Questions of our day / Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
[1936]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Questions of our day / Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    180/336 (page 167)
    THE CENTENARY OF WILLIAM MORRIS national borders and is still transforming our ways of living. He was equally active in the first wave of that movement of Socialism and Communism which to-day enrolls so many youthful spirits in all countries under its banner. He remained a representative Englishman. For Napoleon the English were a nation of shopkeepers; for more sympathetic critics they have been a nation of poets. Morris was both, and both in a thorough-going spirit. He set up a large and successful shop, and he was writing successful if not great poetry— handicraft poetry it has been called—all his life. He was enabled to do this because he was, first and last, a great craftsman. In the recent exhibition of British Art one felt that these men are really, by nature and talent, not so much artists as craftsmen. To pass from that exhibition to the exhibition now being held of the work of William Morris is to realize not only his enormous range and versatility but how splendidly he embodies the English genius. With whatever limitations, he goes, it has been well said, to the very root of English art and literature; he designed as Chaucer wrote. At another exhibition there is now also a full collection of all the works which came from his famous Kelmscott Press, the forerunner of all the private presses which have since been set up. In everything—in printing, mural decoration, tapestry, wall¬ papers, embroidery, furniture, and the rest—^he was always a great craftsman. It has even been claimed that he is the greatest craftsman who ever lived. A typical Englishman, I said. In that also he was comprehen¬ sive, seeming to unite varied strains. In appearance short and sturdy and yet alert, he was the Norseman. But he was also Welsh and also central English. I seem to have a good deal of Welsh blood in me, he once wrote in answer to an inquiry of mine. My father's father was Welsh, I believe, and my mother's mother also. My father and mother both came from 167