Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/178

 a few years at a factory in the Brompton Road.

In 1887 De Morgan married Mary Evelyn, the eldest daughter of Percival Andree Pickering, Q.C., and sister of Spencer Umfreville Pickering, F.R.S. She was a pupil and niece of R. Spencer-Stanhope, and was herself an artist of talent. More than twenty years of their married life were spent in the Vale, Chelsea, where they bought a little house. The impending destruction of the Vale obliged them to leave in 1909, and the next year they settled at 127 Church Street, their last London home. About 1890 a serious pronouncement of the doctors on De Morgan’s health (it was feared that he had the family predisposition to lung trouble) decided them to spend part of the year abroad, and thenceforth until the spring of 1914 they wintered in Florence. This decision, so serious for the fortunes of the pottery, spurred De Morgan to an invention whereby the tiles, which formed a large part of the industry, could be painted on paper by Italian workmen in Florence and sent to London to be transferred to the clay and fired. In the decoration of the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s liners, undertaken by De Morgan, the tiles and panels were done by this process, which of course could only be employed for flat surface decoration.

When De Morgan’s activities as a potter and designer were coming to an end, a new phase of his life began. A life’s labour with all its brilliant achievements had brought him no monetary success; this now came to him from work lightly undertaken to keep his thoughts occupied in days of disappointment and enforced idleness. He began to write a few years before he actually retired from the business, and he speaks to a friend of ‘this scribbling that keeps me quiet and prevents my being sulky’. At a time of ill-health and depression, Mrs. De Morgan brought to his notice two chapters of a story written some time before and rescued by her from being burned as rubbish. This was the beginning, leisurely and discursive, with no thought of publication, of Joseph Vance and of the series of novels by which De Morgan is known. It was not the first time that his wife’s sympathy and encouragement had helped him in a difficult moment in his life. Joseph Vance was refused by the first publisher to whom it was offered, and a second novel was half finished before the first was accepted for publication in England and America. To the author’s great surprise, Joseph Vance, published in the summer of 1906, had an immediate success, and thenceforth De Morgan, artist, potter, and inventor, became known in two worlds as a novelist. The following is a list of his subsequent novels in the order of publication: Alice-for-Short (1907), Somehow Good (1908), It Never Can Happen Again (1909), An Affair of Dishonour (1910), A Likely Story (1911), When Ghost Meets Ghost (1914).

De Morgan began two other stories which, owing to the outbreak of the European War, he never finished. One is The Old Madhouse (1919), which Mrs. De Morgan, with whom he always discussed his work, skilfully completed, condensing the remainder of the plot and revealing the mystery of the story. She dealt with equal skill with The Old Man’s Youth (1921), undertaking a yet more difficult task in piecing material together to make the story coherent. This latter work is of special interest, as it is largely autobiographical, and full of revelations of De Morgan’s personal character. As the War went on, De Morgan became preoccupied with the question of aircraft and submarine defence, and spent more and more time in experiments and in working out schemes. ‘I have got no end of inventions afoot,’ he writes, ‘though I am not absolutely certain of any but one—a new airship.” He died in London 15 January 1917 from a sudden attack of trench fever. He had no children.

De Morgan wrote two treatises on his craft as a potter: a paper read before the Society of Arts in 1892 (Journal, vol. xl) and a Report on the Feasibility of a Manufacture of Glazed Pottery in Egypt (1894), the latter being the result of a visit to Egypt (by invitation) in the previous year. This Report considers interesting technical points, including the question of kilns suitable for the light fuel of Egypt. In the Society of Arts paper occurs the following epitomized description of his lustre-process: ‘As we now practise it at Fulham, it is as follows: the pigment consists simply of white clay mixed with copper scale or oxide of silver, in proportion varying according to the strength of the colour we desire to get. It is painted on to the already fused glaze with water and enough gum-arabic to harden it for handling and make it work easily—a little lamp-black or other colouring matter makes it pleasanter to work with. I have tried many additions to this pigment … but without superseding the first simple mixture.’

Besides fireplace tiles and pots, &c., the De Morgan ware was used for 152