Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/174

ÆT. 28] the first year's trading was done. Premises were taken from Lady Day, 1861, at 8, Red Lion Square, a few doors off Morris's and Burne-Jones's old rooms. The ground floor of the house was occupied by a working jeweller: the firm rented the first floor for an office and show room, and the third floor, with part of the basement, for workshops. In the basement a small kiln was built, for firing glass and tiles. As the work grew on their hands, about a dozen men and boys came to be regularly employed on the premises. The boys were got from a Boys' Home in the Euston Road; the men chiefly from Camden Town. The foreman, Mr. George Campfield, was a glass-painter who had come under Morris's notice as a pupil at the evening classes of the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street. He is still in the employment of the firm at Merton Abbey. There were regular weekly meetings of the firm on Wednesday evenings, but otherwise Morris and Faulkner were the only two partners who partook in the active management of the business.

The following letter from Morris to his old tutor, inclosing a copy of the circular announcing the starting of the business, shows that church decoration was what he chiefly looked to for custom. Among the early purchases entered as house expenses in the books of the firm is a Clergy List, and—divided from it only by an entry for fluoric acid—a Vulgate. Work in Bodley's two new churches at Scarborough and Brighton, and in a third, that of Selsley All Saints, near Stroud, was the main business of this year.

"8, Red Lion Square, "April 19th, 1861.

"My dear Guy,

"By reading the enclosed you will see that I have started as a decorator which I have long meant