The Wayward Muse (14 page)

“Stop it!” he cried. “My wife is shy and not used to your London antics. You must give her time before you spring such things on her.”

“We did not mean any harm, Mrs. Morris,” said Webb apologetically. “We only wished to make clear in what high esteem we all held you, even before we were so lucky as to meet you.”

She could not be angry at that. Jane Burden, who was homely and awkward and born into an excruciatingly poor and coarse family, was held in high esteem by London gentlemen.

Seeing that she was trembling, Morris excused them both and led her away to a corner chair to restore herself.

“Well, you did warn me,” she said shakily.

“Those degenerates,” fumed Morris. “I intend to pummel them at the first opportunity.”

“They meant no harm,” said Jane. “It’s silly of me to make such a fuss about it.”

“It’s understandable,” said Morris. “Anyone would be overwhelmed. Can I bring you anything? Water? Smelling salts? Something to eat?”

“I might like some wine,” ventured Jane.

While Morris was gone a doll-like young woman in a simple gray dress approached her. She had a pointed chin and eyes of such a light blue they seemed almost white.

“Forgive me if it’s rude,” she said. “Mr. Morris sent me to sit with you. I’m Georgie Macdonald. I’m Edward Burne-Jones’s fiancée.” She blushed when she said it and Jane remembered that her father was a Methodist minister. Jane hoped she would not accidentally do anything that would make the girl disapprove of her.

“I’ve been very nervous about meeting you,” the girl confessed. “Ned has raved about you for so long, I feel as if I’m in the presence of a pagan queen. Not that you’re un-Christian, I didn’t mean that…” She blushed again.

“You must be quite disappointed,” said Jane, trying to ease her discomfort. “I’m sure I do not live up to it.”

“Oh not at all,” said Georgie eagerly. “Though I must confess it’s strange to hear you talk! I had not imagined your voice would be so nice and rich, not like my little squeak. I do like my singing voice. Singing and speaking are quite different for me. One comes easily and the other doesn’t.”

“Do you play?” asked Jane.

“Yes, I play very well,” said Georgie matter-of-factly. “I love to play the old hymns, even though they’re quite unfashionable. It comes from having so many ministers in my family. My father, of course, two of my brothers, an uncle. They were all distraught when Ned gave it up to be an artist. They thought they had settled on someone safe for me and then he goes and changes on them. I quite like it, though. I think it’s wonderful. A girl can get tired of ministers. And being a minister’s wife is very hard work, you know.”

Jane smiled. It was difficult to maintain a cold reserve in the face of Georgie’s open friendliness, and the prospect of a friend was not unwelcome. Georgie admitted that she, too, knew few people in London and was a little bit lonely.

“At home in Birmingham there were eight of us,” said Georgie. “Now I’m staying with my aunt and uncle, and I hardly know what to do with myself. Though there’s my friend Lizzie. I spend quite a lot of time with her.”

“Lizzie Siddal?” Jane had trouble saying the name.

“Do you know her?” asked Georgie in surprise.

Jane shook her head. “Will she be here tonight?” she asked, feeling a little guilty for extracting information from the guileless girl but glad of an opportunity to learn Rossetti’s whereabouts. “I would like to meet her.”

“They’re in the country,” reported Georgie. “Lizzie’s had trouble with her lungs, you know. The city air isn’t good for them.” She chattered on innocently about Lizzie’s health and Rossetti’s tender care of her until Jane thought she would scream.

“Well, you must come and see me,” said Jane when she could take no more.

“I would love that,” replied Georgie. “I’d like to see how you keep house. I’m terribly afraid I’m not going to make Ned a very good wife. Of course I know how to do all of the required things, but sometimes when I’m playing music or reading a book, I find that the afternoon has passed without my knowing it. I’m sure that when I’m married, I’ll let the fire go out and forget to buy anything to make for dinner.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” said Jane. “Anyone with seven brothers and sisters can take care of one husband.”

“I hope you’re right,” said Georgie anxiously as Morris and Burne-Jones appeared, each carrying two glasses of claret.

