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[Illustration: _William Morris_]
WILLIAM MORRIS
POET
CRAFTSMAN
SOCIALIST
BY
ELISABETH
LVTHER
CARY
ILLVSTRATED
G. P. PVTNAM'S SONS
THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS
NEW YORK & LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1902
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Published, October, 1902
Reprinted, June, 1903; December, 1905
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PREFACE.
The personal life of William Morris is already known to us through Mr.
Mackail's admirable biography as fully, probably, as we shall ever know
it. My own endeavour has been to present a picture of Morris's busy career
perhaps not less vivid for the absence of much detail, and showing only
the man and his work as they appeared to the outer public.
I have used as a basis for my narrative, the volumes by Mr. Mackail;
_William Morris, his Art, his Writings, and his Public Life_, by Aymer
Vallance; _The Books of William Morris_, by H. Buxton Forman; numerous
articles in periodicals, and Morris's own varied works.
I wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. Bulkley of 42 East 14th Street,
New York City, for permission to reproduce a number of Morris patterns in
his possession, notably a fragment of the St. James's wall-paper.
Much material for the letter-press and for the illustrations I have
obtained through the Boston Public Library. The _Froissart_ pages were
found there and most of the Kelmscott publications from which I have
quoted.
The bibliography is that prepared by Mr. S. C. Cockerell for the last
volume of Mr. Morris issued by the Kelmscott Press, under the title of _A
Note by William Morris on His Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press_. To
the Cockerell bibliography have been added a few notes of my own.
E. L. C.
BROOKLYN, Sept. 10, 1902.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--BOYHOOD 1
II.--OXFORD LIFE 21
III.--FROM ROSSETTI TO THE RED HOUSE 46
IV.--MORRIS AND COMPANY 69
V.--FROM THE RED HOUSE TO KELMSCOTT 96
VI.--POETRY 114
VII.--PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM 146
VIII.--PUBLIC LIFE AND SOCIALISM (_Continued_) 174
IX.--LITERATURE OF THE SOCIALIST PERIOD 194
X.--THE KELMSCOTT PRESS 219
XI.--LATER WRITINGS 239
XII.--THE END 255
BIBLIOGRAPHY 269
INDEX 291
ILLUSTRATIONS.
_Page_
_William Morris_ _Frontispiece_
_From Life._
_Title-page of "The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine"_ _32_
_Portrait of Rossetti_ _36_
_By Watts._
_Illustration by Rossetti to "The Lady of Shalott" in the
Moxon "Tennyson." The Head of Launcelot is a Portrait of
Morris_ _42_
_Portrait of Jane Burden (Mrs. Morris)_ _58_
_By Rossetti_
_Wall-Paper and Cotton-Print Designs_ _60_
_"Acanthus" Wall-Paper_
_"Pimpernel" Wall-Paper_
_"African Marigold" Cotton-Print_
_"These designs must not be taken as exact as to colour
afterwards used, Mr. Morris using the colours to his
hand and afterwards superintending the actual colouring
in the course of manufacture, in most cases many
experimental trials being made before the desired
colouring was actually decided upon."_
_Reproduced from examples obtained by courtesy of Mr.
A. E. Bulkley._
_The Morris designs in this book were reproduced by permission
of Messrs. Morris & Company._
_"The Strawberry Thief" Design for Cotton-Print_ _66_
_Tulip Design for Axminster Carpet_ _70_
_Peacock Design for Coarse Wool Hangings_ _72_
_Painted Wall Decoration Designed by Morris_ _76_
_Painted Wall Decoration Designed by Morris_ _80_
_Design for St. James's Palace Wall-Paper_ _82_
_Reproduced from sample obtained through courtesy of Mr.
Bulkley._
_Early Design for Morris Wall-Paper "Daisy and Columbine"_ _84_
_Chrysanthemum Design for Wall-Paper_ _84_
_Anemone Pattern for Silk and Wool Curtain Material_ _88_
_Portion of Hammersmith Carpet_ _90_
_Secretary Designed by the Morris Co._ _94_
_In possession of Mr. Bulkley._
_Sofa Designed by the Morris Co._ _94_
_In possession of Mr. Bulkley._
_Illustration by Burne-Jones for Projected Edition of "The
Earthly Paradise," Cut on Wood by Morris Himself_ _98_
_Kelmscott Manor House. Two views_ _100_
_Design by Rossetti for Window Executed by Morris & Co.
