sign in sign up
<<
Home , Medievalism, William Morris, Work (painting)

The of

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, and he knew as Shelley knew. .. the economists should take their measurements not from life as it is, but from the vision of men like that, from the vision of the world made perfect that is buried under all minds.1

From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish; here civilization works its miracles and civilized man is turned almost into a savage.2

Inthe seventeenth century, the term “” first came into use to describe the roughly one thousand years between the fall of and the end of the in the sixteenth century. Almost as soon as they were over, the Middle Ages became a point of comparison with “Modem” times. People have used the Middle Ages to define themselves, to explain who they are and who they are not, to measure how much progress they have made over the past, or how much they have lost in relation to it. The medieval is part of our consciousness and imagination. The modem Western world owes much to the medieval for its cultural and religious traditions, political structures, and intellectual framework.3

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

‘Peter J. Faulkner, Against the Age: An Introduction to WilliamMorris (: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), ix-x, quoting W.B. Yeats on William Morris, “The Happiest of the ” (1903) in (London, 1924),77. 2EJ Hobsbawm, TheAge of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 27, quoting Alex de Tocqueville, Journeys to and Ireland, ed. J.P. Mayer (1958), 107-108. Veronica Ortenberg, In Search of the : The Questfor the Middle Ages (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), ix-xii. “Leslie J. Workman and Kathleen Verduin, eds., Medievalisnzin England II (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 2. 154 Suzanne 0 ‘RourkeScanlon are associated with those times with images of , idealism, simple beauty, and appreciation of women. But nineteenth century views of the Middle Ages were mainly based on “ideological projections” because medievalist scholarship was not yet very far advanced.5 In any event, nineteenth century medievalism provided a discourse to compare ideologies and qualities from an imagined past with the Victorian world that privileged , utilitarianism, centralized government, and industrial .6 By the turn of the nineteenth century, medievalism pervaded culture in Britain. It was in England that medievalism first developed, and originated from it. England had a medieval character even in the seventeenth century. One reason for this is that there had been a great deal of continuity in its major political institutions: common law and Parliament. In England, medievalism had probably always been present as a discourse since the Renaissance, but from the eighteenth century on, it was fashionable and visible there.7 Of the many forms medievalism has taken in modern times, the English Romantic movement used it as a medium to stir reflection and comparison between contemporary and past. The Romantics looked back on the Middle Ages seeing times of richer values, social harmony, and greater spirituality. William Morris, born in England in 1834, during the later phase of this era, was associated with a branch of the movement in art that used medievalism more deliberately and fluently, and as an idiom of protest.5 William Morris was one of the most influential medievalists of this phase, as creator of , and , 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 his dissatisfaction with the problems he perceived in Victorian society and his vision for social reform. During the Victorian medieval revival, medievalism could offer solace and escape from the harsh industrial capitalism of nineteenth century England. According to E.P. Thompson, “[tJhe values of industrial capitalism were vicious and beneath contempt, and made a mockery of the past history of mankind.”9 Through medievalism, Morris launched his own “holy crusade against the age,” and made a unique contribution in the arts and politics.’0 Not only was capitalism securely entrenched in Morris’s time, it was venerated by State and Church. As Charles Dickens described it in Hard Times, the 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), 28-29 6 John Simons, “Medievalism as Cultural Process in Pre-industrial Popular ,” in Medievalis,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, WilliamMorris: 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.

