MLA Annual Convention: Boston 2013

L to R: A Beardsley illustration for the Morte D'Arthur; an Edward Burne-Jones window in Trinity Church; and the Frontispiece for The Wood Beyond the World.

This year, the Society sponsored two very well-attended sessions at the Modern Language Association Convention. During our first session, “Morris and New England,” we were treated to talks by Michael P. Kuczynski, Associate Professor of English at Tulane; Maureen Meister, affiliate Professor of Art History at Tufts; Paul Acker, Professor of English at St. Louis U; and Margaret Laster, PhD candidate at CUNY Graduate Center.

During Kucynski's talk, “Morris and Company Windows at Trinity Church,” we learned about Morris and Burne-Jones's stained glass work for Boston's Trinity Church in the 1880s. He spoke about the famous then-rector, Philips Brooks, who had a passion for “pure color” and whose vision guided the church's decoration. From Meister's talk, “Arts and Crafts Architecture in New England,” we learned about the inter-tangled worlds of Arts & Crafts architecture in Britain and New England, and the group of New England architects that deliberately mirrored the "quiet beauty" of England's restrained ornament. Then, from Acker's presentation “Morris and Company Windows for Vinland Cottage,” and Laster's talk “The Vinland Windows in Newport,” we learned much about a remarkable set of Viking-themed windows created by Morris & Co. for the American tobacco heiress, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe.

The second session, “Print and Beyond: Publishing Rossetti, Morris, and the Aesthetes,” was co-sponsored by the Society for the History of Authorship, Readingand Publishing (SHARP), and brought us talks by Laura Golobish, Gallery Assistant/Curator from the Nashville Public Library; Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, Associate Professor of English from UC Davis; and Britten LaRue, an independent lecturer, scholar, and curator.

Golobish gave a talk entitled “Printing a Pocket Cathedral: Morris's The Wood Beyond the World,” using the titular theme to explore the architectural features of The Wood Beyond the World, from the architectural frontispiece that invites readers to walk into a separate space, to the “textual landscape” created by illuminated capitals and dingbats. Miller's talk, “William Morris and Socialist Print Culture,” traced Morris's role in the “outlaw” Socialist press as distinct from the mainstream, capitalist press. Miller argued, among other things, that Morris thought of Socialist print as an entirely separate news sphere, aimed at “making a clean sweep of existing institutions all at once.” LaRue's talk “Marginal Figures, Marginal Texts: Aubrey Beardsley’s chapter headings for Le Morte D’Arthur” was rich with imagery of Beardsley's pictorial work for the 1893-1894 Morte D'Arthur in two volumes. Beardsley plays with gender and strange juxtapositions throughout, creating images including androgynous knights, peacocks and angels. LaRue discussed how his themes of gender, “hybridity and transformation” form a counter-text to the masculine Morte d'Arthur.

MLA 2013 was another year of excellent presentations; next year in Chicago, we hope for more of the same. If you'd like to submit an abstract to our proposed panel on “any aspect of text, illustration, or design of Pre-Raphaelite, Aesthetic, or Fin de Siècle children's books,” submit an abstract to florence-boos@uiowa.edu and philnel@ksu.edu. If you'd like to submit an abstract to our guaranteed panel on "Morris and Arts and Crafts in the Midwest," please write to florence-boos@uiowa.edu. Abstracts for both sessions are due by the 15th of March.

The Late William Morris

Jack Walsdorf, the consummate lifelong collector of Morris books and materials, has kindly shared with us his hard-to-find page from The October 7th, 1896 issue of The Sketch. As many of you will have spotted, this issue was published a mere four days after Morris's death; the page in question is an obituary.

The text itself is quite keenly observed, and sympathetically written. It declares Morris "primarily a poet", then focuses on his other achievements: 

What Ruskin preached in the abstract Morris endeavoured to carry out with immense practicality, now designing wall-papers, now furniture, and latterly reconstructing a considerable portion of the book-world through his Kelmscott Press. . . . To him, next to Mr. Ruskin, is it due that an aesthetic sense pervades the homes even of the poorest to-day.

As a fitting ending, the author then quotes a contemporary review, by Andrew Lang, of a collected edition of Morris's works: "His place in English life and literature is unique as it is honourable. He has done what he desired to to—he has made vast additions to simple and stainless pleasures."

The overall layout of the page can be seen at the top of the post; readable versions of the text are below. Click to see more:

iMorris

A song appears in chapter six of Morris's The Well at World's End, and like so many of Morris's poems, the words suggest a rhythm and melody right from the first verse :

Art thou man, art thou maid, through the long grass a-going?

For short shirt thou bearest, and no beard I see,

And the last wind ere moonrise about thee is blowing.

