Philip Webb was a British architect known as a founder of the Arts and Crafts movement and also a key member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. He had a long association with William Morris and was responsible for the design of the hugely influential Red House, Morris's first home. Webb's letters will be of interest to art and architecture historians.
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Yes, you can access The Letters of Philip Webb, Volume III by John Aplin in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Architecture & History of Architecture. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. Sunday night 22 Jan: ’99
My dear Janey.
If I do not sit down and write to you at once you will be first in sending me a letter, and I shall be beaten in the race of not doing it. Doubtless you have excellent reason or reasons for accusatory excuse on your side; I have none – save my daily, and daily resulting indolence – a far stretch
towards the land of nowhere on which I shall never land, nor see its well known Castle. You, in the kindness of your heart, will be saying for me, “but your work is so tiresome, only equalled in its wearying labour by your clients’ stupidity, so that you can have no time for indolence”! My answer can but be, that I have found time in which not [to] write to you, and that the rowel of the spur1 of my conscience is only now pricking me on to do so, that the very craziness of my style may stir you to retort in kind. Do so, and forgive me.
I dare not enlarge on the crimes of my remaining clients, for fear of the oncoming last one preparing her skirts to sit upon me as they (the penultimate) are doing – for, in the indolence of dream-land I have pictured myself as defacing that pretty hump of ground where the two cottages are to stand near the second crook on the way to the village cross: but, and the ‘but’ brings me up. As soon as the days get long enough for me to do the outing in the day, I must go up to Kelmscott and gather my wits together to see if it be possible not to Cockneyfy the simple sweetness of the place.
I have heard of you through Jenny and May, as well as Walker and Cockerell; but from neither have I gathered that you are robustious, and leading the dance on the verge of the quay at Lyme Regis, either with flourish of ‘skirt’ – or without.2
The time before when I was up at Chiswick, Mrs Grove and Jenny asked me to come again on the 17th Jan: for the birthday supper, to which I said, yea.3 The irresistible Cockerell caught me by the scruff of the neck and landed both – hippogriph fashion,4 in the New Gallery, as a preliminary wakening of my slow faculties.5 O, my child, what a setting out of fabulous pictures were there of sailed-away Ned’s – numbering some 220 & more in the Catalogue. The hour and a quarter we had only allowed me to glance over old and some new friends with the allied witchcraft of memory attending on the looking. 40 years or so of enormous aptitude and industry collected to bedaze one – and I comed [sic] away sadly-serious, with a lurking joy at the bottom, that I had been allied for those 40 years with the two men we knew – enough.
Cockerell then switched me on to Chiswick, and we were prettily welcomed in a very carefully chosen party, all willing and able to be cheery,6 and we were so; and so much so that I ate supper of the best without fore – or after taste of compunction. On the whole I thought Jenny was stronger, and she could not have been kinder to me. She shewed me her newly attained Bewick’s birds,7 with much satisfaction to both. May fairly well, so far as I could make out, and she invited herself heretoward as soon as an evening could be declared, which is to be so; when I shall learn more of her in the tete à tete than I could in the throng the other night.
There, my paper is out, and I send you the above affectionate nonsense from Your old friend | Philip Webb.
BL Add 45342, f. 118
1 The rowel is the small wheel at the point of a spur.
2 JM had been at Chatham House, Lyme Regis, since early December 1898, and did not return to London until April 1899.
3 JEM’s 28th birthday. PSW’s had previously seen her on New Year’s Eve. ‘[Jenny and Mrs Grove] were up here for tea yesterday, & I thought Jenny looking very well – so did Mr Webb who looked in for a few minutes on his way to Mr Wardle.’ SCC to JM, 1 January 1899, BL Add 52738, f 79.
4 The legendary hippogryph, a winged horse-like creature with the head of an eagle. In Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, it is capable of great speed.
5 ‘Met P.W. at the New Gallery at 4.45 & looked at the pictures with him till 6.’ CD, 17 January 1899. After EBJ’s death, arrangements were set in place for two concurrent exhibitions of his work, with paintings at the New Gallery in Regent Street and a selection of drawings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in Savile Row. SCC attended the private view of the New Gallery show on 28 December 1898. ‘A most glorious collection of pictures, many of them new to me.’ CD.
6 ‘[W]ent on to Jenny’s birthday party at Mrs Grove’s – Walker, Miss de Morgan & Mrs Sparling [MM] there – & a merry evening.’ CD, 17 January 1899.
7 The illustrations of the Northumberland wood-engraver, Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) are renowned, especially those of animals and birds. His History of British Birds first appeared in 1797 (land birds) and 1804 (water birds).
619 • To Jane Morris, 28 January 1899
1, Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, | London, W.C. 28 January 1899
My dear Janey
Your good letter of yesterday eased my conscience a little – for I have one, though it gets mislaid at times. It pleased me to learn the rheumatic “knots” were uncoiling, allowing you to get out in the sun when his blessed face in these northern regions is a boon in winter time, and you are not shy of him in such a summer as the last.
I would be glad to Darby & Joan it with you at Kelmscott when you get there – if it can be managed, for you would not hinder my trying to get at the bottom of the cottage problem as how not to cockneyfy the sweet place. I could go about alone and come back and tell you of what seemed likely to be least injurious. In any case it would be a new building.
True, it is devoutly to be desired that May should see her way to peace without rash adventure into the terrible ways of chance: she is always so kind to me that I should the more fear hurting her feeling in any way, and you know I am apt to be too frank: my feeling is of the kindest towards her, but kindness is sometimes killing. I think too she has some of her father’s shyness: maybe I may get her here shortly and have a cheerful talk on things various, in which she may lead the way as may best please her. I am saddened when I see her sitting as the pain-touched woman in a dark dress.1
‘Antiscrape’ finds Parson Burchall (but the boy in me asks if it is not Birchall?) exceedingly helpful in his district – which he makes a wide one, for he has been fighting for Oxford and is likely to do more there.2 You have been likely to hear that rumours of new railways in the Kelmscott neighbourhood are flying about, and he is up in action on that point: for of wheels and stock-jobbing are the chief spiritual thought of our time, and I would have liked to be on ‘tother side of Jordan’ before the porters sing out, ‘Kelmscott Junction, change here for Jerusalem’. Perhaps the covered 7 acres of Gray’s Inn garden may at this moment be on the stock-jobbing road to perdition, and a bill may be in Parliament before my name is in the bills of mortality.
Adieu for the present from your affectionate old friend | Philip Webb.
I had a note from Aglaia this morning:3 she is still unable to get about; I must go and see her as soon as I can, and talk of the coming summer and a new lease of life without lameness.
BL Add 45342, f. 119
1 For MM’s difficulties, see Vol. II, Letter 592, note 1. ‘May’s proceedings ended satisfactorily, and she has now lost a tiresome husband & a comfortable grievance. I fancy these two things rather balanced each other and that the sense of relief is not very great. However she is working & lecturing.’ SCC to Judith Blunt Lytton, 17 February 1899, BL Add 54155, f. 11.
2 PSW would have been delighted to have his preferred spelling confirmed: the Reverend Oswald Birchall was rector of Buscot, near Kelmscott. He had been close politically to WM, and also became involved in investigation...
