KELMSGOTT HOUSE 



his appearance there was some surprise. " Could this robust per- 

 sonality, this practical, breezy-looking, sailor-like, artisan-like sort 

 of person, be really the famous decorative artist, the poet who 

 styled himself ' the idle singer of an empty day.' Then, the rumour 

 that had identified him with views inimical to the public weal, was 

 well founded. For he had discarded the stiff collar, frock-coat, 

 and silk hat, then held to be de rigueur, and his unconventional 

 costume reminded his audience that he had made himself very 

 prominent on the Socialist platform, and correct and conservative 

 Liverpool was then the last place in which his advanced views 

 would be acceptable. 



I think there was some such fluttering of the dove-cotes, but 

 he was well received, and well he might be, for among those 

 invited to attend there was none greater than William Morris ! 

 For some thirty years he had been preaching to the world 

 the cult of beauty as a vital necessity in man's environment, 

 and in the common things of daily use ; and he had been 

 already hailed as the good genius who had brought the useful 

 arts of life to a new birth. The movement to redeem the world 

 from the crass vulgarity of the Mid- Victorian age of crimson 

 flock papers, imitation oak, wax flowers, and Berlin woolwork 

 from the depressing effect of decoration misapplied in architecture 

 and the lesser but allied arts, was rapidly spreading, a quarter of a 

 century ago, even in districts removed from London. So it was, 

 at least, among the professional and upper-middle classes ; I 

 myself was personally familiar with several homes of the wealthier 

 Liverpool merchants, that were already ordered and decorated 

 after the fashion, or by the firm, of Morris and Co. But so far the 

 movement had made little or no progress in a lower stratum of 

 society ; for it was argued that while the deplorable degradation 

 of the working classes continued, it was impossible and indeed 

 ridiculous that they should themselves aspire to the " House 

 Beautiful." Morris, however, with a nobler creed, held, and 

 justly, that the degradation of architecture and the subsidiary 

 arts of decoration, was at once the cause, and the effect, of the whole 

 degradation of life. He held too but here I cannot follow him 

 particularly as his attempt to put theory into practice absorbed 

 so much of his invaluable time, and deprived the world of many 

 of the fruits of his genius that only by becoming apparently one 



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