Summary
Chapter 1: Discussion and Bed
At a meeting of the Socialist League, men argue over the future of society. One man, a friend of the narrator, sat silent in the beginning but becomes involved in the arguing to the point of calling the others fools and leaving. He travels home by public transportation, discontent with society and thinking about arguments he should have made at the meeting.
The train station is five minutes from the man’s house, and as he walks home he looks at an “ugly suspension bridge” (4) over the Thames. He repeats to himself, “If I could but see it!” (4). Suddenly, the man is overtaken by the beauty of the moon and its illumination of the river.
This puts the man in a very good mood, and he goes into his house and falls asleep in his bed. He falls asleep quickly but then wakes up soon after. He stays awake for a few hours and then falls back asleep. The narrator says that they will now take over the story in first person, even though the story did not actually happen to them, because they understand the thoughts and feelings of their friend and it will be more natural to write.
Chapter 2: A Morning Bath
When the narrator awakes, it is a sunny and hot morning. He feels as if he has been sleeping for a long time and seeks to shake off his grogginess. He hurries outside to get some fresh air and finds that, while it was winter when he went to sleep, it now seems to be summer. However, he is definitely in the same place, since he sees the Thames right outside.
The narrator decides to clear his head with a swim. He goes down to a nearby dock and finds a man sitting in a boat. After a quick conversation, the narrator jumps into the water. However, he chokes on water due to his surprise at not seeing an ugly bridge over the river anymore.
He decides that he will ask some questions to the man in the boat. The man helps him into the boat and starts rowing. The boatman asks him whether he’d like to be put straight ashore or whether he’d like to be taken to Putney for breakfast. The narrator is surprised by how handsome the boatman is and how good his speaking and manners are. The narrator comes to believe that the man must be a “refined young gentleman, playing waterman for a spree” (8). The narrator and the boatman have another brief dialogue, with the narrator trying to decide how many questions to ask about the astounding changes since last night; many of the factories that used to line the Thames are gone, and in place of the old metal bridge there is a beautiful stone one. When the narrator asks how old the bridge is, the man replies that it is not very old, since it was built in 2003. The narrator is dumbstruck.
The narrator asks to be taken ashore to have breakfast. When they arrive, the narrator asks “How much?” (10) and the boatman is confused, seeming to not understand the idea of exchanging money for services. The boatman refuses what he can only conceptualize as a special gift, and the narrator begins to think that the man could be crazy. The men talk about old coins for a while, and then the boatman declares that he can tell the narrator must be “from a place very unlike England” (11) and suggests that he can be his guide. The narrator protests, thinking but not saying that he wouldn’t want to do this without paying the man; he tells the man instead that he wouldn’t want to take him away from his work. The boatman tells the narrator that he actually has a friend who would like to take over his job, and that he was planning to go up-stream to do work for the harvest anyway.
The narrator agrees to be guided by the boatman, and the boatman wakes his friend who is sleeping in the Guest House (formerly the narrator’s house) by playing a bugle. Another young man emerges from the Guest House. He greets his friend, meets the narrator, and tells them both that they’d ought to come in for breakfast.
Chapter 3: The Guest House and Breakfast Therein
The narrator follows the two men inside, pausing to admire the architecture of the Guest House. They enter the hall of the Guest House and find three women arranging breakfast. The narrator inwardly praises their looks and especially their dress, comparing it to women of his time and finding these women dressed more simply and beautifully. They set out a breakfast of fruit, bread, and other simple yet well-prepared foods. As the narrator eats, he spies an inscription on the wall of the hall: “Guests and neighbours, on the site of this Guest-hall once stood the lecture-room of the Hammersmith Socialists. Drink a glass to the memory! May 1962" (16).
As they eat, people begin to ask the narrator questions about who he is and where he is from. He tells them to call him "William Guest." As for where he is from, he is wise enough to not tell them he is from Hammersmith, since he has been acting as if he doesn’t know the place or its customs, so he tells them that he was born near Epping Forest. Hearing this, they engage him in a conversation about nature, and he talks comfortably for a while until mistakenly making a reference to the year and having to stop in confusion. Robert asks how old he is, and he tells them honestly that he is 56. They are amazed by this because by their society’s standards, he looks much older than 56.
They invite him to ask questions now, and he begins to ask Robert a question about weaving, but he must stop when another elegant, attractive man enters. This man, Boffin, says that he has questions to ask William, but Dick begs him not to ask William any questions for now and announces that he plans to take the narrator to talk to his great-great-grandfather in Bloomsbury. Boffin goes out to prepare the carriage. In a few minutes, Dick and William leave the Guest House and head off in their carriage, with the women and Boffin seeing them off.
Chapter 4: The Market by the Way
As they ride, William examines the new landscape of Hammersmith. There are small, pretty houses dotted all over, brightly dressed people, and a bustling market. William remarks on how there don’t seem to be “country-looking people” (25) around at the market as he’d expect, but Dick is confused by what he means. When William clarifies that he means poor people, Dick interprets this to mean sick people.