("The Parable of the Vineyard")_ _110_
_Design by Rossetti for Stained-Glass Window Executed by
the Morris Co. ("The Parable of the Vineyard")_ _110_
_Morris's Bed, with Hangings Designed by Himself and
Embroidered by his Daughter_ _114_
_Kelmscott Manor House from the Orchard_ _118_
_Portrait of Edward Burne-Jones_ _120_
_By Watts._
_William Morris_ _130_
_Picture by Rossetti in which the Children's Faces are
Portraits of May Morris_ _148_
_Honeysuckle Design for Linen_ _162_
_Washing Cloth at the Merton Abbey Works_ _174_
_Merton Abbey Works_ _174_
_Portrait of Mrs. Morris_ _200_
_By Rossetti._
_Study of Mrs. Morris_ _216_
_Made by Rossetti for picture called "The Day Dream."_
_Kelmscott Types_ _220_
_Page from Kelmscott "Chaucer." Illustration by
Burne-Jones. Border and Initial Letter by Morris_ _222_
_Title-page of the Kelmscott "Chaucer"_ _224_
_The Smaller Kelmscott Press-Mark_ _228_
_The Larger Kelmscott Press-Mark_ _228_
_Drawing by Morris of the Letter "h" for Kelmscott Type,
with Notes and Corrections_ _228_
_Specimen Page from the Kelmscott "Froissart"_ _234_
_Projected Edition_
CHAPTER I.
BOYHOOD.
There is, perhaps, no single work by William Morris that stands out as a
masterpiece in evidence of his individual genius. He was not impelled to
give peculiar expression to his own personality. His writing was seldom
emotionally autobiographic as Rossetti's always was, his painting and
designing were not the expression of a personal mood as was the case with
Burne-Jones. But no one of his special time and group gave himself more
fully or more freely for others. No one contributed more generously to the
public pleasure and enlightenment. No one tried with more persistent
effort first to create and then to satisfy a taste for the possible best
in the lives and homes of the people. He worked toward this end in so many
directions that a lesser energy than his must have been dissipated and a
weaker purpose rendered impotent. His tremendous vitality saved him from
the most humiliating of failures, the failure to make good extravagant
promise. He never lost sight of the result in the endeavour, and his
discontent with existing mediocrity was neither formless nor empty. It was
the motive power of all his labour; he was always trying to make
everything "something different from what it was," and this instinct was,
alike for strength and weakness, says his chief biographer, "of the very
essence of his nature." To tell the story of his life is to write down the
record of dreams made real, of nebulous theories brought swiftly to the
test of experiment, of the spirit of the distant past reincarnated in the
present. But, as with most natures of similar mould, the man was greater
than any part of his work, and even greater than the sum of it all. He
remains one of the not-to-be-forgotten figures of the nineteenth century,
so interesting was he, so impressive, so simple-hearted, so nearly
adequate to the great tasks he set himself, so well beloved by his
companions, so useful, despite his blunders, to society at large.
The unity that held together his manifold forms of expression was
maintained through the different periods of his life, making him a "whole
man" to a more than usual degree. From the earliest recorded incidents of
his childhood we gain an impression not unlike that made by his latest
years, and by all the interval between. The very opposite of Rossetti,
with whose "school" he has been so long and so mistakenly identified, his
nature was as single as his accomplishment was complex, and the only means
by which it is possible to get a just idea of both the former and the
latter is to regard him as a man of one preoccupation amounting to an
obsession, the reconstruction of social and industrial life according to
an ideal based upon the more poetic aspects of the Middle Ages. From first
to last the early English world, the English world of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, was the world to which he belonged. "Born out of his
due time," in truth, he began almost from his birth to accumulate
associations with the time to which he should have been native and whose
far off splendour lured him constantly back toward it.
