The Project Gutenberg eBook ofMichael Field

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofMichael FieldThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Michael FieldAuthor: Mary SturgeonRelease date: May 31, 2022 [eBook #68213]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: George G. Harrap & Co, 1922Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL FIELD ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Michael FieldAuthor: Mary SturgeonRelease date: May 31, 2022 [eBook #68213]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United Kingdom: George G. Harrap & Co, 1922Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)

Title: Michael Field

Author: Mary Sturgeon

Release date: May 31, 2022 [eBook #68213]Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: George G. Harrap & Co, 1922

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL FIELD ***

THE HARRAP LIBRARY

1. EMERSON’S ESSAYSFirst Series2. EMERSON’S ESSAYSSecond Series3. THE POETRY OF EARTHA Nature Anthology4. PARADISE LOSTJohn Milton5. THE ESSAYS OF ELIACharles Lamb6. THE THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUSGeorge Long7. REPRESENTATIVE MENR. W. Emerson8. ENGLISH TRAITSR. W. Emerson9. LAST ESSAYS OF ELIACharles Lamb10. PARADISE REGAINED AND MINOR POEMSJohn Milton11. SARTOR RESARTUSThomas Carlyle12. THE BOOK OF EPICTETUSThe Enchiridion, with Chapters from the Discourses, etc. Translated by Elizabeth Carter. Edited by T. W. Rolleston.13. THE CONDUCT OF LIFER. W. Emerson14. NATURE: ADDRESSES AND LECTURESR. W. Emerson15. THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURYW. M. Thackeray16. DAY-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTERD’Arcy W. Thompson17. ON HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIPThomas Carlyle18. TALES IN PROSE AND VERSEBret Harte19. LEAVES OF GRASSWalt Whitman20. HAZLITT’S ESSAYS21. KARMA AND OTHER ESSAYSLafcadio Hearn22. THE GOLDEN BOOK OF ENGLISH SONNETSEdited by William Robertson

1. EMERSON’S ESSAYS

First Series

2. EMERSON’S ESSAYS

Second Series

3. THE POETRY OF EARTH

A Nature Anthology

4. PARADISE LOST

John Milton

5. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA

Charles Lamb

6. THE THOUGHTS OF MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS

George Long

7. REPRESENTATIVE MEN

R. W. Emerson

8. ENGLISH TRAITS

R. W. Emerson

9. LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA

Charles Lamb

10. PARADISE REGAINED AND MINOR POEMS

John Milton

11. SARTOR RESARTUS

Thomas Carlyle

12. THE BOOK OF EPICTETUS

The Enchiridion, with Chapters from the Discourses, etc. Translated by Elizabeth Carter. Edited by T. W. Rolleston.

13. THE CONDUCT OF LIFE

R. W. Emerson

14. NATURE: ADDRESSES AND LECTURES

R. W. Emerson

15. THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

W. M. Thackeray

16. DAY-DREAMS OF A SCHOOLMASTER

D’Arcy W. Thompson

17. ON HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP

Thomas Carlyle

18. TALES IN PROSE AND VERSE

Bret Harte

19. LEAVES OF GRASS

Walt Whitman

20. HAZLITT’S ESSAYS

21. KARMA AND OTHER ESSAYS

Lafcadio Hearn

22. THE GOLDEN BOOK OF ENGLISH SONNETS

Edited by William Robertson

Further volumes will be announced later

MICHAEL FIELD[text decoration][text decoration][text decoration]BY MARY STURGEON

“ ...the two friends...Who sought perfection and achieved far more.”Gordon Bottomley

Katharine BradleyandEdith CooperThe latter from a miniatureby Mr Charles Ricketts inthe Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Katharine Bradley

and

Edith Cooper

The latter from a miniatureby Mr Charles Ricketts inthe Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

BY MARY STURGEONAUTHOR OF “STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARYPOETS” “WESTMINSTER ABBEY” ETC.LONDON: GEORGE G.HARRAP & CO. LTD.2-3 PORTSMOUTH ST. KINGSWAY& AT CALCUTTA AND SYDNEYFirst published March 1922Printed in Great Britain atThe Ballantyne PressbySpottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd.Colchester, London & Eton

SOME years ago the writer of this book discovered to herself the work of Michael Field, with fresh delight at every step of her adventure through the lyrics, the tragedies, and later devotional poems. But she was amazed to find that no one seemed to have heard about this large body of fine poetry; and she longed to spread the news, even before the further knowledge was gained that the life of Michael Field had itself been epical in romance and heroism. Then the theme was irresistible.

