But most of his decorative designs were still consecrated to the living. In 1894 he conceived another work to be carried out in bronze relief, the seal of the newly instituted University of Wales. Many designs were made for embroidery (cat. no. 130), some of them commissioned by the Royal School of Art Needlework, founded in 1872; and some interesting experi- ments in jewelry design included pieces made by the well- known Piccadilly firm of Giuliano (cat. no. 137) and one of the gold crosses that Ruskin presented each year to the May Queen at Whitelands Training College for Girls in Chelsea (cat. no. 136). Among other objects that either exist or for which designs are known or recorded were a clavichord, a cra- dle, a jewel box, bookcovers, a lady's fan, and embroidered shoes, even the chandeliers and wooden seats in his "garden" studio. His versatility seemed all-embracing, and no one expressed better the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of art as a way of life. Many of his designs were shown in the exhibitions held at the New Gallery by the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, which was launched in 1888 to define and promote this philosophy. Burne-Jones's enormous and varied output could not have been achieved without intense application. "The work that went on at home," Philip recalled, "was incessant, and I never remember seeing my father idle. He breakfasted punctually at eight o'clock, and was always in his studio by nine- — where he worked uninterruptedly till one o'clock. A short hour was allowed for luncheon, after which he returned to work for as long as the light lasted. … Sometimes he allowed himself a short breathing-space, when he would leave the studio and pay brief visits to various members of his family, or respond to the civilities of a caller, but without ever relinquishing his palette and brushes, to which he seemed to cling as a symbol of safety." 82 Even the notorious "pea soupers" that afflicted Victorian London do not seem to have deterred him. "I gen- erally go and see Burne-Jones when there's a fog," the actress Ellen Terry told George Bernard Shaw in October 1896. "He looks so angelic, painting away there by candlelight." 83 And yet, on top of all his studio work, Burne-Jones found time for another, "unofficial" artistic activity. His addiction to making humorous drawings is not difficult to explain. It was another recourse for that restless pencil and a means of expressing the puckish side of his personality that found no place in his painting. It was also an outlet not only for all that was extraneous to the paintings of that intense "looking" at life which Henry James had noted but for a particular kind of observation. Graham Robertson is once again perceptive. "I . . . noticed very soon when walking with him," he wrote, that wonderfully quick as he was to observe and note passing events of a sad or comic or quaint character, all such material as would be useful to the novelist or the poet, he saw nothing from the purely pictorial point of view. Albert Moore [under whom Robertson had studied] would come in from a walk flail of almost inarticulate delight at the memory of black winter trees fringing the jade-green Serpentine, or of a couple of open oysters lying on a bit of blue paper or of a flower-girls basket of primroses seen through grey mist on a rainy morning. Burne-Jones would have woven a romance or told an amusing tale about the flower girl, but would not have noticed her primroses, the combination of the silvery oysters and the blue paper would not for a moment have struck him as beautiful; he had not the painter's eye. 84 Many of the drawings were made for children (fig. 10 1) — Philip and Margaret, Katie Lewis (cat. no. 118), Margaret's children Denis and Angela (later the novelist Angela Thirkell), but perhaps above all, as Georgie noted, "the child that was always in himself." 85 There were innocent nursery idylls pop- ulated by babies, pigs, cats, dogs, and birds, as well as such amiable mythical beasts as the "wallypug" and the "phlum- budge." A whole series of drawings, a friend recalled, was devoted to "the life and habits of an animal called 'The 'Spression,'" a creature in itself undistinguished, "but his expression, now joyous, now melting, here deeply tragic, there raffish and rollicking, lent him a charm all his own. One par- ticular drawing, 'Stampede of Wild 'Spressions in the Pampas,' showed him in almost every mood and is a joy to remember." 86 But not all these drawings were so cozy. For strong-minded children like Angela, there was a series enti- tled "The Horrors of Mountainous Lands." "They nearly all had a hint of the nightmare about them, treating of the adven- tures of helpless midgets lost in vast lands of towering mountain peaks, fathomless abysses and trackless forests. One . . . showed an immense valley . . . smooth and polished like a basin into which a tiny insect-like man had slipped and was sliding miserably down the side towards a dark hole which yawned at the foot. Beneath was the cheering inscrip- tion — 'Inside that hole there is a Thing.'" 87
On The Grange headed paper c. 1895 to Helen Mary Gaskell. Saturday aft / They are cleaning already. / An awful woman, oh / an awful harridan of / a gorgon has come with / buckets & soap & mops and all the / utensils of her art - & men - and / what, I ask, is the good of life? it / is all your doing - you said the room / was "nasty" - she's like that / & she will live with me / & bear me company / till Wednesday / afternoon. / ? / me, & there / will be no Escape / from her / & to look / at her once / is to lose / all artistic / sense for ever - & to look at her / ... ... she will tyrannize over me - and make / my days a damp waste. are you sorry-? / ? Morris who is ? less like a Viking, which / he really is, says that he is ? sorry for / me. / ...
The cleaning of what Burne-Jones called his 'Augean studio' was always a much-dreaded event.