EX POST FACTO The Medievalism of William Morris 155

Medievalism was a form of revolt against the prevailing utilitarianism of Victorian times, that were in Morris’s words, pervaded by “bourgeoisdom and philistinism.” Morris sought to diffuse philistinism with his art: to “inject into the very sources of production pleasurable and creative labour, to recreate conditions of artistic production in medieval times.”2 The literary and visual artwork that Morris created gave him an outlet for social protest, but it never fully satisfied his desire to create social change. Thus, in his later life, Morris worried that his was not making enough of an impact. Morris’s artistic vision could not stop the spread of slums or ugly suburban sprawl, and he found it distasteful that his work was in very high demand among so many fashionable and wealthy clients. In his discontent, Morris continued to search for new projects, and he ultimately became involved with England’s incipient socialist movement. He was one of its earliest and original thinkers, writing extensively on the subject in a way that complemented the teachings of Karl 3 Marx. Morris grew up and lived through times of dual revolution in Europe: the and the . As the revolutions fanned out from England and France in the form of economic growth and world conquest, European economies grew, but it was Britain especially that enjoyed unparalleled expansion and world domination. According to E.J. Hobsbawm, it was an age when “money not only talked, but governed.”4 During the Industrial Revolution, class consciousness developed among three classes: land owners, bourgeois capitalists, and laborers, and a utilitarian outlook prevailed. In the early years of the nineteenth century, a “pietistic ” grew, one that 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 mills spewing air and water pollution and punctuated with endless rows of small, bleak homes. Socialist movements, including , developed in the nineteenth century as a reaction to the problems posed by the Industrial Revolution.’6

William Morris’ Early Life and Career

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

12 Thompson, 248. ‘‘ Thompson, 248-249, 770. “ E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 3, 28-31; Mark Knight and Emma Mason, Nineteenth-Century Religion and Literature: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 12; George lichtheim, Marxism: An Historical 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.

VOLUME XXII 2013 156 Suzanne 0 ‘RourkeScanlon this religious practice. From an early age Morris was a voracious reader and had a fascination with medieval and prehistoric sites and “endless stories of knights and chivalry.” Morris’s father died in 1847, and his inheritance made him very wealthy. In 1853, Morris began studies at Oxford and immersed himself in medieval history and the religious poetics of the . He abandoned the latter when he came into contact with the writings of and : Ruskin on art, society, and the idea that art should express the moral being of the artist and Carlyle on medieval utopianism and condemnation 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 friends associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, a parallel movement in relation to Romanticism which included and Edward Bume-Jones. The circle dedicated itself to the “purity of art and religion and ... the service of things of the spirit in a world given over to Mammon.”8 Morris wrote poetry during this time, reflecting these values and his preoccupation with the medieval. The Defense of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), the first volume of poetry he published and a very significant achievement of his early career, strongly reflected influences of Keats, Tennyson, and Browning, the increasing influence of medievalism, and the philosophy of “art for art’s sake.” The Defense of Guenevere was a success for Morris, but shortly afterward, Morris saw the visual and architectural arts to be more important in his artistic battle against “philistinism,” and he made them his primary focus.’9 Toward the end of his time at Oxford, Morris traveled in England and France with Edward Burne-Jones, and the two spent time taking in and studying the medieval architectural sites. Soon after, Morris became articled (given a training position) to the architect . Morris was probably an attractive candidate because he had acquired sophisticated knowledge of architecture and the Gothic style from his studies and travels. Morris and Burne-Jones began to spend time with Rossetti who exerted a powerful influence on the two of them. It was Rossetti who encouraged Morris in 1856 to take up the study of , which somehow he found time for while working at Street’s firm. From the time he was at Oxford, friends and associates noticed that Morris had a powerful sense of observation and keen ability to recall detail. , who worked for the firm became one of his lifelong friends, also shared his friend’s love of the medieval, and it was he who tutored Morris in drawing, a skill Morris needed for his work at Street’s firm.2° Just two years later, Morris completed the painting Le Belle Iseult.

‘ Thompson, 4041,77-78,86. 10Ibid.,24. According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, “mammon” means “an inordinate desire for wealth or possession, personified as a devil or demonic agent (now rare). In later use (from the l6 Cent.)also (with more or less personification): wealth, profit, possessions, etc., regarded as a fals 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 WilliamMorris (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1950), 17-18; Raymond Watkinson, “William Morris as a Painter,” Witlia,nMorris: Art and , ed. Linda Parry (London: The Boydell Press, 1996), 23-33.

