PAGE FROM KELMSCOTT “CHAUCER.”ILLUSTRATION BY BURNE-JONES.BORDER AND INITIAL LETTER BY MORRIS
The Golden Legend, with its ornamented borders, its handsome initials, its woodcuts, and its twelve hundred and eighty-six pages, kept the one press busy until the middle of September, 1892. Before it was completed Morris had designed another fount of type greatly more pleasing to him than the first. This was called the Troy type from Caxton’sHistoryes of Troye, the first book to be issued in its larger size, and was the outcome of careful study of the beautiful types of Peter Schoeffer of Mainz, Gunther Zainer of Augsburg, and Anthony Koburger of Nuremberg. It was Gothic in character, but Morris strove to redeem it from the charge of unreadableness by using the short form of the smalls, by diminishing the number of tied letters, and abolishing the abbreviations to be found in mediæval books. How far he succeeded is a disputed question, certainly not so far as to make it as easy reading for modern eyes as the Golden type. As time went on, however, the use of the Golden type atthe Kelmscott Press became less and less frequent, giving place in the case of most of the more important books to either the Troy type or the Chaucer type, the latter being similar to the former, save that it is Great Pica instead of Primer size.
Morris’s success in the mechanical application of his theories was surprising, or would have been surprising had he not constantly proven his genius for success. Mr. De Vinne quotes a prominent American typefounder as declaring after a close scrutiny of his cuts of type that he had triumphantly passed the pitfalls that beset all tyros and had made types that in lining, fitting, and adjustment show the skill of the expert. “A printer of the old school may dislike many of his mannerisms of composition and make-up,” adds Mr. De Vinne, “but he will cheerfully admit that his types and decorations and initials are in admirable accord: that the evenness of colour he maintains on his rough paper is remarkable, and that his registry of black with red is unexceptionable. No one can examine a book made by Morris without the conviction that it shows the hand of a master.”
TITLE-PAGE OF THE KELMSCOTT “CHAUCER”
Upon the artistic side it was natural that he should excel. His long practice in and love of design, his close study of the best models, and his exacting taste were promising of extraordinary results. None the less there is perhaps more room for criticism of his book decoration than of his plain bookmaking. He was convinced, as one would expect him to be,that modern methods of illustrating and decorating a book were entirely wrong, and he argued with indisputable logic for the unity of impression to be gained from ornaments and pictures forming part of the page, in other words, being made in line as readily printed as the type itself and corresponding to it in size and degree of blackness. He argued that the ornament to be ornament must submit to certain limitations and become “architectural,” and also that it should be used with exuberance or restraint according to the matter of the book decorated. Thus “a work on differential calculus,” he says, “a medical work, a dictionary, a collection of a statesman’s speeches, or a treatise on manures, such books, though they might be handsomely and well printed, would scarcely receive ornament with the same exuberance as a volume of lyrical poems, or a standard classic, or such like. A work on Art, I think, bears less of ornament than any other kind of book (non bis in idemis a good motto); again, a book thatmusthaveillustrations, more or less utilitarian, should, I think, have no actualornamentat all, because the ornament and the illustration must almost certainly fight.” He designed all his ornaments with his own hand, from the minute leaves and flowers which took the place of periods on his page, to the full-page borders, titles, and elaborate initials. He drew with a brush, on a sheet of paper from the Press marked with ruled lines, showing the exact position to be occupiedby the design. “It was most usual during the last few years of his life,” says Mr. Vallance, “to find him thus engaged, with his Indian ink and Chinese white in little saucers before him upon the table, its boards bare of any cloth covering, but littered with books and papers and sheets of MS. He did not place any value on the original drawings, regarding them as just temporary instruments, only fit, as soon as engraved, to be thrown away.” Time and trouble counted for nothing with him in gaining the desired result. But though his ornament was always handsome, and occasionally exquisite, he not infrequently overloaded his page with it, and—preaching vigorously the necessity of restraint—allowed his fancy to lead him into garrulous profusion. Despite his mediæval proclivities, his designs for the borders of his pages are intensely modern. Compare them with the early books by which they were inspired, and their flowing elaboration, so free from unexpectedness, so impersonal, so inexpressive, suggests the fatal defect of all imitative work and fails in distinction. But he was individual enough in temper if not in execution, and he brooked no conventional restriction that interfered with his doing what pleased him. For example, the notion of making the border ornaments agree in spirit with the subject matter of the page was not to be entertained for a moment when he had in mind a fine design of grapes hanging ripe from their vines and a page of Chaucer’s description of April to adorn.
