THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM MORRIS WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY HIS DAUGHTER MAY MORRIS VOLUME X THREE NORTHERN LOVE STORIES THE TALE OF BEOWULF LONGMANSGREEN AND COMPANY PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON NEW YORK BOMBAY CALCUTTA MDCCCCXI IIs co Coa ag. Mie Pure “jones cared ¢ : Herris crrridies ( Shetograpdied cil Fle (erie Iz INT frog Fovelerr eds Myer “} v / r reef ser re bi Clg, Dsecvselod vue the rite poy y. fe eh li lege heaped. ser aniloadc gee, be es piigissedd crite y CF hires. Wo on te repre fe the l ‘elle INTRODUCTION HE letter writtenin February 1873 to our dear friend Mrs. Coronio, though already published, cannot be overlooked here. The following extract gives a lively impression of my father’s practical life at the moment and touches with some gravity on the life of the spirit, which, as we have seen, he seldom allowed himself to do. “] am very hard at work at one thing or another; firm's work for one thing. I should very much like to make the business quite a success, and it can’t be, unless I work at it myself. I must say, though [ don’t call myself money-greedy, a smash on that side would be a terrible nuisance; | have so many serious troubles, pleasures, hopes and fears, that 1 have not timeon my hands to be ruined and get really poor: above all things it would destroy my freedom of work, which isa dear delight to me. My translations go on apace, but I am doing nothing original: it can’t be helped, though some- times I begin to fear | am losing my invention. You know I very much wish not tofall off in imagination and enthusiasm as growolder: there have been men who, once upon a time, have done things good or noteworthy, who have got worse with time and have outlived their power; | don’t like that at all. On the other hand, all great men that have not died young have done some of their best work when they were getting quite old. However, it won't do to force oneself about it, and I certainly enjoy some of the work 1 do very much, and one of these days my Heimskringla will be an important work.” The year was busier than ever, though as regards literary production the poet’s brain was lying fallow. While in this letter he expresses a fear that he may be losing invention, in another he takes the matter philosophically: “Except the work for the firm, in which I am rather busy, I am doing nothing now but translations: I should be glad to have some ix poem on hand, but it’s no use trying to force the thing; and though the translating lacks the hope and fear that makes writing original things so absorbing, yet at any rate it 1s amusing and in places even exciting.” “The Story of Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue” first ap- peared in the Fortnightly Review for January 1869, the titlethere being “The Saga of Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue and Rafn the Skald,” while the last page concludes with: “And hereends the Saga.” Itissigned by the two translators. “Frithiof the Bold” was published in the Dark Blue for March and April 1871, with only my father’s name on the first page as translator. It has the following footnote: “This tale is the original of the Swedish Bishop Tegner’s ‘Frithiof Saga,’ along modern poem which has agreat repu- tation, but bears little enough relation, either in spirit or matter, to its prototype.” To anyone like my father, somewhat stay-at-home by nature, two foreign journeys the same year were quite an event: his first visit to Italy in the spring, his second journey across Iceland in thesummer, The Italian visit—quiteashort one—was madeincompany with Burne-Jones. In theletters written home, one feels (remembering words spoken later) thatthe expressionof pleasurein the beautiful things seen was tinged withacertainsenseof disappointment. Heonly visited Florence and Siena, with a day’s trip to Prato and Pistoja, and itis a thousand pities, considering his quick response to the appeal of a lovely land, that there was no one to lead him out right into the characteristic Tuscan country so near Florence, where he could have feasted eyes and heart on unforgettable things—realizing many a vivid dream of ancient Italy of his own fashioning—forgetting for a little the disappointment of a city with its old walls nearly obli- terated and its inhabitants in a fever to imitate the Paris of Haussmann. TherearetwothingsIspeciallyrememberabout his Florence impressions that we sat round agape to hear: x first that Florence was after all a modern city crowded with old monuments (he had