Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/334

ÆT. 41] could be gathered from books on the subject, supplemented by continual experiments in his own vats, left him still unsatisfied; and in the following year he resolved to learn the art practically and thoroughly among the Staffordshire dye-works. This was the beginning of a fresh period in his life of renewed and strenuous activity. Just at present, however, he allowed himself more holiday-making than usual, often spending whole days fishing, and, besides his stays at Kelmscott, going with his family to Belgium in July, and to Mr. and Mrs. George Howard's at Naworth in August. On the 24th of July he wrote to his mother from Bruges:

"We have had but little railway travelling, only from Calais to Tournay, and from Tournay to Ghent: we found it so terribly hot on the railway that we quite gave up the idea of moving much, and so hired an omnibus at Ghent to take us here last Tuesday by road, and a very pleasant drive we had on a beautiful day, with a shower or two to lay the dust, through the ripe wheat and rye. I find Bruges scarcely changed at all; it is really a beautiful place, so clean and quiet too." A child of the party remembers that long sunshiny drive, and the halt for dinner at Eecloo, where, French and English being alike useless, Morris made a desperate effort at making himself understood by haranguing the amazed inn-keeper in Icelandic.

The visit to Naworth, on which he was accompanied by Burne-Jones, had the additional pleasure of a meeting with Dixon and a renewal of the affection and enthusiasm of Oxford days. "I saw Ted and Morris," Canon Dixon wrote to Price, "at the abode of splendour last week—slept there, and we were most jolly. Ned is in poor health I grieve to find, and a little quieter in manner, otherwise unaltered: Topsy genial,