A selection from "Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics" by Lyn C.A. Gardner

Kelmscott Manor: In the Attics

by Lyn C.A. Gardner

G

eorgiana Burne-Jones sat beside the great bed, holding Topsy’s hand while he slept. Georgie had seen this room many times: the whole of Kelmscott Manor was a work of art. The top panel of the bed-curtains bore a verse that Topsy had written, embroidered by his younger daughter in medieval script. The house held furnishings both medieval and modern; he and his friends and family, including Georgie, had created many of the tiles and tapestries.

But Jane, his wife, had only been interested in his vision in the early years, when he still tried to paint her in oils or verse, before her boredom had grown to disgust and led her to the arms of the lovers that her adoring husband chose not to begrudge her. Though they never spoke of it in such vulgar terms, Georgie knew that her friend had spent his time in this wonderful bed alone.

His face looked so worn, so lined—shockingly old. Too much for sixty-two. The unruly dark hair and beard had all gone white. So many marks of care about his mouth; even while he slept, a muscle ticked on his cheek, as if he couldn’t rest. It was his energetic spirit—his need to do everything—that was killing him.

Since 1883, he’d worn himself down, committing heart and soul to the Cause: his form of Socialism, which aimed to bring beauty and happiness to daily life through the revival of handicraft, care for the earth, and the elimination of class disparities. Though he had sacrificed his poetry on this altar years ago, in the end, he’d despaired of the politics. These last few years, he’d turned his hope inward, crafting beautiful books to fuel the imagination and give courage to the soul. But he hadn’t stopped his grueling lectures soon enough to save his health.

She stroked his hand, so large, so talented—so often stained deep blue from the dye vats. His elder daughter had dubbed him “Old Proosian Blue.” Now the hands had grown thin, spotted, striped with the paler blue of ropy veins.

The great man, William Morris, opened his eyes.

“Georgie,” he murmured. “You came at last. How I’ve wanted a sight of your dear face.”

“Topsy,” she said fondly. “We’ll be walking through your gardens before you know it. Kelmscott is beautiful in the fall, with all the leaves aflame.”

He grunted, but he smiled. She could see what an effort he made for her. Both of them knew that he would never see Kelmscott in autumn again.

“How I’ve missed you. Our talks.” He lifted a trembling hand toward her face. She pressed it to her cheek.

“Ned should be here in a few hours.” She faltered. Her husband, Edward Burne-Jones, would be devastated when Topsy died. Topsy had sunk so fast in eight months. Gout, diabetes, congestion of the left lung, tuberculosis. Topsy had lost so much weight that he might be another man.

“I don’t have much time left, Georgie.” He squeezed her palm weakly. “There’s something I must tell you.”

Her chest tightened. Here it was—the words they’d never spoken. What had always been understood, in silence and verse. They were dear friends, drawn closer by the fact that both their spouses had broken their hearts—and they themselves were too bound by love and honor to do anything. They’d taken comfort in the warmth of friendship, when they might have thrown themselves into the fire. Both Ned and Janey had entangled themselves in disastrous, painful affairs; but it was Georgie and Topsy who loved too much to cause further grief by finding their own happiness together.

He managed another smile. “You know I love you, dear heart. I can’t tell you,” and his voice trembled, “how glad I am to have you here with me, at the end.”

She kissed his hand. She kissed his brow, as a friend might. Then she sat back and watched him with wide eyes as he told her other things. Painful things. Things she could scarcely believe.

And yet it was her Topsy who said them. It was easy to fill the room with the memory of his booming voice—a whisper now, as he mentioned days that had not yet been. Days that would never be. He reached into the bed-curtains and drew out a letter. “Please, Georgie. Sit here by me and read it now. I could not give it to you before. . . .” And as she read, she began to understand. Why he had waited to tell her, until it was too late.

He knew, if there were still a chance for him to live, she might have changed his mind.

My dear, my life of late has not been what it seems. There is a reason why I grew so listless toward politics in 1894, and it has nothing to do with my health. Or rather, everything, as you shall soon see.

