Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/444

ÆT. 48] course northeastward. A stream runs down the little valley and is gathered in ponds to work several mills, once busily employed in turning out silk yarn for the Coventry manufacturers. One after another they had succumbed to altered conditions and the fierce competition of more modern machinery: and now they stood empty. The notices of the last reduction of wages made, before they had to give up the struggle for life altogether, were still pasted on the workshop doors. Morris fell in love with the place. An ideally beautiful landscape; clean air and water in abundance; a railway station within easy distance; skilled workmen still lingering in the half-deserted village, and owners who would have been glad to make easy terms for what was becoming almost unsaleable property, seemed enough to counterbalance the disadvantage of being nearly a hundred miles from London and more remote still from other manufacturing centres. But to the less enthusiastic mind of his manager the risks of the scheme seemed much too great; and at last Morris reluctantly abandoned it. As time went on, too, the feeling grew on him that, as a Londoner, he ought to be loyal to London and do the best by her.

The neighbourhood of London was searched all round. William De Morgan, who was about to set up pottery works for the manufacture of his lustred tiles and majolica, joined in the search, and it was agreed that both factories should be placed together if possible. At the beginning of 1881 the matter became really pressing. "We shall have to take the chintzes ourselves before long," Morris wrote to his wife on the 23rd of February, "and are now really looking about for premises. Edgar went to look at the print-works at Crayford on Monday. They seemed promising: