CHAPTER XIII 
KELMSCOTT HOUSE, UPPER MALL. 
HAMMERSMITH 
ROWN of brick, square of frontage, solid and comfortable- 
looking, but externally by no means ‘‘ The House Beau- 
tiful,” of which its most celebrated occupant dreamed, the 
Georgian mansion in which William Morris died, stands facing the 
river, and separated from it only by a narrow roadway, and a row of 
noble elms. : 
The spectator who stands opposite the house, has on his right a 
somewhat squalid area of small cottages, dingy courts, and narrow 
passages ; in the rear is a large and beautiful garden, separated 
from the slum by high brick walls, and by Hampshire House ; 
the latter is an early Georgian residence, now a workmen’s social 
club, founded long after Morris’s death, but carried on on lines of 
which he would have strongly approved. 
The interior of Kelmscott House. is not remarkable, but the 
five windows of the drawing-room command a fine prospect of 
two of the Thames reaches; to the right the eye is carried past 
Chiswick Eyot, towards Kew and Richmond, and to the left, 
through the piers of Hammersmith Bridge to Putney and Fulham. 
The house and garden had a history or ever “ the idle singer of 
an empty day ” stamped upon them, as he could not fail to do, 
the impress of his own strong individuality. So long back as 
1816—as a plaque on the outer wall records—Sir Francis Ronalds, 
the inventor of the electric telegraph, resided there, and laid down 
in the garden eight miles of insulated wire “‘ charged with static 
electricity and worked by electrometers and synchronized discs 
at either end.” It was the first electric communication ever 
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