Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/270

ÆT. 38] riding and pack horses for the party; tents, blankets, food, and appliances of all kinds were to be bought, and details of travel in the desert were rehearsed in anticipation. The Burne-Jones children long remembered vividly how Morris came one day and built a little hearth in their garden with loose bricks, over which he cooked a stew in the manner of some pirate or backwoodsman in a story-book. As the time drew near he was as excited and fidgety as a boy preparing for the holidays. The importance of the occasion was such that he resolved, for the first time in his life, to keep a diary. This was almost necessary in any case if he wished to bring home any ordered account of his adventures, for from the day the travellers struck inland from Reykjavik until they regained it again there was little chance of sending, any more than of receiving, letters. This diary, scribbled from day to day on the spot, was carefully written out by him when he came home, and afterwards revised and written out again with some idea of publishing it. This idea, however, considered and deferred more than once, was finally rejected by him towards the end of his life. The extracts given here are from the revised manuscript given by him to Mrs. Burne-Jones in 1873.

On the 6th of July, the party (except Mr. Evans, who had gone on to Leith by sea) started from London to take the fortnightly Danish mail boat from Granton. "That morning," says the diarist, "my heart had failed me, and I felt as if I should have been glad of any accident that had kept me at home; yet now it would have seemed unbearable to sleep in London another night." All night in the train he was too excited to sleep; but with the next day's dawn he recovered himself and began to observe things: sunrise among the forges of Darlington, a beautiful sky-landscape strangely