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The William Morris Internet Archive : Chronology

This chronology was created by and is © Nick Salmon.

14 June 1797 : William Morris Snr, the second of four brothers, was born in Worcester. His father is supposed to have come to Worcester from Wales in the late eighteenth-century and married Elizabeth Stanley, the daughter of a retired naval surgeon from Nottingham.

24 May 1805 : Emma Shelton, William Morris's mother, was born in Worcester. She was the youngest of Joseph Shelton's (1764-1848) children. Her family could be traced back to Henry Shelton (or `Shilton'), mercer, of Birmingham (c.1450-1520).

1812 : Sanderson & Co, brokers, was established by Richard Sanderson.

1816 : Richard Sanderson went into partnership with Joseph Owen Harris and Robert Harris to form Harris, Sanderson & Harris.

8 February 1819 : John Ruskin was born at 54 Hunter Street, London.

1820 : Around this time William Morris Snr moved to London. At some point soon after he joined Harris, Sanderson & Harris. The Morrises appear to have been distantly related to the Harrises and both families had Quaker associations.

16 April 1821 : Ford Madox Brown was born in Calais.

1824 : Emma Shelton became engaged to William Morris Snr. The William Morris Gallery possesses watercolour miniatures of the young couple probably painted at the time of their engagement. The picture of William Morris Snr is signed by T Wheeler.

20 June 1824 : G E Street was born in Woodford, Essex.

4 February 1825 : Frederick James Furnivall was born in Egham, Surrey.

1826 : The Rev F B Guy was born. He was later headmaster of Bradfield College (1850-52) and then of the Forest School, Walthamstow (1856-86). He had a passion for painting and architecture.

January 1826 : The two Harris brothers were replaced as partners by William Morris Snr and Richard Gard. The firm continued trading as Sanderson & Co. Soon after becoming a partner in the business William Morris Snr married Emma Shelton. The young couple moved into rooms above the business at 32 Lombard Street. They later took a cottage in Sydenham, Kent, where they spent their holidays.

2 April 1827 : William Holman Hunt was born in Cheapside, London.

30 August 1827 : Charles Stanley, William and Emma Morris's first son, was born at 32 Lombard Street. He died four days later.

16 November 1827 : Charles Eliot Norton was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

12 May 1828 : Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born at 38 Charlotte Street - now Hallam Street - London.

8 June 1829 : John Millais was born in Southampton.

29 October 1829 : Morris's favourite sister, Emma, was born at 32 Lombard Street, London, over the office of Sanderson & Co.

12 January 1831 : Philip[pe] Speakman Webb was born at 1 Beaumont Street, Oxford.

17 July 1833 : Morris's sister, Henrietta, was born at 32 Lombard Street, London. At some point shortly after Henrietta's birth the Morris family moved to Elm House, Clay Hill, Walthamstow. This early nineteenth-century building was demolished in 1898.

28 August 1833 : Edward Coley Jones - later Burne-Jones - was born at 11 Bennett's Hill, Birmingham.

24 March 1834 : William Morris was born at Elm House, Walthamstow. The early nineteenth-century mahogany four-poster bed in which he was born is to be seen at Kelmscott Manor. By this time his father had become senior partner in Sanderson & Co.

25 July 1834 : Morris was baptized at St Mary's Church, Walthamstow.

1836 : Sanderson & Co moved from 32 Lombard Street to 83 King William Street. Pugin's Contrasts was published.

2 August 1837 : Morris's brother, Hugh Stanley, was born at Elm House, Walthamstow.

27 January 1839 : Morris's brother, Thomas Rendall, was born at Elm House, Walthamstow.

19 October 1839 : Jane Burden - Morris's future wife - was born in a small, three-roomed, insanitary cottage in St Helen's Passage off Holywell, Oxford. She was the third child of Robert Burden and his wife Ann (nee Maizey). Robert was from the village of Stanton Harcourt and his wife from the neighbouring village of Alvescot. At the time of her birth Robert worked as a stablehand or ostler at Symonds' Livery Stables in Holywell Street. Her mother registered the birth with a cross indicating she was illiterate. Many years later Morris was to write to the Daily News urging the preservation of `the little plaster houses in front of Trinity College ... [and] the beautiful houses left on the north side of Holywell Street. These are in their way as important as the more majestic buildings to which all the world makes pilgrimage.'

1840 : The Morris family moved to Woodford Hall in Essex which they rented for £600 a year. The house was an impressive Palladian brick mansion which had a fifty acre park and a hundred acre farm which bordered Epping Forest. Many years later (1888) Morris was to write: `When we lived at Woodford there were some stocks there on a little bit of wayside green in the middle of the village: beside them stood the Cage a small shanty some 12 ft sq: and as it was built of brown brick roofed with blue slate, I suppose it had been quite recently in use, since its style was not earlier than the days of Fat George. I remember that I used to look at these two threats of law [and] order with considerable terror, and decidedly preferred to walk on the opposite side of the road; but I never heard of anybody being locked up in the Cage or laid by the heels in the stocks.' Morris read The Arabian Nights and John Gerard's Herball.

30 August 1840 : Morris's brother, Arthur, was born at Woodford Hall.

1841 : Pugin's The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture was published. By this time Morris claimed to have read all Walter Scott's works.

1842 : Morris visited Canterbury Cathedral and the Minster at Thanet Church with his father. He later recalled `thinking thatthe gates of heaven had been opened to me.' He also went brass rubbing in a number of churches in Essex and Suffolk. Jane's sister, Elizabeth (Bessie) Burden, was born. Tennyson's Morte d'Arthur was published.

17 July 1842 : Morris's sister, Isabella, was born at Woodford Hall.

1843 : Morris went to the Misses Arundale's `Academy for Young Gentlemen' at Woodford as a day scholar. According to Mackail's Notebooks this school was originally situated opposite Elm House where Morris was born. It later moved to George Lane, Woodford. Mackail also recorded that Morris rode to school on a Shetland pony. Morris's father obtained a Grant of Arms from the Herald's College: `Azure, a horse's head erased argent between three horse-shoes or, and for crest, on a wreath of the colours, a horse's head couped argent, charged with three horse-shoes in chevron sable.' Pugin's Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England was published as was Carlyle's Past and Present.

15 April 1843 : Henry James was born in New York.

May 1843 : Volume I of Ruskin's Modern Painters was published.

August 1843 : Marlborough College, Morris's future school, was founded in premises at the Castle Inn in the High Street.

6 June 1844 : Morris's brother, Edgar Llewelyn, was born at Woodford Hall.

26 July 1844 : A new Devonshire mining company agreed a lease with the Duke of Bedford's land agent to sink a mine in Blanchdown Woods, on the Devon bank of the Tamar.

10 August 1844 : Work began on the mine known as `Wheal Maria' named after the Duke of Bedford's wife. The first shaft was named `Gard's' shaft after William Morris Snr's partner in Sanderson & Co.

November 1844 : Rich deposits of copper were found in `Gard's' shaft just 18 fathoms from the surface. The lode was 40 feet in width and stretched eastwards for over two miles. A whole series of mines were subsequently opened along the seam.

25 March 1845 : The Devonshire Great Consolidated Copper Mining Co. was registered as a joint stock company. William Morris Snr and his brother, Thomas, owned 304 of its 1,024 shares. William Morris Snr was appointed trustee and auditor.

15 August 1845 : Walter Crane was born in Liverpool.

1846 : Volume II of Ruskin's Modern Painters was published as was Persoz's L'impression des Tissus which was one of the volumes Morris was later to refer to in his `Printer's Notes' of 1883.

May 1846 : At the first annual meeting of the Devonshire Great Consolidated Copper Mining Co, William Morris Snr was appointed to the board. Each of the directors were to receive 100 guineas a year for their services. During its first year of operation 13,292 tons of ore were sold for £116,068. A dividend of £71 per share was made. Stockbrokers quoted prices of up to £850 to obtain a share in the business, At this time William Morris Snr's shares were worth approximately £230,000.

5 May 1846 : Morris's sister, Alice, was born at Woodford Hall.

1847 : A new edition of Paul Henri Mallet's Northern Antiquities, translated by Thomas Percy, was published.

8 September 1847 : William Morris Snr died, aged 50, at Woodford. His elaborate tomb can be seen in Woodford churchyard bearing the family coat-of-arms.

15 September 1847 : Sanderson & Co suspended business with liabilities amounting to £2,606,569. In the event the company's assets were sufficient to stave off the crisis and the firm recommenced trading as Sanderson, Sandeman & Co.

October 1847 : William Morris Snr's estate was valued at £60,000.

Autumn 1847 : Morris left the Misses Arundale's school.

1848 : A copper mine was named `Wheal Emma' after Morris's mother. John Henry Newman's Oxford novel Loss and Gain was published, as was Marx and Engel's Communist Manifesto , Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture and G E Street and Agnes Blencowe's Ecclesiastical Embroidery.

February 1848 : Morris went, aged thirteen, to Marlborough College where he acquired the nickname `Crab'. He was recorded in the school register as `Morris, William, son of Mrs. Morris, Woodford Hall, Essex, aged 14 (sic).' He spent his first week in the Upper 3rd Form before being transferred to the Fourth Form 1st Remove. His room was in `A' House of which he became Captain two years later. His housemaster was the Rev Pitman. `A' House has now been renamed Morris House and serves as a girls residential block. Morris later wrote that it was a `very rough school. As far as my school instruction went, I think I may fairly say I learned next to nothing there, for indeed next to nothing was taught; but the place is in very beautiful country, thickly scattered over with prehistoric monuments, and I set myself eagerly to studying these and everything else that had any history in it, and so perhaps learnt a good deal' (c.f. 14 March 1891). A school friend recalled in the Marlburian: `The Captain of our Dormitory ... made great friends with Morris - not that their tastes were at all similar, but that the former having a passion for listening to tales of romance ... found quite a repertoire of them in Morris.' Another contemporary, G Ward, recalled Morris as `a thickset strong looking boy with a high colour and black curly hair, good natured and kind, but with a fearful temper.' Schoolboy gossip was that he was `Welsh and mad'.

September 1848 : The Morris family moved to the Water House, in what is now Forest Road, Walthamstow, Essex. In later life W Bliss recalled that when he was a child he and Morris used to chase the swans in the moat. (Since 1950 Water House has housed the William Morris Gallery.) The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded at 83 Gower Street, London, by John Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was later extended to include James Collinson, F G Stephens, Thomas Woolmer and William Michael Rossetti. The Brotherhood's aim was to revolutionise the standard of English painting.

1 November 1848 : Morris wrote to his eldest sister, Emma, from Malborough College. This is his oldest surviving letter. At the time he was looking forward with enthusiasm to the Christmas holidays.

Christmas 1848 : Morris returned to the Water House for the holidays.

1849 : Jane Burden's eldest sister, Mary Anne, died of tuberculosis. Ruskin's The Seven Lamps of Architecture waspublished.

Early 1849 : Philip Webb was apprenticed as an architect to John Billing of London Street, Reading.

17 March 1849 : Morris was confirmed by the Bishop of Salisbury in Marlborough College Chapel: `the Bishop himself is very tall and thin and he does not [look] very old though bald on the top of his head.'

18 March 1849 : Morris received his first Holy Communion from the Bishop of Salisbury.

19/20 March 1849 : Morris wrote to Emma describing his confirmation in the Church of England. He had just sold some baby rabbits to buy a fishing rod. Fishing was to be a passion throughout Morris's life.

9 April 1849 : Morris visited Avebury and Silbury Hill `where there is a Druidical circle and a Roman entrenchment both which encircle the town.'

10 April 1849 : Morris paid a second visit to Avebury and visited the church: `the tower was very pretty indeed it had four little spires on it of the decorated order and ... inside the porch a beautiful Norman doorway loaded with mouldings.'

13 April 1849 : In a letter to Emma, Morris described singing the Marlborough anthem on Easter Sunday .

1850 : The Pre-Raphaelite magazine The Germ appeared. It ran for four issues. Rossetti's Ancilla Domini was exhibited at the National Institution. Ford Madox Brown became headmaster of the North London School of Design.

14 May 1850 : Morris's sister, Emma, married the Rev Joseph Oldham, curate of Downe, Kent, and later moved to Derbyshire. The couple had two sons (who died in childhood) and a daughter Emmie.

1851 : The Great Exhibition was held at the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, London. F S Ellis recalled (in a lecture he gave many years later): `I remember him speaking many a time of the Exhibition of 1851, at which all the world was struck with unbounded admiration, and telling how, as a youth of 17, he declined to see anything more wonderful in it than that it was "wonderfully ugly," and, sitting himself down on a seat, steadily refused to go over the building with the rest of his family.' At the Exhibition Thomas Welch was awarded a medal for his Printed Table Clothes produced at Merton Abbey (later to be rented by Morris).

March 1851 : The first volume of Ruskin's Stones of Venice was published.

