The Structure of Morris's Tales for the 'Oxford' and ...

The Structure of Morris's Tales
Magazine
for the Oxford and Cambridge

Florence S. Boos

A casual reader of the Oxford and Cam Churches of North France: Shadows of

bridge Magazine in 1856 might well con Amiens," testifies to his ardent enjoyment
clude that its
two most promising writers of Amiens' decorative artwork and
of short fiction
were Edward Bur ne-Jones statuary, and the essay's detached-but

and R.W. Dixon, yet admire William Morris1 loving narrative mode is closely paral

eight prose tales for their narrative leled in his first-published fictional

invention, stark emotion, and complex tale, "The Story of the Unknown Church."

motifs. These early writings have a co

herent psychological structure and employ In general, Morris's early prose works

techniques which served Morris well in his hover between fiction, descriptive essay,

later work. For example, he experimented and stylized autobiography. Their

here, for the first time, with narrators language approaches the cadence and

and protagonists who survive normal pro imagery of his best poetry, and as a

cesses of death and change, and sometimes result they are ill-served by conventional

leave their 'proper1 narrative frames. plot-summary. At best, their

psychological authenticity rivals that of

These early tales have been variously the poems of The Defence of Guenevere, and
interpreted as searches for religious
their temporally dislocated narrative

certainty, romantic love, active vocation, frames are strangely haunting and remote.
and social
community, and as an expression I will examine these qualities in three
of failure to create
an integrated, confi works: the essay, "Shadow of Amiens,"

dent identity. (1) At times, they clearly Morris's first contribution to the

express apprehensions of Morris's late Magazine; "The Story of the Unknown

adolescence and early maturity, and fears Church," narrated by a fictional craftsman
of the
that he will fail to achieve worthy ends sort celebrated in "Shadow of

and inspire love.(2) They reflect the Amiens;" and "A Dream," the first of
Morris's
efforts of a complex and multiply-gifted tales to employ a complex
community
personality to harmonize several conflict of interrelated protagonists and

ing aspirations and confront an unclear narrators.

future.

Shadows of Amiens

Characteristically, Morris wrote these

first published works in support of a Morris often remarked in early letters
to ex
cooperative project, to which he contrib that deep emotions are difficult
with a
uted more than most others in the press, (4) and the essay begins does not

group.(3) Originally, he also planned to passionate description of what he

write a series of impressionistic essays know and cannot say.
after the
on the churches of North France,

manner of The Seven Lamps of Architecture And I thought that even if I could

and The Stones of Venice. Ruskin's influ say nothing else about these grand

ence may also be seen in the tale's mov churches I could at least tell men

ing-camera effects and intense mixture of how much I loved then: so that though
emphathy
narrator and detachment, but Morris's they might laugh at me for my foolish
what he
identifies more directly with and confused words, they might yet be

sees. Morris's essay for the moved to see what there was to make

February issue of the Magazine, "The me speak my love. . . . (349)

_VPR 3

Sixteen pages of rhapsodic visual detail faith and love of man that dies not:

follow. The twenty-one-year-old Morris for their love, and the deeds through

does not pretend to be an antiquarian or which it worked, . . . they will not
architectural his
historian, and lose their reward (349-50),

commentary recalls Blake's epigram that

"Imitation is criticism." The essay and these from the sermon of John Ball

begins: published more than thirty years later:

as though the prison walls opened to

Not long ago I saw for the first time me and I was out of Canterbury street

some of the churches of North France; and amidst the green meadows of

still more recently I saw them for April; and therewithal along with me

the second time; and remembering the folk that I have known and who are

love I have for them and the longing dead, and folk that are living; yea,
and all those
that was in me to see them during the of the Fellowship on
earth and in
time that came between the first and heaven; yea, and all

second visit, I thought I should like that are here this day.

to tell people of some of those

things I felt when I was there, there ... I knew once more that he who

among the mighty tombs of the long doeth well in fellowship, and because

dead ages.(349) of fellowship, shall not fail though

he seem to fail today, but in days

Notice that he commemorates an earlier hereafter shall he and his work yet

emotion, the 'love' and 'longing' felt be alive, and men be holpen by them

'among the mighty tombs.' His evocation to strive again and yet again. .. .
of the cathedral's artisans
leads to an (5)

empathetic leap of Morrisian faith:

. . . those Morris was deeply consistent in his desire
of human
same builders, still to vindicate the continuity
the faith and
surely living, still real men and emotion, the "stories of

capable of receiving love, I love no love of man that die not."

less than the great men, poets and

painters and such like, who are on The echoing, symmetrical cadences in
"Amiens" are
earth now; no less than my breathing more tempered variants of

friends whom I can see looking kindly Ruskin's, and Morris also varied Ruskin's

on me now. Ah, do l_ not love them arial-overview, in which a narrator ranges

with just cause who certainly loved freely over what is seen. In the famous

me, thinking of me sometimes between opening passage of "The Nature of Gothic,"

the strokes of their chisels? (349) Ruskin invites the reader to follow the

(emphasis mine) flight-path of a bird from Southern to

Northern Europe. In "Amiens," Morris
within humbler
Upon reflection, the timeshift seems emulates this perspective

strangely appropriate: why shouldn't past human limits:
builders have imagined
him, as he imagines

them? Similar thought-experiments informed if you were to mount one of the

the better-known A Dream of John Ball, steeples of the town, or were even to

written thirty years later. Notice the mount up to the roof of one of the

parallels between the following passage houses westward of the Cathedral. ..

from "Amiens:" near the top of the spire the crock
ets swell till you come to the rose

And for this love of all men that that holds the great spire-cross of
metal work
they had, and moreover for. . . this .... (350-55) (emphasis

work of theirs, the upraising of the mine)

great Cathedral front. . . ; wrought.
. . by the dint
of chisel and stroke Later, the narrator approaches the church

of hammer into . . . stories of the more mundanely from "one of the streets

4 SPRING 1987

leading out to the Place Royale," and ers' 'wonder' also suggests the early
use of multiple
shifts from second to first person: "I tale's characteristic
reverential witnesses
felt inclined to shout. ..." Morris's narrators as eager,

great set piece of this 'arial1 technique, to a central tableau. Ruskin enjoined a
the colors of stones,
of course, is the idle singer's descrip careful attention to

tion of fourteenth-century London at the and Morris's stained glass was noted for

beginning of The Earthly Paradise: the depth and richness of its colors.

Here, he chafes at photographs which tell

Forget six counties overhung with "nothing about the colour of the building,

smoke, ... in fact their brown and yellow is as un

Think rather of the pack-horse on the like as possible to the grey of Amiens.

down, So for. . . the facts of colour I have to
And dream
of London, small, and try and remember the day or two I spent at

white, and clean Amiens. . . ."(354-55) He could, he ad

The clear Thames bordered by its mits, have looked up full explanations of
(6) (III, 3)
gardens green. .. the church's decorations, but this would

undercut his intention: to tell the sto

and its subsequent dissolve to an unnamed ries suggested by them, and nothing else.
Elders
Aegean city and town hall, where
longest
and Wanderers narrate Morris's

poem:

Pass now between them, push the

brazen door, on the polished marble
And standing

floor

Leave all the noises of the square

behind; chamber shall

Most calm that reverent

ye find,

Silent at first, but for the noise
door your hand you
you made ... (7) (4)
When on the brazen

laid

To shut it after.

In "Amiens" Morris not surprisingly takes

more interest in the cathedral's carvings,

paintings, stained glass, and statuary WILLIAM MORRIS

than its engineering. He praises stalls

whose stories are "told in such a glor Morris's medieval reconstructions have

iously quaint straightforward manner" been criticized for their distortions and

(352); and he dwells carefully on points praised for their verisimilitude. Both
they were, a
of realistic detail: "There views are right; he appreciated certain

writhing heap [of kine], crushing and kinds of physical and visual historical
crowding and
one another; drooping heads detail as precisely as anyone in his time,

starting eyes, and strange angular bodies. and he ignored others altogether. He

... I never fairly understood Pharoh's thoroughly researched later works such as

dream till I saw the stalls at The Roots of the Mountains and The Earthly

Amiens."(352) A burial scene evokes his Paradise, but his interest in 'important'
most intense response: ''O those faces so
figures was minimal: "The next scene is

full of all tender yearning and longing the shrine of some saint, this same bish
that
they too . . . might be with the op, I suppose; dead now after all his
happy
faces dead! There is a wonder on their building and ruling, and hard fighting,

power too, when they see. . . the mighty possibly, with the powers that be. . . ."
of death. . . . (364) The bystand
(357) His selective attention to such

_VPR 5

generic figures and situations was also lacement of arches the intensest blue
that
prompted by his strong conviction of the blue summer sky; . . . some
measure times at night you may see the stars
human emotions are the appropriate

of the Cathedral's mighty effects: shining through it. It is fair still

I think I felt inclined to shout when though the gold is gone, the spire

that seems to rock when across it in

I first entered Amiens Cathedral. It the wild February nights the clouds

is so free and vast and noble that I go westward. (366)

. . . felt. . . intense exultation at

the beauty of it. That, and a cer In a letter written January 11, 1856,

tain kind of satisfaction in looking eleven days after the appearance of the

on the geometrical tracery of the first issue of the Oxford and Cambridge

windows, on the sweep of the huge Magazine, Morris remarked that "The Sha

arches, were my first feelings in dows of Amiens" was not easy to write:

