CZM Book Club: "The Story of the Unknown Church" by William Morris

Margaret reads you a story about decoration. Really.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media book Club. Book Club book Club. It's
the Cool Zone Media book Club, the only book club
where you don't have to do the reading because I'm
going to do the reading for you. There's probably other
book clubs where you don't have to do the reading,
but they're not going to be ones where I do

(00:22):
the reading for you, unless you find like audiobooks I've
read or something, in which case I guess you can
find one like that. Well, I can't promise this is
the only book club where you don't have to do
the reading because I do it for you. But it's
one of them, maybe the only one. This week's story

(00:43):
is by someone I've admired for a long time because
he's an anti state socialist jack of all trades from
the nineteenth century who made invaluable contributions to politics, visual art, literature,
and is mostly famous as a wallpaper designer. How could
I not love him? He was custom made to be
someone I like. His name is William Morris. William Morris

(01:05):
is on my short list of people I want to
cover on cool People did cool stuff, So I don't
know as much about him as I will by the
time I researched a whole episode about him. Maybe he's terrible,
I don't know. He seemed to be really good to
his family and that's usually how he judged people. But
in short, William Morris today's author, there was this upper

(01:27):
middle class guy named William Morris. He was born in
eighteen thirty four in England. He went to Oxford and shit,
he got really into art and he wound up basically
revolutionizing interior decoration, and he like designed wallpaper and textiles
and shit for the rich, whom he wound up despising.
He did a ton of medievalism and worked to translate
old Norse epics and shit into English and seen through

(01:51):
his fiction as one of the fathers of modern fantasy fiction.
He became a socialist, burning his bridges with rich clientele
and financing radical publishing mark alongside workers. He was arrested
for assaulting an officer in like his early fifties or
late forties or some shit. His socialism was basically Marxist
theoretical underpinnings, with strong anarchist sympathies and ties. He was

(02:14):
friends with friend of the Pod Peter Kropotkin, for example,
and he opposed state socialism, but he also didn't become
an anarchist or something like that. He was caught up
in all the factional infighting, but he basically tried not
to be. He spent all of his last days trying
to fight for unity among all the socialists. This story

(02:36):
is the first story he ever published, when he was
probably twenty one or so and in Oxford. It was
inspired by his time touring churches in France. This story
is not a nail biter, It is not action packed.
It's a story of a kind we don't see much anymore,
and it shows his commitment to craftsmanship and beauty in

(02:56):
how it develops its themes. It also, to me shows
how much he owes the Romantics, who were all like
proto socialists and interesting as hell. I've read some of
their stuff on this podcast and talked about some of
their lives on cool people who did cool stuff. As
for this story, I remember once during a writing workshop,
the instructor, who might have been Tobias Buckel, but I'm

(03:17):
not certain. I don't remember who said it was like
talking about how look in your first novel, your publisher
isn't going to let you get away with spending eight
pages describing the stained glass windows in a church, or
whatever your interest is. But once you've earned your audience's trust,
publishers will trust you to go down those sorts of paths.
And this story is just about the most perfect and

(03:40):
essentially literal version of that I've ever read, although it
is his first story, and maybe the reason it's trusted
is because he later earned everyone's respect. But I think
he earns it in this story. I think that he
makes these pages describing the literal beauty of churches. He
makes it what the story is about in a really

(04:00):
interesting way. But I'll talk about that afterwards. I hope
you like this story. It's called the Story of the
Unknown Church by William Morris. I was the master mason
of a church that was built more than six hundred
years ago. It is now two hundred years since that
church vanished from the face of the earth. It was

(04:21):
destroyed utterly. No fragment of it was left, not even
the great pillars that bore up the tower at the
cross where the choir used to join the nave. No
one knows even where it stood. Only in this very
autumn tide. If you knew the place, you would see
the heaps made by the earth covered ruins, heaving the

(04:41):
yellow corn into glorious waves, so that the place where
my church used to be is as beautiful now as
when it stood in all its splendor. I do not
remember very much about the land where my church was.
I have quite forgotten the name of it, but I
know it was very beautiful. And even now, while I
am thinking of it, comes a flood of old memories,