EX POST FACTO The Medievalism of William Morris 157

La Belle Iseult

Morris’s painting, La Belle Iseutt (1858) (illustration no. I) is the only completed easel painting of Morris’s that has survived. Morris’s work as a designer, , contributor to the , and his socialist writings and activism overshadow his work as a painter by far, but even so, La Belle Isetttt is in the permanent collection of the Gallery in London. The

Fig. I L Belle lseult, William Morris

VOLUME XXII. 2013 158 Suzanne 0 ‘Rourke Scanlon painting is a considerable accomplishment since Morris had been painting and drawing for only a short time before he executed it. 21 In La Belle Isetilt, Jane Burden, who modeled for the painting, and whom Morris later married, wears medieval dress, and so does a lyre player in the 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 this painting. The painting has sometimes been referred to as “Queen Guenevere,” but research points to Sir ’s (c. 1405-71) Le Morte d’Arthur (c. 1470) as source of the subject matter. The small greyhound on the bed probably refers to the brachet (female hound) Malory wrote that Iseult always had with her, except when Sir Tristan was present. According to the Tate Gallery’s interpretation, Iseult is mourning her lover Tristan’s exile from King Mark’s court. Rosemary sprigs wrapped around her crown signify remembrance, and the word “DOLOURS” (grief) is written on the side of the mirror. Iseult’s dress, the embroidered fabrics, the MiddleEastern , the fleur-de-lys and pomegranate pattern covering the dressing table, and the hanging behind the bed with its wide trees and motto emblazoning reflect medieval influences, and are examples of the way Morris experimented with patterns and design in his artwork.22 During this first phase of Morris’s career, his medievalism had matured from the stage of adolescent fascination with the mystery of past times, into a disciplined form of expression. As the century advanced, new scholarship added to the conceptualization of the Middle Ages, transforming it from a “grotesque” or “fairy” world into a sense of its being a “real community of human beings—an organic precapitalist community with values and art of its own,” in sharp contrast with the Victorian. Over the following twenty years, Morris continued to establish himself as a poet, craftsman of decorative arts, and businessman. He and Jane Burden were married in 1859 and within a few years had two daughters. Morris built his first home, Red House, where he tried to create a world with values, manners, and architecture distinctly different from the Victorian style that he so wanted to reform. At Red House he later incorporated 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 other friends and associates. Red House was a prototype for the artistic revival Morris and his circle wanted to work for, and it helped lay the foundation for the Arts and Crafts movement.23 Morris took on the challenge of reforming the “philistine” in the decorative 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; Le Morte Dartur: Sir ThomasMaloiy ‘sBook of and of His Noble Knights, theTextof Caxton, ed. & with intro. By Sir Edward Strachey, Bart. (London: MacMillan and Co. Limited, 1899), 215 (Google e-book); Thompson, WilliamMorris, 6. 22 Summary of painting from theTate Gallery website; Watkinson, 33. 23 The British owns and maintains the house as an historic site, and it isopen to the public.

