To the "Oxford and Cambridge Magazine," William Morris's organ, which ran for the twelve months of 1856, Rossetti contributed "The Burden of Nineveh," "The Blessed Damozel" (a little altered from the "Germ" version), and "The Staff and Scrip."

By the end of 1856 Burne-Jones and Morris had left Oxford and were settled in London, occupying the rooms at 17, Red Lion Square, which had formerly served as a studio for Rossetti and Deverell. Both were under the spell of Rossetti's influence. The ménage at Red Lion Square lasted till 1859, and was a rallying point for all members of the circle. "From the incidents that occurred or were invented there," says Mr. Mackail, "a sort of Book of the Hundred Merry Tales gradually was formed, of which Morris was the central figure." The rooms were "the quaintest in all London," as Burne-Jones wrote, "hung with brasses of old knights and drawings of Albert Dürer"; and in order to furnish them recourse had to be had to invention. A local joiner was engaged to manufacture furniture from Morris's own designs: "intensely mediaeval" was Rossetti's description of it to a friend, "tables and chairs like incubi and succubi." Next came the idea of painting pictures on walls, cupboards, and doors, about the time that Morris was planning to build himself at Upton, in the neighbourhood of Bexley Heath, a "palace of art" the like of which should never have been seen. In the general enthusiasm Rossetti set to and designed a pair of panels for a cabinet—the subject of his early pen-and-ink drawing, The Salutation of Beatrice, representing in two compartments Dante meeting Beatrice in Florence, and again in Paradise.

At the risk of repetition, one may mention once more a side of the movement which is apt to be overshadowed by its far-reaching results; namely, the light-heartedness and sense of fun which prevailed amongst this band of artistic pioneers. There was nothing of the mawkish affectation which discredited the aesthetes who came after. When Burne-Jones was down at Upton, helping to decorate the Red House in 1860, Rossetti wrote to a mutual friend: "I wish you were in town, to see you sometimes, for I literally see no one now except Madox Brown pretty often, and even he is gone to join Morris, who is out of reach at Upton, and with them is married Jones painting the inner walls of the house that Top built (Morris was always called 'Topsy' by his friends). But as for the neighbours, when they see men pourtrayed by Jones upon the walls, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed (by him!) in Extract Vermilion, exceeding all probability in dyed attire upon their heads, after the manner of no Babylonians of any Chaldea, the land of anyone's nativity—as soon as they see them with their eyes, shall they not account him doting and send messengers into Colney Hatch?"

During the long vacation of 1857 Rossetti went up to Oxford with Morris on a visit to the architect, Benjamin Woodward, who was at work upon a debating hall for the Union Society, and seeing an opportunity for mural decoration of a kind never previously attempted in England in the new hall of the Union, he became fired with an idea for carrying it out. The hall was a long building, with an apse at each end, and a gallery running all the way round. In this gallery were bookcases, and above the cases were ten semi-circular bays, each pierced with a pair of circular windows. These bays, it was suggested, should be painted with scenes from the Arthurian legend, and the roof, as part of the general scheme, was to be decorated in a harmonious manner. A building committee was in charge of the operations, and without any clear idea of its responsibilities or restrictions it fell in with Rossetti's proposal that he and a select band of artists should execute the work gratuitously, but that the Union should defray their expenses at Oxford and should provide all necessary materials. The time estimated for completing the work was six weeks. Seven artists, including Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris, were enlisted without much trouble, the remaining four being Arthur Hughes, Spencer Stanhope, Val Prinsep, and J. Hungerford Pollen, who had already won much credit from his painting of the roof in Merton College Chapel. Rossetti took as subjects for two bays Launcelot asleep before the Chapel of the Sanc Grael and Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival receiving the Sanc Grael. The others chose similar themes, but in a short time it was found that the work in hand was considerably more than had been anticipated, though abundant evidence remains of the enthusiasm which was put into it.

Unfortunately the delight was not to be of long duration. Almost before the pictures were finished they had begun to decay, the effect of tempera laid direct upon a new brick wall, with no preparation but a layer of whitewash, being quite inadequate to resist the English climate. Several of the designs were never completed. In 1859 some arrangement was entered into by the Union with a Mr. Riviere to fill the three blank compartments; and after that the ill-fated undertaking, on which so much pains and so much skill had been spent, gradually faded away and resolved itself into what it is to-day, a dingy blur of colours in which may be distinguished the occasional vague form of an armoured limb or a patch of flowery background.

Rossetti's connection with Oxford, and its intercalation in his work, does not end with the Union paintings. It was destined to furnish him with a more lasting influence—a face that to the end of his life haunted his pictures with an austere and solemn beauty, dominating and transforming all other kinds, so as even to give rise to the suggestion—a shallow and ignorant one, it is true—that he painted but one type of face. It was at the theatre, one night in the summer of 1857, that Rossetti and Burne-Jones found themselves sitting near two youthful Misses Burden, daughters of an Oxford resident, the elder of whom, by her striking features and wealth of dark wavy hair, appealed so forcibly to Rossetti's painter eye that he obtained an introduction in order to ask for sittings. A pen-and-ink head called Queen Guenevere, now in the National Gallery at Dublin, and evidently intended to replace the earlier studies done for Launcelot at the Shrine, was one of the first fruits of this acquaintance, which, for the rest, does not seem to have become really prolific of results until several years later, when Rossetti's wife was dead. In the meantime William Morris, whose admiration went even further, had married Miss Burden, and the casual relationship of painter and sitter which existed between her and Rossetti deepened into a friendship, in which Miss Siddal participated, both up to and after her marriage.

CHAPTER VI
WORK FROM 1858 TO 1862

The year 1858, while the Oxford affair was still in train, saw the completion of two pen-and-ink drawings which had been in hand a long time. These were Hamlet and Ophelia and Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee.