Morris and the Machine

The 1893 Chicago World's Fair Machinery Hall
via http://industrialartifactsreview.com/

Standing in the Machinery Hall of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Henry Adams, Great-Grandson of the second President of the United States, suddenly realized that science and machinery had “electrocuted Santa Claus.” William Morris died in 1896, just three years after Adams's realization, and already there were signs that “the machine” was coming to dominate human minds and lives. Automobile development was blooming, H.G. Wells's Time Machine came out in 1895, and in 1896, a wireless telegraphic message (precursor to the radio), was successfully sent nearly nine miles across the Bristol channel.

It's easy to think that Morris wasn't ready for the 20th century; that it was somehow fitting for him to pass away before the next wave of technology engulfed the wealthy part of the world. After all, he'd spent most of his life battling the ugly effects of industrialization. He'd even said himself that the leading passion of his life, apart from a desire to make beautiful things, was a “hatred of modern civilisation.”

But he's often misunderstood in this sense. Although he had been among the first Victorians to decry the loss of old ways of life, he was more pragmatic about it than many of us realize. In his 1888 essay, “The Revival of Handicraft,” he gently mocked those who would have everything done by hand, without regard for the craftsmen doing the work: “it is not uncommon to hear regrets for the hand-labour in the fields, now fast disappearing from even backward districts of civilized countries. The scythe, the sickle, and even the flail are lamented over … although I must avow myself a sharer in the above-mentioned reactionary regrets, I must at the outset disclaim the mere aesthetic point of view which looks upon … the reaper, his work, his wife, and his dinner, as so many elements which compose a pretty tapestry hanging.”

He did think that machine labor was degrading, but he laid the blame for this at man's door, and pointed out (in another lecture) that machines could relieve degradation as well as create it: “I have spoken of machinery being used freely for releasing people from the more mechanical and repulsive part of necessary labour; and I know that to some ... machinery is particularly distasteful, and they will be apt to say you will never get your surroundings pleasant so long as you are surrounded by machinery. I don't quite admit that; it is the allowing machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays...”

These concessions were limited: his long-term hope was for the reign of Socialism, the simplification of life, and the limitation of machinery once again. But in the the short-term, he quite admitted that “as an instrument for forcing on us better conditions of life, it [machinery] has been, and for some time yet will be, indispensable.”  

A Drunken Promise to Tennyson

Portrait of Tennyson, by Millais.
A figure who inspired upstanding behavior...

William Morris's friend, William Allingham, was an Irish man of letters with a penchant for collecting famous friends. He was also a devoted keeper of diaries. As a result, his unfinished autobiography, "William Allingham, a Diary" is an amazing resource, sprinkled with tales of Morris, Rossetti, Carlyle, and Tennyson.

This is one of my favorite stories from the diary, a re-telling of a story that Tennyson had told Allingham:

I was at an hotel in Covent Garden, and went out one morning for a walk in the Piazza. A man met me, tolerably well-dressed but battered-looking. I never saw him before that I know of. He pulled off his hat and said, “Beg pardon, Mr. Tennyson, might I say a word to you?” I stopped. “I've been drunk for three days and I want to make a solemn promise to you, Mr Tennyson, that I won't do so any more.” I said that was a good resolve, and I hoped he would keep it. He said, “I promise you I will, Mr. Tennyson,” and added, “Might I shake your hand?” I shook hands with him, and he thanked me and went on his way.” 

One Good Thing to Come out of America

An Attack on a Galleon by Howard Pyle. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

This year, The Delaware Art Museum turns 100. Their excellent collection of Pre-Raphaelite art didn't join the museum until 1935, so the only works to fully celebrate the centennial this year are about a hundred pieces by a single artist: Howard Pyle. Pyle was an American illustrator, artist and author. His art formed the heart of the new “Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts” collection in 1912, after his grieving friends and students banded together to create an institution in his memory.