During the life of the Kelmscott Press, a period of some half dozen years, Morris made six hundred and forty-four designs. The illustrations proper, all of them woodcuts harmonising in their strong black line with the ornaments and type, were made, with few exceptions, by Burne-Jones. His designs were nearly always drawn in pencil, a medium in which his most characteristic effects were obtained. They were then redrawn in ink by another hand, revised by Burne-Jones, and finally transferred to the block again by that useful Cinderella of the Kelmscott Press, photography. It is obvious that the Kelmscott books, whatever fault may be found with them, could not be other than remarkable creations with Morris and Burne-Jones uniting their gifts to make each of them such a picture-book as Morris declared at the height of his ardour was “one of the very worthiest things toward the production of which reasonable men should strive.”
The list of works selected to be issued from the Press is interesting, indicating as it does a line of taste somewhat narrow and tangential to the popular taste of the time. Before the three volumes ofThe Golden Legend(“the Interminable” it was called) were out of his hands, Morris had bought a second large press and had engaged more workmen with an idea in mind of printing all his own works beginning withSigurd the Volsung. He had already, during 1891, printed in addition toThe Glittering Plain, a volume of his collected verse entitledPoems by the Way, thefinal long poem of which,Goldilocks and Goldilocks, he wrote on the spur of the moment, after the book was set up in type, to “plump it out a bit” as it seemed rather scant. During the following year, before the appearance ofThe Golden Legend, were issued a volume of poems by Wilfrid Blunt, who was one of his personal friends; the chapter from Ruskin’sStones of Veniceon “The Nature of the Gothic,” with which he had such early and such close associations, and two more of his own works,The Defence of GuenevereandThe Dream of John Ball. In the case of the four books written by himself he issued in addition to the paper copies a few on vellum. All these early books were small quartos and bound in vellum covers. Immediately followingThe Golden Legendcame theHistoryes of Troye, two volumes in the new type, Mackail’sBiblia Innocentium, and Caxton’sReynarde the Foxein large quarto size and printed in the Troy type. The year 1893 began with a comparatively modern book, Shakespeare’sPoems, followed in rapid succession by Caxton’s translation ofThe Order of Chivalry, in one volume withThe Ordination of Knighthood, translated by Morris himself from a twelfth-century French poem; Cavendish’sLife of Cardinal Wolsey; Caxton’s history of Godefrey of Boloyne; Ralph Robinson’s translation of Sir Thomas More’sUtopia; Tennyson’sMaud; a lecture by Morris onGothic Architecture, forty-five copies of which he printed on vellum; and Lady Wilde’s translation ofSidonia the Sorceressfrom the Germanof William Meinhold, a book for which both Morris and Rossetti had a positive passion, Morris considering it without a rival of its kind, and an almost faultless reproduction of the life of the past. The year ended with two volumes of Rossetti’sBallads and Narrative Poems, andThe Tale of King Florus and Fair Jehane, translated by Morris from the French of a little volume that forty years before had served to introduce him to mediæval French romance and had been treasured by him ever since.
THE SMALLER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK
THE LARGER KELMSCOTT PRESS-MARK
DRAWING BY MORRIS OF THE LETTER “h” FOR KELMSCOTT TYPE,WITH NOTES AND CORRECTIONS
“After this continuous torrent of production,” says Mr. Mackail, “the Press for a time slackened off a little,” but the output in 1894 consisted of ten books as against the eleven of the previous year. The first was a large quarto edition ofThe Glittering Plain, printed this time in the Troy type and illustrated with twenty-three pictures by Walter Crane. Next came another little volume of mediæval romance, the story ofAmis and Amile, translated in a day and a quarter; and after this, Keats’sPoems.
In July of the same year the bust of Keats, executed by the American sculptor, Miss Anne Whitney, was unveiled in the Parish Church of Hampstead, the first memorial to Keats on English ground. The scheme for such a memorial had been promoted in America, Lowell being one of the earliest to encourage it, and a little notice of the ceremony was printed at the Kelmscott Press with the card of invitation. Swinburne’sAtalanta in CalydonfollowedKeatsin a large quarto edition. Next came the third volumeof the French romances containingThe Tale of the Emperor ConstansandThe History of Oversea. At this point Morris returned again to the printing of his own works, and the next book to be issued from the Press wasThe Wood beyond the World, with a lovely frontispiece by Burne-Jones representing “the Maid,” the heroine of the romance, and one of the most charming of the visionary women created by Morris.The Book of Wisdom and Lies, a Georgian story-book of the eighteenth century, written by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, and translated by Oliver Wardrop, was the next stranger to come from the Press, and after it was issued the first of a set of Shelley’sPoems. A rhymed version ofThe Penitential Psalmsfound in a manuscript ofThe Hours of Our Lady, written in the fifteenth century, followed it, andThe Epistola de Contemptu Mundi, a letter in Italian by Savonarola, the autograph original of which belonged to Mr. Fairfax Murray, completed the list of this prolific year. The year 1895 produced only five volumes, the first of them theTale of Beowulf, which Morris with characteristic daring had translated into verse by the aid of a prose translation made for him by Mr. A. J. Wyatt. Not himself an Anglo-Saxon scholar, Morris was unable to give such a rendering of this chief epic of the Germanic races as would appeal to the scholarly mind, and his zeal for literal translation led him to employ a phraseology nothing short of outlandish. At the end of the book he printed a list of “words not commonly used now,” but hisconstructions were even more obstructive than his uncommon words. In the following passage, for example, which opens the section describing the coming of Beowulf to the land of the Danes, only the word “nithing” is defined in the index, yet certainly the average reader may be expected to pause for the meaning:
So care that was time-long the kinsman of HealfdeneStill seethed without ceasing, nor might the wise warriorWend otherwhere woe, for o’er strong was the strifeAll loathly so longsome late laid on the people,Need-wrack and grim nithing, of night-bales the greatest.
