During the winters which he spent abroad he was still busy with new experiments and inventions, and set up a shop in his garden in Florence, where he trained Italian workmen to paint tiles with Persian colours under the glaze. But by degrees his connection with the work ceased, and about ten years ago the factory was closed and the moulds destroyed, to the great regret of all lovers of art.
It was just at this moment, when William De Morgan was already sixty-six, that he startled the world and amazed his most intimate friends by revealing himself in a new and altogether unexpected capacity. Suddenly, without any warning, the great potter appeared before the public as a successful novelist. There are comparatively few men in any age who have attained distinction in two separate branches of art. Great poet-painters there have been, it is true, such as Michelangelo in Italy of the Renaissance, and Dante Rossetti in our own times, but there was generally a close connection between their creations in the different arts. Either the picture was inspired by the sonnet, or the verses gave birth to the painting. It would be difficult to trace any connection between De Morgan’s tiles and the novels which his prolific pen poured forth in his later years. Yet, as I have often heard him explain, his novels were indirectly the result of his work as a potter. It was during these first fifty years of his life, when he was busily engaged in making experiments and looking about for boys and men whom he could train to help him, that he acquired the familiarity with the working classes and dwellers in the slums which is one of the most striking features of his novels. The close and daily contact into which he was brought with his own potters, listening to their talk and watching them at work as he sat in a corner of the factory making designs or meditating new inventions, gave him that intimate knowledge of their habits and language, that insight into the points of view and prejudices of their class of which he writes with so much sympathy and kindly humour.
As a boy he remembered being told by his father, the professor of mathematics, that he possessed some literary power, and that if he applied himself to books he might do something in that line. But in those early days, young De Morgan’s sole ambition was to be a painter. So he entered the Academy school and, like Charles Heath in ‘Alice-for-Short,’ gave up painting to design stained glass, giving this up in turn when, about the age of thirty, he started his experiments as a potter. But he never made any attempt at original composition until he wrote his first novel, ‘Joseph Vance,’ when he was well on in the sixties.
It was at this interesting moment in De Morgan’s career, in the summer of 1906, that I had the good fortune to meet him at a country house, where he was staying with one of his oldest friends. We had often met before, generally at Burne-Jones’ house, and as I sat by his side at dinner we recalled those happy times and sighed for the days and the friends that were no more. George Howard, Lord Carlisle, who happened to be my other neighbour, joined in our conversation and agreed with all De Morgan said of the brilliant play of fantasy, the wit and tenderness, the indefinable charm which made our beloved painter the most delightful companion in the world. And with tears in his eyes, De Morgan said how it was always thus in life. ‘We fail to realise the importance of the present and let the good days go by, without any attempt to keep a record of our friends’ words and actions, until it is too late.’ Towards the end of dinner he dropped his voice and whispered that he had a secret to tell me. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘I have perpetrated the crime or the folly—whichever you choose to call it—of writing a novel, which has just been published, and what is more wonderful I have in my pocket a flattering review of the book, in to-day’s Spectator!’ He went on to tell me how the story of ‘Joseph Vance’ had grown into being; how when he was ill and away in Florence, a rheumatic hand disabled him from drawing, so he took to scribbling instead, and began to jot down ideas that came into his head, on scraps of paper; how his wife encouraged him to go on with the story; and how he became interested first of all in the character of Christopher Vance, the drunken old builder, and then in that of his heroine, ‘Lossie,’ till the actual writing became a pleasure and the book took its present shape. The speaker’s earnestness and animation, I remember, excited Lord Carlisle’s curiosity, and after dinner he asked me if what he had caught of our conversation could be true and De Morgan had really written a novel. There was no denying the fact, and soon we were all reading ‘Joseph Vance’ and the friendly review which had given its author so much satisfaction.
From the first the success of the book was phenomenal. The girls in the office where the manuscript was typed became so much absorbed in the story that they forgot to go on with their work. The critics were unanimous in their chorus of praise, in spite of the unusual length of the book, which at first seemed likely to prove a stumbling-block. Mr. Punch pronounced ‘Joseph Vance’ to be quite the best novel which he had read for a long time, and the public on both sides of the Atlantic hailed the advent of a new star in the literary horizon.
