William Morris

Communism in Furs: A Dream of Prehistory in William Morris's "John Ball"
Author(s): Stephen F. Eisenman

Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 87, No. 1 (Mar., 2005), pp. 92-110
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067157 .
Accessed: 14/06/2014 18:10
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Art
Bulletin.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Communism in Furs: A Dream of Prehistory in
William Morris's John Ball
Stephen F. Eisenman
A Dream of John Ball, a novel by William Morris, was first of the takes "were
early dialogue place, paneled roughly
as a serial in the of the Common with oak boards to about six feet from the and
published pages newspaper enough floor,
weal between November 13, 1886, and January 22, 1887.1 about three feet of
plaster above that was in a
wrought
Founded two years earlier by Morris and fellow disaffected pattern of a rose stem all round the room, and
running freely
members of the Social Democratic Federation, Commonweal
roughly done, but with (as it seemed to my unused eyes)
was an unusual One of three socialist wonderful skill and This of wall treatment?a
extremely weekly.2 spirit."8 type
papers published in England, it took as its special charge combination of paneling (or wainscoting) below textile or
proletarian education and To that end, it mural decoration?was described in numerous treatises of
organization. pub
lished news, fiction, poems, songs and with Morris's as of decoration, and
political working day typical fourteenth-century
class themes, as well as theoretical and historical he himself often used the in his commissioned
important arrangement
essays of the most socialists of the interiors.9 The walls of the main, lower room in Will Green's
by many important day,
among them (besides Morris), Frederick Engels, Edward house, featured later in the story, "instead of
being paneled,
Aveling, Paul Lafargue, George Bernard Shaw, Wilhelm were
hung with a coarse
loosely-woven stuff of green worsted
Liebknecht, and Karl Readers of Commonweal, who with birds and trees woven into it." Morris have been
Kautsky.3 may
inspired here by Froissart: several plates in H. N. Humphrey's

were drawn from and even titled
working, professional,
classes, either subscribed or
purchased single issues; the latter set, copied from an illuminated manuscript in the British
were hawked on the streets, at newsstands, and at of Museum, contain
wall that match the
meetings hangings generally
the Socialist Circulation was two to author's Green's Gothic chamber, however,
League. approximately description.10
three thousand during Morris's editorship (from 1885 to recalls
nothing
so much as the
drawing
room on the first
1890), a creditable number the of many news floor of Morris's own Kelmscott House, Hammersmith
given hostility (pho
agents at the time, though
not
enough
to ensure financial
tographed by Emery Walker, Fig. 1 ), which was hung with the
stability; until he left the paper in 1890, Morris was its chief woven Bird textile manufactured by Morris and
Company.11
benefactor as well as author.
At once
political, cosmopolitan, popular,
and
intellectually
The Library of Socialism
ambitious, Commonweal included in its pages in the late au For all his attention to weapons, costumes, and
furnishings,
tumn of 1886 articles dedicated to "The International Con supposed authentic dialect, Morris did not intend John Balito
ference of Glass Bottle Makers," "Communal Life," "The be either a of Gothic revival or a
dictionary style simple
Anarchists of and "Commercial Colonization?a adventure of the sort he admired in the novels of Sir
Chicago," story
Brief History of the 'Civilization' of Jamaica."4 Yet even in Walter Scott. Morris's chief ambition is best seen in the
such an eclectic context, John Ball must have
appeared episode during which the two protagonists?the rebel leader
strange to its first readers; the tale was at once and the to communicate their own histories
antiquarian narrator?try
and aestheticist, a combination of traits rare in other the veil of five centuries. While one
writing through interposing
in Commonweal.5 from brief and conclud the of the revolt, the other?who, of course,
Apart introductory explains goals
ing sections set in the present, Morris's story of peasant has knowledge of the future?must tell John Ball of his
rebellion takes in the En imminent defeat and death, that this failure is nev
place entirely fourteenth-century arguing
gland of King Richard II, and its characters speak in a dialect ertheless productive, since it will provide the platform
on
that can
only be described as
quaint?full of yeas and nays, which will be built an edifice of socialism that even the
thees and thous, and His source for narrator?that is, Morris not live to see. Thus,
sayests forsooths. principal himself?may
the narrative o?
John Ball, Jean Froissart's
fourteenth-century in spite of its archaism, John Ball was devised to advance just
Chronicles France and was a fount of adven one realization," as Morris elsewhere wrote, "of
of England, Spain, goal?"the
ture and detail, and Morris's text socialism."12 Within its pages, con
picturesque correspond complete Revolutionary
ingly brimmed with both event and archaism.6 Beside the temporary readers could discover concrete and
entertaining
archers, bowmen, and men-at-arms, there stood of political and even rev
plentiful pictures solidarity, popular protest,
"arbalestiers" (warriors armed with crossbows), "billmen" violence.13 The common in John Ball?like
olutionary people
(soldiers with halberds), and men with "long handled glaives" the contemporary workers and union members
represented
(lances, or broadswords). elsewhere in the of Commonweal?are described as
spears, pages
Morris also provided detailed descriptions of the antique brave, cooperative, and fraternal, and their leaders as
plain
costumes of his protagonists?John Ball, Jack Straw, and Will spoken and incorruptible. The publication of John Ball was
Green?and of the architecture and decoration of churches, thus of an effort to construct a
part ongoing popular English
taverns, and houses. Indeed, numerous
passages better reveal narrative that could supplant what Morris called "the dull
the of the than the ear of the novelist. The records of the battles and of and scoun
eye designer intrigues kings
interior walls of the Rose Tavern, for where much drels."14 Even the peasant that constitutes
example, though uprising

A DREAM OF PREHISTORY IN WILLIAM MORRIS'S JOHN BALL 93
1 Emery Walker, the drawing room,

Kelmscott House, Hammersmith
(from Morris, Collected Works, vol. 23,
frontispiece)
the book's narrative is defeated, the heroic and selfless G. E. Street.19 The were exhibited at the
finally drawings inaugural
actions of the men and women of Kent and Essex will lead in exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society at the
the end?the book makes clear?to emancipation from the New Gallery in London in October 1888; the mosaic itself was
yoke of serfdom in England. Most of all, therefore, John Ball begun in 1892 and completed two years later (Fig. 3). The
highlights the idea (expressed in much late-nineteenth finished work, located in the apse high above the chancel,
century socialist
pedagogy) that communism is a fundamen depicts Christ in the attitude of the cross before a flourishing
tal human that cannot be thwarted or de Tree of Life.20 To the of one outstretched arm is Eve,
impulse easily right
nied.15 After all, the story proposes, if the communist urge cloaked in a revealing tunic, with her children her
clutching
can drive men and women to rebellion in the conditions of
legs and a lily, symbol of the Annunciation and the promise
Britain, how much more how much of human salvation, at her side. To the left of Christ's other
primitive imperative,
more must be the desire to a commonweal extended arm stands Adam with his hands
unstoppable forge clasped together
in the circumstances of modern industrial En in an attitude of reverence or to his are sheaves
alienating prayer; right
gland. The novel thereby joined a growing corpus of key of wheat, symbolic
of his labors. With its robust Christ, sub
texts, old and new, in the library of

English socialism.16 stitution of Adam and Eve for Saint John and the Virgin Mary,
Morris's implicit claim in John Ball that communism is voluptuous
tree in
place of the cross, and fecund, Liberty
to and a basic human drive was the scene is modern and
indigenous England given pattern-style landscape, surprisingly
added dimension when his tale was republished in book form even secular in feel?a
pragmatic response to contemporary
by Reeves and Turner in 1888. That edition included a complaints about excessive, High
Church ritual and
piety.21
remarkable a the au However innovative the of mosa
frontispiece, soft-ground etching by iconography Burne-Jones's
a in Rome, m from
thor's best friend, Edward Burne-Jones, which has become ics the Genesis narrative John Ball?derived
of art and a ver the so-called Second, or Adamic, Covenant?is more remark
paradigmatic image late-nineteenth-century
itable emblem of British Socialism (Fig. 2). It depicts Adam able still, by virtue of its distinctly prehistoric cast and socially
and Eve, primitively dressed in animal furs and skins, tending redemptive message. Contrary to the biblical injunction that
their children and in their condemns Adam and Eve to burdensome toil
engaged separate, gender-specific perpetual,
labors: Adam
digs spade, with a while
yarn Eve manufactures ("cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of
by
means of a
drop spindle. This was not the only time that it all the days of your life," Gen. 3:17)?what Morris in 1879
Morris or had the first The called "the curse of shows the first hu
Burne-Jones depicted parents. labor"?Burne-Jones
former made cartoons for windows
depicting
Adam and Eve mans occupied with hard but satisfying labor in conditions of
in 1865 and the latter in 1857 and 1865.17 Ford Madox equality and mutual aid.22 "When Adam delved and Eve
Brown, a in the firm of Morris, Marshall, reads the "Who was then the Gentleman."
partner design span," caption,
Faulkner and Company, decorated and installed in 1862 a There were no bosses, in other words, when
society
was young
pair of windows depicting "Adam and Eve before the Fall" for and, consequently,
no alienated labor in
prehistory.
Commu
the west-end lancets of St. Martin's in Adam nism is thus not the response to circumstances
Scarborough.18 merely logical
and Eve also figured as the subject of a set of drawings by of oppression, whether during the late Middle Ages or the
for a mosaic for the new American but a fundamental of humans their
Burnejones Episcopal present, component by
church of St. Paul's Within the Walls in Rome designed by very original
natures: "From communism we have come," the

ART BULLETIN MARCH 2005 VOLUME LXXXVII NUMBER 1
94
2 Edward Burne-Jones, A Dream Ball, 1888, from Morris, A Dream of John Ball, 1888, frontispiece
of John soft-ground etching,

