London Calling. London Walks connecting. This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead. Story time. History time.
And today we’re going west. Hammersmith. William Morris country.
William Morris died there 130 years ago this autumn. And I’m not going to tell you about him.
Because we’ve got somebody much better qualified to do that.
Ann.
Brilliant London Walks guide. And, characteristically, far too modest to tell you what I’m about to tell you.
On September 19th, Ann is guiding her William Morris & Friends walk. It starts at 10.45 am from Stamford Brook Tube Station. Its subtitle is The Most Beautiful Walk in London.
And that’s quite a claim.
Except that this one has a pretty good case. Morris’s Hammersmith. His riverside house. His extraordinary circle. Arts and Crafts. Socialism. Pre-Raphaelites. And one of the loveliest stretches of the Thames in London.
So consider that the plug Ann won’t give herself.
One word before I hand over to her.
Minister.
Because Morris once complained, magnificently, “I spend my life ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich.”
Minister comes ultimately from the Latin minister: a servant, an attendant. Someone who serves. Which is how we get a minister of religion, a government minister and the verb to minister to somebody.
And there, in one sentence, is one of the delicious contradictions of William Morris.
Socialist revolutionary. Enemy of industrial capitalism. Dreamer of a society made by the people, for the people.
And supplier of extremely beautiful wallpaper to people with extremely large houses.
Over to Ann.
“It’s 130 years since William Morris, designer, artist, author, poet, printer and socialist, died in Hammersmith. Many of his designs for fabrics and wallpapers have never been out of print. And to visit any museum or national trust gift shop is to wade through mountains of Morris patterned hand cream, no-plates, aprons and coasters. I think he’d be stupefied if he could come back and see just how popular are so many of his designs. And what would he think of the Morris inspired football strip for Walthamstow FC? Morris was born and brought up nearby. Morris of course was far more than this. He ran a successful home interior business, everything for the tasteful middle-class home, though he numbered the aristocracy among his clients, Balmoral, St. James’s Palace. And in 1895, Tsar Nicholas II ordered 300 yards of Morris and Co. Garden Tulip for apartments at the Winter Palace. A hundred years later, the Navy chose his rose pattern for offices quarters in its nuclear submarine fleet to evoke a sense of British domesticity. Morris mastered many of the crafts he sold himself.
He wore a tapestry, acanthus and vine, cabbage and vine, he called it. And it took him 516 hours over some months. Turning from 19th-century chemical dyes to natural dyes, he learned how to dye, emerging from the tub, navy blue up to the elbows as he mastered indigo discharge. He could so, he first taught his wife, Janie, who later was a skilled embroiderer herself. Later in life, he started the Kelmscott Press and chose the typefaces inspired by the 15th-century. Everything later than that he considered rubbish. Morris was a poet. Those knights and medieval ladies feature a lot. Morris’ fondness for the Middle Ages must have started when, as a little boy, he had a pony and a miniature suit of armour. With a friend, he translated Icelandic sagas, all those Norse gods an ideal fit for a man in love with the Middle Ages. And he visited Iceland. While camping, Morris the chef was proud of his plover casserole and his fried bacon, which he’d refined while practicing at home. But back to those sagas. “If a chap can’t compose an epic poem while he’s weaving tapestry, he’d better shut up. He’ll never do any good at anything,” he said. Morris believed that the 19th-century industrialisation of what had been artisan crafts had to be reversed, made by the people, for the people, as a joy for the maker and the user.
His move to socialism sat slightly uneasily with his upmark interiors business. “It’s only that I spend my life administering to the swinish luxury of the rich,” he said. But he became a socialist, not just in much of his writing, but also in practical ways, appearing in court to support those arrested on marches, designing posters for the socialist league, giving speeches to the Hammersmith shoppers and lecturing around the country, running the socialist society from his riverside house. As a socialist and writer, he was to inspire generations to come. And academics, I found an essay which claims that the material processes of getting the dye into the fabric are correlated by Morris to the politics of the world’s struggles and the prospects for a future society. Now, who would have thought that? I’ve noticed that he’s almost unknown in Europe, but very well known in Australia, where the Art Gallery of South Australia has the second largest collection of Morris decorative arts in the world after the V&A. Well-to-do 19th-century settlers in Australia took Morris designs with them, and came back on Morris shopping trips. And there’s an American William Morris Society.
I was enchanted by an American firm I found online who have an astonishing collection of Morris stuff. For the Morris fan in your circle, how about the William Morris at Home Beautiful Sleep Wind Down Ritual set? Or perhaps a couple of Morris egg cups? Designed for practicality, says the catalogue, these egg cups are perfectly sized to hold a standard boiled egg. Presented in matching gift box, this set of two egg cups is ideal as a thoughtful gift for a new home, birthday or Christmas. It adds a sophisticated and practical finishing touch.”