21 March 1851 : Morris's copy of Quinti Horatti Flacci Opera (The Odes of Horace) bears this date. Inside the cover he drew a pen and ink drawing of a one-legged man holding a placard on which is written: `W. Morris. His Horace'.

2 April 1851 : Emery Walker was born at Paddington, London.

5 November 1851 : A pupil `rebellion' began at Marlborough College in which fireworks were let off around the school. The rebellion continued for many days. It is not certain what part, if any, Morris played in this episode.

Late-December 1851 : After taking his final term's exams, in which he came fifth out of nine, Morris left the 5th form of Marlborough College to study privately with the Rev F B Guyin Hoe Street, Walthamstow. Guy was an Assistant Master at the nearby Forest School.

20 April 1852 : The Rev F B Guy was married. In is probable that Morris attended the wedding.

May 1852 : G E Street, on the advice of J H Parker, moved his architects business from Wantage to Beaumont Street, Oxford.

2 June 1852 : Morris sat his matriculation examination for Exeter College, Oxford. Edward Burne-Jones took his examination at the same time. Burne-Jones later recorded how Morris had finished his Horace paper early, folded it, and inscribed it firmly `William Morris'.

3 July 1852 : An article on Welch's Merton Abbey works appeared in The Illustrated Exhibitor and Magazine of Art.

Summer 1852 : Morris returned to study with the Rev Guy in Walthamstow. He and Guy later spent six weeks in Alphington, Devon. While on holiday Morris visited St Mary's Church, Ottery, which he described as `certainly one of the most remarkable & beautiful ones in England.'

October 1852 : Richard Watson Dixon took up residence at Pembroke College, Oxford. Here he met William Fulford and Charles Faulkner and formed what became known as the `Set'.

18 November 1852 : Morris, to the annoyance of his sister Hernrietta, refused to join the rest of the family in going to the Duke of Wellington's funeral. Instead he rode through Epping Forest to Waltham Abbey.

1853 : Charlotte M. Yonge's Heir of Redclyffe was published, as was Napier's A Manual of the Art of Dyeing which was one of the volumes refered to in Morris's `Printers Notes' of 1883.

January 1853 : Morris went to Exeter College, Oxford, to study theology. Here he made friends with Burne-Jones who also intended to pursue a career in the Church. Mackail recorded in his Notebooks that Burne-Jones told him that: `Before a week they were inseparable.' He added their `expenses [were] about £40 a term or say £130 a year, incl. subscriptions to boat and cricket clubs.' Amongst the other things Burne-Jones recalled was that they `went to St. Thomas's (the church near the station) for early service and plain song: this they practised once a week in [the] Music-room in Holywell College Library.'

1 May 1853 : Burne-Jones wrote to Cormell Price: `I have set my heart on our founding a Brotherhood. Learn Sir Galahad by heart. He is to be the patron of our Order. I have enlisted one in the project up here [Morris], heart and soul.' This is the first reference to Morris and Burne-Jones's plan to found a `monastic brotherhood' and launch a `crusade and Holy Warfare against the age.'

June 1853 : The final volume of Ruskin's Stones of Venice was published. This included the chapter on `The Nature of Gothic' which was to be a crucial influence on Morris's subsequent development.

Summer 1853 : Morris spent the long vacation visting a number of English churches. Burne-Jones also stayed for three days with the Morrises at the Water House at Walthamstow. According to Georgiana Burne-Jones writing in the Memorials: `[Morris's] mother welcomed Edward kindly, and seeing his affection for her son would willingly have told many stories of his childhood; but at this Morris chafed so much that the anecdotes had to be deferred.'

Michaelmas Term 1853 : Morris moved into rooms at Exeter College in what was known as `Hell's Quad' overlooking the Fellow's garden and the Bodleian Library. Georgiana Burne-Jones noted in the Memorials that it was reached by passing `under an archway called Purgatory from the great quadrangle.' Morris decorated the walls of his rooms with rubbings made from medieval brasses.

6 November 1853 : Morris may have accompanied Burne-Jones to hear Pusey preach on `Justification'.

Late-November 1853 : What was probably Morris's first poem, The Dedication of the Temple, was written. According to May Morris this poem was discovered in the early 1930s in a bureau which had once belonged to Morris's sister Emma. The title was the same as that for an Oxford prize poem, for which Morris was not eligible, which was due in on 1 December 1853.

1854 : The Working Men's College was founded by the Christian Socialist, F D Maurice. Ruskin was one of the first to teach at the new institution.

Early 1854 : Burne-Jones wrote of Morris: `He is full of enthusiasm for things holy and beautiful and true, and, what is rarest, of the most exquisite perception and judgment in them. For myself, he has tinged my whole inner being with the beauty of his own, and I know not a single gift for which I owe such gratitude to Heaven as his friendship.'

16 May 1854 : Philip Webb began work at G E Street's office at a salary of £1 a week.

Summer 1854 : The publication of Ruskin's Edinburgh Lectures introduced Morris and Burne-Jones to the Pre-Raphaelites and the name of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Georgiana Burne-Jones recorded her husband saying: `I was working in my room when Morris ran in one morning bringing the newly published book with him: so everything was put aside until he read it all through to me.'

August 1854 : Morris, with his sister Henrietta, visited Belgium and Northern France. On this journey Morris viewed pictures by Van Eyck and Memling and visited the Gothic churches at Amiens, Beauvais, Chartres and Rouen. Later he was to write: `Many times I think of the first time I ever went abroad, and to Rouen, and what a wonder of glory that was to me when I first came upon the front of the Cathedral rising above the flower-market.' He also went to the Musée Cluny, the Tuilleries and the Louvre in Paris.

18 September 1854 : Cormell Price's sister recorded in her Diary: `Jones came to tea. He is the most clever and the nicest fellow I ever knew. He says he thinks Fulford will be a "star" and he is sure Morris will be.'

October 1854 : The start of the winter term at Oxford was delayed for a week due to the cholera epidemic that was sweeping the country. The delay annoyed Burne-Jones who wrote to Cormell Price saying how keen he was to be back `with Morris and his glorious little company of martyrs.' At the beginning of the new term Morris moved into rooms adjoining those of Burne-Jones at Old Buildings, overlooking Broad Street, Oxford. In some `Notes' quoted by Georgiana in the Memorials, Burne-Jones recalled that they were `Tumbly old buildings, gable-roofed and pebble-dashed, little dark passages led from the staircase to the sitting rooms.' While at Old Buildings Morris wrote his poem The Willow and the Red Cliff (often cited as his first poem c.f. entry for December 1853). Burne-Jones nickname him `Topsy' after the little slave-girl - who also had unruly curly hair - in Harriet Beecher Stowe'sUncle Tom's Cabin. This nickname was often shortened to `Top' by his friends.

16 October 1854 : Burne-Jones wrote to Cormell Price that `the Monastery ... stands a fairer chance than ever of being founded; I know that it will some day.'

1855 : Morris wrote a number of poems including Blanche. Tennyson's Maud was published as were Browning's Men and Women and G E Street's The Architecture of North Italy.

24 March 1855 : On reaching the age of twenty-one Morris inherited thirteen Devon Great Consol shares. These gave him an income of £741 in 1855 and £715 in 1856 .

Good Friday 1855 : Morris wrote his poem Kisses at the Water House, Walthamstow. He dedicated it to Cormell Price.

April 1855 : Morris spent some time reading Shelley's poetry. He greatly admired The Skylark. He also went brass rubbing in Stoke D'Abernon in Surrey and at Rochester, Kent.

3 April 1855 : Morris wrote to Cormell Price from the Water House, Walthamstow, including the text of his poem Kisses.

May 1855 : Morris and Burne-Jones went to see the Pre-Raphaelite paintings in the Windus Collection. These included Ford Madox Brown's The Last of England. Cormell Price recorded that `Our Monastery will come to nought, I'm afraid; Smith has changed his views to extreme latitudinarianism, Morris has become questionable on doctrinal points, and Ted is too Catholic to be ordained. He and Morris diverge more and more in views though not in friendship.'

18 May 1855 : Philip Webb undertook a survey of Holywell Church.

24 May 1855 : Cormell Price and Edward Burne-Jones went to London for the short vacation to visit the Royal Academy Annual Exhibition.

June 1855 : Morris visited the Royal Academy Exhibition. Here he viewed paintings by Dyce, Leighton, Madox Brown and Millais. It was at this exhibition that he was introduced to Georgiana Macdonald (later Mrs Burne-Jones) by Wilfred L Heeley as he was viewing Millais picture The Rescue . Georgiana Burne-Jones recalled: `He was very handsome, of an unusual type - the statues of medieval kings often remind me of him - and at that time he wore no moustache, so that the drawing of his mouth, which was his most expressive feature, could be clearly seen. His eyes always seemed to me to take in rather than to give out. His hair waved and curled triumphantly.'

Early July 1855 : Morris and Burne-Jones spent four or five days in Cambridge where they discussed plans for the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. Morris was to be proprietor and editor. One of the provisional titles for the paper was the Brotherhood. Morris described Cambridge as `rather a hole of a place'. Burne-Jones recalled that on their first evening in Cambridge they visited St Sepulchre's Church.

18 July 1855 : Morris, Burne-Jones and Fulford stayed in an hotel in London prior to embarking on what was originally intended to be a walking tour of Normandy. Cormell Price had intended to accompany them but had to withdraw at the last moment.

19 July 1855 : Morris, Burne-Jones and Fulford took the ferry from Folkestone to Boulogne. They arrived in Abbeville at10.30 pm and walked to the Hotel `La Tete du Boeuf'.

20 July 1855 : The party were up before breakfast sight-seeing in Abbeville. They then travelled to Amiens where they visited the cathedral. Fulford wrote `Morris surveyed it with calm joy and Jones was speechless with admiration. It did not awe me until it got quite dark, for we stayed till after nine, but it was so solemn, so human and divine in its beauty, that love cast out fear.' Morris fell lame at Amiens `filling the streets', according to Burne-Jones, `with imprecations on all bootmakers'. He purchased a pair of `gay carpet slippers' to see if these would make walking easier. The friends stayed the night in Amiens.

21 July 1855 : The travellers took the train to Clermont and then walked the seventeen miles to Beauvais. Morris found the carpet slippers did nothing to help his sore feet.

22 July 1855 : The party spent the day in Beauvais where Morris attended High Mass at the cathedral. They then took the train to Paris where they arrived at 11.30 pm. Morris, aware of the restoration work being undertaken at Notre Dame, had urged the party to travel straight to Chartres but he was over-ruled as Burne-Jones wanted to visit the Louvre.

23 July 1855 : Morris and his companions visited the Church of St Chappelle, then the Beaux Arts section at the Exposition Universelle in Paris which included Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Hunt, Millais and Collins. Fulford recorded they spent sixteen hours sight-seeing around the city. In the evening, at Burne-Jones's instigation, the party went to the opera and heard Madame Alboni in Meyerbeer's Le Prophete. Fulford described Morris being `a good deal bored by the experience.'

24 July 1855 : The party spent the day in Paris where they visited the Louvre. According to Georgiana Burne-Jones `Morris made Edward shut his eyes and so led him up to Angelico's picture of "The Coronation of the Virgin" before he allowed him to look.'

25 July 1855 : In the evening Morris and his companions left Paris for Chartres. They arrived at 10.30 pm.

26 July 1855 : The friends spent the day sight-seeing in Chartres.

27 July 1855 : The party spent the day travelling from Chartres to Rouen. On the way they visited the church at Dreux. They stayed the night at the Hotel de France.

28 July 1855 : Morris and his friends visited various churches in Rouen and heard vespers at Notre Dame. After dinner they climbed Mont St Catherine.

29-31 July 1855 : The party spent these days in Rouen. At some point Morris purchased the Tauchnitz edition of Thackeray's novel The Newcomes.

1 August 1855 : The party left Rouen on foot and walked the twenty-five miles to Caudebec-en-Caux. Morris suffered greatly with his shoes.

2 August 1855 : The party travelled by bus from Caudebec to Yvetot and then by train to Le Havre where they spent the night. According to Burne-Jones `it was while walking on the quay at Havre at night that we resolved definitely that we would begin a life of art, and put off our decision no longer - he should be an architect and I a painter.'

3 August 1855 : The party left Le Havre by steamer for Caen where they visited the church of St Etienne.

4 August 1855 : In the afternoon Morris and his friends caught the bus from Caen to Bayeux. In the evening they visited the cathedral.

5 August 1855 : The party viewed the Bayeux Tapestry in the Town Hall.

6 August 1855 : The friends left Bayeux for St Lô and then Coutances where they visited the cathedral and stayed the night at the Hotel de France.

7 August 1855 : The day was spent site-seeing in Coutances.

8 August 1855 : The party travelled by bus to Avranches. Here Morris had his first sight of Mont St Michel.

9 August 1855 : The friends visited Mont St Michel and then returned to Avranches.

10 August 1855 : The day was spent sight-seeing in Avranches.

11 August 1855 : The party left Avranches in the evening and travelled to Granville.

12 August 1855 : The friends took the 11 am boat from Granville to Jersey.

13 August 1855 : Morris and his companions reached Southampton.

22 August 1855 : By this time Morris was staying in Birmingham with Burne-Jones. On this date they were visited by Fulford, Cormell Price and Heeley. Morris was introduced to Fanny Price, Cormell's sister. Margaret Price, Cormell's younger sister, wrote in her Diary that `F[anny] says Morris is very handsome.'