3 Burne-Jones, The Tree of Life between

Adam and Eve, 1883-94. Rome,
St. Paul's Within the Walls
and seem to propose, "and to communism we the members of a small number of tribes or
image caption present among
shall return." communities that were either remote from or
geographically
The that underlies this of an resistant to modernization.24
anthropology conception fiercely European
free labor and social was broad and ambi Because communism was said to represent a
original equality primitive stage
tious, and Morris was one of its champions. In common with in human that antedated monogamy, prop
history private
a number of other Victorian critics, and the because it buttressed an
ethnologists, philologists, erty, patriarchal family?and
and historians, he believed that there existed a in existence was
stage explicitly evolutionary perspective?its very
human social evolution called communism or barbar controversial from the conservatives
primitive beginning.25 Religious
ism during which people generally enjoyed communal living, and anti-Darwinians in the third quarter of the nineteenth
and labor. Moreover, he believed that Adam and Eve and their imme
reciprocity, pleasurable century, perhaps fearing
that in
widely
diverse times and places there survived clans, diate progeny would be denied their divine origin if they
tribes, and peoples that maintained the fundamentals of this were discovered to be communists, insisted on the priority
of life. These communities served as and of and or
early way dispersed universality private property father right, patri
mediating links between the prehistoric past and the eman

archy.26 (If some contemporary foraging or tribal peoples still
future, and of their and circum lived in communistic circumstances those from
cipated knowledge lifeways resembling
stances would prove valuable in the future of the described anthropologists, it could
development past evolutionary
by
text were or
English socialism. Morris's and Burne-Jones's etching for only be because they degenerate atavistic; they had
A Dream ofJohn Ball portray the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 as fallen far from an
original
state of
grace.) Legitimist
and
such a nodal a milestone, or "a step other conservative theorists, concerned to preserve
just point, upward along political
the as Morris wrote, that leads from the primitive the stature of monarchs and elites, also insisted on the
spiral," ruling
communist to the future.23 or at least ancient, of private and
past postrevolutionary prehistoric, origins property
Claims to after all, rested on a
patriarchy.27 royal legitimacy,
Primitive Communism in Nineteenth-Century Thought king's
status as father in an extended, national household or
Since roughly the middle of the nineteenth century, primitive family. (The very etymology of the word family?derived from
communism, communism in living, the communistic house the Roman or "all persons in a household subject
to
primitive familia,
hold, and other similar have been used to describe the control of one man"?was taken as a demonstration of
phrases
small-scale, and pr?state systems of social and the and of monogamy and patriar
premodern, universality superiority
material life in which the patriarchal family and strict hier chy.)28 As late as 1874, the legal historian Henry Sumner
archies of status and wealth were
largely
absent. In the space Maine would argue in The Early History of Institutions that "the
that would later be
occupied by private property, accumula patriarchal family of the Hebrew and Latin types [was] the
tion, and wage labor, there was in the oldest form of the
generalized reciprocity; family."29
that would be taken by monarchy, or this conservative eth
place theocracy, tyranny Despite opposition, archaeologists,
was found face-to-face decision and direct democ and continued to amass evidence of
making nologists, philologists
racy. As these definitions communism was the priority of communism. Indeed, after the
suggest, primitive primitive pub
understood its nineteenth-century
by theorists to have con lication of J.-J. Bachofen's Das Mutterrecht (1861) and John
stituted a distinct,
early stage in human and social evolution. Ferguson McLennan's Primitive Marriage (1865), the ubiquity
In addition, it was thought
to have "survived" until the and of masculine and monog
antiquity authority patriarchal,

96 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2005 VOLUME LXXXVII NUMBER 1
amous was no asserted. In Prim and tribes. still existed, the

marriage longer universally Savagery they argued, among
itive McLennan stated that humans had no of Australia and other Pacific
Marriage, early foraging Aborigines peoples.
families in the modern sense of the term. "Ideas of Civilizations are scattered across the and arose at vari
kinship," globe
he "must be as . . . and the fact of ous moments in
argued, regarded growths history.
consanguinity
must have
long remained
unperceived
as other The influence of Morgan and Engels, and of other less
facts, quite
as obvious have done."30 Men and women at this radical prehistorians such as John Lubbock, was immediate
primitive stage of human and In a series of articles in Commonweal from the
history recognized only "apparent" widespread.
ties of
fellowship among those who traveled, hunted, and ate
spring of 1887 devoted to the topic "Early Communal Life
After some indeterminate of time, there and What It Teaches," the architect and
together. length garden city-planner
arose notions of a blood "stock" common to all the members Unwin to
Raymond attempted provide ethnographic speci
of the groups; after that, there occurred ideas of
consanguine ficity to the idea of a tie between the primitive family and
relations between mother and child and then between sisters communist He focused his attention on
property. village
and brothers. Thus, for McLennan,
"kinship through
females communalism in the European Middle Ages and past and
Bachofen called "das Russia, Serbia, India, Peru, Switzerland, and
only"?what Mutterrecht"?everywhere present Java.
preceded kinship systems based on descent through the male "These are not isolated cases. . . .There can no
longer
be any
line. The first human
beings
lived in a state of "Hetairism," or doubt that nearly all nations have passed through a very long
communal and mother and much the characteristic feature of which was the common
promiscuity right, only period,
later?due to women's
supposed
natural revulsion at this use and ownership of land and other means of production by
sexual monogamous and the associations based more or less on the
anarchy?developed marriage family relationship."
patriarchal family. Unwin wrote in conclusion: "I hope this little study of prim
a few after McLennan, the American ethnol itive in the communal will us to see what
Writing years property ages help
ogist Lewis Henry Morgan similarly stated that the pairing sentiments and customs are
helpful
to a
peaceful and
happy
was "a slow its roots far back in the life. By to and these sentiments we shall
family growth, planting trying practice spread
period
of savagery.
. . .
Although essentially modern, it was be greatly helping to bring such a social life out of dreamland
the product of a vast and varied The into In Morris's series of "Socialism from the
experience."31 English reality."35 essays
polymath (and friend of William Morris) Andrew Lang ech Root

Up," published
in Commonweal a year
earlier?just prior
oed Morgan's observation in 1879 in The Encyclopedia Britan to the appearance o? John Ball?Morris himself described the
nica. The civilized family, he stated, arose from former savage "individualism of savage life" yielding over time to "primitive
and barbaric "tribal associations" in which and communism": the "unit of was the [clan], a
promiscuity society gens
polyandry prevailed.32 Far from being the earliest, the pairing group of blood relations at peace among themselves ...
[with]
was "one of the latest of civilization." Mor wealth common to all its members."36
family conquests
gan's writings, which included

Society (1877) and Ancient For William Morris as for Frederick
Engels, consideration
Houses and House-Life of theAmerican Aborigines (1881), were of the historical dimensions of primitive communism went
also deeply important for Frederick Engels, whose The Origin beyond a scientific or philosophical pursuit. For them, it
of the Family, Private Property and the State was an explicit formed a necessary
aspect of both socialist pedagogy and
homage
to the American evolutionary ethnologist.
In both
practical politics. They each believed, following Karl Marx,
Morgan's Ancient Society and Engels 's The Origin of theFamily, that no
stage in the evolution of society
was ever
completely
the three main stages in social evolution and property rela subsumed by its successor. Rather, each distinct
they thought,
tions were called savagery, barbarism, and civilization. Sav mode of both economic forces
production?encompassing
agery, according toMorgan and Engels, began with what they and social relations?was transcended by the next in such a
considered the childhood of the human race and ended with way as to
repeat many of its essential patterns, albeit at a
bows and arrows, fire, canoes, and It was more self-conscious, and more achieved
dugout longhouses. higher, technically
an umbrella term that
encompassed what we would now call level.3 This pattern of progress amid repetition derived not
foraging (hunter-gathering) and simple horticultural modes from a
cyclically ordered cosmic system
or an
unchanging
of production. Barbarism began with the development of human nature but simply
from the
contingencies of history
pottery and the domestication of plants and animals and and the inertia of culture as well as the power of memory.
ended with the clearing of forests and the forging of iron Thus, the communist society of the future would inevitably
tools. The world of the Homeric epics, especially the Iliad, bear a
significant resemblance to its
primitive precursor,
"
Engels writes, [marks] the upper stage of barbarism at its though
its economic and social structure would be pro
highest."33 (This period includes what we would now call foundly changed, and knowledge of the relation of past and
horticultural, and modes could instrumental in the formation of a ma
complex pastoral, early agricultural present prove
of production.) Civilization, finally, was the period "in which ture, revolutionary self-consciousness.
Engels concluded his
man learned a more advanced application of work to the treatise The Origin of theFamily by tying together past, present,
products of nature, the period of industry proper and of and future communism. Quoting Morgan, he wrote:
art."34 The term embraced ancient slave and late feudal
modes of
production,
as well as modern, industrial
capital The time which has passed away since civilization began
ism. It should be noted that the three terms were not is but a of the duration of man's existence;
strictly fragment past
and wrote, was and but a of the to come. . . .
chronological. Barbarism, Morgan Engels fragment ages yet Democracy
restored to Europe by the Germans after the fall of Roman in government, brotherhood in society,
equality
in
rights
civilization and survived among many contemporary clans and and universal education, foreshadow the
privileges,

next of to which intelli for tirades whose echoes could be

higher plane society experience, counterrevolutionary
and are It will be a heard until Morris's and
gence knowledge steadily tending. day beyond.
in a of the and fra The events and heroes and villains of 1381 were
revival, higher form, liberty, equality speeches,
of the ancient at first in local and soon after in the
ternity gentes.38 preserved memory,
written chronicles of Froissart, Ho
Henry Knighton, Raphael
linshed, Thomas and others. These authors
In A Dream ofJohn Ball, Morris, too, described this upward Walsingham,
There he that the

