I, too, was one of his comrades in the cause; I, too, basked in the genial sunshine of his friendship; I, too, feel bitterly his loss, and beg to be allowed to lay the tribute of my grateful memory on his bier.
To those of us who remember how, in the early days of the movement, he joined our ranks, how he threw himself into the party-work with all the glowing ardour of his soul, with all the weight find prestige of his favourable position in the society which he bated—the memory of our brilliant comrade will ever remain precious and inspiring.
William Morris, the singer of "The Earthly Paradise," did not become a Socialist through scientific research and statistic calculation. His quick and loving eye for everything natural, beautiful, and true; his intense hatred of sham, fraud, and brutality, predisposed him to be a warrior in the revolution against a social order in which ugliness and falsehood reigned supreme. When he was brought face to face with the theory of scientific Socialism, he grasped its truth at once; and when he perceived the promise of activity in the striving towards a life of freedom and beauty for the masses of the people, his inborn zeal for work and love of battle made him forthwith throw in his lot with those of us whose Socialism was neither superstitious nor utopian, but realistic and militant.
His accession to our ranks was not merely a gain of ornament, but of strength. His sincerity was so striking and his enthusiasm so catching that many a doubtful waverer was carried into our camp by the supposition that a cause could not be bad to which William Morris had lent his name and given his best endeavours. His love of our cause made him overcome his natural dislike to theoretical dissertations, especially of an economical kind, and studying the standard works of modern Socialism he gradually made their reasoning his own. Seeing that the art of public speaking would increase his effectiveness in the work of propaganda, he who was at first a rather indifferent speaker, practised his tongue through lecture and debate, and thus he almost gained the mastership upon a field of art in which he was not greatly gifted.
There is no doubt that the agitation into which he had thus vigorously thrown himself did influence and modify some of his most cherished notions, for just as with his knowledge and his love of art he beautified a movement the school of which was all too purely economic and political, and just as he endowed our propaganda with the charming halo of his sweet imagination, so in return did scientific Socialism with its base of facts and with its logical conclusions teach him in the end many things. It showed him the historical development of Society and its political expression in the form of state; the potent factors in the game of party and the portentous need of our organisation.
Thus he, who with Ruskin abhorred the rigid ugliness of hard and fast production by mechanical contrivance as opposed to the individual deft and beautiful in human handiwork, allowed himself to be convinced that machinery would in the society of the future play the part of hewer of wood and drawer of water—the part of redeemer of man's aspirations, striving upward from the dust of its labour-stricken existence.
Likewise did he give way—to some extent—in his views as to politics. Not that he ever hated them any less, but he came to admit the necessity of political action for the workers in a society where political power is used for economical ends, and where the sincere administration of recognised political jugglery is replacing the insincere worship of an old hypothetical deity.
As he often used to tell me in conversation, he did not like these conclusions, but he did not see how any logical mind could possibly escape them.
To serve the cause of Socialism he would not only do anything "he was told" (as he expressed himself), but he would do things which he was begged (by me, for instance) not to do, like the selling of the Commonweal in the public streets.
But whilst be scorned to spare himself and did such and other things "all for the cause," he drew a line at one thing, and that was "compromise of principle." Not that he rejected the device as something for ever and absolutely bad. He admitted its necessity for politicians (of which he was none) in extreme cases with undisguised horror, whilst for those who make the driving of bargains in compromise their political business and revel in the glory of "their dirty work," he had nothing but withering contempt.
His personal company was so refreshing because of his being a man of almost hurtful straightforwardness; a man of "Yes," or " No," of "I will," or "I will not," who had no mercy for the "ifs" and "buts" of the compromising conscience-mongers who beset his path.
Yet now that he is dead, that his hands are cold and his lips are sealed for ever, the scribes of superstition and the oracles of conceit come forward to claim our immortal William as one of their own. The first profess to find that he was, after all, not without "religious feeling," and the others assert that in the end he had "practically" lived the life of a temporising opportunist.
That our William Morris showed religious feeling in his "Dream of John Ball " is not to be denied. He could not possibly picture the conversation with his hero with any degree of truthfulness unless he showed his sympathetic understanding of such emotion but this is far from the "religious feeling" which modern respectability exacts, and which our dead comrade never yielded.
That Morris took two deep and chastening lessons, first from that march to Trafalgar Square, where he saw unorganised "right" driven to the winds like chaff before the well-drilled "might" of society's night watchmen, and then from that breaking up of the Socialist League through the unchecked elements of Anarchism and police, is true. In how far those lessons prompted him in his later years to return to the purely artistic pursuits of his earlier manhood I will not venture to say. But one thing I am certain of, and that is that he did not turn a pessimist or a temporiser on that or any other account. A man like William Morris, who has fought in the forefront of the battle, and spent his best energies in the people's cause, has a right to return to his tent and indulge in cherished habits more suitable to his advancing years than the clamour of party strife. He need not therefore be supposed to have approved of compromising as a programme, and of temporising as a policy for the militant youth of a class-conscious proletariat.
When I saw him last, some weeks before his death, he appeared, though bodily weakened, still the same old comrade in heart and soul, with the same unshaken, cheerful trust in the certain triumph of Socialism; a trust without which no warriors of any worldly cause ever gained victory.
No, the life of our beloved departed Morris, a life so unsophisticated, so warmly pulsing with enthusiasm, and so rich in beautiful results; a life so worthy of admiration and emulation by the best among us; a life so true to its highest aspirations—it gives the lie to those who so blindly and persistently assert that in the upward transformation of the human race enthusiasm is of no account!
In Memory of Our William Morris
Andreas Scheu
Justice, 17th October 1896, p. 6
Graham Seaman, September 2020.