\%f^ :^\ \ J #% ■'y,0m^ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/artofpeopleaddreOOmorrrich THE ART OF THE PEOPLE WILLIAM MORRIS Wc^c Urt of tbe people An Address delivered before the Birmingham Society of Arts, February 19th, 1879 By WILLIAM MORRIS Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Publisher Fine Arts Building, Chicago MDCCCCII CASE B Copyright 190a Ralph Fletcher Seymour THE ART OF THE PEOPLE ( And the men of labour spent their strength in daily struggling for bread to maintain the vital strength they labour with: so living in a daily cir- culation of sorrow, living but to work, and working but to live, as if daily bread were the only end of a wearisome life, and a wearisome life the only oc- casion of daily bread.— Daniel Defoe* tecHrtofme people An Address by WILLIAM MORRIS Author of The Earthly Paradise/ Etc. KNOW THAT A LARGE PRO PORTION OF THOSE HERE PRESENT ARE EITHER ALREADY PRACTISING THE FINE Arts, or are being specially educated to that end, and I feel that I may be ex- pected to address myself specially to these. But since it is not to be doubted that we are all met together because of the interest we take in what concerns these arts, I would rather address myself to you all as representing the public in general. Indeed, those of you who are specially studying Art could learn little would be useful to yourselves learning under The Art o£ competent masters— most competent I am glad to the People know— by means of a system which should teach you all you need, if you have been right in making the first step of devoting yourselves to Art; I mean if you are aiming at the right thing, and in some way or another understand what Art means, which you may well do without being able to express it, and if you are resolute to follow on the path which that inborn knowledge has shown to you; if it is otherwise with you than this, no system and no teachers will help you to produce real art of any kind, be it never so humble* Those of you who are real artists know well enough all the special advice I can give you, and in how few words it may be said— follow nature, study antiquity, make your own art, and do not steal it, grudge no expense of trouble, patience, or courage, in the striving to accomplish the hard thing you have set yourselves to do* You have had all that said to you twenty times, I doubt not; and twenty times twenty have said it to yourselves, and now I have said it again to you, and done neither you nor me good nor harm thereby. So true it all is, so well known, and so hard to follow* 5UT to me, and I hope to you. Art is a very serious thing, and cannot by any means be dissociated from the weighty matters that occupy the thoughts of men; and there are principles underlying the practice of it, 8 on which all serious-minded men, may— nay, must The Art o£ —have their own thoughts. It is on some of these the People that I ask your leave to speak, and to address myself, not only to those who are consciously interested in the arts, but to all those also who have considered what the progress of civilisation promises and threatens to those who shall come after us: what there is to hope and fear for the future of the arts, which were born with the birth of civilisation and will only die with its death— what on this side of things, thepresent timeof strife and doubt and change is preparing for the better time, when the change shall have come, the strife be lulled, and the doubt cleared: this is a question, I say, which is indeed weighty, and may well interest all thinking men. jAY, so universally important is it, that I fear lest you should think I am taking too much upon myself to speak to you on so weighty a matter, nor should I have dared to do so, if I did not feel that I am to-night only the mouthpiece of better men than myself, whose hopes and fears I share; and that being so, I am the more emboldened to speak out, if I can, my full mind on the subject, because I am in a city where, if anywhere, men are not contented to live wholly for themselves and the present, but have fully ac- cepted the duty of keeping their eyes open to what- ever new is stirring, so that they may help and be b 9 The Art of helped by any truth that there may be in it. Nor the People can I forget that since you have done me the great honour of choosing me for the President of your Society of Arts for the past year, and of asking me to speak to you to-night I should be doing less than my duty if I did not according to my lights, speak out straightforwardly whatever seemed to me might be in a small degree useful to you. Indeed, I think I am among friends, who may forgive me if I speak rashly, but scarcely if I speak falsely. |HE aim of your Society and School of Arts is, as I understand it, to further those arts by education widely spread. A very great object is that, and well worthy of the rep- utation of this great city; but since Birmingham has also, I rejoice to know, a great reputation for not allowing things to go about shamming life when the brains are knocked out of them, I think you should know and see clearly what it is you have undertaken to further by these institutions, and whether you really care about it, or only languidly acquiesce in it— whether, in short, you know it to the heart, and are indeed part and parcel of it, with your own will, or against it; or else have heard say that it is a good thing if any one care to meddle with it. F you are surprised at my putting that question for your consideration, I will tell ^^ you why I do so. There are some of us who love Art most, and I may say most lO faithfully, who see for certain that such love is The Art of rare nowadays. We cannot help seeing, that be- the People sides a vast number of people, who (poor souls!) are sordid and brutal of mind and habits, and have had no chance or choice in the matter, there are many high-minded, thoughtful, and cultivated men who inwardly think the arts to be a foolish accident of civilisation— nay, worse perhaps, a nuisance, a dis- ease, a