23 August 1855 : Morris, Burne-Jones and Fulford had tea and supper at Cormell Price's home. Margaret Price wrote: `Morris is very handsome.'

26 August 1855 : Cormell Price recorded in his Diary that he visited Burne-Jones and found Morris there `wild and jolly as ever'. They had `much talk about Maud'.

27 August 1855 : Morris, Price and Burne-Jones visited Dudley Castle. Later they had tea and supper at Cormell Price's home where Morris read poetry out loud. Margaret Price recorded that he was `a queer reader.'

August/September 1855 : Morris and Burne-Jones visited Cornish's bookshop in New Street, Birmingham, where Morris purchased Southey's 1817 edition of Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Mackail records in his Notebooks that Burne-Jones `had read great parts of it there [in the shop] but had not money to buy it. M. came to stay with him in a vacation [and] bought it.'

2 September 1855 : Burne-Jones and Morris had tea and supper at Cormell Price's home. Margaret Price wrote: `Morris got so excited once that he punched his own head and threw his arms about frantically.'

7 September 1855 : Morris, Burne-Jones, Fulford and Cormell Price had a discussion at the latter's house about architecture, the organisation of labour and the proposed Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. R W Dixon wrote to Cormell Price informing him that Morris - the `little brick' - had just sent him a copy of Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture.

9 September 1855 : Morris, Burne-Jones and Cormell Pricediscussed Aytoun's unsympathetic review of Tennyson's Maud which had appeared in Blackwood's Magazine.

10 September 1855 : Morris visited Malvern - possibly to visit some relatives of his mother - which he described as `a very splendid place, but very much spoiled by being made into a kind of tea gardens for idle people.' While in Malvern he heard the abbey bells ring to mark the fall of Sebastopol which had occurred the previous day.

11 September 1855 : Morris travelled to Clay Cross to stay with his sister Emma and her husband the Rev Joseph Oldham. He was greatly amused that the local people had decorated Clay Cross with Russian flags under the delusion they were French!

28 September 1855 : Cormell Price noted in his Diary that he had written to Morris `abusing him roundly for thinking of leaving Oxford [University].' Morris replied: `Thank you very much for taking so much interest in me, but make your mind easy about my coming back next term. I am certainly coming back, though I should not have done so if it had not been for my Mother.'

October 1855 : In a long letter to his cousin Maria, Burne-Jones claimed that the study of French and German philosophy had `shivered' Morris's belief in religion and `palsied' his own.

2 October 1855 : Morris began to prepare for his Final Schools exams by reading `for six hours a day at Livy, Ethics, &c.' He was coached by Fulford who at the time was hesitating about taking holy orders.

6 October 1855 : Morris wrote to Cormell Price once again expressing doubts about taking his university degree as he hoped to take up the study of architecture under G E Street.

Autumn 1855 : Morris passed his Final Schools exam at Oxford University and took his pass degree. After taking his degree he grew a moustache and long hair.

11 November 1855 : Morris wrote to his mother informing her he intended to become an architect. It is apparent from this letter that he had told her some weeks before that he had abandoned the idea of taking holy orders.

17 November 1855 : Morris, Cormell Price and Dixon considered the title and other details about the proposed Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. They resolved that the magazine should be a 72 page monthly.

22 November 1855 : Morris and Cormell Price worked on the prospectus for the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine at Pembroke College, Oxford.

1856 : Morris took up carving, clay-modelling, illuminating and wood-engraving. Georgiana Burne-Jones recalled `the long, folded white evening tie which he nailed in loops against his bedroom wall in order to hold his tools.'

1 January 1856 : The first number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine appeared under Morris's editorship. 750 copies were printed by Bell and Daldy of Fleet Street and sold for 1s. They were sent out in green printed wrappers with the contents printed in double columns. The magazine proved so successful that a further 250 copies were later printed. Morris contributed `The Story of the Unknown Church' and a poem called `Winter Weather'.

9 January 1856 : Margaret Price recorded in her diary that `Morris does not like being Editor of the O. & C. Magazine.' At around the same time Burne-Jones wrote to Cormell Price saying that if Morris gave up the editorship of the magazine it would `be a good thing for all of us and a great relief for Topsy.' Shortly after this Morris paid William Fulford £100 to take over as editor.

21 January 1856 : Morris was articled to G E Street whose office was then in Beaumont Street, Oxford. He paid £5 as a registration fee. Here he met Philip Webb who was Street's senior assistant. Philip Webb later described Morris as `a slim boy like a wonderful bird just out of his shell.' Morris was to say of Street `though not an ill-tempered man, he dearly loved a row.' Morris's took lodgings which were, according to Philip Webb, `opposite the Martyr's Memorial, next but one ... to the Randolph Hotel.' According to Webb, Morris was occupied for much of the time during his apprenticeship `in copying a drawing of the doorway of St. Augustine's Church, Canterbury.' Webb wrote: `He suffered much tribulation in delineating the many arch mouldings, "and at last the compass points nearly bored a hole through the drawing-board".'

23 January 1856 : Cormell Price wrote mysteriously to his father: `I shall ignore the existence of a female Topsy for the time.'

February 1856 : Morris essay on `The Churches of North France: Shadows of Amiens' appeared in the second number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine along with a tale called `The Two Partings'. The latter was attributed to Morris by Buxton Forman.

9 February 1856 : Burne-Jones went to stay in Oxford for a few days. The evening he arrived the Oxford set gathered in Morris's rooms where, according to Cormell Price's Diary, there was a `delightful Babel'.

10 February 1856 : In the morning Morris and Burne-Jones walked to Summertown when they called on MacLaren.

14 February 1856 : Burne-Jones left Oxford for Birmingham by train in the evening. Cormell Price saw him off.

25/26 February 1856 : According to Lethaby, Morris and Webb went to sketch churches in Bloxham, King's Sutton, and Adderbury. Webb was amazed by Morris's inability to go without food.

March 1856 : Morris contributed `A Dream' and a review of Browning's Men and Women to the third number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. Mackail notes a letter from Fulford to Cormell Price which refers to Morris's review of Browning's poems: `I didn't like Topsy's Review at all ... you men at Oxford must not let your love of Morris carry you away to admire such of his writings as don't deserve admiration.'

6 March 1856 : Rossetti recorded in a letter to William Allingham that he had recently been sent a copy of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. He was flattered by a notice Burne-Jones had given him in his `Essay on The Newcomes'. Rossetti's went on to say that Burne-Jones `was in London the other day, and whom (being known to some of the Working Men's Coll[ege] council) I have now met; - one of the nicest young fellows in - Dreamland.' The same letter also praised Morris's story `A Dream': `which really is remarkable, I think, in colour.' There is some confusion about when Burne-Jones actually met Rossetti. The account in the Memorials suggests that he was introduced to Frederick James Furnivall and Vernon Lushington at an open-evening at the Working Men's College at Red Lion Square, Holborn. Here Rossetti was pointed out to him. Furnivall then invited him to a party at VernonLushington's rooms where he was introduced to Rossetti. The latter in turn invited him to view his studio, at Chatham Place, near Blackfriars Bridge, the following day. Burne-Jones recalled Rossetti `asked much about Morris, one or two of whose poems he knew already, and I think that was our principal subject of talk, for he seemed much interested about him.' Rossetti's letter would suggest that these events took place in late February or early March 1856.

Easter 1856 : Burne-Jones began painting in London under Rossetti's guidance.

April 1856 : Morris contributed `Frank's Sealed Letter' to the fourth number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.

May 1856 : Morris contributed `A Night in a Cathedral' and a poem `Riding Together' to the fifth number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. Accompanied by Burne-Jones and Cormell Price he visited the Royal Academy Exhibition in London. Here they viewed pictures by Millais, Holman Hunt and Wallis. While at the exhibition Morris greatly admired Arthur Hughes's painting April Love.

17 May 1856 : Morris wrote to Burne-Jones from Oxford asking him to `nobble that picture called "April Love," as soon as possible lest anybody else should buy it.'

18 May 1856 : Burne-Jones moved into new lodgings at 13 Sloane Terrace, Sloane Street, Chelsea. These lodgings were opposite the chapel where his future wife's father was minister.

20 May 1856 : Burne-Jones purchased April Love for Morris for £30. Arthur Hughes recalled, near the end of his life, Burne-Jones arriving in his studio with Morris's cheque: `My chief feeling then was surprise at an Oxford student buying pictures.' The painting is now in the Tate Gallery.

June 1856 : Morris is supposed, according to Buxton Forman, to have contributed the article entitled `Ruskin and the Quarterly' which appeared in the sixth number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. It is clear from a letter that Rossetti wrote to John Lucas Tupper that he had still not met Morris.

9 June 1856 : Burne-Jones and Georgiana Macdonald became engaged. Morris later presented Georgiana with a copy of Turner's Rivers of France as an engagement present. The latter wrote in the Memorials: `I thanked him and he wrote my name in it, but we were not much the nearer for this meeting. The poet who wrote the poem of Guendolen seemed one person and the man I saw before me another - my eyes were helden that I could not yet see.'

10 June 1856 : Burne-Jones presented Georgiana with all the books he possessed written by Ruskin. Charles Faulkner wrote to his mother informing her that he had obtained a Fellowship at University College.

July 1856 : Rossetti urged Morris to `paint'. In a letter to Cormell Price, Morris wrote: `he says I shall be able; now as he is a very great man, and speaks with authority and not as the scribes, I must try.' In the same letter he went on to say: `I can't enter into politico-social subjects with any interest, for on the whole I see that things are in a muddle, and I have no power of vocation to set them right in ever so little a degree. My work is the embodiment of dreams in one form or another....' Morris contributed the poem `Hands' and the first part of the story `Gertha's Lovers' to the seventh number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. It is also possible he attended the play Medea, or the Best of Mothers, with a Brute of a Husband which was produced at the Olympic starring the burlesque actorFrederick Robson. Morris was later to utilize this play in the plot of his abortive novel.

13 July 1856 : Burne Jones wrote to Cormell Price that `Topsy is here ... the dear little fellow is drawing away in the next room.... [He] wants me to go to Walthamstow on Tuesday to paint some trees on the island behind the house.'

29 July 1856[?] : A self-portrait in pencil by Morris bears the date `29th July'. The year of composition is conjectural. A second self-portrait also probably dates from around this time. Both portraits are now at the V & A.

31 July 1856 : Hannah Macdonald - Georgiana's mother - recorded in her Diary that Morris had come to tea and `sat with Georgie on the balcony till 11 o'clock' (c.f. 9 June 1856).

August 1856 : Morris contributed the second part of `Gertha's Lovers', `Death the Avenger and Death the Friend' and `Svend and His Brethren' to the eighth number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.

Mid-August 1856 : Morris moved with Street to London where the latter had taken offices at 33 Montagu Place, Russell Square. While in London he and Burne-Jones first took furnished lodgings at 1 Upper Gordon Street. These lodgings were, according to Burne-Jones, decorated by Morris `with brasses of old knights and drawings of Albert Dürer.'

23 August 1856 : Rossetti took Morris to visit Ford Madox Brown's at 13 Fortess Terrace, Kentish Town . The following day Ford Madox Brown recorded in his Diary: `Yesterday Rossetti brought his ardent admirer Morris of Oxford, who bought my little hay field for 40 gns.' Ford Madox Brown got the picture back from Morris in 1860 as payment for work done at the Red House.

September 1856 : Morris contributed `Lindenborg Pool', the first part of `The Hollow Land' and the poem `The Chapel in Lyonesse' to the ninth number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.

Autumn 1856 : G E Street, after completing his competition drawings for Lille Cathedral, set out with Morris on a tour of the Low Countries. The announcement for the competition had been made in 1855. The chief condition was that the building should be in the French Gothic style. Street's design for the cathedral included two spires with coloured bands. Street wrote: `We have had about three hours at the Exhibition. We are agreed naturally that I ought to have place No. 1.... I really think I shall have one of the prizes. Morris says the first.' In the event Street came second in the competition, the prize going to Clutton & Burges.

End of Long Vacation 1856 : Morris, along with Burne-Jones, Fulford, Faulkner and Vernon Lushington attended Heeley's wedding in Birmingham. During this visit Margaret Price wrote in her Diary: `Fulford was in the most noisy, quizzical humour imaginable, no one could get a word in edgeways for him, and whenever Topsy wanted to say anything he sprang into the middle of the room and flourished his fists till Fulford was silenced.'

October 1856 : Morris contributed the second part of `The Hollow Land' and the poem `Pray But One Prayer For Me' to the tenth number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.