Amiens Cathedral .... (351-52) "It has cost me more trouble than anything

I have written yet; I ground at it the

Throughout his writings Morris was other night from nine o'clock till half

consistently preoccupied with the past four a.m., when the lamp went out,

difficult retention of past truth, the and I had to creep upstairs to bed through

vagaries and ironies of indirect the great dark house like a thief."(9) In

historical transmission, and the recovery the end, the essay's exposition reflects

and redefinition of vanishing points at this care. "Shadows of Amiens" revealed

the edge of human record. Morris's ability to reshape Ruskin's tech

nique's, sensibility, and rhetoric to his
he
Artists, he believed, should piece own ends, and it touched registers
and his own di
together their own perceptions, often used again: narrative emotions,
refrain fabrication. Other reconstruc
from conscious rectly reported;

essayists sometimes suppress their tions, suggested by immediate visual de
tails; on the
source's unreliability; Morris makes it a and extended reflections

central rhetorical device, which also moral significance of what he has seen.
It is a surprisingly
complements the ineffability and thus the critical sophisticated first
effort,
elusiveness of what he sees. Compare the and Mackail was not en

following description of an angel, for tirely effusive when he called it "wrought

example, with his tribute to Jane Burden as if with chisel strokes, precise and yet

that "I cannot paint you, but I love passionate."(10)

you"(8):

it is rather like a very fair woman's Story of the Unknown Church

face, but fairer than any woman's

face I ever saw or thought of. . . . Dramatically-charged language and fluid

I am utterly at a loss how to de narrative structure have created critical

scribe it, or to give any idea of the interest in "The Story of the Unknown

exquisite lines of the cheek and the Church." Its dream plot is highly sugges

rippled hair sweeping back from it. . tive, and its unusual anachronisms may be
. . (359-60)
disordered, evocative, or both. More

significantly, the tale's portrayal of an

Twenty-six more lines of magniloquent intensely devoted stonemason also recon

farewells precede the essay's conclusion. siders an ancient question: is artistic

Later, Morris took great care with fic creation a manifestation of inhuman re

tional leavetaking, and several works, pression, or a fitting reward for a dedi
As a conventional
early and late (The Roots of the Moun cated and humane life?

tains, for example, in 1888), end with narrative of heroism or love, the work is

solemn funerals. "Amiens's" final image rather slight; as a companion-tale to "The

is of a bare ruined choir which Shadows of Amiens," it is orderly, even

still.. . catches transparent, and its narrative structure

through its inter again adumbrates many patterns which Mor

6 SPRING 1987

ris developed more clearly in his later I was the master-mason of a church

work. that was built more than six hundred

years ago; it is now two hundred

Walter, the mason, is one of the builders years since that church vanished from

Morris evoked in "Shadows of Amiens," the face of the earth; it was de

"still surely living, still real men and stroyed utterly,?no fragment of it

capable of receiving love" (349), and he was left; not even the great pillars.

lovingly describes his 'unknown church,' . . . (149)

exterior first. In "Amiens," Morris

responded deeply to a carving of the dead Like Ruskin, Morris considered Gothic

virgin; Walter has carefully carved architecture the highest form of art and

effigies of his dead sister Margaret and later described it as "the most completely
of . . . Art which the world
her fiance Amyot, his closest friend. The organic form
. . . (11) "a harmonious
narrator of "Amiens" praises an elegiac has seen,"
a vanished
art which attempts to restore cooperative work of art, inclusive of all

past; Wlater's most lovingly wrought work the serious arts,"(12) that is, of

commenorates his love for two lost lovers. craftwork and the decorative arts. Its

practitioners, in consequence?among them

Like the narrator of "Amiens," Walter also artisans such as Walter?were "the most

likes iconic complexity, even profusion. useful part of [society's]

The two lovers lie together in death population." (13)

beneath a marble canopy "carved all about

with so many flowers and histories," which Morris's English Gothic church, however,

include some standard Christian icons, but falls into a category neglected by Ruskin,

also "the faces of all of those he had who remarked in Seven Lamps of Architec

known on earth." (!) The Amiens essayist ture that "I could have wished to have

bids cadenced farewell to his church when given more examples from our early English

his homage is done; when Walter completes Gothic; but I have always found it impos

his last decorative ornament, he bids sible to work in the cold interiors of our

farewell to life, for he is found "lying cathedrals. . . ."(14) Ruskin also com

dead underneath the last lily of the ments that "a building cannot be consid

tomb." ered as in its prime until four or five

centuries have passed over it. . . ."(15)

As benefits one of the master-artists The 'unknown church,' then, is?or was?an

Morris admires, Walter thus creates English Gothic church destroyed two hun

ornamentation of great variety and dred years ago, in its Ruskinian 'prime,1

improvis?tional range, but his and any penumbra of it has vanished from

accomplishment is obliterated. The story recent memory. In later narratives such

of his effort somehow survives, but the as "Ogier the Dane," Morris used centuries

church itself is gone; compare the or 'ages' (saecula) as symbols for a sin

cathedral at Amiens, which has fallen into gle lifetime. After a lapse of two such

ruin, though its great spire may still be 'ages,' what living memory of the church

seen on wild February nights. In life, could there be?