hindrance to human progress. Some of these, doubtless, are very busy about other sides of thought. They are, as I should put it, so artistically engrossed by the study of science, politics, or what not, that they have necessarily narrowed their minds by their hard and praiseworthy labours. But since such men are few, this does not account for a prevalent habit of thought that looks upon Art as at best trifling. HAT is wrong, then, with us or the arts, |§ since what was once accounted so glori- ous, is now deemed paltry? The question is no light one; for, to put the matter in its clearest light, I will say that the leaders of modern thought do for the most part sincerely and single-mindedly hate and despise the arts; and you know well that as the leaders are, so must the people be; and that means that we who are met together here for the furthering of Art by wide-spread education are either deceiving our- selves and wasting our time, since we shall one day be of the same opinion as the best men among us, 11 The Art of or else we represent a small minority that is right the People 3S minorities sometimes are, while those upright men aforesaid, and the great mass of civilised men> have been blinded by untoward circumstances, HAT we are of this mind— the minority that is right— is, I hope, the case. I hope we know assuredly that the arts we have met together to further are necessary to the life of man, if the progress of civiliza- tion is not to be as causeless as the turning of a wheel that makes nothing. How, then, shall we, the minority, carry out the duty which our position thrusts upon us, of striving to grow into a majority? ]F we could only explain to those thought- ful men, and the millions of whom they are the flower, what the thing is that we love, which is to us as the bread we eat, and the air we breathe, but about which they know nothing and feel nothing, save a vague instinct of re- pulsion, then the seed of victory might be sown. This is hard indeed to do; yet if we ponder upon a chapter of ancient or mediaeval history, it seems to me some glimmer of a chance of doing so breaks in upon us. Take for example a century of the Byzantine Em- pire, weary yourselves with reading the names of the pedants, tyrants, and tax-gatherers to whom the terrible chain which long-dead Rome once forged, 12 still gave the power of cheating people into think- The Art of ing that they were necessary lords of the world* the People Turn then to the lands they governed, and read and forget a long string of the causeless murders of Northern and Saracen pirates and robbers. That is pretty much the sum of what so-called history has left us of the tale of those days — the stupid lan- guor and the evil deeds of kings and scoundrels. Must we turn away then, and say that all was evil? How then did men live from day to day? How then did Europe grow into intelligence and freedom? It seems there were others than those of whom his- tory (so-called) has left us the names and the deeds. These, the raw material for the treasury and the slave-market we now call 'the people/ and we know that they were working all that while. Yes, and that their work was not merely slaves' work, the meal-trough before them and the whip behind them; for though history (so-called) has forgotten them, yet their work has not been forgotten, but has made another history— the history of Art. There is not an ancient city in the East or the West that does not bear some token of their grief, and joy, and hope. From Ispahan to Northumberland, there is no building built between the seventh and seven- teenth centuries that does not show the influence of the labour of that oppressed and neglected herd of men. No one of them, indeed, rose high above his fellows. There was no Plato, or Shakespeare, 13 The Art of or Michael Angelo amongst them. Yet scattered the People as it was among manymen,howstrong their thought was, how long it abided, how far it travelled ! ND so it was ever through all those days when Art was so vigorous and progres- sive. Who can say how little we should know of many periods, but for their art? History (so-called) has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; Art has remem- bered the people, because they created. THINK> then, that this knowledge we have of the life of past times gives us R^l some token of the way we should take in meeting those honest and single- hearted men who above all things desire the world's progress, but whose minds are, as it were, sick on this point of the arts. Surely you may say to them: When all is gained that you (and we) so long for, what shall we do then? That great change which we are working for, each in his own way, will come like other changes, as a thief in the night, and will be with us before we know it; but let us imagine that its consummation has come suddenly and dramatically, acknowledged and hailed by all right- minded people; and what shall we do then, lest we begin once more to heap up fresh corruption for the woeful labour of ages once again? I say, as we turn away from the flagstaff where the new ban- ner has been just run up; as we depart, our ears 14 yet ringing with the blare of the heralds' trumpets The Art o£ that have proclaimed the new order of things, what the People shall we turn to then, what must we turn to then? To what else, save to our work, our daily labour? ITH what, then, shall we adorn it when we have become wholly free and reason- ^ able? It is necessary toil, but shall it be toil only ? Shall all we can do with it be to shorten the hours of that toil to the utmost, that the hours of leisure may be long beyond what men used to hope for? and what then shall we do with the leisure, if we say that all toil is irksome? Shall we sleep it all away?