William Morris by Clutton-Brock Arthur

Author:Clutton-Brock, Arthur. [Clutton-Brock, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783107643
Publisher: Parkstone International

84. Walter Crane, Hammersmith Branch Socialist League

(Membership card for Henry Halliday Sparling), 1890.

Ink on paper, 11.4 x 7.6 cm. Signed by Emery Walker

and William Morris. Private collection.

85. Columbine, 1876. Design for chintz.

Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Morris as a Socialist

Morris was first drawn into public life almost against his will and not by any sudden conviction that he ought to take part in it. Up to the year 1877, when he was forty-four, he had concerned himself with politics, and, indeed, with any kind of public action, less than most men of his class. He lacked the superior person’s contempt of political parties, but they and their behaviour and the excitement which they aroused, puzzled him as men who do not hunt or shoot are puzzled by the ardour of those who do. He had no natural liking for public meetings or political discussions; indeed, he had a natural dislike for them, and he needed to be powerfully moved by some particular event before he could be induced to take part in any kind of public action. One of the first events that so moved him was not political at all. But the action which it provoked was important, not only for its immediate results, but because it introduced him into public life and made him aware that he could do some good by means of appeals to the public.

In 1876 he was moved to indignation by the restoration of Lichfield Cathedral and of the parish church at Burford, a beautiful village near his own Kelmscott. Then, in the spring of 1877, hearing that Tewkesbury Abbey was also threatened with restoration, he wrote a letter to the Athenæum proposing that “an association should be set on foot to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all ‘restoration’ that means more than keeping out wind and weather, and, by all means, literary and others, to awaken a feeling that our ancient buildings are not mere ecclesiastical toys, but sacred monuments of the nation’s growth and hope.”

About a month after this letter was published, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings was founded. Morris himself became secretary of it, and wrote a statement of the principles which it was founded to uphold. It was for the protection, he said, of any building “that could be looked upon as artistic, picturesque, historical, antique or substantial: any work, in short, over which educated artistic people would think it worth while to argue at all.” Its principle was “to put Protection in the place of Restoration, to stave off decay by daily care, to prop a perilous wall or mend a leaking roof by such means as were obviously meant for support or covering, and showed no pretence of other art; and otherwise to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the building as it stands.”

Morris gave much time and trouble to the business of the society for the rest of his life, though after a time Thackeray Turner became secretary.

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