purpose, and an exquisite design by Morris was reproduced in blue, white, and orange velvet pile, with gold thread interwoven in parts, Morris assisting personally in the process of manufacture. But it was found far too costly to be practical. Only a small quantity of this most sumptuous material was ever woven, and the essay was not repeated.

It was about the middle of the seventies when Morris, who by that time had ceased to reside at Queen Square, happened to be in want of some special shades of silk for embroidery. But being unable to get what he needed by other means, he deter- mined to start dyeing on his own account. Accordingly, the scullery at No. 26, Queen Square, being fitted with coppers, was chosen, rough and primitive as was the accommodation, for the dyeing; while the kitchen was turned into a drying ground, under the charge of the caretaker. From these small beginnings sprang what developed subsequently into one of the most indis- pensable of all the operations of the firm, to wit, that of dyeing, " since upon it," to use Mr. Morris's own words, " is founded all the ornamental character of textile fabrics." It was in fact the necessity of obtaining a sufficient supply of water for this pur- pose that induced Mr. Morris, when in treaty for some more commodious place of manufacture than the Queen Square house afforded, to decide upon the firm's present workshops on the Wandle. Among the several alternatives possible, yet such as would have involved the having to journey further afield, Merton Abbey, being at a distance not exceeding nine miles from London, presented the most convenient spot. Thither the pro- cess of dyeing was transferred, and there it has been carried on since the summer of 1881. The place had been used formerly for dyeing, and tradition says that, in the time of a previous occupier, Lord Nelson visited the works and was shown the various pro- cesses of the craft.

Morris began by dyeing skeins of embroidery silk, and then proceeded to dye wool for tapestry and carpets, in the manufacture

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of which the firm use none other than their own dyed wool. Morris himself went to Leek in order to improve his acquaint- ance with the technicalities of the process under the guidance of Mr. Thomas Wardle, the well-known expert and eminent authority on the dyer's craft. And so, when Morris referred to the subject in his lecture at the Health Exhibition in 1884, he was entitled to remind his audience that he was " speaking as a dyer, and not a scientific person ; " he spoke, that is, as one who had had practical experience of the matters whereof he treated ; in contradistinction to a theorist whose knowledge must be con- fined within the limits of mere book-lore; or on the other hand to an experimenting chemist. Indeed, as an artist, Morris felt very strongly that the so-called improvements effected by chemical science had proved in the highest degree disastrous to the craft of dyeing. In his writings on the subject he enumerates the successive additions that have been made to the repertory of dye- stuffs in historical times, with a view to showing how that the practice of primitive ages was materially identical with that of later ages, and had in fact remained unspoilt during all the inter- vening centuries down to quite recent days. " No change at all," says Morris, " befell the art either in the East or the North till after the discovery of America ; this gave the dyers one new material in itself good and one that was doubtful or bad. The good one was the new insect dye, cochineal, which at first was used only for dyeing crimson. . . . The bad new material was log-wood, so fugitive a dye as to be quite worthless as a colour by itself (as it was at first used) and to my mind of very little use otherwise. No other new dye-stuff of importance was found in America, although the discoverers came across such abund- ance of red-dyeing wood growing there that a huge country of South America has thence taken its name of Brazil." " About the year 1656, ... a Dutch chemist discovered the secret of getting a scarlet from cochineal " on a tin basis, " and so produced a cheaper, brighter, and uglier scarlet, much to the satisfaction of the civilized world." " In the last years of the eighteenth century a worthless blue was invented. . . . About the same time a rather valuable yellow dye (quercitron bark) was introduced from America." Nothing else of moment occurred " up to the time of the discovery of the process of Prussian blue dyeing in about 1810, . . . which has cheapened and worsened black-dyeing in so far as it has taken the place of the indigo vat as a basis." " Now these novelties, the sum of which amounts to very little, are all that make any difference between the practice of dyeing under Rameses the Great and under Queen Victoria, till about

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twenty years ago." (These words were published in 1882. A few sentences from another work may best describe what befell at the time indicated. The date, to be precise, was 1858.) " Then came," says Morris, " one of the most wonderful and most use- less of the inventions of modern chemistry, that of the dyes- made from coal-tar, producing a series of hideous colours, crude, livid — and cheap, — which every person of taste loathes, but which nevertheless we can by no means get rid of until we are able to struggle successfully against the doom of cheap and nasty which has overtaken us." These newly-discovered methods, " from a so-called commercial point of view, have been of the greatest importance ; for they have, as the phrase goes, revolutionized the art of dyeing. The dye-stuffs discovered by the indefatigable genius of scientific chemists, which everyone has heard of under the name of aniline colours, . . . are brighter and stronger in colour than the old dyes . . . and, which is of course of the last importance to the dyer, infinitely easier to use. No wonder, therefore, that they have almost altogether supplanted the older dyes, except in a few cases : surely the invention seems a splendid one ! Well, it is only marred by one fact, that being an invention for the benefit of an art whose very existence depends upon its producing beauty, it is on the road, and far advanced on it, towards destroying all beauty in the art. The fact is, that every one of these colours is hideous in itself, whereas all the old dyes are in themselves beautiful colours — only extreme per- versity could make an ugly colour out of them. Under these circumstances it must, I suppose, be considered a negative virtue in the new dyes, that they are as fugitive as the older ones are stable ; but even on that head I will ask you to note one thing that condemns them finally, that whereas the old dyes when fading, as all colours will do more or less, simply gradually changed into paler tints of the same colour, and were not un- pleasant to look on, the fading of the new dyes is a change into all kinds of abominable and livid hues. I mention this because otherwise it might be thought that a man with an artistic eye for colour might so blend the hideous but bright aniline colours as to produce at least something tolerable ; indeed, this is not unfre- quently attempted to-day, but with small success, partly from the reason above mentioned, partly because the hues so produced by ' messing about,' as I should call it, have none of the quality or character which the simpler drug gives naturally : all artists will understand what I mean by this." Elsewhere, comparing the two classes of dyes, Morris refers to pre-aniline colours as follows : " As to the artistic value of these dye-stuffs, most of