(05:04):
and I almost seem to see it again, that old
beautiful land. Only dimly do I see it in spring
and summer and winter. But I see it in autumn
tide clearly now, yes, clearer, clearer, oh so bright and glorious.
Yet it was beautiful too in spring, when the brown
earth began to grow green, Beautiful in summer, when the

(05:25):
blue sky looked so much bluer if you could ham
a piece of it between the new white carving, Beautiful
in solemn starry nights, so solemn that it almost reached agony,
the awe and joy one had in their great beauty.
But of all these beautiful times, I remember the whole
only of autumn tide. The others come in bits to me.

(05:48):
I can only think of parts of them, but all
of autumn, and of all days and nights in autumn,
I remember one more particularly that autumn day. The church
was nearly finished, and the monks for whom we were
building the church, and the people who lived in the
town hard By, crowded round us, oftentimes to watch us carving.

(06:11):
Now the great church and the buildings of the abbey
where the monks lived, were about three miles from the town,
and the town stood on a hill overlooking the rich
autumn country. It was girt about with great walls that
had overhanging battlements and towers at certain places all along
the walls, and often we could see from the churchyard

(06:32):
or the abbey garden the flash of helmets and spears,
and the dim shadowy wavings of banners as the knights
and lords and men at arms passed to and fro
along the battlements. And we could see too, in the
town the three spires of the three churches, and the
spire of the cathedral, which was the tallest of the three,
was gilt all over with gold, and always at night

(06:54):
time a great lamp shone from it that hung in
the spire midway between the roof of the church and
the at the top of the spire. The abbey where
we built the church was not girt by stone walls,
but by a circle of poplar trees. And whenever a
wind passed over them, were it ever so little a breath,
it set them all a ripple. And when the wind

(07:15):
was high, they bowed and swayed very low. And the wind,
as it lifted the leaves and showed their silvery white sides,
or as again in the lulls of it it let
them drop, kept on, changing the trees from green to white,
and white to green. Moreover, through the boughs and trunks
of the poplars we caught glimpses of the great golden
corn sea, waving, waving, waving for leagues and leagues. And

(07:40):
among the corn grew burning scarlet poppies and blue corn flowers.
And the corn flowers were so blue that they gleamed,
and they seemed to burn with a steady light, and
they grew beside the poppies among the gold of the wheat.
Through the corn sea ran a blue river, and always
green meadows and lines of tall poplars followed its windings.

(08:04):
The old church had been burned, and that was the
reason why the monks caused me to build the new one.
The buildings of the abbey were built at the same
time as the burned down church, more than one hundred
years before I was born. And they were on the
north side of the church and joined to it by
a cloister of round arches. And in the midst of
the cloister was a lawn, and in the midst of

(08:25):
that lawn a fountain of marble carved round about with
flowers and strange beasts. And at the edge of the lawn,
near the round arches, were a great many sunflowers that
were all in blossom on that autumn day, and up
many of the pillars of the cloister crept passion flowers
and roses. Then farther from the church and past the

(08:45):
cloister and its buildings were many detached buildings, and a
great garden round them. All within the circle of the
poplar trees. In the garden were trellises covered over with
roses and convolvolus, and the great leaved fairiness durium, And
especially all around by the poplar trees that were their trellises,

(09:05):
but on these grew nothing but deep crimson roses, the
hollyhocks too, were all out in blossom at that time,
great spires of pink and orange, and red and white,
with their soft, downy leaves. I said that nothing grew
on the trellises by the poplars but crimson roses. But
I was not quite right, for in many places the
wild roses had crept into the garden from without. Lush

(09:27):
green brioni and green white blossoms that grow so fast
one could almost think that we see it grow. And
deadly night shade la belladonna, oh so beautiful red berry,
and purple yellow spiked flower, and deadly, cruel looking dark
green leaf, all growing together in the glorious days of