Morris himself found his interest wane before the work was completed, but he made a handsome quarto volume of it, with fine marginal decorations, and an exceptionally well-designed title-page. A reprint ofSyr Percyvelle of Galesafter the edition printed by J. O. Halliwell from the MS. in the library of Lincoln Cathedral, a large quarto edition ofThe Life and Death of Jason; two 16mo volumes of a new romance entitled,Child Christopher and Goldilands the Fair; and Rossetti’sHand and Soul, reprinted from theGerm, brought the Press to its great year 1896. This year was to see the completion of the folioChaucer, which since early in 1892 had been in preparation, and had filled the heart of Morris with anxiety, anticipation, and joy. Before it came from the press three other books were issued. Herrick’sPoemscame first. Then a selection of thirteen poems from Coleridge, “a muddle-brained metaphysician, who by some strange freak of fortune turned out a few real poemsamongst the dreary flood of inanity which was his wont!”
The poems chosen were,Christabel,Kubla Khan,The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,Love,A Fragment of a Sexton’s Tale,The Ballad of the Dark Ladie,Names,Youth and Age,The Improvisatore,Work without Hope,The Garden of Boccaccio,The Knight’s Tomb, andAlice du Clos. The first four were the only ones, however, concerning which Morris would own to feeling any interest. The Coleridge volume was followed by the large quarto edition of Morris’s latest romance,The Well at the World’s Endin two volumes, and then appeared theChaucer, the mere printing of which had occupied a year and nine months. The first two copies were brought home from the binders on the second of June, in a season of “lots of sun” and plentiful apple-blossoms, during which Morris was beginning to realise that the end of his delight in seasons and in books was fast approaching.
Mr. Ellis has declared the KelmscottChaucerto be, “for typography, ornament, and illustration combined, the grandest book that has been issued from the press since the invention of typography.” Morris lavished upon it the utmost wealth of his invention. The drawing of the title-page alone occupied a fortnight, and the splendid initial letters were each an elaborate work of art. The ornament indeed was too profuse to be wholly satisfactory, especially as much of it was repeated; nevertheless, the book was one ofgreat magnificence and the glee with which Morris beheld it is not to be wondered at. The Chaucer type had been specially designed for it, and Burne-Jones had made for it eighty-seven drawings, while Morris himself designed for it the white pigskin binding with silver clasps, executed at the Doves Bindery for those purchasers who desired their elaborate and costly volume in a more suitable garb than the ordinary half holland covers which gave it the appearance of a silken garment under a calico apron.