25 October 1856 : Cormell Price noted in his Diary: `Ted and Topsy up. To Maclaren's; singlestick with Top. With them before and after hall at Dixon's - then on to Adams' who gaveus music. What a difference their coming makes!'

November 1856 : Morris and Burne-Jones moved to three unfurnished rooms on the first floor of 17 Red Lion Square. Morris occupied the small room at the rear of the building. Rossetti and Deverell had occupied the same rooms in the days of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. At the time that Morris and Burne-Jones took the rooms the ground floor of the house was occupied by a French family of feather-dressers called the Fauconniers. Morris and Burne-Jones later designed - and had made - their own furniture for their lodgings. This included Morris's only surviving design for a round table (now to be seen in the Cheltenham Museum). Shortly after they moved in Rossetti wrote: `Morris is rather doing the magnificent there, and is having some intensely medieval furniture made - tables and chairs like incubi and succubi. He and I have painted the back of a chair with figures and inscriptions in gules and vert and azure, and we are all three going to cover a cabinet with pictures.' Burne-Jones wrote (in November): `Topsy has had some furniture (chairs and table) made after his own design; they are as beautiful as medieval work, and when we have painted designs of knights and ladies upon them they will be perfect marvels.'

December 1856 : Morris's story `Golden Wings' appeared in the twelfth - and final - number of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine. The twelve issues of the magazine were later bound together and sold as a volume by Bell & Daldy. Some of these contain two photographs from Woolner's medallions of Tennyson and Carlyle. These had been offered to subscribers by the publishers of the magazine.

12 December 1856 : Morris and Burne-Jones dined with Ruskin at Denmark Hill.

18 December 1856 : Rossetti wrote to William Allingham describing Morris as `one of the finest little fellows alive - with a touch of the incoherent, but a real man.... In all illumination and work of that kind he is quite unrivalled by anything modern that I know.'

End of 1856 : Encouraged by Rossetti, Morris left Street's office and abandoned his career in architecture. Mackail, in his Notebooks, recalled Burne-Jones saying that Morris `began painting directly on leaving Street'.

1857 : During the year Morris experimented with sculpture, painting, stained-glass design and embroidery. He finished the `Bird and Tree' embroidered pattern and the `If I Can' embroidered wall-hanging worked in wool on linen. The latter is now at Kelmscott Manor. He also produced a great deal of poetry which included an incomplete cycle of Troy poems. These were first published in the Collected Works in 1915.

February 1857 : In a letter to William Bell Scott, Rossetti described Morris and Burne-Jones as `now very intimate friends of mine.'

18 February 1857 : Morris and Burne-Jones contributed £10 to a subscription fund set up for the artist Thomas Seddon who had died a few months earlier.

3 April 1857 : A two volume edition of Froissart's Chronicles - edited by Thomas Johnes (London, Bohn, 1852) - that Morris dedicated to Louisa Macdonald bears this date.

Spring 1857 : Burne-Jones painted a wardrobe for 17 Red Lion Square with scenes from Chaucer's The Prioress's Tale.

Spring/Summer 1857 : Morris saw Keen at the Princess Theatrein Shakespeare's Richard II.

June 1857 : Rossetti reported that Morris was painting `Recognition of Tristram by his Dog' (Tristram and Iseult). He went on to add: `It is being done all from nature of course, and I believe will turn out capitally.' This scene is from Morte d'Arthur and is described elsewhere as `Sir Tristram after his illness in the Garden of King Marko's Palace recognised by the Dog he had given Iseult.'

9 June 1857 : Georgiana Burne-Jones recalled in the Memorials that she and her fiancé went to see `The Light of the World' at Mr Combe's house before paying a short visit to the MacLarens. They found `Morris painting a tree in MacLaren's beautiful garden with such energy that it was long before the grass grew again on the spot where his chair had stood.'

Late June/Early July 1857 : Morris went with Rossetti to see Benjamin Woodward in Oxford. Woodward had been chosen to design the University Museum and the Union Debating Hall. Rossetti offered to decorate the apsed upper walls and roof of the Union debating hall. The Union Building Committee accepted this offer. Amongst those to take part in the project were Burne-Jones, Arthur Hughes, Spencer Stanhope, Val Princep and Hungerford Pollen. Morris subject was `How Sir Polomydes loved La Belle Iseult with exceeding great love out of measure and how she loved him not again but rather Sir Tristram.' It was generally considered to have been a failure. Morris later described it as `being extremely ludicrous in many ways.'

July 1857 : Morris, Rossetti and Burne-Jones took rooms at 87 High Street, opposite Queen's College, Oxford.

Mid-August 1857 : In the Memorials Georgiana Burne-Jones wrote that `the work at the Union was well begun, and the painters then hoped that it would be finished in about six weeks - that is, by the end of the Long Vacation - but it lasted until the spring of the following year.'

September 1857 : Morris stayed with Dixon in Manchester and visited the Art Treasures Exhibition. At this Exhibition Morris refused to view the Old Masters preferring to enjoy the fine collection of carved ivories. While staying at Dixon's he painted a watercolour `The Soltan's Daughter in the Palace of Glass' (now lost). He also wrote the poem `Praise of My Lady' which was to appear in The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems.

September/October 1857 : Morris was introduced to Jane Burden. There are a number of versions of how this came about. The most popular is that Rossetti and Burne-Jones met Jane and her sister at the theatre. Mackail's account in his Notebooks seems to confirm this version: `DGR and EBJ [met her] at [the] theatre (behind Randolph['s Hotel]) late in [the] summer of [1857]; she and her sister sitting just behind them. After the theatre they followed her and R. asked her to come and sit: she probably did not know what he meant; consented to come the next day, but didn't. EBJ met her again in the street a few days later and spoke with her asking why she hadn't come. Next day she came.' An alternative version of the meeting, given by Georgiana Burne-Jones in the Memorials, is that Morris saw Jane in a box above him at the theatre when in the company of Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Hughes. Morris was later to court her by reading passages from Dickens's Barnaby Rudge. Around the same time Morris, Burne-Jones and Rossetti moved to new lodgings in George Street. It was in the first floor sitting-room of these lodgings in early October that Rossetti was to make his first pencil drawing of Jane which is now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries.

17 October 1857 : Cormell Price had breakfast with Morris, Rossetti, Hughes, Prinsep, Burne-Jones and Coventry Patmore at `Johnson's' in George Street. The friends then visited the Oxford Union frescos.

18 October 1857 : Cormell Price wrote in his Diary: `To Rossetti's... Prinsep there; six feet one, 15 stone, not fat, well-built, hair like fine wire, short, curly and seamless - aged only 19. Stood for Top for two hours as a dalmatic.'

24 October 1857 : Cormell Price assisted Morris on the Oxford Union frescos by painting black lines on the Union roof. In the Memorials Georgiana Burne-Jones quoted her husband as saying: `Morris ... set to work upon the roof, making in a day a design for it which was a wonder to us for its originality and fitness, for he had never before designed anything of the kind, nor, I suppose, seen any ancient work to guide him.'

25 October 1857 : Morris submitted his first volume of poetry -The Defence of Guenevere & Other Poems - to the publisher, Alexander Macmillan.

30 October 1857 : During the evening Morris entertained Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Cormell Price, Hughes, Swan, Faulkner, Bowen, Bennet, Munro, Hill, Prinsep and Stanhope by reading `King Arthur's Tomb' and `Lancelot and Guenevere'.

31 October 1857 : Morris worked on the Oxford Union frescos with Cormell Price. In the evening he and Cormell Price played whist at George Street with Rossetti, Faulkner and Ford Madox Brown. Rossetti is supposed to have said of Morris that he `had the greatest capacity for producing and annexing dirt of any man he ever met with.'

Winter 1857 : Morris presented Louisa Macdonald with an illuminated manuscript on vellum of one of Grimm's Fairytales.

1 November 1857 : Morris met Swinburne for the first time at Hill's house in Oxford. Burne-Jones, Swan, Faulkner and Hatch were also present.

7 November 1857 : Morris wrote again to Macmillan this time offering to pay for the publication of The Defence of Guenevere & Other Poems.

14 November 1857 : Cormell Price recorded in his Diary that Rossetti had left Oxford due to Lizzie Siddal falling ill. According to Georgiana Burne-Jones in the Memorials he never returned to complete his work.

21 November 1857 : Morris wrote to Macmillan about the loss of his manuscript `Arthur's Tomb'.

10 December 1857 : Cormell Price wrote to his father: `Topsy raves and swares [sic] like or more than any Oxford bargee about a "stunner" he has seen.'

26 December 1857 : An article by Coventry Patmore in the Saturday Review described the Oxford Union Building's frescos as `so brilliant as to make the walls look like the margin of an illuminated manuscript.'

1858 : Morris's Sir Galahad a Christmas Mystery - a foolscap 8vo. booklet - was published by Bell and Daldy of 186 Fleet Street. It was possibly in this year that Morris made his first visit to Worcester since being taken there as a baby. In 1888 he wrote to Jenny: `as to Worcester I have only been there once ... when I went to see my Aunts 30 years ago. I ... remember Prince Arthur's Chantry and the tombs and also the general look of the Church. The town I don't remember except as a mass ofred brick broken by a few half-timber houses.'

January 1858 : Ford Madox Brown recorded in his Diary: `Jones is going to cut Topsy, he says his over bearing temper is becoming quite insupportable as well as his conceit.' Rossetti recorded in a letter to Ford Madox Brown that Plint had purchased Morris's painting Tristram and Iseult for 75 guineas (c.f. 23 April 1861). The painting was later exhibited at the New Gallery, London, in January 1898.

27 January 1858 : Ford Madox Brown recorded in his Diary that he went to Red Lion Square with a dress bought by his wife on Burne-Jones's instruction for `a poor miserable girl of 17 he had met in the street at 2 a.m. The coldest night this winter, scarce any clothes and starving, in spite of prostitution, after only 5 weeks of London life.'

February 1858 : Morris persuaded Jane to marry him. Jane prepared herself for her new role by learning the piano. Rossetti's cartoon of `Morris presenting Miss Burden with a Ring' could refer to this although the ring is being placed on her right hand. Bell & Daldy published The Defence of Guenevere & Other Poems at Morris' expense. The volume was dedicated `To My Friend, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Painter.' It contained thirty poems. At the time only 250 out of the original 500 copies were sold. F S Ellis recorded that he purchased the copies of the book that remained unsold in 1865 `amounting, if I remember rightly, to some thirty or forty.' Elsewhere, however, it has been stated that Bell and Daldy still had copies available as late as 1871. An unsigned notice relating to The Defence of Guenevere & Other Poems appeared in the Spectator (p. 238). The reviewer wrote: `To our taste, the style is as bad as bad can be. Mr. Morris imitates little save faults.' This was the first of a series of unfavourable reviews which led Morris to destroy many of the early poems he omitted from the volume.

17 February 1858 : Swinburne wrote of how glad he was to hear `of Morris having that wonderful and most perfect stunner of his to - look at or speak to. The idea of his marrying her is insane. To kiss her feet is the utmost man should dream of doing.' He also wrote: `Morris's book is really out. Reading it, I would fain be worthy to sit down at his feet.'

March 1858 : No further work was done on the Oxford Union Building's frescos. A more positive review of The Defence of Guenevere & Other Poems - possibly by Richard Garnett - appeared in the Literary Gazette (pp. 226-7). Burne-Jones was taken ill and left Red Lion Square for a year to stay with Mrs Prinsep.

29 March 1858 : Ruskin wrote to the Brownings about The Defence of Guenevere & Other Poems: `I've seen his poems, just out, about old chivalry, and they are most noble - very, very great indeed - in their own peculiar way.'

April 1858 : An unsigned review of The Defence of Guenevere & Other Poems appeared in the Tablet (p. 266).

3 April 1858 : An unsigned review of The Defence of Guenevere & Other Poems - apparently by H F Chorley - appeared in the Athenaeum (pp. 427-428). Chorley wrote: `we must call attention to [this] ... book of Pre-Raphaelite minstrelsy as to a curiosity which shows how far affectation may mislead an earnest man towards the fog-land of Art.'

17 April 1858 : Edwin Hatch recorded in his Diary that he had just arrived in Oxford: `Called on Swinburne, talked in his window seat in the sunset, and then went to Morris.'

26 April 1858 : Swinburne, in a letter to Edwin Hatch, claimed that since the favourable review of The Defence of Guevenere in the Tablet the Oxford County Chronicle had been full of humorous references requesting information relating to Morris's whereabouts. According to Swinburne the town-crier was also going to proclaim the loss the next day: `Lost, stolen, or strayed, an eminent artist and promising literateur... Had on when he was last seen the clothes of another gentleman, much worn, of which he had possessed himself in a fit or moral - and physical - abstraction. Linen (questionable) marked W. M. Swears awfully, and walks with a rolling gait, as if partially intoxicated.'