The third of nine children, he was born at Walthamstow, in Essex, England,
on the 24th of March, 1834. On the Morris side he came of Welsh ancestry,
a fact accounting perhaps for the mingled gloom and romance of his
temperament. His father was a discount broker in opulent circumstances,
and his mother was descended from a family of prosperous merchants and
landed proprietors. On the maternal side a strong talent for music
existed, but in the Morris family no more artistic quality can be traced
than a devotion to general excellence, to which William Morris certainly
fell heir. For a time he was a sickly child, and used the opportunity to
advance his reading, being "already deep in the Waverley novels" when four
years old, and having gone through these and many others before he was
seven.
In 1840 the family removed to Woodford Hall, a house belonging to the
Georgian period, standing in about fifty acres of park, on the road from
London to Epping, and here Morris led an outdoor life with the result of
rapidly establishing his health, steeping mind and sense in the sights and
sounds of nature dear to him forever after, and gaining intimate
acquaintance with the romantic and mediaeval surroundings by which his
whole career was to be influenced. The county of Essex was well adapted to
feed his prodigious appetite for antiquities. Its churches, in numbers of
which Norman masonry is to be found, its ancient brasses (that of the
schoolboy Thomas Heron being among many others within easy reach of
Woodford), and its tapestry-hung houses, all stimulated his inborn love of
the Middle Ages and started him fairly on that path through the thirteenth
century which he followed deviously as long as he lived. Even in his own
home, we are told, certain of the habits of mediaeval England persisted,
such as the brewing of beer, the meal of cakes and ale at "high prime,"
the keeping of Twelfth Night, and other such festivals. The places he
lived in counted for much with him always, and the impressions of this
childish period remained, like all his later impressions, keen and
permanent. Toward the end of his life he printed at the Kelmscott Press
the carol _Good King Wenceslas_, which begins with a lusty freshness:
Good King Wenceslas look'd out,
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight
Gath'ring winter fuel.
"The legend itself," he comments, "is a pleasing and genuine one, and the
Christmas-like quality of it, recalling the times of my boyhood, appeals
to me at least as a memory of past days."
Beside angling, shooting, and riding, he very early occupied much of his
time with visits to the old churches, a pursuit of which he was never to
weary, studying their monuments and accumulating an amount of genuine
erudition concerning them quite out of proportion to his rather moderate
accomplishment along the ordinary lines of study. At an age when Scott was
scouring his native heath in search of Border ballads and antiquities,
this almost equally precocious boy was collecting rubbings from ancient
inscriptions, and picturing to himself, as he wandered about the region of
his home on foot or on horseback, the lovely face of England as it looked
in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. In one of the earliest of the
boyish romances that appeared in the _Oxford and Cambridge Magazine_, he
imagines himself the master-mason of a church built more than six
centuries before, and which has vanished from the face of the earth with
nothing to indicate its existence save earth-covered ruins "heaving the
yellow corn into glorious waves." His description of the carving on the
bas-reliefs of the west front and on the tombs shows with what loving
intensity he has studied the most minute details of the work of the
ancient builders in whose footsteps he would have rejoiced much to tread.
How far his family sympathised with his tastes it is impossible to say,
but probably not deeply. We have few hints of the personal side of his
home-life; we know that a visit to Canterbury Cathedral with his father
was among the indelible experiences of his first decade, and that he
possessed among his toys a little suit of armour in which he rode about
the park after the manner of a Froissart knight, and that is about all we
do know until we hear of the strong disapproval of his mother and one of
his sisters for the career that finally diverted his interest from the
Church for which they had designed him.