The next day there was an account of the event in the papers. It was noted that Mrs. William Morris wore a very unusual dress. It was quite loose, the papers reported, delicately refraining from mentioning her lack of a corset, and was of an artistic shade of purple. Only the wife of an artist could get away with it, they said, disapprovingly.

T
HE
house in Kent was nearly finished and one Sunday in March Morris took Jane to see it. They took the train to Abbey Wood station and hired a carriage to drive them the three miles to the house. They passed the immaculate stone cottages of Upton, then turned onto a lane with orchards on either side. They drove past row after orderly row of apple trees, knobby and bare and glistening in the rain.

“Wait until next month,” said Morris. “They will be as white and diaphanous as fields of clouds. There is an apple grown here, called Gascoigne Scarlet. I imagine you have seen one. It is as large and red and sweet as the original, biblical fruit. I can’t wait for you to taste it.”

They were driving alongside a crumbling, mossy stone wall, and Jane could tell from the way Morris was craning his neck and then looking at her expectantly that they were getting close. Her first glimpse of her new home was of a red tile roof and two hulking oak trees, misty and indistinct.

“How lovely,” she gasped.

“I’ve called it Red House,” said Morris. “Not a poetic name, I know, but what else would suit it so well?” They turned onto the drive and the carriage stopped in front of an odd-looking, redbrick house, built in the style of an ancient forest lodge.

“It’s so bright!” said Jane. Morris helped her from the carriage, opened an umbrella, and held it over her.

“Don’t worry,” he said quickly. “Soon the ivy and jasmine and climbing roses will mute the color and make the house seem as if it has been here forever.”

“It’s like a fairy story,” said Jane. “I expect a princess to be unfurling her hair from that window.” She pointed to the many-paned oriel window projecting from the right-hand side of the house.

“I imagine you sitting there in the window seat, gazing out upon your domain,” said Morris.

But Jane was already on the front porch looking at the massive wooden front door. “A truncheon couldn’t break this down,” she laughed.

“I don’t expect anyone will lay siege, but I wanted to be prepared,” Morris said, smiling.

Jane read aloud the inscription on the heavy arch above the door: ‘God preserve your going out and your coming in.’”

“You like it?” asked Morris nervously. He came and stood beside her on the porch.

“I like it,” she affirmed. She was so giddy she kissed her husband on the cheek, in front of the carriage driver who was still sitting there in front of the house.

Morris looked embarrassed but pleased. He took her hand and led her back out into the rain. “Come out and see the grounds,” he said.

“The grounds,” said Jane, relishing the sound of the word in her mouth. “We have grounds!”

“We do,” said Morris. “And we’ll have gardens, and a lawn. Let me show you how I want to lay them out.”

The land around the house was mostly bare and muddy from the construction, but Morris had saved several rows of pippins and pearmains from the orchard that had been there before. They would lend a mature look to the landscape very quickly, he said. He led her down a rough path and showed her the series of trellises in place on either side.

“Here will be the hollyhocks and morning glories,” he said, pointing at two of the trellises. “Over there I’ve planted a row of sunflowers, and in that sunny spot a bunch of lilies. I want to plant antique flowers in beds here, separated by sweetbriar hedges, but I wanted to wait and ask you what you particularly like.”

“Perhaps sweet peas,” said Jane. She had always thought that growing flowers for pleasure was somewhat impractical and unnecessary, but Morris’s excitement was infectious. She began to see a fairy garden next to her fairy house. “And lilac.”

“I like woody plants, too,” he said. “I’ll see if any of our neighbors has a plant I can take a cutting from.”

Jane thought that the woodsy, uncleared corners of the property, hemmed by the mossy stone wall, would be cool and inviting in the summer. At the back of the house, Morris showed her the well, which he had designed to look like a small oast-house, and the open courtyard.

“We thought an L-shaped plan would be the easiest to add on to,” said Morris. “We can build another L and enclose the courtyard completely, if our family gets too large.”

Jane could not imagine how many children she would have to have to make the house seem cramped. The wind drove the rain into her face.

“I’m dying to see my kitchen,” she said hopefully.

