KELMSCOTT HOUSE 
among the olives beside the midland sea). . . . The house could 
easily be done up at a cost of money . . . the garden is really 
most beautiful. If you come to think of it, you will find that 
you won’t get a garden or a house with much character unless 
you go out as far as the Upper Mall, and I don’t think that either 
you or I could stand a modern house in a street. . . .” 
This praise of his London garden is not exaggerated. There is 
only a small plot of ground in front ; with two scrubby bushes of 
box, so far as I remember—on either side of the front door. ‘‘ It 
neither ‘clothes’ nor gives grace to the house,” but at the 
back stretches away, almost to King Street, Hammersmith, the 
loveliest and most extensive town-garden that it has fallen to 
my lot to describe and to depict. I do not, of course, compare 
it with the “ princely gardens,” to repeat once more Bacon’s 
famous phrase—but with those usually attached to the middle- 
class Londoner’s home. 
Strictly speaking, at Kelmscott House there are three gardens, each 
opening out of the other—connected, however, by an encircling walk. 
A wide, smooth lawn, much used for tennis and bowls, and 
shaded by splendid trees—among them a fine tulip tree—is the 
principal feature of the first garden. A row of terra-cotta vases, 
almost large enough to hold a small man, therefore sometimes 
called the “‘ Ali Baba” pots, which are Italian oil jars, used in 
importing olive oil, cuts off the lawn at the lower end. When I 
saw them, they were filled with scarlet geraniums, as seen in the 
drawing ; it was remarked significantly that “ of course they were 
not there in Morris’s time.’”’ No doubt they were held to be 
vulgar by the worshippers of the sunflower and the lily; and 
vulgarity indeed is too mild a term applied to geraniums when 
they are contrasted with a garish yellow; but that Morris 
himself considered them as altogether beyond the pale, and that 
he started the prejudice against them, seems almost incredible 
in face of his efforts to get pure, bright dyes in his vats. His 
infallible eye for colour enabled him to harmonize everything, 
even tints inherently discordant; and he could not have failed 
to realize the preciousness of a dash of scarlet—which is as valuable 
sometimes as a touch of black—in a decorative scheme—but then 
Morris would never have contrasted it with calceolaria-yellow ; 
and that is exactly what the ordinary garden-lover does ! 
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