Spring/Summer 1858 : The inaugural meeting of the Hogarth Club, a social club for artists and writers, was held at Morris and Burne-Jones's lodgings in Red Lion Square. William Rossetti wrote: `the original Hogarth Club was so named on the ground that Hogarth was the first great figure in British art, and still remains one of the greatest. Madox Brown (not to mention other projectors of the Club) entertained this view very strongly, and I think it probable that he was the proposer of the name.' The Club's headquarters were originally at 178 Piccadilly but it later moved to 6 Waterloo Place, London. It was dissolved in April 1861.

4 May 1858 : Boyce wrote in his Diary: `Meeting of the (just formed) Hogarth Club at Jones and Morris's rooms. In the room some interesting drawings, tapestries and furniture, the latter gorgeously painted in subjects by Jones and Morris and Gabriel Rossetti.'

27 May 1858 : Philip Webb left G E Street's office.

June 1858 : William Bell Scott, who visited the Oxford Union Building, found the frescos already much deteriorated. All that could be seen of Morris's picture was Tristram's head over a row of sunflowers.

2 June 1858 : Boyce wrote in his Diary that he had visited Rossetti in London: `He made one or two rough sketches while talking, one of a "Stunner" at Oxford which he tore into fragments, but which I recovered from the fire grate.'

17 August 1858 : Morris set off to France with Faulkner and Webb.

18 August 1858 : Morris, Faulkner and Webb arrived in Amiens. When visiting the tower of the cathedral a shower of sovereigns fell from Morris satchel and were only prevented from disappearing down the mouth of a gargoyle by Webb's boot. Morris then attempted to make a drawing of the choir but this was ruined when he knocked a bottle of ink over his sketch.

20 August 1858 : The party visited Beauvais (where Webb drew the transept of St. Etienne) and Creil.

21 August 1858 : Morris, Faulkner and Webb arrived in Paris where they lodged at Meurice's. Webb recalled rats running around in the gutters. They spent some time sketching at Notre Dame where they drew some of the capitals and the panels of the west porch. During the next few days they rowed and sailed down the Seine in a boat sent over from Oxford. The boat arrived with a large hole in the bottom which had to be repaired. On discovering the damage, according to Webb, Morris was `transported' and rasped the skin off his hand on the parapet of the river wall in his excitement. The local population jeered as the party set off from the Quai du Louvre with their luggage which consisted of three carpet bags and half-a-dozen bottles of wine. They took Murray's Guide to France (1857) which every five miles they marked with the distances from Paris to the sea. At Duclair they encountered an eight foot highriver `bore'. It engulfed them as they were trying to row to the shore and deposited them high and dry on the bank! It was during this river trip that Morris and Webb began to discuss the building of what was to be the Red House. Webb made a preliminary sketch for the staircase of the house on the back of one of the maps in Murray's Guide to France.

24 August 1858 : The party visited Chartres. Webb drew `the noble south-west steeple of the Cathedral and the interior.' They then returned to Paris.

28 August 1858 : The party left Paris for Poissy.

1 September 1858 : Morris, Faulkner and Webb visited Chateau Gaillard and Petit Andeley. Webb drew the church.

2 September 1858 : The party reached Rouen. They were upset to discover the new cast-iron spire for the cathedral was as yet unfinished. Webb wrote: `the upper part was lying hatefully on the ground.'

6 September 1858 : The holiday ended when the party took the boat home from Le Havre to Southampton.

Mid-September 1858 : Georgiana Burne-Jones recorded that Morris had returned from his trip `full of a scheme for building a house for himself.'

Late-September 1858 : Morris and Webb spent some time looking at possible house sites.

October 1858 : Morris went to France on a trip buying `antiques' for his new house. These included old ironwork, armour, enamel and manuscripts.

Autumn 1858 : Morris suffered an illness which his friends attributed to unwise eating. This could have been the first indication of the kidney trouble that affected him in 1861.

20 November 1858 : An unsigned review of The Defence of Guenevere & other Poems appeared in the Saturday Review (pp. 506-7): `The later school of pre-Raffaelites and Mr. Morris seem to consider that all art is imitation.'

15 December 1858 : Boyce noted amongst Rossetti's new work: `A most beautiful pen and ink study of Topsy's "Stunner" at Oxford.'

1859 : Darwin's Origin of the Species was published as was Ruskin's The Elements of Perspective. Burne-Jones gave a course on glass painting at the Working Men's College.

January 1859 : The Hogarth Club held its first exhibition.

Early 1859 : Morris abandoned his attempt to become a painter.

6 March 1859 : Faulkner, Burne-Jones and Boyce rowed to Godstow to `have a look' at Jane Burden. They dined that evening with Morris and Swinburne.

Spring 1859 : Morris and Burne-Jones gave up their lodgings at 17 Red Lion Square. Morris returned to 13 George Street, Oxford, while Burne-Jones took lodgings in Charlotte Street, London.

26 April 1859 : Morris married Jane Burden at St Michael's Church, Ship Street, Oxford. The wedding was conducted by Morris's friend R W Dixon with Faulkner as the best man. The bride was given away by her father. According to the account that Burne-Jones gave Mackail `M. said to Dixon beforehand"Mind you don't call her Mary" but he did.' Dixon mistakenly married them as `William and Mary'. The entry in the Register reads: `William Morris, 25, Bachelor Gentleman, 13 George Street, son of William Morris decd. Gentleman. Jane Burden, minor, spinster, 65 Holywell Street, d. of Robert Burden, Groom.' The witnesses were Jane's parents and Faulkner. None of Morris's family attended the ceremony. Morris presented Jane with a plain gold ring bearing the London hallmark for 1858. She gave her husband a double-handled antique silver cup.

27 April 1859 : Morris and Jane began their six week honeymoon. Jane later told Mackail that she had her first view of the sea on her honeymoon `at Dover on a grey April day'. She found it `extremely disappointing'. Later they stayed at the Bruges Hotel du Commerce, Paris. According to May Morris the couple toured France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. They visited Basle, Liege, Namur , Mainz, Mannheim, Cologne, Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp and Brussels.

April/May 1859 : Webb's designs for the Red House were completed.

June 1859 : William Riviere was commissioned to fill the three vacant bays left unfinished when the frescos at the Oxford Union Building were abandoned in March 1858.

Mid-June 1859 : Morris and Jane returned from their honeymoon to live in furnished rooms at 41 Great Ormond Street, London. It was here that Burne-Jones introduced Jane to his fiancée Georgiana Macdonald. Work began on building the Red House.

22 June 1859 : Rossetti recorded that he had completed one of the two painted panels on a cabinet for Morris's new home at Red House. These panels were later framed and sold in 1865.

19 October 1859 : Morris presented Jane with a copy of Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Times for her birthday.

November 1859 : Morris joined the Corps of Artist Volunteers. He was to serve until 1862 (or 1864 according to Mackail). He resigned due to ill-health. Amongst the other volunteers were Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown and Rossetti. The Secretary of the Corps, William Richmond, remembered the unit being `supremely comical' in its silver and grey uniform.

1860 : Morris's carol `Masters in the Hall' - written to an old French air - was included in Edmund Sedding's collection of Nine Antient and Goodly Carols for the Merry Tide of Christmas (1860). Sedding had at one point also been in the office of G E Street. In 1884 Swinburne described this carol as `one of the co-equal three finest ... in the language.' According to Swinburne the carol was also included, at his suggestion, in A H Bullen's A Christmas Garland; Carols and Poems from the Fifteenth Century to the Present (1885). The Daisy embroidered wall-hanging was designed by Morris and executed by Jane and others. This is now at Kelmscott Manor. Ruskin started the serialisation of Unto this Last in the Cornhill magazine. These articles were later published in book form in 1862.

31 January 1860 : Jane and Morris visited the Hogarth Club. Boyce noted in his Diary `the fine and beautiful character' of Jane's face on this occasion.

6 February 1860 : Morris wrote to Mary Nicolson the housekeeper at 17 Red Lion Square requesting that she bring him the brass memorial that used to hang up between the windows in his room (c.f. November 1856). Mary Nicolson had been nicknamed `Red Lion Mary' by Rossetti. In theMemorials, Georgiana Burne-Jones recorded her saying `though he [Morris] was so short-tempered, I seemed so necessary to him at all times, and felt myself his man Friday.' She also recorded `a never-forgotten' trick that she played on him one day when relations were strained between them, which vastly amused Rossetti, Edward and Madox Brown, all present at the time. Morris was going to Oxford and had asked her before he did so to wind up his watch and set it right, on which the wily Mary put it forward nearly an hour, and he "remembered to mention it to her" on his return.' Georgiana Burne-Jones also wrote: `Morris taught her to embroider his designs for hangings, and being in a fever to see how they looked, often made her bring her embriodery frame into the studio so that she might work under his direction - and many a funny conversation took place as she plied her needle and they painted.'

Spring 1860 : Morris and Jane moved temporarily to Aberley (or Aberleigh) Lodge, near the Red House, to supervise the latter's construction. Cormell Price applied for the post of tutor to the family of Count Orloff-Davidoff which he had seen advertised in the Times. He was successful in gaining the post and spent most of the next three years in Russia (although he was in London for six to eight months during this period). He described his time in Russia as a `period of purgatory' (c.f. 11 November 1860).

23 May 1860 : Rossetti married Lizzie Siddal at St Clement's Church, Hastings. They travelled to Paris for their honeymoon.

June 1860 : Morris and Jane moved to the Red House, overlooking the Cray Valley near Bexley Heath, Kent. The house was situated three miles from Abbey Wood Station and only ten miles from the centre of London. The weather vane on the tower has the inscription `W.M. 1859'. The house cost Morris about £4,000 to build. Rossetti later referred to it as `the Hole' after some hollow ground nearby known as `Hog's Hole'.

9 June 1860 : Burne-Jones married Georgiana Macdonald in Manchester. The couple later travelled to Chester to attend the service at the Cathedral the next day. Their ultimate plan was to join Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal in Paris.

10 June 1860 : Burne-Jones fell ill with a sore throat in Chester and the couple had to abandon their plan to travel to Paris. The two couples finally met when they spent a day at London Zoo on 26 July 1860 at `The Wombat's Lair'.

Summer/Autumn 1860 : The Burne-Joneses stayed with the Morrises at the Red House for several weeks. According to Georgiana Burne-Jones: `it was by no means on a holiday that Edward had come down, nor only to enjoy the company of his friend again, but that they might consult together about the decoration of the house.' A few days after the Burne-Joneses arrived they were joined by Charles Faulkner. The Burne-Joneses left in October. During this visit many tricks were played on Morris including sending him to Coventry at his own table. Georgiana Burne-Jones recalled that the evenings were spent listening to old English songs `and the inexhaustible Echos du Temps Passé.'

30 July 1860 : Boyce noted in his Diary that when he visited Rossetti's study: `Morris and his wife (whom DGR familiarly addresses as Janey) came in.'

September 1860 : Morris's sister Isabella married Arthur Hamilton Gilmore at Leyton Church. Morris gave the bride away. They had no children.

October 1860 : Lizzie Siddall spent a few days with theMorrises at the Red House.

11 November 1860 : Cormell Price took up his tutoring post in Russian.

1861 : In the census Morris was recorded as William Morris `B.A., Artist'. It may also have been in this year that the twelve embroidered figure panels for the Red House were finished. The panels depicting St Catherine and Penelope are at Kelmscott Manor. Three other panels were subsequently made into a screen for the Earl of Carlisle at Castle Howard in 1889. Morris painted the panels on the George and Dragon cabinet designed by Philip Webb.

January 1861 : Rossetti wrote to William Allingham: `We are organising (but this is quite under the rose as yet) a company for the production of furniture and decoration of all kinds, for the sale of which we are going to open an actual shop! The men concerned are Madox Brown, Jones, Topsy, Webb (the architect of T[opsy]'s house), P P Marshall, Faulkner, and myself.... We expect to start in some shape about May or June, but not to go to any expense in premises at first.' Burne-Jones, in Mackail's Notebooks, is recorded as saying `It was DGR's idea; he saw money in it.'

17 January 1861 : Jane Alice (`Jenny') Morris was born at the Red House. Morris named her Alice after his younger sister. She was - at a later date - christened at Bexley Church in Kent. A celebration dinner was held after the christening at the Red House which was attended by amongst others Rossetti, Swinburne, the Browns, the Marshalls and the Burne-Joneses. The centre-piece of the celebration was a lavish medieval banquet set out on a large T-shaped table. The men later spent the night on temporary beds set out in the drawing room.

18 January 1861 : Morris reported `Janey and kid (girl) are both very well.'

21 January 1861 : Emma Madox Brown, who had stayed with Jane during the latter stages of her pregnancy, left the Red House.

26 January 1861 : George Boyce wrote in his Diary: `Jones told me that he and Morris and Rossetti and Webb were going to set up a shop where they would jointly produce and sell painted furniture.'

25 March 1861 : Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (later referred to as `the Firm') took premises above a jeweller's workshop at 8 Red Lion Square. The first floor was used as an office and showroom, the third floor as workshops, and the basement to house a small kiln where stained glass was made and tiles fired. Rossetti referred to the new premises as the `Topsaic Laboratory'. George Campfield, who Morris had met at the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street, was employed as the Firm's foreman.