During the remainder of the year 1896 the Press issued the first volumes of the Kelmscott edition ofThe Earthly Paradise, a volume of Latin poems (Laudes Beatae Mariae Virginis), the first Kelmscott book to be printed in three colours, the quotation heading each stanza being in red, the initial letter in pale blue, and the remaining text in black:The Floure and the LeafeandThe Shepherde’s Calender. BeforeThe Shepherde’s Calenderreached its completion, however, Morris was dead, and the subsequent work of the Press was merely the clearing up of a few books already advertised. The first of these to appear was the prose romance by Morris entitledThe Water of the Wondrous Isles: this was issued on the first day of April, 1897, with borders and ornaments designed entirely by Morris save for a couple of initial words completed from his unfinished designs by R. Catterson-Smith. To this year belong also the two trial pages made for the intended folio edition ofFroissart, the heraldic bordersof which far surpass any of theChaucerornaments, and the two old English romances,Sire DegravauntandSyr Ysambrace. In 1898 came a large quarto volume of German woodcuts, and three more works by Morris, a small folio edition ofSigurd the Volsung, which was to have been a large folio with twenty-five woodcuts by Burne-Jones;The Sundering Flood, the last romance written by Morris, and a large quarto edition ofLove is Enough. These were followed by a “Note” written by Morris himself on his aims in starting the Kelmscott Press, accompanied with facts concerning the Press, and an annotated list of all the books there printed, compiled by Mr. S. C. Cockerell, who, since July, 1894, had been secretary to the Press. This was the end.[2]
Specimen Page from the Kelmscott “Froissart”(Projected Edition)
Although Morris not only neglected commercial considerations in printing his books, lavishing their price many times over in valuable time and labour and the actual expenditure of money to secure some inconspicuous detail; but defied commercial methods openly in the character of his type, the quality of his materials, and the slowness of his processes, the Kelmscott Press testified, as most of his enterprises did testify, to the practical worth of his ideals. Quite content to make just enough by his books to continue printing them in the most conscientious and desirable way he knew, he gradually obtained from them a considerable profit. The Press had early beenmoved to quarters larger than the first occupied by it, and three presses were kept busy. By the end of 1892 Morris had become his own publisher, and after that time all the Kelmscott books were published by him except in cases of special arrangement. A few copies, usually less than a dozen, of nearly all the books were printed on vellum and sold at a proportionately higher price than the paper copies. The volumes were bound either in vellum or half holland, these temporary and unsatisfactory covers probably having been chosen on account of the strength and slow-drying qualities of the ink used, a note to the prospectus of theChaucerstating that the book would not be fit for ordinary full binding with the usual pressure for at least a year after its issue. The issue prices charged for the books were not low, but certainly not exorbitant when time, labour, and expense of producing them are taken into consideration. They were prizes for the collector from the beginning, the impossibility of duplicating them and the small editions sent out giving them a charm and a value not easily to be resisted, and Morris himself and his trustees adopted measures tending to protect the collector’s interests. After the death of Morris all the woodblocks for initials, ornaments, and illustrations were sent to the British Museum and were accepted, with the condition that they should not be reproduced or printed from for the space of one hundred years. The electrotypes were destroyed. The matter was talked over with Morris during hislifetime and he sanctioned this course on the part of the trustees, its aim being to keep the series of the Kelmscott Press “a thing apart and to prevent the designs becoming stale by repetition.” While there is a fair ground for the criticism frequently made that a man urging the necessity of art for the people showed inconsistency by withdrawing from their reach art which he could control and deemed valuable, it must be remembered that in his mind the great result to be obtained was the stirring up the people to making art for themselves. Morris rightly counted the joy to be gained from making a beautiful thing as far higher than the joy to be gained from seeing one. He was never in favour of making a work of art “common” by reproducing or servilely imitating it. He had shown the printers of books his idea of the way they should manage their craft, now let them develop it themselves along the lines pointed out for them. And whether he was or was not consistent in allowing the works of the Kelmscott Press to be cut off from any possibility of a large circulation, his was the temperament to feel all the delight to be won from exclusive ownership. He had the true collector’s passion for possession. If he was bargaining for a book, says his biographer, he would carry on the negotiation with the book tucked tightly under his arm, as if it might run away. His collection of old painted books gave him the keenest emotions before and after his acquisition of them. Of one, which finally proved unattainable, he wrote,“Sucha book!myeyes! and I am beating my brains to see if I can find any thread of an intrigue to begin upon, so as to creep and crawl toward the possession of it.” It is no matter for wonder if in imagination he beheld the love of bibliophiles for his own works upon which he had so ardently spent his energies, and was gratified by the prevision.
Whether the Kelmscott books will increase or decrease in money value as time goes on is a question that stirs interest in book-buying circles. They have already had their rise and ebb to a certain extent, and the prices brought by the copies owned by Mr. Ellis at the sale of his library after his death indicate that a steady level of interest has been reached among collectors for the time being at least; only five of the copies printed on paper exceeding prices previously paid for them. The presentation copy on vellum of the greatChaucerbrought five hundred and ten pounds, certainly a remarkable sum for a modern book, under any conditions, and nearly a hundred pounds more than the highest price which Morris himself up to the summer of 1894 had ever paid for even a fourteenth-century book. The paper copy of theChaucersold at the Ellis sale for one hundred and twelve pounds and a paper copy in ordinary binding sold in America in 1902 for $650, while a paper copy in the special pigskin binding brought $950 the same year. The issue price for the four hundred and twenty-five paper copies was twenty pounds apiece, and forthe eight copies on vellum offered for sale out of the thirteen printed, a hundred and twenty guineas apiece. The posthumous edition ofSigurd the Volsung, the paper copies of which were issued at six guineas apiece, brought at the Ellis sale twenty-six pounds.News from Nowhere, issued at two guineas, has never yet brought a higher price than the five pounds, fifteen shillings paid for it in 1899, while Keats’sPoemsissued at one pound, ten shillings, rose as high as twenty-seven pounds, ten shillings, also in 1899. As a general measure of the advance in the Kelmscott books since the death of Morris, it may be noted that the series owned by Mr. Ellis, excluding duplicates, and including a presentation copy ofJasonand two fine bindings for the paper and the vellumChaucer, represented a gross issue price of six hundred and twelve pounds, ten shillings, and realised two thousand, three hundred and sixty-seven pounds, two shillings. For one decade of the life of a modern series that is a great record, and it would be a rash prophet who should venture to predict future values.
