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On 2
April Morris told Jane that he had taken it; he wrote optimistically about
their future there: “I do think that people will come and see us at the
Retreat (fy on the name!) if only for the sake of the garden & river: we
will lay ourselves for company than heretofore ... so let us hope that we
shall all grow younger there, my dear”. Certainly for Morris, 44 years old
now, the following years were ones of tremendous change and activity and of
relative stability in his marriage.
In
spite of Morris's dislike of Georgian architecture, over the years Kelmscott
House became a much-loved family home. He changed the name from The Retreat
to Kelmscott House (after Kelmscott Manor). Mackail records how he ‘liked to
think that the water which ran under his windows at Hammersmith had passed
the meadows and grey gables of Kelmscott’. He spent two happy holidays in
1880 and 1881, rowing up the river from London to Kelmscott with family and
friends. Kelmscott House, built in the 1790s, is a Georgian building with
three storeys, an attic and a basement. Its history is a distinguished one:
in 1816 Sir Francis Ronalds constructed the first electric telegraph with
eight miles of cable in the garden, and Morris's immediate predecessor, the
writer George MacDonald, wrote two of his most popular children's books
there, At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the
Goblin.
Part
of Kelmscott House's charm lies in its position by the river. May Morris's
evocative description of it illuminates Morris's principles of interior
decoration, particularly his love of the simple and unpretentious.
“My father's own rooms, sleeping-room and study, were almost frugally bare;
in the study no carpet and no curtains; his writing-table in earlier times a
plain deal board and trestles, the walls nearly lined with books; just a
fine inlaid Italian cabinet in one corner of the study .. .
Above Father's rooms was the long drawing-room, which he turned into a haven
of peace and sweet colour, breathing harmony and simplicity....
At the fire-side end of the room stood the Red House painted cabinet ... on
the open hearth was the massive pillared grate Mr Webb had designed for
Queen's Square; and at right angles to the hearth the Red House settle
caught the gleams of the fire on its tawny yellow panels in winter evenings,
and in summer the dancing reflections of the river, while lustre plates
above the chimney-piece suggested flushed sunsets and dim moonlight nights
beyond the elms. At the other end of the room one saw the discreet glimmer
of old glass in closed cupboards sunk in the walls, and on a long narrow
table lay a few pots and plates from the Far East. No pictures of course ...
no occasional tables, no chairs like feather-beds, no litter of any sort.
Plenty of 'quarter-deck' in which to march up and down when discussions got
animated and ideas needed exercise
... Without, the waving trees, the shining river with splendid sweep and
stretch of sun-lit land, and the blue distance of Richmond and the Surrey
hills.”
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