I suppose you remember that young writer, H.G. Wells—Bertie, we called him—who used to come to Hammersmith for the meetings of the old Socialist League. He seemed quite taken with News from Nowhere, my vision of the future. He called it The Dream of Socialism Fulfilled. But he seemed equally fascinated by that damned-dull machine age of Edward Bellamy and the philosophic science of T.H. Huxley, with whom he’d studied at the Normal School of Science.

As we became friends, he would slip round odd evenings to the meetings and stay on afterwards to talk of the future, developments in science, and how things might change—how they must change, if the fate of humanity is to be anything but dismal. We talked utopia and time travel, amidst our Socialism, our hopes and fears for the future. Bertie told me he wanted to explore the future in quite a new rational and scientific way. In 1890, he showed me a few exploratory pieces. But it wasn’t until 1894 that I realized the full genius—and danger—of the man.

Bertie came around one evening, agitated. He beckoned me outside. As we stood in the gardens, he thrust some numbers of Henley’s National Observer at me, with his work.

“Here. You must read this first. Then come to my chambers as quick as you can.”

“The Chronic Argonauts?”

“Henley got his hands into it,” Bertie said with disgust. “I’ll have it out by itself in the spring as The Time Machine, the way it’s meant to be.”

“Congratulations!” I pumped his hand.

“Just read it,” Bertie muttered. “You may think differently then.”

I read all through the evening, in growing disquiet. It was indeed a “utopia” to counter mine—but what a horrifying future. Bertie’s vision presented the ultimate dissolution of society, with humankind deprived of useful work and any ability for intellectual or artistic endeavors.

In those days, Bertie lived in rented rooms with his paramour and her mother, always under threat of eviction. With the awful vision of his hopeless future before my eyes, I knocked in the dead of night. He let me in at once.

And there it was. The vision made flesh.

Wedged in the clutter of a young man’s work sat something that looked like a new form of conveyance. The saddle rested amid twisted crystal bars in a contrivance that looked at once delicate, yet permanent. The metallic framework shone in the low light of the lamp, the bars and levers canted at such angles that they seemed built to withstand speed. But such beautiful lines! Such rich workmanship! Quartz and ivory, ebony and obsidian, steel and transparent bars that seemed to glow from within. I had never expected to see such beauty in the form of a machine.

“You don’t need to ask me what this is,” he said in a low voice.

I maintained my silence a moment longer, in respect for the artistry of the thing. But even if I had not read his tale, there could be only one answer. “I’m growing old, Bertie.”

“Not too old. You want to see if there’s any hope, any chance. So do I.”

“You’re only 28.”

He gripped my hands. “Now that you’ve read my little nightmare, how can you refuse? All I can see ahead is darkness.” He frowned. “But you may have better luck. You can find the right path for us, if anyone can. No matter what’s happened, you’ve never lost hope. When one vision fails, you create a better one.”

“Perhaps,” I murmured. But my mind had already begun to churn over the days ahead. What might I do, beyond my efforts now? The laborers embraced my ideals, drank in all I could teach them; but those with the power to improve the lives of the working class refused to step beyond their own concerns and alleviate that terrible poverty—the slavery of man to machine.

“You need some time to mull things over,” Bertie said.

But I knew already. Just the sight of the thing had set a hunger howling within me. “I’m your man.” I gripped his hand, and shook it, hard—and found there all the strength of my own conviction, despite his slight frame.

He laughed shakily. “Good. Because you might be our best chance. So much hinges on the next few years, and I can’t do anything. I’m still alive through too much of what goes wrong. But you—”

“Yes?” I asked tightly.

He looked away. “You died in October of 1896.”

I stood silent. The weight of that choked me like a millstone. Two more years. I forced myself to say, “Well, we still have some time, then!”

We packed the machine, dismantling and bundling the pieces. Finally, curiosity won over dread. “How did I die?”

“Too many things. No one was sure, at first—you drove yourself so hard. One doctor said, ‘The disease is simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men.’ By the time they diagnosed anything, it was already too late.”

I grunted in disbelief. I’d had the gout for years, and there were bad spells, I admit; but I could not reconcile the health and energy I still felt with my death in two years. It didn’t seem possible.

After we settled the last pieces, Bertie touched my arm. “I could hardly believe it myself. But I’ve read of my own death, too. That’s the curse of having a time machine.”

