Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/459

50 When months of daily practice had familiarized Morris himself with the processes and difficulties of tapestry-weaving, the next thing was to teach the art to other workmen. The work is of a kind which experience proves to be best done by boys. It involves little muscular effort, and is best carried on by small flexible fingers. In this as in the preliminary work Morris was aided throughout by J.H. Dearle, then a young assistant, who afterwards became manager of the Merton works and a partner in the firm. "Dearle got on so well," Mr. George Wardle tells me, "that very soon we took in two other boys, Sleath and Knight, as his apprentices. When we moved to Merton therefore we had already three 'hands' fairly competent in this art." The tapestry of the Goose-Girl, designed by Mr. Walter Crane, was the first large figure-piece executed there. Dearle did the faces himself, and the rest was mainly carried out by the two boys.

"At Merton" Mr. Wardle adds, "the boys, who were still young, lived in the house. We gave them board and lodging and a certain weekly stipend. It is worth while to note that there was no sort of selection of these boys, or of any others who were brought up by us to one or other branch of Mr. Morris's business. John Smith, who is now the dyer at Merton, was taken into the dye-shop because it was just being set up at the time he was getting too old to remain errand boy. Others were put to the loom because at the time we were starting this we were asked to do something for them. We took Sleath on that ground first of all, and he introduced Knight. The same rule applied to all others, and its working justified Mr. Morris's contention that the universal