— Yes, and never wake up again, I should hope, in that case. What shall we do then? what shall our neces- sary hours of labour bring forth? HAT will be a question for all men in that day when many wrongs are righted, and when there will be no classes of deg- radation on whom the dirty work of the world can be shovelled; and if men's minds are still sick and loathe the arts, they will not be able to answer that question. ^NCE men sat under grinding tyr- annies, amidst violence and fear so great, that nowadays we wonder how they lived through twenty- four hours of it, till we remember that then, as now, their daily labour 15 The Art of was the main part of their lives, and that that daily the People labour was sweetened by the daily creation of Art; and shall we who are delivered from the evils they bore, live drearier days than they did? Shall men, who have come forth from so many tyrannies, bind themselves to yet another one, and become the slaves of nature, piling day upon day of hopeless, useless toil? Must this go on worsening till it comes to this at last— that the world shall have come into its inheritance, and with all foes con- quered and nought to bind it, shall choose to sit down and labour for ever amidst grim ugliness? How, then, were all our hopes cheated, what a gulf of despair should we tumble into then? ^N truth, it cannot be; yet if that sickness of repulsion to the arts were to go on hopelessly, nought else would be, and the extinction of the love of beauty and im- agination would prove to be the extinction of civil- isation* But that sickness the world will one day throw off, yet will, I believe, pass through many pains in so doing, some of which will look very like the death-throes of Art, and some, perhaps, will be grievous enough to the poor people of the world; since hard necessity, I doubt, works many of the world's changes, rather than the purblind striving to see, which we call the foresight of man. i6 EANWHILE. remember that I asked The Art o£ just now, what was amiss in Art or in the People ourselves that this sickness was upon us. Nothing is wrong or can be with Art in the abstract— that must always be good for man- kind, or we are all wrong together: but with Art, as we of these latter days have known it, there is much wrong; nay, what are we here for to-night if that is not so? were not the schools of art founded all over the country some thirty years ago because we had found out that popular art was fading— or per- haps had faded out from amongst us? jS to the progress made since then in this country — and in this country only, if at all— it is hard for me to speak without being either ungracious or insincere, and yet speak I must, I say, then, that an apparent external progress in some ways is obvious, but I do not know how far that is hopeful, for time must try it, and prove whether it be a passing fashion or the first token of a real stir among the great mass of civilised men. To speak quite frankly, and as one friend to another, I must needs say that even as I say those words they seem too good to be true. And yet— who knows?— so wont are we to frame history for the future as well as for the past, so often are our eyes blind both when we look back- ward and when we look forward, because we have been gazing so intently at our own days, our own c 17 The Art of lines. May all be better than I think it! the People T any rate let us count our gains, and set them against less hopeful signs of the times. In England, then— and as far as I know, in England only— painters of pic- tures have grown, I believe, more numerous, and certainly more conscientious in their work, and in some cases— and this more especially in England- have developed and expressed a sense of beauty which the world has not seen for the last three hundred years. This is certainly a very great gain, which is not easy to over-estimate, both for those who make the pictures and those who use them. URTHERMORE, in England, and in England only, there has been a great im- provement in architecture and the arts that attend it— arts which it was the spe- cial province of the afore-mentioned schools to revive and foster. This, also, is a considerable gain to the users of the works so made, but I fear a gain less important to most of those concerned in makincf t hem. ****'^ GAINST these gains we must, I am very sorry to say, set the fact not easy to be accounted for, that the rest of the civilised world (so called) seems to have done little more than stand still in these matters; and that among ourselves these improvements have i8 concerned comparatively few people, the mass of The Art of our population not being in the least touched by the People them; so that the great bulk of our architecture— the art which most depends on the taste of the people at large— grows worse and worse every day* MUST speak also of another piece of discouragement before I go further, I daresay many of you will remember how emphatically those who first had to do with the movement of which the foundation of our art-schools was a part called the attention of our pattern-designers to the beautiful works of the East. This was surely most well judged of them> for they bade us look at an art at once beautiful orderly, living in our own day> and above all popular. Now, it is a grievous result of the sickness of civilisation that this art is fast disap- pearing before the advance of western conquest and commerce — fast, and every day faster. While we are met here in Birmingham to further the spread of education in art. Englishmen in India are, in their short-sightedness, actively destroying the very sources of that education— jewellery, metal-work, pottery, calico-printing, brocade- weaving, carpet-making— all the famous and his- torical arts of the great peninsula have been for long treated as matters of no importance, to be thrust aside for the advantage of any paltry scrap of so-called commerce; and matters are now 19 The Art of speedily coming to an end there. I daresay some the People of you saw the presents which the native Princes gave to the Prince of Wales on the occasion of his progress through India. I did myselt I will not say with great disappointment for I guessed what they would be like, but with great griet since there was scarce here and there a piece of goods among these costly gifts, things given as great treasures, which faintly upheld the ancient fame of the cradle of the industrial arts. Nay, in some cases, it would have been laughable, if it had not been so sad, to see the piteous simplicity with which the con- quered race had copied the blank vulgarity of their lords. And this deterioration we are now, as I have said, actively engaged in forwarding. I have read a little book, a handbook to the Indian Court of last year's Paris Exhibition, which takes the occasion of noting the state of manufactures in India one by one. 