KELMSCOTT HOUSE 



it, and in due time finished it, turning neither to the right hand 

 nor the left till it was done. So I did with all things I set my hand 

 to." 



It was in this way that, when under Rossetti's influence, he 

 at one time had resolved to become a painter but soon, as we have 

 seen, gave up the idea, finding that not in that line lay his genius. 

 In his subsequent career as a decorative artist and craftsman, 

 everything done in his workshops was tested, tried, and examined 

 by himself; whether carpet- weaving, tapestry-weaving, chintzes, 

 wall-paper, or stained glass. His chintzes were primarily intended 

 for wall-hangings, to be used instead of paper but people would 

 not have them. 



His industry and consequent output, were astonishing. Seventy 

 or eighty designs for wall-papers, and nearly forty for chintzes, 

 were produced by him during the years he was in business. Woven 

 stuffs, and stamped velvets, silk damasks, carpets and tapestries, 

 occupied him in turn. " He carried on his business as a manu- 

 facturer," says Mr. Mackail, " not because 'he wanted to make 

 money, but because he wanted to make the things he manufac- 

 tured ... in every manual art which he touched he was a skilled 

 expert ; in the art of money-making he remained to the last an 

 amateur." 



A great painter once said to me, when sitting before an unfinished 

 picture on my easel and gazing with kind eyes thoughtfully at it, 

 " Ah, Jessie, an artist's greatest reward in his work, is his pleasure 

 in the doing of it." The words sank into my mind, and I have never 

 forgotten them. 



o 



To Morris all work was pleasure ; one of his dicta being that 

 " no work that cannot be done with pleasure in the doing, is worth 

 doing," which is only another way of saying, less comprehensively, 

 that the work can not be well done unless the worker's heart be 

 in it. The aphorism is broadly true, but must be accepted with 

 modification ; it applies of course in a special manner to the Arts, 

 to craftsmanship, to literature, to scientific research, to inventions, 

 to the instruction of youth and in short to avocations innumerable 

 wherever brain power, skill, initiative, and perseverance, are 

 essential to achievement. But it is obvious that the dustman, the 

 scavenger and the sweep, for example, can find no positive pleasure 

 in their occupations, yet they are hygienic and necessary, and 



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