EX POST FACTO The Medievalism of William Morris 159 but by working in the medieval spirit: a return to simple, detailed design, good materials, and excellent workmanship. In this way, Morris distinguished himself from other medievalists who merely imitated Gothic features. Initially, Morris’s Firm met with resistance in the trade and among wealthy patrons, but by the 1$70s, Morris was beginning to find support for his work and eventually it became very popular among those who could afford it.24 Morris was an intense critic of much of the craftsmanship and architecture that was being turned out. He referred to Gobelins, then the French center of makers, as having become a “hatching-nest of stupidity.” He often remarked that the times he lived in were “an age of shoddy.” Through constant study and practice, Morris acquired a great deal of authority in his areas of expertise. Even if he sometimes strayed along with the Gothic imitators to some 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 . Morris’s stained glasswork, The Recognition of Sir Tristram by La Belle Isoude (1862), is in a PreRaphaelite style, and serves as a good example of Morris’s commitment to his artistic principles. Even as the Pre-Raphaelites eventually lost some of their status in the world of art, artists working in this style, like Morris, made an important contribution to nineteenth century stained glass because the work is so well executed and very beautiful. Much of the other stained glass work produced at this time, done by tradesmen and glass wrights, or in the Gothic Revival style, was unexceptional in aesthetic quality. Revived interest in the Middle Ages during the nineteenth century brought scientific research that uncovered the authentic materials that medieval artists worked in, and made Morris’s experimentation possible. Morris’s work in stained glass reflects the influence of his former employer G.E. Street, who criticized much of the modern stained glass he was seeing as cheaply produced and workman-like. Street advocated imitation of painters like Memling, Van Meckenen, Roger of , Van Eyck, William of Cologne, and others to produce glasswork with chiaroscuro, detail of attitude, and dress in its subjects.26 The Recognition of Sir Tristram by La Belle Isoude (1862), a work in stained glass commissioned by a Bradford merchant, Walter Dunlop, is a good example of Morris’s use of these techniques and qualities. Morris used light and shade in a way that made it look more like a painting than a work in glass. The composition is reminiscent of the painting La Belle Iseult and may relate to another of Morris’s paintings of a similar subject that has been lost. The setting includes 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 and William Morris,” in WilliamMorris: Art and Ketmscott, ed. Linda Parry (London: The Boydell Press), 3843.

VOLUME XXII 2013 160 Suzanne 0 ‘RourkeScanlon at the firm at this time. The setting also is composed in a deliberate and artistic way. The subject matter is medieval and one of Morris’s favorites, Tristan and Iseult. David O’Connor suggests that the curled up dog could be a reference to Dürer’s Melancholia, but it could also be the brachet that Tristan gave Iseult in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, cited earlier. This stained glasswork, the painting La Belle Iseutt, and the poetry of The Defence of Guenevere are strong examples of Morris’s PreRaphaelite works.27 The Pre-Raphaelite style in stained glass became very popular, and was still being produced after World War II. There were many imitators and countless stained glasswork in this style at various levels of quality that are in evidence around England. O’Connor mentions one from the Priory Street Wesleyen Chapel in York that imitates the style badly, and he suggests it would have Morris “turning in his grave.”28 In the late 1860s, the poetry Morris was writing continued to be important in the eyes of the public. With (1868-70) and The Ltfeand Death of (1867), Morris established himself as an important romantic poet, but his dissatisfaction with the times he lived in and nostalgia for the past brought him into a dark phase of his life that corresponded with a stage of decline in the English Romantic movement. According to E.P. Thompson, this darkness permeated Morris’s poetry at this time. During these years, and until he became involved with in 1883, Morris was experiencing despair, personal problems, and disillusion. According to E.P. Thompson, in socialism Morris found an alternative to the romanticism that had lost its hopefulness as it did its power as a movement of revolt. 29 As a result of rapid industrialization, living conditions in Victorian England were very harsh. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote to Morris’ friend Canon Dixon:

My Liverpool and Glasgow experience laid upon my mind a conviction, a truly crushing conviction, of the misery of town life to the poor and more than to the poor, of the misery of the poor in general, of the degradation even of our race, of the hollowness of this country’s civilization: It rnade life a burden 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 the industrial age and remorse over its effects on the quality of life, especially for the poor. Morris was despondent and melancholy during these years partly because 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.