'Art manufactures,* you would call them; but, indeed, all manufactures are, or were, 'art manufactures' in India. Dr. Birdwood, the author of this book, is of great experience in Indian life, a man of science, and a lover of the arts* His story, by no means a new one to me, or others interested in the East and its labour, is a sad one indeed. The conquered races in their hopelessness are everywhere giving up the genuine practice of their own arts, which we know ourselves, as we have indeed loudly proclaimed, are founded on the 20 truest and most natural principles. The often- The Art of praised perfection of these arts is the blossom of the People many ages of labour and change, but the conquered races are casting it aside as a thing of no value, so that they may conform themselves to the inferior art or rather the lack of art, of their conquerors. In some parts of the country the genuine arts are quite destroyed ; in many others nearly so ; in all they have more or less begun to sicken. So much so is this the case, that now for some time the Government has been furthering this deterioration. As for example, no doubt with the best intentions, and certainly in full sympathy with the general English public, both at home and in India, the Government is now manufacturing cheap Indian carpets in the Indian gaols. I do not say that it is a bad thing to turn out real work, or works of art, in gaols; on the contrary, I think it good if it be properly managed. But in this case, the Govern- ment, being, as I said, in full sympathy with the English public, has determined that it will make its wares cheap, whether it make them nasty or not. Cheap and nasty they are, I assure you; but, though they are the worst of their kind, they would not be made thus, if everything did not tend the same way. And it is the same everywhere and with all Indian manufactures, till it has come to this— that these poor people have all but lost the one distinction, the one glory that conquest had 21 The Art of left them. Their famous wares, so praised by the People those who thirty years ago began to attempt the restoration of popular art amongst ourselves, are no longer to be bought at reasonable prices in the common market but must be sought for and treasured as precious relics for the museums we have founded for our art education. In short their art is dead, and the commerce of modern civilisa- tion has slain it. HAT is going on in India is also going on, more or less, all over the East; but I have ^ spoken of India chiefly because I cannot help thinking that we ourselves are re- sponsible for what is happening there. Chance- hap has made us the lords of many millions out there; surely, it behooves us to look to it, lest we give to the people whom we have made helpless scorpions for fish and stones for bread. UT since neither on this side, nor on any other, can art be amended, until the countries that lead civilisation are them- selves in a healthy state about it, let us return to the consideration of its condition among ourselves. And again I say, that obvious as is that surface improvement of the arts within the last few years, I fear too much that there is something wrong about the root of the plant to exult over the bursting of its February buds. 22 HAVE just shown you for one thing that The Art of lovers of Indian and Eastern Art includ- the People ing as they do the heads of our institu- tions for art education, and I am sure many among what are called the governing classes, are utterly powerless to stay its downward course. The general tendency of civilisation is against them, and is too strong for them. GAIN, though many of us love archi- tecture dearly, and believe that it helps the healthiness both of body and soul to live among beautiful things, we of the big towns are mostly compelled to live in houses which have become a by-word of contempt for their ugliness and inconvenience. The stream of civilisation is against us, and we cannot battle against it. NCE more those devoted men who have upheld the standard of truth and beauty amongst us, and whose pictures, painted amidst difficulties that none but a painter can know, show qualities of mind unsurpassed in any age— these great men have but a narrow circle that can understand their works, and are utterly unknown to the great mass of the people: civilisa- tion is so much against them, that they cannot move the people. 23 The Art of the People HEREFORE> looking at all this, I cannot think that all is well with the root of the tree we are cultiva- ting» Indeed, I believe that if other things were but to stand still in the world, this improvement before mentioned would lead to a kind of art which, in that impossible case, would be in a way stable, would perhaps stand still also* This would be an art cultivated professedly by a few, and for a few, who would consider it necessary — a duty, if they could admit duties— to despise the common herd, to hold themselves aloof from all that the world has been struggling for from the first, to guard carefully every approach to their palace of art. It would be a pity to waste many words on the pros- pect of such a school of art as this, which does in a way, theoretically at least, exist at present, and has for its watchword a piece of slang that does not mean the harmless thing it seems to mean- art for art's sake. Its fore-doomed end must be, that art at last will seem too delicate a thing for even the