William Morris
s at 17 Red Lion Square where he and Burne-Jones took quarters. "Topsy and I live together," wrote Burne-Jones, "in the quaintest room in all London, hung with brasses of old knights and
ions on the Thames. One of the latter is vividly described in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Letters of Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, giving a joyous picture of Morris at the mercy of his ungovernable temper. The party, consisting of Hill, Morris, and Faulkner, had started out to row down the Thames from Oxford to a London suburb. By the time they had reached Henley they had spent all their money except enough for Faulkner's return ticket to Oxford, where he was to attend a college meeting. For this he departed, promising to bring back a supply of money in the evening. "The weather was unusually hot," writes Dr. Hill, "Morris and I sauntered along the river-side. I have not forgotten the longing glances he cast on a large basket of strawberries. He had always been so plentifully supplied with money that he bore with far greater impatience than I did this privation. At last the shadows had grown long and the heat was more bearable. We went with light hearts to the railway station to meet our comrade. 'Well, Faulkner,' cried out Morris, cheerfully, 'how much money have you brought?' Our friend gave a start. 'Good heavens,' he replied, 'I forgot all about it.' Morris thrust both his hands into his long dark curly hair, tugged at it
out to be as free as their offer) were to be paid by the Union. It is easy to imagine the ensuing bustle and ardour. Rossetti eagerly managing, Morris delighted with the charmingly medi?val situation,-a few humble painters working together piously, without hope of glory or thought of gain,-the others following their leader with lamb-like docility. Had their knowledge of methods been equal to their zeal, the walls of the Debating Room must have become the loveliest of realised visions and the delight of many generations. The young workmen sat for each other, Morris, Burne-Jones, and Rossetti all possessing fine paintable heads. They clambered up and down endless ladders to gain a satisfactory view of their performance, and attacked the most stupendous difficulties with patience and ingenuity. The faces in the subject undertaken by Burne-Jones were painted, for example, in three planes at right angles to one another, owing to the projection of a string-course of bricks straight across
to months as complications increased, and finally the enterprise was abandoned with the work unfinished. It had led, however, to an event of paramount importance to Morris, and of considerable importance to Rossetti-the meeting with Miss Burden, who was to figure in so many of Rossetti's symbolic pictures, and who became the wife of Morris. Her remarkable beauty had attracted the attention of the young men one night at the little Oxford theatre. "My brother was the first to observe her," writes William Rossetti; "her face was at once tragic, mystic, passionate, calm, beautiful, and gracious-a face for a
seems
ight nose, and
a little
mea
ad, oversh
hair, has
good to m
mea
y long my
th yellow
nd crisped
mea
ake the pa
ut dead as
by God most
mea
ge metal, thr
t from my l
g much to
mea
brows the li
a clear s
ld wish my
mea
yes, standi
e memory fr
out very
mea
ul and kin
imes looki
something,
mea
if the la
t do her brig
half tears
mea
elow the
place where
ld rise and
mea
ps being ma
nd pensive
e faint to s
mea
r stained glass windows, even "doing worsted work," in Rossetti's contemptuous phrase for his efforts at reviving the lost art of embroidery, with a frame made from an old model and wools dyed especially for him. Most of all he was writing poetry, the proper occupation of a lover so ?sthetically endowed. Early in
e, that comes into the poetry of his maturity. Technically, the poems could hardly be more picturesquely defective than they are. The one giving the volume its name is nearly unintel
cript, reminding one of nothing in nature, but flashing the richness of medi?val symbolism upon the imagination in more or less awkward forms. If Morris could not "imitate Gabriel" in his pictures, he could at least imitat
long throat how
o my mouth;
ies like win
ously colo
and the splendour of material things, rendered w
head and gol
the hems of h
girdle roun
est belle, L
ow it is g
·
sitting gl
gold and g
glorious fa
est belle, L
on the great church walls;" ladies walk in their gardens clad in white and scarlet; the vision of Christ appears to Galahad "with raiment half blood-red, half white as snow"; angels appear clad in white with scarlet wings; scarlet is the predominating colour throughout, if we except gold, which serves
ater
bill'd h
sses on
e red ru
ood-red da
night, c
r arms, lithe arms, twining arms, broad fair eyelids, long necks, and unlimited hair, form an equipment somewhat dangerous for a poet with anything short of genius to sustain him. For themes Morris had gone chiefly to the Arthurian stories and to the chronicles of Froissart. His style, he himself thought, was more like Browning's than anyone else's, though the difference that lay between him and Browning even at the beginning forbade any essential likeness. Browning's effort was always to render an idea which was perfectly clear in his own mind. His volubility and obscurity and roughness frequently arose from his over-eagerness to express his idea in a variety of ways, leading him to break off with half statements and begin afresh, to throw out imperfect suggestions and follow them with others equally imperfect. But all his stutterings and broken sentences failed to disguise the fact that an intellectual conception underlay the turbulent method, giving substance and life to the poem however much it might lack grace and form. With Morris the intellectual conception was as weak as with Browning it was strong, and apparently existed
