The Medievalism of William Morris

Suzanne 0 ‘Rourke Scanton

[William Morris’sJ vision is true because it is poetical,because we are a little happier when we are looking at it, andhe knew as Shelley knew. .. the economists should take theirmeasurements not from life as it is, but from the vision of menlike that, from the vision of the world made perfect that isburied under all minds.1

From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industryflows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewerpure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most completedevelopment and its most brutish; here civilization works itsmiracles and civilized man is turned almost into a savage.2

In the seventeenth century, the term “Middle Ages” first came intouse to describe the roughly one thousand years between the fall of Rome and theend of the Renaissance in the sixteenth century. Almost as soon as they wereover, the Middle Ages became a point of comparison with “Modem” times.People have used the Middle Ages to define themselves, to explain who they areand who they are not, to measure how much progress they have made over thepast, or how much they have lost in relation to it. The medieval is part of ourconsciousness and imagination. The modem Western world owes much to themedieval for its cultural and religious traditions, political structures, andintellectual framework.3

Historian Leslie Workman put it simply, “medievalism . . [isi theMiddle Ages in the contemplation of contemporary society.”4 Some historianscontend that it was the romantic artists and writers of the late eighteenth andearly nineteenth centuries who first created medievalism. They rehabilitated theMiddle Ages by replacing images of barbarism, decline, and backwardness that

‘Peter J. Faulkner, Against the Age: An Introduction to William Morris (London: George Allen &Unwin, 1980), ix-x, quoting W.B. Yeats on William Morris, “The Happiest of the Poets” (1903) inEssays (London, 1924), 77.2EJ Hobsbawm, The Age ofRevolution: Europe 1789-1848 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,1962), 27, quoting Alex de Tocqueville, Journeys to England and Ireland, ed. J.P. Mayer (1958),107-108.Veronica Ortenberg, In Search of the Holy Grail: The Quest for the Middle Ages (London:

Hambledon Continuum, 2007), ix-xii.“Leslie J. Workman and Kathleen Verduin, eds., Medievalisnz in England II (Cambridge: D.S.Brewer, 1996), 2.

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are associated with those times with images of chivalry, idealism, simple beauty,and appreciation of women. But nineteenth century views of the Middle Ageswere mainly based on “ideological projections” because medievalist scholarshipwas not yet very far advanced.5 In any event, nineteenth century medievalismprovided a discourse to compare ideologies and qualities from an imagined pastwith the Victorian world that privileged rationalism, utilitarianism, centralizedgovernment, and industrial capitalism.6

By the turn of the nineteenth century, medievalism pervaded culture inBritain. It was in England that medievalism first developed, and Romanticismoriginated from it. England had a medieval character even in the seventeenthcentury. One reason for this is that there had been a great deal of continuity in itsmajor political institutions: common law and Parliament. In England,medievalism had probably always been present as a discourse since theRenaissance, but from the eighteenth century on, it was fashionable and visiblethere.7

Of the many forms medievalism has taken in modern times, the 19thcentury English Romantic movement used it as a medium to stir reflection andcomparison between contemporary and past. The Romantics looked back on theMiddle Ages seeing times of richer values, social harmony, and greaterspirituality. William Morris, born in England in 1834, during the later phase ofthis era, was associated with a branch of the movement in art that usedmedievalism more deliberately and fluently, and as an idiom of protest.5

William Morris was one of the most influential medievalists of thisphase, as creator of paintings, decorative arts and crafts, graphics, jewelry,books, poems, fiction, songs, and as translator, art theorist, and political writer.Morris used medievalism in his art and social activism to express hisdissatisfaction with the problems he perceived in Victorian society and hisvision for social reform. During the Victorian medieval revival, medievalismcould offer solace and escape from the harsh industrial capitalism of nineteenthcentury England. According to E.P. Thompson, “[tJhe values of industrialcapitalism were vicious and beneath contempt, and made a mockery of the pasthistory of mankind.”9 Through medievalism, Morris launched his own “holycrusade against the age,” and made a unique contribution in the arts andpolitics.’0

Not only was capitalism securely entrenched in Morris’s time, it wasvenerated by State and Church. As Charles Dickens described it in Hard Times,the Victorian era was an age of “facts and figures,” in which people should“never wonder” or “stoop to the cultivation of sentiments and affections.”

Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 28-296 John Simons, “Medievalism as Cultural Process in Pre-industrial Popular Literature,” inMedievalis,n in England II, 5-6; Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages, 29.

Leslie J. Workman, “Medievalism and Romanticism,” Poetica 39/40(1994), 1; Simons, 6.Ortenberg, Holy Grail, 44-45.E.P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (Pontypool: The Merlin Press, 1955,

1976 Foreword by Peter Linebaugh, 2011), 770.‘°Thompson, 248.

Charles Dickens, Hard TOnes, ed. by Paul Schlicke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 51.

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Medievalism was a form of revolt against the prevailing utilitarianism ofVictorian times, that were in Morris’s words, pervaded by “bourgeoisdom andphilistinism.” Morris sought to diffuse philistinism with his art: to “inject intothe very sources of production pleasurable and creative labour, to recreateconditions of artistic production found in medieval times.”2 The literary andvisual artwork that Morris created gave him an outlet for social protest, but itnever fully satisfied his desire to create social change. Thus, in his later life,Morris worried that his work was not making enough of an impact. Morris’sartistic vision could not stop the spread of slums or ugly suburban sprawl, andhe found it distasteful that his work was in very high demand among so manyfashionable and wealthy clients. In his discontent, Morris continued to searchfor new projects, and he ultimately became involved with England’s incipientsocialist movement. He was one of its earliest and original thinkers, writingextensively on the subject in a way that complemented the teachings of KarlMarx. 3

Morris grew up and lived through times of dual revolution in Europe:the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. As the revolutions fannedout from England and France in the form of economic growth and worldconquest, European economies grew, but it was Britain especially that enjoyedunparalleled expansion and world domination. According to E.J. Hobsbawm, itwas an age when “money not only talked, but governed.”4 During theIndustrial Revolution, class consciousness developed among three classes: landowners, bourgeois capitalists, and laborers, and a utilitarian outlook prevailed.In the early years of the nineteenth century, a “pietistic protestantism” grew, onethat had no tolerance for anything not comporting with its “rigid, self-righteous,and unintellectual” values.’5 With the growth of factory production,inhospitable manufacturing cities cropped up, characterized by gloomy millsspewing air and water pollution and punctuated with endless rows of small,bleak homes. Socialist movements, including Marxism, developed in thenineteenth century as a reaction to the problems posed by the IndustrialRevolution.’6

William Morris’ Early Life and Career

Morris grew up in a suburban village near Epping Forest calledWalthamstow in a well-to-do family. His childhood was a time steeped in theromanticism of Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Morris was raised as a member of anevangelical branch of the English Church, but as he recalled, “never took to”

12 Thompson, 248.‘‘ Thompson, 248-249, 770.“ E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age ofRevolution: Europe 1789-1848 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,1962), 3, 28-31; Mark Knight and Emma Mason, Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: AnIntroduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 12; George lichtheim, Marxism: AnHistorical and Critical Study (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), xiii.‘5lbid., 185-188.16 Ibid., 187-188; George lichtheim, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (New York:Columbia University Press, 1964), xiii.

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this religious practice. From an early age Morris was a voracious reader and hada fascination with medieval and prehistoric sites and “endless stories of knightsand chivalry.” Morris’s father died in 1847, and his inheritance made him verywealthy. In 1853, Morris began studies at Oxford and immersed himself inmedieval history and the religious poetics of the Oxford Movement. Heabandoned the latter when he came into contact with the writings of John Ruskinand Thomas Carlyle: Ruskin on art, society, and the idea that art should expressthe moral being of the artist and Carlyle on medieval utopianism andcondemnation of industrial capitalism. Morris was surrounded by romanticism,and it was one of the strongest of his early influences and passions.’7

In 1856, Morris crossed paths with a circle of artists and friendsassociated with the Pre-Raphaelites, a parallel movement in relation toRomanticism which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Bume-Jones.The circle dedicated itself to the “purity of art and religion and ... the service ofthings of the spirit in a world given over to Mammon.”8 Morris wrote poetryduring this time, reflecting these values and his preoccupation with themedieval. The Defense of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), the first volumeof poetry he published and a very significant achievement of his early career,strongly reflected influences of Keats, Tennyson, and Browning, the increasinginfluence of medievalism, and the philosophy of “art for art’s sake.” TheDefense of Guenevere was a success for Morris, but shortly afterward, Morrissaw the visual and architectural arts to be more important in his artistic battleagainst “philistinism,” and he made them his primary focus.’9

