KELMSGOTT HOUSE 



an old garden in Hammersmith, Chelsea, or Chiswick, that does 

 not rejoice in the possession of at least one. 



One cannot suppose that the Kelmscott specimens were among 

 those planted so long ago by royal command but they are their 

 direct descendants. The mulberry is a beautiful tree, growing 

 picturesquely ; it has large handsome leaves ; the fruit, when 

 newly-gathered, is most delicious and the berries, ripe and unripe, 

 red, black and green appear simultaneously on the boughs. We 

 must prize those we have, for unless we mend our ways, and plant 

 for posterity as our ancestors did for us, the mulberry-bush in 

 common with many other trees, may in a generation or two 

 become extinct for nobody plants it now ! 



It was natural that this town garden should compare unfavour- 

 ably with that on the Upper Thames in the heart of the country 

 but certain entries in Morris's letters and diaries, show that he 

 found pleasure in it. 



In 1882 he wrote from Hammersmith, 4 Well ! one thing I 

 long for will certainly come, the sunshine and the spring. Mean- 

 while we are hard at work gardening here, making dry paths 

 and a sublimely tidy box- edging ; how I love tidiness ! " Per- 

 haps he meant the remark for a joke ; anyway, it is amusing 

 coming from one who appears to have been notoriously untidy. 



" Both the Hammersmith and the Merton gardens," he writes 

 in September, 1866, "are looking very nice just now" Merton 

 Abbey being the picturesque Surrey works, seven miles from 

 Charing Cross, to which he had removed his plant for dyeing, 

 weaving, and cotton-printing. This was according to a plan he 

 had long entertained for he felt that " this world-without-end, 

 for- ever last ing hole of a London " was not the place to do more 

 than carry out experimental work in. But though he abused 

 London, he was typically a Londoner of the middle-class and 

 being a poet and an artist to boot his native city at times made 

 strong appeal to him. His Hammersmith garden with its brown 

 brick walls, and smoky environment illustrated his own text, 

 when in May, 1891, he wrote, " The blossom is splendid London, 

 in the older parts like the Inns of Court, really looks well in the 

 springtime, with the bright, fresh green against the smoky old 

 walls. Spring over, it becomes London again, and no more an 

 enchanted city ; " a day or two later he^adds, " The weather is 



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