money or luxury—­and it can’t—­or anything it has in its trumpery treasure-house, it is most of all because he said it in a way that touched me, not scolding nor forbidding, nor much leading—­walking with me a step in front.  So he stands to me as a great image or symbol of a man who never stooped, and who put all this world’s life in one splendid venture, which he knew as well as you or I might fail, but with a glorious scorn of everything that was not his dream.

RED LION MARY
[Sidenote:  Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones]

The life in Red Lion Square was a very happy one in its freedom.  Red Lion Mary’s originality all but equalled that of the young men, and she understood them and their ways thoroughly.  Their rough and ready hospitality was seconded by her with unfailing good temper; she cheerfully spread mattresses on the floor for friends who stayed there, and when the mattresses came to an end it was said that she built up beds with boots and portmanteaus.  Cleanliness, beyond the limits of the tub, was impossible in Red Lion Square, and hers was not a nature to dash itself against impossibilities, so the subject was pretty much ignored, but she was ready to fulfil any mission or do anything for them at a moment’s notice, which was much more important.  Never did she dishonour their bills.

“Mary!” cried Edward one evening when ordering breakfast over-night for Rossetti, who was staying with them, “let us have quarts of hot coffee, pyramids of toast, and multitudinous quantities of milk”; which to her meant all he intended.  “Dear Mary,” wrote Rossetti, “please go and smash a brute in Red Lion passage to-morrow.  He had to send a big book, a scrapbook, to Master Crabb, 34, Westbourne Place, Eaton Square, and he hasn’t done it.  I don’t know his name, but his shop is dirty and full of account books.  This book was ordered ten days ago, and was to have been sent home the next day and was paid for—­so sit on him hard to-morrow and dig a fork into his eye, as I can’t come that way to murder him myself.”  From these hints she knew exactly what to say.

Her memory was excellent and sense of humour keen, so that some of the commissions on which she was sent gave her great enjoyment—­as one day when Edward told her to take a cab and go to Mr. Watts at Little Holland House, and ask him for the loan of “whatever draperies and any other old things he could spare,” and Mr. Watts, amused at the form of the request, sent her back with a parcel of draperies and an old pair of brown trousers, bidding her tell Mr. Jones those were the only “old things” he could spare.  This delighted Edward, and he detained Mary while he took down his “Vasari” and read to her of the old Italian painter who had his breeches made of leather because they wore out so quickly; and then he professed to be grateful for Mr. Watts’ gift, and said he would have the brown trousers made to fit him.