Toward the end of his time at Oxford, Morris traveled in England andFrance with Edward Burne-Jones, and the two spent time taking in and studyingthe medieval architectural sites. Soon after, Morris became articled (given atraining position) to the architect George Edmund Street. Morris was probablyan attractive candidate because he had acquired sophisticated knowledge ofarchitecture and the Gothic style from his studies and travels. Morris andBurne-Jones began to spend time with Rossetti who exerted a powerfulinfluence on the two of them. It was Rossetti who encouraged Morris in 1856 totake up the study of painting, which somehow he found time for while workingat Street’s firm. From the time he was at Oxford, friends and associates noticedthat Morris had a powerful sense of observation and keen ability to recall detail.Philip Webb, who worked for the firm became one of his lifelong friends, alsoshared his friend’s love of the medieval, and it was he who tutored Morris indrawing, a skill Morris needed for his work at Street’s firm.2° Just two yearslater, Morris completed the painting Le Belle Iseult.

‘ Thompson, 4041,77-78,86.10Ibid., 24. According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, “mammon” means “an inordinatedesire for wealth or possession, personified as a devil or demonic agent (now rare). In later use (fromthe l6 Cent.) also (with more or less personification): wealth, profit, possessions, etc., regarded as afals go or an evil influence.” http://oed.com/viewfEntry /1 l3169?redirecteFrom=mammon.

Ibid., 1-10, 20-33.20 Ibid., 44,45; Philip Henderson, ed., The Letters of William Morris (London: Longmans, Green &Co., 1950), 17-18; Raymond Watkinson, “William Morris as a Painter,” Witlia,n Morris: Art andKelmscott, ed. Linda Parry (London: The Boydell Press, 1996), 23-33.

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La Belle Iseult

Morris’s painting, La Belle Iseutt (1858) (illustration no. I) is the onlycompleted easel painting of Morris’s that has survived. Morris’s work as adesigner, poet, contributor to the Arts and Crafts movement, and his socialistwritings and activism overshadow his work as a painter by far, but even so, LaBelle Isetttt is in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery in London. The

Fig. I L Belle lseult, William Morris

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painting is a considerable accomplishment since Morris had been painting anddrawing for only a short time before he executed it. 21

In La Belle Isetilt, Jane Burden, who modeled for the painting, andwhom Morris later married, wears medieval dress, and so does a lyre player inthe background. Illustration no. 2 shows a costume (gown and sideless surcoat)that Morris designed around 1857 as a studio prop and was probably used in thispainting. The painting has sometimes been referred to as “Queen Guenevere,”but research points to Sir Thomas Malory’s (c. 1405-7 1) Le Morte d’Arthur (c.1470) as source of the subject matter. The small greyhound on the bed probablyrefers to the brachet (female hound) Malory wrote that Iseult always had withher, except when Sir Tristan was present. According to the Tate Gallery’sinterpretation, Iseult is mourning her lover Tristan’s exile from King Mark’scourt. Rosemary sprigs wrapped around her crown signify remembrance, andthe word “DOLOURS” (grief) is written on the side of the mirror. Iseult’s dress,the embroidered fabrics, the MiddleEastern carpets, the fleur-de-lys andpomegranate pattern covering the dressing table, and the hanging behind the bedwith its wide trees and motto emblazoning reflect medieval influences, and areexamples of the way Morris experimented with patterns and design in hisartwork. 22

During this first phase of Morris’s career, his medievalism had maturedfrom the stage of adolescent fascination with the mystery of past times, into adisciplined form of expression. As the century advanced, new scholarshipadded to the conceptualization of the Middle Ages, transforming it from a“grotesque” or “fairy” world into a sense of its being a “real community ofhuman beings—an organic precapitalist community with values and art of itsown,” in sharp contrast with the Victorian. Over the following twenty years,Morris continued to establish himself as a poet, craftsman of decorative arts, andbusinessman. He and Jane Burden were married in 1859 and within a few yearshad two daughters. Morris built his first home, Red House, where he tried tocreate a world with values, manners, and architecture distinctly different fromthe Victorian style that he so wanted to reform. At Red House he laterincorporated a place to work and conduct the business of his design company,the Firm of Morris & Co., which he formed with Webb, Burne-Jones, and otherfriends and associates. Red House was a prototype for the artistic revival Morrisand his circle wanted to work for, and it helped lay the foundation for the Artsand Crafts movement.23

