William Morris was a giant in physical strength and a giant in intellect.
His nature was intensely masculine, in that he could plan and act without
thought of precedent. Never was a man more emancipated from the trammels
of convention and custom than William Morris.

Kelmscott House at Hammersmith is in an ebb-tide district where once
wealth and fashion held sway; but now the vicinity is given over to
factories, tenement-houses and all that train of evil and vice that
follows in the wake of faded gentility.

At Hammersmith you will see spacious old mansions used as warehouses;
others as boarding-houses; still others converted into dance-halls with
beer-gardens in the rear, where once bloomed and blossomed milady's
flowerbeds.

The broad stone steps and wide hallways and iron fences, with glimpses now
and then of ancient doorplates or more ancient knockers, tell of
generations lost in the maze of oblivion.

Just why William Morris, the poet and lover of harmony, should have
selected this locality for a home is quite beyond the average ken.
Certainly it mystified the fashionable literary world of London, with whom
he never kept goose-step, but that still kept track of him--for fashion
has a way of patronizing genius--and some of his old friends wrote him
asking where Hammersmith was, and others expressed doubts as to its
existence. I had no difficulty in taking the right train for Hammersmith,
but once there no one seemed to have ever heard of the Kelmscott Press.
When I inquired, grave misgivings seemed to arise as to whether the press
I referred to was a cider-press, a wine-press or a press for "cracklings."