EX POST FACTO The Medievalism of William Morris 161

Morris had a reputation for being enigmatic, remote and withdrawn, and she also suffered from unexplainable poor health from time to time.31 Starting in the late 1860s, there was an emotional separation between Jane and Morris. Jane was spending a great deal of time with Rossetti, and it is fairly certain the two were romantically involved. In 1871, Morris and Rossetti shared a joint tenancy of , and he left Jane and Rossetti there together when he set off on his first trip to Iceland. Thompson points out that had Jane been the aggrieved party in this unusual domestic arrangement, it would have been expected that she “suffer in silence.” But for Morris, a man, to do this is shows that he was not afraid to be at odds with the moral and gender standards of Victorian society.32 The journey to Iceland was probably gave Morris a break from the uncomfortable situation at home, but his interest in Iceland had begun a few years earlier, when in 1868 he met the Icelandic scholar EirIkir Magnüsson, and the two became friends. Morris began to study the with Magnüsson and the two worked on translations of Northern sagas including the Volsunga Saga while still in England. According to Thompson, Morris found strength in the “energies and aspirations of a poor people in a barren northern island in the twelfth century.” Morris was impressed by the courage the medieval sagas portrayed, and connected it with England’s Viking past. In 1870, Morris published his own prose translation of the Volsunga Saga from a version that Magnüsson had given him. In the preface published translation of the Volsunga Saga, Morris wrote:

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

Morris found in the literature of the North “delightful freshness and independence of thought . . . the air of freedom which breathes through them, their worship of courage (the great virtue of the human race),” and “their utter unconventionality took [his] heart by storm.”35 Morris’s travels in Iceland in 1871 and again in 1873 not only gave him some distance from Jane and Rossetti, but from the work of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites. In his words, Morris saw in the sagas “a good corrective to the maundering side of medievalism.” Yet, even traveling through Iceland, he still sought out . Morris argued with the parson of a ruined

31 Ibid., 153-155, 158. 32Thompson, 157-162. Ibid., 175-179, 189. 34Ibid., 179. 35Ibid., 182.

VOLUME XXII 2013 162 Suzanne 0 ‘RourkeScanlon medieval church; the parson insisted it was from the , but Morris estimated its origin to be around 1340.36

Sigurd the Volsung

Taking inspiration from his travels, in 1876, Morris wrote his last poem, the epic the Volsung and the Fall of Niblungs based on the earlier prose version of the saga. Morris found a publisher for his 306-page poem, but the work met with mixed reviews. Thompson argues that Morris’s romantic style in the poem prevented him from “conveying the true spirit of the saga into English.” Morris gets sidetracked by his own preoccupations with Victorian problems: he makes a greedy lust for gold the primary motivation behind the tragedy of the saga that unfolds. But even so, Northern literature owes Morris a debt for his efforts.37 Simon Dentith, professor of English literature at the University of Reading, explains that other nineteenth century writers attempted to create such an epic in Europe and the United States. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and the American Hiawatha are examples. Dentith also points out some of the problems with the Morris’s work. For instance, as a foundational story, there is the problem that Morris oversimplifies the “ethnic diversity of these islands, and overrides the various Celtic and Gaelic inheritances that provide some of the primary mythical material of the British archipelago.” This, of course, is a pervasive difficulty with stories of origin. In Sigurd the Votsung, Dentith argues, Morris tried to write a creation story that would supersede the Greek and Roman story of origin for Britain, but this did not work because of Morris’s agenda concerning his own times. By publishing Sigurd the Votsung, Morris was able to share his fascination with Old Northern literature with his fellow Englishmen. Morris was not the first Victorian to visit Iceland, to speak the language, and translate a long, epic poem, but Andrew Wawn claims this poem and others earned him international 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 involved in the Eastern Question Association to protest the “unjust war” that Britain threatened to tvage against Russia. The immediate cause of forming the association was to protest Britain’s alliance with the Turks who had committed atrocities in Bulgaria. In connection with that Morris wrote a manifesto “To the

36 Fiona MacCarthy, WilliwnMorris: A Lifefor 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 of Victoria Culture 14 (2009). 238-239, 241, 251-253; Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Press, 2002), 114-115, 142, 150, 155- 156, 164-165. Andrew Wawn, The Vikingsand tire Victorians: Inventing the Old North in NineteenthCentury Britain (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000) 247,271-276.

