Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/618

ÆT. 54] confine itself rigidly to painting and sculpture and what may be called abstract architecture, and should ignore all the other decorative and applied arts. But public opinion could not be roused to press for the reform of this bad tradition. The attempt to do so, not for the first or last time, came to nothing: and it was then that the suggestion arose of a separate exhibition of products of applied art. So early as 1858 the question had been raised by Madox Brown in connexion with the exhibitions held by the newly-founded Hogarth Club. The committee of the club had then refused to hang his designs for furniture, as not being examples of "fine art proper." Their decision was quite in consonance with the traditions of that day. But the Pre-Raphaelites themselves were strongly represented on the committee, and even among them the proposal found little or no favour. Probably this was due to a certain excessive purism which had its legitimate and intelligible source in the desire to withdraw art from all taint or suspicion of commercialism. In any case the decision then taken had practically put the matter off for a whole generation. Perhaps the delay was not without its uses.

The first step towards carrying the scheme now once more suggested into actual working was taken by Mr. Benson, who, since he left Oxford in 1876, had been engaged first (like Morris himself) in an architect's office, and then in founding and carrying on a business as a decorative metal-worker and cabinet-maker, and had been throughout that time intimate with Morris on the side of theory and of practice alike. In concert with two or three others, he succeeded, early in 1886, in effecting the formation of a provisional committee of some five and twenty members. Nearly all of them were also members of