hands of the initiated to touch; and the initiated must at last sit still and do nothing— to the grief of no one. Well,certainly,if I thought you were come here to further such an art as this I could not have stood up and called you friends; though such a feeble folk as I have told you of one could scarce care to call foes. 24 ET, as I say, such men exist and I have The Art o£ troubled you with speaking of them, the People because I know that those honest and intelligent people, who are eager for hu- man progress, and yet lack part of the human senses, and are anti-artistic, suppose that such men are artists, and that this is what art means, and what it does for people, and that such a narrow, cowardly life is what we, fellow-handicraftsmen, aim at. I see this taken for granted continu- ally, even by many who, to say truth, ought to know better, and I long to put the slur from off us; to make people understand that we, least of all men, wish to widen the gulf between the classes, nay, worse still, to make new classes of elevation, and new classes of degradation— new lords and new slaves ; that we, least of all men, want to cultivate the 'plant called man in different ways — here sting- ily, there wastefully: I wish people to understand that the art we are striving for is a good thing which all can share, which will elevate all; in good sooth, if all people do not soon share it there will soon be none to share; if all are not elevated by it, mankind will lose the elevation it has gained. Nor is such an art as we long for a vain dream; such an art once was in times that were worse than these, when there was less courage, kindness, and truth in the world than there is now; such an art there will be hereafter, when there will be d 25 The Art of more courage, kindness, and truth than there is the People now in the world, jET us look backward in history once more for a short while, and then steadily forward till my words are done: I began iL^-jti>Ji^ by saying that part of the common and necessary advice given to Art students was to study antiquity ; and no doubt many of you, like me, have done so; have wandered, for instance, through the galleries of the admirable museum of South Ken- sington, and, like me, have been filled with wonder and gratitude at the beauty which has been born from the brain of man. Now, consider, I pray you, what these wonderful works are, and how they were made; and indeed, it is neither in extrava- gance nor without due meaning that I use the word 'wonderful' in speaking of them. Well, these things are just the common household goods of those past days, and that is one reason why they are so few and so carefully treasured. They were common things in their own day, used without fear of breaking or spoiling— no rarities then— and yet we have called them 'wonderful/ ND how were they made? Did a great artist draw the designs for them— a man ^ of cultivation, highly paid, daintily fed, carefully housed, wrapped up in cotton wool, in short, when he was not at work? By no means. Wonderful as these works are, they 26 were made by 'common fellows/ as the phrase The Art of goes, in the common course of their daily labour^ the People Such were the men we honour in honouring those works. And their labour— do you think it was irksome to them? Those of you who are artists know very well that it was not; that it could not be. Many a grin of pleasure. Til be bound— and you will not contradict me— went to the carrying through of those mazes of mysterious beauty, to the invention of those strange beasts and birds and flowers that we ourselves have chuckled over at South Kensington. While they were at work, at least, these men were not unhappy, and I sup- pose they worked most days, and the most part of the day, as we do. R those treasures of architecture that we study so carefully nowadays— what are they? how were they made? There are great minsters among them, indeed, and palaces of kings and lords, but not many; and, noble and awe-inspiring as these may be, they differ only in size from the little grey church that still so often makes the common-place English landscape beauti- ful, and the little grey house that still, in some parts of the country at least, makes an English village a thing apart, to be seen and pondered on by all who love romance and beauty. These form the mass of our architectural treasures, the houses that everyday people lived in, the unregarded %7 The Art o£ churches in which they worshipped, the People ^^^^ND, once more, who was it that designed and ornamented them? The great archi- tect carefully kept for the purpose, and guarded from the common troubles of common men? By no means. Sometimes, per- haps, it was the monk, the plowman's brother; oftenest his other brother, the village carpenter, smith, mason, what not— 'a common fellow,' whose common everyday labour fashioned works that are to-day the wonder and despair of many a hard-working 'cultivated' architect. And did he loathe his work? No, it is impossible, I have seen, as we most of us have, work done by such men in some out-of-the-way hamlet— where to- day even few strangers ever come, and whose people seldom go five miles from their own doors; in such places, I say, I have seen work so delicate, so careful, and so inventive, that nothing in its way could go further. And I will assert, without fear of contradiction, that no human ingenuity can produce work such as this without pleasure being a third party to the brain that conceived and the hand that fashioned it. Nor are such works rare. The throne of the great Plantagenet, or the great Valois, was no more daintily carved than the seat of the village mass-john, or the chest of the yoeman s good-wife. 28 \0, you see, there was much going on The Art o£ to make life endurable in those times, the People Not every day, you may be sure, was a day of slaughter and tumult, though the histories read almost as if it were so; but every day the hammer chinked on the anvil, and the chisel played about the oak beam, and never