condemned the uprising, but often in terms that implicitly
toward democracy. argued goals
trajectory
of the peasant rebellion would be met not in the days that accepted the justice of popular complaints. Succeeding gen
erations of clergy and nobles, including Archbishop Courte
followed its defeat but in the distant future, "the change
as nay of Canterbury, Queen Elizabeth I, and King Charles II
the And at that future time, he later
beyond change."39
bitterly invoked the names of the rebel leaders Ball, Tyler,
wrote, it would become clear that the of the
replacement
and Straw to warn the dangers of reform,
of the middle with "the confusion of against religious
"orderly system ages"
sedition, or factionalism.46 In the seven
commercialism" was not a but "a step conspiracy, early
incipient retrogression
teenth Thomas a his
the which, not the line, is . . . the century, Deloney composed "strange
upward along spiral straight
true line of tory" of "the rebellion of Watt Tyler and Jack Straw" in order
progress."40
to praise in rhyming couplets the bravery of the young King
Richard II in standing up to and defeating the insurgents and
John Ball and the Histories of the Peasants' Revolt William Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, and to proclaim
Precisely such a dialectical perspective?nurtured by the that "rebels never flourish long."47 John Cleveland's history,
study of primitive communism, or barbarism?is articulated called The Idol ofClownes, compared the rebels to the contem
by William Morris in A Dream ofJohn Ball.41 The historical porary Levelers, or
"Diggers," who argued
for the redistribu
event that was the basis for John Ball?the Great Peasants' tion of farmland, and insisted, "The Idol [Wat Tyler] and his
Revolt?occurred an age that was Morris Incendiaries are abhorred every detests
during shaped, everywhere, History
believed, by the historical contradiction between the rise of them, while Faith, Civility, Honesty, and Piety shall be left in
craft guilds and "the primitive Communism which yet lived in the world, the Enemies of all these must neither be beloved
the early days of the Middle Ages."42 The insurrection itself nor
pitied."48 By the end of the eighteenth century, however,
began in the small town of Fobbing, Essex (about fifteen accounts of the uprising to include references
began explicit
miles east of Morris's birthplace, Walthamstow) ,43In late May to the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the
1381, a number of local peasants, craftsmen, and traders rebels.In his History ofEngland, David Hume wrote,
seized and assaulted some sent from London to en
justices
force a hated new poll tax. Rebellion spread quickly to more One John Ball also, a seditious
preacher,
who affected low
than 120 other villages in south and central Essex, and there popularity,
went about the country, and inculcated on the
after to the counties of Kent, Norfolk, Hertfordshire, Sussex, audience the principles of the first origin of mankind from
and Suffolk. "IfKent be not the Mother of [rebellion]," wrote one common flock; their equal right to liberty and to all
the poet and wit John Cleveland in 1654, "yet are the Trea the goods of nature; the tyranny of artificial distinctions;
sons of her and Essex, Sister-twins of the same birth, but Essex and the abuses which had arisen from the of
degradation
started first."44 the insurrectionists, led the more considerable part of the species, and the aggran
only By mid-June by
the "mad preacher" John Ball, his friend Wat Tyler from dizement of a few intolerant rulers. These doctrines, so
Colchester, and another named Straw, made a set to the and so conformable to the
priest Jack agreeable populace,
of demands: besides elimination of the poll tax, they required ideas of primitive equality which are engraven in the
the end of and other servile tenures, reduction of hearts of all men were received by the multitude;
villeinage greatly
rents, and cessation of the extravagant maintenance of aris and scattered the sparks of that sedition which the present
tocrats and the higher clergy. They even demanded the tax raised into a
conflagration.49
rudiments of after the of the
democracy: suppression upris
an indictment issued in Bocking, Essex, states that the Hume's account is the first to propose that inborn "ideas of
ing,
rebels wished "to have no other law in but those that motivate the rebels and advance
England primitive equality" helped
themselves made to be ordained."45 The was the insurrection.
they uprising
thus
unprecedented
in its boldness and coherence. In mid It is, of course, difficult to judge the extent to which the
thousands marched in protest to London to meet the Peasants' Revolt was in memory for the
June, "engraven" popular
and their demands, the certain of five centuries to the events; must
king present marking entry subsequent popular history
the plebeian classes into the written records of English his often make due with only indirect evidence of a salient,
tory. Though the rebellion was defeated in just nine days? indigenous ideology.50 That generations of lords and bish
and though villeinage in England ended later, most histori ops, poets and historians felt the need to condemn the rebels,
ans now not with a but a mercantile as we have seen, that a kind of subterranean cult of
agree, revolutionary bang suggests
whimper?the revolt became for many peasants and workers John Ball and Wat Tylor persisted long after the insurrection.
a
symbol
of the power of political address, popular organiza William Langland's The Vision and Creed of Piers Plowman was
tion, and communalism. The rhymes, sayings, speeches, and written just before the rebellion, but John Ball himself is said
songs of that
springtime
of revolt became the bases for a to have used the allegorical poem to help him voice his
popular ideology of insurrection that would prove insistent antipathy to the domination of nobles and a hierarchical
and valuable in later centuries. also furnished stimulus church. readers o? Piers Plowman, Thomas
They Subsequent Wright

98 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2005 VOLUME LXXXVII NUMBER 1
first suggested in 1842, could not help but see the Plowman Rioting in revelry;
himself as an embodiment of
religious and political dissent.51 Be he villain, be he fool,
Cleveland's to the Levelers during the English
references Still to hold despotic rule,
Revolution suggests that they were inspired by the rebels of Trampling
on his slaves with scorn;
1381; certainly, the "True Levelers" must have known by Thisis to be nobly born.
heart the famous
rhyme
about Adam
delving.52
When Adam delved and Eve Span
Indeed, the cries, and
Ball were oaths of Who was then the Gentleman?
slogans, John
recorded Holinshed, and Froissart and ap
by Walsingham,
pear in
nearly
all later accounts of the
uprising.
In Cleveland
During the 1820s and 1830s, the essential facts of the Peas
we read: "At Black heath, where an of 200,000 men ants' Revolt and the literature connected with it
assembly popular
made their Randez-vouze, after some time in served as the of both for reform
spent seeking currency agitators political
God, [John Ball] baits in Rime, 'Wahn Adam Dalf and Eve and loyalists opposed to constitutional change. In 1819 and
"
span,/Who
was than a Gentleman?' Fallen from the sleeve 1820, after Peterloo (the murder by the Lancashire militia of
of one of the traitors on the were letters from several radical reformers in St. Peter's Field, Manchester)
hung gallows
"Baal, composed of a jargon, a canting gibridge, fit for the and in the midst of the Queen Caroline affair (a popular and
. . . fuller of Ridles than sense. ..." tussle over the divorce of IV
design parliamentary planned George
from Caroline of Brunswick), dueling penny pamphlets in
Stand in God's Name, and biddeth Piers Plow voked Wat Tyler.56 An antirepublican
together play called Wat Tyler
man to his work, and chastise Hob the robber, and or theMob was
goe and Jack Straw, in London
Reformers performed
take with you John Trewman, and all his fellows and no in 1831 at the height of debate over the Reform Bill, and by
moe, John the Miller hath y ground small, small, small, the the end of the decade, of Wat were seen on the
images Tyler
or
Kings Son of Heaven shall pay for all. Beware ye be woe. walls of radical and Chartist rooms in the Essex
meeting
Know friend from foe. . . ,53
your your towns of Bradford and Sheffield.57 They may have hung there
still during Morris's boyhood at nearby Woodford and
The occasional appearance of these and codes in
rhymes
Walthamstow. The local historian and folklorist Thomas
elite literature?and the need to cen
consequent express
who wrote a massive in was
in oral Wright, History of Essex 1831,
sure?also suggests their traditions and popu
vitality
interested in the songs and his
sufficiently popular "strange
lar writing. In 1777, Thomas Evans published his volume of
tories" associated with Wat Tyler and John Ball to trace their
Old Ballads, which included a twenty-three-verse history called
It was Holinshed, he an "older
an to Wm. origins. explained, copying
"The Rebellion of Wat and encomium
Tyler" chronicler" who recorded the well-known the
of London, rhyme: "John
(William) Walworth, mayor for killing Tyler:
Miller small, small, small; the sonne of
y- ground kings
"And therewith to his dagger start,/He thrust the rebel to the
heaven shall for all."58 The was in
paie couplet engraved
heart."54
Morris's as he in Ball "Methinks
memory, explained John
At the end of the eighteenth century and during the first
thou comest from heaven down," Will Green says when first
decades of the nineteenth, the Peasants' Revolt, its leaders,
the and visitor (the book's narra
meeting strange suspicious
and its rhetoric were cited times of polit
increasingly during
tor) from the future:
ical crisis and In 1791, Tom Paine cele
popular insurgency.
brated the leaders of the rebellion in the second part of
[Green] seemed to hesitate a moment, and then leant
Common Sense (1791), and three years later Robert Southey forward and in my ear: the Miller, that
whispered 'John
his Wat That work, however, remained
composed play Tyler. "and and winked at me,
ground small, small, small, stopped
little known until 1817, when it became the focus of a scandal
known as "the Wat affair." A after a mass reform

and from between my lips without my mind forming any
Tyler day came i(The king's son
meaning the words, of heaven shall pay
at
Spa-Fields and an aborted effort to seize the Tower of "
rally
an for all.
London, delivered oration in the House of Com
Southey
mons "seditious" who the
denouncing journalists impugned It was the that the man the
boy's memory gave grown pass
and its ministers. The next his
present government day, needed to entrance into the world of the
word he gain
Jacobin play of 1794, long thought to have been lost, was medieval conspirators.
published without the author's knowledge or permission. In
The Essex County inhabitants of Morris's childhood?and
the House of Commons, of the play were read aloud
portions
enemies in order to highlight his
the boy himself?had good reason to recall the fourteenth
by Southey's republican its heroes, and its The
century rebellion, rhymes. poverty
and Soon the was issued in a
inconsistency opportunism. play and workers
experienced by craftsmen, farmers, agricultural
two-penny pamphlet; sixty thousand copies sold in just a few
and the disruption of former patterns of life may have been
and then everyone in England, it seemed, knew the
days, these than in the five
greater during years any previous
that act 2:55
song began It was one of the the
hundred. regions caught up during
1820s and 1830s in what William Cobbett called the "Rural
When Adam Delved and Eve Span
War" between landlords and country laborers threatened by
Who was then the Gentleman? . . .
agricultural and industrial mechanization and by the decline
While the peasant works to
sleep;
in employment and wages. Though 55 percent of the families
What the peasant
sows to reap; of the county were still engaged in the cultivation of grain
On the couch of ease to lie, and the grazing of animals in 1831, industry in Essex was

A DREAM OF PREHISTORY IN WILLIAM MORRIS'S JOHN BALL
99
5 Richard II and the Rebels, from Froissart, The Chronicles