LATER WRITINGS.
Thewritings of Morris’s later years consist, as we have seen, chiefly of prose romances. The little group beginning withThe House of the Wolfingsand ending withThe Sundering Floodwere written with no polemical or proselytising intention, with merely his old delight in storytelling and in depicting the beauty of the external world and the kindness of men and maids. Curiosity had never played any great part in his mental equipment; he cared little to know or speculate further than the visible and tangible surface of life. “The skin of the world” was sufficient for him, and in these later romances all that is beautiful and winning has chiefly to do with the skin of the world presented in its spring-time freshness. The background of nature is always exquisite. With the landscape of the North, which had made its indelible impression upon him, he mingled the scenes—“the dear scenes” he would have called them—of his childhood and the fairer portions of theThames shore as he had long and intimately known them; and in his books, as in his familiar letters, he constantly speaks of the weather and the seasons as matters of keen importance in the sum of daily happiness. Thus, whatever we miss from his romances, we gain, what is missing from the majority of modern books, familiarity with the true aspect of the outdoor world. We have the constant sense of ample sky and pleasant air, and green woods and cool waters. The mountains are near us, and often the ocean, and the freedom of a genuine wildwood that is no enchanted forest or ideal vision. Inexpressibly charming are such pictures as those of Elfhild (inThe Sundering Flood) piping to her sheep and dancing on the bank of the river, on the bright mid-April day, whose sun dazzles her eyes with its brilliant shining; and of Birdalone (inThe Water of the Wondrous Isles) embroidering her gown and smock in the wood of Evilshaw. What could be more expressive of lovely open-air peace than this description? “Who was glad now but Birdalone; she grew red with new pleasure, and knelt down and kissed the witch’s hand, and then went her way to the wood with her precious lading, and wrought there under her oak-tree day after day, and all days, either there, or in the house when the weather was foul. That was in the middle of March, when all birds were singing, and the young leaves showing on the hawthorns, so that there were pale green clouds, as it were, betwixt the great greyboles of oak and sweet-chestnut; and by the lake the meadow-saffron new-thrust-up was opening its blossom; and March wore and April, and still she was at work happily when now it was later May, and the harebells were in full bloom down the bent before her ... and still she wrought on at her gown and her smock, and it was well-nigh done. She had broidered the said gown with roses and lilies, and a tall tree springing up from amidmost the hem of the skirt, and a hart on either side thereof, face to face of each other. And the smock she had sewn daintily at the hems and the bosom with fair knots and buds. It was now past the middle of June hot and bright weather.”
And only less delightful than these glimpses of the natural world are the recurring portraits of half-grown boys and girls, all different and all lovable. The sweetness of adolescent beauty had for Morris an irresistible appeal, and while his characters have little of the psychological charm inseparable in real life from dawning qualities and undeveloped potentialities, they are as lovely as the morning in the brightness of hair, the slimness of form, the freedom of gesture with which he endows them. The shapely brown hands and feet of Ursula, her ruddy colour, her slender sturdiness, and brave young laugh are attractions as potent as the more delicate charm of Birdalone’s serious eyes and thin face, or Elfhild’s flower-like head and tender playfulness; and all these heroines are alike in a fine capabilityfor useful toil and pride in it. When the old carle says to Birdalone, “It will be no such hard life for thee, for I have still some work in me, and thou mayst do something in spite of thy slender and delicate fashion,” she replies with merry laughter, “Forsooth, good sire, I might do somewhat more than something; for I am deft in all such work as here ye need; so fear not but I should earn my livelihood, and that with joy.” Ursula also knows all the craft of needlework, and all the manners of the fields, and finds nothing in work to weary her; and even in the Maid ofThe Wood beyond the World, with her magic power to revive flowers by the touch of her fingers, is felt the preferable human power to make comfort and pleasantness by the right performance of plain tasks.