with- out some beauty and invention being born of it, and cons equently some human happiness. HAT last word brings me to the very kernel and heart of what I have come here to say to you, and I pray you to think of it most seriously— not as to my words, but as to a thought which is stirring in the world, and wi ll one day grow into something. HAT thing which I understand by real art is the expression by man of his pleasure in labour. I do not be- lieve he can be happy in his labour without expressing that happiness; ^ and especially is this so when he is at work at anything in which he specially excels. A most kind gift is this of nature, since all men, nay, it seems all things too, must labour; so that not only does the dog take pleasure in hunting, and the horse in running, and the bird in flying, but so natural does the idea seem to us, that we imagine to ourselves that the earth and the very elements rejoice in doing their appointed work; and the poets 29 The Art of have told us of the spring meadows smiling, of the the People exultation of the fire> of the countless laughter of the sea. OR until these latter days has man ever rejected this universal gift but always, when he has not been too much per- plexed, too much bound by disease or beaten down by trouble, has striven to make his work at least happy. Pain he has too often found in his pleasure, and weariness in his rest, to trust to these. What matter if his happiness lie with what must be always with him — his work? ]ND, once more, shall we, who have gained so much, forego this gain, the earliest, most natural gain of mankind? If we have to a great extent done so, as I verily fear we have, what strange foglights must have misled us; or rather let me say, how hard pressed we must have been in the battle with the evils we have overcome, to have forgotten the greatest of all evils. I cannot call it less than that. If a man has work to do which he despises, which does not satisfy his natural and rightful desire for pleasure, the greater part of his life must pass un- happily and without self-respect. Consider, I beg of you, what that means, and what ruin must come of it in the end. 30 g^^F I could only persuade you of this, that The Art o£ the chief duty of the civilised world to- the People ^ day is to set about making labour happy =s^ for all, to do its utmost to minimise the amount of unhappy labour— nay, if I could only persuade some two or three of you here present— I should have made a good night's work of it. jO not, at any rate, shelter yourselves from any misgiving you may have be- hind the fallacy that the art-lacking labour of to-day is happy work: for the most of men it is not so. It would take long, perhaps, to show you, and make you fully under- stand that the would-be art which it produces is joyless. But there is another token of its being most unhappy work, which you cannot fail to understand at once— a grievous thing that token is— and I beg of you to believe that I feel the full shame of it, as I stand here speaking of it; but if we do not admit that we are sick, how can we be healed? This hapless token is, that the work done by the civilised world is mostly dishonest work. Look now: I admit that civilisation does make certain things well, things which it knows, con- sciously or unconsciously, are necessary to its present unhealthy condition. These things, to speak shortly, are chiefly machines for carrying on the competition in buying and selling, called 31 The Art of falsely commerce; and machines for the violent the People destruction of life— that is to say, materials for two kinds of war; of which kinds the last is no doubt the worst not so much in itself perhaps, but because on this point the conscience of the world is beginning to be somewhat pricked. But, on the other hand, matters for the carrying on of a dignified daily life, that life of mutual trust, for- bearance, and help, which is the only real life of thinking men— these things the civilised world makes ill, and even increasingly worse and worse. ^F I am wrong in saying this, you know well I am only saying what is widely ^i thought, nay widely said too, for that 5£Si matter. Let me give an instance, familiar enough, of that wide-spread opinion. There is a very clever book of pictures now being sold at the railway bookstalls, called The British Work- ing Man, by one who does not believe in him,'— a title and a book which make me both angry and ashamed, because the two express much injustice, and not a little truth in their quaint, and necessa- rily exaggerated way. It is quite true, and very sad to say, that if anyone nowadays wants a piece of ordinary work done by gardener, carpenter, mason, dyer, weaver, smith, what you will, he will be a lucky rarity if he get it well done. He will, on the contrary, meet on every side with evasion of plain duties, and disregard of other men s rights; yet I 3^ cannot see how the 'British Working Man is to The Art of be made to bear the whole burden of this blame, the People or indeed the chief part of it. I doubt if it be pos- sible for a whole mass of men to do work to which they are driven, and in which there is no hope and no pleasure, without trying to shirk it— at any rate, shirked it has always been under such circum- stances. On the other hand, I know that there are some men so right-minded, that they will, in de- spite of irksomeness and hopelessness, drive right through their work. Such men are the salt of the earth. But must there not be something wrong with a state of society which drives these into that bitter heroism, and the most part into shirking, in- to the depths often of half-conscious self-contempt and degradation? Be sure that there is, that the blindness and hurry of civilisation, as it now is, have to answer a heavy charge as to that enormous amount of pleasureless work— work that tries every muscle of the body and every atom of the brain, and which is done without pleasure and without aim— work which everybody who has to do with tries to shuffle off