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diff --git a/old/68213-0.txt b/old/68213-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 9708edb..0000000 --- a/old/68213-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6655 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Michael Field, by Mary Sturgeon - -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 at -www.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 Field - -Author: Mary Sturgeon - -Release Date: May 31, 2022 [eBook #68213] - -Language: English - -Produced by: 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 - - [Illustration] - - - 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 - -[Illustration: text decoration] - -[Illustration: text decoration] - -_BY MARY STURGEON_ - - - “ ... _the two friends_ ... - _Who sought perfection and achieved far more._” - GORDON BOTTOMLEY - -[Illustration: KATHARINE BRADLEY - -and - -EDITH COOPER - -_The latter from a miniature by Mr Charles Ricketts in the Fitzwilliam -Museum, Cambridge_] - - - - -MICHAEL -FIELD - -[Illustration: text decoration] - -BY MARY STURGEON - -AUTHOR OF “STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARY -POETS” “WESTMINSTER ABBEY” ETC. - -[Illustration] - - -LONDON: GEORGE G. -HARRAP & CO. LTD. -2-3 PORTSMOUTH ST. KINGSWAY -& AT CALCUTTA AND SYDNEY - - -_First published March 1922_ - -_Printed in Great Britain at_ THE BALLANTYNE PRESS _by_ -SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE & CO. LTD. -_Colchester, London & Eton_ - - - - -PREFACE - - -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 -Algernon Warren; 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 (for _Borgia_, _Queen -Mariamne_, _Deirdre_, and _In the Name of Time_); to Mr T. Fisher Unwin, -Messrs Sands and Company, and Mr Eveleigh Nash; and to Mr Heinemann for -Mr Arthur Symons’s poem _At 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 - -OXFORD - -_November 1921_ - - - -CONTENTS - - - I. BIOGRAPHICAL 13 - - II. THE LYRICS 65 - -III. THE TRAGEDIES--I 114 - - IV. THE TRAGEDIES--II 162 - - V. THE TRAGEDIES--III 197 - - BIBLIOGRAPHY 245 - - - Yea, gold is son of Zeus: no rust - Its timeless light can stain; - The worm that brings man’s flesh to dust - Assaults its strength in vain: - More gold than gold the love I sing, - A hard, inviolable thing. - - Men say the passions should grow old - With waning years; my heart - Is incorruptible as gold, - ’Tis my immortal part: - Nor is there any god can lay - On love the finger of decay. - _Long Ago, XXXVI_ - - - - -I. BIOGRAPHICAL - - -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 -called _Callirrhoë_ had 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 interest in 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, and from -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’s _Lady 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 private tutors) 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 called _An Invitation_, throws a -gleam on their student days. Through it one sees as in 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 dwelling - In 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 ago - And to-day; I shall not know - Some, unless thou read them, so - Their excelling - Music needs thy voice’s flow: - - Campion, with a noble ring - Of choice spirits; count this wing - Sacred! All the songs I sing - Welling, welling - From Elizabethan spring. - - French, that corner of primrose! - Flaubert, Verlaine, with all those - Precious, little things in prose, - Bliss-compelling, - Howsoe’er the story goes: - - All the Latins _thou_ dost prize! - Cynthia’s lover by thee lies; - Note Catullus, type and size - Least repelling - To thy weariable eyes. - - And for Greek! Too sluggishly - Thou dost toil; but Sappho, see! - And the dear Anthology - For 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, the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_?” 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 their -_Bellerophôn_ (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 the mirth 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, “Who _are_ -this 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. Their friendship, 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 called _The Poet_, written, I believe, about this time, but -not published until 1907, in _Wild Honey_: - - Within his eyes are hung lamps of the sanctuary: - A wind, from whence none knows, can set in sway - And spill their light by fits; but yet their ray - Returns, deep-boled, to its obscurity. - - The world as from a dullard turns annoyed - To 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 passion - Life 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 word _dullard_ -sweetly 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 another kind: 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 afterward told 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 in _Underneath the -Bough_ (first edition): - - When thou to death, fond one, wouldst fain be starting, - I did not pray - That thou shouldst stay; - Alone I lay - And 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 last - Didst cling, kiss fast, - Yet art thou past - Beyond me, in the hollow of a blast. - - * * * * * - -‘Michael Field’ did not come into existence until the publication of -_Callirrhoë_ in 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. The pseudonym -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. - -_Callirrhoë_ was 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 the _Saturday -Review_ talked 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. The _Spectator_ announced “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 peoples are allowed to hear the voice. The _Athenæum_ -saw “something almost of Shakespearean penetration”; the _Academy_ -rejoiced in “a gospel of ecstasy ... a fresh poetic ring ... a fresh -gift of song ... a picturesque and vivid style.” The _Pall Mall Gazette_ -quoted a lyric which “Drayton would not have refused to sign”; and, not -to multiply these perfectly just remarks, the _Liverpool Mercury_ -crowned 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 the _Cambridge -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 “creative imagination” 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 -than _Callirrhoë_ passed unnoticed or was reviled; while on the other -hand _Borgia_, published _anonymously_, 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, he being -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’s _Birth of -Tragedy_ in their _Callirrhoë_; 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 entirely from 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’s _Hand 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), external