4 John Ball Preaching to thePeople, from Jean Froissart, The of
Froissart, vol. 1, 657
Chronicles of Froissart, vol. 1. London: Bohn, 1852, 653
making advances. Samuel Courthauld's tory. Ball and received treatment from
rapid development Tyler sympathetic
of the power loom in the 1830s essentially ended the careers Charles Dickens in A Child's History ofEngland (1852) and the
of thousands of local hand-loom silk weavers. An iron Christian Socialist C. E. Maurice (a close friend of Morris) in
foundry was established in 1839 atWest Ham on the river Lea "The Class Struggle in Richard IPs Reign," in his Lives of
about four miles from Morris's house at Walthamstow, and
English Popular Leaders of Middle
the Ages (1875).63 The histo
within a decade it boasted four blast furnaces, as well as rian J. R. Green stated in his History of the English People
puddling and scrap furnaces, hammers, rollers, shears, and (1878)?another book admired and cited by Morris?that
numerous steam Indeed, at West the rebellion was animated clever and
engines.60 employment peasant by slogans
Ham drained the of Walthamstow and Wood and that these constituted the of a
populations catchphrases, beginnings
ford, and the proximity of industry diminished the value of political literature that would attain maturity with John Mil
the better homes?like those of the Morris family?in both ton and William Blake. "It was the tyranny of property that
towns. then as ever roused the defiance of socialism. A spirit fatal to
Working-class residents of Essex
responded
to the changes the whole system of the Middle Ages breathed in the popular
around them with a mixture of forbearance, dismay, and rime which condensed the leveling doctrine of John Ball:
resistance. an economic in 1829, farm 'When Adam delved and Eve who was then the
Following depression span, gentle
"64
ers and laborers alike demanded a reduction in rents and the man.' of the rebellion, them Ball
Images among John
reform of Parliament. In 1832, hundreds of people
con
Preaching to thePeople and Richard II and theRebels (Figs. 4, 5),
verged on Essex to demand enactment of the Reform Bill, could be seen in
popular editions of Froissart, such as those
intended to
expand suffrage and shift some
Parliamentary published by H. G. Bohn. Perhaps most important of all, as
from rural to urban areas. In addition, Essex soon Morris believed, the new science of socialism revealed the
power
became a center for in to the historical dialectic that events even
agitation opposition oppressive propelled insurrectionary
new Poor Law of 1834, which laborers to accept in the absence of a class consciousness. The
compelled fully developed
lower or be interred in workhouses. The latter edifices "communistic of the fourteenth inher
wages aspirations" century,
were set ablaze all across Essex and Suffolk.61 ited from the primitive Celtic and Teutonic tribes and
Thus, when William Morris decided to retell the tale of thwarted by the fetters of feudal bond service, found expres
John Ball just a little more than five hundred years after the sion in the words and deeds of peasants, simple craftsmen,
events, he had every reason to believe that he was a and who acted not for themselves but for
fanning clergy posterity.65
revolutionary ember that still glowed
in
popular
conscious The fruits of their actions, Morris believed, would be born
ness. The dream of
primitive communism that yet lived dur half a millennium later. In 1884 in London, the Lord Mayor's
ing late medieval times?expressed in the rhymes
concern Show included a reenactment of the slaying of Wat Tyler; that
ing Piers Plowman, John Trewman, John the Miller, and celebration, Morris
argued,
was a
vestige of former reaction
Adam and Eve?survived the appearance of "free laborers," ary attitudes that would be swept aside by the coming surge of
the authority of the guilds, "the expropriation of the yeo socialism.66 He would contribute to the movement
by relating
menry from the lands," the appearance of a
powerful middle the true story of the rebellion in A Dream ofJohn Ball.
class, and now "the rise of the machine industries."62
great
The saga of the rebel priest and his fellow outlaws, ending in Communism in Furs
the rebels being tortured and killed, was still often told by the Edward Burnejones's frontispiece illustration for A Dream of
powerful
in order to ensure obedience, but the tale became John Ball provides a compelling image of primitive commu
once more the stuff of revolt and his nism (or barbarism)?and thus too?as fun
working-class popular gender equality,

100
damental to the human condition. The engraving depicts that has set "the whole of
bourgeoisdom
in a twitter."73
neither a
single
moment in Morris's narrative nor a
unique
Morris may additionally have recalled the Lord Mayor's Show
instance in time; instead, it is an iconic image, functioning of two years earlier that reenacted the slaying
of Wat
Tyler.
for the spectator,
as for the protagonists
in the story,
as an The medieval past and socialist future brushed against each
of veneration or It is based on a nota other in the of the rancorous and not in
object contemplation. actuality present, just
ble passage of ekphrastic in 2, where Morris Morris's dialectical
writing chapter imagination.
describes the procession of women and men anxious to hear
Burne-Jones's etching is largely faithful to the text that
the words of John Ball: inspired it, even down to its
interweaving,
as we shall see, of
several discrete historical moments. The of Adam and

figures
Above the heads of the crowd, and now are
slowly working Eve and their two children in a
pressed closely together
towards the cross was a banner on a
high-raised cross-pole, that resembles a more than a An
landscape copse garden.
a of a man and woman half-clad in skins of beasts
picture
apple tree arches long, fruit-bearing limbs behind the first
seen a of green trees, the man
against background holding man and woman, them in an embrace. Small
holding plants
a spade and the woman a distaff and spindle, rudely done at clods of earth at and arcs of at
left, center, grass right
but with a certain and much
enough, yet spirit meaning; the narrow Also on the be
punctuate ground. ground, just
and underneath this of the early world and man's
symbol hind the blade of the spade held by Adam, is a ball of yarn,
first contest with nature were the written words: of Eve's A preparatory in the
product industry. drawing,
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, omits the ball of yarn and
"When Adam delved and Eve span, much other detail and indicates a that
was foreground landscape
Who then the
gentleman?" is more like an orchard than a Several
weedy garden (Fig. 6).
came on trees take up the instead of the lone
The banner bearer and the crowd, background, etching's
through
which at last where we stood for its passage, and tree, and beyond them at left is a brick wall, recalling the
opened
hortus conclusus of late medieval Marian The overall
the banner-bearer turned and faced the and stood imagery.
throng
on the first of the cross beside me.67 composition of both the drawing and etching recalls Burne
step
well-known (based on some in
Jones's painting rhymes
The text is redolent with historical overlays and purposeful Thomas Percy's Reliques) King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
anachronism. Morris writes that the banner carried by the (Fig. 7), especially when we recall that the finished print is
medieval people of Kent depicted the first parents "half-clad reversed from the
copperplate.74
In each case, a female
fig
in skins of beasts" and a and and ure sits above a male in an foreshortened,
employing spade spindle exaggeratedly
distaff. It is a
"symbol
of the early world and man's first vertical field. Even the widely parted knees and tight folds of
contest with nature," that is, of the of human social the that around the two female are
stage garments wrap figures
evolution called barbarism. The was the tool
spade specifi comparable.
cally cited by Morris in Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome as a Burne-Jones's Eve in the finished
etching
wears a skirt
of the of a over nature" when made of fur or animal skin tied around her waist like a
sign "beginnings greater power
land was "the definite property of the community."68 Kinship Polynesian pareu and supported from above by a length of
was based, this of human on the material that over her shoulder, her
during early phase history, drapes right leaving right
or clan, "in which descent was traced breast as if she were an Amazon. This is a form of
gens, wholly through exposed,
the mother, and that women were the undress of which was fond; it appears
consequently recog pagan Burne-Jones
5
nized element therein."69 Morris's several times in his oeuvre. In her left hand Eve holds a
predominant descriptions loop
of relations in John Ball?of who men of raw fiber, and in her a One child,
gender priests marry, right, drop spindle.
on on her child at
who openly weep hearing
the rebel leader's plea
for sitting the ground, clutches right leg; another
and women who answer men with confi left, with his back to the viewer, sits sheltered a rock or tree
fellowship, proud by
dence and conviction?suggest that the "primitive
commu trunk. The right half of the composition is dominated by the
nity" of early times had survived until the late Middle Ages.70 taut
figure
of Adam, who leans heavily into his
spade,
its
But the above more than a medieval blade the surface of the earth.
passage depicts memory heart-shaped barely breaking
of prehistory; it also invokes modernity. With just a few He, too, wears a
wraparound skirt, parted
at the thigh by
dint
changes, Morris's words might have described a march of of his exertions. Fine lines on his
thighs, legs, and arms,
unemployed British working men and women through Tra engraved

on the plate after the ground
had been removed,
the we pa articulate volume and musculature.
falger Square: latter-day protestors, may imagine, subtly
rade with resolution, aloft their and banners, announces at once three distinct
raising placards Burne-Jones's etching
and labor such as Morris's moments in time: the medieval of Morris's narrative,
chanting slogans, singing songs, England
own "No Master," composed in 1883 for his collection Chants the "early world" of Adam and Eve (represented as the epoch
for Socialists.71 In fact, such a rally was held on November 9, of barbarism), and the modern age of the artist and author.
1886, while Morris was at work on the first parts o? John Ball. The medieval iconography of the Labors of Adam and Eve
It was the Social Democratic Federation, Mor was common from about the twelfth the
organized by extremely through
ris's former and was conducted amid the and sixteenth centuries. The contained an asser
group, pomp subject implicit
pageantry of the annual Lord Mayor's Show.72 In a short tion that unremitting hard work was the lot of humankind
notice in Commonweal, Morris remarked the contrast between since the Fall?it was generally bond laborers that broke the
the "sheriffs and aldermen's banners and late winter soil with wooden or metal
carriages, company compacted, spades?
usual circus show" and the of the and that was eternal. the late fourteenth cen
"procession" unemployed villeinage By

A DREAM OF PREHISTORY IN WILLIAM MORRIS'S JOHN BALL \Q\
6 Burnejones, study for A Dream of

1888. Oxford, Ashmolean
John Ball,
Museum
tury, as Michael Camille writes, the image of diggers and A particularly fine depiction of the Labors of Adam and Eve
plowmen
in
English manuscripts represented "a nostalgic is found in the Morgan Crusader Bible (ca. 1250, Pierpont
vision of an earlier 'golden age' of feudal order at a time of
Morgan Library, New York, M. 638), acquired by the great
actual crisis and change
in the
agricultural and social sys monopolist in 1916 from the renowned collection of Sir
tem."76 Labor shortages in the half century following the Thomas Phillipps. A facsimile of the book, prepared by Mor
Black Death improved
the circumstances and assertiveness of ris's close friend Sir Sidney Cockerell for the Roxborough
craftsmen, wage laborers, villeins, and servants, which in turn Club, was published in 1920, but it is not certain that Morris
led to renewed efforts lords and masters to increase rents, or had access to this in the later
by Burne-Jones manuscript
raise taxes, and otherwise reestablish It was 1880s.78 More certain sources for the two artists at this time
authority. pre
this labor that knew its value and were the or block-book (so called because all or
cisely struggle?between xylographie,
nobles who wished to restore their traditional of the texts were from woodblocks, not from
prerogatives? part printed
that led to the insurrections of the late fourteenth century. movable type), and incunabular editions of the Speculum
Artistic
representations
of the Labors of Adam and Eve are
published between about 1450 and 1500. Speculum block
found in late medieval bibles, missals, Psalters, and, espe books, such as the Dutch edition in the Huntington Library
cially, the typological Speculum humanae salvationis (Mirror of (Fig. 8) or a nearly identical book with Latin text in the
Salvation) manuscripts, block books, and incunabula.77 Mor British Library (Fig. 9), with their clear images and didactic
ris and knew these books and well. were used as reference or
Burne-Jones manuscripts explications, by clergy guides