in the speediest way that dread of starvation or ruin will allow him. ^^ AM as sure of one thing as that I am living and breathing, and it is this : that the dishonesty in the daily arts of life, complaints of which are in all men s mouths, and which I can answer for it does exist, e 33 The Art o£ is the natural and inevitable result of the world in the People the hurry of the war of the counting-house, and the war of the battlefield, having forgotten— of all men, I say, each for the other, having forgotten, that pleasure in our daily labour, which nature cries out for as its due, HEREFORE, I say again, it is necessary to the further progress of civilisation that men should turn their thoughts to some means of limiting, and in the end of doing away with, degrading labour. DO not think my words hitherto spoken have given you any occasion to think that I mean by this either hard or rough labour; I do not pity men much for their hardships, especially if they be accidental; not necessarily attached to one class or one condition, I mean. Nor do I think (I were crazy or dream- ing else) that the work of the world can be carried on without rough labour; but I have seen enough of that to know that it need not be by any means degrading. To plough the earth, to cast the net, to fold the flock— these, and such as these, which are rough occupations enough, and which carry with them many hardships, are good enough for the best of us, certain conditions of leisure, freedom, and due wages being granted. As to the brick- layer, the mason, and the like— these would be 34 artists, and doing not only necessary, but beautiful The Art o£ and therefore happy work, if art were anything the People like what it should be. No, it is not such labour as this which we need to do away with, but the toil which makes the thousand and one things which nobody wants, which are used merely as the counters for the competitive buying and sell- ing, falsely called commerce, which I have spoken of before— I know in my heart, and not merely by my reason, that this toil cries out to be done away with. But, besides that, the labor which now makes things good and necessary in themselves, merely as counters for the commercial war afore- said, needs regulating and reforming. Nor can this reform be brought about save by art; and if we were only come to our right minds, and could see the necessity for making labour sweet to all men, as it is now to very few— the necessity, I repeat; lest discontent, unrest, and despair should at last swallow up all society— If we, then, with our eyes cleared, could but make some sacrifice of things which do us no good, since we unjustly and un- easily possess them, then indeed I believe we should sow the seeds of a happiness which the world has not yet known, of a rest and content which would make it what I cannot help thinking it was meant to be : and with that seed would be sown also the seed of real art, the expression of man s happiness in his labour,— an art made by the people, and for 35 The Art of the People the people, as a happiness to the maker and the user, HAT is the only real art there is, the only- art which will be an instrument to the progress of the world, and not a hin- drance. Nor can I seriously doubt that in your hearts you know that it is so, all of you, at any rate, who have in you an instinct for art. I believe that you agree with me in this, though you may differ from much else that I have said. I think assuredly that this is the art whose welfare we have met together to further, and the necessary instruction in which we have undertaken to spread as widely as may be. HUS I have told you something of what I think is to be hoped and feared for the future of art; and if you ask me what I expect as a practical outcome of the admission of these opinions, I must say at once that I know, even if we were all of one mind, and that what I think the right mind on this subject, we should still have much work and many hin- drances before us; we should still have need of all the prudence, foresight, and industry of the best among us; and, even so, our path would some- times seem blind enough. And, to-day, when the opinions which we think right, and which one day will be generally thought so, have to struggle sorely to make themselves noticed at all, it is early 36 days for us to try to see our exact and clearly The Art of mapped road. I suppose you will think it too the People commonplace of me to say that the general education that makes men think, will one day make them think rightly upon art. Common- place as it is, I really believe it and am indeed encouraged by it, when I remember how obviously this age is one of transition from the old to the new, and what a strange confusion, from out of which we shall one day come, our ignorance and half-ignorance is like to make of the exhausted rubbish of the old and the crude rubbish of the new, both of which lie so ready to our hands. UT, if I must say, furthermore, any words that seem like words of practical advice, I think my task is hard, and I fear I shall offend some of you whatever I say; for this is indeed an affair of morality, rather than of what people call art. OWEVER, I cannot forget that, in my I mind, it is not possible to dissociate art ^y ; from morality, politics, and religion. ^isa Truth in these ofreat matters of principle is of one, and it is only in formal treatises that it can be split up diversely. I must also ask you to remember how I have already said, that though my mouth alone speaks, it speaks, however feebly and disjointedly, the thoughts of many men better than myself. And further, though when things 37 The Art of are tending to the best, we shall still, as afore- the People said, need our best men to lead us quite right; yet even now surely, when it is far from that, the least of us can do some yeoman s service to the cause, and live and die not without honour. O I will say that I believe there are two virtues much needed in modern life, if it is ever to become sweet; and I am quite sure that they are abso- lutely necessary in the sowing the seed of an art which is to be made by the people and for the people, as a happiness to the maker and the user. These virtues are hon- esty, and simplicity of life. To make my meaning clearer I will name the opposing vice of the sec- ond of these— luxury to wit. Also I mean by hon- esty, the careful and eager giving his due to every man, the determination not to gain by any man s loss, which in my experience is not a common virtue. jUT note how the practice of either of these virtues will make the other easier to us. For if our wants are few, we shall have but little chance of being driven by our wants into injustice; and if we are fixed in the principle of giving every man his due, how can our self-respect bear that we should give too much to ourselves? 