(09:47):
early autumn. In the midst of the great garden was
a conduit, with its sides carved with the histories of
the Bible. And there on it too, as on the
fountain in the cloister, much carving of flowers and strange beasts.
Now the church itself was surrounded on every side but
the north by the cemetery, and there were many graves there,

(10:09):
both of monks and of laymen, And often the friends
of those whose bodies lay there had planted flowers about
the graves of those They loved. I remember one such particularly,
for at the head of it was a cross of
carved wood, and at the foot of it, facing the cross,
three tall sunflowers. Then in the midst of the cemetery

(10:29):
was a cross of stone carved on one side with
the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and on the
other with our Lady holding the Divine Child. So that
day that I specially remember, in autumn tide, when the
church was nearly finished, I was carving in that central
porch of the west front where I carved all those

(10:49):
base reliefs in the west front with my own hand.
Beneath me, my sister Margaret was carving at the flower
work and the little quatrefoils that carry the sign of
the zone podiacs and emblems of the months. Now, my
sister Margaret was rather more than twenty years old at
that time, and she was very beautiful, with dark brown
hair and deep, calm violet eyes. I had lived with

(11:12):
her all my life, lived with her almost alone latterly,
for our father and mother died when she was quite young,
and I loved her very much, though I was not
thinking of her just then as she stood beneath me carving. Now,
the central porch was carved with a base relief of
the last Judgment, and it was divided into three parts
by horizontal bands of deep flower work. In the lowest division,

(11:32):
just over the doors, was carved the Rising of the Dead.
Above were angels blowing long trumpets, and Michael, the archangel
weighing the souls and the blessed lead into heaven by angels,
and the lost into hell by the devil. And in
the topmost division was the Judge of the World. And
much like William Morris, was conflicted by doing the work

(11:55):
of the rich while being a dedicated socialist, I too
feel that way every time I interrupt everything I do
to transition to ads like these ones. Enjoy them, we
all do. And Rebecca, all the figures in the porch

(12:27):
were finished except one. And I remember when I woke
that morning my exultation at the thought of my church
being so nearly finished. I remember too, how kind of
misgiving mingled with the exultation, which, try all I could,
it was unable to shake off. I thought then it
was a rebuke for my pride. What perhaps it was?

(12:48):
The figure I had to carve was Abraham sitting with
a blossoming tree on each side of him, holding in
his two hands the corners of his great robe, so
that it made a mighty fold. Wherein their hands, crossed
over their breasts were the souls of the faithful, of
whom he was called Father. I stood on the scaffolding

(13:08):
for some time, while Margaret's chisel worked on bravely down below.
I took mine in my hand and stood so listening
to the noise of the masons inside. And two monks
of the abbey came and stood below me, and a
knight holding his little daughter by the hand, who every
now and then looked up at him and asked him
strange questions. I did not think of these long, but

(13:29):
began to think of Abraham. Yet I could not think
of him sitting there, quiet and solemn while the judgment
trumpet was being blown. I rather thought of him as
he looked when he chased those kings, so far, riding
far ahead of any of his company, with his mail
hood off his head and lying in grim folds down
his back, with the strong west wind blowing his wild

(13:50):
black hair far out behind him, with the wind rippling
the long scarlet pennon of his lance, riding there amid
the rocks and the sands alone, with the last gleam
of the armor of the beaten Kings, disappearing behind the
winding of the pass, with his company a long long
way behind, quite out of sight, though their trumpets sounded
faintly among the clefts of the rocks. And so I

(14:12):
thought of him till in his fierce chase he leapt
horse and man into a deep river, quiet, swift and smooth.
And there was something in the moving of the water lilies,
as the breast of the horse swept them aside, that
suddenly took away the thought of Abraham, and brought a
strange dream of lands I have never seen. And the

(14:33):
first was of a place where I was quite alone,
standing by the side of the river, and there was
the sound of singing a very long way off, but
no living thing of any kind could be seen. And
the land was quite flat, quite without hills, quite without trees, too,
and the river wound very much, making all kinds of
quaint curves. And on the side where I stood there