Morris took on the challenge of reforming the “philistine” in thedecorative arts and promoting the medieval, not by attempting to copy it exactly,

William Morris, “Le Belle Iseult,” Summary of painting from the Tate Gallery website,www.tate.org. uk/art/artworks/morris-la-belle-eseult-n04999/text-summary; Watkinson, 23-33; LeMorte Dartur: Sir Thomas Maloiy ‘s Book ofKing Arthur and ofHis Noble Knights, the Text ofCaxton, ed. & with intro. By Sir Edward Strachey, Bart. (London: MacMillan and Co. Limited,1899), 215 (Google e-book); Thompson, William Morris, 6.22 Summary of painting from the Tate Gallery website; Watkinson, 33.23 The British National Trust owns and maintains the house as an historic site, and it is open to thepublic.

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but by working in the medieval spirit: a return to simple, detailed design, goodmaterials, and excellent workmanship. In this way, Morris distinguishedhimself from other medievalists who merely imitated Gothic features. Initially,Morris’s Firm met with resistance in the trade and among wealthy patrons, butby the 1$70s, Morris was beginning to find support for his work and eventuallyit became very popular among those who could afford it.24

Morris was an intense critic of much of the craftsmanship andarchitecture that was being turned out. He referred to Gobelins, then the Frenchcenter of tapestry makers, as having become a “hatching-nest of stupidity.” Heoften remarked that the times he lived in were “an age of shoddy.” Throughconstant study and practice, Morris acquired a great deal of authority in his areasof expertise. Even if he sometimes strayed along with the Gothic imitators tosome degree, this authenticity was one of the driving forces behind his work,and he used it to inform his work as a designer.

The Recognition of Sir Tristram by La Belle Isoude

Among the Firm’s artistic output was stained glass. Morris’s stainedglasswork, The Recognition of Sir Tristram by La Belle Isoude (1862), is in aPreRaphaelite style, and serves as a good example of Morris’s commitment tohis artistic principles. Even as the Pre-Raphaelites eventually lost some of theirstatus in the world of art, artists working in this style, like Morris, made animportant contribution to nineteenth century stained glass because the work is sowell executed and very beautiful. Much of the other stained glass workproduced at this time, done by tradesmen and glass wrights, or in the GothicRevival style, was unexceptional in aesthetic quality. Revived interest in theMiddle Ages during the nineteenth century brought scientific research thatuncovered the authentic materials that medieval artists worked in, and madeMorris’s experimentation possible. Morris’s work in stained glass reflects theinfluence of his former employer G.E. Street, who criticized much of themodern stained glass he was seeing as cheaply produced and workman-like.Street advocated imitation of painters like Memling, Van Meckenen, Roger ofBruges, Van Eyck, William of Cologne, and others to produce glasswork withchiaroscuro, detail of attitude, and dress in its subjects.26

The Recognition of Sir Tristram by La Belle Isoude (1862), a work instained glass commissioned by a Bradford merchant, Walter Dunlop, is a goodexample of Morris’s use of these techniques and qualities. Morris used light andshade in a way that made it look more like a painting than a work in glass. Thecomposition is reminiscent of the painting La Belle Iseult and may relate toanother of Morris’s paintings of a similar subject that has been lost. The settingincludes fabrics and furnishings of the kind Morris and his associates were using

24Thompson, 93-95, 96-97, 248-249.Ibid., 93-95, 100-102, 175.

26 David O’Connor, “Pre-Raphaelite Stained Glass: The Early Work of Edward Bume-Jones andWilliam Morris,” in William Morris: Art and Ketmscott, ed. Linda Parry (London: The BoydellPress), 3843.