102
7 Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar

Maid, 1884. London, T?te Gallery (photo:
T?te Gallery/Art Resource, NY)

A DREAM OF PREHISTORY IN WILLIAM MORRIS'S JOHN BALL 1Q3
8 Adam and Eve, woodcut, from

humanae salvationis, Utrecht?
Speculum
ca. 1470-71. San Marino, California,
The Henry E. Library and
Huntington
Art Gallery (reproduced by permission
of The Library, San
Huntington
Marino, California)
prompts in the instruction of the poor and unlettered in the The overall appearance of the woodcuts of the Labors of
proper conduct of life and the best path to salvation.79 Like Adam and Eve in the British Library, Huntington, and other
the Biblia pauperum that generally preceded them, they were Speculum block books is sufficiently close to that of Burne
also owned by the better-off laity. Among the earliest of all Jones's frontispiece etching in John Ball that they must be
printed books, Speculum block books were the subject of considered direct sources. Each Adam and Eve full
depicts
considerable bibliographic curiosity in Morris's day, with length
in
three-quarter views, turned to the center and en
some writers claiming that

composite volumes, comprising gaged in their gender-specific labors. Each in addition is
as well as the in a short, below. The first, in
xylographie metal-type printing, predated accompanied by aphoristic gloss
vention of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in Germa black letter, reads: "Hie Adam operatur
terram in sudore
The British Library Speculum volume had already been vultus sui" (Here Adam with sweat on his brow delves the
ny.80
republished in facsimile in 1861, and Morris specifically dis earth). The second, engraved by Morris with a highly idio
cussed it in his Arts and Crafts Essays of 1888 and four years syncratic blend of Roman uncials and minuscules with incip
later in an illustrated lecture titled "Woodcuts of Gothic ient Gothic elements (tick serifs, tall ascenders, and little ears
Books." There, he generally praised the "picture cuts" in on the minuscule g), influenced by the fifteenth-century
block books, adding, "itwould be difficult to find more direct printer
Nicholas Jensen, contains the now-familiar rhyme.
or more of the events than those of The in the Ashmolean Museum reveals
poetical rendering given preparatory drawing
the Speculum Humanae Salvationist1 Morris also admired, that the
engraver's original intention was to
employ
an an
and again specifically praised, the incunabular edition of the gular, or pointed, Gothic that closely approximated the black
Speculum printed by G?nther Zainer at Augsburg in 1473.82 letter in the reliance on the block
Speculum. Burne-Jones's
He in fact acquired a copy of the book in 1889 or 1890, along book illustration as a source for his composition is further
with a similar volume by Zainer, the Spiegel des menschlichen indicated by one additional detail. Paired with the Labors of
lebens (both are now in the Morgan Library). He inserted in Adam and Eve in the British Library and Huntington Library
his of the latter a note that the cuts, combined books is an of Noah's ark, a vessel
copy stating Speculum image bargelike
with the created "ornamented as as are to be with a basifican beneath a dove with out
type, pages good superstructure
found in all typography."83 stretched wings. A pair of small drawings by Burne-Jones in a

104
*&'
' "jPfc
vr,,if
'Sr^FTm'i't' ^i
-.?* '*>*!?:% ws. ':^?

fef-ak*-'
^-P?' *M
~--mm?
.?. /
*fer i*ai*i58s.'.j^:
9 Ad?zm and Eve, woodcut, and from humanae salvationis, ca. 1470. London, The British
xylographie metal-type printing, Speculum
Library G. 11784 (photo: by permission of the British Library, London)
sketchbook from about this time similar vessels nes of Adam and Eve but the one created
depicts Burnejones's picture
tled in stylized seas, surrounded by frames such as those used by the medieval men and women of Kent and carried by them
in illustrated incunabula (Fig. 10). Fruit trees recalling the in a march. It
thereby imputes
a
sophisticated
historical sense
specimen in John Ball grow from the middle of the mysteri to the rebels of 1381, a consciousness that they
were
acting in
ous concert with their or Adamic, forebears, and that
ships.84 prehistoric,
There are, however, some notable and the world" was one of labor, when work was
iconographie stylis "early integrated
tic differences between the Speculum image of the Labors of not
clearly separated from leisure, and the domestic sphere
Adam and Eve and Burne-Jones's print for A Dream ofJohn was not
distinguished from the communal economy. At the
Ball. In place of the single child on Eve's knee in the former same time, however, the image looks forward to modern
volume?presumably, the first-born Cain, the antitype of England, that is, to laborers and the unemployed carrying
Jesus?Burne-Jones portrays
two infants at Eve's feet, without banners in a rally. The wide-branching fruit tree in the John
distinguishing Abel from Cain, thereby suggesting (as he had Ball etching recalls the spreading oak designed by Morris in
in St. Paul's Within the Walls in Rome) that there is no 1883 for the membership card of the Democratic Federation
murderer present,
no victim, and no mortal sin. In addition,
(Fig. 11); each employed the same, idiosyncratic Roman
the laboring Eve holds in her left hand not the distaff that is lettering. In fact,
Burne-Jones's image
became a kind of
her usual attribute but instead a more basic mechanism?a socialist and feminist broadside or soon after
popular image
simple roll of yarn, employed by primitive peoples, according it was published. It was copied on a larger scale by the
to the best
nineteenth-century scholarship, when the fibers to
Birmingham Arts and Crafts designer Robert Catterson
be spun are shorter.85 Burne-Jones may have wished by inclu Smith and reproduced in the Daily Chronicle in 1888.87 Four
sion of this detail to signal more clearly the "early world" years later, the image
was
republished
as the woodcut fron
mentioned in Morris's text, a time when humans wore furs tispiece for the Kelmscott Press edition of A Dream ofJohn Ball,
and animal skins, when the division of labor was the and two after as the first of a
only years page four-page pamphlet
sexual division of labor, and, most of all, when there were no
printed by the Kelmscott Press and presented to members of
lords, masters, or overseers. The the Ancoats Brotherhood, a Manchester asso
gentlemen, etching thereby workingmen's
invokes the epoch
of barbarism?the time of communism in ciation led by Charles Rowley (Fig. 12). This work of deluxe
furs?when humans inhabited what the anthropologist Mar ephemera, which also included short poems by Alfred, Lord
shall Sahlins called "the original affluent society."86 Tennyson and brief excerpts from the writings of John
the Burne-Jones thus revives Ruskin, was an of the association's motto:
Though engraving something evidently example
of the forms and iconography of late medieval manuscripts "nothing but the best is good enough for us."88 Membership
and block books, it does so in a paradoxical fashion. It is in in the association cost one
shilling,
and the bulk of its mem
fact a kind of ironic forgery, since it purports to be not bers, male and female, were workers from the Ancoats indus

A DREAM OF PREHISTORY IN WILLIAM MORRIS'S JOHN BALL 1Q5
11 William Morris, card for the Democratic

membership
Federation, woodcut (from Morris, Collected Works, vol. 19, xx)
very wide currency. It was in

photomechanically reproduced,
reduced size, in numerous and paper editions o? John
pocket
Ball and sold for pence or from London to Kansas
pennies
(Fig. 13).90 The British intellectual historian and Socialist

Harold Laski wrote in 1934 that he saw the book on the
shelves of impoverished coal miners from Wales to Scotland:
I went last week to the coalfields of Cumberland, and I saw

in house after house of the miners there, the tat
again,
tered pages of the paper-bound "ADream ojjohn Ball" and
no mistake,
uSongs for Socialists. "Make the song that Morris
is more in the hearts of the class
sang profoundly working
than at any time in his own lifetime.91
More of Adam and Eve with

recently, Burne-Jones's image
William Morris's version
engraved couplet?the published by
the Kelmscott Press?decorated the back of the dust jacket of
the second edition of E. P. Thompson's magisterial political
biography of Morris, William Morris: Romantic toRevolutionary
(1955; 1977, Fig. 14). There it serves to remind the reader
that William Morris, to his greatest twentieth-cen
according
tury interpreter, wrote John Ball in order to describe how it
was that men and women have no alternative but to
struggle
"for unattainable within the determined course of
objectives
history" if they are ever even to glimpse a future of fulfilling
labor and "Conscious for "the be
fraternity. hope" change
yond the is as great a force, Morris and
change" revolutionary
as the sheer that in the first
Thompson argued, necessity
drives men and women to take up arms and revolt.92 It
place
was Morris's ambition to that desire
goad by representing
discrete and times when it burned hot and and
places steady
led people to joy and heroism, even if the pleasure was only
and the Morris's text and
partial emancipation temporary.
illustration propose, I have here, that at
Burne-Jones's argued
critical moments in English and world history, men and
women have dreamed of an future
emancipated through
10 Burne-Jones, from the "Secret" Book of Designs, of their communist
drawings contemplation primitive past.
ca. 1890. London, British Museum
A Spiral of Progress
trial district. "How we roused the dormant faculties," Primitive communism and dialectics were essential
Rowley compo
boasted, "of many remarkable but obscure men and women nents of Morris's mature art and Their lie in
thought. origins
can never be told."89 By the 1910s, the image had attained a his Romantic that is, his initial critiques?in
anticapitalism,

105
s^
kv
12 Burne Jones, A Dream of John Ball,

woodcut, from William Morris, A
Dream of John Ball, Hammersmith:
Kelmscott Press, 1892, frontispiece
S?#*::? (photo: reproduced by permission of
The Henry E. Huntington Library and
Art Gallery, San Marino, California)
poetry such as The Earthly Paradise and in

paintings such as
political theory of his friend and collaborator E. Belfort
the Oxford Union murals?of the contemporary social and Bax, Morris's first articulation of the idea may be
though
economic order from the of val traced at least to 1884, that is, before their collaboration.93
standpoint precapitalist
ues. This stance, shared with many Victorian The mature arose in the course of Morris's work
early predeces conception
sors and contemporaries, predisposed
him to medievalism for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings
and revivalism. But his
subsequent
idea that the actions and (SPAB) and especially after his reading of Lewis Henry Mor
of and distant times are both irre Ancient and Marx's In these texts, he
lifeways long-dead people gan's Society Capital.
lost and ever that moves neither found an intellectual buttress for his efforts as a
trievably present, history preservation
forward nor back, made a contri ist. The monuments and medieval Mor
relentlessly directly signal prehistoric buildings
bution to critical To be sure, the notion that histo ris and his to preserve, he now understood,
thought. colleagues sought
the progress of human were not the product of "mere accidental confusion,
ry?and especially emancipation? strange
moves not in a
straight line but in a
spiral
is a formulation tribes and clans with whom they had no relation, jostling
Morris owed to several sources: to Christian think one another for no save that of a herd of
typological against purpose
ing, exemplified by the Speculum books he so admired, to the bisons." Instead, they
were the result of a historical
logic that
architect Augustus Welby Pugin, author of Contrasts, to was cunning, if indirect. At a meeting of the SPAB in 1884,
Thomas and to Ruskin. It Was also derived from the Morris stated:
Carlyle,

men and women of Ball's Essex?revealed that the germ

John
of a future lies within us all.
emancipation
Morris refined his formulation historical laws
concerning
of motion in "The Manifesto of the Socialist League" of 1885:
we look forward to the time when any definite

