Part 17 (2/2)
Fro within himself which drew him instinctively to all that was beautiful in nature, in art, in books His earliest coe of four and finished at seven; his earliest haunt was Epping Forest, where he roah many of the years of his youth
His father, as in business in the City of London, as partner in a bill-broking firm, lived at different times at Walthamstow and at Woodford; and the hills of the forest, in sorowth of hornbea a wide view over the levels of the lower Thaly on the boy's ination that this scenery often recurred in the setting of tales which he wrote in middle life
There was no need of external aid to develop these tastes; and Morris was fortunate in going to a school which did no violence to theenial pursuits Marlborough College, at the time when he went there in 1848, had only been open a few years The gaanized but left to voluntary effort; and during his three or four years at school Morris never took part in cricket or football In the latter game, at any rate, he should have proved a notable performer on unorthodox lines, impetuous, forcible, and burly as he was But he found no reason to regret the absence of ga heavy on his hands The country satisfied his wants, the Druidic stones at Avebury, the green water-lades of Savernake Forest So strong was the spell of nature, that he hardly felt the need for companionshi+p; and, as chance had not yet thrown him into close relations with any friend of similar tastes, he lived much alone
It was a differentthose who e that year was a freshham naun a friendshi+p with hireatest happiness For more than forty years their naenerations to coreat tapestry of the Nativity designed by one and executed by the other Burne-Jones had not yet found his vocation as a painter; he came to Oxford like Morris with the wish to take Holy Orders He was of Welsh fa, and a Celtic instinct for as beautiful, and at King Edward's School he had e about the same time Their friendshi+p was extended to his new acquaintance froh Here Morris found himself in the midst of a small circle who shared his enthusias whom he quickly learned to express those ideas which had been stirring his heart in his solitary youth Through the knowledge gained by close observation and a retentive h his impetuosity and swift decision, Morris soon beca them
Carlyle and Ruskin, Keats and Tennyson, were at this ti the in the circle at Pe alone with Burne-Jones at Exeter reading aloud to hiether French ro men of to-day, with a wealth of books on their shelves and of pictures on their walls, with popular reproductions bringing daily to their doors things old and new, can little realize the thrill of excitele new poe by Millais or Rossetti How they were quickened by ever fresh delight in the beauty and strangeness of such things, how they responded to the ic of romance and dreamed of a day when they should themselves help in the creation of such work, how they started a hts in prose or verse, can best be read in the volumes which Lady Burne-Jones[50] has dedicated to the memory of her husband
This period is of capital importance in the life of Williaht with momentous decisions
[Note 50: _Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones_, by G B-J, 2 vols
(Macone up to Oxford intending to take Holy Orders in the Church of England; but the last three years had taught him that his interest lay elsewhere The spirit of faith, of reverence, of love for his fellow men still attracted him to Christianity; but he could not subscribe to a body of doctrine or accept the authority of a single Church His ideal shi+fted gradually At one time he hoped to found a brotherhood which was to coion and to train craftsmen for the service of the Church; but he was more fitted to work in the world than in the cloister, and the social aspect of this foundation prevailed over the religious Nor was it mere self-culture to which he aspired The arts as he understood the the powers ofall that wason the torch to the future; in this field there ork for ood
His own favourite study was the thirteenth century, when princes and merchants, monks and friars, poets and craftsmen had combined to exalt the Church and to beautify Western Europe; and he wished to recreate the nineteenth century in its spirit And so while Burne-Jones discovered his true gift in the narrower field of painting, Morris began his apprenticeshi+p in the master craft of architecture, and passed from one art to another till he had covered nearly the whole field of endeavour with ever-growing knowledge of principle and restless activity of hand and eye His father had died in 1847; and when Morris cae he inherited a fortune of about 900 a year and was his own master Before the end of 1855 he i Orders The Rubicon was crossed; but on which road he was to reach his goal was not settled for many years Twice he had to retrace his steps froin a fresh career The year 1856 saw hi at Oxford, in the office of Street, the architect Twoat easel pictures under the influence of Rossetti, though he also published his first volume of poetry at this time The year 1859 found hi of a ho his way towards the choice of a profession