events 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 human creature 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 (not shocked, 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 again - So blithe a day among the woods. - - The forest knew you and was glad, - And laughed for very joy to know - Her child was with her; then, grown sad, - She wept because her child must go. - - And you would spy and you would capture - The shyest flower that lit the grass; - The joy I had to watch your rapture - Was 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 had - Among the woods of Fontainebleau. - -One is not surprised to see how brightly our poets struck the -imagination of the few who knew 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 things of 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 -editing _The 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 am indebted 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: - - Michael was then immensely vivacious, full of vitality and - curiosity. When young she had doubtless been very pretty, and for - years kept traces of colour in her white hair. But if Michael was - small, ruddy, gay, buoyant and quick in word and temper, Henry was - tall, pallid, singularly beautiful in a way not appreciated by - common people, that is, white with gray eyes, thin in face, - shoulders and hands, as if touched throughout with gray long before - the graying of her temples. Sudden shadows would flit over the face - at some inner perception or memory. Always of fragile health, she - was very quiet and restrained in voice and manner, a singularly - alive and avid spectator and questioner, occasionally speaking with - force and vivacity, but instinctively retiring, and absorbed by an - intensely reflective inner life. - -Yet it is clear that she, as well as Michael, loved the give-and-take of -social intercourse within their circle. She too liked to catch up and -pass on an amusing story about a contemporary, and thoroughly enjoyed a -joke. After the austere Bristol days, when their gravity might have been -at least a thousand years old, they grew steadily younger through the -next fifteen years. “Michael had,” says Father John Gray, “the look, the -laugh, and many of the thoughts of a child.” Both were witty, but -Michael, the richer and more spontaneous nature, had a warm gift of -humour almost Rabelaisian. She loved fun, and jesting, and mimicry. With -her frequent smile, her sparkling eyes, and her emphatic tones and -gestures, she was an extremely animated storyteller. Henry’s wit had a -more intellectual quality: it was quicker and sharper in edge than -Michael’s, and it grew keener as she grew older, till it acquired almost -a touch of grimness, as when she said to a friend during her last -illness: “The doctor says I may live till Christmas, but after that _I -must go away at once_.” - -Henry was not a sedulous correspondent: indulged by Michael, she only -wrote letters when a rare mood prompted her to do so. But the fortunate -friend who heard from her at those times received a missive that was -like an emanation from her soul, tender, wise, penetrative, gravely -witty and delicately sweet. One would like to give in full some of those -letters, but must be content to quote characteristic fragments of them. -Thus, in March of 1888, she wrote to Miss Alice Trusted: - - I feel you will never let yourself believe how much you are loved - by me.... Your letter is one of the most precious I have ever - received. Ah! so a friend thinks of one; would that God could think - with her! But it is a deep joy to me to be something to the souls - that live along with me on the earth.... - -In May she wrote to the same friend an account of a visit to their “dear -old friend, Mr Browning”: - - He came in to us quite by himself, with one of his impetuous - exclamations, followed by “Well, my two dear Greek women!” We found - him well, lovingly kind, grave as ever. His new home is well-nigh a - palace, and his famed old tapestries (one attributed to Giulio - Romano) have now a princely setting.... He fell into a deep, - mourning reverie after speaking of the death of Matthew Arnold, - whom he called with familiar affection--Mat. Then his face was like - the surface of a grey pool in autumn, full of calm, blank - _intimité_. - -Another visit is described in July of the same year: - - We have again been to see Mr Browning, and spent with him and his - sister almost the only perfect hours of this season. Alice, he has - promised me to play, the next time we meet, some of Galuppi’s - toccatas!... He read to us some of the loveliest poems of Alfred de - Musset, very quietly, with a low voice full of _recueillement_, and - now and then a brief smile at some touch of exquisite playfulness. - He is always the poet with us, and it seems impossible to realise - that he goes behind a shell of worldly behaviour and commonplace - talk when he faces society. Yet so it is: we once saw it was so. - In his own home, in his study, he is “Rabbi ben Ezra,” with his - inspired, calm, triumphant old age. His eyes rest on one with their - strange, passive vision, traversed sometimes by an autumnal - geniality, mellow and apart, which is beautiful to meet. Yet his - motions are full of impetuosity and warmth, and contrast with his - steady outlook and his ‘grave-kindly’ aspect. - -One finds acute artistic and literary estimates in these letters. Thus, -after an appreciation of Whistler’s nocturnes, she remarks of his -Carlyle portrait, “It is a masterpiece; the face has caught the fervid -chaos of his ideality.” - -Of Onslow Ford’s memorial of Shelley she says: “The drowned nude ... is -an excellent portrait of the model, and therefore unworthy of Shelley, -to my mind. The conventional lions and the naturalistic apple-boughs -don’t coalesce. The Muse is but a music-girl. I like the bold treatment -of the sea-washed body.” - -She sketches an illuminating comparison between the art of Pierre Loti’s -_Pêcheur d’lslande_ and that of Millet; and declares that Huysmans’ work -“is the last word of decadence--the foam on the most recent decay--and -yet there is something of meagre tragedy about it.” - -After a visit to the opera she writes: - - We went to see Gluck’s _Orfeo_. Julia Ravogli attaches one to her - with that love which is almost chivalry, that one gives to a great - and simple artist. Her hands are as expressive as a countenance, - and her face is true, is pliant to ideal passion. Her voice is - lovely, and she sits down by her dead Euridice and sings _Che farò_ - as a woodland nightingale sings her pain. - -She exclaims at the “elegant Latin” used by Gerbert in his letters, -“written in the dark tenth century”; agrees with Matthew Arnold that -Flaubert has “neither compassion nor insight: his art cannot give us the -verity of a temperament or soul”; but adds of his (Flaubert’s) -correspondence, “To me each letter in which he writes of art is full of -incitement, help, and subtle justness.” - -She gives her impressions of Pater when delivering a lecture in December -1890: - - He came forward without looking anywhere and immediately began to - read, with no preface. He never gave his pleasant blue eyes to his - audience.... There is great determination, a little brutality (in - the French sense) about the lower part of his face; yet it is under - complete, urbane control. His voice is low, and has a singular - sensitive resonance in it--an audible capacity for suffering, as it - were. His courteous exterior hides a strong nature; there is - something, one feels, of Denys l’Auxerrois in him--a Bacchant, a - Zagreus. - -A criticism of the comedy of the nineties, and its manner of -production, is thrown off lightly in a letter to Miss Louie Ellis: - - We went to Pinero. He was taken at snail’s pace, and so much that - was disgraceful to humanity had to be endured at that rate that we - groaned. Satire should always be taken with rapier speed--to pause - on it is to make it unendurable. The malice and anger must sparkle, - or the mind contracts and is bored. - -On an Easter visit to the country, in 1894, she wrote to Miss Trusted: - - Yesterday we saw our first daffodils: they were growing in awful - peace. The sun was setting: it had reached the tranquil, not the - coloured stage; the air held more of its effect than the sky yet - showed. We did not pluck a daffodil: they grew inviolable. After - sunset, as we came thro’ the firs, we saw a round glow behind - them--it was the Paschal moon rising. A chafer passed, like the - twang of one string of an Æolian harp. The sound of the wind in the - firs is cosmic, the gathering of many waters etherealized; and the - sharp notes of individual birds cross it with their smallness, and - with a pertinacity that can throw continuance itself into the - background. - -Writing to another friend at a much later date, she says: - - We have seen Tagore for a quarter of an hour--seen the patient and - quiet beauty of a lustrous-eyed animal. He is full of rumination, - affability; and his smile is a jewel, the particular jewel of his - soul. - -And in 1913, the last year of her life, when Mr Rothenstein had been -making a sketch of her head for a portrait, she wrote him thanks which -were both critical and appreciative, concluding: - - It is a lovely and noble drawing: it is such a revelation of a mood - of the soul--so intense, I said, seeing it at first--that is how I - shall look at the Last Judgment, “When to Thee I have appealed, - Sweet Spirit, comfort me.” - -It is significant that, wherever they went, the servants fell in love -with Henry. Her manner, always gracious, was to them of the most -beautiful courtesy and consideration. Michael was more imperious, more -exigent. Warm and generous in her friendships, she yet was capable of -sudden fierce anger for some trivial cause--when, however, she would -rage so amusingly that the offender forgot to be offended in his turn. -She might banish a friend for months, for no discoverable reason, or -might in some other rash way inconsiderately hurt him; but, though she -would be too proud to confess it, she would be the unhappiest party of -them all to the quarrel. “Of the wounds she inflicts, Michael very -frequently dies,” she once wrote in a letter. - -But of her devotion to Henry, its passion, its depth, its tenacity and -tenderness, it is quite impossible to speak adequately. From Henry’s -infancy to her death--literally from her first day to her last--Michael -shielded, tended, and nurtured her in body and in spirit. Probably there -never was another such case of one mind being formed by another. There -surely cannot be elsewhere in literature a set of love-songs such as -those she addressed to Henry; nor such jealousy for a comrade’s fame as -that she showed to the reviewers after Henry’s death; nor such absolute -generosity as that with which she lavished praise on her fellow’s work, -and forgot her own share in it. But there is not room, even if one could -find words, to speak of these things. One can only snatch, as it were in -passing, a few fragments from her letters. And this I do, partly to -bring home the other proof of Michael’s devotion, namely, that she -always did the very considerable business involved in the collaboration, -and wrote nearly all the social letters: but chiefly so that some direct -glimpses may be caught of her warm human soul. - -Thus we may find, in her correspondence with Mr Elkin Mathews about -_Sight and Song_ in 1892, one proof out of many which the poets’ career -affords of their concern for the physical beauty of their books. They -desired their children to be lovely in body as well as in spirit; and -great was their care for format, decoration, binding, paper, and type: -for colour, texture, quality, arrangement of letterpress, appearance of -title-page, design of cover. In every detail there was rigorous -discrimination: precise directions were given, often in an imperious -tone; experiments were recommended; journeys of inspection were -undertaken; certain things were chosen and certain others emphatically -banned. But in the midst of exacting demands on some point or other one -lights on a gracious phrase such as “We know you will share our anxiety -that the book should be as perfect as art can make it”; or, this time to -the printers, “I am greatly obliged to you for your patience.” - -Again, Michael is discovered, in 1901, when a beautiful view from the -old bridge at Richmond was threatened by the factory-builder, rushing an -urgent whip to their friends. That which went to Mr Sydney Cockerell -ran: - - If you think our rulers incompetent, prove yourself a competent - subject. The competent subject does not plead evening engagements - when a buttercup piece of his England, with elms for shade and a - stretch of winding stream for freshness, is about to be wrenched - away. He toddles over to the Lebanon estate, notes the marked - trees, learns what trees are already felled, makes himself unhappy - ... and then goes home and writes to the papers. - -In a letter to Mr Havelock Ellis, in May 1886, there is a picturesque -but concise statement of the manner of the poets’ collaboration: - - As to our work, let no man think he can put asunder what God has - joined. _The Father’s Tragedy_, save Emmeline’s song and here and - there a stray line, is indeed Edith’s work: for the others, the - work is perfect mosaic: we cross and interlace like a company of - dancing summer flies; if one begins a character, his companion - seizes and possesses it; if one