Major Morris

“ The societies were all directly concerned with [Pg 193] questions in which Morris had all his life been interested, and his connection with them was not only natural but almost inevitable. He was not a man to whom public business made a strong appeal. He undertook it with reluctance and relinquished it with delight. Nor did he care for the labels of distinction for which most men, even among the greatly distinguished, have a measure of regard. ”

“ Thus it was that, before and after the adoption of his final political creed, Morris carried on his work patiently from day to day, and thus it was that he exhorted others by word and example to carry on theirs; "not living like fools and fine gentlemen, and not beaten by the muddle, but like good fellows trying by some dim candle-light to set our workshop ready against to-morrow's daylight." ”

“ Morris looked at the dark, quiet eyes that seemed to express much which the thin and impassive face refused to reveal; at the grey pointed beard and the yellowish skin of the outstretched arm. Here before him, he felt, lay a man whose personality it was not easy to define, one who might be foolish, or might be able, but of whose character the leading note was reticence, inherent or acquired. ”

“ Morris shows us that he can write, and his Saturday Readings are full of the warm impulses and genuine kindness of the man, but are written more for purposes of good than to display his powers. Occasionally he warms up in his general articles, and lets out a spark or two, shows us a glimpse of the wealth he hoards, and causes us to wish for continued examples of the ability he possesses. ”

“ Morris was the agent of any Socialist propaganda, and that all they had meant was to give to an eminent man the opportunity of expressing his opinions on art under a democracy: "a subject with which" (so the report of the meeting gives Dr. Bright's words) "he was unusually well acquainted, and a knowledge of which, in the existing condition of social questions in England, was a most desirable part of the education of every young man." ”

“ After a brief period of training he went to the East India Company's college at Haileybury, and afterwards entered the Madras civil service, reaching India in 1818. Five younger brothers obtained similar employment under the East India Company. Morris served for a time at Masulipatam (in 1821) and Coimbore. In 1823 a stroke of paralysis deprived him of the use of his legs; but his energy was not impaired by the misfortune, and his industry in sedentary occupation was exceptional. Most of his time was thenceforth spent at Madras in the secretariat, or board of revenue. ”

“ For the last two years of his life Morris was prostrated by an incurable and distressing illness, which he bore with characteristic fortitude, preserving his cheerfulness and his love of a good story to the last. He retired to the railway-side hamlet of Harold Wood in Essex, and there he died on 12 May 1894. ”

“ And to-day he owned himself defeated: life had the upper hand; if there had been any means of flight or place to flee to, if the world had been so ordered that a man could leave it like a place of entertainment, Morris would have instantly resigned all further claim on its rewards and pleasures, and, with inexpressible contentment, ceased to be. As it was, one aim shone before him: he could get home. Even as the sick dog crawls under the sofa, Morris could shut the door of John Street and be alone. ”

“ Morris was a singular instance of a man of immense industry and force of character, whose whole life, through a long period of manifold activity and multiform production, was guided by a very few simple ideas. His rapid movements from one form of productive energy to another often gave occasion for perplexity to his friends as well as for satire from his opponents. But in fact all these varying energies were directed towards a single object, the re-integration of human life ; and he practised so many arts because to him art was a single thing. ”

“ I'm glad you're a dead man, William Morris, I'm glad you're down in the damp and mouldy, only a memory instead of a living man—I'm glad you're gone.
You never lied to us, William Morris, you loved the shape of those stones piled and carved for you to dream over and wonder because workmen got joy of life into them,
Workmen in aprons singing while they hammered, and praying, and putting their songs and prayers into the walls and roofs, the bastions and cornerstones and gargoyles—all their children and kisses of women and wheat and roses growing. ”

“ Æschylus, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Beethoven, Wagner, Shelley, Wordsworth—there is an inspiration to the lips in the very names of these men and their fellows, but there must be no disputation as to the headship in their presence; they themselves will but laugh if they heed us at all. And Morris is, as I see him, clearly of that fellowship. By some strange generosity of nature he was not only allowed to give great poetry to the world, but also to readjust for us the significance of life in phases a little lower than the highest. ”

“ The seceders organised themselves as a separate body under the name of the Socialist league, and Morris, much against his will, was forced into a leadership of this group, among whom he was conspicuous alike by means, education, and character. To the service of the league he gave himself up with even more complete devotion, managing and financing their journal, the 'Commonweal,' preaching socialism among the working class in most of the industrial centres of Great Britain, and addressing street meetings regularly with the view of organising discontent towards a social revolution. ”

“ In Morris’s world we should all be very happy if we were like Morris. He was not very happy in our world, yet perhaps he managed to get out of it as much of the joy of doing as it can be made to yield to any one man. His Socialism, from one point of view, was certainly a tremendous failure, but no other side of his life visible to the public at large showed so plainly his moral virtues, his generosity, his sincerity, his power of self-sacrifice, his effort toward self-control. ”

“ Morris wrote much on religious subjects, but he is best known by his works on natural history, which, although 'popular' rather than scientific, had much literary value. He was never able to accept the theory of evolution, and was an extreme anti-vivisectionist.
His great work was 'A History of British Birds,' in 6 vols. 8vo, London, 1851-7, a third edition of which appeared in 1891. ”