His formal education began when he was sent at the age of nine to a
preparatory school kept by a couple of maiden ladies. There he remained
until the death of his father in 1847. In February, 1848, he went to
Marlborough College, a nomination to which his father had purchased for
him. The best that can be said for this school seems to be that it was
situated in a part of England ideally suited to a boy of archaeological
tastes, and was provided with an excellent archaeological and architectural
library. Here his eager mind browsed on the literature of English Gothic,
and his restless feet carried him far afield among pre-Celtic barrows,
stone circles, and Roman villas. Savernake Forest was close at hand and
he spent many of his holidays within it. It was doubtless the familiarity
with all aspects of the woods, due to his pilgrimages through Savernake
and Epping Forests and the long roving days idled away among their
shadows, that gave rise to the allusions in his books--early and late--to
woodland life. The passage through the thick wood and the coming at last
to the place where the trees thin out and the light begins to shimmer
through them is a constantly recurring figure of his verse and of his
prose. Frequently the important scene of a romance or of a long poem is
laid in a wildwood, as in the story entitled _The Wood beyond the World_,
or in _Goldilocks and Goldilocks_, the concluding poem of the volume of
_Poems by the Way_, in which the great grey boles of the trees, the
bramble bush, the "woodlawn clear," and the cherished oaks are as vivid as
the human actors in the drama. His heroes seldom fail of being deft
woodsmen, able to thread the tangle of underbrush by blind paths, and
observant of all the common sights and sounds of the woodland, rabbits
scuttling out of the grass, adders sunning themselves on stones in the
cleared spaces, wild swine running grunting toward close covert, hart and
hind bounding across the way. They know the musty savour of water dipped
from a forest brook, they know how to go straight to the yew sticks that
quarter best for bow-staves, they know the feeling of the boggy moss under
their feet, and the sound of the "iron wind" through the branches in the
depth of winter; there is no detail of wild wood life of which they are
ignorant. This intimacy with Nature in her most secluded moments, in her
shyest and most mysterious aspect, forms an element of inexpressible charm
in the lovely backgrounds against which Morris delighted to place his
visionary figures. He never tired of combining the impressions stored away
in his mind on his boyish rambles into pictures the delicate beauty of
which can hardly be overestimated.
While he was at school, his already highly developed imagination found an
outlet in constant fable-making, his tales of knights and fairies and
miraculous adventures having a considerable popularity among his comrades,
with whom, however, he himself was not especially popular, making friends
with them only in a superficial fashion. Judging from the autobiographic
fragments occasionally found in his work, he was a boy of many moods, most
of them tinged with the self-conscious melancholy of his early poetry.
Sentiment was strong with him, and a peculiar reticence or detachment of
temperament kept him independent of others during his school years, and
apparently uninfluenced by the tastes or opinions of those about him, if
we except the case of his Anglo-Catholic proclivities, which obviously
were fed by the tendencies of the school, but which, so far from diverting
him from the general scheme of his individual interests, fitted into them
and served him as another link between the present and the much preferred
past.
Outwardly he can hardly have seemed the typical dreamer he has described
himself as being. Beautiful of feature, of sturdy build, with a shouting
voice, extraordinary muscular strength, and a gusty temper, he impressed
himself upon his comrades chiefly by his impetuosity in the energetic game
of singlestick, by the surplus vigour that led him at times to punch his
own head with all his might to "take it out of himself," and by the
vehemence and enthusiasm of his argumentative talk.
He was little of a student along the orthodox lines, and Marlborough
College was not calculated to increase his respect--never undue--for
pedagogic methods. A letter written when he was sixteen to his eldest and
favourite sister reflects quite fully his pre-occupations. It has none of
the genuine wit and literary tone of the juvenile letter written by
Stevenson to his father, presenting his claims for reimbursements. It
shows no such zest for bookish pursuits as Rossetti's letters, written at
the same age, reveal. But it is entirely free from the shallow flippancy
that frequently characterises the correspondence of a young man's second
decade--that characterised Lowell's, for example, to an almost painful
degree; nor has it a shade of the self-magnification to which any amount
of flippancy is preferable. It is straightforward and boyish, and
remarkable only as showing the thorough and intelligent method with which
its writer followed up whatever commanded his interest. Commencing with
the description of an anthem sung at Easter by the trained choir of
Blore's Chapel connected with his school, he passes on to an account of
his archaeological investigations, giving after his characteristic fashion
all the small details necessary to enable his correspondent to form a
definite picture of the places he had visited. After he had made one
pilgrimage to the Druidical circle and Roman entrenchment at Avebury, he
had learned of the peculiar method of placing the stones which, from the
dislocated condition of the ruins, had not been obvious to him. Therefore
he had returned on the following day to study it out and fix the original
arrangement firmly in his imagination, and, at the time of writing the
letter, was able to explain it quite clearly, a result, derived from the
expenditure of two holidays, that was completely satisfactory to him. He
winds up with a purely boyish plea for a "good large cake" and some
biscuit in addition to a cheese that had been promised him, and for paper
and postage stamps and his silkworm eggs and a pen box to be sent him from
home.