conceives a scene or situation, the - other corrects, completes, or murderously cuts away. - -To the same correspondent she wrote in 1889, on the subject of religion: - - If I may say so, I am glad of what you feel about the Son of Man, - the divineness of His love and purposes towards the world. There is - an atrocious superstition about me that I am orthodox ... whereas I - am Christian, pagan, pantheist, and other things the name of which - I do not know; and the only people with whom I cannot be in - sympathy are those who fail to recognize the beauty of Christ’s - life, and do not care to make their own lives in temper like His. - -And in 1891, because Henry was recovering from her Dresden illness, -Michael wrote in jocular mood: - - As you are a follower of Dionysos, I charge you get me Greek wine. - The Herr Geheimrath has ordered it for several weeks for Edith, and - in England they make as though they know it not. - -One finds in letters to Miss Louie Ellis amusing evidence of both our -poets’ love of beautiful clothes, as well as of Michael’s gift of -humorous expression. Thus, in 1895, just before a visit to Italy, she -wrote: - - I dream an evening frock to wear at Asolo. It is of a soft black, - frail and billowy, and its sleeves are in part of this, with - silvery white satin ribbon tied about. If you have a better dream, - send word; if not, tell me how much (I mean how little) the gown - would be. I want this to be not expensive--not _the_ evening gown, - but _an_ evening gown. - -And later, after the frock was received, she wrote: - - How often, from “Afric’s coral strand,” will a voice of praise go - up to Louie for that _perfect_ silk gown; I shall want to be in - little black frills for ever.... Do you know where in the city I - can get a big shady hat to wear with it in Italy? Not a monster, - but of a kind Theocritus would admire. - -The following too brief passages are from some of Michael’s letters to -the Rothensteins: the occasion of the first being to commiserate them on -the discomforts of a removal: - - _February 1907._--Unhappy ones! Take care of your everlasting - souls! I have got my soul bruised black and blue, beside some still - ridging scars, in removals. - - Yet there was once a transportation that was a triumph. It was - suggested we should be drawn by pards to Richmond in a golden - chariot. The pards was a detail not carried out; but of Thee, O - Bacchus, and of Thy ritual, the open landau piled high with Chow - and Field and Michael, doves and manuscripts and sacred - plants!--all that is US was there; and we drove consciously to - Paradise. - -There are delightful letters about the Rothenstein children, in -particular of an unfortunate catastrophe to a parcel of birds’ eggs sent -to a certain small John in January 1907: - - Leaving home on Monday in great haste, I besought Cook to pack the - tiny gift to John, and to blow the eggs. This may have been ill - done, I fear. Poets are the right folk for packing.... - - My heart goes out to your son. It is so odd--in a play we are - writing there is half a page of Herod Agrippa (the highly revered - slaughterer of the innocents, though that’s ‘another story’). He - talks exactly like John--and the FUTURE will say I copied him!... - - _Two days later._--Furious am I over the smashed eggs. But what can - we hope? It is the office of a cook to smash eggs. More eggs will - be born, and John shall have some whole. - - _January 20th, 1907._--Say to John--if Nelson had promised a - postcard to a lady, he would not have kept her waiting. He would - have gone forth, in the snow, with guns being fired at him all - round, and a lion growling in front, to choose that postcard. Say, - I am quite sure of this. - -In the spring of 1908 the poets went on one of their frequent country -visits, which were often rather in the nature of a retreat, and this -time they put up at an inn called the Tumble-Down-Dick. Thence they -wrote: - - You must some day visit us here, in our bar-parlour. The masons - have been having a grand dinner next door--smoke and excellent - knife-and-fork laughter, discussion, the pleasure of all speaking - at once--how these things enchant the poets from their muttered - breviaries! - -And a few days later: - - If Noli wants a jest, tell her Edith has heard from a Richmond - priest--our reputation is completely gone in Richmond.... A lady - had said to him she did not understand how anyone with self-respect - could put up at the Tumble-Down-Dick Inn! The priest, who is Irish - and sent us here under counsel of a Benedictine friar, is in great - bliss!! - -And in March 1910, having both been ill, they conclude thus an -invitation: - - Try to come on Wednesday. We are gradually gathering together the - teeth, glasses, wigs, and complexions that may enable us again to - greet our friends. Henry is among the flowers. Henry sees the - flowers: I see Henry, I have little to say. Speech, I suppose, will - go next!! “Yet once,” as Villon says.... - -From the time of the _Dial_ contributions Mr Ricketts became their -adviser in matters of book-production. It was on his suggestion, too, -that they removed from Reigate to the small Georgian house at 1 The -Paragon, Richmond, which overlooks the Thames from its balconies and -sloping garden, and remained their home until their death. That was in -1899, after the death of Henry’s father had left them free to choose -another home. It was in this year that they published their masque, -_Noontide Branches_, from the Daniel Press at Oxford. They had been in -Oxford two years earlier, in October 1897, while they were still under -the shadow of Mr Cooper’s uncertain fate. He had been lost on the -Riffelalp in June, and his body had not yet been recovered. But the -beauty of Oxford brought them peace, and the kindliness which met them -there, in particular from Mr and Mrs Daniel, lightened the cloud that -lay on their spirits. Michael wrote afterward from Richmond to Miss -Trusted to record gratefully how Mr Daniel, though she had been quite -unknown to him, had consented to print the masque and warmly befriended -them. - -They would joke about the minute size of the house at Richmond, which -nowadays has dwindled to a mere annexe. “Do not squirm at the lowly -entrance,” they wrote in an invitation to a friend; “within the -snail-shell are two poets most gay and happy”; and added, referring to -their dog, “_Do_ come! Chow says you will, or he will know the reason -why.” Probably there never was so modest a shell with so exquisite an -interior; but of this it is Mr Gordon Bottomley who can best speak: - - Their rooms were not less flawless than their poems. Their - interiors showed a rarer, wider, more certain choice than those of - the Dutch painters. The silvery, clear lithographs of their friend - Mr C. H. Shannon were hung all together in a cool northern room, - which they seemed to permeate with a faint light; and in another - room the gold grain of the walls, alike with the Persian plates - that glowed on the table as if they were rich, large petals, seemed - to find their reason for being there in the two deeply and subtly - coloured pictures by Mr Charles Ricketts on the walls. - - But always there was the same feeling of inevitable choice and - unity everywhere: in a jewelled pendant that lay on a satin-wood - table, in the opal bowl of pot-pourri near by on which an opal - shell lay lightly--a shell chosen for its supreme beauty of form, - and taken from its rose-leaf bed by Miss Cooper to be shown to a - visitor in the same way as she took a flower from a vase, saying, - “This is _Iris Susiana_,” as if she were saying “This is one of the - greatest treasures in the world,” and held it in her hand as if it - were a part of her hand. - -It is true that at Paragon they were gaily and happily busy: the years -there were fruitful of mellow achievement. Nevertheless, it was there -that the spiritual crisis of their life came, when in 1907 both poets -entered the Roman Catholic Church. Henry was received into the Church at -St Elizabeth’s, Richmond, on April 19th of that year; and Michael went -to Edinburgh on May 8th to be received by their old friend the poet -Father John Gray. - -The crisis had been prepared for partly by Henry’s ill-health, which -encouraged her contemplative habit of mind--that in turn operating upon -the religious sense which had always underlain their rationality. It was -Henry who first made the great decision when, after reading the Missal -in Latin, she suddenly exclaimed: “This is sacrifice: from this moment I -am a Catholic.” But their curious small volume called _Whym Chow_ -suggests (and the suggestion is confirmed by the facts) that the course -of that event was strongly influenced by the death of their Chow dog. It -was a mental process of great interest for the student of the psychology -of religious conversion, but too intimate and subtle to be discussed -here; and _Whym Chow_, printed privately in an exquisite small edition -in the Eragny Press, was intended only for the eyes of friends. The -chief value of the book is therefore bibliographical. Yet, in order to -comprehend how the rationalists of the year 1887 and the declared pagans -of 1897 became the Catholics of the year 1907, one thing may at least be -said--that in the manner of the death of the little creature they loved -both the poets came to realize sacrifice as the supreme good. It was not -by any means a new idea to them; on the contrary, it will be seen that -it was their earliest ideal. And the reason for its triumphant force at -this stage lay precisely in the fact that what had been an instinct -then, an intuitive, hardly conscious, but integral element of character, -became now a passionate conviction. - -In February 1911 Henry was attacked by cancer; and in one of the few -letters that she wrote she says (to the Rothensteins): - - Of course the shock was great and the struggle very hard at first. - I write this that you may both understand our silence.... We had to - go into Arabian deserts to repossess our souls. - -At the same time her fellow was writing to their friend Miss Tanner: - - Think of us as living in retreat, as indeed we are.... Henry has - very sharp pains, with moments of agony every day to bear. The - Beloved is showing her how great things she must suffer for His - Name’s sake.... For the rest, I am all dirty from the battle, and - smoked and bleeding--often three parts dragon myself to one of - Michael--and sometimes I have only clenched teeth to offer to God. - -Michael’s sufferings, through the long ordeal of Henry’s illness, were -not, however, confined to spiritual anguish. She herself was attacked by -cancer six months before Henry’s death on December 13th, 1913. But she -did not reveal the fact; no one knew of it save her doctor and her -confessor, and they were under a bond of secrecy. She nursed her fellow -tenderly, hiding her own pain and refusing an operation which might have -been remedial, encouraging Henry in the composition that she still -laboured at, attending to the details of its publication, and snatching -moments herself to write poems which are among the most poignant in our -language. Neither poet would consent to the use of morphia, for they -desired to keep their minds clear; and to the last, in quiet intervals -between attacks of pain, they pursued their art. In a cottage in the -village of Armitage, near Hawkesyard Priory, where they stayed for a few -weeks in the summer of 1911, I stood in the small sitting-room they -occupied, and there, so the good housewife told me, Miss Cooper, though -very weak, sat day after day--writing, writing. All through 1912, with -occasional weeks of respite and certain visits to Leicester and Dublin, -the work went on: _Poems of Adoration_, Henry’s last work, was published -in that year. In the summer of 1913, from the Masefields’ house at 13 -Well Walk, Hampstead (taken for the poets by the generosity of Mrs -Berenson), Michael wrote to Miss Fortey: - - Henry has now fearful pain to bear, and the fighting is severe. - Pray for me, dear Emily. _Mystic Trees_ is faring horribly. - -Yet _Mystic Trees_, Michael’s last written book, was published in that -year. - -When December brought release at last to Henry’s gentle spirit, -Michael’s endurance broke down. A hæmorrhage revealed her secret on the -day of Henry’s funeral; a belated operation was performed, and for some -weeks Michael was too ill to do more than rail angrily against the Press -notices of her fellow: - - Nothing in the least adequate has yet been done--nothing of her - work given. I am hovering as a hawk over the reviewers. - -By March 1914, however, she was at work again, collecting early poems of -Henry’s to publish in a volume called _Dedicated_, and about this time -she wrote to Miss Fortey: - - You will rejoice to know I have written a poem or two--one pagan. I - am reverting to the pagan, to the humanity of Virgil, to the moods - that make life so human and so sweet. - -The poems she mentions appeared in the _Dedicated_ volume shortly -afterward. - -As the summer grew her malady gained the mastery; and, knowing that -death was approaching, she removed to a house in the grounds of -Hawkesyard Priory, in order to be near the ministration of her friend -and confessor, Father Vincent McNabb, a Dominican priest who was at that -time Prior at Hawkesyard. One of the few recorded incidents of her last -days (it was on August 24th, 1914, just a month before she died) is -touchingly characteristic. Father Vincent had taken tea with her, and -Michael, propped