Nearly if not quite equal to Morris’s expression of love for the beauty of nature and of fair humanity is his expression of the love for beautiful handicraft, to which his whole life and all his writings alike testify. Whatever is omitted from his stories of love and adventure, he never omits to familiarise his readers with the ornament lavished upon buildings and garments and countless accessories; hardly a dozen pages of any one of the romances may be turned before the description of some piece of artistic workmanship is met. Osberne’s knife inThe Sundering Floodis early introduced to the reader as “a goodly weapon, carven with quaintnesses about the heft, the blade inlaid with runes done in goldand the sheath of silver,” and the gifts he sends to Elfhild across the flood are “an ouch or chain or arm-ring” fashioned “quaintly and finely,” or “fair windowed shoon, and broidered hosen and dainty smocks, and silken kerchiefs”; much is made of his holiday raiment of scarlet and gold, of his flowered green coat, and of the fine gear of gold and green for which Elfhild changes her grey cloak. InThe Story of the Glittering Plain, filled as it is with the sterner spirit of the sagas, there is still room for much detail concerning the carven panelling of the shut-bed, in which was pictured “fair groves and gardens, with flowery grass and fruited trees all about,” and “fair women abiding therein, and lovely young men and warriors, and strange beasts and many marvels, and the ending of wrath and beginning of pleasure, and the crowning of love,” and for the account of the painted book, “covered outside with gold and gems” and painted within with woods and castles, “and burning mountains, and the wall of the world, and kings upon their thrones, and fair women and warriors, all most lovely to behold.” As for the fair Birdalone, her pleasure in fine stuffs and rich embroideries is unsurpassed in the annals of womankind. The wood-wife with canny knowledge of her tastes brings her the fairy web, declaring that if she dare wear it she shall presently be clad as goodly as she can wish. Birdalone can be trusted to don any attire that meets her fancy (and to doff it as willingly,for she has a startling habit not uncommon with Morris’s heroines of stripping off her garments to let the winds of heaven play upon her unimpeded). The wood-wife places the raiment she has brought on Birdalone’s outstretched arms, “and it was as if the sunbeam had thrust through the close leafage of the oak, and made its shadow nought a space about Birdalone, so gleamed and glowed in shifty brightness the broidery of the gown; and Birdalone let it fall to earth, and passed over her hands and arms the fine smock sewed in yellow and white silk, so that the web thereof seemed of mingled cream and curd; and she looked on the shoon that lay beside the gown, that were done so nicely and finely that the work was as the feather-robe of a beauteous bird, whereof one scarce can say whether it be bright or grey, thousand-hued or all simple of colour. Birdalone quivered for joy of all the fair things, and crowed in her speech as she knelt before Habundia to thank her.” Thus Morris carried into his “pleasure-work of books” the “bread-and-butter work” of which he was hardly less fond.
But in the deeper realities of life with which even romantic fiction may deal, and must deal if it is to lay hold of the modern imagination, these romances are poor. Not one of his characters is developed by circumstance into a fully equipped human being thoroughly alive to the intellectual and moral as to the physical and emotional world. His men and women are eternally young and,with the physical freshness of youth, have also the crude, unrounded, unfinished, unmoulded character of youth. They have all drunk of the Well at the World’s End, and the scars of experience have disappeared, leaving a blank surface. The range of their emotions and passions is as simple and narrow as with children, and life as the great story-tellers understand it is not shown by the chronicle of their days. In many of the romances, it is true, the introduction of legendary and unreal persons and incidents relieves the writer from all obligation to make his account more lifelike than a fairy-tale; but Morris is never content to make a fairy-tale pure and simple. Marvellous adventures told directly as to a child are not within his method. One of his critics has describedThe Water of the Wondrous Islesas a three-volume novel in the environment of a fairy-tale, and the phrase perfectly characterises it. A sentimental atmosphere surrounds his figures, and suggests languor and soft moods not to be tolerated by the writer of true fairy-tales, for while love is certainly not alien to even the purest type of the latter, with its witch and its princess and its cruel step-mother and rescuing prince, it is not love as Morris depicts it any more than it is love as Dante or Shakespeare depicts it. In Morris’s stories the lovers are neither frankly symbolic creatures of the imagination whose loves are secondary to their heroic or miraculous achievements, and who apparently exist only to givea reason for the machinery of witchcraft, nor are they, like the lovers of the great novels, endowed with thoughtful minds and spiritual qualities. They are too sophisticated not to be more complex. The modern taste is unsympathetic to their endless kissing and “fawning” and “clipping,” nor would ancient taste have welcomed their refinements of kindness toward each other or the lack of zest in their adventures. Morris seems to have tried somewhat, as in the case of his handicrafts, to start with the traditions of the Middle Ages and to infuse into them a modern spirit that should make them legitimate successors and not mere imitations of the well-beloved mediæval types. That he did not entirely succeed was the fault not so much of his method as of his deficient insight into human nature. He could not create what he had never closely investigated.
