Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/318

ÆT. 39] carry on the work, which was cramped as it was, and which Morris was always, almost without his will, extending in one direction or another by fresh inventions or experiments. "I am going with Janey to-morrow," he writes on the 25th of November, "to look at a house in Hammersmith in Theresa Terrace: it is Mason the painter's house, who died about a month ago. We must, it seems, turn out of this house next spring, for Wardle wants it all for the business." Towards the end of 1872 the family removed from Queen Square. Morris himself kept two rooms for his own private use, and the rest of the house was turned over to the use of the firm, the drawing-room being made into a much-needed show-room, and the upper floors into additional workshops. The new house was not the Hammersmith one, but another not far from it, on the high road between Hammersmith and Turnham Green, in a rambling suburb of orchards and market-gardens, and with easy access to the Thames down Chiswick Lane. Before the building of the District Railway it was a pleasant, if somewhat remote, suburb. The house itself was very small, "a very good sort of house for one person to live in, or perhaps two," as its mistress afterwards described it; but there was a large garden, and the quiet was complete. Here Morris lived for six years. The parting from Queen Square took place with little effusion of sentiment. Morris himself was too elated by the prospect of setting up a little dye-shop in the empty basement to care much about the abandonment of the house. It had never been more than a temporary home forced on him by disagreeable necessity.

On the 23rd of January, 1873, he writes, "We have cleared out of Queen Square as far as our domesticity is concerned: I keep my study and little bedroom