Finally,
will have ceased to exist; as it never
exchange entirely just
existed in that primitive Communism which preceded
Civilization. The will "this is not
enemy say, retrogression
to which we answer, All every distinc
progress;" progress,
tive of involves a backward as well as a
stage progress,
forward movement; the new returns to a
development
which the older elevated to a
point represents principle
the old reappears transformed,
higher plane; principle
made and to advance on the
13 and title of William Morris, A Dream purified, stronger, ready
Frontispiece page of
fuller life it has its seeming death. . . .The
John Ball and A King's Lesson, London: Longmans, Green, 1912 gained through
of all life must not be on the line, but on
progress straight
the
spiral.95
Stephen F. Eisenman has published The Temptation of Saint

Redon, Skirt, and Nineteenth Art: A Crit
Gauguin's Century
with Richard Brettell
ical History. He is also co-author of Nine
Art at the Norton Simon Museum, vol. 1
teenth-Century
(forthcoming) and with Otto Karl Werckmeister of European Art:

A Critical History (forthcoming) [Department ofArt History, Kresge
Hall, Northwestern Evanston, III. 60202, s-eisenman@
University,
northwestern, edu].
Notes
The intellectual generosity and professional courtesy of numerous people
14 Dust jacket of E. P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to greatly helped me in my research and writing. Caroline Arscott and Andrew
New York: Pantheon 1977 Hemingway offered incisive criticisms of early versions of this paper. Fred
Revolutionary, Books,
Orton, Sam Smiles, Liz Prettejohn, and Jonathan Harris engaged me in
valuable discussions about Morris and offered me hospitality during an im
portant stage in my research. Alan Crawford kindly answered some questions
about Burne-Jones and lent me slides from his personal collection. Linda
Parry at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Shelly Bennett at the Hunting
The mists of pedantry slowly lifted and showed a different ton Gallery provided access to their extraordinary collections (as well as doses
picture; inchoate order in the remotest times, varying

of healthy skepticism). Stephen Tabor at the Huntington Library assisted me
in my examination of incunabula and provided slides and photographs.
indeed different races and countries, but
among swayed Roman Stansberry at Northwestern also helped with photography.
University
always by the same laws, moving forward ever towards A 2001-2 Mellon Fellowship at the Huntington Library supported me in my
research. I am enormously grateful to the fine librarians and staff of that
that seems the of that which it started
something opposite institution. I am indebted to Mary Weismantel for her ideas and
Finally,
and the earlier order never dead but in the
from, yet living support and her indulgence of my bibliophilia.
new, and it to a recreation of its former
slowly molding 1. Commonweal 2, no. 44 (November 13, 1886): 256-57; 3, no. 54 (January
self. How different a such a view of must 22, 1887): 28-29.
spirit history
create it is not difficult to see. No shallow 2. William Morris, Journalism: Contributions to "Commonweal," 1885-1890,
longer mockery
at the failures and follies of the from a of
ed. Nicholas Salmon (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996), vii-xxiii.
past, standpoint
3. William Morris, The Collected Letters of William Morris, ed. Norman
so-called civilization, but with its half-con
deep sympathy Kelvin, 4 vols, in 5 (Princeton: Princeton Press, 1984-96),
University
scious aims.94 vol. 2A, 372.
4. In Commomueal 2, no. 44: 261; no. 48: 292-93; no. 50: 308-9; 3, no. 51,
Morris was thus enabled to the many distinct 4-5.
join together
of his ethics, and artistic This new 5. The vast majority of Morris's contributions to Commonweal were short
parts imagination, practice.
notes concerning such matters as Parliament and the ministries, Irish
made it possible to see the and
perspective study preservation home rule, labor protests, the anarchists, trade policy, women's suf
"
of past artworks and monuments not as an See Morris, Contributions to "Commonweal.
simply antiquarian frage, and imperialism.
but as of a aesthetic and 6. Morris cited the account of Jean Froissart in 1884 in "The Lord May
pursuit part progressive political
a so or's Show," in William Morris: Artist, Writer, Socialist, ed. May Morris, 2
of stage in human
practice. Anthropologists' discovery vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1936), vol. 2, 143-47. Morris gave a set
cial evolution called communism or barbarism?a of Froissart to Louisa MacDonald, wife of the poet and novelist George
primitive
mode of life characteristic not
only of remote
prehistory
but MacDonald, along with H. N. Humphreys, illuminated Illustrations of
Froissart in the British Museum (London: William Smith, Bradbury and
also of Homeric Greece, the Germanic tribes described by see Morris, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 136n. Each is in
Evans, 1844-45);
Tacitus, the Icelanders of the and even the medieval scribed and dated 1857. The volume of illuminations is now in the
sagas,

108
Huntington Library, San Marino, California (former Berger Collec any contemporary cultural practice, symbol, or belief that is inexplica
tion). ble in utilitarian terms. Survivals are thus like vestigial organs whose
7. See Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick, A Critical Inquiry into Antiek Armour, as it existence signals a past physiological function. Since all humans?past
and present?share a common mind and logic, Tylor reasoned, itmust
existed in Europe, but particularly in England, from theNorman Conquest to
theReign of Charles II (London: Jennings, be that forms and symbols now considered strange once functioned
1824); and J. R. Planche, His
according to a determined law and necessity. "Advancing civilization,"
tory of British Costume (London: C. Cox, 1847), 130-214.
he writes, everywhere places "way-marks full of meaning to those who
8. William Morris, A Dream ofJohn Ball and A King's Lesson (London: can decipher their signs" (142). Past and present times, Tylor thus pro
Reeves and Turner, 1888), 11. Whatever it owed to actual fourteenth
posed, were more closely interwoven than had previously been sup
century decoration, Morris's scheme for the Rose Tavern partly re
posed. The old is everywhere visible amid the new in the form of sur
prises his own and Edward Burne-Jones's designs for an embroidered vivals; the modern is itself nothing more than a survival that has yet to
frieze titled The Pilgrim in the Garden of Idleness from Geoffrey Chaucer's
be discovered and decoded by future ethnographers. Tylor, Primitive
Romaunt of theRose (1874-82, William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow)
Culture: Researches into theDevelopment ofMythology, Philosophy, Religion,
installed above wooden panels at Rounton Grange, Northallerton. The
Art and Custom (London: John Murray, 1871), 63-144. Also see Georges
house itself, designed by Philip Webb, was built in the late Gothic style
for Sir Lowthian Bell between
Didi-Huberman, L'image survivante: Histoire de l'art et temps des fant?mes
1872 and 1876.
selon Aby Warburg (Paris: ?ditions de Minuit, 2002).
9. See John Hungerford Pollen, Ancient and Modern Furniture and Wood 25. This notwithstanding the fact that Charles Darwin himself doubted
work (London: Chapman and Hall, 1875), 49. Also see the oak panels
"that primeval men and women lived promiscuously." He stated that
illustrated in F. T. Dollmen and I. R. Jobbins, An Analysis of Ancient Do
the example of animals and present "savages" indicated, "In primeval
mestic Architecture in Great Britain, vol. 2 (London: B. J. Batsford, 1863). . . .would
times, men probably have lived as polygamists." Darwin, The
10. Sir John Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain. . . . , trans. Descent ofMan and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: Appleton,
Thomas Johnes (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1868), vol. 2, 1890), vol. 2, 346.
686. The plate depicts "The Earl of Derby Taking Leave of the King
26. Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law, Its Connection with theEarly History of
and Lords of France at Paris."
Society and Its Relation toModern Ideas (London: John Murray, 1861),
11. On the aesthetic and ideological significance of Morris's flat patterns, 114-24, in George W. Stocking Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York:
see Stephen F. Eisenman, "Class Consciousness in the Design of Wil Free Press, 1987), 122-23. Maine's work was deeply influenced by the
liam Morris," Journal ofWilliam Morris Studies 15, no. 1 (winter 2002-3): historical school of jurisprudence in Germany, the writings of
especially
17-37. Friedrich Karl Savigny, whose key work is the System des heuligen romis
12. Morris, Contributions to "Commonweal,"!. chen Rechts, published in eight volumes between 1840 and 1849. Evolu
tionary anthropology, like the theory of evolution by natural selection,
13. Nicholas Salmon, "A Reassessment of A Dream ofJohn Ball" Journal of
was considered a version of materialism that denied the continuing
theWilliam Morris Society 14, no. 2 (spring 2001): 30.
authority of a divine creator. See, for example, the summary discussion
14. William Morris, The Collected Works of William Morris, 24 vols. (London: in Charles Lyell's The Geological Evidences of theAntiquity ofMan with Re
Longmans Green, 1910-15), vol. 22, 8. Historians representative of this marks on Theories of the Origin of Species by Variation (London: John Mur
tendency include E. A. Freeman, William Stubbs, J. R. Green, and Ed ray, 1863), 495-506.
win Thorold-Rogers. Morris cites the work of Freeman and Green in
"The Revival of Architecture," in ibid., 319. Morris frequently read
27. See [George John Douglas Campbell, 8th duke of Argyll], "Tylor on
Primitive Culture," Edinburgh Review or Critical Journal 135 (January
aloud John Ball's speech at Socialist meetings, as, for example, at the
"Socialist League Soiree," January 1, 1887. British Library, Cockerell April 1872): 88-121.
Papers, Add. 52772, vol. CL, fol. 16r. 28. Oxford Latin Dictionary, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 675.
Henry Sumner Maine ascribed the same patriarchal conception to the
15. See H. M. Hyndman, The Historical Basis of Socialism in England (Lon
primitive Aryan, Semitic, and Uralian races, which understood "the
don, 1883), cited in Salmon, "Reassessment o? Dream," 30; and Oscar
... to be made up of the descendents of a single living
Wilde, The Soul ofMan under Socialism (1891; Boston: John Luce, n.d.). Family group
man and his wife or wives." Maine, The Early History of Institutions (Lon
16. The dozens of titles comprising the "Bellamy Library" and "Bijou Li don: John Murray, 1890), 310.
brary" published by William Reeves in the 1880s and 1890s give one
indication of the breadth and vitality of this intellectual culture. Au 29. Though highly critical of John Ferguson McLennan and Lewis Henry
Morgan, Maine, Early History of Institutions, 66, finally accepted that
thors in the series range from Morris himself (A Summary of thePrinci
communal property relations and group marriage?though never the
ples of Socialism) to the Christian Socialist Charles W. Stubbs (A Socialist
universal condition of savage men and women?predated modern sys
Creed for Christians) to the American, single-tax apostle Henry George
tems of pair-bonding and property. "The collective ownership of the
(Progress and Poverty).
soil by groups of men is now entitled to take rank as an ascertained
17. A graphite drawing of Eve for All Saints Church, Middleton Chaney, once universally those commu
primitive phenomenon, characterizing
Northamptonshire, is in the Huntington Museum, San Marino, Califor nities of mankind and our own there is a
between whose civilization
nia. Another may be found in the Morris Gallery, Walthamstow. See A. or analogy."
distinct connection
Charles Sewter, The Stained Glass ofWilliam Morris and His Circle, vol. 1
30. John Ferguson McLennan, Studies in Ancient History: Comprising a Re
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), nos. 234, 238. That latter
figure wears a furry cloak
over a furry undergarment. Adam is shown print of Primitive Marriage (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1876), 121.
in profile, facing right, with a foot on his spade. He wears a brown 31. Lewis Henry Ancient Society (New York: Henry Holt, 1878),
Morgan,
robe. 507-8.
18. Aymer Vallance, William Morris?His Art, His Writings and His Public Life 32. Andrew Lang, "Family," in The Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. 9
(London: George Bell and Son, 1897), 65-67. Also see Burne-Jones's (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1879), 18.
Adam and Eve after theFall, watercolor and Indian ink, Victoria and Al
bert Museum, E. 1319-1970, and the designs for the tracery
33. Frederick Engels, The Origin of theFamily, Private Property and the State in
London,
windows of All Saints Church, Middleton Light of theResearches of Lewis H Morgan, ed. Eleanor Burke Leacock
Chaney, Northamptonshire.
(New York: International Publishers, 1990), 92.
19. Richard Dorment, "Burne-Jones' Roman Mosaics," Burlington Magazine 34. Ibid., 93.
120 (February 1978): 58, 72-82. Also see Stephen Wildman and John
35. Raymond Unwin, "Early Communal Life and What It Teaches," Com
Christian, Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer (New York: Metro
monweal 3, no. 66 (May 14, 1887): 157.
politan Museum of Art, 1999), 292-93.
20. Alan Crawford, "Burne-Jones as a Decorative Artist," inWildman and 36. William Morris, "Socialism from the Root Up," Commonweal 1, no. 6
Christian, Edward Burne-Jones, 17. (May 15, 1886): 53.
21. William Hunt, "England, Church of," in The Encyclopedia Britannica, 37. The notions of historical recurrences, survivals, and revivals and a tri
11th ?d. (New York: Encylopedia Britannica 1910), vol. 11, partite division of human, social evolution into stages of savagery, bar
Company,
442-54. barism, and civilization are especially marked in Morris's thought after
1885. The evidence is internal: in Morris's lectures "Art and Labor"
22. The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Edition (New York: New American Li
(1884) and "Of the Origins of Ornamental Art" (1883; revised 1886),
brary, 1974), 3; and Morris, "Revival of Architecture," 6.
there is no evidence of the tripartite evolutionary scheme developed by
23. William Morris, "Section of Applied Art: The Presidential Address," in and adopted by Engels. The terms savagery and barbarism are,
Morgan
Transactions of theNational Association for theAdvancement of Art, 200. with anthropological in the lecture
however, weighted significance
24. In Primitive Culture, the Oxford anthropologist E. B. Tylor proposed "Early England" (1886): "many huge tracts of unsettled land [were] yet
that there exists a phenomenon called "survival in culture," which of left; many of the tribes were still in a savage state; but there were king
fers at once clues to primitive life and times and explanations for doms, probably Gaulish, on the East and Southeast, which were not
present cultural forms that would otherwise be mysteries. A survival is only clear of the savage state but could perhaps be called barbarian

A DREAM OF PREHISTORY IN WILLIAM MORRIS'S JOHN BALL 1QQ,
even." Morris, The Unpublished Lectures ofWilliam Morris, ed. Eugene D. 52. The celebrtated rhyme attributed to John Ball likely predates the 1381
Lemire (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1969), 161. Morris's insurrection. See G. R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit inMedieval England
chief source for this lecture, Charles Elton's Origins of English History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961), 290-91; also see J. A. Raftis, "Social
(London: Bernard Quaritch, 1882), makes no use of this particular vo Change versus Revolution: New Interpretations of the Peasants' Revolt
cabulary, retaining instead the older m?tallurgie schema of Stone, of 1381," in Social Unrest in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Francis X. Newman
Bronze, and Iron Ages. In 1885, Morris and Engels had extensive con (Binghamton: State University of New York Press, 1986), 17, cited in
"
tact, especially concerning the latter's contributions to the Commonweal Michael Camille, 'When Adam Delved': Labouring on the Land in
in March and November. In addition, Morris was much concerned with English Medieval Art," in Agriculture in theMiddle Ages: Technology, Prac
"The Future of Marriage," an article George Bernard Shaw submitted tice and Representation, ed. Del Sweeny (Philadelphia: University of
to the Commonweal but rejected by Morris and E. Belfort Bax (philoso Pennsylvannia Press, 1995), 275 n. 24.
pher, journalist, and co-founder of the Socialist League in 1884) as in see Walsingham,
53. Cleveland, Idol of Clownes, n.p. For "John the Miller,"
consistent with the class analysis in the manifesto of the Socialist
Historia Anglicana, vol. 2, 33-34.
League, published in October 1885 (see Morris, Collected Letters, vol. 2B,
54. Thomas Evans, Old Ballads, historical and narrative. . . . , ed. R. H. Evans,
404). Morris might also have read a summary of Morgan's evolutionary
new ed. (London: Bulmer, 1810), 311-15.
schema from Ancient Society in Andrew Lang's entry on the "family" in
The Encyclopedia Britannica or his essay "The Early History of the Fam 55. Robert Southey's text follows generally the narrative in Froissart but
ily," in Custom and Myth (London: Longman's Green, 1884), 245-75. includes speeches of pure Jacobin sentiment. These concern the
Lang was a well-known philologist and polymath. His translation of
"equality of mankind," the unjust transformation of freemen into
Homer immediately preceded Morris's own. His lecture "The Art of slaves, the tyranny of kings and nobles, and the need for the rebels to
Savages" was delivered to the 1889 Edinburgh meeting of the National be merciful (perhaps in response to the blood of the French Revolu
Association for the Advancement of Art and Its Application to Industry tion). 'Ye are all equal: nature made ye so. Equality is your birth-right."
(transactions published in London, 1890), a group of which Morris was Southey, Wat Tylor: A Dramatic Poem, Sherwin's Edition (London: W. T.
a leading officer. Morris also read and admired Richard Jefferies's Sherwin, [1817]), 8. On the Wat Tyler affair, see Frank T. Hoadley,
apocalyptic novel After London, orWild England (London: Cassell, 1885), "The Wat Tyler Affair," Studies in Philology 38 (1941): 81-96. Also see
immediately on its publication. The novel described the simultaneous The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, ed. Charles Cuthbert
existence, after the "great conflagration" that destroyed London, of (London: Longmans, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850),
Southey
savage, barbarian, and civilized communities (though Jefferies used vol. 4, 250-61.
different terminology). See Morris, Collected Letters, vol. 2B, 426-27.
56. The Financial House thatJack Built (London: J. M. Richardson, 1819).
Morris's engagement with the intellectual and literary tradition out
lined here helps account for his remarks in May 1885 to Georgiana 57. R. B. Dobson, "Remembering the Peasants' Revolt, 1381-1981," in Essex
"I have [no] more faith than a grain of mustard seed in and the Great Revolt of 1381, ed. W. H. Liddell and R. G. E. Wood
Burne-Jones,
the future history of 'civilization,' which I know now is doomed to de (Chelmsford: Essex Record Office, 1981), 14.
struction. .. .How often it consoles me to think of barbarism once 58. Thomas Wright, Essays on . . .Literature, Popular Superstitions and History
more flooding the world, and real feelings, and real passions, however in theMiddle Ages, vol. 2 (London: John Russell Smith,
of England
rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrises." Ibid., 436. 1846), 260.
38. Engels, Origin of theFamily, 237. The historical materialism of Engels 59. A. F. J. Brown, Chartism in Essex and Suffolk (Chelmsford: Essex Record
and Morris must therefore be distinguished from the Hegelian ideal Office; Ipswich: Suffolk Libraries, 1982), 13.
ism of Walter Pater, who in his essay "Winckelmann" described Helle
60. John Booker, Essex and the Industrial Revolution (Chelmsford: Essex
nistic art as a universal expression of perfection and perfectibility that
County Council, 1974), 200.
periodically recurs throughout history. See Pater, The Renaissance: Stud
ies in Art and Poetry (London: Macmillan, 1873). 61. Brown, Chartism, 41.
39. Morris, Dream ofJohn Ball, 112. 62. Morris and Bax, Socialism, 91, 105, 123.
40. Morris, "Section of Applied Art: The Presidential Address," 200. 63. John Goode, "William Morris and the Dream of Revolution," in Litera
ture and Politics in theNineteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1971), 248.
41. On social evolution, Morgan, and the necessity to engage the past in
Also see Michael Holzman, "The Encouragement and Warning of His
order to organize the future, see William Morris and Belfort Bax, So
cialism: Its Growth and Outcome (London: Swan Sonnenschein, tory:William Morris's A Dream ofJohn Ball," in Socialism and the Literary
1893),
20-21. Artistry ofWilliam Morris, ed. Florence Boos and Carole G. Silver (Co
lumbia: University of Missouri Press, 1990), 98-116.
42. Morris, Collected Works, vol. 22, 389.
64. J. R. Green, A Short History of theEnglish People (New York: Harper and
43. The essential documentary sources are Anonimalle Chronicle, 1331-1381,
Brothers, 1892), 484-85.
ed. V. H. Galbraith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1927);
65. Morris, Collected Works, vol. 23, 39.
Thomas Walsingham, Chronicon Angliae, ed. E. M. Thompson, Rolls Se
ries, vol. 64 (London: Longman, Green, 1875); idem, Historia Angli 66. Morris, Contributions to "Commonweal,"151.
cana, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series, vol. 28 (London: Longman, 67. Morris, Dream ofJohn Ball, 23-24.
Green, 1863); and Henry Knighton, Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. Jo
68. Morris and Bax, Socialism, 24.
seph Rawson Lumby, 2 vols. (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1889
95). The best English summary of the Latin chronicles is The Peasants' 69. Ibid., 26.
Revolt of 1381, ed. R. B. Dobson (London: Macmillan, 1982). An in 70. Fiona MacCarthy, William Morris: A Life for Our Times (London: Faber
sightful summary of the literary impact of the revolt is found in David andFaber, 1994), 546.
Aers, "Vox Populi and the Literature of 1381," in The Cambridge History
71. William Morris, The Pilgrims ofHope and Chants for Socialists (London:
ofMedieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge
Press, 1999), 432-53. Longmans, Green, 1915), 67.
University
44. John Cleveland, The Idol of Clownes, or Insurrection 72. On the staging of scenes from the Peasants' Revolt during popular pag
of Wat Tylor with His
Priests Baal and Straw (London, eants, see Rebecca F. Virag, "Images of Inheritance: The Influence of
1654), 13.
Eugenic Ideas and Socio-Biological Theory in Late 19th and Early 20th
45. Quoted in Lawrence Poos, Rural Society after the Black Death: Essex 1350
Century British Art" (PhD diss., University of London, Courtauld Insti
1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 235-36: "dicen tute of Art, 2003).
dum et iurandum quod noluerunt aliquam legem in Anglia habere nisi
tantummodo certas per ipsos motas ordinandum." 73. Morris, Contributions to "Commonweal,"151.
46. 74. On the several versions of King Cophetua, see Wildman and Christian,
"Dissipa gentes quoe bella voluent, Domine Jhesu," in Thomas Wright,
Edward Burne-Jones, 252-55.
ed., Political Poems and Songs, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Long
man and Roberts, 1859), 231-49. 75. See, for example, Cupid Finding Psyche, ca. 1865, Yale Center for British
47. and Popular Literature, vol. 3, Art, New Haven, and Venus Giving Arms toAeneas, from the illuminated
Percy Society, Early English Poetry, Ballads
manuscript The Aeneid (1874-75), Lloyd Weber Collection.
(London: Percy Society and T. Richards, 1841), 49-54.
48. Cleveland, Idol of Clownes, n.p. 76. Michael Camille, Mirror in Parchment: The Luttrell Psalter and theMaking
ofMedieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 192.
49. David Hume, History of England, vol. 3 (London: Robert Bowyer, 1806), On the iconography of Adam and Eve, see Hans Martin von Erffa, Iko
178-79.
nologie des Genesis: Die Christlichen Bildthemen aus dem Alten Testament und
50. See George Rude, Ideology and Popular Protest (New York: Pantheon ihre Quellen (Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1989), 233-35.
Books, 1980). 77. See especially Speculum humanae salvationis, ca. 1400-1410, Oxford,
51. William Langland, The Vision and Creed of Piers Plowman, vol. 1, ed. Corpus Christi College, MS 16, fol. 7; illustrated in Kathleen L. Scott,
Thomas Wright (London: Thomas Pickering, 1842), xxix. Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390-1490 (London: Harvey Miller, 1996),