EX POST FACTO The Medievalism of William Morris 163

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 of Berlin in 1878, and agitation on the Left played a successful part, Morris withdrew from politics and its intrigues for a time. Thompson contends that Morris may have taken a break so he could absorb lessons learned from the experience: distrust for professional politicians and respect for the potential power of the working class. Around this time, he became involved with another important project, the formation of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Morris also began public lecturing on art, society, and his belief in the relation of the artist to society and that art should maintain its authenticity and continuity with history.41

The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

Morris was always a passionate critic of the recklessness he saw in the business of architectural restoration. It was a very profitable business for a few well-known architects who worked with little supervision, and many did not hesitate to corrupt the original structures in their attempts at restoration. Morris formed the Society, also known as the “AntiScrape,” in the late 1870s, in association with Philip Webb, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, and others. He pursued the Society’s work from its inception until the end of his life. He corresponded with architects and notables who worked on these projects, and he publicized the work of the Anti-Scrape in the press. Some of the Society’s important projects were Tewkesbury Minster, the choir at , the destruction of Christopher Wren’s city churches, the roof of St. Albans, and the controversy of the replacement of mosaics at St. Mark’s in .42 Morris wrote a manifesto for the Society that clearly explains the issues involved. Morris argues that the way restoration of very old monuments was being conducted was such that “those last fifty years of knowledge and attention have done more for [the ancient monuments’] destruction than all the foregoing centuries of revolution, violence, and contempt.” He feared that if restorations were not done properly, “our descendants will find [these monuments] useless for study and chilling to enthusiasm.”43 Morris found it particularly dangerous that it was newly gained knowledge of medieval architecture that was behind the artistic “forgery” of the structures. 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 the eleventh 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., WilliamMorris By Himself: Designs and Writings (London: Macdonald Orbis, 1988), 98.

VOLUME XXII 2013 164 Suzanne 0 ‘RourkeScanton working this way was, “whatever history it destroyed, left history in the gap, and was alive with the spirit of the deeds done midst its fashioning.” Morris thought the real danger to the monuments lay in being restored by persons “professing to bring back a building to best time of its history, [but withi no guide but each his own individual whim.” Many, many minsters and less important buildings had been treated in this way, and the loss, of course, irreplaceable. The Society’s manifesto advocates for architects, the guardians of buildings, and the public to insist on restoring buildings in the manner proscribed by the Society:

Protection [should beJ in the place of Restoration, to stave off decay by daily care, to prop a perilous wall or mend a leaky

roof . . if to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the building as it stands; if it has become inconvenient for its present use, to raise another building rather than alter or enlarge the old one; in fine to treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying.

When the French architect and medievalist Eugene-Emmanuel Violett le-Duc was working on his restoration of Notre-Dame in , Morris bluntly remarked that “[The cathedral] will be a terrible thing to look at.”45 Typical of Morris, he did not hesitate to express his different views on medieval buildings even 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 of Victorian England he had questioned his entire life: capitalism and the Church. Morris’s work with the Society sharpened his feelings about contemporary problems. It is not surprising that in the 1880s Morris, along with Carlyle, Ruskin, Rossetti, and other thinkers, began to undertake a deeper and began to study socialism. The purpose of the Anti-Scrape was consistent with these ideologies. Morris wrote “our ancient historical monuments are national property and ought no longer to be left at the mercy of the many and variable ideas of ecclesiastical propriety that may at any time be prevalent among us.” He argued that people had rights and responsibilities in preserving the old buildings that was beyond the law, but a matter of social conscience.47 Morris first became a propagandist and agitator for socialism in 1883, when he joined the Democratic Federation, and he continued to work for the cause for the rest of his life. As one of Britain’s first advocates, Morris traveled around England and Scotland spreading the socialist gospel with the tirelessness and enthusiasm that he was well known for. In letters to his daughter Jane, he

Naylor, 118-119. ‘ Camille, The Gargoyles of Notre-Da,ne: Medievalism and the Monsters of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 65-66. Thompson, 234, 243, Camille, 65-66. ° Ibid., 234.