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which, together with the necessary mordant alumina, the world discovered in early times (I mean early historical times), I must tell you that they all make in their simplest forms beautiful colours ; they need no muddling into artistic usefulness, when you need your colours bright (as I hope you usually do), and they can be modified and toned without dirtying, as the foul blotches of the capitalist dyer cannot be. Like all dyes, they are not eternal ; the sun in lighting them and beautifying them con- sumes them ; yet gradually and for the most part kindly. . . . These colours in fading still remain beautiful, and never, even after long wear, pass into nothingness, through that stage of livid ugliness which distinguishes the commercial dyes as nuisances, even more than their short and by no means merry life." In fine, "it is most true that the chemists of our day have made dis- coveries almost past belief for their wonder ; they have given us a set of colours which has made a new thing of the dyer's craft ; commercial enterprise has eagerly seized on the gift, and yet, unless all art is to disappear from our woven stuffs, we must turn round and utterly and simply reject it." The above passage is extracted from the lecture on " The Lesser Arts of Life." Morris refers, in very similar terms, in his essay " Of Dyeing as an Art," to aniline dyes, which are " deduced," as he says, " by a long process from the plants of the coal-measures. Of these dyes it must be enough to say that their discovery, while conferring the greatest honour on the abstract science of chemistry, and while doing great service to capitalists in their hunt for profits, has terribly injured the art of dyeing, and for the general public has nearly destroyed it as an art. Henceforward there is an absolute divorce between the commercial process and the art of dyeing. Any- one wanting to produce dyed textiles with any artistic quality in them must entirely forgo the modern and commercial methods in favour of those which are at least as old as Pliny, who speaks of them as being old in his time." After this it is scarcely necessary to add that no aniline dyes are admitted, on any pretext, into the vats of Messrs. Morris and Co.

" The art of dyeing, I am bound to say," writes Morris, who was well qualified to express an opinion on the subject, " is a difficult one, needing for its practice a good craftsman, with plenty of experience. Matching a colour by means of it is an agreeable but somewhat anxious game to play." In several places he has left on record his own personal experiences in the use of various dyes. Thus, in the lecture on "^Textile Fabrics," already quoted, he says of indigo that " as long as it keeps its colour and nature," it " is insoluble and therefore unfit for dyeing ;

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it has therefore to be turned into white indigo by means of deoxi- dation, which is effected . . . chiefly by fermentation ; the white indigo is then soluble by alkalies ; this deoxidation is called by the dyers ' setting the vat ; ' and this setting by means of fermen- tation, the oldest and best way, is a very ticklish job, and the capacity of doing so indicates the past master in dyeing," though perhaps it " seems an easy process " enough. The ancient blue dye-stuff has at any rate one advantage, which, as Morris points out, is of no little account : " I may note also that no tex- tiles dyed blue or green, otherwise than by indigo, keep an agreeable colour by candle-light : many quite bright greens turning into sheer drab." Elsewhere Morris writes : " I myself have dyed wool red," (which was to his mind " above all a dyer's colour,") " by the selfsame process that the Mosaical dyers used. ... If I want for my own use some of the red dye above alluded to, I must send to Argolis or Acharnania for it." And although this "red insect dye, . . . called by the classical peoples coccus, and by the Arabs Al kermes," shares " somewhat in the ill qualities of madder for silk," — it is apt, that is, to take off the gloss, and was for that reason never used for silk dyeing so largely as were some other dyes, — Morris says, again, that he has " dyed silk in kermes and got very beautiful and powerful results by means of it. . . . Yellow dyes," he continues a little further on, " are the commonest to be met with in nature, and our fields and hedgerows bear plenty of greening-weeds, as our forefathers called them, since they used them chiefly for greening blue woollen cloth. ... Of these I have tried poplar and osier twigs, which both gave a strong yellow, but the former not a very per- manent one." These quotations must suffice. The whole sub- ject of dyeing will be found dealt with both fully and clearly in Morris's Arts and Crafts Essay.

From self-colour dyeing was but one step to pattern printing on textile fabrics of velveteen, of cotton or linen. " The art of dyeing," says Morris, " leads me naturally to the humble but useful art of printing on cloth. . . . As to the craft among our- selves, it has, as a matter of course, suffered grievously from the degradation of dyeing, and this not only from the worsening of the tints both in beauty and durability, but from a more intricate cause. I have said that the older dyes were much more difficult to use than the modern ones. The processes for getting a many- coloured pattern on to a piece of cotton, even so short a while back as when I was a boy, were many and difficult. As a rule, this is done in fewer hours now than it was in days then. . . . The natural and healthy difficulties of the old processes, all

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connected as they were with the endeavour to make the colour stable, drove any designer who had anything in him to making his pattern peculiarly suitable to the whole art, and gave a character to it — that character which you so easily recognize in Indian palampores, or in the faded curtains of our grandmothers' time, which still, in spite of many a summer's sun and many and many a strenuous washing, retain at least their reds and blues. In spite of the rudeness or the extravagance of these things, we are always attracted towards them, and the chief reason is, that we feel at once that there is something about the