But although it has been a joy to try to retrieve something of this life and work from the limbo into which it appeared to be slipping, the matter may wear anything but a joyful aspect to all the long-suffering ones who were ruthlessly laid under tribute. The author remembers guiltily the many friends of the poets whom she has harried, and kindly library staffs (in particular at the Bodleian) who gave generous and patient help. To each one she offers sincere gratitude; and though it is impossible to name them all, she desires especially to record her debt to Mr Sturge Moore and Miss Fortey; Father Vincent McNabb, Mrs Berenson, and Mr Charles Ricketts; Dr Grenfell, Sir Herbert Warren, and Mr and Mrs AlgernonWarren; Miss S. J. Tanner, Mr Havelock Ellis and Miss Louie Ellis; the Misses Sturge; Professor F. Brooks and the Rev. C. L. Bradley; Professor and Mrs William Rothenstein; Mr Gordon Bottomley and Mr Arthur Symons—;who will all understand her regret that this book is so unworthy a tribute to their friend and that the scheme of it, designed primarily to introduce the poetry of Michael Field, rendered impossible a fuller use of the material for a Life which they supplied.

To the courtesy of Mr Sydney C. Cockerell, the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the author owes the copy of Edith Cooper’s portrait. This portrait is a miniature set in a jewelled pendant (both drawing and setting the work of Mr Charles Ricketts) which was bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum on the death of Katharine Bradley.

Warm thanks are also tendered to the publishers who have kindly given permission to use extracts from the poets’ works, including Messrs G. Bell and Sons, the Vale Press, the Poetry Bookshop (forBorgia,Queen Mariamne,Deirdre, andIn the Name of Time); to Mr T. Fisher Unwin, Messrs Sands and Company, and Mr Eveleigh Nash; and toMr Heinemann for Mr Arthur Symons’s poemAt Fontainebleau.

A Bibliography is appended of all the Michael Field books which have been published to date; but there still remain some unpublished MSS.

MARY STURGEON

OxfordNovember 1921

Yea, gold is son of Zeus: no rustIts timeless light can stain;The worm that brings man’s flesh to dustAssaults its strength in vain:More gold than gold the love I sing,A hard, inviolable thing.Men say the passions should grow oldWith waning years; my heartIs incorruptible as gold,’Tis my immortal part:Nor is there any god can layOn love the finger of decay.Long Ago, XXXVI

Yea, gold is son of Zeus: no rustIts timeless light can stain;The worm that brings man’s flesh to dustAssaults its strength in vain:More gold than gold the love I sing,A hard, inviolable thing.

Men say the passions should grow oldWith waning years; my heartIs incorruptible as gold,’Tis my immortal part:Nor is there any god can layOn love the finger of decay.Long Ago, XXXVI

ONE evening, probably in the spring of 1885, Browning was at a dinner-party given by Stopford Brooke. He had recently met for the first time two quiet ladies who had come up to the metropolis from Bristol to visit art galleries and talk business with publishers, and he suddenly announced to the company in a lull of conversation, “I have found a new poet.” But others of the party had made a similar discovery: it had jumped to the eye of the intelligent about a year before, when a tragedy calledCallirrhoëhad been published; and several voices cried simultaneously to the challenge, “Michael Field!”

Only Browning, however, and a few intimate friends of the poets, knew that Michael Field was not a man, but two women, Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper. They were an aunt and niece, and came of a Derbyshire family settled at Ashbourne. Joseph Bradley, its representative there in 1749, with his son and grandson after him, were merchants of substance and culture. They were men of intellect as well as business men, and seem to have possessed between them all the elements which ultimately became concentrated in our two poets. There is evidence of a leaning to philosophy, a feeling for the arts, an interestin drama; and, more significant still, there is one Charles Bradley who was “a prolific and meditative writer both of prose and song.”

Katharine Harris Bradley, the elder of the two poets, was born at Birmingham on October 27, 1846. Her grandfather had migrated there from Ashbourne in 1810, and her father, Charles Bradley, was a tobacco-manufacturer of that city. He had married in 1834 a Miss Emma Harris of Birmingham, and, in the simpler fashion of those times, he and his wife were living in a house adjoining their place of business in the old quarter of the town. There, at 10 Digbeth, Katharine was born, The only other child of the union was a daughter who was eleven years old at Katharine’s birth. She was named Emma, and was of first importance in the lives of the Michael Fields. For, being a thoughtful creature, of rare sweetness and strength of character, she largely shaped the life of the little sister who was so much younger than herself; and, still more vital fact, she afterward became the mother of our second poet. She married, about 1860, James Robert Cooper, and went with him to live at Kenilworth. Her daughter, Edith Emma Cooper, was born there, at their house in the High Street, on January 12, 1862.

