Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

In November 1910, De Morgan was the guest of honour at a dinner given by the Society of Authors, but his gratification at the compliment thus paid him was considerably damped when he found that he was expected to make a speech! So nervous was he at the prospect that he would not allow Mrs. De Morgan to be present, lest he should disgrace himself by breaking down. But, although his voice at first sounded a little weak and quavering, he got through the ordeal well, and amused his hearers by a good-humoured allusion to a boycott which his last novel had sustained at the hands of one of the largest circulating libraries, which had rejected it as being improper. This, he suspected, was rather due to the fact that he had outraged the feelings of circulating libraries by venturing to publish a novel in two volumes. But he confessed that he could not help feeling rather hurt at the treatment which he had received, because of the singular respect that he had always felt for libraries, ever since the day, sixty-six years before, when his mother first took him, as a small boy, into Mudie’s Library. He still remembered clearly how, as he stood with his chin resting on the counter, he saw a tall gentleman step out from the back of the shop and hand his mother a parcel of books. ‘That,’ said Mrs. De Morgan, ‘was Mr. Mudie.’ He never forgot the thrill which the words sent through him.

Long residence in Chelsea had made William De Morgan familiar with its chief landmarks and leading inhabitants. He had known Carlyle and Rossetti, Whistler and William Bell Scott, John Hungerford Pollen and many other celebrities of past days. The historic monuments in the Old Church, and the families whom they commemorate, the Cheynes and Petitts, the Laurences and Danvers, were a theme of which he was never tired. He mourned over the destruction of the old wooden Battersea bridge that figured so often in Whistler’s paintings and etchings. He had many stories to tell of the part which it had played in the old life of Chelsea, and of the health-giving properties associated with the structure in the minds of former inhabitants. There was, it appears, a popular superstition among Chelsea folk some fifty years ago that seven currents of air met in the middle span of the bridge. A carpenter who is still living vividly remembers being taken by his mother to stand on the bridge, on a bitterly cold March day, with his six brothers and sisters, who were all suffering from whooping-cough. It must have been a case of kill or cure, but in this instance the good woman’s faith seems to have been justified, for all her seven children got over the whooping-cough and grew up hale and hearty.

In spite, however, of his affection for Chelsea and its people, De Morgan never forgot Italy and the Florentine home where he and his wife had spent so many happy seasons. He missed the sun and the flowers and thought with regret of his friend Spencer Stanhope, whose death had left so great a blank in the English colony at Florence. Often he recalled the painter’s lovely home at Villa Nuti, where the De Morgans always spent the week-end, and their pleasant walks up the steep hillside, on radiant April mornings, when Val d’Arno lay below in the first flush of spring loveliness.

One evening towards dusk I happened to meet him in Chelsea, in front of a new Roman church which has been built of recent years in Cheyne Row. The door stood open and we saw the priest within reciting the office of Benediction, the clouds of incense rising heavenwards and the gleam of silver and lighted candles on the altar. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I like that, it makes me feel I am at home again!’ And then it flashed across him that this church stood on the exact spot where his first pottery kiln had been set up, in the garden of Orange House; and so, as he said, ‘it really was his home.’

The sudden outbreak of war, in August 1914, found the indefatigable author busy with a new novel which promised to be both original and entertaining. It was the story of his own recollections of life in Chelsea during the last fifty years, put in the mouth of an old pauper exactly his own age, who was supposed to be living in the workhouse near his home. But, like many other authors, De Morgan found it impossible to go on writing when his whole soul was absorbed in the life and death struggle in which the Empire found itself involved. The new novel was left unfinished, but since a considerable part had been already written, it is to be hoped that both this fragment, and another novel on which he had been for some time engaged, may eventually see the light.

During the next two years and a half, De Morgan thought of little but the war. He followed every step of the campaign by land and by sea, and did his utmost to enlighten public opinion abroad and in the United States. More than this, he devoted a great part of his time to making scientific experiments at the Polytechnic and perfecting new discoveries, which might prove useful in submarine warfare. All his old love for chemistry now revived, and many were the suggestions for saving life and destroying hostile craft which he sent to the Board of Admiralty.

The splendid optimism and youthful enthusiasm which were so marked a feature of his character carried him safely through the darkest days of the last two winters. He took keen interest in an exhibition of his wife’s symbolical paintings dealing with subjects suggested by the war, which was held in Chelsea last spring, and was very proud of the substantial sum which it realised for the English and Italian Red Cross Societies. All through these anxious months his familiar figure was frequently to be seen in the streets of Chelsea. You met him in the morning doing his own marketing and carrying provisions home, and late in the dusk of evening he was constantly to be seen setting out on a rapid walk along the Embankment. Often you caught sight of him stopping at a street corner to exchange greetings with some old inhabitant or engaged in earnest conversation with a soldier in khaki just back from the front. The tall figure was slightly bowed with advancing years, and Time had whitened the locks and beard that were once a rich brown, but the brisk, alert step and clear blue eyes with their frank, kindly glance, were still the same as ever.

The last time I saw him he was singularly bright and hopeful. He had thoroughly enjoyed a short September holiday at Lyme Regis, and was eloquent on the beauty of the Dorset and Devon coast. And he spoke with the utmost confidence of the coming campaign on the Western front next spring. For him there could be no doubt as to the final issue of the struggle. The devil was let loose for a while and all the powers of evil were ranged against us in the battle, but right must conquer in the end, he felt convinced, and the hour of victory, he believed, was not far off. Alas! he was not destined to see the day to which he looked forward with such serene confidence. A sharp and sudden attack of influenza carried him off after a fortnight’s illness, and on the 15th of January he breathed his last. A few days later, a large company of the friends who had known and loved him met in the Old Church, which has played so great a part in the history of Chelsea and is so often mentioned in his books. Here his mortal remains were laid under a violet pall, bright with flowers, while sweet boy-voices sang his last Requiem. Among the mourners were the children and grandchildren of Burne-Jones and the daughter of William Morris. So, with the music and flowers which he had loved, and with familiar faces all around, he passed to his well-earned rest, followed by the love and gratitude of thousands whose lives had been cheered and gladdened by his genius.

JULIA CARTWRIGHT.

_UNCONQUERED: AN EPISODE OF 1914._

BY MAUD DIVER.

Copyright, 1917, by Mrs. Diver, in the United States of America.