Chapter 5: Children on the Road
William and Dick keep on their journey toward Bloomsbury. They go through Kensington and continue on through thick woods. William becomes curious when he sees many groups of people playing and hanging around in the woods, especially groups of children ranging from quite young to teenagers. Dick tells him that children often go off to camp in the woods together for weeks at a time in the summer, and that this is something encouraged by the adults in society since it teaches the youngsters to do things for themselves. William adjusts to this knowledge and tries to support it with the idea that the students must be refreshed when they return to school after the summer. Dick is again confused, and describes the system of education they now have in England, which consists of children learning what they like from adults. Because of the general interests of the children, most learn to cook, build, and farm, and many learn to read and speak other languages, but few study literature or mathematics intensively.
Dick and William travel by Westminster Abbey and the old Houses of Parliament. While Westminster Abbey has been preserved in its original form, the Houses of Parliament are now used as a market and a storage place for manure. Dick talks disdainfully of architecture of these old buildings, but notes that nobody has found a strong reason to tear them down and that they serve to contrast newer, more artfully built buildings.
Chapter 6: A Little Shopping
Dick and William emerge from the forest into Piccadilly. William watches as people go into shops and come out with items, though we already know that this society no longer buys and sells goods for money. Dick suggests that they do some shopping, and William thinks to himself that he could use some new clothes. He is momentarily upset when he remembers he doesn’t have any money, but he reminds himself the rules of this society and suggests to Dick that they get him some new clothes. Dick urges him not to get new clothes yet, since he’d like his great-great-grandfather to see him how he is. They settle on getting William a pipe and some tobacco.
They get out of the carriage and Dick asks a young woman to hold their horse for them. They enter a shop and find a young girl and boy working there. The girl waits on Dick and William very maturely, providing him with a large amount of good tobacco, a beautiful new bag to hold it in, and an elegant, hand-crafted pipe. Though he tries to resist, William protests that he could not pay for such a thing, that he might lose it, and that it is too grand for him. However, with a look from Dick, he realizes that he should simply accept what the girl is offering and give her thanks. The boy brings out wine for them to drink, and then they head back out to their carriage.
When Dick and William arrive at their carriage, there is a man holding the horse instead of the young woman they left there. The man offers to go along to Bloomsbury and Dick welcomes him along. They talk about children working jobs like shopkeeping, with Dick explaining how children generally like to do this kind of work, especially because it isn’t very taxing on the body. He gives a long speech about “a disease called Idleness” (38) which existed back when people were forced to do certain kinds of work they didn’t enjoy and consequently became ugly and had ugly children.
Analysis
To understand Chapter 1 of News from Nowhere, it is important to know William Morris's political background. Morris was one of the founding members of the Socialist League in the UK, a group that was founded in 1884 by a group of people who believed socialism would be a better political and economic system for England than the current system of capitalism. However, in-fighting began quickly and by the 1890s, most of the members actually supported anarchism over socialism. Morris alludes to this in the beginning of Chapter 1 when he says that at the socialist meeting, "there were six persons present, and consequently six sections of the party were represented, four of which had strong but divergent Anarchist opinions" (3).
It is important to remember throughout the novel that the person narrating is not actually the man who supposedly experienced the events of the story. Throughout Chapter 1, the narrator refers to the person who experienced what we will later find out was a dream as "our friend" (3). At the end of Chapter 1, the narrator tells the reader that they will begin using the first person to tell the story since they "understand the feelings and desires of the comrade of whom I am telling better than any one else in the world does" (5). This distinction between the man who experienced the events and the narrator telling his story is little discussed in the rest of the novel, but it can be postulated that Morris made this significant choice to ask readers to trust the narrator, even when the story itself seems far-fetched.
A bridge over the Thames near to the home of the main character is used as a symbol in the first two chapters to begin the contrast between the 19th and 21st centuries. On the night that William attends the socialist meeting, he pauses on his way home to marvel at the beauty of nature which is only ruined for him by "an ugly suspension bridge" (4). However, when he wakes up in the 21st century, this bridge has been replaced by a stone bridge, which William describes as "a little weathered, but showed no marks of the grimy sootiness which I was used to on every London building more than a year old. In short, to me a wonder of a bridge" (8). This contrast will soon be drawn out by William's comparisons of things he sees in the 21st century including other architectural structures, clothing, and people's physical appearances.
While some sections of the novel are quite dense, in other sections Morris uses light humor to show the incredible differences between 19th- and 21st-century England. One such section comes in Chapter 4 when William notes the lack of poor people around the market and Dick simply cannot figure out what he means. After trying out a few definitions and synonyms, William and Dick give up on fully understanding one another. This shows how immersed both men are in their respective societies and cultures, preventing them from fully understanding each other.
Another symbol Morris creates through architecture is the Parliament building. In the 21st century, William finds that the building where Parliament used to meet has been turned into a market and a storage place for manure. This shows the 21st century's disregard for things of the 19th century, and Morris's own distaste for Parliament and what it represents, since he felt that England's entire system of government was one that protected the interests of the rich and did little for the rest of its citizens.