“By all means, let’s go inside!” exclaimed Morris.

He led her by the hand through the back entrance. “I call this hall Pilgrim’s Rest,” he said. “It’s the portion of the house closest to Canterbury. I hope we can succor many pilgrims here.”

“If by pilgrims you mean poor hungry artists, I’m sure we will,” said Jane, stopping to examine the two small rooms that opened off the porch.

“I thought this one could be sleeping quarters for guests,” Morris said, “and that this one could be a sitting room for you, if you like.”

The entryway had a red travertine floor, simple and roughly hewn. On its way upstairs, an oak staircase turned past two large leaded glass windows with diamond-shaped panes.

“I want to etch some glass with the Morris coat of arms,” Morris said. “I know it’s feudal, but it will fit with the theme of chivalry. And I want some glass and some tiles to have my motto painted on them.”

“You are living up to it very well so far,” Jane teased. “Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Well, I tried to make the weather better for your first visit to Red House, but you can see I’ve failed,” he answered, flushing with pride at her compliment.

The upstairs comprised a library, an office for Morris, a master bedroom, and several rooms for servants’ quarters. The ceilings were not especially tall, and they weren’t finished with the moldings and cornices and capitals that a regular Victorian home should have.

“Well, it’s far from complete,” said Morris. “This is more of a shell than a house. But between ourselves and all of our friends, I am sure we can decorate it sublimely.”

Morris opened every closet for her, explained every nook and every window. As the final flourish he took her to the kitchen and the downstairs storage areas. He showed her all of the storage space he had built there.

“The coal cellar seems a bit small,” she said, and wished she could take it back immediately. Morris looked hurt.

“The winters are milder here than in London,” he said. “And we won’t have many servants. But if you like I can have the workmen knock out the wall and combine it with the second pantry.”

“I’m sure it won’t be necessary,” said Jane. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

Gratitude washed over Jane as it dawned on her just how much Morris had done, and for her. He had built the house for her. She promised herself that she would fall in love with him, to repay him. In his excitement Morris had allowed his shirtfront to come untucked and it flapped in a ridiculous way when he walked. His hair stuck out all over his head and his trousers were covered with mud from the garden, but somehow it suited him. Jane thought for a moment of flinging her arms around him, but she was too shy, and the moment passed.

Back in London Jane concentrated on readying things for the move. The contents of the house had to be carefully inventoried and Jane went shopping for a calf-bound ledger for the purpose. She was very proud of the price she had gotten, and the length of antique Spanish lace she had found. Preoccupied with her purchases, Jane almost didn’t notice Rossetti’s card in the hall. When she saw it she nearly fainted. Morris had not told her that Rossetti was back in London.

Jane left the card on the table but kept returning to look at it. The stock was cream colored and heavy, but the typeface was very plain:
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
. She ran her finger over the letters as if they were Rossetti’s lips. He had been in her hall, had laid the card on her table with his own hand. The thought made her heart pound wildly, and after unsuccessfully trying to go on with her chores for the day, she went to lie down.

That night Morris laid the lace out on the floor and began to unpick one side of it, trying to see how it was made.

“This was done with a needle,” he said. “You see it’s entirely looped stitches.” Jane tried to pay attention, but she was no longer interested in it.

“You saw Rossetti’s card?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “We must return the visit. Perhaps on Sunday.”

“Is it all right to go?” asked Jane, not sure how to phrase her question. As much as she desperately wanted to see Rossetti, she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet his lover. But Morris understood her.

“You must not snub Lizzie,” he said. “It would look very bad, and Rossetti would never forgive me. By going, you indicate that you don’t consider her beneath you.”

Jane found the idea that Lizzie might be beneath her amusing. Jane knew that in the eyes of many London ladies she was beneath notice because of her background. Many of them would not call on her, or receive her into their homes, no matter how many courses she took with Mrs. Wallingford. It would certainly be hypocritical of her to turn up her nose at Lizzie.

“All right,” Jane agreed. “We should dine with them on Sunday.”

“I’ll write him a note,” said Morris.