Both poets, therefore, took their origin in the heart of a Midland city and came of merchant stock. These facts may have larger significance than their bearing on environment and nurture, though that was important. But regarded more widely, they seem to relate Michael Field and her fine contribution to English literature to that movement in our modern civilization which, in the last two or three generations, has drawn commerce into intimate connexion with our art and letters. Such names as Horniman, Fry, Beecham (and there are others of similar import) suggest at once drama, art, music. They are associated in one’s mind with new impulse, energy, initiative, and above all with disinterested service of the arts; and they are connected chiefly with Midland towns. In like manner Michael Field, with her gift of tragic vision sublimated from fierce Derbyshire elements, may be seen spending a strenuous life and a moderate fortune, without reward or encouragement, to enrich English poetry.

Neither poet ever attended school, or swotted to gain certificates; which is probably one reason why they both became highly educated and cultured people. When Katharine was two years old her father died from cancer—;a disease which afterward carried off her mother, andfrom which both our poets died. Mrs Bradley removed to a suburb of Birmingham, and was careful to provide that the lessons which she gave her little girls should be supplemented, as the need arose, by other and more advanced teaching. But the children were allowed to follow their bent, and authority took the form of a wise and kindly directing influence. We hear in those early days of eager studies in French, painting, and Italian. We hear, too, of friendships with a group of lively cousins. One of them remembers Katharine’s vivid childhood, and speaks of her as a gay and frolicsome creature, highly imaginative and emotional, with whom he used to act and recite. She adored poetry, would write even her letters in rhyme, and had, as a small child, a particular fondness for Scott’sLady of the Lake. And she joined with the greatest delight in the dramatic ventures which the group from time to time attempted, such as the representation at Christmas of the passage of the Old Year and the coming of the New.

It is probable that such conditions were ideally suited to a child of great natural gifts and buoyant temperament. Katharine evidently thrived under them both in mind and body; and by the time of her sister’s marriage to Mr Cooper she was not only the healthy,happy, and well-developed young animal who was the potential of all she afterward became, but she had already embarked upon the classics and was beginning to interest herself in German language and literature. Thus it happened that when, about 1861, she and her mother made their home with the Coopers at Kenilworth, Katharine became the natural companion of the little Edith, born in the following year, when Katharine was sixteen. But she was, from the first, much more than that. Mrs Cooper remained an invalid for life after the birth of her second daughter, Amy, and Katharine fostered Edith as a mother. She lavished on her an eager and rather imperious affection. She led her, as the child grew old enough, along the paths that she herself had adventurously gone, and although Edith was always shyer and more hesitating than Katharine, poetic genius was dormant in her too, only waiting to be stimulated by Katharine’s exuberance and led by her audacity. Edith, stepping delicately, followed the daring lead of her elder with a steadiness of mental power which was her proper gift; and she reaped from Katharine’s educational harvest (won in all sorts of fields, from literatures ancient and modern, from the Collège de France, Newnham, University College, Bristol, and numerous privatetutors) fruits more solid and mature than even Katharine herself.

When the poets removed to Stoke Bishop, Bristol, in 1878 it was with intellectual appetites still unsatisfied, and determined to pursue at University College their beloved classics and philosophy. They were already, in the opinion of a scholar who knew them at that time, fair latinists: they possessed considerable German and French, and some Italian, while Edith’s enthusiasm for philosophy was balanced by Katharine’s for Greek. Edith, docile in so much else, yet “could not be coaxed on” in Greek; not even later, when Browning, who used to speak affectionately of her as “our little Francesca,” one day gently pressed her hand and said “in honied accents, ‘Do learn Greek.’”What could a young poet do, overwhelmed by the courtly old master’s flattery, except promise softly, “I will try”? But it is not recorded that the effort took her very far. Katharine the Dionysian (always a little over-zealous for her divinities, whether Thracian or Hebrew) did not cease from coaxing; and perhaps did not perceive, for she could be obtuse now and then, how radical was Edith’s austere latinity. A poem of this period, addressed by Katharine to Edith, and calledAn Invitation, throws a gleam on their student days. Through it one sees asin morning sunlight their strenuous happy existence, their eager welcome to the best that life could offer, and their fortunate freedom to grasp it, whether it were in books or art, in sunny aspects or beautiful new Morris designs and textures. For they were, from the first, artists in life.

Come and sing, my room is south;Come with thy sun-governed mouth,Thou wilt never suffer drouth,Long as dwellingIn my chamber of the south.