(14:55):
grew nothing but long grass, But on the other side,
quite on to the horizon, a great sea of red
corn poppies, only paths of white lilies wound all among them,
with here and there a great golden sunflower. So I
looked down at the river by my feet, and I
saw how blue it was, and how as the stream

(15:16):
went swiftly by it swayed to and fro the long
green weeds. And I stood and looked at the river
for long till at last I felt someone touch me
on the shoulder, and looking round, I saw standing by
me my friend, Am youu whom I love better than
anyone else in the world. But I thought in my

(15:36):
dream that I was frightened when I saw him, for
his face had changed so it was so bright and
almost transparent, and his eyes gleamed and shone as I
had never seen them do before. Oh, he was so
wondrously beautiful, so fearfully beautiful. And as I looked at him,
the distant music swelled and seemed to come close up

(15:58):
to me, and then swept by us, and fainted away,
and at last died off entirely. And then I felt
sick at heart and faint and parched, and I stooped
up to drink the water of the river, And as
soon as the water touched my lips low, the river vanished,
and the flat country with its poppies and lilies, and
I dreamed that I was in a boat by my sofa, again,

(16:21):
floating in an almost landlocked bay of the Northern Sea,
under a cliff of dark basalt. I was lying on
my back in the boat, looking up at the intensely
blue sky, and a long low swell from the outer
sea lifted the boat up and let it fall again,
and carried it gradually nearer and nearer towards the dark cliff.
And as I moved on, I saw it last on

(16:42):
the top of the cliff, a castle with many towers,
and on the highest tower of the castle there was
a great white banner floating with a red chevron on it,
and three golden stars on the chevron. Presently I saw
two on one of the towers, growing in a cranny
of the worn stones, a great bunch of golden and
blood red wallflowers. And I watched the wallflowers and banner

(17:06):
for long, when I suddenly heard a trumpet blow from
the castle, and saw a rush of armed men on
to the battlements, and there was a fierce fight till
at last it was ended and one went to the
banner and pulled it down and cast it over the
cliff into the sea, and it came down in long sweeps,
with the wind making little ripples in it. Slowly, slowly

(17:27):
it came till at last it fell over me and
covered me from my feet till over my breast. And
I let it stay there and looked again at the castle.
And then I saw that there was an amber colored
banner floating over the castle in place of the red chevron,
and it was much larger than the other. Also, now
a man stood on the battlements, looking towards me. He

(17:48):
had a tilting helmet on with the visor down, and
an amber colored surcoat over his armor. His right hand
was ungauntleted, and he held it high above his head,
and in his hand was the bunch of wallflowers I
had seen growing on the wall. And his hand was
white and small, like a woman's. For in my dream
I could see very far off things that much clearer

(18:10):
than we see real material things on earth. Presently, he
threw the wallflowers over the cliff, and they fell in
the boat just behind my head. And then I saw
looking down from the battlements of the castle, and you.
He looked down towards me, very sorrowfully, I thought. But
even as the other dream said nothing, so I thought

(18:30):
in my dream that I wept for very pity and
for love of him. For he looked as a man
just risen from long illness, and who will carry till
he dies a dull pain about with him. He was
very thin, and his long black hair drooped all about
his face. And as he leaned over the battlements looking
at me, he was quite pale, and his cheeks were hollow,

(18:51):
but page his eyes large and soft and sad. So
I reached out my arms to him, and suddenly I
was walking with him in a lovely garden, and we
said nothing, for the music which I had heard at
first was sounding close to us now. And there were
many birds in the boughs of the trees, oh, such birds,
gold and ruby and emerald. But they sung not at all,

(19:13):
but were quite silent, as though they too were listening
to the music. Now. All this time, m You and
I had been looking at each other. But just when
I turned my head away from him, and as soon
as I did so, the music ended with a long wail.
And when I turned again, em You was gone. Then
I felt even more sad and sick at heart than

(19:34):
I had before. When I was by the river, and
I leaned against a tree and put my hands before
my eyes. When I looked again, the garden was gone,
and I knew not where I was. Presently, all my
dreams were gone. The chips were flying bravely from the
stone under my chisel at last, and all my thoughts
now were in my carving. When I heard my name,

