Jenny Morris at Over Stowey

http://janmarsh.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/jenny-morris-at-over-stowey.html

Jenny aged 44

My favorite Jenny aged about 30

thanks for pointing out my mistake
Kimberly Eve

Jenny and William

Morris adored Jenney [sic]. He could not sit in the same
room without his arm around her waist. His voice changed
when he spoke to her as it changed to no one else ... Their
harmony seemed to me to be perfect.

G.B. Shaw
The Observer, 6 November 1949

Ada Peerless

Kimberly has kindly pointed out that in this photograph from Kelmscott (1905), Ada Peerless is named as Jenny's companion, the only one we know of though I can't trace any details. She may also be in this picture as well

but is not named.

Jenny (along with May) had a very comfortable income averaging just over £700 / annum derived from her Fathers dividends and sales. She seems to have settled in the country and Sidney Cockerell implies she was heavily sedated in her last years with a corresponding mental decline and was worse if she visited Kelmscott where she wandered sadly looking for her Father (not her Mother note).

Jenny left her posessions including books fom her Father to May and they later went to the V&A. She died at Over Stowey in Somerset on 11 July 1935 at 74 (the same age Jane died) of diabetes (her Father's disease too). The Kelmscott village hall was partly funded by her.

Jane and Jenny Morris

There were times when Jenny (1904 for instance) when Jenny seemed better and showed her natural intelligence. But to live knowing she would inevitably have another attack, never marry, never fulfill her obvious potential.

There are long letters to her from her Father but seemingly none from her Mother. Jenny was said to be very upset at Jane's funeral though. After that time she seldom visited Kelmscott and May, living in various accommodations on the South Coast with carers. Her letters have never been collected though Kimberly posted on one she found recently. So many questions still.

http://www.artfund.org/what-we-do/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/12421/honeysuckle-embroidery

The Morris Family and Friends or My day of research at The Morgan Library! blog post

http://kimberlyevemusings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-morris-family-and-friends-or-my-day.html

Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_Exhibition_Society

In the 1888 exhibition May displayed a silk book cover for Love is Enough and a screen. Jane and Jenny exhibited a portiere worked in silks and linen while Bessie displayed three 'Illustrious Women' (Penelope, Hippolyta and Helen).

At the 1890 show, May exhibited nine items and included a child's quilt worked by Jane.

Jenny detail, date unknown

Childhood

William Morris may serve as another instance of a Victorian middle-class father whose parenting style eschewed detached authoritarianism, and instead combined nurture, play, instruction, lively conversation, and shared interests throughout the lives of his two daughters. May Morris describes her relatively liberated childhood, marked by both intellectual and physical freedom. As children, May and her older sister Jenny fished, punted, climbed trees, and roamed outdoors at will, unconfined by Victorian conventions of feminine dress or demeanour. May’s penchant for climbing the gabled roofs of Kelmscott Manor — or ‘roof-riding’ as she called it — seems to have been a regular activity until one day she found herself stranded, unable to descend, and the gardener was sent ‘post-haste for the longest ladders the village possessed’.7 The Morris girls were given free access to the family library, educated outside the home, and included in social occasions as full participants, as May’s memories of childhood conversations and friendships with famous denizens of the Morris social circle attest. Morris also seems to have had an enlightened view of the role of adult daughters in the home: the social expectation that (unmarried) daughters would serve their fathers’ needs seemed entirely absent from the Morris household and Morris was known to undertake domestic duties at times (he was a keen cook, for instance).

The Morris daughters’ sympathy for their father’s aesthetic and political philosophies, and the circumstances of their later lives, however, complicate this picture in a number of ways. Jenny Morris’s epilepsy — which developed in mid-adolescence and left her a semi-invalid for the rest of her life — struck at the heart of Morris family life, taking a heavy emotional toll on all. For Morris, it meant that he always worked to include Jenny in conversations and correspondence about literature, politics, and art as a means of assuring her of his confidence in her intellectual capacities, despite her illness (much misunderstood in this era, of course) and to compensate for her limited access to the outside world. May Morris’s close collaboration with her father, both in Morris & Co. and socialist organizations, no doubt reflected an emotional dynamic in which passionately shared interests were inextricably bound up with shared affection, but one does not need to be an avowed Freudian to see May’s short-lived marriage to an unprepossessing socialist of her father’s circle as a conflicted — if unconscious — attempt to replace and please her father at the same time. The tone of Morris’s correspondence with his daughters retained a childlike playfulness throughout their lives, despite (or because of?) the complexities of their adult relationships. Letters offering sustained accounts of political events or other weighty concerns were interspersed with affectionate asides to ‘my darling child’ or ‘my dear little May’ and gentle but humorous mocking of friends and associates.9 In her recollections of her father, then, it is not surprising that May Morris emphasized this light-hearted aspect of her father’s character in his dealings with the children. From May, we see glimpses of Morris’s delight in his children and their happiness, very similar to that described by Mamie Dickens of her father. Describing her first trip abroad — when the Morris family, together with the Burne-Jones children, Margaret and Philip, travelled to France — May recalled that, during the train journey, ‘Father smiled across at Mother above the scrambling swarm and said, with his heart in his voice, “It’s worth anything to take the kids a treat, Janey, and see the little rascals enjoying it so.”

http://www.19.bbk.ac.uk/index.php/19/article/view/606/768

Jenny Morris

http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-tragedy-of-jenny-morris.html

my post on Jenny

May and Jenny's graves;Kelmscott church

Jenny Morris grave

I've been looking everywhere for a photo of this- at last

The sweet stone for Jane Alice (Jenny) Morris that was buried in the lawn near her parents under a weeping yew tree. With moss growing in the initials.

Honeysuckle embroidery

This hanging is a rare example of a collaboration between three members of the Morris family: William, who designed the honeysuckle pattern, and his wife Jane and daughter Jenny, who embroidered the fabric.

I Knew Jenny did some embroidery as therapy for her epileptic fits but never seen anything that survived before.

http://www.artfund.org/what-we-do/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/12421/honeysuckle-embroidery-william-morris

WM Gallery

The Tragedy of Jenny Morris

My article on Jenny

http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-tragedy-of-jenny-morris.html?spref=fb

Jenny and May Morris 1870

Jenny and May Morris 1870
George Howard
Kelmscott Manor

Sorry for the scan that book (Jane's Letters) is heavy!

Jenny Jane Alice Morris

Jenny Jane Alice Morris
by Unknown photographer
albumen cabinet card, 1901

Jenny at about 40

Jenny at about 40 (c. 1901)
Unknown photographer
albumen cabinet card, 1901?

Jenny Morris as a young adult

Jenny Morris at 18 (1879)

already under treatment for epilepsy.