John Bruce Glasier

“ No one who really believes in God as an All-benevolent, Almighty Father, and who bears in mind Morris' inherently childlike way of looking at all things from a human level, will be disposed to see anything irreverent in this outburst. His whole conception of life as consisting in fellowship, in doing things to make oneself and one's fellows happy, his hatred of cruelty and oppression, selfishness, sordidness and ugliness in every form, was, if not religion itself, at least that without which religion becomes an illogical and unfeeling pietism or pretence. ”

“ Craig was now over ninety years of age, and though frail in body was extraordinarily alert in mind, and full of enthusiasm for the new Socialist movement. His queer little cramped-up figure as he sat on the platform with a grey Scottish shepherd's plaid round his shoulders, contrasted drolly with the burly form of Morris, who, despite several warning turns of illness, still looked in the height of health and energy. ”

“ We do not know what we ourselves are, or what the world is, nor, if it comes to that, do we know what poetry, or art, or happiness is. One thing is quite certain to me, and that is that our beliefs, whatever they be, whether concerning God, or nature, or art, or happiness, are in the end only of account in so far as they affect the right doings of our lives, so far, in fact, as they make ourselves and our fellows happy. And in actual fact I find about the same amount of goodness and badness, happiness and misery among peoples of all creeds—Jew, Christian, and Gentile. ”

“ When deep in poetry reading in my earlier manhood days, his name was familiar to me as the author of 'The Earthly Paradise' and 'Jason,' though as yet the only work of his that I had read—the only one I could find in any public library in Glasgow at that time—was 'Love is Enough, or The Freeing of Pharamond.' I knew also that, besides being a poet of acknowledged high rank, he was famed in art circles as a designer and reformer of the decorative arts, but I had seen none of his designs, and had little idea of what was the nature of his craftsmanship. ”

“ As I hear the yells and shrieks and all the degradation cast on the glorious tongue of Shakespeare and Milton, and I see the brutal, reckless faces and figures go past me, it rouses in me recklessness and brutality also, and fierce wrath takes possession of me, till I remember, as I hope I mostly do, that it was my good luck only of being born respectable and rich that has put me on this side of the window amid delightful books and lovely works of art, and not on the other side in the empty street, the drink-steeped liquor shops, and the foul and degraded lodgings. ”

“ Morris had the disability, if it be such, of being incapable of assuming any character or views other than his own. He could never have been an actor; he had no histrionic talent. In his speech, his writings, his art, in all things that he did, he was always William Morris. There never perhaps was an artist or writer whose work was invariably so unmistakably his own. From but a sentence or two of any writing of his, or the smallest scrap of one of his designs, his authorship can be discovered at once. ”

“ Heaven, or another life beyond the grave, of which men dream and hope so fondly, could give me nothing which I possess the faculties to use or enjoy, that the present world and life cannot give, except maybe—were it true—reunion with those who have gone before or who will shortly afterwards follow. Human wrong-doing and perhaps disease can be got rid of: but old age and death are irremediable. Sometimes death appears to me awful, terrible, so cruel, so absurd. ”

“ Nowhere did Anarchism spring up spontaneously, so to speak, in the country, as Socialism so often did. It grew and spread only within the Socialist Movement, parasitically in the branches—a fact which accords with general experience of Anarchist propaganda in other countries.
Men are often what is described as 'born Socialists'—born, that is to say, with altruistic natures, abhorrent of all social wrong, and with minds easily attracted by Utopian ideas. Men are also often enough 'born individualists'—wholly obsessed, that is to say, with their own self-interests and desires. ”

“ But I tell you frankly that I should not, even if I could, work at the kind of work and in the kind of way of working, that you do—not even though offered a thousand pounds a week for so doing, instead of the paltry one or two pounds a week which you are asked to be content with, and which I regret to think you so frequently are content with. Sooner than work in an ironworks or coal mine as you folks do for ten or twelve hours a day, every week day, year out and year in, all my life, I should rebel rather, and take whatever consequences my rebellion might bring upon me. ”

“ The Gods are all as real to my imagination as are historical and living persons, and their miraculous powers seem quite natural to their office, so to speak. Some people, as you know, have upbraided Burne-Jones and myself for using so much Christian legend and symbolism in our work, all of which they say is quite outside the belief of any but most crudely superstitious minds; but the fools do not perceive that with us in our art Christian legends and symbolism are as true as with any of themselves—as true and as eternal as the world itself in which we live. ”

“ The great object of Socialism was to place all men and women on a footing of equality and brotherhood in order that they might one and all have the utmost possible freedom to live the fullest and happiest lives. ”