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was in soeneration; certainly he was the only individual whose influence was ever capable of do him to a course of action which he would not have chosen for hiic collapse after his wife's death, and the pictures which he painted in his later life, have obscured the true portrait of this virile and attractive character Burne-Jones fell completely under his spell, and he tells us how for many years his chief anxiety, over each successive work of art that he finished, hat Gabriel would have thought of it' So decisive was his judge his personality
Morris's period of hesitation ended in 1861, when the first fir the friends Of the old Oxford set it included Burne-Jones and Faulkner; new elements were introduced by Philip Webb the architect and Madox Brown the painter The leadershi+p in ideasto Rossetti; but in execution William Morris proved himself at once the captain The actual hich he contributed in the first year was more than equal to that produced by his six partners, and future years told the same tale
In the early part of his married life Morris lived in Kent, at Upton, so Cross, in a house built for him by his friend Webb The house was of red brick, simple but unconventional in character, built to be the home of one who detested stucco and all other shas to seem what they were Its decoration was to be the work of its owner and his friends
Here we see Morris in the strength of early orous nature, surrounded by friends for whoer to respond to all the claiy Here ca, dreaah the country-side, quoting poets old and new, and sche to cover the walls and cupboards of the rooends of mediaeval romance
Visitors of the conventional aesthetic type would have many a surprise and many a shock The jests often took the form of practical jokes, of which Morris, from his explosive temper, was chosen to be the butt, but which in the end he always shared and enjoyed Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Faulkner would conspire to lay booby traps on the doors for him, would insult him with lively caricatures, and with relentless humour would send him to 'Coventry' for the duration of a dinner Or he would have a sudden tempestuous outbreak in which chairs would collapse and door panels be kicked in and violent expletives would resound through the hall In all, Morris was the central figure, iure, unke, but with the keenest appreciation and sympathy for any manifestation of beauty in literature or in art But this idyll was short-lived Ill-health in the Burne-Jones family was followed by an illness which befell Morris hi business and the need for the master to be nearer at hand forced him to leave Upton The Red House was sold in 1865; and first Bloomsbury and later Hammersmith furnished him with a home more conveniently placed
The period of his return to London coincided with the most fruitful period of his poetic work Already at Oxford he had written some pieces of verse which had found favour with his friends He soon found that his taste and his talent was for narrative poetry; and in 1856 he made acquaintance with his two supreme favourites, Chaucer and Malory It is to them that he owes most in all that he produced in poetry or in prose, and notably in the _Earthly Paradise_, which he published between 1868 and 1870 This consists of a collection of stories drawn chiefly from Greek sources, but supposed to be told by a band of wanderers in the fourteenth century Thus the classic legends are seen through a veil of mediaeval romance He had no wish to step back, in the spirit of a norance or mist, and to pick up the classic stones clear-cut and cold as the Greeks left theends had a continuous history up to the Renaissance; as they were retold by Ro in our gardens, still putting out fresh shoots, not an eht us to exhume and to study in the chill atmosphere of our libraries and museums This mediaevalism of his was much misunderstood, both in literature and in art; people would talk to hi the s or tapestries of the Middle Ages, whereas what he wanted was to recapture the technical secrets which the true craftsmen had known and then to use these methods in a live spirit to carry on the work to fresh developments in the future
If the French tales of the fourteenth century were an inspiration to him in his earliest poems, a second influence no less potent was that of the Icelandic Sagas He began to study thenusson, he was translating solish He made two journeys to Iceland, and was deeply randeur of the scenes in which these heroic tales were set