by her pillows, yet contrived to add dignity and grace -to the little ceremony with which she presented to him a copy of Henry’s -_Dedicated_. One can imagine the scene--the long, low room on the ground -floor in which her bed had been placed for greater convenience in -nursing her; the windows giving on to an unkempt lawn and a tangle of -shrubs; summer dying outside, and inside the dying poet reading to the -white Dominican poem after poem by her fellow, in a voice that must have -shaken even as the feeble hand shook in writing the record down. Finally -the priest, taking the book in his turn, read to her her own poem -_Fellowship_, and, hearing her soft prayer for absolution on account of -it, turned away his face and could find no answer. - - -I - - In the old accents I will sing, my Glory, my Delight, - In the old accents, tipped with flame, before we knew the right, - True way of singing with reserve. O Love, with pagan might, - - -II - - White in our steeds, and white too in our armour let us ride, - Immortal, white, triumphing, flashing downward side by side - To where our friends, the Argonauts, are fighting with the tide. - - -III - - Let us draw calm to them, Beloved, the souls on heavenly voyage bound, - Saluting as one presence. Great disaster were it found, - If one with half-fed lambency should halt and flicker round. - - -IV - - O friends so fondly loving, so beloved, look up to us, - In constellation breaking on your errand, prosperous, - O Argonauts!... - ... Now, faded from their sight, - We cling and joy. It was thy intercession gave me right, - My Fellow, to this fellowship. My Glory, my Delight! - -The weeks of Michael’s passing witnessed the passing of the age to which -she belonged, for they were those in which the Great War began. It is -clear that Michael Field, in the noble unity of her life and work, -represented something that was finest in the dying era; and yet she was, -in certain respects, aloof from that Victorian Age, and in advance of -it. It is profoundly moving to see how, even in extremity, her genius -remained true to itself. It was so true, indeed, that in her pitiful, -scanty record of those days one may catch a glimpse, through her winging -spirit, of the moments of greatness to which the spirit of England rose -in that crisis. - -She was desolated at the thought of the killing, the suffering, the -destruction of beauty. But she too felt the stimulus which the vastness -of the danger gave to the national spirit, and she longed to serve. “I -want to live now the times are great,” she wrote to Mrs Berenson. “There -are untended wounds to think of--that makes me ashamed”--ashamed, she -meant, of the tendance that her own wound was receiving. Again, on -August 13th: - - But Michael cannot join with Jenny the cook. “What news of the war, - Jenny?” ... “_Good news; fifty thousand Germans killed!_” - -She followed with desperate anxiety the calamitous events in Belgium, -writing on August 28th: - - I am suffering from the folly of our English troops being wasted, - and making fine, orderly retreats.... Namur gave me a shock from - which I cannot recover. - -And finally, on September 19th: - - Father Prior mourns Louvain even worse than Bernard--the - destruction of the precious beauty. Tell me, is Senlis safe? - -After that day little or nothing more was written. Every morning she -rose at seven o’clock, and, assisted by her nurse, dressed and was -wheeled in a chair through the Priory park to hear Mass at the chapel. -On September 23rd the nurse wrote at Michael’s bidding to Miss Fortey: - - Miss Bradley is anxious about you: she fears you may be ill. She is - frightfully weak to-day, but had a splendid night and is very - happy. - -On September 26th Michael for the first time did not appear in the -chapel at her usual early hour. Father Vincent, seeing her vacant place, -had a sudden certainty of the end. “_Consummatum est_” rushed to his -lips as he ran down the grassy slopes to the house. He found Michael -stretched on the floor of her room, dead, with her head on the bosom of -the kneeling nurse. She had sighed her last breath one moment before. -She had succeeded in dressing ready to go to Mass, but the effort to -step into the carriage had been too much. She sank down and died quietly -in the nurse’s arms. - - * * * * * - -There are questions of intense interest involved in the life of the -Michael Fields--personal, psychological, literary--which one must put -aside, angry at the compulsion of restricted space. But their life was -in itself a poem, and the beauty of it is unmistakable. These were -heroic and impassioned souls, who, in honouring their vow to poetry, -gave life, it is true, “a poor second place”; and yet they fulfilled -life itself, with a completeness few are capable of, in love and -sacrifice. Michael would quote from her copy of St Augustine: “_Aime, -donc, et fais ce que tu voudras ensuite_”; and love was her gift to the -fellowship, as Henry’s was intellect. But the collaboration was so -loyal, the union so complete, that one may search diligently, and search -in vain, for any sign in the work both wrought that this is the creation -of two minds and not of one. It is possible to sift the elements, of -course, seeing in this work vividly contrasting qualities; that it is at -one and the same time passionate and intellectual, exuberant and -dignified, swift and stately, of high romantic manner and yet -psychologically true; that it is fierce, sombre, vehement, and at the -same time gentle, delicate, of the last refinement of perception and -feeling. One can even identify the various elements (when one knows) as -more characteristic of one poet or the other; perceiving that Michael -was the initiator, the pioneer, the passionate one from whom the -creative impulse flowed; and that to Henry belonged especially the gift -of form, that hers was the thoughtful, constructive, shaping, finishing -genius of the fellowship. But it is not possible, in the plays on which -the two worked, to point to this line or that speech, and say “It is the -work of Michael” or “It is the work of Henry.” You cannot do it, because -the poets themselves could not have done it. The collaboration was so -close, so completely were the poets at one in the imaginative effort, -that frequently they could not themselves decide (except by reference to -the handwriting on the original sheet of manuscript) who had composed a -given passage. - -In like manner it is possible to follow the poets through the facts of -their existence, and to see that existence shape itself, despite mental -vicissitude and apparent change, triumphantly of one piece -throughout--generous in colour, rich in texture, graceful in design. It -might seem that gulfs were fixed between their grave, austere, studious -girlhood, the joyous blossoming of their maturity with its pagan joy in -beauty, and the mysticism of their last years. They appeared to go -through many phases, and even to pass, under the eyes of astonished and -indignant friends, out of all mental resemblance to what they were -believed to be. A friend of Bristol days, Miss Carta Sturge, writing in -a strain of regret for this apparent inconsistency, adds generously: - - Perhaps the fine flavour of their genius, its subtle sensitiveness - to impressions, its unspoilt bloom, might have suffered had they - had more ... consistency and stability. It is enough that their - genius was great, their spirit beautiful, and their companionship - of unexampled delight. And that is how we gratefully remember them. - -That is finely true; and yet it may be that the tone of regret is -unnecessary; for on a complete survey it will be found that Michael -Field was deeply consistent from first to last. Through perhaps a -hundred changes--of opinion, of taste, and of deeper things--she -remained the same; and those changes were but steps toward the -fulfilment of what she had been from the beginning. Thus one sees the -ending of the poets’ life as the inevitable outcome of that which they -always were--of a magnificence touched with grace. The Dionysian wine of -those early days was poured at last to the Man of Sorrows; the Bacchic -revel was turned to tragedy. But it was the same wine; the same energy -of enthusiasm; and the latest-written lyrics, devotional pieces composed -in suffering and very near to death, have often the audacity and abandon -of the worshipper of the vine-god. The poet is Mænad still. - - - - -II. THE LYRICS - - -The lyrical poetry of Michael Field is much smaller in bulk than her -dramatic work; yet there are eight volumes of it. On the other hand, it -is more perfect in its kind than her tragedies, and yet its chiselled, -small perfection cannot approach their grandeur. - -A story is told about one of the books of lyrics which is amusingly -characteristic of the poets. _Underneath the Bough_ made its appearance -first in the spring of 1893, and was well received. The _Athenæum_ -reviewer even went so far in admiration as to suggest, of obvious -defects, that Michael Field probably _preferred_ to write in that way! -Soon after the book came out, however, the poets went on an Italian -journey with some friends who took a different view of the function of -criticism, and who dealt with them faithfully about the weakness of some -of the pieces. Thereupon, with a gesture that is entirely their own in -its grace and emphasis, the poets confessed their repentance for the -defective work by immediately cutting the book to the extent of -one-half, and reissued it in the autumn of 1893 with the careful legend -“Revised and Decreased Edition.” The story, however, does not close on -that access of humility which, on a comparison of the two editions, -would certainly appear somewhat excessive. But humility was not, at any -rate with Michael, a pet virtue. Repenting at leisure of their hasty -repentance, they brought out yet another edition, and reinstated many of -the poems which they had rejected from number two--this with a word of -defiance to the critics of number one, and a recommendation to them to -look for a precedent to _Asolando_. - -The third edition is rare, but a copy of it may be seen at the British -Museum. It was published in Portland, Maine, in 1898. It still omits -about thirty of the pieces from the first edition, but it introduces a -number of new ones and restores, among others, the _In Memoriam_ verses -for Robert Browning which appeared first in the _Academy_ for December -21st, 1889, on the occasion of Browning’s death: - - Slowly we disarray, - Our leaves grow few, - Few on the bough, and many on the sod. - Round him no ruining autumn tempest blew; - Gathered on genial day, - He fills, fresh as Apollo’s bay, - The Hand of God. - -It would appear from the preface, however, that there was an additional -motive for publishing a third edition in an invitation from the United -States to contribute a volume to the “Old World” series, and the poet -adds a note of gratitude to her American readers who, as she says, “have -given me that joy of listening denied to me in my own island.” - -Considering the lyrical work as a whole, it is seen to cover Michael -Field’s poetical career from beginning to end. Not that the lyric -impulse was constant (for there were times when the poets’ dramatic work -absorbed them almost completely); but it never entirely failed. It was, -as one would expect, strongest in their early years: it recurred -intermittently through the period of the later tragedies, and returned -in force when, toward the end of their life, tragic inspiration gave -place to religious ardour. Thus, although this poetry is subjective in a -less degree than lyrical verse often is, most of the crucial events of -the poets’ lives are reflected there. The lover of a story will not be -disappointed, and the student of character will find enough for his -purpose in personal revelation both conscious and unconscious. Moreover, -a spiritual autobiography might, with a little patience, be outlined -from these eight volumes; and it would be a significant document, -illuminating much more than the lives of two maiden ladies in the second -half of the nineteenth century. - -Such a spiritual history would be complete, in extent at least, for it -would begin with Michael’s earliest work in _The New Minnesinger_ (that -title at once suggesting the German influence in English life and -letters at the moment, 1875), with its strenuous ethic of Unitarian -tendency based on a creed so wide as to have no perceptible boundary; -and it would end only with the devotional poetry of her last written -volumes where, with no concern for ethics as such, the poet stands at -the gate of the well-fenced garden of the Roman Church with a flaming -sword in her hand and a face of impassioned tenderness. But in the -interval it would pass through her pagan phase, when she revelled in -joyful living--and in the classics, turning their myths into pleasant -narrative verse; when in _Long Ago_ (1889) she daringly rehandled the -Sapphic themes; and when in _Sight and Song_ (1892) she tried to convey -her intense delight in colour and form by translating into poetry some -of the old master-pictures that she loved. More important, however, than -those books are in such an autobiography is the human record of joys and -loves and sorrows contained in the volume called _Underneath the Bough_ -(1893); while _Wild Honey_ (1908), a collection covering about ten years -of her life, brings us down to the epoch of religious crisis and -reconciliation with the Church of Rome. Then, with tragic