Walter looked forward to "the time when we

should all be together again," but now Morris also cherished the 'unknown,' for

only his spectral narrative voice lingers what was 'living not,' (like the legendary
will get
to record his fidelity. Someone figures of The Earthly Paradise) "can n'er

the "Amiens" bishop's identity straight, be dead." A plausibly idealized but con
but Walter
is the only possible jectural past can never be impugned, so we
interpreter
achievement of his tale. Because his can imagine the lineaments of his 'unknown
its
was greater, so also is church' as freely as we wish. Morris

loss. later refined extensively his use of nar

rative frames and timeless descriptions of

The anachronism of Morris' narrative is the distant past, for example in his de

direct and immediate. In Walter's words: scription of the fourteenth-century peas

ant revolt in A Dream of John Ball. One

7
_VPR

of these techniques was to attribute tem bitter loss, but his ultimate loyalty is

poral dislocations to the protagonists to the art's natural source. Thus his

themselves, as when Ogier the Dane strug deep sadness at the loss of a lifework

gles to remember his previous secular ("destroyed utterly,?no fragment. . ..

'lives.' Here the disembodied Walter No one knows. . . where it stood," (149)

tries with some strain to recover the is tempered by his love of what has dis

church's entire Gestalt: placed it ("the place where my church used

to be is as beautiful now as when it stood

No one knows now even where it stood. in all its splendour" (141). It took
Walter the last twenty life
jL ??2 not remember very much to carve his masterwork: years of his

about the land where my church was; ^i
have
quite forgotten the name of it,

... I almost seem to see it again. so it happened after I had carved

. . . Only dimly do I_ see it in those two whom I loved above their
and winter ....
spring and summer tomb, that I could not yet leave

I remember the whole of autumn-tide; carving it; and so that I might be

the others come in bits to me; I can near them I became a monk, and used

think only of parts of them. ... to sit in the choir and sing, think

(149, emphasis mine) ing of the time when we should all be

together again. (158)

What was most important eventually

returns, however, even with preternatural Approval of an internal audience is essen

vividness: "I see it in autumn-tide tial to Morrisian narratives, and the

clearly now; yes, clearer, clearer, oh! so townspeople's growing interest becomes a

bright and glorious .... I can think testimonial to Walter's ability to trans

only of parts of them but all of autumn; form his sorrow: "as I carved, sometimes

and of all days and nights in autumn, I the monks and other people too would come

remember one more particularly." (149) and gaze, . . . and sometimes too as they

gazed, they would weep for pity, knowing

There is something paradoxical and how all had been."(158) Otherwise, Wal
at the
touching in Walter's fierce joy ter's secluded labor is quite monastic
into
transformation of his life-work indeed: "I was not as one on earth now,

waving corn ("the most completely organic but seemed quite away out of the world"

form of . . . Art the world has seen?"). (149). He lives to finish the last detail

Someone who has labored to transmute of the tomb, the finest his imagination

natural forms and processes into art might can conceive, and his last act is the
reversion
regret such an Ecclesiastes-like creation of the flower which symbolizes,
takes Morris's
of art to grass, but Walter among other things, mutual love and resur
profusion:
own delight in the garden's rection. "So my life passed,. . . till

one morning, quite early, when they came

lush green briony, with green-white into the church for matins, they found me

blossoms, that grows so fast, one lying dead, with my chisel in my hand,

could almost think that we see it underneath the last lily of the tomb."

grow, and deadly nightshade, La bella (158) As a final reward, the artist is

donna, oh! so beautiful; red berry, not forced to outlive his art. Consonant

and purple, yellow-spiked flower, and with the tale's praise of art is its pre

deadly, cruel-looking, dark green occupation with a loss of love. Like

leaf, all growing together in the Thomas Mann's Tonio Kroger, Walter is a

glorious days of early autumn. (151) lonely observer-memorialist of the happi

ness of others, but he deeply respects

By contrast, descriptions of the church's what he observes; and like all of Morris's

golden spires and carved fountains recall protagonist-observers, he records the

Tennyson's "Palace of Art;" even here, tale's essential emotional events from

though, the passage finally returns to within.