Three stanzas describe the woodbine and the myrtles outside the window, and the cushioned settee inside. Then:

Books I have of long agoAnd to-day; I shall not knowSome, unless thou read them, soTheir excellingMusic needs thy voice’s flow:Campion, with a noble ringOf choice spirits; count this wingSacred! All the songs I singWelling, wellingFrom Elizabethan spring.French, that corner of primrose!Flaubert, Verlaine, with all thosePrecious, little things in prose,Bliss-compelling,Howsoe’er the story goes:All the Latinsthoudost prize!Cynthia’s lover by thee lies;Note Catullus, type and sizeLeast repellingTo thy weariable eyes.And for Greek! Too sluggishlyThou dost toil; but Sappho, see!And the dear AnthologyFor thy spelling.Come, it shall be well with thee.

Books I have of long agoAnd to-day; I shall not knowSome, unless thou read them, soTheir excellingMusic needs thy voice’s flow:

Campion, with a noble ringOf choice spirits; count this wingSacred! All the songs I singWelling, wellingFrom Elizabethan spring.

French, that corner of primrose!Flaubert, Verlaine, with all thosePrecious, little things in prose,Bliss-compelling,Howsoe’er the story goes:

All the Latinsthoudost prize!Cynthia’s lover by thee lies;Note Catullus, type and sizeLeast repellingTo thy weariable eyes.

And for Greek! Too sluggishlyThou dost toil; but Sappho, see!And the dear AnthologyFor thy spelling.Come, it shall be well with thee.

It is clear from all the testimony that Katharine and Edith were extremely serious persons in those first years at Stoke Bishop, a fact which seems to have borne rather hard on the young men of their acquaintance. Thus, a member of their college, launching a small conversational craft with a light phrase, might have his barque swamped by the inquiry of one who really wanted to know: “Which do you truly think is the greater poem, theIliador theOdyssey?” It was an era when Higher Education and Women’s Rights and Anti-Vivisection were being indignantly championed, and when ‘æsthetic dress’ was being very consciously worn—;all by the same kind of people. Katharine and Edith were of that kind. They joined the debating society of the college and plunged into the questions of the moment. They spoke eloquently in favour of the suffrage for women,and were deeply interested in ethical matters. They were devotees of reason, and would subscribe to no creed. Katharine was a prime mover of the Anti-Vivisection Society in Clifton, and was its secretary till 1887. She was, too, in correspondence with Ruskin, was strongly influenced by him in moral and artistic questions, and was a companion of the Guild of St George—;though that was as far as she ever went in Ruskinian economics. Both of the friends adored pictures, worked at water-colour drawing, wore wonderful flowing garments in ‘art’ colours, and dressed their hair in a loose knot at the nape of the neck.

But more than all that, they were already dedicated to poetry, and sworn in fellowship. That was in secret, however. Student friends might guess, thrillingly, but no one had yet been told that Katharine had published in 1875 a volume of lyrics which she signed as Arran Leigh, nor that Edith had timidly produced for her fellow’s inspection, as the experiment of a girl of sixteen, several scenes of a powerful tragedy; nor that the two of them together were at that moment working on theirBellerophôn(with the accent, please), which they published in 1881, signed “Arran and Isla Leigh.” But such portentous facts kept them very grave; and their solemnity naturally provoked themirth of the irreverent, especially of undergraduate friends down from Oxford, who knew something on their own account about æsthetic crazes and the leaders of them. Thus a certain Herbert Warren came down during one vacation and poked bracing fun at them. The story makes one suppose that he must have disliked the colour blue in women and the colour green in every one—;possibly because he was then in his own salad days. For when somebody mischievously asked him in Katharine’s presence, “Whoarethis æsthetic crowd?” he promptly replied, “They’re people as green as their dresses.”

But their women friends were more favourably impressed. To them the two eager girls who walked over the downs for lectures every morning were persons of a certain distinction who, despite careless hair and untidy feet, could be “perfectly fascinating.” Their manner of speech had been shaped by old books, and was a little archaic. Later it became a “mighty jargon,” understood only of the initiate. Their style of dress was daringly clinging and graceful in an age of ugly protuberances. And though these things might suggest a pose to the satirical, they were very attractive to the ingenuous, who saw them simply as the naïve signs they were of budding individuality. Theirfriendship, too, was clearly on the grand scale and in the romantic manner. They were, indeed, absorbed in each other to an extent which exasperated those who would have liked to engage the affections of one or the other in another direction. Yet they were companionable souls in a sympathetic circle, Katharine with abounding vitality and love of fun and keen joy in life, expansive and forthcoming despite an occasional haughtiness of manner; and Edith lighting up more slowly, to a rarer, finer, more delicate exaltation.

