William Morris and Manliness,” Eras Edition 15, March 2014 –

Susan Mooney, “William Morris and Manliness,” Eras Edition 15, March 2014 – http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/eras/ “ … not only a genius, he was a man”: William Morris and Manliness Susan Mooney, Melbourne University, Australia Abstract: William Morris valued the idea of Manliness and strove to emulate a Victorian “manly” ideal. His friends saw him as exhibiting “manly” qualities during his lifetime. However, in the intervening years, succeeding biographers have moved away from the notion of Morris’s “manliness”, instead discovering psychological and neurological problems in him. As a result of modern biographies, Morris has latterly been caricatured as a comic, ridiculous figure in contrast to the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti who is portrayed as romantic and virile – the modern version of “manliness”. I argue this revision has come about from preconceptions about Morris’s relationship with his wife and his friend Rossetti. Further, I argue that Morris believed in “free love”, and was himself in love with another woman, and that this has not been adequately investigated by biographers. The overriding idea that Morris was a “cuckolded” husband has caused him to be portrayed recently as weak and effeminate, skewing public perceptions erroneously. Manly: 1. having the qualities generally regarded as those that a man should have; virile; strong, brave, resolute, honourable, etc.1 In his own lifetime William Morris was widely known as a poet and designer but also a fiery social critic and political radical. However, his name is now almost always associated with floral wallpaper, and the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who famously painted and loved Morris’s wife. Both of these associations might tend to emasculate Morris in the public mind. The recent BBC television dramatisation of the exploits of the young artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, entitled Desperate Romantics, presented a wildly exaggerated picture of Rossetti 1 New World Dictionary, www.memidex.com/manly (accessed 6 Feb 2014). Page 1 Susan Mooney, “William Morris and Manliness,” Eras Edition 15, March 2014 – http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/eras/ and his circle.2 In this series Rossetti was cast as a handsome, dashing character, able to seduce any woman; while Morris, who was twenty-two, eight years younger than Rossetti, was played by an overweight actor in his late 30s, preposterously outfitted in a purple frock coat and top hat, and with a debilitating stutter. In one scene he is seized by a fit, during which he stabs his own hand with a fork. His abject marriage proposal to Jane Burden, incorrectly cast as a serving wench, was accepted by her on the basis that he must sleep in another room.3 In caricaturing these two men, the casting gave Rossetti athletic good looks and sexual prowess, while Morris appears as an unattractive, comical figure, as if the two must be defined in relationship to one another as a pair of opposites. Until the twentieth century Morris was never seen as a failure in any context. During his lifetime he was a highly respected man of letters and a social critic. He spent the last decades of his life, among other pursuits, as a public speaker advocating radical social change. At the time of his death in 1896 the socialist paper The Clarion printed a heartfelt eulogy: Great as was his work, he himself was greater ... he was better than the best. Though his words fell like sword strokes, one always felt that the warrior was stronger than the sword. For Morris was not only a genius, he was a man. Strike at him where you would, he rang true... he was our best man.... In all England there lives no braver, kinder, honester, cleverer, heartier man than William Morris.4 2 Peter Bowker, Franny Moyle, Desperate Romantics, BBC Television, (2009). 3 Jane was just seventeen and although working class was not known to be working. 4 Jack Lindsay, William Morris: a Biography (London: Constable, 1975), 376. Page 2 Susan Mooney, “William Morris and Manliness,” Eras Edition 15, March 2014 – http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/eras/ Although the Clarion’s writer knew Morris only as a member of a socialist group, the statement is broad – Morris was a “man’s man” to those who actually knew him.5 The descriptive words pile up “masculine” attributes: brave, hearty, clever, strong - a warrior. In another account Morris was addressed by a working man: “They tell me you are a poet, Mr Morris? Well, I know nothing about poets or poetry, but I’m blooming well sure I know a man, and you’re one, by God!6 In the Victorian period “manliness” was a much bandied-about term with distinct attributes, both innate and acquired, which men strove to exemplify. In her article, “William Morris and Victorian Manliness”, Jan Marsh enumerates these qualities, and shows the ways Morris adopted the manly ideal, sometimes naturally through his strength and courage, or sometimes with a struggle, such as developing stoicism when he was by nature highly impatient.7 As Marsh points out, it is true that his sympathy and talent for the “feminine” in design and nature run alongside his “solidly masculine persona”.8 Similarly, Scott Brennan-Smith concludes that “Morris affected a dynamic balance of masculine and feminine elements in his personal psychology” – an ideal achievement.9 How then has such a change in perceptions of Morris come about? 