ABSTRACT
Morris remained a staunch socialist for the rest of his life, and worked to make the Hammersmith Socialist Society, founded on 23 November 1890, an effective propagandist force. To this end the series of Sunday evening lectures in the old coach-house adjoining Kelmscott House on the Mall, which had been inaugurated in 1884 by Hyndman and continued through the Socialist League days, was maintained. Many leading socialists spoke there, including Bernard Shaw, John Burns, Sidney Webb, Keir Hardy and Morris himself. The building itself was austere, as Bruce Glasier's account (corroborated by others) makes clear:
It was a large room, with the floor raised three steps at the further end, forming a dais or platform with a side door leading into the garden of the house. It was quite simply furnished, and visitors who expected it, and it seems many did, to be fitted up as a sort of Morris art show-room were disappointed with its severely utilitarian character. The furniture consisted of rush-bottom chairs and several long wooden forms, a lecture table on the platform, and a bookstall near the entrance. The plain whitewashed walls were covered with rush matting. 1
