KELMSCOTT 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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