11 April 1861 : Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. opened for business. The partners - Morris, Burne-Jones, Webb, Faulkner, Hughes (who withdrew soon after), Rossetti, Madox Brown and Marshall - each put up £1 as collateral. The main capital of £100 was loaned by Morris's mother, Emma. The Firm's prospectus was also issued. In its early days the members of the Firm held meetings once or twice a fortnight. Faulkner wrote that these had `rather the character of a meeting of the "Jolly Masons" or the jolly something else than of a meeting to discuss business. Beginning at 8 for 9 p.m. they open with the relation of anecdotes which have been culled by members of the firm since the last meeting. These stories being exhausted, Topsy and Brown will perhaps discuss the relative merits of the art ofthe thirteenth and fifteenth century, and then perhaps after a few more anecdotes business matters will come up about 10 or 11 o'clock and be furiously discussed till 12, 1 or 2.'

19 April 1861 : Morris wrote to his old tutor, the Rev F B Guy, requesting a circulation list of fellow clergy so as to advertise the Firm.

23 April 1861 : Mr. Plint, annoyed by the delay in receiving his painting by Morris, wrote to Ford Madox Brown to find out how the work was progressing. Madox Brown wrote in reply: `Morris I have spoken to. His picture is now in my house, and at my suggestion he has so altered it that it is quite a fresh work. There is still a figure in the foreground to be scraped out and another put in its place. It is this sort of work which makes it so difficult for a real artist to say when a painting will be finished. I take as much interest in Morris's picture turning out good as though it were my own, for, though it was not commissioned at my recommendation, I have repeatedly since told you that Morris is a man of real genius.'

2 May 1861 : Lizzie Siddal, Rossetti's wife, had a stillborn daughter.

Late June 1861 : Morris attended a camp of the Corps of Artist Volunteers on Wimbledon Common.

22 June 1861 : While stationed on Wimbledon Common Morris witnessed the fire in the warehouses of the firm of Scovell at Cotton's Wharf. This fire consumed an area of three acres and was considered the worst fire since the Great Fire of London. Later (1881) Morris was to write: `I always did hate fire works, especially since I saw Cotton's Wharf ablaze.'

23 June 1861 : Morris returned to the Red House where the Burne-Joneses were staying for the weekend.

4 July 1861 : George Wardle married Madeleine Smith.

5 September 1861 : Charles Faulkner recorded that `Topsy has had very bad kidneys lately.'

October 1861 : Lizzie Siddal went to stay at the Red House.

9 November 1861 : The Firm advertised in the Builder for `a first-rate fret glazier' to help prepare its glass for the International Exhibition of 1862.

22 November 1861 : Morris visited Rossetti to participate in `oysters and obloquy.' Others present included George Meredith, Val Prinsep and D G R Gilchrist. Gilchrist was to die eight days later of scarlet fever.

24 December 1861 : Burne-Jones coughed up blood while in bed with a cold. This was to be the beginning of a period of ill health.

End of 1861 : By this stage five men and boys were regularly employed by the Firm. Amongst those taken on at this time were Albert and Henry Goodwin. The boys were recruited from the Industrial Home for Destitute Boys in Euston Road.

1862 : The Firm took two stands at the International Exhibition held at the South Kensington Museum. One was for the sole promotion of stained-glass (Exhibit No. 6734) the other for embroideries and painted Gothic furniture (Exhibit No. 5783). Both stands were awarded medals of commendation. The prize for the stained glass was given `for artistic qualities of colour and design' while that for the other exhibits read: `Messrs. Morris & Co have exhibited several pieces of furniture,tapestries, &c., in the style of the Middle Ages. The general forms of the furniture, the arrangement of the tapestry, and the character of the details are satisfactory to the archaeologist from the exactness of the imitation, at the same time that the general effect is excellent.' However, the medal the Firm received for its stained glass was challenged by a petition raised by those in the trade who alleged the seven panels depicting the Parable of the Vineyard by Rossetti consisted of genuine medieval glass touched up and remounted. This petition was rejected by the judges. The offending glass was later erected in the east window of St Martin's on the Hill Church, Scarborough. At the xxhibition the Firm sold £150 worth of goods. The Firm undertook its first stained-glass commission at All Saints Church, Selsey, Gloucestershire. Morris contributed a number of the designs. The Firm also provided stained-glass for St Michael & All Angels Church, Lyndhurst, Hampshire. Morris designed the stained-glass panel depicting St Matthew in the Lady Chapel, Christ Church, Southgate.

January 1862 : A further call on the partners of the Firm for £19 per share raised the paid up capital to £140. Morris became General Manager with a salary of £150 per annum. Rossetti wrote to Norton: `I wish you could see the house which Morris ... has built for himself in Kent. It is a most noble work in every way, and more a poem than a house.'

11 February 1862 : Burne-Jones wrote: `Top ... is slowly making Red House the beautifullest place on earth.' Lizzie Siddal died at Chatham Place from an overdose of drugs. Rossetti put a notebook of poems into her coffin when she was later buried at Highgate Cemetery.

25 March 1862 : Mary (`May') Morris was born at the Red House. She was named Mary as she was born on Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation.

April 1862 : Around this time Faulkner replaced Morris as General Manager of the Firm. Morris was appointed its Business Manager. Rossetti designed the frontispiece of his sister Christina's Goblin Market. This was the first identifiable work of the Firm as its initials can be seen in the bottom of the left-hand corner.

16 August 1862 : Boyce wrote in his Diary: `Joined Rossetti at Swinburne's rooms where they were looking over "Justine" by the Marquis de Sade, [a] recent acquisition of the latter. We then went on to the International Exhibition.'

22 October 1862 : Rossetti took up residence at `Tudor House', 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

November 1862 : Morris designed the Trellis wallpaper. The birds were drawn by Philip Webb (c.f. 1 February 1864).

December 1862 : Henry Holiday, who was to design stained-glass for the Firm, was introduced to Morris and Burne-Jones.

10 December 1862 : A Minute Book for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co records a business meeting of the `Firm' held on this date at 8 Red Lion Square. The entry is signed by Morris.

1863 : Morris's sister, Alice, married Reginald Butler Edgecombe Gill. He was one of the partners in the Tavistock firm of Gill & Rundle that acted as bankers to the Devon mines.

7 January 1863 : Rossetti invited Ford Madox Brown and Marshall to dinner to discuss the management of the Firm: `Topsy is excluded by the nature of the meeting.'

1 March 1863 : Mackail's Notebooks record a letter Morriswrote to the Rev F B Guy giving details of the progress of tiles for decorating the Turret School. This work does not appear to have been carried out.

1864 : Swinburne introduced Morris to the publisher F S Ellis of King Street, Covent Garden. Ellis was later to publish The Earthly Paradise. The South Kensington Museum bought four stained-glass panels from the Firm: Penelope, Chaucer Asleep, Dido & Cleopatra and Alcestis & Eros.

Early 1864 : Morris considered moving the Firm from Red Lion Square to the Red House. He also planned to build an extension to the house for the Burne-Joneses to live in.

1 February 1864 : The Trellis and Daisy wallpaper designs were registered. These were the first wallpapers produced by Morris. They were expensive to make as they each required twelve blocks (one for each colour used). Jeffery & Co, of Islington, were employed to print these wallpapers.

May 1864 : The Burne-Joneses visited the Red House. Their son, Philip, `shared the nursery of the Misses Morris, two beautiful children by this time.'

18 July 1864 : The poet, William Allingham, visited the Morrises: `After some wandering, find the Red House and at last in its rose garden, William Morris and his queenly wife crowned with her own black hair.'

19 July 1864 : Allingham, who spent the night at Red House, recorded in his Diary that he found `Jenny and May bright-eyed, curly pated ... W. M. brusque, careless, with big shoon.'

September 1864 : The Morris and Burne-Jones families took a holiday at Littlehampton, Sussex. During this holiday Morris had one of his rages and threw a pair of broken spectacles out of the window in the belief that he had brought a spare pair with him. It turned out that he had not. He was found the next morning before breakfast searching for them in the street. The holiday ended in disaster when Philip Burne-Jones caught scarlet fever.

28 October 1864 : Georgiana Burne-Jones gave birth to a son named Christopher.

21 November 1864 : Christopher Burne-Jones died. Soon after this event Morris abandoned the idea of moving the Firm to Red House and building an extension for the Burne-Joneses.

December 1864 : Burne-Jones and his family moved to 41 Kensington Square. According to Mackail's Notebooks the house was furnished by Burne-Jones and Cormell Price. Morris gave the Burne-Jones a Persian prayer carpet for one of the rooms.

1865 : Morris designed various stained-glass panels for All Saints Church, Middleton Cheney, Northamptonshire. These included St Peter, St Augustine & St Catherine, Eve and Mary Virgin and St Agnes & St Alban. Burne-Jones sketched a cartoon of Morris with his two children. Morris was persuaded to join the board of British Mining & Smelting Ltd, a speculative concern which folded in 1874. G E Street published Some Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain.

10 February 1865 : Morris wrote to Allan Park Patton concerning the Firm's proposed stained-class for the Old West Kirk, Greenock.

3 March 1865 : A meeting was held at Philip Webb's house to discuss the appointment of Warington Taylor as BusinessManager of the Firm. His appointment was supported by Rossetti - who was not present - as he considered him `the right man for the purpose.' Warington Taylor was given the job at a salary of £120 per year. Taylor was the son of a Devonshire squire but in 1865 had been `earning a scanty livelihood as a check-taker at the Opera House in the Hay-market.' May later claimed that Taylor was largely responsible for her father's subsequent conversion to socialism.

12 April 1865 : Morris and Jane attended an `evening party' at Rossetti's. Amongst the other guests were the Burne-Joneses, William Rossetti and the Madox Browns.

May 1865 : Burne-Jones noted in his Account Book that he paid the Firm £3 4s for eight plain Sussex chairs.

Midsummer 1865 : The Firm took a twenty-one year lease on 26 Queen Square, just east of Southampton Row, Bloomsbury. The Firm paid £52.10s per year rent. The ground floor of the house was used as an office and a showroom. The ballroom was converted into a large workshop, while the wooden gallery that connected it to the main building was used for glass painting.

5 July 1865 : Rossetti wrote a letter to Jane - apparently postmarked 5 July 1865 (`Sunday Night`) - in which he said: `The photographer [John Parsons] is coming at 11 on Wednesday [8 July].' He was to photograph Jane in the garden of 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. However, the 5 July 1865 was not a Sunday. The only years in which 5 July fell on a Sunday during the 1860s were in 1863 and 1868.

Autumn 1865 : Bessie Burden, Jane's sister, came to live with the Morrises at the Red House following the death of her father.

14 October 1865 : The `Fine Art Gossip' section of the Athenaeum recorded that `Messrs. Morris, Marshall & Faulkner have been intrusted by the first Commissioner of Public Works with the re-decoration of one of the principal rooms in St. James's Palace... Mr. Cowper, being desirous of obtaining aid of the highest class in such works, has also commissioned the firm above named to design and make two drinking-fountains, which will be placed in prominent positions in London. Messrs. Morris, Marshall & Faulkner have also in hand a stained-glass window for the new church of St. Oswald, Durham, which comprises 6 panels, representing events in the life of St. Oswald, King of Northumbria.'

November 1865 : Morris and his family moved from the Red House to the Firm's headquarters at 26 Queen Square. Morris was never to visit the Red House again because, as Mackail wrote, `the sight of it would be more than he could bear.'

1866 : Morris completed the poems `Orpheus & Eurydice' and the `Quest of the Golden Fleece'. The poem - `Aristomenes' -was started but not finished. Morris designed the stained-glass panel depicting the Last Supper at the Church of St Edward the Confessor, Cheddleton, Staffordshire.

16 February 1866 : James Arnold Heathcote, a retired commander in the Indian Navy, wrote to Morris asking to know the rent of the Red House.

19 February 1866 : Morris wrote to James Arnold Heathcote offering to let the Red House to him for £100 per annum.

7 March 1866 : Morris again wrote to James Arnold Heatchcote offering to let the Red House for two years at £95 per annum. He also added that Heatchcote could have the option of purchasing the freehold after the expiration of this period for£1,800. He concluded: `I cannot entertain any lower offer than this.'

22 April 1866 : Morris and Burne-Jones had dinner with Ford Madox Brown.

June 1866 : It is clear from a bill issued by Mr Marsh `Auctioner, Surveyor & Land Agent of 2 Charlotte Row, Mansion House' that the Red House was still available for let. This bill described the house as `Erected in 1859, on an elevated Position, commanding Extensive Views of the surrounding much-admired scenery; it has exceedingly Dry Concrete Foundations, supporting very solidly-built Walls, faced with best Picked Kentish Red Bricks, stands in its own Grounds, approached by a Carriage Sweep... The Grounds are tastefully disposed, the Flower Garden with Plaisances in character with the House, Bowling Green, Orchard, and Productive Kitchen Garden, the whole containing more than an Acre.'

