"'Shall the hide of a fierce lion Be stretched on a couch of wood For a daughter's foot to lie on, Stained with a father's blood?'
"Whereupon the girl, quite unawed by the horrible proposition, replied with baffling complacency, 'It shall if you like, sir'!"
From the fact of the Red Lion Square rooms being unfurnished came practically the beginnings of Morris's work as a decorator and manufacturer. He set to work to provide it with "intensely mediæval furniture," designed by himself, and painted in panels afterwards by Rossetti and Burne-Jones. There were tables, chairs, and a large settle; "chairs," says Rossetti, "such as Barbarossa might have sat in." It is pleasant to think of Morris and Rossetti walking arm-in-arm on summer evenings, wending their way through quaint alleys up to the Red Lion Square lodgings, deep in earnest conversation; young, intensely busy and hopeful--still more intensely full of "the joy of life." They spent their holidays at the not far distant Zoological Gardens, where Morris, who was fond of birds, would observe and imitate the habits of eagles:
"He would imitate an eagle with considerable skill and humour, climbing on to a chair, and, after a sullen pause, coming down with a soft heavy flop; and for some time an owl was one of the tenants of Red Lion Square, in spite of a standing feud between it and Rossetti."
Morris had several Bloomsbury abodes. Later, when he married, and the Red Lion Square household broke up, he and his wife went into lodgings at 41, Great Ormond Street; and again, some five or six years later, they took an old house, 26 Queen Square, (now pulled down to make room for a hospital), a house which, with its yard and outbuildings behind, had room and to spare for his family, and also for workshops to accommodate his increasing trade as a decorative manufacturer. It is sad that London houses where Morris lived should bear no trace of his beautifying hand; for externally, it must be confessed, such of his Bloomsbury dwellings as remain extant are commonplace. Red Lion Square, a curiously antiquated enclosure near Holborn, approached by paved diverging alleys at the eastern corners, and with a pathetic look of having known better days (it is now mostly offices and business flats), contains but few dwelling-houses. No. 17 still stands, but the only thing about it that seems to suggest the Morris tradition is its plain green door; and it differs from its neighbours merely by its middle first-floor window being "heightened up to the ceiling" as already described. Neither is 41, Great Ormond Street--one of the smaller houses in that dignified old street--in any way remarkable, except for its rather dilapidated look. It seems a pity, by the way, that tablets do not more frequently indicate the houses where great people have lived; the dullest of London streets would gain infinitely in interest were this the rule, instead of merely the exception.