(19:55):
Walter called, and when I looked down, I saw one
standing below me whom I had seen in my dreams
just before, am you. I had no hopes of seeing
him for a long time. Perhaps I might never see
him again, I thought, for he was away, as I thought,
fighting in the Holy Wars. And it made me almost
beside myself to think him standing close by me in

(20:16):
the flesh. I got down from the scaffolding as soon
as I could, and all thoughts else were soon drowned
in the joy of having him by me. Margaret too,
how glad she must have been, for she had been
betrothed to him for some time before he went to
the Wars, and he had been five years away, five years,

(20:37):
And how we had thought of him through those many
weary days, how often his face had come before me,
his brave, honest face, the most beautiful among all the
faces of men and women I have ever seen. Yes,
I remember how five years ago I held his hand
as we came together out of the cathedral of that great,
far off city whose name I forget now. And then

(21:00):
I remember the stamping of the horses feet. I remember
how his hand left mine at last, and then someone
looking back at me earnestly, as they all rode on together,
looking back with his hand on the saddle behind him,
while the trumpets sang in long, solemn peals, and they
all rode on together, with the glimmer of arms and
the fluttering of banners, and the clinking of the rings

(21:22):
of the mail that sounded like the falling of many
drops of water into the deep still waters of some
pond that the rocks nearly meet over, And the gleam
and flash of the swords, and the glimmer of the
land's heads, and the flutter of the rippled banners that
streamed out from them swept past me and were gone,
And they seemed like a pageant in a dream whose

(21:44):
meaning we know not, And those sounds too, the trumpets
and the clink of the mail, and the thunder of
the horse hoofs. They seemed dream like too, And it
was all like a dream that he should leave me,
for we had said we should always be together. But
he went away. And now he has come back again,
much like ads come back again. Well, kind of the opposite,

(22:07):
because we want Amu to come back. But I guess
we're grateful for the ads that provide us, the money
that feed us. Sort of whatever, here's ads, and we're back.

(22:34):
We were by his bedside, Margaret and I. I stood
and leaned over him, and my hair fell sideways over
my face and touched his face. Margaret kneeled beside me,
quivering in every limb, not with pain, I think, but
rather shaken by a passion of earnest prayer. After some time,
I know not how long, I stood up from his
face to the window underneath which he lay. I do

(22:57):
not know what time of the day it was, but
I know that it was a glorious autumn day, a
day soft with melting golden haze. A vine and a
rose grew together and trailed half cross the window, so
that I could not see much of the beautiful blue sky,
and nothing of town or country beyond. The vine leaves
were touched with red here and there, and three overblown roses,

(23:20):
light pink roses hung amongst them. I remember dwelling on
the strange lines the autumn had made, and read on
one of the gold green vine leaves, watching one leaf
of one of the overblown roses, expecting it to fall
every minute. But as I gazed and felt disappointed that
the rose leaf had not fallen yet, I felt my

(23:42):
pain suddenly shoot through me, and I remembered what I
had lost. And then came bitter, bitter dreams, dreams which
had once made me happy, dreams of the things I
hoped would be, of the things that would never be.
Now they came between the fair vine leaves and rose
and that which lay before the window. They came, as before,

(24:04):
perfect in color and form, sweet sounds and shapes, but
now in every one was something utterably miserable. They would
not go away. They put out the steady glow of
the golden haze, the sweet light of the sun through
the vine leaves, the soft leaning of the full blown roses.
I wandered in them for a long time. At last

(24:24):
I felt a hand put me aside gently, for I
was standing at the head of the bed. And then
someone kissed my forehead, and words were spoken. I know
not what words. The bitter dreams left me for the
bitterer reality at last, For I had found him that morning,
lying dead, only the morning after I had seen him,
when he had come back from his long absence. I

(24:46):
had found him lying dead, with his hands crossed downwards,
with his eyes closed, as though the angels had done
that for him. And now when I looked at him,
he still lay there, and Margaret knelt by him, with
her face touching his. She was not quivering now, her
lips moved not at all as they had done just before.