flowers?on graves "of monks and . . .

lawyers." Walter's art expresses his

8 SPRING 1987

A Dream: Multiple Speakers, lives-within-lives clearly appealed to

Selves, Frames, and Dreams Morris, and variants of them reappear

throughout his writings. "A Dream"'s

"A Dream" appeared in the Oxford and inset tales also follow the same seasonal

Cambridge Magazine for March, the month cycle as the much longer one of The Earth

Morris became twenty-two. It would be ly Paradise?beginning in spring. The

hard to find a fourteen-page Victorian singer of The Earthly Paradise compares

prose tale with a more complex structure. himself to a wizard in a wintry northern

Not only does "A Dream" have four internal clime, who throws open four windows of a

narrators and witnesses of four inset feudal castle onto scenes of the four

episodes, but these narrators' seasons in a warm dwelling on a cold win
interrelations
with the inset protagonists ter night. Finally, the narrators and
are essential to the tale as a whole.
protagonists seem to hear, prompt, and

respond to each other, which not only

"A Dream"'s narrators tell tales of four suggests its own wizardry, but creates

incarnations of the same two lovers in some of the strains already encountered in

four seasons scattered across four "The Unknown Church."

centuries?a structure which varies

aspects of "The Story of the Unknown The four witnesses/narrators are intro
Church"
and anticipates in miniature the duced in descending order of age. Hugh,
elaborate
frames of A Dream of John Ball the first and principal speaker, is a

and Ttie Earthly Paradise. Like The white-bearded ancient; Giles black-bearded

Earthly Paradise, "A Dream"'s narrative and younger; Osric is simply one of "the

has three levels. The first-person outer two younger men" (179), and Herman is "the

narrator "dream [s] once, that four men sat youngest." For the most part, Hugh and
Giles speak
by the winter fire talking and telling as Osric and Herman listen,

tales. . . ," and enters the inmost tale much as The Earthly Paradise's aged

in its final paragraph to view the lovers' Wanderers and Elders tell their tales to

tomb before he 'awakes' to remark that he younger auditors.

has labored "To gather and tell o'er/Each

little sound and sight" (175). The tale More 'wizardry' is to come. In the third

also takes place in an eclectically episode Ella remarks that Hugh has died
and Giles remembers a
European feudal past, and its narrators? the preceding night,
became Osric and
Hugh, Giles, Osric, and Herman; English, time when he invisible.

French, Scandinavian, and German?might be Herman are understandably disturbed when
Hugh and Giles reappear for the last time,
prototypes of The Earthly Paradise's

multinational "Wanderers." Hugh narrates and more so when the more-than-four-hun

two episodes in the extended lives of the dred-year-old Ella appears at its close.

lovers Lawrence and Ella; Giles the third; Since Osric and Herman themselves by then

and all four witness the fourth. are centuries-old, narrators as well as

protagonists thus seem to 'exist' in at

The episodes, drawn from four different least two worlds?within the episodes,
incarnations of Lawrence and Ella's exist
where death is possible, and in a timeless

ence, are apparently separated by the narrative realm in which they share their

Morrisian saecula mentioned earlier. (The tales. In Morris's totum simul, the four

intervals between the last three episodes narrators form a kind of collective cho
text) The tale's
are explicit in the rus. They shiver at each other's tales,
that of the 'unknown
duration thus matches tremble at each other's woes, and join

church,' and like the church, both Law finally to celebrate the lovers' long
awaited
rence and Ella have now ceased to exist. union. Again, these patterns

A major Earthly Paradise tale, "Ogier the strongly suggest Morris's later tendencies

Dane," similarly follows its protagonist to blend different cultures and time peri

through four life-spans at one hundred ods, memories and dreams, old and young,

year intervals but opens out in the last observers and participants.

cycle to infinity. As I have mentioned, can be found

configurations of tales-within-tales and More immediate parallels

_VPR 9

between "The Story of the Unknown Church" (16) These and other stories only kindle
and "A Dream." Both tales open with his the young Hugh's imagination, however:

torical prefaces, close with public funer

als, memorialize lost lovers, and involve My father told me many wondrous tales

narrators in their own tales. Walter's about the place, whereof for a long

dream and memories are accompanied by time I have been able to remember

music and sensuous descriptions of red and nothing; yet, by some means or

gold flowers; "A Dream"'s most sensuous another, a certain story has grown up

descriptions are of Ella's musical voice, in my heart, which I will tell you

the lovers' golden hair and clothing, and something of: a story which no living

a brilliant crimson sunset. Walter's creature ever told me, though I do

friend Amyot has a deathlike pallor, and not remember the time when I knew it
the
in each reincarnation of "A Dream" not.(159)

separated lovers are more pallid than in

the last. Amyot appears in a dream near a Notice the syncretic imagery of a tale

cliff by water; Lawrence must enter a red which "no living creature ever told me,"

cavern near a red peak by a river. Each but which "has grown up in his heart."