When we read his prose romances, their framework gives many a clue to their ancestry, but it is an ancestry so remote from the interest of the general reader as to puzzle more than charm in its influence upon the modern product. InThe House of the Wolfings,The Roots of the Mountains, and especiallyThe Glittering Plain, we have more or less modernised sagas, obviously derived from the Icelandic literature of which he had been drinking deep. The hero ofThe Glittering Plainis as valorous a youth and as given to brave adventures as the great Sigurd, the environment is Norse, andso are the names of the characters—Sea-eagle, Long-hoary, Grey Goose of the Ravagers, and Puny Fox. Other words and phrases also drawn from the “word-hoard” of the Icelandic tongue are sprinkled over the pages. We find “nithing-stake” and byrny, and bight, spoke-shave and ness and watchet, sley and ashlar and ghyll, used as expressions of familiar parlance. The characters give each other “the sele of the day,” retire to shut-beds at night, and look “sorry and sad and fell” when fortune goes against them. They wander in garths and call each other faring-fellow and they yea-say and nay-say and wot and wend. It is not altogether surprising to find some of Morris’s most loyal followers admitting that they can make nothing of books written in this archaic prose.
In the subsequent romances the comparative sturdiness imparted by the writings of the North gives place to a mildness and grace suggestive of those early French romances the charm of which Morris had always keenly felt. We still have much the same vocabulary and more or less use of the same magic arts, “skin-changing” holding its own as a favourite method of overcoming otherwise insuperable difficulties; but we have more of the love motive and a clearer endeavour to portray the relations of the characters to each other. In all, however, the French and Scandinavian influences are so mingled with each other and with the element provided by Morris alone, and so fused byhis fluent prolix style, as to produce a result somewhat different from anything else in literature, with a character and interest personal to itself, and difficult to imitate in essence, although wofully lending itself to parody. The subject never seems important. There is no sense that the writer was spurred to expression by the pressure of an irresistible message or sentiment. We feel that anything may have started this copious flow of words, and that there is no logical end to them. The title ofThe Well at the World’s Endwas taken from an old Scottish ballad called by that name which Morris had never read, but the title of which struck his fancy, and the book reads as though it had grown without plan from the fanciful, meaningless title.
Of these later romances,The Glittering Plainis the most saga-like, andThe Water of the Wondrous Islesis most permeated by the romantic spirit of the Arthurian legends and their kin. Despite all defects, the latter has a bright bejewelled aspect that pleases the fancy although it does not deeply enlist the imagination. The story is leisurely and wandering. The heroine, Birdalone, some of whose characteristics have already been mentioned, is stolen in her infancy from her home near a town called Utterhay, by a witch-wife who brings her up on the edge of a wood called Evilshaw and teaches her to milk and plough and sow and reap and bake and shoot deer in the forest. When she is seventeen years of age she meets in the forest Habundia, afairy woman, who gives her a magic ring by which she may make herself invisible and a lock of hair by burning a bit of which she may summon her in time of need. Birdalone soon after escapes from the witch-wife in a magic boat, and passes through fabulous scenes to enchanted islands, where she finds friends and enemies. Three maidens, Atra, Viridis, and Aurea, save her from the latter, and send her forth to find for them their lovers. While on her quest she travels to various isles,—the Isle of the Young and the Old, the Isle of the Queens, the Isle of the Kings, and the Isle of Nothing,—which afford opportunity for strange pictures and quaint conceits but have nothing to do with the narrative. When Birdalone finds the lovers of her friends, the Golden Knight, the Green Knight, and Arthur the Black Squire, called the Three Champions, they are charmed by her beauty and friendliness, and she immediately falls in love with the Black Squire, betrothed of Atra.[3]The Black Squire returns her prompt affection, but has grace to show himself moody and downcast at the thought of breaking faith with his lady. Presently the Three Champions go their ways to find the three maidens who were kind to Birdalone and who are kept on the Isle of Increase Unsought by a witch, sister to Birdalone’s early guardian, and Birdalone, weary of waiting for their return, fares forth to meet adventures and loversin plenty. To all the brave knights and youths who take their turn at wooing her she is pitiful and gentle after her fashion, and thanks them kindly, and praises them and suffers them to kiss her for their comfort, and deems them “fair and lovely and sweet,” but keeps her preference for the Black Squire. Now, when the Three Champions come back with their ladies and find Birdalone fled there is much distress among them, and the knights set forth to find her. Meeting with her, they are set upon by the bad Red Knight, into whose custody she has recently been thrown, and Baudoin, the Golden Knight, is killed. Returning with this bad news to the three ladies, the two remaining knights, who have rescued Birdalone and killed the Red Knight, decide to ride back into the latter’s domain and make war upon his followers. In the meantime Atra has learned that the Black Squire has transferred his affections from her to Birdalone, and does not attempt to dissemble her grief thereat, none of Morris’s characters being gifted in the art of dissimulation, particularly where love is concerned. Birdalone, departing from