William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'

Apollo, Feb, 2004 by Michael Braesel

'Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,/A flask of wine, a book of verse, and thou/Beside me singing in the wilderness,/And wilderness is paradise enow.' (1) In these lines from 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam', which had been avail able in a translation by Edward Fitzgerald since 1859, all the pleasures of life which William Morris valued most seem to be united--food and wine, the company of good friends, poetry and nature.

Morris's affection for the text is reflect ed in the fact that he prepared four copies of it, three of them illuminated. Here we will concern ourselves only with the first two manuscripts, which were made at a short interval from one another. (2) The differences in the conception of their decoration, which can be explained by the different levels of involvement of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in each case, will be the central concern of the present article.

There can be no doubt that Morris was introduced to the text by Burne-Jones, and borrowed the book after which the copies were made from him. (3) The first manuscript of the 'Rubaiyat' was made between spring 1871 and 16 October of the next year as a birthday present for Burne-Jones's wife Georgiana, to whom Morris had already given a manuscript with a few poems entitled 'A Book of Verse', and an illuminated version of a translation from the Icelandic, 'The Story of the Dwellers of Eyr' (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, no. 92'20); he completed the latter--as he noted in the colophon--on 19 April 1871. (4) The choice of the title 'A Book of Verse' was probably already intended to refer to the line from the 'Rubaiyat' quoted above, and indicates the particularly close ties between Morris and Georgiana Burne-Jones. (5) 'A Book of Verse' was produced as a collaborative venture by Morris, Burne-Jones, George Wardle and Charles Fairfax Murray, and the manuscript of the 'Rubaiyat' now in the British Library is also a collaborative work by Morris and Fairfax Murray. (6)

While the British Library manuscript bears the stamp of Morris, the second, privately owned manuscript of the 'Rubaiyat' seems to be the creation of Burne-Jones; together with Morris he prepared it for Frances Graham, the daughter of his friend and patron William Graham. What must be carefully weighed up in this connection is the received wisdom concerning the patronage of this second 'Rubaiyat'. Mackail wrote that even before completing the British Library manuscript Morris began 'another copy of the same poem for Burne-Jones on paper, and in it Burne-Jones himself painted six extraordinarily beautiful pictures, each in a different scheme of colour and showing ... his finest qualities of design and invention'. (7) His wording does not make it clear whether the manuscript was originally intended as a gift for Burne-Jones, or whether Morris was preparing it at Burne-Jones's behest, and that the latter intended that it should be a present for Frances Graham. Moreover, it has been Suggested--possibly on the basis of an inference from Mackail--that Morris 'intended the second to be for Ned [Burne-Jones]. But Ned could not resist giving the exquisite, painted book to Frances'. (8) If this were the case, any involvement on the part of the intended recipient of the gift in its manufacture would seem rather implausible.

Mackail's account of the distinctive colour scheme adopted for each individual miniature has proved highly influential, and has been much repeated, not least, perhaps, because this manuscript was relatively inaccessible by comparison with those housed in public libraries; what is surprising is the fact that Mackail emphasised the differences rather than the similarities in the colouring.

While the British Library manuscript carries on from 'A Book of Verse' in terms of its design, and builds on the results achieved there in terms of its treatment of the floral ornaments, in comparison with which the figures are less important, the second manuscript is characterised by six large miniatures which--both in their positioning in the upper third of the page and in their wide, heavy gold frames--are inspired by the miniature by Burne-Jones placed before the first poem in 'A Book of Verse' (Fig. 1). (9) The fact that this represented a continuation of a tried and tested form of illuminated miniature, which was painterly in conception, would argue in favour of Burne-Jones as the initiator of the manuscript given to Frances Graham. The explicitly pictorial character of the miniature by Burne-Jones in 'A Book of Verse' contrasts with the smaller miniatures executed by Fair-fax Murray that are inserted into the floral foliage decoration. As is clear in the manuscripts that were created following 'A Book of Verse', Morris himself tended to combine figures and ornament in the borders framing the manuscript, whereas this approach is abandoned in the Graham 'Rubaiyat' in favour of a pictorial effect and the resulting separation of the miniatures and framing ornaments. Admittedly, the floral decoration follows the pattern of 'A Book of Verse' in its layout and in defining the written field by means of the linear frame, but in the London 'Rubaiyat' it is more luxuriant, denser and more animated, and richer colours are used.