of "The Story"'s four inset scenes de When he finishes the first tale, Osric and

scribes a body of water (two rivers, a Herman are "awed by some vague sense of
spirits being very near. . . ," but Giles
landlocked bay, and a waterfall); in "A

Dream" each dissolve of scene is asso is not so patient, and he brusquely

ciated with imagery of elements in disor prompts the hesitant Hugh: "Never? old

der: wintry winds, a rushing sea, a tem Hugh, it is not so?Speak! I cannot tell

pest, and gusts of wind over the snow. you how it happened, but I know it was not

so, not so?speak quick, Hugh! Tell us

Some aspects of the narrative frame may all, all!"(165) The ruggedly dressed,

also be symbolic enough to merit notice. middled-aged Giles is "black-bearded, with
hung
Hugh begins the first tale: "And I have wild grey eyes that. . . great brows

fancied sometimes, that in some way, how I over far," and his blunt contravention is

know not, I am mixed up with the strange one of the frame's more interesting

story I am going to tell you." (159-60) passages. Hugh and Giles struggle to

Hugh quotes his father Cuthbert's descrip continue until the latter's

tion of the mysterious red cavern:

breast heaved as though it would
be rid of
many would have explored that cave, burst, as though it must
sprang up,
either from covetousness (expecting its secret. Suddenly he a solemn

to find gold therein), or from that and in a voice that was

love of wonders which most young men chant, began: "In full daylight, long
ago, on a slumberously-wrathful,
have, but fear kept them back. . ..

Within the memory of man, however, thunderous afternoon of summmer.

some had entered, and, so men said, (165)

were never seen on earth again. . ..

(159) then across his chant ran the old

man's shrill voice: "On an October

Something about this 'cave' suggests both day, packed close with heavy-lying

The Earthly Paradise's "Hill of Venus" and mist, which was more than mere autumn

more general emblems of an Unknown toward mist,". . . the shrill voice went on;

which successive generations are Giles sank down again, and Hugh

inexorably drawn?an ambiguity which may [remained] standing there, swaying to
to ringing of
account for some of Hugh's tendency and fro to the measured

assimilate Lawrence and himself. his own shrill voice, his long beard

moving with him. . . . (165)

The archetypical attraction of the cave is

also made more vivid when Cuthbert tells Hugh's second episode records a brief
between Lawrence
Hugh that his own father once stabbed him reconciliation and Ella,
and hos
in the shoulder to keep him from the cave. reincarnated as a wounded knight

10 SPRING 1987

pital nurse during a plague. In a scene overwhelmed by inarticulate grief. Her.

perhaps influenced by Kingsley's Two Years "need [for] a witness" also expresses once

After (1855), Hugh serves as a physician again Morris's desire for testimonial

to Lawrence as the latter recuperates from recognition of deep emotion. In reply,

his wounds. Lawrence addresses him as Lawrence suggests "old Hugh, or Cuthbert

"kind master Hugh" as the physician makes his father, [who] have both been witnesses

his rounds with the reincarnated Ella, who before;" solemnly she replies that "Cuth

is now a 'holy woman,' presumably a nun, bert. . . . has been dead twenty years

but also still 'peevish-looking' and quick [and] Hugh died last night" (170). At

to anger. Her only speech in the episode this point in Giles's narration, "a cold

is an unmerited exhortation and reproof: sickening shudder" goes through the two

"Master Physician, this is not time for younger men, "but he noted it not and went

dreaming: act. . . ," but here at least, on" (170).

she enjoins a man to care for the sick,

not enter a man-eating cave. The gentle, In the tale, Giles then sets forth with

scrupulous Lawrence responds to all of Ella and Lawrence "toward the hill by the

this "impatiently, as if his mind were on riverside" (another red cave by a river?),

other things, and he turned in his bed where a queen is to crown the victorious

away. . . . (167) The scene finally ends hero of a recent war. As they walk, Giles

when a great healing "WEST WIND" rises up is overcome by another curious phenomenon:

from the sea to blow away the plague's "my nature was changed, and ... I was

miasmic clouds, (17) a healing process invisible. . . for, though the sun was

which Hugh?'kind master' though he may high, I cast no shadow, neither did any

be?cannot effect himself. At the end of man that we passed notice us. . . ." (170)

his tale he remains poignantly "mixed up After Ella and Lawrence suddenly depart,

with the strange story": "somehow my life "my own right visible nature was

changed from the time when I beheld the returned," but friends at the celebration
...
two lovers, and I grew old quickly. not note his inappropriate attire. With

