Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/486

ÆT. 48] only strange it is that we are tumbled just into the time when these things go quickest: after us in a while I think things will mend; before us change was slower. Meanwhile I ought to have thanked you for your perch before, especially as I know what a trouble it is to bring such wet goods up to town: only, news for news, nay, water news for water news, I have suddenly discovered that it may not be long that they will have water to swim in; whereas a society, calling itself the London and South Western Spring Water Company, has a bill in Parliament to enable them to sink a well at Carshalton which will drain the Carshalton Wandle, and give us a muddy ditch instead of my water and water-power: jolly isn't it? there are 7 miles of Wandle and 40 mills on that 7 miles, and here we are to be landed without compensation just to put some money into promoters' pockets, unless we can manage to get the bill thrown out in Committee. You see that 'tis jobbery (not mastery) that mows the meadow: what compensation we should have got, if this had been public money that was in question! However there is a strong opposition to the thieves, so perhaps my perch may die a natural death (by hook to wit) after all. I was up the water to-day to see about this matter, and at Carshalton for the first time; a pretty place still in spite of the building. "Yours ever truly, "William Morris."

The opposition to the Bill, in which Morris had, of course, the hearty support of the other thirty-nine mill-owners immediately concerned in the Wandle as a source of water-power, was successful. "The water company," he writes at the end of March, "terrified by our bold front, has climbed down and has agreed