the course which Morris elsewhere is most inclined to sanction, decides to renounce in Atra’s favour, and betakes herself to the town of Greenford, where she is received into the broiderers’ guild and works with a woman who turns out to be her own mother, from whom she was stolen by the witch. With her she lives for five years, when sickness slays Audrey, the mother,and Birdalone can no longer resist the temptation to seek her love, the Black Squire, again. So she makes her way once more through marvellous adventures into the old forest of Evilshaw, where she comes again upon her fairy friend Habundia, by whose aid she finds the Black Squire. The latter has met with misfortunes and is lost in the forest, where he falls ill. Birdalone nurses him back to health, and they decide that whether Atra be dead or alive they will have no more parting from one another. They are soon to be put to the test, as in the wood they come upon Atra and their other friends, who have set out to seek them, being anxious for their welfare, and who have been overcome by caitiffs and bound and held prisoners. Arthur and Birdalone rescue them, and all these friends make up their minds to go together and dwell in Utterhay for the rest of their lives. Aurea finds another lover in place of the Golden Knight she has lost, but Atra is faithful in heart to the Black Squire, though able to bear with philosophy his union with Birdalone. Thus they live happily ever after. Upon this skeleton of mingled reality and dream Morris built his general idea of happy love. The tale might easily be twisted into an allegory, since all the creatures of his imagination stand for either the satisfactions or dissatisfactions of the visible world, but nothing is more certain than that he meant no such interpretations to be put upon it. When one of his critics assumed an allegorical intentionin the story calledThe Wood Beyond the World, he was moved to public refutation, writing to theSpectator: “It is meant to be a tale pure and simple, with nothing didactic about it. If I have to write or speak on social problems, I always try to be as direct as I possibly can.” The truth of this is best known by those who most faithfully have followed his writings, and it is entirely vain to try to squeeze from his “tales” any ethical virtue beyond their frank expression of his singularly simple temperament. Nevertheless, like the rest of his work, they reveal in some degree his way of regarding the moral world. As we have seen, Birdalone has her impulse toward renunciation, and for a brief interval one feels that the story possibly may be allowed to run along the conventional lines laid down by the civilised human race for the greatest good of the greatest number. This, however, would have been wholly alien to the writer’s temper, and there is no shock to those familiar with this temper in finding that in the end the hero and heroine eat their cake and have it. Renunciation on the side of the unbeloved is effected with grace and nobility, but it is made clear that it is a question of accepting the inevitable in as lofty a spirit as possible. It is perhaps the most obvious moral characteristic of Morris’s types in general, that they are no more prone than children to do what they dislike unless circumstance forces them to it. If we were to argue from his romances alone we could almost imaginehim contending that what one dislikes in conduct is wrong, just as he did contend that what one dislikes in art is bad. But if his men and women do not willingly renounce, at least they do not exult. The sight of unhappiness pains them. For stern self-denial he substitutes the softer virtues of amiability and sweetness of temper. A high level of kindliness and tenderness takes the place of more compelling and formidable emotions. “Kind,” indeed, is one of the adjectives of which one soonest wearies when confined to his vocabulary, and “dear,” is another. We read of “dear feet and legs,” of dear and kind kisses, of kind wheedling looks, of kind and dear maidens, and dear and kind lads, and everyone is kind and dear who is not evil and cruel. What Morris’s romances preach, if they preach anything, is: that we should get from life all the enjoyment possible, hurting others as little as may be consistent with our own happiness, but claiming the satisfaction of all honest desires; that, in thus satisfying ourselves, we should keep toward those about us a kind and pleasant countenance and a consideration for their pain even when our duty toward ourselves forces us to inflict it. It is a narrow and exclusive teaching, and ill adapted to foster freedom of mind and spirit. It is a teaching that provides no breastplate for the buffets of fortune, and sets before one no ideal of intellectual or spiritual life the attainment of which would bring pleasure austere and exquisite. There is no stimulus andno sting in the love depicted. Even its ardour is checked and wasted by its dallying with the external charms that seem to veil rather than to reveal the spirit within the flesh. It is the essence of immaturity. But while we gain from the observation of Morris’s childlike characters, playing in a world that knows no conventions and consequently no shame, a foreboding of the weariness that would attend such a life as he plans for them, we are conscious also that he is trying characteristically, to go back to the beginning, and to start humanity aright and afresh; to show us fine and healthy sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, “living,” to use his own words, “in the enjoyment of animal life at least, happy therefore, and beautiful according to the beauty of their race.” He sets them among the surroundings he loves, gives them the education he values, and leaves them with us—the blithe children of a new world, whose maturity he is content not to forecast. With such health of body, he seems to say, and such innocence of heart, what noble commonwealth may not arise, what glory may not enter into civilisation?