At school he was "always thinking about home," and when the family moved
again to Walthamstow, within a short distance of his first home, and to a
house boasting a moat and a wooded island, he was eagerly responsive to
the poetic suggestions conveyed by these romantic accessories. When at
the end of 1851 he left school to prepare under a private tutor for
Oxford, he renewed his early familiarity with Epping Forest and spent most
of his holidays among the trees that had not apparently changed since the
time of Edward the Confessor. The great age of the wood and its peculiarly
English character made a profound impression upon him, and it is easy to
imagine the fury with which he must have received the suggestion, made
forty years later by Mr. Alfred Wallace, that in place of "a hideous
assemblage of stunted mop-like pollards rising from a thicket of scrubby
bushes," North American trees should be planted and a part of the forest
made into an "almost exact copy" of North American woodland. Indeed, a
suppressed but unmistakable fury breathes from the letters written to the
_Daily Chronicle_, as late as 1895, regarding the tree-felling that was
going on ruthlessly in the forest, destroying its native character and
individual charm. These letters, curiously recalling those written half a
century before concerning boyish excursions through the same region, are
well worth quoting here, where properly they belong, as they are inspired
by the earliest of the associations and ideals cherished by Morris to the
end of his life. They are fine examples of his own native character in
argument, his humbly didactic tone early caught from Ruskin and never
relinquished, his militant irony, his willingness to fortify his position
by painstaking investigation, his moral attitude toward matters artistic,
his superb rightness of taste in the special problem under discussion.
They show also how closely his memory had held through his manifold
interests the details that had appealed to him in his boyhood. The first
letter is dated April 23rd, and addressed to the editor of the _Daily
Chronicle_.
"SIR: I venture to ask you to allow me a few words on the subject of
the present treatment of Epping Forest. I was born and bred in its
neighbourhood (Walthamstow and Woodford), and when I was a boy and
young man I knew it yard by yard from Wanstead to the Theydons, and
from Hale End to the Fairlop Oak. In those days it had no worse foes
than the gravel stealer and the rolling-fence maker, and was always
interesting and often very beautiful. From what I can hear it is years
since the greater part of it has been destroyed, and I fear, Sir, that
in spite of your late optimistic note on the subject, what is left of
it now runs the danger of further ruin.
"The special character of it was derived from the fact that by far the
greater part was a wood of hornbeams, a tree not common save in Essex
and Herts. It was certainly the biggest hornbeam wood in these
islands, and I suppose in the world. The said hornbeams were all
pollards, being shrouded every four or six years, and were
interspersed in many places with holly thickets, and the result was a
very curious and characteristic wood, such as can be seen nowhere
else. And I submit that no treatment of it can be tolerable which does
not maintain this hornbeam wood intact.