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at the firm at this time. The setting also is composed in a deliberate and artisticway. The subject matter is medieval and one of Morris’s favorites, Tristan andIseult. David O’Connor suggests that the curled up dog could be a reference toDürer’s Melancholia, but it could also be the brachet that Tristan gave Iseult inMalory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, cited earlier. This stained glasswork, the paintingLa Belle Iseutt, and the poetry of The Defence of Guenevere are strong examplesof Morris’s PreRaphaelite works.27

The Pre-Raphaelite style in stained glass became very popular, and wasstill being produced after World War II. There were many imitators andcountless stained glasswork in this style at various levels of quality that are inevidence around England. O’Connor mentions one from the Priory StreetWesleyen Chapel in York that imitates the style badly, and he suggests it wouldhave Morris “turning in his grave.”28

In the late 1860s, the poetry Morris was writing continued to beimportant in the eyes of the public. With The Earthly Paradise (1868-70) andThe Ltfe and Death of Jason (1867), Morris established himself as an importantromantic poet, but his dissatisfaction with the times he lived in and nostalgia forthe past brought him into a dark phase of his life that corresponded with a stageof decline in the English Romantic movement. According to E.P. Thompson,this darkness permeated Morris’s poetry at this time. During these years, anduntil he became involved with socialism in 1883, Morris was experiencingdespair, personal problems, and disillusion. According to E.P. Thompson, insocialism Morris found an alternative to the romanticism that had lost itshopefulness as it did its power as a movement of revolt. 29

As a result of rapid industrialization, living conditions in VictorianEngland were very harsh. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote to Morris’friend Canon Dixon:

My Liverpool and Glasgow experience laid upon my mind aconviction, a truly crushing conviction, of the misery of townlife to the poor and more than to the poor, of the misery of thepoor in general, of the degradation even of our race, of thehollowness of this country’s civilization: It rnade life aburden to me to have daily thrust upon me the things I saw.3°

In Victorian society, there was a conflict between feelings of enthusiasm for theindustrial age and remorse over its effects on the quality of life, especially forthe poor. Morris was despondent and melancholy during these years partlybecause of this conflict. Another reason was related to his family problems.Morris and Jane had problems in their marriage after the first few years. Jane

27 O’Connor, 52.28 Ibid., 53-54.29Thompson., 110-114, 125-126.30Ibid., 142-143.

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Morris had a reputation for being enigmatic, remote and withdrawn, and she alsosuffered from unexplainable poor health from time to time.31

Starting in the late 1860s, there was an emotional separation betweenJane and Morris. Jane was spending a great deal of time with Rossetti, and it isfairly certain the two were romantically involved. In 1871, Morris and Rossettishared a joint tenancy of Kelmscott Manor, and he left Jane and Rossetti theretogether when he set off on his first trip to Iceland. Thompson points out thathad Jane been the aggrieved party in this unusual domestic arrangement, itwould have been expected that she “suffer in silence.” But for Morris, a man, todo this is shows that he was not afraid to be at odds with the moral and genderstandards of Victorian society.32

The journey to Iceland was probably gave Morris a break from theuncomfortable situation at home, but his interest in Iceland had begun a fewyears earlier, when in 1868 he met the Icelandic scholar EirIkir Magnüsson, andthe two became friends. Morris began to study the Icelandic language withMagnüsson and the two worked on translations of Northern sagas including theVolsunga Saga while still in England. According to Thompson, Morris foundstrength in the “energies and aspirations of a poor people in a barren northernisland in the twelfth century.” Morris was impressed by the courage themedieval sagas portrayed, and connected it with England’s Viking past. In1870, Morris published his own prose translation of the Volsunga Saga from aversion that Magnüsson had given him. In the preface published translation ofthe Volsunga Saga, Morris wrote:

This is the Great Story of the North, which should be to all ourrace tvhat the Tale of Troy was to the Greeks—to all our racefirst, and afterwards, when the change of the world has madeour race nothing more than a name of what has been—a storytoo—then should it be to those that come after us no less thanthe Tale of Troy has been to us.34

Morris found in the literature of the North “delightful freshness andindependence of thought . . . the air of freedom which breathes through them,their worship of courage (the great virtue of the human race),” and “their utterunconventionality took [his] heart by storm.”35

Morris’s travels in Iceland in 1871 and again in 1873 not only gave himsome distance from Jane and Rossetti, but from the work of Rossetti and thePre-Raphaelites. In his words, Morris saw in the sagas “a good corrective to themaundering side of medievalism.” Yet, even traveling through Iceland, he stillsought out medieval architecture. Morris argued with the parson of a ruined

31 Ibid., 153-155, 158.32Thompson, 157-162.

Ibid., 175- 179, 189.34Ibid., 179.35Ibid., 182.