“ As we listened, our minds seemed to gain a new sense of sight, or new way of seeing and understanding why we lived in the world, and how important to our own selves was the well-being of our fellows. His ideas seemed to spring from a pure well of idealism within himself, and in his diction the English language had a new tune to the ear. No such an address had ever been heard in Glasgow before; no such single-minded and noble appeal to man's inherent sense of rightness and fellowship towards man. ”

“ So far from regarding work in that light, so far from looking upon work as being in itself an evil, an undesirable or penitential task, Morris held work to be the highest, the most God-like of all human capacities. Without work life would cease to have any meaning or yield any noble happiness at all. ”

“ But, mark you again, what I aim at is Socialism or Communism, not Anarchism. Anarchism and Communism, notwithstanding our friend Kropotkin, are incompatible in principle. Anarchism means, as I understand it, the doing away with, and doing without, laws and rules of all kinds, and in each person being allowed to do just as he pleases. I don't want people to do just as they please; I want them to consider and act for the good of their fellowsfor the commonweal in fact. ”

“ It is now quite forgotten, I suppose, in the Socialist movement itself, but at the time it was a great windfall to us, 'the feeble band and few,' who were striving by means of our hoarse shoutings at forlorn street corners, and our lecturings in shabby out-of the-way halls, to rouse our million-fold fellow citizens from centuries of ignorance and prejudice, and persuade them that in our 'fantastic and impossible schemes' lay the only hope and means of the social redemption of mankind. ”

“ Sharing, as I myself now do, very largely in this changed outlook of mind, I find the question forces itself upon me as it doubtless also does on many readers of these pages—Is the gospel of Art and Socialism as exemplified in the work and teaching of William Morris adequate as a practical precept and philosophy of life? Would I, for example, say to any earnest-minded young man or woman, 'Go and follow as far as in your power lies the teaching of William Morris, and therein you will find the whole duty and Kingdom of Man?' No, indeed, I should not. ”

“ But I don't think a Socialist community will require many governmental laws; though each citizen will require to conform as far as possible to the general understanding of how we are to live and work harmoniously together. But, frankly and flatly, I reckon customs, if they are bad customs, to be always more oppressive and difficult to get rid of than political laws. If you violate political laws you have the policeman and the soldiers, maybe, against you, but when you violate social customs you have the whole of the community against you. ”

“ But I am not attracted, as some good men both in present and bygone times have been, with the idea of going out into the wilderness, either as an anchorite or as one of a group of Socialist Fifth Monarchy men. I don't want to get out from among my fellow men, for with all their faults—which are not theirs only but our own—I like them and want to live and work among them. ”

“ And that, as I shall explain later on if you will listen to me, is just the sum and substance of what Socialism means, which we have come here to preach to you this afternoon. And I call you "fellow workers" because, though I am, as you have just heard, a writer of poetry and such like, and what is called an artist or designer, I nevertheless do a great deal of work with my hands, hard work too, sometimes, not only for the pleasure of doing it, but actually, as you folk do here, as a means of livelihood. ”

“ A few months later he wrote her: 'I am sure it is right, whatever the apparent consequences may be, to stir up the lower class (damn the word) to demand a higher standard of life for themselves, not merely for the sake of themselves and the material comfort it will bring, but for the good of the whole world and the regeneration of the conscience of man; and this stirring up is part of the necessary education which must in good truth go before the reconstruction of society. ”

“ I am not, however, so much surprised to find down here in Scotland that you working chaps apparently found each your own way to Socialism without even being in contact, as we in London were, with foreign revolutionary influences, as that you have all come the same road, so to speak, and that road has simply been the road of the reading and political experience common to the more thoughtful of the Scotch working class generally. ”

“ And I felt, and now feel more than ever, that the one Socialism is true, universally and for ever, while the other Socialism is at least only half-Socialism, and makes only temporary and conditional appeal, and that not to the higher social but to the more groundling and selfish instincts of the race.
This feeling that Morris and Hyndman represented two widely different conceptions of Socialism was impressed upon me in a curious way by an experience that befell Morris himself on the night of his first Glasgow lecture which I have already described. ”

“ But he saw clearly that their present course must inevitably end in tragic consequences to some of themselves or to their dupes at the hands of the police, and that meanwhile their conduct was calculated to demoralise the movement, destroy the tradition, and deface the ideals of the Socialist cause.
Not that Morris desired that Socialism or Socialists should approve themselves to what is termed the nonconformist conscience. But he wished Socialism to approve itself to earnest-minded Socialists themselves, and to all good-hearted and right-headed men and women. ”