And that was long ago,. . . I know dream-plausibility, the victor now becomes

when it happened."(168) Like Walter, Hugh Lawrence and the queen Ella, and Giles

venerates an ideal which has faded with also recalls that he has rendered Lawrence

him into oblivion; in Morris's work narra a good service: "in that fierce fight. ..

tors too "come and till the fields, and another, coming from behind, would have

lie beneath." slain him, but. . . my lance bit into his

breast."(171) The queen briefly holds the

Giles's episode, the third, begins more hero's hand to render thanks; only Giles

quietly than his tempestuous intervention sees that she is Ella, and the formal

in the second: "I heard suddenly a breath gesture is in fact a passionate embrace.

of air rustle through the boughs of the After this climactic encounter, Giles
beat
elm. . . . my heart almost stopped quickly ends his tale; Osric now asks him

ing, I knew not why, as I watched the path how long ago all this happened, and Giles

of that breeze over the bowing lilies and terrifies him with his reply: "More than a

the rushes by the fountain. . . ." (168 hundred years. ..."

69) Giles's brother and love have recent

ly died, and he is still in mourning when The fourth inset tale briefly reunites
he sees
a "clear and distinct" (169) in everyone involved. A southwest wind howls

carnation of Lawrence and Ella, "Those two outside the warm hearth, and Ella enters

whom before I had but seen in dreams by when Hugh nods to Osric to open the door;

night." Ella speaks to Lawrence, for the Herman later opens it for Lawrence, as the

first time in the tale with open affec wind howls even louder. Ella's appearance

tion?"Love, for this our last true meet now transcends age; she is dressed in

ing before the end of all, we need a white, as usual, but her golden hair is

witness; let this man, softened by sorrow, covered with a long, white veil, both
bridal . ..
even as we are, go with us"(169)?and her veil and shroud: "her beauty

melodious voice so reminds the normally seemed to grow every minute; though she

vigorous Giles of his dead love that he is was plainly not young, but rather very,

_VPR 11

very old, who could say how old?" (173) widespread experimentation with complex
Law
She actively seeks the still absent narrative voices, multiple points of view
time
rence and describes him for the first (The Ring and the Book), and narrators

in terms which emphasize his physical alienated from an earlier vision ("Titho

beauty. When he finally enters, he is nus," "Dover Beach"). Anacoluthic narra

more luminous presence than human lover: tive is a flaw only if it lacks a plausi

[Herman] "was 'ware of some one in bright ble rationale, and absence of such shifts

armour passing him, for the gleam of it in certain contexts may simply be bland.

was all about him, for as yet he could not Morris's book-borders also show roughly

see clearly, being blinded by the hair analagous patterns of symmetry broken and

that had floated about him." (174) The reestablished again and again, as larger

pair now embrace in a last silent tableau patterns diverge from successive waves of
ash
then fade into 'a heap of snow-white who smaller configurations, each slightly dif

es' before the four awed 'witnesses,' ferent from the next.

pray for their souls. They also bear the Morris's first fictional attempts to ex
news who build a great
to 'the people,'
tomb, and like Walter carve the lovers' press his emotional identification with

story on its sides. Finally, the outer the role of narrative artist also bear
most
narrator who has dreamt all this several traits which remained deeply en

speaks the tale's final image, which is graved in his mature character: sensuous

both Keats i an and pre-Raphaelite: "in my identification with romantic experience,

dream I saw the moon shining on the tomb, willingness to endure frustration in fi

throwing fair colours on it from the delity to a disinterested cause, and devo

painted glass; till a sound of music rose, tion to an ideal of historical redemption
deepened, and The
fainted. . . . " (175) for collective and personal loss. The

lovers's final state is chill and warm, narrator who is a wry or diffident witness

sensuous and restful, loving and of others' tales likewise remained a basic

passionate. pattern of Morris's writings. Aspects of

this narrative role may be found again and

In its modest way, "A Dream" is a remarka again in the characteristic blend of in

ble tale. Its idealistic melancholy and tense sympathy and narrative distance of

nostalgia are present in all of Morris's Morris's speakers, the restlessly emotive,

early work, but its demarcation of inner non-possessive, trans-historical quality

and outer frames renders these qualities of the 'I' and 'we' which move through the

more effective, and Ella's complex temper early prose tales, The Earthly Paradise,

ament varies the tale's conventional divi and the essays on art and socialism. Wal

sions of sexual and heroic labor. In some ter, Hugh, Giles, and the narrator of

respects stylized and conventional, the "Shadows of Amiens" express an early form
dia
two lovers also enact a complicated of the complex but coherent fusion of
and
lectic of alienated consciousness sympathy and detachment which remained

postponed desire, and the tale anticipates throughout William Morris's long career a
form the more complex
in concentrated virtual signature of his literary work.