"But the hornbeam, though an interesting tree to an artist and
reasonable person, is no favourite with the landscape gardener, and I
very much fear that the intention of the authorities is to clear the
forest of native trees, and to plant vile weeds like deodars and
outlandish conifers instead. We are told that a committee of 'experts'
has been formed to sit in judgment on Epping Forest; but, Sir, I
decline to be gagged by the word 'expert,' and I call on the public
generally to take the same position. An 'expert' may be a very
dangerous person, because he is likely to narrow his views to the
particular business (usually a commercial one) which he represents. In
this case, for instance, we do not want to be under the thumb of
either a wood bailiff whose business is to grow timber for the market,
or of a botanist whose business is to collect specimens for a
botanical garden; or of a landscape gardener whose business is to
vulgarise a garden or landscape to the utmost extent that his patron's
purse will allow of. What we want is reasonable men of real artistic
taste to take into consideration what the essential needs of the case
are, and to advise accordingly. Now it seems to me that the
authorities who have Epping Forest in hand may have two intentions as
to it. First, they may intend to landscape-garden it, or turn it into
golf grounds (and I very much fear that even the latter nuisance may
be in their minds); or second, they may really think it necessary (as
you suggest) to thin the hornbeams, so as to give them a better chance
of growing. The first alternative we Londoners should protest against
to the utmost, for if it be carried out then Epping Forest is turned
into a mere place of vulgarity, is destroyed in fact.
"As to the second, to put our minds at rest, we ought to be assured
that the cleared spaces would be planted again, and that almost wholly
with hornbeam. And, further, the greatest possible care should be
taken that not a single tree should be felled unless it is necessary
for the growth of its fellows. Because, mind you, with comparatively
small trees, the really beautiful effect of them can only be got by
their standing as close together as the emergencies of growth will
allow. We want a thicket, not a park, from Epping Forest.
"In short, a great and practically irreparable mistake will be made
if, under the shelter of the opinion of 'experts,' from mere
carelessness and thoughtlessness, we let the matter slip out of the
hands of the thoughtful part of the public; the essential character of
one of the greatest ornaments of London will disappear, and no one
will have even a sample left to show what the great north-eastern
forest was like. I am, Sir, yours obediently,
"WILLIAM MORRIS
"Kelmscott House, Hammersmith."
The second letter is written two or three weeks later, and shows Morris as
characteristically prompt and thorough in action as he is positive in
speech.
"Yesterday," he says, "I carried out my intention of visiting Epping
Forest. I went to Loughton first, and saw the work that had been done
about Clay Road, thence to Monk Wood, thence to Theydon Woods, and
thence to the part about the Chingford Hotel, passing by Fair Mead
Bottom and lastly to Bury Wood and the wood on the other side of the
road thereby.
"I can verify closely your representative's account of the doings on
the Clay Road, which is an ugly scar originally made by the lord of
the manor when he contemplated handing over to the builder a part of
what he thought was his property. The fellings here seem to me all
pure damage to the forest, and in fact were quite unaccountable to me,
and would surely be so to any unprejudiced person. I cannot see what
could be pleaded for them either on the side of utility or taste.
"About Monk Wood there had been much, and I should say excessive,
felling of trees apparently quite sound. This is a very beautiful
spot, and I was informed that the trees there had not been polled for
a period long before the acquisition of the forest for the public; and
nothing could be more interesting and romantic than the effect of the
long poles of the hornbeams rising from the trunks and seen against
the mass of the wood behind. This wood should be guarded most
jealously as a treasure of beauty so near to 'the Wen.' In the Theydon
Woods, which are mainly of beech, a great deal of felling has gone on,
to my mind quite unnecessary, and therefore harmful. On the road
between the Wake Arms and the King's Oak Hotel there has been again
much felling, obviously destructive.
"In Bury Wood (by Sewardstone Green) we saw the trunks of a great
number of oak trees (not pollards), all of them sound, and a great
number were yet standing in the wood marked for felling, which,
however, we heard had been saved by a majority of the committee of
experts. I can only say that it would have been a very great
misfortune if they had been lost; in almost every case where the
stumps of the felled trees showed there seemed to have been no reason
for their destruction. The wood on the other side of the road to Bury
Wood, called in the map Woodman's Glade, has not suffered from
felling, and stands as an object lesson to show how unnecessary such
felling is. It is one of the thickest parts of the forest, and looks
in all respects like such woods were forty years ago, the growth of
the heads of the hornbeams being but slow; but there is no difficulty
in getting through it in all directions, and it has a peculiar charm
of its own not to be found in any other forest; in short, it is
thoroughly _characteristic_. I should mention that the whole of these
woods are composed of pollard hornbeams and 'spear'--_i.e._,
unpolled--oaks.