Jane Burden
Ros
in new wine of his youthful poetry in the old bottles of the defunct past, using motives and scenes and accessories alien to our modern life, and only dimly understood by the modern reader. The true spirit of that past it is hardly necessary to say he did not revive,-no writer has ever revived t
undred copies was sold and given away, and the remainder lingered for a dozen years or more until the p
ife and the most intense personal interests. On the twenty-sixth of April, 1859, he was married to Jane Burden, and after a br
tmosphere of activities and interests in which the vast general public could breathe as easily as he. In building his new home to his fancy he was unconsciously laying the corner-stones of the many homes throughout England into which his influence was afterward to enter. He was just twenty-five, filled with energy, generous impulse, honesty, and kindness. The bourgeois touch which his biographer declares was inherent in his nature was far from obvious as yet. Society for its own sake he liked little, and was not above getting out of unwelcome invitations by subterfuge, if fair means would not avail. He affected a Bohemian carelessness in dress, and his hair was uniformly wild. His language was generally forcible, often violent, always expressive. He lived in the company of his intimates and cared for noth
"PIMPERNEL" WALL-PAP
ON-P
AND COTTON-
les obtained by courte
Italian invasion, while the mobile Gothic style, adapting itself readily to individual needs, prevailed. It stood among the old and gnarled trees, only two stories in height, but with an effect of rambling spaciousness and hospitality, and the garden that lay close to it was as individual and old-fashioned as itself. Morris prided himself, Mr. Mackail tells us, on his knowledge of gardening, and his advice to the Birmingham Society of Artists in one of the lectures of his later years shows how thoughtfully he considered the subject. As he always acted so far as he could upon his theories, we may be fairly sure that the Red House garden was planned in conformity with the ideal place sketched in this lecture, and may assume in it a profusion of single flowers mixed to avoid great masses of colour, among them the old columbine, where the clustering doves are unmistakable and distinct, the old china aster, the single snowdrop, and the sunflower, these
aphazard and ill-considered way," which the indwellers are "forced to obscure again by shutters, blinds, curtains, screens, heavy upholsteries, and such other nuisances." By all means, therefore, fill the window with moderate-sized panes of glass set in solid sash bars-"we shall then at all events feel as if we were indoors on a cold day"-as if we had a roof over our heads. The fact that small windows
a rough age, a sturdy art, a plain habit of life; that he was a worker whose dreams tormented him to speedy and vigorous action, a creature whose vitality was too great even for his strong frame and physical power. He liked a massive chair, and well he might, for one of his amusements was to twist his legs about it in such a way that a lightly built affair must instantly succumb. He liked a floor that he could stamp on with impunity; he liked a table on which he could pound with his fists without danger to its equilibrium. In the Red House these requirements were fully met. In the lecture called The Beauty of Life is an account of the fittings "necessary to the sitting-room of a healthy person." Beside the table that will "keep steady when you work upon it," and the chairs "that you can move about," the good floor, and the small carpet "which can be bundled
done to give an effect of splendour to the rooms. Up to the large drawing-room came the ponderous and mighty settle which had cost so many expletives in the course of its adjustment to the old room in Red Lion Square, and which was now embellished by a balcony at the top to which a stairway led up. All minor accessories were thoughtfully considered and for the most part designed by Morris or by friends pressed into service at his eager demand. He found little to content him in the articles of commerce on sale at the orthodox shops in the early sixties. "In looking at an old house," he says in one of his books, "we please ourselves by thinking
RAWBERR
FOR COT
requiring for himself artistic handicraft, acting out a vigorous protest against the mechanical arts and the shams of the commercial world,-all this was meat and drink to him, and out of it grew an enterprise representing what to the public has been probably the most valuable side of his many-sided career, the establishment of a firm engaged in various forms of decorative art. At about this time he adopted, after the fashion of the master-workman of the Middle Ages, a device or legend e