3 June 1866 : Margaret Burne-Jones was born.

Mid-June 1866 : Morris, Jane, Webb and Warington Taylor went on a holiday tour of the churches in northern France. They visited Sens, Troyes and Paris where Morris searched for books on the quays. Burne-Jones drew a caricature of their departure in which all the party were depicted as sea-sick. Burne-Jones portrayed himself left on the shore holding his new baby daughter Margaret. Her birth had prevented him accompanying the others on the trip.

3 July 1866 : Morris subscribed two guineas to a testimonial fund on behalf of George Cruikshank to defray the expenses of an exhibition of his work.

5 July 1866 : Morris travelled to Cambridge with George Frederick Bodley to discuss the decoration of Jesus College Chapel by the Firm.

30 July 1866 : William Allingham recorded in his Diary that he visited Burne-Jones at his new house in Kensington and found the latter and Morris discussing a book they planned with `lots of stories and pictures' [the proposed illustrated edition of The Earthly Paradise].

1 August 1866 : Allingham had dinner with the Morrises. In his Diary he recorded that Morris was `learned about wines and distilling... M. and friends intend to engrave the wood-blocks themselves [for `the Big Story Book'] - and M. will publish the book at his warehouse. I like Morris much. He is plain-spoken and emphatic, often boisterously, without an atom of irritating matter.'

18 August 1866 : William Allingham recorded in his Diary that Burne-Jones `occupies himself, when in the mood, with designs for the Big Book of Stories in Verse by Morris, and has done several from Cupid and Psyche.'

30 August 1866 : Morris, Allingham, Webb and the Burne-Joneses visited Winchester where they went to the Cathedral. Allingham recorded that `Morris talked copiously and interestingly on all things.' In the evening Morris, Allingham and Burne-Jones went to Lymington where Morris stayed at the Nag's Head. Allingham recorded the following conversation between Morris and Burne-Jones: `When we got to Stanwell House, Ned said, "I'm sorry, but I've been so lazy I've not done a single thing for the book," to which Morris gave a slight grunt. Then Ned produced his eight or nine designs for the wood-blocks, whereupon Morris laughed right joyously and shook himself.'

31 August 1866 : Morris, Allingham and the Burne-Joneses took a carriage from the Nag's Head to the sea at Milford where they visited the church. Later they buried Morris up to his neck in shingle on the beach.

September 1866 : The Firm began work on the Armoury and Tapestry Room at St James's Palace.

13 September 1866 : Morris wrote to Henry Young Darracott Scott stating that the Firm's estimate for glazing the three windows in the Refreshment Room at the South Kensington Museum would be £272.

Autumn 1866 : Around this time James Arnold Heathcote purchased the Red House from Morris. Amongst the furniture and effects sold with the house were the tempera paintings executed on the walls, the sideboard designed by Webb and the two great painted cupboards.

26 October 1866 : Webb drew the wall design of repeated olive branches for the Green Dining Room at the South Kensington Museum.

November 1866 : Work proceeded on Jesus College Chapel, the decoration being undertaken by Frederick R Leach. Mackail recorded in his Notebooks that C F Murray went to work for Edward Burne-Jones at Kensington Square around this time `and soon met Morris there'. Rosalind Howard paid her first visit to Morris and Webb's `furniture place' at Queen Square.

3 November 1866 : Warington Taylor wrote to Philip Webb urging he `report real visible progress at the palace [St James's], so as to give me some cheering news.' By this time Taylor, who had consumption, was staying at 7 Beach Cottages, Hastings.

6 November 1866 : With reference to the work on the Jesus College Chapel, Edmund Henry Morgan wrote to Bodley that `some astonishment was felt at the employment of a Cambridge workman in the execution of a work which was intrusted to Mr. Morris, on the very favourable recommendation given by you.'

8 November 1866 : Bodley assured Morgan that `the figures of angels, in the panels over the wall-cornice, will be executed by Morris' own men. The cartoons are prepared & matters put in hand. I wd. say that Morris finds Leach a very capable & able executant. The design & the exact shades of the colours are all done according to the directions given to him.'

13 November 1866 : Warington Taylor complained to Webb about Morris's apparent delay over the Jesus College commisssion: `Do see that Morris starts those angels for [the] Cambridge roof now; he will never have them in time, and at the last moment will want others to do the work.' Robinson and Wildman claim `Morris's own hand is to be seen in the row of stately angels in red, yellow and green around the cove of the ceiling.'

24 November 1866 : Morgan, apparently frustrated with the delay over the ceiling of Jesus College Chapel, wrote to Morris setting a deadline for its completion.

27 November 1866 : Morris responded to Morgan's letter by stating: `I must deprecate any hurry with works of this kind; the opportunity (as you probably know) seldom happens to us to paint figures in churches on such a scale, and I am extremely interested in the work and want it to be done in the best possible way.'

30 November 1866 : Morris visited Jesus College Chapel,Cambridge, and reported that the work was `going on satisfactorily'.

3 December 1866 : Morris assured Morgan that `we shall be able to finish the ceiling by the first of April as you have arranged.'

27 December 1866 : Warington Taylor wrote to Webb: `Just remember we are embezzling the public money now - what business has any palace to be decorated at all?'

1867 : Edward Burne-Jones began an affair with Mary Zambaco. This relationship was ultimately to devastate his health.

January 1867 : According to Buxton Forman, Morris finished writing The Life & Death of Jason. Forman claimed that Morris originally intended to publish it under the title of The Deeds of Jason.

3 January 1867 : Morris wrote to Allan Park Paton with reference to the Firm's work on the proposed vestry windows for the Old West Kirk in Greenock. He suggested the stained-glass windows should depict Nehemiah (cost £41.5s) and Ezra (£48.5s).

Mid-January 1867 : The firm completed its work on the Armoury and Tapestry Rooms at St James's Palace.

25 March 1867 : Morris went to Cambridge in connection with the work on the Jesus College Chapel.

26 March 1867 : Morris wrote to Morgan that following his inspection of the work on Jesus College Chapel: `I shall not be able to give it up to you this week; it will however be finished by the week after, (week ending April 7th).'

May 1867 : The Life & Death of Jason was published by Bell & Daldy at Morris's expense in an initial edition of 500 copies. Within five years the poem had gone through seven editions and sold over 3,000 copies.

16 May 1867 : A meeting of the Firm was held at which it was decided to offer Philip Webb £80 per annum - backdated to January 1867 - to serve as its consulting manager.

25 May 1867 : Robert Browning wrote to Morris thanking him for sending him a copy of The Life & Death of Jason: `What a noble, melodious and most beautiful poem you have written!'

9 June 1867 : A favourable unsigned review of The Life & Death of Jason, by Joseph Knight, appeared in the Sunday Times (p. 7).

15 June 1867 : An anonymous review of The Life & Death of Jason appeared in the Athenaeum (pp. 779 and 780).

20 June 1867 : Morris wrote to Burne-Jones expressing himself `in good spirits after the puffs [i.e. the reviews of The Life & Death of Jason].'

30 June 1867 : Morris and his family dined with Allingham and Burne-Jones at Queen Square.

1 July 1867 : Swinburne's review of The Life & Death of Jason appeared in the Fortnightly Review (Volume VIII, pp. 19-28).

2 July 1867 : Morris and Allingham went to the Royalty Theatre to see Black-eyed Susan. Allingham recorded in his Diary that `M. seldom goes to the Theatre, and is bored a good deal.'

4 July 1867 : Morris and Allingham visited Westminster Abbey.

15 July 1867 : Sydney Cockerell was born.

August 1867 : The Morrises spent the summer in lodgings in Beaumont Street, Oxford. The Burne-Joneses took lodgings in undergraduate rooms in St Giles. The two families - along with Faulkner - spent most evenings together.

21 August 1867 : In a letter to Morgan George Watkins, Morris wrote of Wordsworth that `his cold unhuman, & sometimes prolix poetry has not much attraction for me, even now I'm grown old.'

22 August 1867 : A review of The Life & Death of Jason by Professor C E Norton appeared in the Nation (Volume V, pp. 146-47): `By this work Mr. Morris wins a secure place among the chief English poets of the age.'

24 August 1867 : Morris, Burne-Jones and Faulkner started out on a river trip from Oxford to Dorchester.

September 1867 : Morris and Jane attended the wedding of Charles Howell to his cousin Kate which was held at St Matthew's Church, Brixton. Volume I of Marx's Das Kapital was published.

October 1867 : An unsigned review of The Life & Death of Jason by Henry James appeared in the North American Review (pp. 688-692). He wrote: `It is some time since we have met with a work of imagination of so thoroughly satisfactory a character.'

16 October 1867 : Morris attended a party at Warington Taylor's lodgings. Allingham recorded Morris reading Tennyson `with furious emphasis and gestures, making us all shout with laughter.'

18 October 1867 : In a letter to Webb, Morris recorded that he had taken Jenny and May donkey riding on Hampstead Heath.

25 October 1867 : F T Palgrave wrote to W M Rossetti about The Life & Death of Jason: `I heard very favourable things about it from A. Tennyson (who came with me for three weeks last autumn to Devonshire), but I have seen no other judge of poetry who knew it except Woolner.'

November 1867 : Burne-Jones and his family moved to the Grange, North End Lane, Fulham. The house had previously been occupied by the novelist Samuel Richardson.

25 November 1867 : Morris wrote to the Rev F B Guy with reference to the proposed decoration of the Forest School, Walthamstow. Guy had introduced The Life & Death of Jason to the school curriculum at the Forest School. Morris wrote: `it makes me laugh to be in the position of nuisance to schoolboys.'

December 1867 : A second edition of five hundred copies of The Life and Death of Jason was published.

19 December 1867 : Morris wrote to Allan Park Paton telling him that the window depicting `Charity' would be ready to be installed in the Old West Kirk in January 1868.

1868 : Morris designed the stained-glass panels depicting Boaz and Ruth in the Church of St Edward the Confessor at Cheddleton, Staffordshire. He also designed the stained-glass panels of Christ as King and Zacharias at Llandaff Cathedral, Glamorgan. Morris's poem `Captiva Regina' was published in the Forest School Magazine.

February 1868 : Burne-Jones noted in his Account Book that he paid the Firm £2 16s for twelve Sussex chairs.

2 February 1868 : Morris wrote 33 stanzas of `Pygmalion and the Image' one of the stories for `August' in The Earthly Paradise.

3 February 1868 : Morris took the first instalment of The Earthly Paradise to the printer.

6 February 1868 : Morris finalised the publishing agreement with F S Ellis for The Earthly Paradise.

13 February 1868 : William Rossetti wrote in his Diary: `Browning expresses (as I had before been told) a very high opinion of Morris's Jason.'

March 1868 : Morris commissioned Rossetti to paint a portrait of Jane. This portrait is known as `Mrs William Morris in a Blue Silk Dress.'

11 April 1868 : A review of The Life & Death of Jason appeared in the Times.

19 April 1868 : At some point between this date and 1 May 1868 Volume I of The Earthly Paradise was published by F S Ellis. The first edition consisted on a thousand Crown 8vo copies (which sold at 14s) and a further twenty-five Demo 8vo on Whatman hand-made paper. Morris engraved the woodcut, from a design by Burne-Jones, of three female musicians that decorated the title page (this was also used in later editions of The Life & Death of Jason). The volume bore the inscription `To my Wife I dedicate this Book'.

20 April 1868 : Morris wrote to the Athenaeum pointing out some inaccuracies in their `Weekly Gossip' column relating to The Life and Death of Jason and the proposed illustrated edition of The Earthly Paradise. Morris wrote: `The time of publication ... of this illustrated edition must, from the magnitude of the work, be very remote.'

May 1868 : Warington Taylor wrote to Webb: `I have lately been quite wonderfully well - able to read a couple of Morris's poems; how simple and splendid they are!' In a letter to Jane, Rossetti drew a caricature of Morris as `The Bard and Petty Tradesman'

16 May 1868 : The Brighton Herald published an unsigned review of Volume I of The Earthly Paradise.

27 May 1868 : Morris held a party at Queen Square. Amongst those present were Allingham, the Burne-Joneses, Rossetti, the Madox Browns and Philip Webb. Allingham suggested the banquet be called the `Earthly Paradise' and this was written at the top of the menu by Burne-Jones.

30 May 1868 : An anonymous review of The Earthly Paradise appeared in the Athenaeum (pp. 753-54). Another anonymous review of the poem appeared in the Saturday Review (Volume XXV, pp. 730 and 731).

June 1868 : George Eliot wrote to John Blackwood: `We take Morris's poem into the woods with us and read it aloud, greedily, looking to see how much more there is in store for us. If ever you have an idle afternoon, bestow it on the Earthly Paradise.'

7 June 1868 : Robert Browning wrote to Morris thanking him for sending him The Earthly Paradise: `It is a double delight tome - to read such poetry, and know you, of all the world, wrote it'.

