Summary
Chapter 25: The Third Day on the Thames
The next morning, Dick, Clara, William, and Walter return to the subject of the man who killed for love. Dick suggests that the man not be allowed to live alone, since he will continue to feel worse about his crime and possibly kill himself. Clara says that she doesn't think he will kill himself because he still loves that girl, but agrees that he should stop mourning. Walter asks to come with them in the boat to look at a house for the man. They set off and William soon asks about the locks he has been seeing, asserting that such pleasure-loving people should have come up with a better way to go up stairs; Dick simply deflects this criticism, but Walter answers more fully that "this is not an age of inventions" (167).
The boat passes by a group of girls in a hay field and the girls summon the travelers to eat with them. Dick declines, saying that they want to save the pleasures of the harvest for William until they get to their destination, and William thinks to himself that the girls all take such authentic interest in matters of conversation such as the weather and birds.
Chapter 26: The Obstinate Refusers
Before Dick, Clara, William, and Walter leave the group of girls, Dick teases them about the lack of men accompanying them. The girls tell them that they should go see something for themselves up a nearby hill since they have a certain rivalry with a group of builders. They ponder why the girls might laugh at the people they are about to meet, and Dick guesses that it is because haymaking isn't work that all people want to do but a festival of a sort.
When they reach the house, a man comes to meet them with a mallet and chisel in his hands. Other women and men are around the room and a woman dressed nicely also approaches the visitors. She says that they have come to see "the Obstinate Refusers" (170) and explains that she is a model for Mistress Philippa, the head carver. She leads the group inside to where Mistress Philippa is hard at work carving a relief. She tells the girl and the visitors that she does not want to be bothered while she works, but other workers in the area inform them that they aren't working on the harvest because they need to finish making this pretty house to stand in place of an ugly one that used to be there. They offer the guests drinks and joke around for a little while and then the guests say goodbye and head back to their boat.
Chapter 27: The Upper Waters
The group continues up the Thames, dropping Walter in Berkshire, stopping for lunch in Wallingford, and spending the evening with an old man named Henry Morsom who has more knowledge about the times of the "Parliamentary Wars" (174). The old man tells them how in the olden days many people had gotten so out of touch with nature that they didn't know how to bake bread or do handicrafts. This artisanship had to be passed down by the few who remembered after the revolution. They discuss the 19th-century rise of machines to avoid work and to "make 'nature' their slave" (176). After the revolution, machines slowly went out of style when the focus shifted to creating art, which machines could not produce. The artifacts from that time are not delicate, but they are clearly created with pleasure.
Dick tells Morsom that they must be continuing toward the harvest and Morsom asks to join them for a ways to get a book from a library at Oxford. As the four set off to leave in their boat, they see another boat coming under an arch with Ellen rowing. Ellen says that she followed them because in a week or two she and her grandfather will be moving up north and she wanted to see them again before that. Clara tells Dick that he should go in Ellen's boat because he is the best sculler, but Dick says that William should go with her, and everyone is happy.
Ellen relaxes while William sculls; he notices that she looks at the scenery with true interest. They talk back and forth, with William multiple times tripping over his words as he fights to not reveal where (or when) he is really from. They stop a few times along the way to look at old buildings and eventually stop for the night in a small town.
Chapter 28: The Little River
They start off early the next morning in the same pairs. Ellen and William start to talk and he decides to tell her how he really came to be in 21st-century England. She accepts his explanation readily and without much surprise. She tells him that she will make him a proposal soon, but doesn't tell him what this will be. They lapse into talking about scenery again, and they agree that it is not pleasant to move homes frequently.
Chapter 29: A Resting-Place on the Upper Thames
The pairs continue up the Thames, pausing to rest and talk about how rich men didn't used to keep beautiful houses because everything in the world back then was made quickly and vulgarly. Ellen comes to feel she is understanding the past more and more through William. Ellen asks him to keep teaching her so that she can be aware of how the world works in case of hard times and educate her children as well.