pictured it asa mediaeval town) and next that when one drove out to get a glimpse of the country “you went for miles between high white walls and saw no- thing.” And yet, at a stone’s throw, the real Tuscan land was there, waiting to be loved—so lovable and welcoming: busy valleys with their sparkling poplar-shaded streams, cypress-woods starred with asphodel, lonely sunburnt heights fragrant with rosemary and pink, solemn with the beauty of a thousand years: this was the land he had looked for, and not found. I have often thought of it in my own wanderings there. He wrote to Mother, having just been to the Duomo and Santa Maria Novella: Florence Sunday [Aprilg, 1873] Dearest Janey We ended our long journey yesterday: it had been very fine all the way: for my own part | was not over-tired, though the night journey from Paris was sufficiently weari- some. All is well here,and Ned in great spirits. Wewent out this morning to the Duomoand S. Maria Novella, but it has clouded over now and is raining. You will hardly expect me to tell you of all the marvels in the limits of a letter; besides I'am suck a bad hand atit; I suppose in somerespects we have come into Italy by the worst road: nevertheless it is all full of wonder and delight: one gets abit tired of the eternal mul- berry trees between Turin and Bologna but the passing of the Apennines thence to Florence is a wonderful journey; especially where you come out of a tunnel and see from the edge of the mountains the plain of Florence lying below you, with the beautiful old town of Pistoijawithin its square walls at the mountain’s fect; it was something also to remember coming down into the plain of Piedmont out of the Alp, on the most beautiful of all evenings, and going (still between snow-capped mountains) through a country like a garden: x green grass and feathery poplars, and abundance of pink blossomed leafless peachand almond trees. The Duomo here is certainly the most beautiful church in the world outside;* and inside I suppose would be if it had not been made asbare as the palm of my hand. The cloisters of S. Maria Novella though is what I have seen most to my mind here. We went through a market this morning and that was the greatestgame;thelemonsand oranges forsalewith theleaves still on them: miraculous frying going on, and all sorts of queer vegetables and cheeses to be sold. "Tis Palm Sunday to-day and the people are going about with bunches of olive boughs to serve for palms, The monks of S. Maria Novella make scents: I must bring you home a bottle, also I must, if cash holds out, buy a toy for the littles from the jewellers’ shops on the Ponte Vecchio: the shops are a good deal shut to-day, so I couldn’t see much there. I suppose 1 shall stay here till next Friday, so don’t write here again but write to The Hotel Lille and Albion Rue St Honore Paris. Best love to you and the littles: don’t tell them I think of bringing them a toy though. I hope you are much better. am Your loving William Morris. Santa Croce (the inside of 9, he thought “the finest church in Florence.” Thesight of a famous old building like San Miniato barbarously restored was a real distress to him. Mr. Mackail writes: “ Burne-Jones, with whom he went out, and who himself made a more prolonged stay, found him a rather exacting companion, and a little determined to make the worst of things. The interior of the Duomo at Florence * An enthusiasm of the moment surely. I have heard his con- sidered judgement. X1} depressed him with its chilly bareness: San Miniato was un- fortunately in the death-agonies of a thorough restoration; and even the more unspoiled Siena failed to excite him.” * In the summer came the second visit to Iceland, and a second instalment of all that keen excitement, with the pleasurable “young” picnic-feeling overlying the deep-laid inherent melancholy and the sadness born out of a feeling of sympathy over the sufferings of a dignified hard-living race. The attraction my father felt towards the North was not shared or quite approved of by all his nearest friends. Rossetti and Burne-Jones both poked fun at him in their different way, and the former, as we know from an often repeated witticism, got really cross on one occasion in dis- cussing the merits of the Volsung story. “ Morris's return from Iceland in September 1873 was announced to Mr. Fairfax Murray thus,” says Lady Burne-Jones: “‘Mr. Morris has come back more enslaved with passion for ice and snow and raw fish than ever—1I fear I shall never drag him to Italy again.
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