Highways and Byways in LondonCook, Emily Constance Baird
History
Highways and Byways in London
Cook, Emily Constance Baird
London (England) -- Description and travel
From the fact of the Red Lion Square rooms being unfurnished came
practically the beginnings of Morris's work as a decorator and
manufacturer. He set to work to provide it with "intensely mediæval
furniture," designed by himself, and painted in panels afterwards by
Rossetti and Burne-Jones. There were tables, chairs, and a large
settle; "chairs," says Rossetti, "such as Barbarossa might have sat
in." It is pleasant to think of Morris and Rossetti walking arm-in-arm
on summer evenings, wending their way through quaint alleys up to the
Red Lion Square lodgings, deep in earnest conversation; young,
intensely busy and hopeful--still more intensely full of "the joy of
life." They spent their holidays at the not far distant Zoological
Gardens, where Morris, who was fond of birds, would observe and
imitate the habits of eagles:
"He would imitate an eagle with considerable skill and
humour, climbing on to a chair, and, after a sullen pause,
coming down with a soft heavy flop; and for some time an owl
was one of the tenants of Red Lion Square, in spite of a
standing feud between it and Rossetti."
Morris had several Bloomsbury abodes. Later, when he married, and the
Red Lion Square household broke up, he and his wife went into lodgings
at 41, Great Ormond Street; and again, some five or six years later,
they took an old house, 26 Queen Square, (now pulled down to make room
for a hospital), a house which, with its yard and outbuildings behind,
had room and to spare for his family, and also for workshops to
accommodate his increasing trade as a decorative manufacturer. It is
sad that London houses where Morris lived should bear no trace of his
beautifying hand; for externally, it must be confessed, such of his
Bloomsbury dwellings as remain extant are commonplace. Red Lion
Square, a curiously antiquated enclosure near Holborn, approached by
paved diverging alleys at the eastern corners, and with a pathetic
look of having known better days (it is now mostly offices and
business flats), contains but few dwelling-houses. No. 17 still
stands, but the only thing about it that seems to suggest the Morris
tradition is its plain green door; and it differs from its neighbours
merely by its middle first-floor window being "heightened up to the
ceiling" as already described. Neither is 41, Great Ormond Street--one
of the smaller houses in that dignified old street--in any way
remarkable, except for its rather dilapidated look. It seems a pity,
by the way, that tablets do not more frequently indicate the houses
where great people have lived; the dullest of London streets would
gain infinitely in interest were this the rule, instead of merely the
exception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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