KELMSCOTT 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. é 
In 1882 he wrote from Hammersmith, “ 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-everlasting 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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