During the winter and spring of 1911 De Morgan found time to write another short novel, called ‘A Likely Story,’ in which he tried—not altogether successfully—to weave an Italian tale of the sixteenth century into the modern life of Chelsea. But the Italian part of the book is told with consummate art, and might almost pass as the work of Bandello or Luigi da Porto.
There was, however, general rejoicing among the readers of De Morgan’s novels when he returned to his older and more familiar vein in his second two-volume novel, ‘When Ghost meets Ghost,’ which appeared early in 1914. The plot of the story turns on the adventures of twin sisters, who are parted by a cruel fate in their youth, and only meet again after interminable vicissitudes and delays, when they are eighty years of age. This time his interest in the tale and the pleasure which he took in elaborating every detail carried him beyond his usual limits, and the story in its original form made up over a thousand pages. When in response to a gentle remonstrance from his publisher he succeeded in cutting out two hundred pages, he found it absolutely necessary to add another fifty or sixty, ‘to fill up the gaps.’ But in spite of its great length, much of the book was written in the author’s happiest manner, and many of his critics placed it next to ‘Joseph Vance’ in their estimation.
The letters which he received on this occasion, as he said in his quaint fashion, ‘greatly alimented his vanity.’ But he noticed that most of his readers referred to ‘Joseph Vance’ as his best book and to ‘Lossie’ as their favourite heroine. He confessed that for his part ‘Janey’ was ‘his darling,’ and took great pains to explain that she was not to be regarded as a ‘pis-aller,’ but as the best possible helpmeet for Joseph Vance—the true wife of his soul. One thing which surprised and gratified him extremely was the warm appreciation expressed for his novels by so many of the clergy—‘even Canons and Bishops’ of the Church of England, ‘in spite of all his heresies!’ It was in recognition of this kindly attitude that he felt it necessary to introduce a good parson into his novel, ‘It Never can Happen Again,’ in the person of the Rector, Athelstan Taylor, who refutes the ‘ultra-liberal views’ expressed by Alfred Challis.
He came to the conclusion that what attracted ecclesiastics of this description in his writings must be his ‘immortalism.’ As he always insisted, he had a firm faith in an overruling Providence which orders all things well, and in a future life where we shall see and know our lost friends once more.
It is pleasant to know that the success of De Morgan’s novels brought him the material rewards which his artistic pottery had failed to command, and better still to feel how thoroughly he enjoyed the fame and prosperity which had at length crowned his labours. He took a child-like pleasure in the letters which reached him from devoted admirers in all parts of the world, and often said that he was quite ashamed of the magnificent sums which he received from American publishers. The popularity of his novels showed no signs of diminishing. Each one was awaited with the same impatience, and in one instance a distinguished statesman who knew that his days were numbered, begged to see advance proofs of the forthcoming novel that was announced in the daily press, in order that he might enjoy this last pleasure before his death.
In November 1910, De Morgan was the guest of honour at a dinner given by the Society of Authors, but his gratification at the compliment thus paid him was considerably damped when he found that he was expected to make a speech! So nervous was he at the prospect that he would not allow Mrs. De Morgan to be present, lest he should disgrace himself by breaking down. But, although his voice at first sounded a little weak and quavering, he got through the ordeal well, and amused his hearers by a good-humoured allusion to a boycott which his last novel had sustained at the hands of one of the largest circulating libraries, which had rejected it as being improper. This, he suspected, was rather due to the fact that he had outraged the feelings of circulating libraries by venturing to publish a novel in two volumes. But he confessed that he could not help feeling rather hurt at the treatment which he had received, because of the singular respect that he had always felt for libraries, ever since the day, sixty-six years before, when his mother first took him, as a small boy, into Mudie’s Library. He still remembered clearly how, as he stood with his chin resting on the counter, he saw a tall gentleman step out from the back of the shop and hand his mother a parcel of books. ‘That,’ said Mrs. De Morgan, ‘was Mr. Mudie.’ He never forgot the thrill which the words sent through him.
Long residence in Chelsea had made William De Morgan familiar with its chief landmarks and leading inhabitants. He had known Carlyle and Rossetti, Whistler and William Bell Scott, John Hungerford Pollen and many other celebrities of past days. The historic monuments in the Old Church, and the families whom they commemorate, the Cheynes and Petitts, the Laurences and Danvers, were a theme of which he was never tired. He mourned over the destruction of the old wooden Battersea bridge that figured so often in Whistler’s paintings and etchings. He had many stories to tell of the part which it had played in the old life of Chelsea, and of the health-giving properties associated with the structure in the minds of former inhabitants. There was, it appears, a popular superstition among Chelsea folk some fifty years ago that seven currents of air met in the middle span of the bridge. A carpenter who is still living vividly remembers being taken by his mother to stand on the bridge, on a bitterly cold March day, with his six brothers and sisters, who were all suffering from whooping-cough. It must have been a case of kill or cure, but in this instance the good woman’s faith seems to have been justified, for all her seven children got over the whooping-cough and grew up hale and hearty.
In spite, however, of his affection for Chelsea and its people, De Morgan never forgot Italy and the Florentine home where he and his wife had spent so many happy seasons. He missed the sun and the flowers and thought with regret of his friend Spencer Stanhope, whose death had left so great a blank in the English colony at Florence. Often he recalled the painter’s lovely home at Villa Nuti, where the De Morgans always spent the week-end, and their pleasant walks up the steep hillside, on radiant April mornings, when Val d’Arno lay below in the first flush of spring loveliness.
One evening towards dusk I happened to meet him in Chelsea, in front of a new Roman church which has been built of recent years in Cheyne Row. The door stood open and we saw the priest within reciting the office of Benediction, the clouds of incense rising heavenwards and the gleam of silver and lighted candles on the altar. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I like that, it makes me feel I am at home again!’ And then it flashed across him that this church stood on the exact spot where his first pottery kiln had been set up, in the garden of Orange House; and so, as he said, ‘it really was his home.’
The sudden outbreak of war, in August 1914, found the indefatigable author busy with a new novel which promised to be both original and entertaining. It was the story of his own recollections of life in Chelsea during the last fifty years, put in the mouth of an old pauper exactly his own age, who was supposed to be living in the workhouse near his home. But, like many other authors, De Morgan found it impossible to go on writing when his whole soul was absorbed in the life and death struggle in which the Empire found itself involved. The new novel was left unfinished, but since a considerable part had been already written, it is to be hoped that both this fragment, and another novel on which he had been for some time engaged, may eventually see the light.