Yet, in spite of many friends and a genuine interest in affairs, one perceives that they constantly gave a sense of seclusion from life, of natures set a little way apart. It was an impression conveyed unwittingly, and in spite of themselves; and one is reminded by it of their sonnet calledThe Poet, written, I believe, about this time, but not published until 1907, inWild Honey:

Within his eyes are hung lamps of the sanctuary:A wind, from whence none knows, can set in swayAnd spill their light by fits; but yet their rayReturns, deep-boled, to its obscurity.The world as from a dullard turns annoyedTo stir the days with show or deeds or voices;But if one spies him justly one rejoices,With silence that the careful lips avoid.He is a plan, a work of some strange passionLife has conceived apart from Time’s harsh drill,A thing it hides and cherishes to fashionAt odd bright moments to its secret will:Holy and foolish, ever set apart,He waits the leisure of his god’s free heart.

Within his eyes are hung lamps of the sanctuary:A wind, from whence none knows, can set in swayAnd spill their light by fits; but yet their rayReturns, deep-boled, to its obscurity.

The world as from a dullard turns annoyedTo stir the days with show or deeds or voices;But if one spies him justly one rejoices,With silence that the careful lips avoid.

He is a plan, a work of some strange passionLife has conceived apart from Time’s harsh drill,A thing it hides and cherishes to fashion

At odd bright moments to its secret will:Holy and foolish, ever set apart,He waits the leisure of his god’s free heart.

Consciously or not, the poem is a portrait. More than one touch is recognizable, and there can be no doubt that the opening lines give a glimpse of Edith. They suggest for this reason that the sonnet was written by Katharine; and if that is so, her use of the worddullardsweetly turns the edge of the complaint of critical friends that Katharine could be thoroughly stupid. Of course she could!—;why not? though, to be sure, it was very provoking of her. Returning, however, to the resemblance to Edith. She had never the good health of Katharine, and her beauty, which was of the large, regular, blonde type, suffered in consequence. One of her friends says: “She was as if touched by a cloud—;crystalline and fragile as flowers that love the shade.” All who knew her speak of the extraordinary look of vision in her eyes: time after time one hears of the ‘inspiration’ in her face, which is visible in no matter how poor a photograph or hasty a sketch. Katharine had intensity of anotherkind: warm, rich, glowing, a lyric and almost bacchic expression. But in Edith there was “a Tuscan quality of refinement, the outward expression of an inward beauty of thought.”

One cannot but associate those “lamps of the sanctuary” with the psychic power which Edith undoubtedly possessed. An incident attested by their cousin, Professor F. Brooks, may be given to illustrate this. It was occasioned by the death of Edith’s father in the Alps. He and his younger daughter Amy were there on holiday in 1897, and had planned to climb the Riffelalp. They wrote of their plan to Katharine and Edith, who received the letter at home in England on the day that the ascent was being made. Edith read the letter and passed it to Katharine with the remark: “If they go to the Riffelalp they will go to their doom.” And, probably about the time she was speaking, Mr Cooper met his death, for he was lost in the ascent, and his body was not recovered for many months.

That is only one of several psychic experiences which incontestably occurred to Edith Cooper, the most impressive being the vision which appeared to her as her mother was dying. Edith, who was helping to nurse her mother, had gone into another room to rest, as it was not believed that the end was near. She afterwardtold her friend Miss Helen Sturge that in the moment of death her mother’s spirit passed through the room and lingered for an instant beside the bed on which Edith was lying. The event is recorded explicitly in a poem published inUnderneath the Bough(first edition):

When thou to death, fond one, wouldst fain be starting,I did not prayThat thou shouldst stay;Alone I layAnd dreamed and wept and watched thee on thy way.But now thou dost return, yea, after parting,And me embrace,Our souls enlace;Ask thou no grace;Thou shalt be aye confinèd to this place.Alone, alone I lie. Ah! bitter smarting!Thou to the lastDidst cling, kiss fast,Yet art thou pastBeyond me, in the hollow of a blast.

When thou to death, fond one, wouldst fain be starting,I did not prayThat thou shouldst stay;Alone I layAnd dreamed and wept and watched thee on thy way.

But now thou dost return, yea, after parting,And me embrace,Our souls enlace;Ask thou no grace;Thou shalt be aye confinèd to this place.

Alone, alone I lie. Ah! bitter smarting!Thou to the lastDidst cling, kiss fast,Yet art thou pastBeyond me, in the hollow of a blast.

