William Morris – A short History
Page 11
Throughout 1896 Morris’ health was becoming worse. Jane wrote again: `My husband has been unwell all winter, but the last few weeks there seemed fresh cause for anxiety he looked so very ill, and the worst is that no doctor has discovered anything very wrong with him.’
In June of that year, Jane again wrote: “the fits of prostration are startling from time to time and the loss of flesh goes on”. She visited Dr Playfair who said in his view “the disease was being William Morris and working 18 hours a day”.
William Morris died peacefully at eleven-fifteen in the morning of Saturday, October 3, 1896 at Kelmscott House in London.
The family doctor pronounced that he had “died a victim of his enthusiasm for spreading the principles of Socialism”. Another doctor stated, “The Disease is simple being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men.”
Georgiana Burne-Jones who – along with wife Jane, daughter May, Detmar Blow, and Mary De Morgan – was by his bedside said he died “as gently, as quietly as a babe who is satisfied drops from its mother’s breast.” Mary De Morgan and Emery Walker traveled to Kelmscott to break the news to Morris’ daughter Jenny. Later in the day Fairfax Murray made two drawings from the body.
On Tuesday October 6, 1896, Morris’s remains were transported by a privately hired train to Lechlade station where four countrymen in moleskin bore the body to an open cart festooned with vines, with alder and bulrushes.
William Morris’ coffin was of unpolished oak with wrought-iron handles. He was buried in the churchyard at Kelmscott.
William Morris' Grave at Kelmscott churchyard. Jane is buried with him.
Cunninghame Graham wrote: “dust to dust fell idly on my ears, and in its stead a vision of the England which he dreamed of filled my mind.”