His illustrations for magazines and books were very well known in his lifetime, drawing praise from American and European artists alike. Vincent Van Gogh was especially taken with his drawings of an old-time Quaker village in Harper's Magazine in 1881, which he thought “astounding”.

Pyle is perhaps best known for his collection of tales, “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood”, which was published in 1883. Although the story of Robin Hood dates from the medieval period, and had been partially treated by the famous author Sir Walter Scott, Pyle's book was entirely devoted to the outlaw, one of the earliest books to do so in a popular fashion. It was a hit.*

The book even reached England, and found its way into the discerning hands of William Morris. It was right up Morris's street, and not just because of its sympathetic treatment of the tales. Pyle had carefully designed the whole book, which included flourishes of medieval manuscript motifs and sixty-one of this own illustrations. According to art critic Joseph Pennell, Morris had “thought up to that time [that] … nothing good artistically could come out of America." Pyle's beautiful, Romantic book changed Morris's opinion: he was “impressed greatly”.

So when I say Happy 100^th birthday to the Delaware Art Museum, I mean to say happy birthday as well to the seed of its collection: Pyle's swashbuckling, adventuresome illustrations and paintings.

*No such luck for many others, including John B. Marsh's version from 1865.

Life is Fun! Grow Tall!

Bradbury in 1975 (Photo by Alan Light)

In honor of Ray Bradbury, who passed away on Tuesday night at the age of 91, I thought I'd share a clip from his Paris Review interview from 2010:

“That’s what we have to do for everyone, give the gift of life with our books. Say to a girl or boy at age ten, Hey, life is fun! Grow tall! I’ve talked to more biochemists and more astronomers and technologists in various fields, who, when they were ten years old, fell in love with John Carter and Tarzan and decided to become something romantic. Burroughs put us on the moon. All the technologists read Burroughs. I was once at Caltech with a whole bunch of scientists and they all admitted it. Two leading astronomers—one from Cornell, the other from Caltech—came out and said, Yeah, that’s why we became astronomers. We wanted to see Mars more closely.

I find this in most fields. The need for romance is constant, and again, it’s pooh-poohed by intellectuals. As a result they’re going to stunt their kids. You can’t kill a dream. Social obligation has to come from living with some sense of style, high adventure, and romance.”

Morris would have agreed heartily. As a boy, he learned the romance of life from Sir Walter Scott's novels like Ivanhoe and Waverley. That excitement and love of the world drove him to become a Socialist and an activist, and to beautify his surroundings with his design firm. It also drove him to write his own fantastical stories, inspiring younger writers like J.R.R. Tolkien.

The gift continues to be passed down in an unbroken chain. Bradbury is a part of this, which means that he achieved one of his most ambitious goals: when he was twelve, he decided that he would never die. In a very important sense, he hasn't.

Our Fat Vic

“I am sorry poor old Tennyson thought himself bound to write an ode on our fat Vic’s Jubilee: have you seen it? It is like Martin Tupper for all the world.” *

By the time of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887, William Morris was an ardent Socialist, and he clearly wasn't that keen on what the Queen represented. To mock her and the whole establishment of the monarchy, he had a collection of colorful nicknames for her. He called her “fat Vic” for obvious reasons; “Widow Guelph”, which drew on an old name from her family, transforming her into an ordinary widow rather than a royal; and “Empress Brown”, which saucily played on her close friendship with her servant, John Brown, after she'd become Empress of India.

Morris died the year before Fat Vic's diamond jubilee, but had he lived to see it, he wouldn't have liked it one bit.

* For the quotation, see p39 of this article.

Don't forget to get your thigh-boots...

"William Morris Climbing a Mountain in Iceland" From www.leicestergalleries.com.