* * *

‘Michael Field’ did not come into existence until the publication ofCallirrhoëin 1884. The poets put behind them, as experimental work, the two volumes which they had already published, and began afresh, changing their pen-names the better to close the past. Thepseudonym under which they now hid themselves was chosen somewhat arbitrarily, ‘Michael’ because they liked the name and its associations, ‘Field’ because it went well with ‘Michael.’ But it is true also that they had a great admiration for the work of William Michael Rossetti, whom, Katharine says in one of her letters, they regarded as “a kind of god-father”; and it is true, too, that ‘Field’ had been an old nickname of Edith. Their family indulged freely in pet names, and Edith was teased by a nurse, from her boyish appearance during a fever in Dresden, as the “little Heinrich.” Thenceforth she became Henry for Katharine, and Katharine was Michael to her and to their intimates.

Callirrhoëwas well received, and went to a second edition in November of the same year. It is amusing now to read the praises that were lavished upon ‘Mr Field’ upon his first appearance. Thus theSaturday Reviewtalked of “the immutable attributes of poetry ... beauty of conception ... strength and purity of language ... brilliant distinction and consistent development of the characters ... a poet of distinguished powers”—;all of which is very true. TheSpectatorannounced “the ring of a new voice which is likely to be heard far and wide among the English-speaking peoples”—;and that may yet become true, if the English-speaking peoplesare allowed to hear the voice. TheAthenæumsaw “something almost of Shakespearean penetration”; theAcademyrejoiced in “a gospel of ecstasy ... a fresh poetic ring ... a fresh gift of song ... a picturesque and vivid style.” ThePall Mall Gazettequoted a lyric which “Drayton would not have refused to sign”; and, not to multiply these perfectly just remarks, theLiverpool Mercurycrowned them all in a flash of real perception, by noting that which I believe to be Michael Field’s first virtue as a dramatist in these terms: “A really imaginative creator ... will often make his dialogue proceed by abrupt starts, which seem at first like breaches of continuity, but are in reality true to a higher though more occult logic of evolution. This last characteristic we have remarked in Mr Field, and it is one he shares with Shakespeare.”

But alas for irony! These pæans of welcome died out and were replaced as time went on by an indifference which, at its nadir in theCambridge History of English Literature, could dismiss Michael Field in six lines, and commit the ineptitude of describing the collaboration as a “curious fancy.” Yet the poets continued to reveal the “immutable attributes of poetry”; their “ecstasy” grew and deepened; their “Shakespearean penetration” became a thing almost uncanny in its swift rightness; their “creativeimagination” called up creatures of fierce energy; their “fresh gift of song” played gracefully about their drama, and lived on, amazingly young, into their latest years—;which is simply to say that, having the root of the matter in them, and fostering it by sheer toil, they developed as the intelligent reviewers had predicted, and became highly accomplished dramatic poets. But in the meantime the critics learned that Michael Field was not a man, and work much finer thanCallirrhoëpassed unnoticed or was reviled; while on the other handBorgia, publishedanonymously, was noticed and appreciated. One might guess at reasons for this, if it were worth while. Perhaps the poets neglected to attach themselves to a useful little log-rolling coterie, and to pay the proper attentions to the Press. Or it may be that something in the fact of a collaboration was obscurely repellent; or even that their true sex was not revealed with tact to sensitive susceptibilities. But whatever the reason, the effect of the boycott was not, mercifully, to silence the poets: their economic independence saved them from that; and a steady output of work—;a play to mark every year and a great deal of other verse—;mounted to its splendid sum of twenty-seven tragedies, eight volumes of lyrics, and a masque without public recognition. The poets did not greatly care about the neglect.They had assurance that a few of the best minds appreciated what they were trying to do. Browning was their staunch friend and admirer; and Meredith, chivalrous gentleman, wrote to acclaim their noble stand for pure poetry and to beg them not to heed hostility. Swinburne had shown interest in their work, and Oscar Wilde had praised it. Therefore only rarely did they allow themselves a regret for their unpopularity. But they were human, after all, Michael particularly so; and once she wrote whimsically to Mr Havelock Ellis, “Want of due recognition is beginning its embittering, disintegrating work, and we will have in the end a cynic such as only a disillusioned Bacchante can become.”

Their reading at this period, and indeed throughout their career, was as comprehensive as one would expect of minds so free, curious, and hungry. To mention only a few names at random, evidence is clear that they appreciated genius so widely diverse as Flaubert and Walt Whitman, Hegel and Bourget, Ibsen and Heine, Dante, Tolstoi, and St Augustine. Yet so independent were they, that when it comes to a question of influence, proof of it is by no means certain after the period of their earliest plays, where their beloved Elizabethans have obviously wrought them both good and evil. Traces of Browning we should take for granted, hebeing so greatly admired by them; yet such traces are rare. And still more convincing proof of their independence surely is that in the Age of Tennyson they found his laureate suavity too smooth, and his condescension an insult; while at a time when the Sage of Chelsea thundered from a sort of Sinai those irreverent young women could talk about “Carlyle’s inflated sincerity.”