narrative wavefronts of Morris's later,

longer works. University of Iowa

Such shifts in narrator and chronology in

Morris's work are often judged as signs of NOTES

fragmented identity or lack of artistic --For two such interpretations, see the articles by

control, and "A Story" and "A Dream" might Frederick Kirchhoff and Kenneth Deal in The Golden Chain,

seem two of the most difficult test cases edited by Carole Silver, New York: William Morris Society,

for a contrary Yet twentieth 1981.

argument.

century novelists routinely employ such 2Among Morris's early medieval tales, only "Linden

shifts, and it is considered a mark of borg Pool" lacks an inset romantic plot. Its nineteenth

to object to them at least century narrator, who becomes a thirteenth-century priest,

Philistinism is troubled by this transition: "I have lost my identity.

without some ancillary argument. Victo . . . Yet I will be calm. ... I am resigned, since it

was also characterized is no worse than that. I am a priest, then. . . ," and

rian poetry by remarks that his thoughts are "all. . . strangely dou

12 SPRING 1987

ble,". . . ." The previous fall, Morris had abandoned his 9J.W. Mackai 1, The Life of William Morris, (New

intention to become an Anglican clergyman. The Collected York/London: Benjamin Bloom, 1968), vol. I, p. 96.

Works of William Morris, edited by May Morris, London:

Longmans, 1910-15, vol. I, pp. 247-48. Quotations in the 10Ibid., p. 97.

text are from this volume unless another reference or

volume number is given. 1:I-May Morris, William Morris: Artist, Writer,
1936), vol. I,
^Walter K. Jordon, in A Critical and Selected Edition Socialist, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

of William Morris's "Oxford and Cambridge Magazine" (1856)

(Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1960), comments 12 vol. I, p. 266. Compare John Ruskin's The
Ibid., of Architecture,
extensively on the Magazine's history in his general in E.T. Cook and The Complete
Seven Lamps
troduction and in the headnotes to each chapter. Ruskm, ?3- 1903), vol. Works of John

George Allen, Alexander Wedderburn, (London:

^Morris commented self-consciously on his earliest VIII, p. 224.

poetic efforts in early letters, especially those to Cor

mell Price in 1855. See The Letters of William Morris, 13Artist, Writer, Socialist, vol. I, p. 267.

edited by Norman Kelvin, Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1984, pp. 8-11, pp. 12-14, pp. 19-22. 14John Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, p. 6.

5The Collected Works of William Morris, vol. XVI, p. ^Fathers who harm sons are fairly rare in Morris's
233. in Earthly
writings, but several fathers Paradise tales
daughters,
confine or imprison marriageable father. and one daugh
6The Collected Works, vol. Ill, p. 3. ter (Rhodope) spurns a devoted

7Ibid., p. 4. *?The scenario in which a queen crowns a heroic

soldier is quite Morrisian; it may also have been in

8Philip Henderson, William Morris: His Life, Work, fluenced by contemporary reports of ceremonies in which
and Friends
(New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), p. 49. Queen Victoria honored veterans of the Crimean War.

33. ~.?m

"This is my theory":

Macaulay on Periodical Style

William A. Davis, Jr.

In 1879, Matthew Arnold wrote "Lord Ma the techniques of the novelist, the bio

caulay had, as we know, his own heightened grapher, and the dramatist to create his

and telling way of putting things, and we unique style as a historian. (2) These and

must always make allowance for it."(l) By other discussions have not suggested that

the time Arnold offered this advice, Tho Macaulay's original style in any way im

mas Babington Macaulay's way of putting pedes an understanding of the History.

things had already become legend to two Likewise, those critics who argue that

generations of readers raised on the His Macaulay's style as an Edinburgh Review
contributor was
tory of England and the Critical and His unremarkable have not

torical Essays Contributed to the Edin questioned the substance of the Edinburgh

burgh Review. The trend among Macaulay's essays or the relationship between their

more recent readers has been not to make style and meaning. (3) The present study

allowances for his way of putting things examines Macaulay's theories of periodical

but to attempt to explain his method in style and shows that readers of Macaulay's

terms of his theories of historiography Edinburgh Review essays should keep these

and composition in general. Several dis theories in mind before ascribing to Ma

cussions of the History, for example, caulay all of the ideas and literary opin

begin by piecing together Macaulay's scat ions contained in the essays.

tered statements on theory and proceed to

show that Macaulay borrowed freely from By examining first Macaulay's letters to