On the Beauty of Home with William Morris

“I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.”

-William Morris

William Morris is my hero. Not because he painted Cathedral ceilings or sculpted statues out of marble, or designed monuments of bronze, though these be noble artistic pursuits in their own right. No, William Morris is my hero because his most precious and exquisite possession, his art, his whole life’s focus and muse, was entirely given over to one, carefully chosen ‘canvas’ - a canvas that at first surprises for its obvious simplicity – the canvas of the family home. That place where we are born, where we eat and drink and read by the fire, where we feel at our most comfortable padding about in our threadbare slippers; where we find a covert from a harsher world, the place that equips us with the courage to step out into our greater journey because we know it will always be there when we turn around. Home. A place that William always carried with him and bequeathed to us. He believed that all our inspiration and creativity came from the physical things that surrounded us in our homes, and these should be useful and beautiful objects. He was so certain of this. At first, I wondered why such a fantastical artist as he would completely ensconce his art in mere pots and pans, dishes and sheets – beautiful though they might be. But over time, he revealed his reasoning to me by his very life. William knew that home is the place of first memory. The child memory. The crucial memory. He understood that we must always have the child memory to be the kind of adults that shine brightly with promise in a world of woe. He never forgot how to think and feel and remember like a child. It seeps through his work like a fairytale. This was William’s gift to us. His legacy of love. That we should love our homes, and deeply, for the beauty to be discovered there.

Love of beauty begins in the child memory. Children absorb smells, sounds, the way things look, the feel of things under their hands. That is why they are always touching everything they see. They do not have the power of reasoning quite yet. They do not collect ideas so much as sense impressions. Yet, these sense impressions gently press upon their memory imperceptibly stirring up in them a wistful longing for an eternal mystery they don’t quite understand but know instinctively they must hold like a treasure. It is in that look you suddenly see when they are poring over the pictures in a beautiful storybook on their lap and you hear that swift little sigh of wonder. Or when they suddenly murmur dreamily over a steaming mug after a snowy day of sledding, “I wish cocoa could last forever.” Or when they ask that the covers be tucked in just so. Or that the Christmas ornaments be unwrapped slowly and greeted each and every year with that distinctive joy-cry of meeting a long lost friend. Or gently touching the window covered in fairy frost on a late winter’s day filled with an ache they know is beauty but cannot explain. They have no burning need to explain – only to feel it and wonder at the feeling. The weight of books in hands. The way a lamp glows. The taste of the Christmas Turkey and the sight of the gold leafed plate it is served on just once a year. The glimpse of their picked dandelions arranged in a crystal vase on the kitchen table by their mom. These things all speak love, they sing ‘you belong here’, they cry ‘you are seen and heard and worthy of beauty’. This is what homes are for – to teach children they are worthy - worthy of the mystery, each and every one. We are there to create sensible portals for this beauty to enter our children in the familiar, encompassed world of the home they wander through daily. Dishes, pictures on walls, furniture, blankets, dinner around a table, recipes handed down in grandmama’s handwriting, songs sung, poems learned, books read. All must carry the sensible stamp of beauty.

These portals will be as unique as the home itself. For William Morris, the child memory was caught fast in nature. He lived on a country estate. Being outdoors was his natural habitat. He spent hours and hours of his childhood tromping the fields and ponds with his sister who was sent to look after him. He lay in the dewy grass and looked up at trees swaying, clouds billowing. He swam in ponds and knew the luxurious feel of water on sun baked skin. He gazed long at flowers in the grass and ate berries from the bush. When he inevitably had to come inside the house, he grabbed an apple, his favorite book of Knights, and ensconced himself in the great window seat at the top of the old familiar stairs so he could look out on the stars. Here he would dream of Ladies and daring deeds and battles and swords and shining silver armor as he took in the drawings of his book. In this long luxurious sensation of home, he found portal after portal to the beauty he longed for. From that natural beauty, that taste of apple, that book of jeweled images, his art would grow into the beautiful vines and flowers we have come to love on walls, on tea cups, on towels and storybooks. His own home that he later built would carry all this child memory within it as he grew older and would bring him great comfort.

As we grow older and are a bit battered by our forays into adulthood, we too need this memory to swirl up within us. And it will faithfully come as “a light shining in a dark place”. When that twenty something is sitting alone in his new and empty apartment trying in vain to call into focus his now yet nebulous vocation in life, he will suddenly be inspired to make a pot of spaghetti sauce filled with the taste of his childhood. He feels a comfort in that taste far beyond itself. The child memory wraps him round in a mystery that says ‘all will be well’ and he believes it. The Child memory tells a new mother what will comfort her crying babe. She recalls the song her own mother sang for her – that song she feels like joy singing in her brain rocking her gently into confidence as she croons her own baby to blessed sleep in its mystery. The child memory laughs through tears of adult sorrow at jokes told long ago by a Dad’s loud voice reveling in terrible puns which are suddenly and inexplicably cherished now. The child memory hears music and dances and sways like it did when washing the dishes in a sink of warm suds with a sister who knew all the words to every song. It closes distances. The child memory shores up sadness, struggle and fear. William knew this all too well. He was an anxious person who suffered panic attacks when in small enclosed spaces. Train compartments, and small rooms in houses made half mad with anxiety. The child memory of his beloved countryside inspired him to create the wallpaper we have come to love, so that all the outdoors would magically grow inside as an extension of itself. It expanded the room with vines, trees, and space and calmed his anxiety.

We need to fill our houses with physical beauty. It isn’t a luxury. It is a necessity. It is food for the adult journey as we make our way to the House of the Father Who is all beauty. This child memory of home and place, of smells, of sounds and gentle touches. It needs to be created by all of us through the physical things with which we surround our children. The blankets we knit to hold them, the paintings on the walls, the wonder of jeweled storybooks read over and over in the comfy chintz chair by the window, the smell of tea in the old blue china cup, popcorn smell on Friday nights, the favorite dress, the smell of cookies baking and kept in the old butter crock cookie jar. The vase that has held flowers of romance, of milestone, of a mother’s love for her child’s dandelions. These mere ‘things’ contain the mystery of Child memory. They tell us we are loved, known, and seen as unique marvels in this vast, sometimes lonely universe. That we are worthy of the mystery unfolding within us. William Morris bet his life on it. With every ounce of his genius he made the home his masterpiece. I have been inspired all my life to do the same because of him. And I, like William, have been blessed, and blessed, and blessed and am certain that the work of Child memory will go on.

This essay originally appeared in Dappled Things Online Magazine

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