Again, one may think to spy an influence from Nietzsche’sBirth of Tragedyin theirCallirrhoë; but it is necessary to walk warily even here. For the genius of Michael Field, uniting as it does the two principal elements of art, Dionysian and Apolline, is therefore of its nature an illustration of Nietzsche’s theory. They needed no tutoring from him to reveal that nature, for they knew themselves. Nor did they need prompting to the primary spiritual act of the tragic poet. From the beginning the philosophic mind lay behind their artistic temper. Very early they had confronted reality, had discovered certain grim truth, and had resolutely accepted it. Not until they became Roman Catholics did they become optimists, and then they ceased, or all but ceased, to be tragic poets.

* * *

When the Michael Fields left Bristol for Reigate in 1888 they withdrew almost entirelyfrom contact with the world of affairs, and devoted themselves to their art. Old friendships and interests were left behind with the old environment. Their circle became restricted, as did their activities of whatever kind, to those which should subserve their vocation. Family ties, which had always been loosely held, were now (with the exception of Mrs Ryan, Edith’s sister Amy) almost completely dropped. Their life became more and more strictly a life of the mind, and more and more closely directed to its purpose. It was a purpose (that “curious fancy” so called by the learned critic) which had been formulated very early—;long before Katharine found it expressed for her to the echo in Rossetti’sHand and Soul: “What God hath set in thine heart to do, that do thou; and even though thou do it without thought of Him, it shall be well done. It is this sacrifice that He asketh of thee, and His flame is upon it for a sign. Think not of Him, but of His love and thy love.” To that, as to a religion, they deliberately vowed themselves, guarding their work from trivial interruption, plunging into research, and yielding themselves up to the persons of their drama, in whom they vividly lived. But although their imaginative adventures were stormy and exhausting (the death of one of their characters would leave them stricken), externalevents were very few. Never had dramatist so undramatic a career; and there is an amazing contrast between the tremendous passions of their Tragic Muse and the smoothness, temperance, and quietude of their existence. One has no right to be surprised at the contrast, of course, for that untroubled, purposeful living was the condition which made possible their achievement. And that a virile genius can consist with feminine power, even feminine power of a rather low vitality, hardly needs to be remarked, since Emily Brontë wrote. Moreover, the contrast is determined by the physical and mental basis proper to genius of this type, one that is peculiarly English, perhaps, with sanity, common sense, and moral soundness at the root of its creative faculty. No doubt the type has sometimes the defects of its virtues, and Michael Field, who was inclined to boast that there was no Celtic strain in her blood, was not immune from faults which the critical imp that dances in the brain of the Celt might have saved her from. For he would have laughed at a simplicity sometimes verging on the absurd, at grandeur when it tended to be grandiose, at emotion occasionally getting a little out of hand; just as he would have mocked a singleness and directness so embarrassing to the more subtle, and have declared that no mature humancreature in this bad world has any right to be so innocent as all that!

Happily we are not concerned with the impishness of the satirical spirit: we have simply to note that it was a physical and mental (and possibly a racial) quality which enabled Michael Field thus to dedicate herself to poetry and steadily to fulfil her vow. Even the poets’ journeys now were less disinterested than their early jaunts in France and Germany for the pure pleasure of seeing masterpieces. Thus, in these later days, if they went to Edinburgh, it was for the Marian legend; to the New Forest, it was for some faint sound of Rufus’s hunting-horn; to Italy, it was for innumerable haunting echoes of Imperial Rome, of the Borgia, of the Church; to bits of old France, for memories of Frankish kings; to Ireland, for a vanishing white glimpse of Deirdre; to Cornwall, in the belief that they might be favoured to give “in the English the great love-story of the world, Tristan and Iseult.” All of which does not mean, however, that those journeys were not very joyous affairs. Several of them were sweetened by friendships, as the visits to the Brownings at Asolo, the Italian tours with Mr and Mrs Bernard Berenson, and jolly times in Paris, with peeps at lions artistic and literary. It was on one of these occasions that their British eyes were assailed (notshocked, for they were incapable of that kind of respectability) by a vision of Verlaine “coming out of a shop on the other side of the road with a huge roll of French bread under one arm.” It was Mr Arthur Symons who pointed out to them this apparition; and it was he who delightedly watched their joy in the woods of Fontainebleau, and afterward wrote a poem to recapture the memory of Edith Cooper on that day:

It was a day of sun and rain,Uncertain as a child’s quick moods;And I shall never pass againSo blithe a day among the woods.The forest knew you and was glad,And laughed for very joy to knowHer child was with her; then, grown sad,She wept because her child must go.And you would spy and you would captureThe shyest flower that lit the grass;The joy I had to watch your raptureWas keen as even your rapture was.The forest knew you and was glad,And laughed and wept for joy and woe.This was the welcome that you hadAmong the woods of Fontainebleau.

It was a day of sun and rain,Uncertain as a child’s quick moods;And I shall never pass againSo blithe a day among the woods.

The forest knew you and was glad,And laughed for very joy to knowHer child was with her; then, grown sad,She wept because her child must go.

And you would spy and you would captureThe shyest flower that lit the grass;The joy I had to watch your raptureWas keen as even your rapture was.

The forest knew you and was glad,And laughed and wept for joy and woe.This was the welcome that you hadAmong the woods of Fontainebleau.

One is not surprised to see how brightly our poets struck the imagination of the few whoknew them, particularly of their poet and artist friends. Mr Charles Ricketts, Mr and Mrs Berenson, Father John Gray, Mr and Mrs William Rothenstein, and, later, Mr Gordon Bottomley were of those whose genius set them in tune with the fastidious, discriminating, and yet eclectic adoration of beauty which was the inspiration of Michael Field. They have all confessed the unique charm of the poets (a charm which consisted with “business ability and thoroughly good housekeeping”); and Mr Bottomley has contrived, by reflecting it in a poet’s mirror, to rescue it from Lethe:

The marvellous thing to me is the way in which their lives and their work were one thing: life was one of their arts—;they gave it a consistency and texture that made its quality a sheer delight. I have never seen anywhere else their supreme faculty of identifying being with doing.I do not mean simply that this beauty of life was to be seen in their devotion to each other; though there was a bloom and a light on that which made it incomparable. Nor do I mean only their characters and personalities, and the flawless rhythm, balance, precision that each got into her own life—;though these, too, contributed to the sensation they always gave me of living as a piece of concerted chamber-music lives while it is being played.But, beyond all this, I mean that this identity of life and art was to be seen in the slight, ordinary thingsof existence. They did not speak as if their speech was considered; but in the most rapid, penetrating interchange of speech, their words were always made their own, and seemed more beautiful than other people’s. This always struck me anew when either of them would refer to the other in her absence as “My dear fellow”: the slight change in the incidence and significance of the phrase turned the most stale of ordinary exclamations into something which suddenly seemed valuable and full of delicate, new, moving music. It seemed said for the first time....With Miss Cooper in particular one had the feeling that her mind moved as her body moved: that if her spirit were visible it would be identical with her presence. The compelling grace and sweet authority of her movement made me feel that her own Lucrezia would have looked so when she played Pope. It is of the great ladies of the world that one always thinks when one thinks of her.

I do not mean simply that this beauty of life was to be seen in their devotion to each other; though there was a bloom and a light on that which made it incomparable. Nor do I mean only their characters and personalities, and the flawless rhythm, balance, precision that each got into her own life—;though these, too, contributed to the sensation they always gave me of living as a piece of concerted chamber-music lives while it is being played.

But, beyond all this, I mean that this identity of life and art was to be seen in the slight, ordinary thingsof existence. They did not speak as if their speech was considered; but in the most rapid, penetrating interchange of speech, their words were always made their own, and seemed more beautiful than other people’s. This always struck me anew when either of them would refer to the other in her absence as “My dear fellow”: the slight change in the incidence and significance of the phrase turned the most stale of ordinary exclamations into something which suddenly seemed valuable and full of delicate, new, moving music. It seemed said for the first time....

With Miss Cooper in particular one had the feeling that her mind moved as her body moved: that if her spirit were visible it would be identical with her presence. The compelling grace and sweet authority of her movement made me feel that her own Lucrezia would have looked so when she played Pope. It is of the great ladies of the world that one always thinks when one thinks of her.

Mr Ricketts first met the poets in 1892, when he and Mr Shannon were editingThe Dial. Michael Field became a contributor to that magazine, and the acquaintance thus begun ripened into close friendship and lasted for twenty years. In memory of it Mr Ricketts has presented to the nation a picture by Dante Gabriel Rossetti which now hangs in the National Gallery of British Art. Its subject, Lucrezia Borgia, was treated by Michael Field in her Borgia tragedy, and is one of her most masterly studies. I amindebted to Mr Ricketts for many facts concerning the poets’ lives in their Reigate and later Richmond periods, and for some vivid impressions of them. Thus, at their first meeting:

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