For riive to the wonted pilgries to Florence and Venice When he was once under the spell, only the geysers with their suggestion of nall's Questions_[51] could bore hi This enthusias_, the lishfor craftseneral, less rich than that of Tennyson, less intense than that of Rossetti, had certain qualities of its own, and owed its popularity chiefly to his gift for telling a story swiftly, naturally and easily, and in such a way as to carry his reader along with him
[Note 51: Letter quoted in _Life of Morris_, by J W Mackail, vol
i, p 257 (Long in London, which was ready enough in the nineteenth century to make the most of its poets In Society, if he had allowed it to entertain hih hardly such as was expected by adested only the prosperous British workman; to one who knew hi' in his blue tweed sailor-cut suit This was his Socialist colleague Mr Hyndrey eyes with the powerful nose and slightly florid cheeks', and tells us hohen he was talking, 'every hair of his head and his rough shaggy beard appeared to enter into the subject as a living part of himself' Elsewhere he speaks of Morris's 'quick, sharp hter and veheer' At times Morris could be bluff beyond measure Stopford Brooke, who afterwards beca with Morris in 1867 'He didn't care for parsons, and he glared atover the table with his eyes set and his fist clenched he shouted at me, ”I am a boor and the son of a boor”' So ready as he was to challenge anything which smacked of conventionality or pretension, he was not quite a safe poet to lionize or to ask into mixed company
But it was less in literature than in art that he influenced his generation, and we s it had established itself in the favourable esteem of the few, and, thanks to exhibitions, its fah as le copy of its prospectus, there was generally one departy of the chief
Painted glass is named first on the prospectus, and was one of the earlier successes of the firm As it was employed for churches more often than for private houses, it is familiar to many who do not know Morris's work in their homes; but it is hardly the , the lass', was purchased, notthe best colours available rather than in creating theure-draas incoures were designed by Burne-Jones, and some of the best-known exahaaret's, Rottingdean, where he died[52] But no cartoon, by Burne-Jones or any one else, was executed till Morris had supervised the colour schee or landscape
[Note 52: Other easily accessible exae Chapel, Cae]
To those people of limited means who cannot afford tapestries and elass on the firm's list), yet ish to beautify their homes, interest centres in the chintzes and wall-papers These show the distinctive gifts by which Morris most widely influenced the Victorian traditions It is not easy to explain why one design stirs our curiosity and quickens our delight, while another has the opposite effect Critics can prate about natural and conventional art without helping us to understand; but a passage fro as simply and clearly phrased[53]
'Morris would start', he says, 'with a pattern in hisas a factor in that pattern But in these early wall-papers he showed a power of pattern-h everything is subject to the pattern, yet the pattern itself expresses a keen delight in the objects of which it is composed So they are like the poems in which the words keep a precise and homely sense and yet in their co with the design of the rose-trellis in 1862, Morris laid under contribution many of the most familiar flowers and trees The daisy, the honeysuckle, thebranch, are but a few of the best known: each bears the sta hand: each flower clainition for itself, and reveals new char Of these papers we hear that Morris hihty, and e add chintzes, tapestry, and other articles we may well be astonished at the fertility of his brain
[Note 53: _Williaate, 1914)]
Even so, much must have depended on his workmen as the firm's operations extended
Mr Mackail tells us of the faith which Morris had in the artistic powers of the average Englishhtly trained He was ready to take and train the boy who results His own belief was that a good tradition once established in the workshops, by which the workence, would of itself produce good work: others believed that the successes would have been iifts of the master, one of which was that he could intuitively select the right man for each job
The material as well as the workers needed this selective power The factories of the day had accustomed the public to second-rate material and second-rate colour, and Morris was deterher standard In 1875 he was absorbed in the production of vegetable dyes, which he insisted on having pure and rich in tone Though ht supply the reds and yellohich he needed, blue was more troublesome For a tio was the right ave days of concentrated work, preparing and watching the vats, dipping the ith his own hands (which often bore the stain of work for longer than he wished), superintending theshort of the best But these two qualities of industry and of aih standard would not have carried hiifts of nature With hie; and thus he could carry his experi his colours, and ti his ith exact felicity And when he had found the right way he had the rare skill to coe to others and thus to train them for the work