KELMSGOTT HOUSE 



Viking succeeded in doing, after all the other heroes had tried in 

 vain to remove it. 



Very handsome in his youth, according to the testimony of Sir 

 Edward Burne- Jones, in later years, Morris's picturesque head, with 

 its leonine locks and somewhat ragged beard, might well have 

 served his friend for the model of a Viking of old, had that great 

 painter drawn any of his subjects from a Scandinavian source. 



His hair was remarkably beautiful, fine, yet also very thick and 

 curly and therefore, among his intimates he went by the name of 

 " Topsy " " Tops " for short. It was so strong that he used to 

 amuse his children by letting them take hold of it, and then lifting 

 them by means of it from the ground. His hands were broad, 

 fleshy, and rather short and clumsy ; yet they executed the most 

 delicately minute work with unequalled precision and celerity. 



He had a ruddy complexion and a rocking walk, and, we are 

 told, might easily have been mistaken for a sea-captain, in his 

 loose suit of blue serge and soft felt hat ; and once when he was 

 " walking down Kensington High Street a fireman from the brigade- 

 station stopped him and said : ' Beg pardon, sir, but were you ever 

 Captain of the Sea Swallow ? ' This was long before the period 

 when he so frequently donned the blouse of the French workman ; 

 but even in his Oxford days his unconventionality led him to wear 

 purple trousers. " Morris went to Jones's on Sunday night," runs 

 a note in a friend's diary, when, after leaving Oxford, he and 

 Burne- Jones shared rooms in Bloomsbury, " and his hair was so 

 long, and he looked so wild, that the servant who opened the door 

 would not let him in, thinking he was a burglar," and at a much 

 later period of his life, when he one day went in his blue blouse and 

 without a hat, as was his wont, from his workshop in Queen Square 

 to lunch with his friend, Faulkner, a few doors off, the new house- 

 maid who let him in, went downstairs to the kitchen in some 

 perplexity, describing him to the cook as the butcher. 



In one of his own lectures on Art he sensibly remarks upon the 

 absurdity of modern masculine attire, usage condemning a man to 

 wear two coats where one would suffice ; a front one, or waistcoat, 

 that has no back, and over it another that has no front ! 



But indifferent to appearance though he, Morris, was, and though 

 it is said that he never looked really peculiar except when con- 

 ventionally dressed, he yet strove at times to adapt himself to 



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