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medieval church; the parson insisted it was from the Reformation, but Morrisestimated its origin to be around 1340.36

Sigurd the Volsung

Taking inspiration from his travels, in 1876, Morris wrote his lastpoem, the epic Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall ofNiblungs based on the earlierprose version of the saga. Morris found a publisher for his 306-page poem, butthe work met with mixed reviews. Thompson argues that Morris’s romanticstyle in the poem prevented him from “conveying the true spirit of the saga intoEnglish.” Morris gets sidetracked by his own preoccupations with Victorianproblems: he makes a greedy lust for gold the primary motivation behind thetragedy of the saga that unfolds. But even so, Northern literature owes Morris adebt for his efforts.37

Simon Dentith, professor of English literature at the University ofReading, explains that other nineteenth century writers attempted to create suchan epic in Europe and the United States. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and theAmerican Hiawatha are examples. Dentith also points out some of the problemswith the Morris’s work. For instance, as a foundational story, there is theproblem that Morris oversimplifies the “ethnic diversity of these islands, andoverrides the various Celtic and Gaelic inheritances that provide some of theprimary mythical material of the British archipelago.” This, of course, is apervasive difficulty with stories of origin. In Sigurd the Votsung, Dentithargues, Morris tried to write a creation story that would supersede the Greek andRoman story of origin for Britain, but this did not work because of Morris’sagenda concerning his own times.

By publishing Sigurd the Votsung, Morris was able to share hisfascination with Old Northern literature with his fellow Englishmen. Morriswas not the first Victorian to visit Iceland, to speak the language, and translate along, epic poem, but Andrew Wawn claims this poem and others earned himinternational acclaim, and he is the “most arresting” of Victorian Britain’s“poetic spokesman for the old north.”39

In late 1876, around the time he was finishing Sigurd the Volstrng,Morris shifted his focus toward politics and public affairs. He became involvedin the Eastern Question Association to protest the “unjust war” that Britainthreatened to tvage against Russia. The immediate cause of forming theassociation was to protest Britain’s alliance with the Turks who had committedatrocities in Bulgaria. In connection with that Morris wrote a manifesto “To the

36 Fiona MacCarthy, Williwn Morris: A Life for Our Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995),278-279, 284-285; 290.

MacCarthy, 290; Thompson, 188-192.38 Simon Dentith, “Morris, ‘The Great Story of the North,’ and the Barbaric Past,” Journal ofVictoria Culture 14 (2009). 238-239, 241, 251-253; Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: TheMedieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 114-115, 142, 150, 155-156, 164-165.

Andrew Wawn, The Vikings and tire Victorians: Inventing the Old North in NineteenthCenturyBritain (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000) 247,271-276.

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Working-men of England” and for the first time, participated in rallies,demonstrations, and meetings, and even gave speeches.4°

Even though war with Russia had been averted at the Congress ofBerlin in 1878, and agitation on the Left played a successful part, Morriswithdrew from politics and its intrigues for a time. Thompson contends thatMorris may have taken a break so he could absorb lessons learned from theexperience: distrust for professional politicians and respect for the potentialpower of the working class. Around this time, he became involved with anotherimportant project, the formation of the Society for the Protection of AncientBuildings. Morris also began public lecturing on art, society, and his belief inthe relation of the artist to society and that art should maintain its authenticityand continuity with history.41

The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

Morris was always a passionate critic of the recklessness he saw in thebusiness of architectural restoration. It was a very profitable business for a fewwell-known architects who worked with little supervision, and many did nothesitate to corrupt the original structures in their attempts at restoration. Morrisformed the Society, also known as the “AntiScrape,” in the late 1870s, inassociation with Philip Webb, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Burne-Jones,Holman Hunt, and others. He pursued the Society’s work from its inceptionuntil the end of his life. He corresponded with architects and notables whoworked on these projects, and he publicized the work of the Anti-Scrape in thepress. Some of the Society’s important projects were Tewkesbury Minster, thechoir at Canterbury Cathedral, the destruction of Christopher Wren’s citychurches, the roof of St. Albans, and the controversy of the replacement ofmosaics at St. Mark’s in Venice.42

Morris wrote a manifesto for the Society that clearly explains the issuesinvolved. Morris argues that the way restoration of very old monuments wasbeing conducted was such that “those last fifty years of knowledge and attentionhave done more for [the ancient monuments’] destruction than all the foregoingcenturies of revolution, violence, and contempt.” He feared that if restorationswere not done properly, “our descendants will find [these monuments] uselessfor study and chilling to enthusiasm.”43

Morris found it particularly dangerous that it was newly gainedknowledge of medieval architecture that was behind the artistic “forgery” of thestructures. He argued that in prior generations, when restorations were made,the changes were made “in the fashion of the time” so that “a church of theeleventh century might be added to or altered in the twelfth, thirteenth,fourteenth, . . . or even the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries.” The benefit to

4°Thompson, 202.Thompson, 192-227.