Would'st thou meet with thy maiden or look'st thou for me?”

Happily, someone has heard the cry of Morris's poetry, and set it to music. The Kurt Henry Band includes this very song, titled “An Evensong of Upmeads”, on their album, Heart Mind & All.

“Unlike musical settings of Morris I have heard,” Kurt Henry explained, “this setting is more folkloric and natural--I like to believe that Morris would approve. … I believe Morris scholar Fred Kirchhoff complimented me on this in a demo I sent him years before I seriously recorded it. I would be very pleased if society members heard this recording. It truly evokes the fresh, new (if nostalgic) world of the Morris romance. So yes, Morris IS available on iTunes.”

(Image: Age-old music from the Cantigas de Santa Maria Manuscript)

New book: The Multifaceted Mr. Morris

Easily the most ambitious book project by Ray Nichols & Jill Cypher of Lead Graffiti, The Multifaceted Mr. Morris is the catalogue of the William Morris exhibition mounted in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection at the University of Delaware for the “Useful & Beautiful” conference held in October 2010. More than 30 books, manuscripts, drawings, and other works are described and an introduction tells the story of how the collector came to collect Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites. The author, Jane Marguerite Tippett, is a PhD student in Art History at the University of Delaware.

As Lead Graffiti approaches printing via letterpress as designers, they wanted to find an interesting way to incorporate visual elements into the project. Many of the pieces included in the book are fabulous, often either one-of-a-kind or ones with an important provenance. The designers took each entry and looked for some visual element they found interesting. Often it was typographic, in the instance of a photo or a drawing it might just be a small area or a word from a letter. These images were printed in a light tone to complement the main text. It will be interesting for someone who visits the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection to look through some of the pieces and see if they can find the image. Sometimes it will be obvious and sometimes obscure.

The July 2012 print edition of Fine Books & Collections included a nice review of the book along with some additional information about Lead Graffiti, which is located in Newark, DE.

Printed via letterpress in Caslon type in two colors with eight color plates, The Multifaceted Mr. Morris is issued in an edition of 150 copies hand-bound copies: 100 in wrappers ($50) and 50 signed hardcovers ($125) bound with parchment spines.

The book is available from

Lead Graffiti
(302) 547-6930
info@leadgraffiti.com
www.leadgraffiti.com

or from Oak Knoll Books, New Castle, DE.

"Emery Walker, William Morris and the Best Surviving Arts and Crafts Interior in Britain"Lecture by Christopher Wilk in New York, 10 September 2012

The William Morris Society will sponsor a lecture by Christopher Wilk in New York on the 10th of September. Our co-sponsors are the Grolier Club, and the American Friends of Arts and Crafts in Chipping Campden, with the support of the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms.

Sir Emery Walker, a distinguished printer and later the co-publisher of the Doves Press, was the man who provided both the inspiration and practical advice to William Morris to found the Kelmscott Press in 1890. Walker and Morris were close associates until Morris's death and the latter said of his neighbor and friend that he “did not think a day complete without a sight of Emery Walker.” Walker lived on Hammersmith Terrace, West London, overlooking the Thames from 1879 until his death in 1933. His house, 7 Hammersmith Terrace, is without doubt, the most intact surviving Arts and Crafts interior in Britain. This is owing to the fact that the house was lived in continuously by Walker, by his daughter, and then by his daughter's companion until 1999. This talk will focus on the Walker family, their house and its history—including its close association with William and May Morris, Philip Webb and with the Arts and Crafts in the Cotswolds—while also considering Walker’s crucial role in the Revival of Printing.

Christopher Wilk is Keeper of Furniture, Textiles and Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum and a trustee of the Emery Walker House.

Monday, 10 September 2012
6 p.m.
The Grolier Club
47 East 60th Street
New York, NY 10022
(212) 838-6690
www.grolierclub.org

Tickets $12 for members of the sponsoring organizations, $18 for others. To order send a check to William Morris Society, P.O. Box 53263, Washington, DC 20009 or go to www.morrissociety.org to pay using PayPal or a credit card. 

Socialists at Play

May Morris, husband H. H. Sparling, Emery Walker, and George Bernard Shaw. 

Over a hundred years ago this month, Morris published his poem "Socialists at Play" in the July 1885 issue of The Commonweal. The Commonweal, edited by Morris, was the official newspaper of the Socialist League, and Morris published a good deal of original poetry and essays in its pages. While "Socialists at Play" is a little known, minor work of Morris's, it captures his spirit of fun and camaraderie even amidst his sincere and robust political commitment. What I like most about the poem is that it shows the high value Morris put on pleasure. Pleasure was, for Morris, a political goal as well as an end in and of itself. The poem begins,

FRIENDS, we have met amidst our busy life
To rest an hour from turmoil and from strife,
To cast our care aside while song and verse
Touches our hearts, and lulls the ancient curse.