"I am compelled to say from what I saw in a long day's inspection,
that, though no doubt acting with the best intentions, the management
of the forest is going on the wrong tack; it is making war on the
natural aspect of the forest, which the Act of Parliament that
conferred it on the nation expressly stipulated was to be retained.
The tendency of all these fellings is on the one hand to turn over
London forest into a park, which would be more or less like other
parks, and on the other hand to grow sizable trees, as if for the
timber market. I must beg to be allowed a short quotation here from an
excellent little guidebook to the forest by Mr. Edward North Buxton,
verderer of the forest (Sanford, 1885). He says, p. 38: 'In the drier
parts of the forest beeches to a great extent take the place of oaks.
These "spear" trees will make fine timber for future generations,
provided they receive timely attention by being _relieved of the
competing growth of the unpicturesque hornbeam pollards_. Throughout
the wood between Chingford and High Beech, _this has been recently
done_, to the great advantage of the finer trees.'
"The italics are mine, and I ask, Sir, if we want any further evidence
than this of one of the verderers as to the tendency of the fellings.
Mr. Buxton declares in so many words that he wants to change the
special character of the forest; to take away this strange,
unexampled, and most romantic wood, and leave us nothing but a
commonplace instead. I entirely deny his right to do so in the teeth
of the Act of Parliament. I assert, as I did in my former letter, that
the hornbeams are the most important trees in the forest, since they
give it its special character. At the same time I would not encourage
the hornbeams at the expense of the beeches, any more than I would the
beeches at the expense of the hornbeams. I would leave them all to
nature, which is not so niggard after all, even on Epping Forest
gravel, as _e. g._, one can see in places where forest fires have
denuded spaces, and where in a short time birches spring up self-sown.
"The committee of the Common Council has now had Epping Forest in hand
for seventeen years, and has, I am told, in that time felled 100,000
trees. I think the public may now fairly ask for a rest on behalf of
the woods, which, if the present system of felling goes on, will be
ruined as a natural forest; and it is good and useful to make the
claim at once, when, in spite of all disfigurements, the northern part
of the forest, from Sewardstone Green to beyond Epping, is still left
to us, not to be surpassed in interest by any other wood near a great
capital. I am, Sir, yours obediently,
"WILLIAM MORRIS."
These letters emphasise in a single instance what the close student of
Morris will find emphasised at every turn in his career,--the persistent
and strong influence over him of the tastes and occupations of his
boyhood. Unless this is kept constantly in mind, it is easy to fall into
the common error of regarding the various activities into which he threw
himself as separate and dissociated instead of seeing them as they were,
component parts of a perfectly simple purpose and unalterable ideal. With
most men who are on the whole true to the analogy of the chambered
nautilus and cast off the outworn shell of their successive phases of
individuality as the seasons roll, the effect of early environment and
tendency may easily be exaggerated, but Morris grew in the fashion of his
beloved oaks, keeping the rings by which his advance in experience was
marked; at the end all were visible. His education began and continued
largely outside the domain of books and away from masters. His wanderings
in the depths of the quaint and beautiful forest, his intimate
acquaintance with the nature of Gothic architecture, his familiarity with
Scott, his prompt adoption of Ruskin, all these formed the foundation on
which he was to build his own theory of life, and all were his before he
went up to Oxford. They prepared him for the many-sided profession, if
profession it can be called, which was to absorb and at last to exhaust
his mighty energy. It was the tangible surface of the world that most
inspired him in boyhood and in maturity. Loving so much even as a child
its aspects, its lights and shadows, the forms of trees and birds and
beasts, the changes of season, the lives of men living close to "the kind
soil" and in touch with it through hearty manual labour, it was but a step
to the occupations that finally engrossed him. He never got so far away
from the visions of his youth as to forget them. In one form or another he
was constantly trying to embody them that others might see them with his
eyes and worship them with his devotion. "The spirit of the new days, of
our days," says the old man in _News from Nowhere_, "was to be delight in
the life of the world, intense and almost overweening love of the very
skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells."