She ran [in]... and looked at the walls, which had been papered in a [William] Morris design of gray palm-leaves and splotches of bright red and green on a background of dull tan. Something terrible that cut like a knife came up inside her. She threw herself on the floor, kicking with stiffened legs, as she beat her hands on the carpet.... she cried out, over and over: "It's so ugly! It's so ugly."[10]
Hutton Wilkinson, president of the Elsie de Wolfe Foundation, notes that of course many things that De Wolfe hated – such as "pickle and plum Morris furniture," are prized today by museums and designers; he believes that “De Wolfe simply didn’t like Victorian—the high style of her sad childhood—, and chose to banish it from her design vocabulary."[11]