38 ^^ND in art and in that preparation for it The Art o£ without which no art that is stable or the People worthy can be, the raising, namely, of those classes which have heretofore been degraded, the practice of these virtues would make a new world of it. For if you are rich, your sim- plicity of life will both go towards smoothing over the dreadful contrast between waste and want, which is the great horror of civilised countries, and will also give an example and standard of dignified life to those classes which you desire to raise, who, as it is indeed, being like enough to rich people, are given both to envy and to imitate the idleness and waste that the possession of much money produces. AY, and apart from the morality of the matter, which I am forced to speak to you of, let me tell you that though sim- plicity in art may be costly as well as uncostly, at least it is not wasteful, and nothing is more destructive to art than the want of it. I have never been in any rich man s house which would not have looked the better for having a bonfire made outside of it of nine-tenths of all that it held^ Indeed, our sacrifice on the side of luxury will, it seems to me, be little or nothing: for, as far as I can make out, what people usually mean by it, is either a gathering of possessions which are sheer vexations to the owner, or a chain of pompous cir- 39 The Art of cumstance, which checks and annoys the rich man the People at every step. Yes, luxury cannot exist without slavery of some kind or other, and its abolition will be blessed, like the abolition of other slaveries, by the freein g both of the slaves and of their masters, ^f'^^^ASTLY, if, besides attaining to simplicity ^ of life, we attain also to the love of justice, ^ then will all things be ready for the new springtime of the arts. For those of us that are employers of labour, how can we bear to give, any man less money than he can decently live on, less leisure than his education and self-respect demand? or those of us who are workmen, how can we bear to fail in the contract we have under- taken, or to make it necessary for a foreman to go up and down spying out our mean tricks and eva- sions? or we the shopkeepers — can we endure to lie about our wares, that we may shuffle off our losses on to some one else's shoulders? or we the public— how can we bear to pay a price for a piece of goods which will help to trouble one man, to ruin another, and starve a third? Or, still more, I think, how can we bear to use, how can we enjoy something which has been a pain and a grief for the maker to make? ND now, I think, I have said what I came to say, I confess that there is nothing new in it, but you know the experience of the world is that a thing must be said 40 over and over again before any great number of The Art of men can be got to listen to it. Let my words to- the People night therefore, pass for one of the necessary times that the thought in them must be spoken out. |OR the rest I believe that, however seri- ously these words may be gainsayed, I have been speaking to an audience in whom any words spoken from a sense of duty and in hearty good-will, as mine have been, will quicken thought and sow some good seed. At any rate, it is good for a man who thinks seriously to face his fellows, and speak out whatever really burns in him, so that men may seem less strange to one another, and misunderstanding, the fruitful cause of aimless strife, may be avoided. UT if to any of you I have seemed to speak hopelessly, my words have been lacking in art; and you must remember that hopelessness would have locked my mouth, not opened it. I am, indeed, hopeful, but can I give a date to the accomplishment of my hope, and say that it will happen in my life or yours? But I will say at least. Courage ! for things won- derful, unhoped-for, glorious, have happened even in this short while I have been alive. ES, surely these times are wonderful and i< fruitful of change, which, as it wears and gathers new life even in its wearing, will one day bring better things for the toiling 41 The Art of days of men> who, with freer hearts and clearer the People eyes> will once more gain the sense of outward beauty, and rejoice in it. EANWHILE, if these hours be dark, as, indeed, in many ways they are, at least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and fine gentlemen, thinking the common toil not good enough for us, and beaten by the muddle; but rather let us work like good fellows trying by some dim candle-light to set our workshop ready against to-morrow's daylight— that to-morrow, when the civilised world, no longer greedy, strife- ful, and destructive, shall have a new art, a glori- ous art, made by the people and for the people, as a happiness to the maker and the user. THIS EDITION OF 'THE ART OF THE PEOPLE' BY WILLIAM MORRIS, IS THE FIRST BOOK IN WHICH IS USED THE TYPE DESIGNED BY ft CAST FOR MR. SEYMOUR; TWO HUNDRED &> FIFTEEN COPIES ON PAPER 65 TEN ON JAPAN VELLUM HAVE BEEN PRINTED BY GEO. F. McKIERNAN &> CO. IN CHICAGO FOR THE PUBLISHER RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR, ft THE TYPE DISTRIBUTED NOVEMBER, MDCCCCII RETURK' Al GENERAL LIBRARY ■ U.C. BERKELEY '^%J9^;.