For Morris, literature's capacity to produce rest and enjoyment was crucial; ideally, it was a means of creating pleasure for both the author and the reader. In the end, the poem suggests the essentially Morrisian idea that pleasure and work are interchangeable:


So through our play, as in our work, we see
The strife that is, the Peace that is to be.

At play, Morris and his fellow socialists can find enjoyment and rest as well as political meaning. The two are not mutually exclusive:


... Let the cause cling
About the book we read, the song we sing,
Cleave to our cup and hover o’er our plate,
And by our bed at morn and even wait.
Let the sun shine upon it; let the night
Weave happy tales of our fulfilled delight!

contributed by Elizabeth Carolyn Miller
(Photo via the Arts & Crafts Museum flickr feed)

Johanna Lahr (1867-1904)

Very few women members of the Socialist League have been identified, and these few are mostly middle-class. It has been exciting to learn from the researches of German labor historians Gerd Callesen and Heiner Becker of a Socialist League member who was the wife of a journeyman baker as well as fervid union organizer. Born Annie Klebow in Germany in 1867, she emigrated to England around 1885-87. There she married her common-law partner in 1895 and gave birth to sons in 1899 and 1903, dying in childbirth in 1904 at the age of 37.

Lahr was a member of the Bloomsbury branch of the League and active speaker between 1888 and 1890, when she would have been 21-22 years of age. Commonweal records that she delivered 13 speeches during March 1888 alone! During this period she corresponded with Friedrich Engels, asking for his advice in understanding Marx’s theories. She would probably have known Morris briefly before he left the Socialist League in 1889; like Morris she was an anti-parliamentarian, but most likely a member of the League’s anarchist wing.

There were about 2000 German bakers in England and Wales in the period 1880-1910, and they formed a familiar presence in London’s east end, as memorialized in Israel Zangwill’s account of east London Jewish life in Children of the Ghetto (1892) and in exhibits at the present-day London Jewish Museum. Lahr’s 1889 leaflet, “The Poorest of the Wage Slaves,” is a rare extant instance of a polemical essay by an impoverished working class woman of the period. It describes with indignation the conditions of labor experienced by those in her husband’s occupation, and urges all journeyman bakers to unionize in order to gain better conditions.

Because Lahr’s leaflet may be difficult to read, a few passages are excerpted here:

The journeymen bakers must admit that they are, in comparison with any other skilled workers, the poorest, the most sweated, wretched slaves; that their present condition is a most deplorable one, and a disgrace to civilisation. The extraordinary long hours, varying from 14 to 16 hours a day, for the first five days of the week, 22 hours on Saturday, and Sunday work as well, makes up an average of from 90 to 120 hours each week; and in most cases the poor wretches have to work in filthy, unhealthy bakehouses not fit for a dog, let alone a human being. These wage-slaves are injured in health, and are broken men before they enter into full manhood; their lives cut short, and an early grave their reward. Now, lads, the time has arrived when you should bind yourselves together under the Banner of Unity, and strike the blow. God knows, your demands are too moderate; but as the saying goes, with eating commences a craving for more. . . .

Men and women, you are the producers of all wealth; therefore courage, brothers and sisters! Come and join hands with your fellows, no matter what creed or nationality they belong to, and we will win the battle.

Have no trust in your Houses of Parliament. The sooner they are turned into a washhouses or bakehouses the better for the workers. I am with you heart and spirit, and will never tire of helping you to a brighter future, where freedom, love, and harmony shall reign; where the dawn of the morning shall be greeted with gladness, and work be only a pleasure; and where the burden of life and sorrow-stricken faces shall disappear like a snow-white mist in the morning. 

JOHANNA LAHR.
Henry Detloff, Printer. 18 Sun Street, Finsbury, London. E.C.

In November 1890 a widespread strike for bakers’ union rights was conducted in London, and Johanna Lahr’s flyer might well have been distributed during this strike. The bakers won the conflict, in part because of the support of London Trade Union Council and trade unionist leader John Burns, who addressed assemblies of the bakers. One can only regret that this firm-minded and courageous woman died at 37, perhaps a victim of the difficult conditions under which women gave birth.

We owe thanks to Gerd Callesen for sending us this information, and to Ms. Sheila Lahr for this image of her ancestor’s pamphlet. A longer article on Lahr will appear in the July 2012 Newsletter of the William Morris Society in the United States. Mr. Callesen is eager to learn more about Lahr, and may be reached at gerd.callesen@chello.at.