42 Ibid., 226-229.° Gitliam Naylor, ed., William Morris By Himself: Designs and Writings (London: MacdonaldOrbis, 1988), 98.

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working this way was, “whatever history it destroyed, left history in the gap, andwas alive with the spirit of the deeds done midst its fashioning.” Morris thoughtthe real danger to the monuments lay in being restored by persons “professing tobring back a building to best time of its history, [but withi no guide but each hisown individual whim.” Many, many minsters and less important buildings hadbeen treated in this way, and the loss, of course, irreplaceable. The Society’smanifesto advocates for architects, the guardians of buildings, and the public toinsist on restoring buildings in the manner proscribed by the Society:

Protection [should beJ in the place of Restoration, to stave offdecay by daily care, to prop a perilous wall or mend a leakyroof . . if to resist all tampering with either the fabric orornament of the building as it stands; if it has becomeinconvenient for its present use, to raise another buildingrather than alter or enlarge the old one; in fine to treat ourancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created bybygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with withoutdestroying.

When the French architect and medievalist Eugene-Emmanuel Violettle-Duc was working on his restoration of Notre-Dame in Paris, Morris bluntlyremarked that “[The cathedral] will be a terrible thing to look at.”45 Typical ofMorris, he did not hesitate to express his different views on medieval buildingseven in the case of a very high profile restoration project like Violett-le-Duc’s.In Morris’s work with the Anti-Scrape, he came up against two of the pillars ofVictorian England he had questioned his entire life: capitalism and the Church.Morris’s work with the Society sharpened his feelings about contemporaryproblems. It is not surprising that in the 1880s Morris, along with Carlyle,Ruskin, Rossetti, and other thinkers, began to undertake a deeper criticism ofcapitalism and began to study socialism. The purpose of the Anti-Scrape wasconsistent with these ideologies. Morris wrote “our ancient historicalmonuments are national property and ought no longer to be left at the mercy ofthe many and variable ideas of ecclesiastical propriety that may at any time beprevalent among us.” He argued that people had rights and responsibilities inpreserving the old buildings that was beyond the law, but a matter of socialconscience.47

Morris first became a propagandist and agitator for socialism in 1883,when he joined the Democratic Federation, and he continued to work for thecause for the rest of his life. As one of Britain’s first advocates, Morris traveledaround England and Scotland spreading the socialist gospel with the tirelessnessand enthusiasm that he was well known for. In letters to his daughter Jane, he

Naylor, 118-119.‘ Michael Camille, The Gargoyles ofNotre-Da,ne: Medievalism and the Monsters ofModernity(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 65-66.

Thompson, 234, 243, Camille, 65-66.° Ibid., 234.

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described strenuous conditions of his travels touring remote areas by train in allkinds of weather, staying in hotels, and giving lectures, and taking part indebates.”

The first phase of his participation in the movement ended when in1884 the Democratic Federation split into two factions, with one retaining thename “Democratic Federation” and Morris’s faction, called the “SocialistLeague.” Morris wrote prolifically about socialism during this period, includingthe manifesto for the League. By the time of the split, Morris had alreadybecome one of the most important socialist leaders in Britain. He wrote for andedited the League’s weekly newspaper The Commonweal, one of three socialistpapers in England at the time. It included important literary and historicalessays by Morris, Frederick Engels, Edward Avening, Paul Lafargue, GeorgeBernard Shaw, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and Karl Kautsky. Morris subsidized thepaper and frequently had to pay many of the League’s bills.49

A Dream of John Ball

Morris’s novel, A Dream of John Ball, was first serialized in theCommonweal in 1886-1887. The setting of the novel is fourteenth centuryEngland and tells the story of the Great Peasant’s Revolt that took place in thewake of the Black Death in 1381. Morris uses the narrative form of a dream ashe sometimes did in other writings, and it is he who is the narrator.

The story opens as the dreamer Morris awakens to find himself in anidyllic, medieval country setting. He describes the medieval architecture andlandscape in great detail, even observing that the buildings are without moderninterference. Morris has time traveled back to the Peasants’ Revolt organized byJohn Ball, Wat Tyler, and Jack Straw. They have issued a set of demands:cessation of the poll tax, end of villeinage, rent reduction, and other demandsagainst the feudal hierarchy. Morris, as time traveler, knows that the peasantswill be defeated within days, and in the last chapters he has a night longconversation with John Ball in which he explains that although Ball will bekilled, it is the sacrifice he has to make for the workers’ revolution that heexplains to Ball will eventually come to pass. Putting it in dialectic terms,Morris told him:

John Ball, be of good cheer; for once more thou knowest, as Iknow, that the Fellowship of Men shall endure, however manytribulations it may have to wear through. Look you, a whileago was the light bright about us; but it was because of themoon, and the night was deep notwithstanding . . . . The timeshall come, John Ball, when that dream of thine that this shall

Ibid., 276, passim; Morris, “Two Letters to Jane Alice Morris,” in Political Writings of WilliamMorris, ed. AL Morton, 182-187.49Thompson, 580-586,

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one day be, shall be a thing that men shall talk of soberlyand thou shalt not be forgotten.5°

Morris used The Dream of John Ball to draw the comparison betweenthe socialist movement with the earlier social struggles and transformations inclass and economic relations.

Over the years of his participation, Morris’s purism and hatred ofcapitalism kept him from compromising this was part of the reason for theLeague’s limited success. Thompson argues that Morris should have been morewelcoming to the cause of the labor movement. There were other divisionsamong League members: Morris kept his distance from the Fabians and theAnarchists. By 1888, Morris realized that he and his cohorts had failed to builda revolutionary party, and he broke from the League and attempted to regroupby creating the Hammersmith Society.5’

For three more years, Morris worked on “making socialists.” In hisdisappointment, he turned once again to the work of propaganda, and hoped thathis break with the Anarchists would signal the next phase of work withHammersmith and the general movement. Shortly afterward, Morris’s healthbegan to fail, and he became resigned to the fact that he was not going to seesocialism become realized in his lifetime. He no longer had the energy to workwith the same vigor that he had done. He started Kelmscott Press; his aim wasto produce beautiful books that were works of art, not to reform the world as hehad intended with the Firm, but to practice the craft for his own pleasure andrelaxation. On October 3, 1896, he died peacefully. He was mourned byfamily, friends, and the Socialist and progressive movement.52

Morris left a wonderful legacy in the vastness of the tvork he leftbehind in visual art and literature. His message of protest against the cold,profit-driven Victorian Age he lived in seems just as relevant in our times ofintense capitalist crises that still pose the problems of class, inequality, poverty,and the destruction of nature.

Morris loved the medieval, and his life-long fascination with it inspiredhim at every turn, but it would not be fair to say that he longed for a return to thepast, or looked to it for solutions to the problems of his times. Morris was anoriginal thinker who constantly strived for greater understanding of the world.When he found socialism, Morris hoped not for a return to the days of “CatholicEnglish peasants and Guild craftsmen, or. . . heathen Norse bonders,” but for atime when all workers “will . . . once more begin to have a share in art—his aimclear before him . . . [and free from] the dead weight of sordid, unrelievedanxiety, the anxiety for the daily earning of a wretched pittance by labourdegrading at once to body and mind.”53 Through medievalism Morris made an

5° William Morris, “A Dream of John Ball”, in AL. Morton, ed. Three Works by William Morris.New York: International Publishers, 1969, 2nd ed., 33-113; Eisenmen, 92-93, 97.°‘ Thompson, 276, 297-300, 423,511,578-579, 641-728; Stephen F. Eisenrnan, “Communism inFurs: A Dream of Prehistory in William Morris’s John Ball,” The Art Bulletin 86 (2005), 92.5° Thompson, 579,

Ibid., 654, 666.

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exceptional contribution to art in many forms and to social activism that is oneof-a-kind.

Suzanne ORourke Scanlon earned her BA from SFSU in European Historyin 2010 and is now completing her MA in Modern European History.

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