part of it, might be effected without imperilling the progress of society and might even promote such progress. As in all surgical operations, the danger lies in the delicacy of the organism upon which it is proposed to impose mechanical pressure. Mere annihilation of a society could by no means be regarded as an incident of progress. While thus Morris's propaganda, like the previous propaganda of Ruskin, cannot be considered as having other than an extremely shaky philosophical foundation, both rendered service in disturbing even to the point of irritation the complacent optimism current in their time. Social progress may take a direction quite different from that imagined by either of them; but none the less, the society of the future will owe much to their idealism. I have already described the circumstances under which I became acquainted with Morris about 1884. Morris was then fifty years of age, stout almost to the extent of rotundity, with a rolling gait not unlike that of a sailor. In his youth Morris had been fond of sailing, and had probably acquired his roll in that way. One of my children, a serious little boy of about three years, was so struck by Morris's gait that he followed Morris as he walked up and down the room, imitating his roll with painstaking fidelity, evidently not for the purpose of making fun of Morris but for the purpose of acquiring the roll. Morris's hair and beard were ample and were dark grey; not yet was there a suggestion of white. His hair was rather coarse, and the hairs of his beard when he was excited seemed to stand out as if they were affected by an electrical discharge. In spite of his bulk, Morris's physical activity was boundless, corresponding, as it seemed, to the restlessness of his mind. He almost literally rushed from one end of Great Britain to the other, lecturing on Socialism; and from London to Merton Abbey looking after his business. Meanwhile he was writing prose copiously, poetry more exiguously, and translating the Odyssey. These literary labours were generally performed at Hammersmith or at Kelmscott Manor in Gloucestershire, where he sometimes spent week-ends; but very largely while he was travelling. His custom on a long journey was to secure a first-class compartment where he could be alone, and to work steadily. Early one morning I called upon him at a hotel in a provincial town. We were going somewhere to breakfast. I found him in one of the public rooms working on his translation of the Odyssey. This feverish activity which enabled him to work at will under almost any conditions, thereby disproving his own hypothesis, was not accompanied by the will to rest or by the power to rest at will, and this defect probably contributed to the shortening of his life. One evening in Glasgow, I think it was in 1886, after dinner at the house of Bruce Glasier, Morris pulled out of his pocket a copy of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. He had, he said, read a little bit in the train, and if we did not mind he would go on from the point he had reached. He read to us for six or seven hours, that is, till between two and three in the morning. When I saw him early next day I naturally said that I hoped he had rested well, apologising for keeping him up so late. William Morris. "I rested well enough when I did get to sleep; but I had to finish Huckleberry Finn." James Mavor. "When did you finish him?" " William Morris. 'About five o'clock." There is a sequel to this incident. Mark Twain's seventieth birthday was celebrated by his friends in New York. They gave him a dinner. In replying to the toast of his health he made a characteristically humorous speech. In the course of it he mentioned that he had been told by someone that Darwin had read and enjoyed some of his books. When the Life of Darwin, by his son, was published, he had procured it immediately and examined it in order to see if there was in it any reference to himself. There was; this was it: "Towards the close of my father's life, when his mind was somewhat enfeebled, he spent some of his time reading trashy American novels." I had seen Mark Twain in London, at a soirée of the Royal Society; but I did not know him. On the strength of this slender tie, and desiring to administer balm to any wound of the spirit which might have been experienced in spite of appearances to the contrary, I wrote to Mark Twain and told him the story of Morris and Huckleberry Finn. I was glad I did so, for he liked it very much and wrote me a charming letter, in which he said he had placed mine among his treasured possessions. Morris was not a great reader, and least of all of minor literature. He regarded a book, if it was a fine piece of caligraphy or of typography, as a thing of beauty to look at, to handle, and sometimes to work upon. If it was a book of great moment in a language he knew, he looked upon it as a fit subject for transmutation into his own language. He was thus drawn to early manuscripts and to early printing because they contributed ideas for designs; and to the Norse sagas and the Homeric poems because he might weave these afresh into fabrics of his own-into his own mellifluous prose or verse. He had no more regard for commentators