“ As the spring advanced, and Naples became over-sultry for those reared in northern climes, Morris took her to cooler regions. Together they wandered through Switzerland and the Austrian Tyrol, and only with the approach of the winter season were they again in residence at "Mon Bijou."
With the ensuing spring, Morris's restless spirit once more asserted itself, and the summer saw them in London. There he held a social position which led him into circles where no man can introduce a woman who occupies the position Evarne now held. ”

“ Then the Lord sat silent, and seemed to be pondering: at last he said, as if to himself: "Yet there is one thing: many a blencher can sing of battle; and it hath been seen, that a fair body of a man is whiles soft amidst the hard hand-play. Thou! Morfinn's luck! art thou of any use in the tilt-yard?" "Wilt thou try me, lord?" said Ralph, looking somewhat brisker. Said the Lord: "I deem that I may find a man or two for thee, though it is not much our manner here; but now go thou! David, take the lad away to his tent, and get him a flask of wine of the best to help out thy maundering with him." ”

“ I said; "but I must seeriously warn you, Morris, that to a perfect beginer, like you, many things might happen besides merely a fealing against tongue sandwiches. You might be absolutely sick and then——"
"All the food in me would be wasted," said Morris in a very tragick tone.
He turned quite white at this idea. He said it would be madness to do anything to weaken his system at such a critikal time, and I said so too. Then he asked me to go and smoak further off, because the very smell made him feal rather strange after what I had told him. ”

“ The figure that Morris presents at this time is that of the strong and confident man of affairs, sagacious, expeditious, and painstaking, who is surrounded by weaker men, hesitating, vacillating, and procrastinating in their administrative attempts. ”

“ The poems which form the text of Queen Summer (1891) , Renascence (1891) , and The Sirens Three (1886) are by the artist himself.
In the early ’eighties under Morris’s influence he was closely associated with the Socialist movement. He did as much as Morris himself to bring art into the daily life of all classes. With this object in view he devoted much attention to designs for textile stuffs, for wall-papers, and to house decoration; but he also used his art for the direct advancement of the Socialist cause. ”

“ Morris was thoroughly a man, and though much of his sinful nature had been subdued, there was enough left to make his heart rise and fall with great throbs of joy as he thought of Katy free, even though that freedom were bought at the expense of dire disgrace to others, and of misery to her. ”

“ Morris presented a rare combination of mirth and prudence, such as human conduct seldom offers for our imitation. He retained his gaieté de cœur to the last; so that, with equal truth and spirit, he remonstrated:
Captain Morris left his autobiography to his family ”

“ Willis.
The distinction with which the name of General Morris is now associated in a permanent connection with what is least factitious or fugitive in American Art, is admitted and known; but the class of young men of letters in this country, at present, can hardly appreciate the extent to which they, and the profession to which they belong, are indebted to his animated exertions, his varied talents, his admirable resources of temper, during a period of twenty years, and at a time when the character of American literature, both at home and abroad was yet to be formed. ”

“ Eventually there was a tap at the bedroom door, and it was opened slightly from the outside, and a voice expostulated: 'Really, the whole house is awakened. What is the matter? Do speak more quietly and let us get to sleep.'
This interruption acted as an exorcism. Morris quietened down as suddenly as he had flared up. He lifted 'Huckleberry Finn,' which he had tossed on the bed in the course of his fulmination, and making a turn round the room, he offered me his hand in a most friendly manner, remarking simply: 'I have been going it a bit loudly—don't you think? ”

“ How it was that from being the head of an industrial business Morris came to be an ardent advocate of Socialism is the central problem of his life. The root of the matter lay in his love of art and of the Middle Ages. He had studied the centuries productive of the best art known to him, and he believed that he understood the conditions under which it was produced. The one essential was that the workers found pleasure in their work. They were not benumbed by that Division of Labour which set the artisan laboriously repeating the same mechanical task ”

“ When I mentioned to Lord G. what Morris came about, he only laughed, and said, "It was a clever dodge of the half-pay,—he wanted an invitation;" and I see now that such must have been his object. The more one sees of mankind, the greater appears their meanness; and in my heart I feel how unsuited guileless, simple-hearted creatures like myself are to combat against the stratagems and ambuscades of this wicked world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every man who worked under him had to be prepared for occasional outbursts of impatient temper, when Morris spoke, we are told, rather as a good workman scornful of bad work, than as an employer finding fault with his men; but in the long run all were sure to receive fair and friendly treatment.
Such was William Morris at his Merton works, a master craftsman worthy of the best traditions of the Middle Ages, fit to hold his place with the masons of Chartres, the weavers of Bruges, and the wood-carvers of Nuremberg. ”

“ But having said that Morris was not an orator, and without judging this to be either a merit or a defect in him, I must hasten to say that his public speaking, to those who had ears to hear, was one of the finest things to listen to that could be heard on an English platform. It was so like what one expected of him, so characteristic of the man, so interesting in substance and manner, and withal so fresh, so natural and uneffortful, and full of personal flavour. It was as different from the customary platform oratory as a mountain spring is from a garden fountain. ”

“ As to Morris, we have always felt that, take him all round, he is the richest and most varied in artistic endowments of any man of our time. On whichsoever of the fine arts he had chanced to concentrate his gifts and energies the result would have been the same as in poetry. ”

“ Admiral Morris was younger brother of the late Captain Amherst Morris, being second son of Colonel Roger Morris, a member of the Governor's Council at New-York, by Mary, daughter of Frederick Phillipse, of this city. This family of Morris is one of great antiquity, deriving its descent from Elystan Glodrydd, a famed chieftain of Wales in the eleventh century. ”