(25:06):
And so suddenly those words came to my mind, which
she had spoken when she kissed me, and which at
the time I had only heard with my outward hearing.
For she had said, Walter, farewell, and Christ keep you,
but for me, I must be with him. For so
I promised him last night that I would never leave
him anymore, and God will let me go. And verily, Margaret,

(25:32):
and am YOUU did go and left me very lonely
and sad. It was just beneath the westernmost arch of
the knave. There I carved their tomb. I was a
long time carving it. I did not think I should
be so long at first, and I said I shall
die when I have finished carving it, thinking that would

(25:54):
be a very short time. But it so happened after
I had carved those two whom I had loved, lying
with their clasped hands like husband and wife above their tomb,
that I could not yet leave carving it, and so
that I might be near them, I became a monk
and used to sit in the choir and sing, thinking
of the time when we should all be together again.

(26:16):
And as I had time, I used to go to
the westernmost arch of the nave and work at the
tomb that was there under the great sweeping arch. And
in the process of time I raised a marble canopy
that reached quite up to the top of the arch,
and I painted it too, as fair as I could,
and carved it all about with many flowers and histories,

(26:36):
and in them I carved the faces of those I
had known on earth, for I was not as one
on earth now, but seemed quite far away out of
the world. And as I carved, sometimes the monks and
other people too would come and gaze and watch how
the flowers grew. And sometimes too, as they gazed, they
would weep for pity, knowing how all had been. My

(27:00):
life passed, and I lived in that abbey for twenty
years after he died, till one morning, quite early when
they came into the church for matins, they found me
lying dead with my chisel in my hand, underneath the
last lily of the tomb. The end. There is so

(27:22):
much I like in this story. First of all, I
love that it's obvious he loves decoration, right. This is
the story of a man who is going to go
on to revolutionize wallpaper, you know, and like dyeing silks
and stuff like that. And there's this art movement in
the late nineteenth century, the arts and crafts movement that

(27:43):
had Mores as its primary inspiration. He actually didn't like
join it at first. He ended up in it kind of.
This is a movement that basically holds up decoration as art,
which was a reaction to the removal of artisanship that
was happening because of the industrial Revolution. So like decorating
your shit as anti industrial this practice. Hell yeah. And

(28:03):
also I feel like that ties into the romanticism, like
romanticism was an early kind of response to growing industrialization
as well. But it's also this story about how we
put our entire lives into making beautiful things and then
one day those things will fall apart, right Because at
the very beginning of this, when he's talking about how
much he loves autumn and he's been dead for six

(28:24):
hundred years or whatever, how as beautiful as this church
that he built and carved with his own hands with
his sister, How beautiful that was. The undulating fields of
corn that roll over the ruins of that great church
are just as beautiful. That the trees are just as beautiful.
And that handsome man, Phew, that handsome man was beautiful also.

(28:48):
I love when I first read this, I didn't realize
that the name Mu is pronounced m you. It's a
French last name. It's spelled like amyacht to my English
speaking eyes, and I like wonder whether it was intentional,
the like am you. You know, there's like something I
don't know, there's symbolism there. This is a man who

(29:09):
is not afraid of symbolism, you know, like waiting for
the last leaf to drop, just being like, please just
drop already, like while he's waiting for his friend to die,
and how kind of tragical that is. I don't know,
I liked it. I hope you liked it. I'll probably
read you more William Morris, honestly, but we'll see have

(29:30):
a good week and we'll see you next week on
cool Zone Media Book Club. In the meantime, check out
me on tour. I'm going to be on tour. I'm
going to be reading from my novel Thesapling Cage and
maybe some fables that were inspired by it on my
book tour, which you can find out more information by
going to my substack Margert Kildoy at substack dot com,
or just kind of googling where's Margaret Kiljoy talking. I

(29:53):
don't know if that'll work. Google sucks now, but whatever,
I'll talk to you seon. It Could Happen Here is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for
It Could Happen Here, Updated monthly at coolzonemedia, dot com,

(30:15):
slash sources, Thanks for listening.