“ She was evidently in a state of nervous excitement, and spoke so low that we on the platform only ascertained what she had said after the meeting was over. It appears that she expostulated—'Oh, Mr. Morris, don't you think it is wrong in a man of your great talents and influence to be engaged in leading these young men astray—astray from God's truth—into the dangerous paths of Atheism and revolution?' Adding a few more words of religious appeal, she sat down, but immediately afterwards rose and hastened from the room like an affrighted spirit—poor girl! ”

“ But I am, I hope, a Socialist none the less. It is enough political economy for me to know that the idle class is rich and the working class is poor, and that the rich are rich because they rob the poor. ”

“ Glasier had been for some years busied with Socialist lecturing when my father became acquainted with the Scottish circle in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the meeting with this 'half-mythical being,' who was pictured by the ingenuous young men as leading an Arcadian life in the world of poetry and art down South, was to them an exciting event. When the hero comes out of the clouds and stands before his admirers as a man and a good comrade, there is danger of disappointment, of a sense of disillusion. ”

“ Looking around the room, all so charming in the natural simplicity of its furniture—only useful and beautiful things were there, masterpieces of literature and priceless old volumes, Dürer engravings and rare pieces of craftsmanship, and all so kindly lit up in the tranquil candle-light with its ambient shadows—one was conscious of that companionableness in all about one that one feels in a deep forest glade. ”

“ So great indeed has been the reaction of intelligent opinion in this respect, that no solution, however complete it be, of the problem of human happiness in relation to the material circumstances of life, suffices for the needs of thoughtful minds. Noble and beautiful as we may succeed in making the practice of life, this achievement alone will not yield us a self-containing philosophy or religion of life. It does not provide due nourishment and exercise for the intellectual and physical faculties of a large portion of the men and women in our midst to-day. ”

“ The public, the people, the democracy, were a rather shapeless, nebulous mass or herd down below somewhere. With Ruskin, the people are always 'You', with Carlyle they are even farther away, they are 'They'; but with Morris the people are always 'We.' Ruskin and Carlyle are for ever scolding, are admonishing the public and mankind as 'Schoolmasters.' Morris always (except in explosive moments when he seemed kindled into a flame of Olympian or Jehovist wrath) spoke as a fellow-man and a fellow-sinner. ”

“ Now what constitutes the commonweal, or common notion of what is for the common good, will and always must be expressed in the form of laws of some kind—either political laws, instituted by the citizens in public assembly, as of old by folk-moot, or if you will by real councils or parliaments of the people, or by social customs growing up from the experience of Society. The fact that at present many or the majority of laws and customs are bad, does not mean that we can do without good laws or good customs. ”

“ I no longer doubt the possibility of an earthly Paradise. I feel as if Balder the Beautiful were become alive again and had been with us to-day. If one can speak of a God amongst men, we can so speak of William Morris as he has been with us this day in Glasgow.'
Note.—In Commonweal, June 5, 1888, Morris gave an account of his Scottish tour on this occasion. ”

“ Several weeks before the Conference, Morris had become so much alarmed lest the dissentients should carry the day that he wrote me urging me to get the Glasgow branch to send me or some other delegate to the Conference to withstand the assault.
How paltry now seem the circumstances that caused Morris so much perturbation! How lamentable, one is inclined to exclaim, that the powers of one of the most richly gifted minds of modern days should have been tormented with such trivial and wholly distasteful wranglings! ”

“ I have never known what I fear many of you unfortunately have known, actual poverty—the pain of to-day's hunger and cold, and the fear of to-morrow's, or the dread of a master's voice, or the hopeless despair of unemployment. I have, I truly believe, lived as happy a life as anyone could wish to live, save for the misery of seeing so much cruel wrong and needless suffering around me. ”

“ Yet many who are quite ready to see in what Morris called his 'paganism' a religion of life, consistent as far as it goes with the highest spiritual ideals, are disappointed by the absence in him of apparently any interest in beliefs and hopes concerning invisible things, concerning the great questions of the existence of the world, of life, of death, of eternity—questions which have pressed on the minds of the great thinkers and poets of all ages from Job and Aeschylus, Socrates and Omar Khayyám, Dante and Shakespeare, Spinoza and Milton, Hegel and Shelley. ”

“ Something of the beauty of Glasier's character is shown unconsciously in these pages, his integrity, loyalty, unswerving sense of duty, his disinterestedness in labouring for no material reward, besides the lighter qualities, his comradeship and good humour, his sense of fun and enjoyment of adventure—all the things that endeared him to my father. Indeed, the work breathes of the unaffected, unselfish spirit of the man, and scarcely calls for any such introducing words. ”