EX POST FACTO The Medievalism of William Morris 165 described strenuous conditions of his travels touring remote areas by train in all kinds of weather, staying in hotels, and giving lectures, and taking part in debates.” The first phase of his participation in the movement ended when in 1884 the Democratic Federation split into two factions, with one retaining the name “Democratic Federation” and Morris’s faction, called the “Socialist League.” Morris wrote prolifically about socialism during this period, including the manifesto for the League. By the time of the split, Morris had already become one of the most important socialist leaders in Britain. He wrote for and edited the League’s weekly newspaper The Commonweal, one of three socialist papers in England at the time. It included important literary and historical essays by Morris, Frederick Engels, Edward Avening, , , , and . Morris subsidized the paper and frequently had to pay many of the League’s bills.49

A Dream of

Morris’s , A Dream of John Ball, was first serialized in the Commonweal in 1886-1887. The setting of the novel is fourteenth century England and tells the story of the Great Peasant’s Revolt that took place in the wake of the in 1381. Morris uses the narrative form of a dream as he 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 an idyllic, medieval country setting. He describes the medieval architecture and landscape in great detail, even observing that the buildings are without modern interference. Morris has time traveled back to the Peasants’ Revolt organized by John Ball, , and Jack Straw. They have issued a set of demands: cessation of the poll tax, end of villeinage, rent reduction, and other demands against the feudal hierarchy. Morris, as time traveler, knows that the peasants will be defeated within days, and in the last chapters he has a night long conversation with John Ball in which he explains that although Ball will be killed, it is the sacrifice he has to make for the workers’ revolution that he explains 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 I know, that the Fellowship of Men shall endure, however many tribulations it may have to wear through. Look you, a while ago was the light bright about us; but it was because of the

moon, and the night was deep notwithstanding . . . . The time shall 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 William Morris, ed. AL Morton, 182-187. 49Thompson, 580-586,

VOLUME XXII’ 2013 166 Suzanne 0 ‘RourkeScanlon

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

Morris used The Dream of John Ball to draw the comparison between the socialist movement with the earlier social struggles and transformations in class and economic relations. Over the years of his participation, Morris’s purism and hatred of capitalism kept him from compromising this was part of the reason for the League’s limited success. Thompson argues that Morris should have been more welcoming to the cause of the labor movement. There were other divisions among League members: Morris kept his distance from the Fabians and the Anarchists. By 1888, Morris realized that he and his cohorts had failed to build a revolutionary party, and he broke from the League and attempted to regroup by creating the Society.5’ For three more years, Morris worked on “making socialists.” In his disappointment, he turned once again to the work of propaganda, and hoped that his break with the Anarchists would signal the next phase of work with Hammersmith and the general movement. Shortly afterward, Morris’s health began to fail, and he became resigned to the fact that he was not going to see socialism become realized in his lifetime. He no longer had the energy to work with the same vigor that he had done. He started Kelmscott Press; his aim was to produce beautiful books that were works of art, not to reform the world as he had intended with the Firm, but to practice the for his own pleasure and relaxation. On October 3, 1896, he died peacefully. He was mourned by family, friends, and the Socialist and progressive movement.52 Morris left a wonderful legacy in the vastness of the tvork he left behind 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 of intense 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 inspired him at every turn, but it would not be fair to say that he longed for a return to the past, or looked to it for solutions to the problems of his times. Morris was an original thinker who constantly strived for greater understanding of the world. When he found socialism, Morris hoped not for a return to the days of “Catholic

English peasants and Guild craftsmen, or. . . heathen Norse bonders,” but for a

time when all workers “will .. . once more begin to have a share in art—his aim clear before him .. . [and free from] the dead weight of sordid, unrelieved anxiety, the anxiety for the daily earning of a wretched pittance by labour degrading 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 WilliamMorris. 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, “ in Furs: A Dream of Prehistory in William Morris’s John Ball,” TheArt Bulletin 86 (2005), 92. 5° Thompson, 579, Ibid., 654, 666.

EX POST FACTO The Medievalism of William Morris 167 exceptional contribution to art in many forms and to social activism that is one of-a-kind.

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

VOLUME XXII 2013