Mid-Summer 1868 : A second edition - actually a reprint - of Volume I of The Earthly Paradise was published. 750 copies were issued.

August 1868 : Warington Taylor introduced Morris to Eiríkr Magnússon. According to Magnússon: `with a cordial "come upstairs" [Morris] was off at a bound ... [and] I followed until his study on the second floor was released.'

1 August 1868 : Morris's poem `The God of the Poor' appeared in the Fortnightly Review (p. 110).

18 August 1868 : Morris and his family were holidaying at Southwold, Suffolk. They were accompanied by Charles and Kitty Howell. It has been suggested that Howell served as a go-between for Rossetti and Jane on this holiday passing on their letters without Morris's knowledge. Morris later described the area round Southwold as `a mournful place, but full of character.' While on this holiday he visited Blythburgh Church.

24 August 1868 : The Morrises returned to London from Southwold.

7 September 1868 : The American poet Paul Hayne wrote to Sidney Lanier: `As for Wm. Morris, I - for one, consider him as beyond doubt, the purest, sweetest, noblest narrative poet, Great Britain has produced since Chaucer. This may sound exaggerated, nevertheless it is simply true!'

17 September 1868 : Morris wrote to Cowden-Clarke expressing his `boundless admiration' for Keats `whom I venture to call one of my masters.'

19 September 1868 : Charles Eliot Norton described Morris in a letter to Ruskin as combining `in a wonderful measure the solid earthy qualities of the man of practical affairs, with the fine perceptions and quick fancy of the poet.'

October 1868 : Morris's poem `The Two Sides of the River' appeared in the Fortnightly Review (pp. 54 and 85). He began to learn Icelandic and started some translations with Magnússon. A review of `Guenevere', `Jason' and `The Earthly Paradise' by Walter Pater appeared in the Westminster Review, Volume XC, pp. 300-312.

4 October 1868 : Octavia Hill, who had just read The Life & Death of Jason, wrote to a friend that it was `true poetry' although she deplored its lack of Christianity.

18 October 1868 : Morris visited Charles Eliot Norton, the scholar and art historian, at his home at Keston Rectory, Bromley, Kent.

9 November 1868 : Rossetti wrote: `I called on Top[sy] who was howling and threatening to throw a new piano of his wife's out of [the] window. It unfortunately arrived I believe just at dinner time and the occurrence had poisoned his peace of mind ever since.'

17 November 1868 : In a letter to Alice Boyd, Rossetti wrote: `I met Topsy the other night at a large party of Greeks. He seemed depressed and complained of deafness, but on a large plug of string being taken out of his ear, he revived a good deal and even scratched himself in places apparently inaccessible. The whisky cork had already been got out of his nose, and Janey had nearly succeeded in fishing the paper-knife up from the base of his spine. He was offering to stand on his head thatit might drop out, but this was thought unnecessary.'

26 November 1868 : William Bell Scott held a dinner party which was attended by the Morrises and Rossetti: `Gabriel sat by Jeanie [sic], and I must say acts like a perfect fool if he wants to conceal his attachment, doing nothing but attend to her, sitting side-ways towards her, that sort of thing.' Bell Scott also recorded that Morris witnessed this behaviour.

29 November 1868 : The Rev F B Guy had a daughter. Morris agreed to be her godfather.

14 December 1868 : Morris wrote to Frederick R Leach in relation to the organ screens for St Mary's Church, Beddington, Surrey.

1869 : Morris designed stained-glass windows for the south aisle of St Mary's Church, King's Walden, Hertfordshire. The panels depicted St Raphael, St Michael, St Gabriel and musician angels. Morris's first decorated calliagraphic manuscript - The Dwellers at Eyr - was finished. J S Mill's The Subjection Of Women was published.

January 1869 : Morris and Magnússon's translation of `The Saga of Gunnlaug the worm-tongue and Rafn the Skald' appeared in the Fortnightly Review (pp. 54 and 82).

Late January 1869 : Mary Zambaco, with whom Burne-Jones was having an affair, tried to drown herself in the Paddington Canal outside Browning's house.

23 January 1869 : Rossetti recorded that Morris and Burne-Jones - `after the most dreadful to-do' - had started from Rome in an attempt to escape Mary Zambaco. Before he left Morris asked Jane to promise to cease her sittings for Rossetti while he was away. She agreed. However, Burne-Jones became so ill that they got no further than Dover before returning to London a few days later. The affair between Mary Zambaco and Burne-Jones continued until 1872.

February 1869 : An article on `William Morris and Matthew Arnold' by J Skelton appeared in Fraser's Magazine, Volume LXXIX, pp, 230-244.

7 February 1869 : Rossetti wrote to John Skelton: `You know Morris is now only 35, and has done things in decorative art which take as high and exclusive a place in that field as his poetry does in its own. What may he not yet do?'

March 1869 : Morris wrote the poem `Bellerophon'.

10 March 1869 : Henry James, in a letter to Alice James, described Jane as `a tall lean woman in a long dress of some dead purple stuff, guiltless of hoops ... with a mass of crisp black hair heaped into great wavy projections on each side of her temples, a thin pale face, a pair of strange sad, deep, dark, Swinburnian eyes, with great thick black oblique brows, joined in the middle of and tucking themselves away under her hair ... a long neck, without any collar and in lieu thereof some dozen strings of outlandish beads.' James, who had recently visited the Morrises, also wrote: `Morris lives on the same premises as his shop, in Queen's Square, Bloomsbury, an antiquated ex-fashionable region, smelling strong of the last century, with a hoary effigy of Queen Anne in the middle. Morris's poetry, you see, is only a sub-trade. To begin with, he is a manufacturer of stained-glass windows, tiles, ecclesiastical and medieval tapestry, altar-cloths, and in fine everything quaint, archaic, pre-Raphaelite - and I may add, exquisite.'

April 1869 : Morris's poem `On the Edge of the Wilderness'appeared in the Fortnightly Review (p. 54).

1 April 1869 : Morris's poem `Hapless Love' appeared in Good Words (p. 85).

May 1869 : Morris and Magnússon's translation of The Grettis Saga was published in an edition of 500 Crown 8vo copies by F S Ellis. According to Buxton Forman twenty-five copies of the book were printed on Whatman hand-made paper.

13 May 1869 : Morris sent a copy of The Grettis Saga to Charles Eliot Norton.

24 May 1869 : Morris had dinner with Burne-Jones and Charles Fairfax Murray. During this meeting there was an argument which may have related to Burne-Jones's affair with Mary Zambaco.

25 May 1869 : Morris apologised to Burne-Jones for his behaviour the previous evening: `we seem to quarrel in speech now sometimes, and sometimes I think you find it hard to stand me, and no great wonder for I am like a hedgehog with nastiness.'

June 1869 : Morris and Jane spent some days with Rossetti but Jane was too ill to sit for the portrait Morris had commissioned.

Late-June 1869 : Morris completed `Gudrun's Lovers'.

July 1869 : Warington Taylor wrote to Webb complaining about the Firm's failure to collect its outstanding debts: `Ned, W.M., and Gabriel egg one another on to every kind of useless expense... It is disgraceful such childish conduct'. When Webb passed these comments on to Morris he replied: `there is a great deal of reason in what he says, though he is not at present quite master of all the details.' A review of Morris's poetry appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, Volume CVI, pp. 56-73.

16 July 1869 : Rossetti wrote to Miss Losh: `Janey Morris is very ill. She and her husband are going to Ems on the Rhine, where she has been told to go and drink the waters and take baths. Topsy goes on working at a prodigious rate at the second volume of his Earthly Paradise, and is making it so bulky that it will have to come out in two divisions, the first of which will appear I suppose about October. One day lately, working from 10 one morning to 4 the morning after (with intervals of meals etc.) he produced 750 lines! - and this of the finest poem he has yet done.'

17 July 1869 : Morris and Jane departed for Dover en route to Bad Ems via Belgium: `Ned seemed more moved at my going than I should have liked to have seen him.' The trip was undertaken for Jane's health. May and Jenny were left at Naworth Castle with the Howards.

21 July 1869 : Morris and Jane viewed Van Eyck's `Adoration of the Lamb' in St Bavo's church at Ghent. Rossetti enclosed a cartoon in a letter to Jane which depicted her taking the waters at Bad Ems while she was read poetry by Morris: `The accompanying cartoon will prepare you for the worst - which ever that may be the seven tumblers or the 7 volumes.'

22 July 1869 : The Morrises spent the day in Ghent. While in Ghent Morris purchased soup plates and a number of Delft china oil and vinegar bottles. In the evening he and Jane left for Mechelen.

27 July 1869 : The Morrises probably arrived in Bad Ems. According to May her father had not planned the trip properly and he and Jane arrived at Bad Ems with nowhere to stay: `theywere literally stranded at the station, and I scarcely know which to be sorrier for, mother waiting there alone in a state of collapse, or father, frantically seeking for accommodation and coming back to her in a positively desperate state of mind.' Eventually they found rooms at the Fortuna guest house which overlooked the 17th century Kurhaus.

29 July 1869 : Jane visited the doctor and took two baths at the government baths. Morris later took Jane for a ten mile drive.

30 July 1869 : Jane again visited the doctor. Morris later took her for a boat trip on the river. Rossetti wrote to Jane: `All that concerns you is the all absorbing question with me, as dear Top will not mind my telling you at this anxious time. The more he loves you, the more he knows that you are too lovely and noble not to be loved: and, dear Janey, there are too few things that seem worth expressing as life goes on, for one friend to deny another the poor expression of what is most at his heart.'

31 July 1869 : In a letter to Philip Webb, Morris wrote that `Janey is certainly no worse than when we started.'

August 1869 : The Temple Bar (Volume XXVII, pp. 35-50) published an article by Alfred Austin on the poetry of Morris and Matthew Arnold.

1 August 1869 : Morris worked on his poem `Accontius & Cydippe': `I am not sanguine about it'.

4 August 1869 : Rossetti sent a letter to Jane which included a caricature of Morris complaining about his trousers to a German maid: `I fear that the legitimate hopelessness of the pictorial and ideal Topsy has communicated itself to the german maid in the cartoon.'

6 August 1869 : Both Morris and Jane were unwell. Jane was unable to take her usual treatment.

8 August 1869 : Morris went on a two hour walk up a hill road: `I think the country very jolly I must say.'

9 August 1869 : Morris wrote to Webb from Bad-Ems mentioning that he had been reading Carlyle's translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. He had also been reading Thackeray to Jane: `Thackeray's style I think so precious bad.'

11 August 1869 : Jane recommenced her treatment.

12 August 1869 : In a letter to Edward Nicholson, Morris noted that Julia Cameron had `threatened' to take his picture. There is no record that this actually happened.

14 August 1869 : Rossetti drew a cartoon of Morris entitled `Resolution; or, the Infant Hercules' which depicted him taking a shower. It had a note to Jane: `Conceive if your cure were now to proceed so rapidly that there remained a glut of surplus baths, and Topsy were induced to express a thanksgiving frame of mind by that act which is next to godliness.' Morris recorded that while out walking he had `heard a rustle in the dry leaves behind me and out crept one [an adder] as long as my umbrella of a yellowish olive colour and wriggled across the path as though he were expected; I kept feeling the legs of my trousers all the way home after that, and feel a little shy of sitting down on green banks now.'

15 August 1869 : By this time Morris was short of cash and wrote to Webb to arrange a loan of £60. In the morning he walked the twelve mile round trip to Nassau.

19 August 1869 : The cash from Webb arrived. Webb offeredthe money as a gift but Morris wrote: `I think the money will be much more equally divided by your keeping it, than by your casting it on the dry and thirsty ground of a ne'er-do-well.'

20 August 1869 : Morris wrote to Webb: `I went a walk in the uplands this morning about queer winding cart roads through grain fields dotted over with apple-trees, everything of course being on the slope, and big hills everywhere in the distance, and thought what a delightful country it was if I had any business there.'

24 August 1869 : Ellis visited the Morrises at Bad Ems.

25 August 1869 : Morris took Ellis on a mule ride in the morning. Later he accompanied Ellis to the Kurhaus where the latter gambled with some success at the card tables: `his luck has not tempted me to go in there again, it looked too dull.' Ellis left in the evening.

29 August 1869 : Morris, who had the `fidgetts', wrote to Webb outlining a design for a shower that Jane could use once they returned to England: `Can you get this rigged up for me at once in the dressing -room adjoining our bedroom.'

3 September 1869 : Morris, in another letter to Webb, wrote: `I consider Janey really better now; she is stronger and the local trouble seems so much better, as to be nearly knocked on the head.'

6 September 1869 : Morris and Jane left Bad Ems by train for Cologne.

7 September 1869 : The Morrises spent the day in Cologne to recover from the journey of the previous day.

8 September 1869 : The Morrises travelled to Liege where they spent the night.

9 September 1869 : The Morrises travelled to Ghent where they stayed at the Royal Hotel.

10 September 1869 : The Morrises spent the day in Ghent.

11 September 1869 : At midday the Morrises arr