The plunge once made, William De Morgan went merrily on, and novel after novel poured forth in rapid succession from his pen. ‘Joseph Vance’ was followed in 1907 by ‘Alice-for-Short,’ which contains the author’s reminiscences of his experiences as an art-student, and is dedicated to the memory of Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. Then came ‘Somehow Good,’ in which the lively ‘Sally’ rivalled his first creation, ‘Lossie,’ in the affections of the writer, as in those of his readers. Indeed, after the manner of authors, De Morgan confessed that he had fallen in love with his latest creation, but that he was not in the least responsible for Sally’s erratic conduct, as she simply went her own way and did whatever she liked with him. The wife’s meeting with her long-lost husband was, he sometimes said, the passage by which he wished to be remembered, just as Thackeray used to say that Becky Sharp’s pride in her Guardsman was what he himself should select as the best thing that he had written.
In 1909 De Morgan published a two-volume novel, ‘It Never can Happen Again,’ which he dedicated to the memory of Ralph, second Earl of Lovelace, ‘in remembrance of two long concurrent lives, and an uninterrupted friendship.’ Lord Lovelace (who died in 1906) he always said had been his earliest friend in Chelsea. His mother, Ada, daughter of Lord Byron, and first Countess of Lovelace, used to study mathematics with Professor Augustus De Morgan, and their children had known each other from the age of eight or nine. This new book was hardly as successful as its predecessors, although the episode of the blind beggar Jim and ’Lizer Ann was as fresh and delightful as anything its author had ever written.
Lord Lovelace himself once aptly described De Morgan’s novels as ‘the work of an idealist with realistic details,’ combining the sentiments and traditions of the Victorian age with the more analytical methods of the present generation. His sensitiveness to the deep impressions left on the youthful mind by passing sights and sounds, and to the strange way in which these trivial incidents weave themselves about the great events of life, was a noteworthy feature of De Morgan’s writings. Another striking feature of his novels was the vigour and animation of the dialogue, whether he chronicles the sayings of East-end beggars or West-end charwomen—a class with which he seems to have possessed a close and intimate acquaintance—or whether he sets down the lively prattle of Florentine gardeners and barbers or the almost preternatural quickness of repartee possessed by the small urchins of the slums. These are all recorded in the writer’s own inimitable fashion, with the same note of originality, the same gentle irony and warm sympathy, together with a youthful optimism which never seemed to grow old. Dickens, it has often been remarked, was the model on which De Morgan fashioned his style, but there is less of caricature in the characters which De Morgan draws, they are more real and human, and always lovable. The digressions in which he often indulges, taking the reader into his confidence and moralising on love and parting, on death and a future life, seem rather to recall Thackeray.
In his next novel, ‘An Affair of Dishonour,’ which appeared in 1910, De Morgan made a new departure. Leaving contemporary England and London of the Victorian age, he placed the scene of Sir Oliver and Lucinda’s adventures in the days of the Restoration, and introduced a graphic account of the naval battle of Solebay into the story. Several good judges rank this tale amongst the author’s best efforts, but De Morgan himself was not of this opinion, and when an admirer congratulated him on his new ‘tour de force,’ he replied ‘Say, rather, tour de faiblesse!’
The enforced break up of his old home in the Vale, Chelsea, and the move to another house in Church Street, were serious interruptions in De Morgan’s placid life, and when we met in the following summer he told me that for the last six months he had not been able to write a line, adding that it was perhaps just as well, since during the last five years he had written and published above a million and a quarter words! By the end of 1910, however, he and his wife were happily settled in their new home, to which they soon became deeply attached. That winter they spent Christmas in London for the first time, and before long decided to give up their house in Florence and make their home entirely in Chelsea. Here they lived happily, surrounded by old friends and their own beautiful works of art—De Morgan’s lustre-ware and Persian tiles, and his wife’s pictures. Mrs. De Morgan was an accomplished artist, and before her marriage her works appeared for many years at the Grosvenor and New Gallery exhibitions. Her industry was still as great as ever, and she went on painting her pictures while De Morgan wrote his novels. Music was another of their favourite occupations. They were regular attendants at the Albert Hall Sunday Concerts and the musical afternoons at Leighton House, and when they settled in Church Street De Morgan found a new source of delight in the pianola. He became the proud possessor of an Angelus, which he played all the evenings, and declared that it first revealed Beethoven to him. But long before this he had loved and studied the great master’s works, and readers of ‘Joseph Vance’ will remember the fine passage in which he describes the comfort that came to the bereaved widower in a dark hour, through hearing a movement of the Waldstein Sonata.