Poem: John Quinn Pays Court to the Shade of William Morris through his Daughter, May by Benjamin Goluboff

John Quinn Pays Court to the Shade of William Morris through his Daughter, May

Words by Benjamin Goluboff
Image by Christine Stoddard
QuailBellMagazine.com

*Author's Note:  John Quinn (1870-1924) was a patron and collector of modern art. Ezra Pound called Quinn Maecenas after the wealthy Roman who was patron to Horace and Virgil. ​

Miss Morris had been given
an introduction to Quinn
by Esther Pissarro
with whom the attorney
was in correspondence
about acquiring
the luminous Vue d'Havre
by Camille Pissarro,
that is, pere not fils.

This was 1909 and Miss Morris
was no longer in the first flush
of a beauty that had thrown
the young Shaw
from his satirical high horse.
But when he met her at Customs,
a lackluster winter day,
Quinn felt a light break upon him.
 
The willowy figure,
the wavy hair
that gave way
before the fine high brow:
all this sustained Quinn
in the illusion that May
had not disembarked
a Cunard liner where she'd endured
a second-class winter crossing,
but had stepped,
all roseate and golden,
from the canvas where Rosetti,
(fond with love himself)
had painted her as a girl.
 
For a week, during which it seemed
they were on the verge of something,
Quinn showed May New York:
champagne suppers,
strolls in the Ramble,
even a private interview
in Quinn's bachelor rooms
where the attorney showed May
treasures from his collection
by her father.
 
On his library table
Quinn displayed a first edition
of The Earthly Paradise,
a yard of immaculately preserved
wallpaper in the master's
early Trellis pattern,
and, jewel of the collection,
the enormous Kelmscott Chaucer,
with engravings by Burne-Jones.
 
May found Quinn's reverence
for her father charming
and a little peculiar:
such fervent anti-modernism
in this wide-awake
New York lawyer,
who viewed the Morris family's
socialism with amused contempt,
but May knew herself,
in spite of the politics,
to be strongly drawn
to the man.
 
Quinn had his reasons for avoiding
what the founders called
entangling alliances,
and there were other women
on the margins of this picture,
but he had long night thoughts,
that week, about adding
Miss Morris to his collection.
 
One night, when Quinn
had asked May to attend with him
a reception at Columbia
for the British ambassador,
a great snow fell on the city,
delighting his British visitor
and prompting Quinn,
a person rarely given
to impulsive decisions,
to send regrets to Columbia,
hire a trim little sled,
a pair of greys
with harness bells,
and to take May out
for a tour of the storm.
 
The streets were busy despite
the fast-falling snow.
Shoppers and carolers enjoyed
a Broadway transformed,
where each shop window
fronted on a square
of illuminated weather,
and where the spire
of Grace Church
disappeared upward
into a roiling cloud of grey.
May drew closer to Quinn,
and whispered that here was a scene
worthy of Pissarro
(pere, not fils).
 
Here, Quinn knew,
was the moment to kiss her,
to put things on a different footing,
but something, now, intervened.
 
Coming north through the forties
they passed a group of carolers
whose melody merged briefly
with the bells of the greys:
 
The snow in the street and the wind on the door;
Minstrels and Maids stand forth on the floor.
 
May smiled at Quinn in recognition
and Quinn smiled back even though,
in that instant,
everything had changed for him.
For there, seated with them
behind the greys,
was another rider.
Present and absent,
a creature of the storm
and the Broadway lights,
invisible to May, it seemed,
but definite, pronounced
as the note from a plucked string
that hangs in altered air:
the master of Kelmscott,
Morris himself.
 
He appeared, perhaps,
as he had been in life:
stocky and short,
round-shouldered,
with that twitchy
inconsequent bearing
that both friends
and detractors mocked.
Quinn was most aware
of the long sorcerer's beard
that hung vaporous
-- the tail of a comet --
from the apparition's
broad benign face.
 
Through the beard
the specter smiled
upon May's escort,
then faded
as the sled approached
Columbus Circle.
 
In the days that remained
before May left for Ontario
(the next stop of her
New World tour)
it seemed the two
had drawn back
from the verge.
Or Quinn had, at least.
Miss Morris may still
have had her hopes.
But, touched by the past
on that night of storm,
Quinn was satisfied, replete,
the owner now
of a strange Victorian blessing.
May felt this change in him,
but never knew the cause.
 
They wrote letters, of course,
and Quinn would advise Miss Morris
as she edited the master's
Complete Works for Longman.
They saw each other
once or twice more
when Quinn crossed the pond
on trips for his health
or his collection,
but while May might have
held a slim Pre-Raphaelite candle,
Quinn had moved on.
 
Still, every Christmas
he sent May a bushel
of New York apples,
and a tasteful card.