Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/338

ÆT. 42] firm finally effected. On the 31st of March a circular was issued announcing that the firm had been dissolved and that the business would thenceforward be carried on under Morris's sole management and proprietorship. It was added that Burne-Jones and Webb, though no longer partners, would continue to help with designs for stained glass and furniture as before. The name of the business remained Morris & Co., a name which had already for some years practically superseded the longer title of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co., under which it had been originally registered.

This transaction finally snapped the chain of attachment between Morris and Rossetti, which had, for other reasons, long been wearing thin. "They never throve together," says an intimate friend who survived them both, "after the first year or two." In the previous summer Rossetti had finally left Kelmscott and given up his share in the tenancy, to Morris's great relief. From the first almost he had been "unromantically discontented" with it: "he has all sorts of ways so unsympathetic with the sweet simple old place that I feel his presence there as a kind of slur on it." The action which, together with Madox Brown and Marshall, he now took over the dissolution of the partnership, caused Morris intense pain and mortification. With Madox Brown the breach did not remain unhealed; in his last years he was again on cordial relations with Morris, and this trouble was forgotten. But from this time forward Morris was no longer to be seen in Rossetti's house at Cheyne Walk, and the estrangement between the two powerful and self-centred personalities was final.