The stresses of packing for my upcoming summer-long adventure, and for a move in the fall, made me sympathize with Charley Faulkner, a longtime friend of Morris's. Faulkner, despite his poor health, signed up to go to Iceland with Morris in 1871, and was probably overwhelmed when he kept getting letters like this:

“I have bought a cork bed for your use, but couldn't buy your water-proof coat without your trying it: if you get one yourself it should be that stout india-rubber stuff not the light-coloured M[agnússon] and I both have hoods to ours. Don't forget to get your thigh-boots — and order your breeches if you are going in them, as I shall. Magnússon advises us to take saddles with us after all: I have borrowed one from my mother What will you do? I have seen a second-hand one... A gun I have borrowed I think I told you. I need not warn you perhaps to take an over plus of money out....”

The Icelandic adventure ended up being great fun, but as the packing list hints, it was also quite difficult and exhausting. Faulkner was a devoted friend.

The letter excerpt is from the 1st edition of The Collected Letters of William Morris, Volume I edited by Norman Kelvin. It's p137, letter 138.

Morris's Least Favorite Scott

George Gilbert Scott's St. Pancras Station and (former) Midland Grand Hotel in London.

Sir George Gilbert Scott was the architect of some of the most beloved neo-Gothic structures in Victorian England; he was also a famous “restorer” of countless cathedrals and abbeys. But after Scott died in 1878, Morris called him “that (happily) dead dog”.

Scott's knack for extreme ecclesiastical makeovers made him some enemies, and Morris was clearly one of them. Things had started out badly between the two men - just months after Morris left Oxford's Exeter College in 1856, Scott knocked down the college's lovely Jacobean Chapel to make room for a new chapel in a gothic style – and relations never improved.

Morris hated Scott's work so much that he made it part of his own life's work to keep Scott and others away from historical buildings. In 1877, Morris proposed the formation of his “Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings” (SPAB) with an urgent letter to the Athenaeum, in which he denounced Scott by name. Shortly after, a man named Sir Edmund Lechmere sent Morris's letter along to Scott, provoking a long, thoughtful response to the criticism.

Morris's letter to the Athenaeum and Scott's letter to Sir Edmund, when read together, constitute a sort of discussion between the two men. I've arranged excerpts from their letters into a conversation, to give a sense of the conflict between Morris and Scott as it stood in 1877, one short year before Scott's death.

MORRIS: My eye just now caught the word 'restoration' in the morning paper, and, on looking closer, I saw that this time it is nothing less than the Minster of Tewkesbury that is to be destroyed by Sir Gilbert Scott.

SCOTT: You, my dear Sir Edmund, know whether I am “destroying” the church, or contemplating such treatment of it as is intended by that term. You know whether I am “hopeless, because interest, habit, and ignorance bind” me. Nay, you know whether I have obliterated a single chisel-mark of the old masons, and whether I have not, lovingly and carefully, traced out the almost obliterated evidence and relics of much of their work …

MORRIS: ...Your paper has so steadily and courageously opposed itself to these acts of barbarism which the modern architect, parson, and squire call 'restoration,' that it would be waste of words to enlarge here on the ruin that has been wrought by their hands; but, for the saving of what is left, I think I may write a word of encouragement...

SCOTT: ... painful and galling as it is, I rejoice in such letters and protests: for true—most dreadfully true—it is that what “modern architect, parson, and squire call restoration,” has wrought wholesale ruin among our ancient buildings. I have lifted up my voice on this subject for more than thirty years, and, though not faultless, have striven with all my might to avoid such errors, and to prevent their commission by others. I feel more deeply on this subject than on any other ….

I am, therefore, willing to be sacrificed by being made the victim in a cause which I have so intensely at heart.

MORRIS: What I wish for, therefore, is that an association should be set on foot to keep a watch on old monuments, to protest against all 'restoration' that means more than keeping out wind and weather, and, by all means, literary and other, to awaken a feeling that our ancient monuments are not mere ecclesiastical toys, but sacred monuments of the nation's growth and hope.” 

Photo via Beth M527 on flickr, some rights reserved.