Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/152

ÆT. 24] up. Rossetti said that Topsy had the greatest capacity for producing and annexing dirt of any man he ever met with.

"Nov. 1. To Hill's, where were Tospy, Ted, Swan, Hatch, Swinburne of Balliol (introduced I think by Hatch) and Faulkner."

Several of the names mentioned here are new. Swan, a friend of Rossetti's and a man of some amount of genius which verged on eccentricity, had taken a considerable part in executing the decorations on the Union roof, his name, together with those of Morris, Faulkner, and St. John Tyrwhitt of Christ Church, being inscribed on one of the rafters as the artificers. It is recorded that up in the dark angles of the roof they sometimes painted, instead of flowers, little figures of Morris with his legs straddling out like the portraits of Henry VIII.: for the slim young man of the previous year was now not only, in a charming phrase used of him at the time by Burne-Jones, "unnaturally and unnecessarily curly," but growing fat. Bowen, who as Treasurer of the Union had been primarily responsible for accepting the suggested decoration, gave it afterwards, as President, his untiring support. Hill is the well-known editor of Boswell's "Johnson," who, though a little junior to the "set," had been closely connected with it. Bennet had been Treasurer of the Union just before Bowen, and succeeded him in the Presidency in the following year. Swinburne had come up to Balliol in January, 1856; the acquaintance now formed with Morris at Oxford ripened into intimacy in London a few years later. He had already written a long poem on Iseult Blanchemains, and their common enthusiasm for Malory and the Arthurian legend drew them together. Swinburne was among the most fervid admirers of Morris's early