5 Morris’s socialism is explored in Ruth Livesey’s article “William Morris and the Aesthetics of Manly Labour” in Socialism, Sex and the Culture of Aestheticism in Britain, 1880-1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 18-43. 6 E.P. Thompson, William Morris Romantic to Revolutionary (London: Merlin Press, 1996), 673. 7 Jan Marsh, “William Morris and Victorian Manliness”, in Peter Faulkner and Peter Preston (eds), William Morris Centenary Essays: Papers from the Morris Centenary Conference organized by the William Morris Society at Exeter College Oxford, 30 June - 3 July 1996, (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999). 8 Ibid., Scott Brennan-Smith, “Knight and Lady as One: The Reclamation of the ‘Feminine’ in William Morris’s Decorative Art Designs,” in Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 5, no.1 2009, http://www.ncgsjournal.com/issue51/brennan.htm (accessed 19 Feb 2014). 9 Brennan-Smith, “Knight and Lady as One”, para. 2. This has also been explored by Frederick Kirchhoff in his analysis of Morris’s psychological self-development as a man in the world. He draws similar conclusions. See Frederick Kirchhoff, William Morris the Construction of a Male Self 1856- 1872, (Athens, Ohio University Press: 1990). Manliness as an aspect of Morris’s socialism is discussed in Ruth Livesy, Socialism, Sex and the Culture, 18-43. Page 3 Susan Mooney, “William Morris and Manliness,” Eras Edition 15, March 2014 – http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/eras/ In the period between the Clarion’s eulogy and the portrayal of Morris in Desperate Romantics, a handful of biographies have told Morris’s life story. A look at several of these discloses a subtle redirection of emphasis away from the idea of “manliness”. It is an interesting study to note how the later works have diverged from the assessments of Morris as “not only a genius but a man”. The first biography of William Morris was undertaken almost immediately after his death by Jack Mackail, scholar son-in-law of the artist Edward Burne-Jones who had known Morris personally for a decade. Mackail presented Morris as an exceptional personality, ardent and talented in youth, later an idealist and a practical activist. Mackail quotes one of Morris’s associates a year or two before his meeting with Rossetti: In no long time… the great characters of his nature began to impress us. His fire and impetuosity, great bodily strength, and high temper… But his mental qualities, his intellect, also began to be perceived and acknowledged. I remember Faulkner remarking to me, “How Morris seems to know things, doesn’t he?” and then it struck me that it was so. I observed how decisive he was: how accurate, without any effort or formality: what an extraordinary power of observation lay at the base of many of his casual remarks, and how many things he knew that were quite out of our way…10 This stark contrast to the parody of Morris in Desperate Romantics is backed up by Georgiana Burne-Jones describing her first sight of him in 1855: “He was very handsome, of an unusual type – the statues of medieval kings often remind me of 10 J.W. Mackail,The Life of William Morris, vol. 1 (London: Longmans Green and Co.,1899), 44. Page 4 Susan Mooney, “William Morris and Manliness,” Eras Edition 15, March 2014 – http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/eras/ him…. His hair waved and curled triumphantly.”11 Rossetti had been impressed by Morris’s writings even before meeting him. Later he described Morris as “a real man”, despite being “a touch incoherent” as a result of his intellectual exuberance.12 Morris was also exceptionally strong, and in his undergraduate years used to attend a gymnasium where he and friends fenced, boxed and played singlestick, Morris’s playing being particularly forceful and relentless. According to Jan Marsh “martial and physical courage are core ingredients of Victorian masculinity”.13 The owner of the gymnasium, who became a firm friend of Morris, reported that his bills for broken sticks equalled that of all other pupils combined.14 Mackail’s biography emphasises Morris’s manly characteristics. Despite his fear that his biography of Morris would have to be “excessively flat owing to the amount of tact that had to be exercised right and left” the work is never stuffy, or aggrandizing, and is frequently lightened by accounts of Morris’s eccentric and endearing qualities.15 These are placed in perspective by an overarching respect, even love for his subject.

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