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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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? 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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

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 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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

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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, slash sources, Thanks for listening.