Chapter 30: The Journey's End
The group continues up the Thames, still remarking on the beauty of their natural surroundings, including mills. Ellen asks about how the river was managed in the past and William tells her about how it was "MISmanaged" (194). William starts to get upset and Clara thinks this may be because he believes he must go back to his own time soon, so she makes her proposal to him which is that he join her and her father in moving up north.
Finally, they arrive at the place Dick's friends have been harvesting. He introduces William and blames him for their slow travel up the river, since they wanted to enjoy themselves and show him the sights. His friends walk on the bank as they take the boat a little further down the river to the ford. They get out of the boat and look around to see a meadow and a few buildings. William has a moment of confusion where he thinks that he sees a scene of haggard people from the past in place of the beautiful people and setting of the 21st century, but this passes after a moment.
Chapter 31: An Old House Amongst New Folk
William and Ellen go straight inside, delighting on the way in the beauty of nature. Inside, they also delight in the simplicity of the furniture. They chat and then William lapses into comparing his old life to this one, particularly what Ellen would have been like in the past. She decides that they should go be with more people if he may be leaving them soon. Dick meets them as they come out of the house and invites William to go for a swim with him while Clara takes care of Ellen.
Chapter 32: The Feast's Beginning -- The End
Dick takes William through a field full of tents and people and they talk about how more and more people will be showing up to help. They also talk about the seasons, with William commenting on how Dick talks about such a normal, natural occurrence with such passion. They head to the evening feast at the church. William and Dick enter and after surveying the room, William sees Clara and Ellen sitting and talking to other people at the table. They do not seem able to see William. William looks to Dick and he does not seem able to see his guest either. For a moment, Ellen seems to see and recognize William, but this passes for a moment and she tries to shake off the sudden sadness she felt.
After another minute, William leaves the church. He sets out for the old house by the ford, but when he turns a corner he is confronted by an old, grimy man limping along. He hurries past the man, but sees a black cloud rolling toward him and soon cannot see anything or even tell whether he is walking or lying down.
He wakes in his bed in Hammersmith. He contemplates whether what he just experienced was a dream, since it felt so real to him. He thinks about Ellen's last sad look at him, thinking that what it truly communicated was that he could not stay in the happy 21st century, so defiled was he by the trials of the 19th century. However, it also inspired him to see society with a new view and to work toward the socialist utopia he experienced. He ends by calling what he experienced a vision rather than a dream.
Analysis
Unlike almost all of the other female characters, Mistress Philippa is shown unapologetically doing a type of work mostly prohibited to women in the 19th century: art. However, the character of Mistress Philippa is more complicated than this as Morris seems to use her to critique those who focus too much on their own pursuits rather than investing in one's local community. Morris does this by naming the group that Philippa heads the Obstinate Refusers and showing her being too invested to even take a break to drink with guests.
It is interesting that Morris does not make more of William's reveal about where and when he is from. When he tells Ellen his origin, she accepts the information without much surprise and even tells him that she guessed about as much. This may be foreshadowing for William's experience turning out to be a dream, since all the characters in a dream would actually have the information that the dream's controller has. It may also be thought to simply reflect how accepting people in a socialist society are to the quirks of others.
Chapter 30 includes the second of only two footnotes in the novel. This footnote is about the presence of mills of various types along the side of the Thames as William and his friends travel. As with the first footnote, it seems as if the narrator could have included this note in the body of the story, so the reader must specifically question why this bit of information was called to stand outside of the text. The presence of a footnote at least calls attention to the story being communicated in writing rather than flowing in exactly the same way an oral history would.
Morris bookends (begins and ends) William Guest's time in the 21st century with swimming. This can be seen as underscoring the idea of a second childhood through rebirth. It also calls more attention to the Thames as a symbol, representing a part of England that does not change over time, and thus stability and nature integral to the country.
With the reveal in Chapter 32 that, as the reader might have guessed from the beginning, the entire story has taken place within a dream, the title of the book becomes of even more interest. It is clear that the main character has literally traveled "nowhere," but including that specific word still underscores how the utopia William witnesses does not exist. However, using the word "news" rather than a word like "tales" or even "dreams" makes what William saw seem more solid and credible.