We drove to Kelmscott under cover of night, the machine wrapped in horse blankets. We hid it in the stables while I watched the house. Then we brought it up to the attics, piece by delicate piece.

The attics at Kelmscott—you may not have been up there, Georgie, since you were a child and Kelmscott was your father’s house. I’ve kept them bare. They’re so beautiful, in their open, clean lines, spare and sparkling when the morning sun drifts through the windows. Sometimes I’ve climbed up there just to think, amid the rafters. In the attics, I would never be disturbed; and Kelmscott Manor had existed for so many goodly years—since 1570—that its limestone garrets would doubtless exist still, to afford me a measure of comfort and safety.

 Bertie parted from me with a fierce embrace.

I waited until daybreak. From the height of the attic windows, I took my last look at the beloved slopes and meadows, the gardens, the stand of trees, the little haven I’d found here at Kelmscott. Then I sat and gently pressed the lever forward, precisely as Bertie had instructed.

The machine shuddered under me. It shook in a most alarming way. I felt for a moment as though I’d been tossed into the ocean, sick as if I were battered down by waves.

As I looked toward the attic windows, light and dark passed over me in a dizzying spiral. In the flash of leaves and sky, night and moon, I felt I would go blind. But I did not lose my nerve. I pulled back on the lever when the dials indicated the proper moment. I had decided to make my first test at a safe distance.

The machine bucked to a stop. As I climbed gingerly from the saddle, the dials told me that I was setting foot in the attics of 1925—a nice, round quarter-century. Perhaps I should have set to work at once. But I wanted to see the future first. Thoughts of my death gave way to sheer wonder—

—such joy as I felt when I was young and everything was new; when my friends and I stood against the world, determined to bring beauty back into every life.

I rushed to the attic windows and peered out. And what did I see? A line of trees along the walk. The profusion of flowers, red and blue and lavender. The same meadows, golden with morning’s light. The sheltering stretch of wood, untroubled by the passage of years. The winding lane that led to Kelmscott Village, still clear and well-kept.

I crept down through the house, but heard no one stirring. Yet the place was clean, and our furniture and decorations remained. What if Janey and our daughters still lived here? I froze on the stairs, wanting desperately to see them; our firstborn Jenny had been so sick since childhood, and May, the younger, had followed me so enthusiastically in everything. They would have taken my death hard. I wanted to tell them I loved them; but something held me back. Not just the thought of who might be up there with Jane right now. The fear tormented me—what harm I might do them, appearing like a ghost. Then, too, it might jeopardize our hope for the future, before I had fairly begun. I clung to the banister, tormented by the choice. And then I heard a footstep from above.

I could not let them find me here. I snuck out of the house and down into the sunshine. I followed the lane to Kelmscott Village, which looked much the same—a clean, pretty place, a refuge from the dinginess of London. I nodded to the residents, many of them young. They were not flying to the cities for the trap of mindless toil. Some of the older folk looked vaguely familiar. One old man started up, pointing a trembling finger as if he recognized a ghost—but when I drew near, his fear faded to uncertainty, then confusion, and he sat down again.

I took a boat down the Thames to London, wearing a great straw hat to conceal my face. London seemed already less gray, more green, the Thames itself less murky.

And there, at a newsstand, I had my first shock. From the front page, I gazed back at myself—but so much older! The masthead proclaimed it to be March 24, 1925. I had chosen my birthday, since one date was as good as any other.

I stared at the paper in consternation. I have never enjoyed having my portrait taken. Despite the lines of care, the parchment skin and thinning snow-white beard, it was a good likeness. The headlines lauded my life and offered an issue of commemoration for the man who had been “the peacekeeper of our times.” The article referenced many great achievements.

The world spun through my head as I read that paper. The Boer War had ceased—so had our aggressions in Egypt. Conditions for the working class had improved so much that that all enjoyed a level of comfort, if not luxury. Women could vote at the same age as men. Britain maintained its might, but extended the hand of benevolence to its subjects, soliciting their participation.

And the article laid much of the praise for this at my own door.

The blood pounded in my temples, and my leg ached as if in warning of the gout. But I stood firm. I found a library and began to explore the past—my future.