HO ART BULLETIN MARCH 2005 VOLUME LXXXVII NUMBER 1
136-38. Also see A. Wilson and J. L. Wilson, A Medieval Mirror: Specu gether." Tylor, Researches into theEarly History ofMankind and theDevelop
lum humanae salvationis, 1324-1500 (Berkeley: University of California ment of Civilization (London: John Murray, 1870), 193.
Press, 1984). See also British Museum, MS Yates Thompson 20, Guyart 86. Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine, 1-39.
1972),
Desmoulins Bible, fol. Ir;Add. 47682, fol. 4v; Add. 38116, fol. 9r; Roy.
87. See the note by May Morris on Brit. Lib. Add. MS 45347, fol. 181, cited
2B.vii, fol. 4v; and Cambridge, John's College, K. 26, fol. 5r. inWilliam S. Peterson, The Kelmscott Press: A History ofWilliam Morris's
78. Sidney C. Cockerell and John Plummer, Old Testament Miniatures (Lon Typographical Adventure (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991),
don: Phaidon, 1969), 17. The manuscript was acquired in 1834 by the 151. A design for the Kelmscott is in the William
frontispiece design
great collector Sir Thomas Phillipps (d. 1872), who took it with him Morris Gallery, Walthamstow; a marked proof of the frontispiece is at
when he moved in 1862 from Middle Hill, Broadway, Worcestershire, the library of Claremont College, Claremont, California.
to Thirlestain House, Cheltenham. It remained in this collection until 88. Charles Rowley, Fifty Years ofWork without Wages (London: Hodder and
acquired by Morgan in 1916. As well as being a collector, Morris was
Stoughton, [1911]), 205.
an authority on illuminated and frequently advised the
manuscripts 89.
British Library on acquisitions. Morris also owned a mid-fourteenth Ibid., 212.
now in the Morgan 90. An Avon Editions pamphlet o? John Ball was published in London in
century Speculum manuscript Library (M. 140).
1904; Longmans, Green published successive "Pocket Editions" begin
79. The Mirror of Salvation: An Edition of British Library Blockbook G. 11784,
trans. Albert C. Labriola and John Smeltz Uni ning in 1913. An inexpensive edition in the "Ten Cent Pocket Series"
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne was published (Girard, Kansas, n.d.)
by Haldeman-Julius
versity Press, 2002).
91. Harold Laski, in John Drinkwater, Holbrook Jackson, and H. J. Laski,
80. See William Young Ottley, An Inquiry Concerning the Invention of Printing Speeches in Commemoration ofWilliam Morris (Walthamstow, 1934), n.p.
(London: Joseph Lilly, 1863); also see Henry Bradshaw, "List of the
Fonts of Type and Woodcut Devices . .. Used in Collected
92. William Morris, "Facing the Worst of It," Commonweal 3, no. 58 (Febru
by Printers," in E. P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to
ary 19, 1887), quoted
Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1889), 258-80.
Revolutionary (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 428.
81. Morris, William Morris, vol. 1, 323. 93. The dialectical theory of unintended consequences, Jack Lindsay and
82. Ibid., 347. Sir Sidney Cockerell noted in his diary (January 15, 1891) Paul Meier have argued, derives from Engels's Ludwig Feuerbach, pub
that Morris "had with him (Johann] Veldner's Speculum humanae sal lished in the same year as John Ball. Meier also suggests that Morris had
vationis which he thought of buying." British Library, Cockerell an acquaintance with Engels's unpublished Dialectics ofNature. But
Papers,
Add. 52772, vol. CL, vol. 18r. Thompson has persuasively argued that Morris's formulation antedates
the appearance of Ludwig Feuerbach by at least five years. See Lindsay,
83. Morris, quoted in Linda Parry, ed., William Morris (New York: Harry N. William Morris: His Life and Work (New York: Taplinger, 1979), 318; also
Abrams, 1996), 319.
see idem, William Morris: Dreamer ofDreams, ed. David Gerard, rev. ed.
84. The drawings may also be related to Burne-Jones's stained glass of a (London: Nine Elms Press, 1991), 10; and Paul Meier, La pens?e
Viking ship (1884, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington) originally in utopique de William Morris (Paris: ?ditions Sociales, 1972). Thompson's
stalled at Vinland, a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. See Wildman refutation of the thesis is found in his William Morris: Romantic toRevo
and Christian, Edward Burnejones, 288-89. lutionary, 782. Morris's attribution to Bax of the metaphor of the spiral
is found in Morris, "Section of Applied Art: The Presidential Address,"
85. James Paton, 'Yarn," in The Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. 25 (Ed
200.
inburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1888), 730. E. B. Tylor used the ex
ample of the development of thread (yarn or twine) by means of a 94. William Morris, paper read at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the
stick (or spindle) and weight to reject the notion of "degeneration" of SPAB, July 1, 1884, in Morris, William Morris, vol. 1, 126.
cultures and to assert the essential unity of modern and primitive hu 95. William Morris, "The Manifesto of the Socialist League," Commonweal 1,
mans. Once a technological breakthrough is achieved, affecting the no. 1 (February 7, 1885), rev. ed. reprinted in Thompson, William Mor
basic way of life of a tribe or community, it is "very loth to lose it alto ris: Romantic toRevolutionary, 739.


William Morris

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originalbeschreibung:

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

William Morris

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Communism in Furs: A Dream of Prehistory in William Morris's "John Ball"

Author(s): Stephen F. Eisenman

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

inspired here by Froissart: several plates in H. N. Humphrey's

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

1 Emery Walker, the drawing room,

texts, old and new, in the library of

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

3 Burne-Jones, The Tree of Life between

mediating links between the prehistoric past and the eman

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

amous was no asserted. In Prim and tribes. still existed, the

polymath (and friend of William Morris) Andrew Lang ech Root

gan's writings, which included

art."34 The term embraced ancient slave and late feudal

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

next of to which intelli for tirades whose echoes could be

There he that the

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

known as "the Wat affair." A after a mass reform

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

5 Richard II and the Rebels, from Froissart, The Chronicles

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

several discrete historical moments. The of Adam and

unemployed British working men and women through Tra engraved

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

6 Burnejones, study for A Dream of

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

7 Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

8 Adam and Eve, woodcut, from

some writers claiming that

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

-.?* '*>*!?:% ws. ':^?

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

11 William Morris, card for the Democratic

very wide currency. It was in

(Fig. 13).90 The British intellectual historian and Socialist

I went last week to the coalfields of Cumberland, and I saw

More of Adam and Eve with

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

12 Burne Jones, A Dream of John Ball,

poetry such as The Earthly Paradise and in

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

men and women of Ball's Essex?revealed that the germ

we look forward to the time when any definite

Stephen F. Eisenman has published The Temptation of Saint

(forthcoming) and with Otto Karl Werckmeister of European Art:

picture; inchoate order in the remotest times, varying

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.21 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 18:10:23 PM

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen

-.?* '>!?:% ws. ':^?