Norman Shaw (architect) and Morris & Co. (for the stained-glass windows), library, 1883–1884.
Carved oak ceiling and wainscoting.
Cragside House, Garden and Estate, Rothbury.
William Morris, Wandle (name of the river next to Morris’ workshop), 1884.
Indigo-discharged and block-printed cotton, 165 × 92 cm.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Richard Norman Shaw (architect) and his assistant, W. R. Lethby (for the design of the chimneypiece), drawing room, 1883–1884.
Carved Italian marble inglenook and fireplace.
Cragside House, Garden and Estate, Rothbury.
It is written, ‘in the sweat of thy brow,’ but it was never written ‘in the breaking of thine heart,’ thou shalt eat bread; and I find that, as on the one hand, infinite misery is caused by idle people, who both fail in doing what was appointed for them to do, and set in motion various springs of mischief in matters in which they should have had no concern, so on the other hand, no small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself. Were it not so, I believe the fact of their being unhappy is in itself a violation of divine law, and sign of some kind of folly or sin in their way of life. Now in order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it – not a doubtful sense, such as needs some testimony of other people for its confirmation, but a sure sense, or rather knowledge, that so much work has been done well, and faithfully done, whatever the world may say or think about it. So that in order that a man maybe happy, it is necessary that he should not only be capable of his work, but a good judge of his work.”
In other words a certain amount of leisure, a certain amount of skill, and a certain amount of intelligence, are requisite for the best work. Given, then, ideal conditions for work, what profits should a man have for his labour?
The essential reward lies naturally in the happiness which the work engenders. Labour that is wholesome exercise, involving the skill and intelligence and character of the individual, is not really labour in the Ruskinian sense, for there is in it no expense of life. By the recognition of the human values of labour the question of wages is rendered of secondary moment. The real demand of workmen who have not been degraded or corrupted by the mammonism of the day is not for higher wages but for better conditions of labour. The assumption that a man is a repository of energy to be elicited by wages alone is unworthy any observer of men. The wage system is simply one stage better than the slave system it superseded, and wages high or low is still a token of industrial bondage. The distinguishing sign of slavery, Ruskin said, “is to have a price and to be bought for it.” The best work of artists, poets, and scientists is never paid for, nor can the value of toil in these fields be ever measured in terms of money. “The largest quantity of work,” our economist declares, “will not be done by this curious engine (the Soul) for pay, or under pressure. It will be done only when the motive force, that is to say, the will or spirit of the creatures is brought up to the greatest strength by its own proper fuel, namely, by the affections.” Could workmen today direct their united energies toward self-education, so that the nature by which they are surrounded and the life with which they are connected might mean more to them, and so that the things they possess might be more highly valued; could employers understand that work is done well only when it is done with a will and that no man has a thoroughly sound will unless he has character and is contented, knowing he is what he should be and is in his place; could this higher ideal of labour be generally accepted and acted upon, then would the battle between those who have and those who have not be speedily ended.
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., Moon, 1866–1868.
Panel.
The Green Dining Room, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., Elderflowers, 1866–1868.
Panel.
The Green Dining Room, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
The real labour problem is not that of shorter hours or of higher wages, but it is to change the character of work so that work will be its own reward. It will be remembered that Ruskin promised as the fruit of ideal labour a crown of wild olive, symbolising by this token grey honour and sweet rest. “Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry of their pain; these – and the blue sky above you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath; and mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living things – may yet be your riches, untormenting and divine; serviceable for the life that now is; nor, it may be, without promise of that which is to come.”
Ruskin wrote a pamphlet pleading for the preservation of the great buildings of the past, then neglected and falling to ruins, and out of this suggestion came the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, in the work of which William Morris figured so conspicuously. As a writer, manufacturer, and distributer of books, he tried to apply the principles of commercial integrity and honour he had advocated. He would not advertise; he employed no middlemen; he gave no discounts; he engaged in no competitive struggle for a market; he looked out for the welfare of the workmen employed in manufacture; he used the best paper he could procure, and took extraordinary care with the printing; he began the sale of his books from a little Kentish village, at one price, and without credit. Of like nature was his experiment with a London tea-shop: putting a salaried servant in charge, he built up a successful business in tea, without advertisement or any trick of the trade, and was enabled later to turn the shop over to Miss Hill as a part of his good-tenement scheme. He was not above street-cleaning or road-making, as was shown by his forming a company to keep a certain length of London street “clean as the deck of a ship” for a given season, and by his joining in with Oxford undergraduates in mending the Hinksey road. The most considerable of his practical schemes for reform was the St. George’s Company, which began to take definite shape about 1875. The general purpose of this company or guild was to socialise both capital and labour, and incidentally to demonstrate two economic propositions – one, that agriculture formed the only genuine basis of national life, and the other that happiness was derived from honest and contented co-operative labour. It was his object to collect from persons of means a fund of money sufficient to buy land, at first for a small colony of Ruskinites, who should form an ideal nucleus of perfectly just persons, and from whom the idea of justice should radiate, until the whole social body was shaped to its image.
Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., The Green Dining Room, 1866–1868.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
As the idea of a perfect social order matured in Ruskin’s mind he turned his thoughts more and more to the possibility of showing to the world, in the St. George’s Guild, a copy of his vision of the new feudalism. With insufficient means for the experiment, and with no marked public approval, there was no opportunity in Ruskin’s lifetime for the dream to be realised. Like many another social dream, the St. George’s Guild remains a paper Utopia – though its conception by no means lacks potential for the future. As the agricultural proposition could not be proved, the guild funds were devoted to the establishment