than Swift had, and he was not interested in controversies over nice equivalents in translation. For convenience, and in order to save himself the trouble of consulting the bulky Liddell and Scott or other Greek dictionary, he sometimes used a commonplace crib. Nevertheless, especially in those passages of the Odyssey where the author describes textiles and other products of handicraft, Morris's interpretation is certainly as subtle and probably infinitely more accurate than any other, because he knew what the poet (or poetess) must have meant to say. In short, the fire, sometimes burning with great intensity, at which Morris warmed himself was kindled by his own genius and not by the genius of other ages. Walter Crane, in writing to me after Morris's death, remarked that Morris "never had the chill of poverty in his bones." This was true; and it is possible that, had Morris not been from the beginning possessed of ample means, the course of his life in his earlier years might have been somewhat different from what it was. Yet, given Morris's heredity and personality, deficiency of fortune would have been speedily remedied by him. He knew very well the value of the possession of the means of life, and he would have set himself to acquire these with the same industry he employed to amplify the means of life for others. With his practical genius and sagacity Morris could under no circumstances have remained for any length of time a poor man, no matter what buffeting of fortune he might have experienced. There was in Morris a curious example of what might be called inheritance of an acquired habit and the exercise of it without any need for its exercise. Morris's father was a bill-broker. In the billbroking business it is necessary not merely to have a large capital but to hold large sums available for instant use. If a bill-broker is not able to discount sound "paper" on the instant, he might as well close his doors. He must therefore keep a large credit at his bankers. Morris was never in his father's business. His father died when he was a boy at school. Neither Morris's own business nor his personal requirements rendered it necessary for him to keep in the relatively unproductive form of bank credits any considerable sums of money, yet he habitually did so. Indeed, he kept in that way sums of money bearing a large proportion to his total fortune, and thereby his income from investments, had his money been shrewdly invested, was less than it might have been. Morris thus did not derive the advantage from his wealth which he might readily have derived. I think it was in 1885 that Morris came to Glasgow, partly to lecture to the Socialist League and partly to give readings from his own poems to a fashionable audience. It was intended that the net proceeds of the latter effort should be devoted to the maintenance of a reading-room for the members of the League; but unfortunately the expenses were conceived on too generous a scale and there were no net proceeds. The readings were a great success. John Nichol took the chair and introduced Morris in an affectionate and appreciative speech. Some of the items in the programme were suggested by Nichol, for example, a portion of The Death of Jason, which Nichol thought Morris's finest poem. Other items, such as a passage from Sigurd the Volsung, were suggested by myself. Morris's reading was decidedly not that of the ordinary platform reader. He read in an even, rather sing-song voice wholly in keeping with the narrative character of his verse. His reading had a haunting charm; it brought out the rhythm of the poetry, but it had no dramatic quality. His poetry did not possess and could not educe in reading the quality of drama. On many occasions Morris read to me passages from his poems, and he always brought to my mind that he was a Welsh bard reciting, in language and rhythm peculiarly his own, the ancient legends that had come down to him. The illusion would have been perfect had Morris's reading been accompanied by the plucking of a string. In 1889 Morris published The Roots of the Mountains. When he showed me the proofs of the first pages he asked, "How do you like the type?" The type was the same as he had employed for The House of the Wolfings, published in 1888. It was not designed by Morris, but was selected by him and Emery Walker from a number of old types which were available. To my mind the type was too small for the length of the line used in The Roots of the Mountains. I therefore answered that I did not like it. William Morris. "Why?" James Mavor. "Because it hurts my eyes." James Mavor. "Damn your type. Your type in itself is not bad; but the line is one-third too long. My eye, which has a normal range, requires to adjust itself after reading two-thirds only of the line. To read your type is therefore unduly fatiguing. Your type should be larger, or your line shorter." I don't know that Morris was convinced at the time; but he did not use the type again. He proceeded to design types which were founded for him, and thus gave the world the superb products of the Kelmscott Press. The decorative qualities of Morris's type are indisputably fine; but since each page is considered as an integral decorated |