inspiration -quelled by Christian hope and submission, all her creative energy flowed -into the Catholic lyrics contained in _Poems of Adoration_ (1912) and -_Mystic Trees_ (1913). - -One does not pause long on _The New Minnesinger_ in this survey of the -lyrics, because it was published by Katharine Bradley as Arran Leigh, -and is not, therefore, strictly a work of Michael Field. Nor shall we -deal with the lyrics in _Bellerophôn_, a volume published by the two -poets as Arran and Isla Leigh in 1881. Not that either book is unworthy -of study; on the contrary, there are some fine pieces in both. But the -poets having elected to leave them in limbo, where one has had to grope -for this mere reference to them, there, for my part, they shall remain. -Except to note in passing that, following Swift’s _Advice to a Young -Poet_ to “make use of a quaint motto,” the poet has inscribed on the -front of _The New Minnesinger_ the phrase “Think of Womanhood, and thou -to be a woman.” That has a significance which is elaborated in the -name-piece, whose theme is of love and of the woman-poet’s special -aptitude to sing about it; and where it is insisted that the singer -shall be faithful to her own feminine nature and experience. All -through the work of the two poets it will be seen that the principle -stated thus early and definitely by the elder one ruled their artistic -practice; so that we are justified in extracting this, at least, from -Michael’s earliest book, and noting it as a conscious motive from the -beginning. - -I think, too, we are entitled to recover from the shades one small song. -For, after all, a great literary interest of the work of the Michael -Fields is the amazing oneness of the two voices. The collaboration, -indeed, deserves much more space than it is possible to give it here. -But it is something to the good if we can glance, in passing, at -undoubted examples of each poet’s work, hoping to see hints of the -individual qualities which each contributed to the fellowship. We have -already told how, after Henry’s death and when Michael knew that she too -must soon die, she hastened to gather together certain early pieces by -her fellow, and published them, with a poignant closing piece of her -own, in the book called _Dedicated_ (1914). That closing poem, -_Fellowship_, closed her artistic life: it is Michael’s last word as a -poet. But the point for the moment is that she has given us in -_Dedicated_ the means of recognizing Henry, and distinguishing between -the two poets in their youthful work. One may take from _The New -Minnesinger_, therefore, as characteristic of the younger Michael, such -a piece as _The Quiet Light_: - - After the sunset, - Before the night, - There comes a season - Of quiet light. - - After the dying, - Before the death, - There comes a drawing - Of quiet breath. - - Hush of the daylight, - O whisper why - That childlike breathing - Before we die! - -That is a slight thing which does not, of course, represent Michael at -anything like her full power; but it does already suggest the emotional -basis of her gift, and her lyrical facility. The piece which follows, -_Jason_, is a luckier choice for Henry, not only in that it gives her -greater scope, but in that it is probably a maturer work than the other. -The comparison would, therefore, be unfair to Michael if one were -judging of relative merits; but we are thinking for the moment only of a -difference in _kind_ of poetic equipment. And the poem is given for this -further fact--it was chosen by Michael herself to read to Father -Vincent McNabb a few days before she died, in exultation at her -fellow’s genius: - - “Upon the sea-beach I diffuse my limbs; - My wail athwart the harping sea-plain heaves; - The shards are bitter and the ocean brims - My sorrow from a fount where darkness grieves; - I, Jason, by this vessel of my pride, - Lie, as vain flotsam, ’neath its doughty side. - - A wife I had and children--she is gone - To her own land--but first she waved my feet - To where my sons, her wrath had fallen upon, - Lay dead together ’neath their cradle sheet. - A bride I had, but ere to bed she came, - Ashes of flame she was, ashes of flame. - - And I had comrades in grand years of youth; - They are all slain or care no more for deeds. - A golden aim I followed to its truth; - It is a story now no mortal heeds. - Once I drove oxen of fire-shooting lips, - Once I was ruler of a ship of ships.” ... - - The pebbles ground like teeth within a jaw; - A moan of angry timber thundered forth; - And the great poop of Argo rolled its maw, - With a wave’s action, from the south to north; - Earth quaked in fear at glimpse of Jason’s doom, - As slant on him fell Argo as a tomb. - -Clearly there are elements here different from those of _The Quiet -Light_. One feels in this poem a dramatic movement and a sense of -tragedy which are not simply given in the data of the noble old story; -one sees structural skill in the shaping of the narrative, and -recognizes in a memorable line or two--“A golden aim I followed to its -truth” and “Ashes of flame she was, ashes of flame”--the final -concentration of thought and feeling where great poetry begins. - -Perhaps we are not mistaken, therefore, in distinguishing, even so early -as these two poems, the contrasting qualities of the two poets which, -met in happy union, made so clear a single voice that Meredith was -amazed when he discovered that Michael Field was two people. One may -define these qualities as emotional on the one side and intellectual on -the other. It is, of course, the old distinction between rhetoric and -imagination, matter and form; and clearly shows itself again in the two -volumes of devotional poetry at the end of their life, where Henry is -seen as kin to Herbert and Michael as kin to Vaughan. And though the -whole story of the collaboration cannot be contained within any -statement so simple as that, its fundamentals are rooted in this -complementary relation between the two minds. - -Returning to the lyrics, I choose frankly the pieces which throw some -light on the poets’ lives. And although I do this from an unashamed -interest in their story, and without immediate reference to the merits -of the verse as poetry, there should be a chance that the poetical -values of pieces wrought under the stress of intimate feeling will be -not lower but higher than those of others. So, indeed, the event proves; -for of the lyrics which may be safely attributed to Michael those are -the best which can be called her love-poems. Of love-interest, in the -attractive common meaning of the term, there is not a great deal in the -work of either poet; and in that of Michael it is mainly comprised in -half a dozen songs in _Underneath the Bough_. Sapphic affinities -notwithstanding (and imaginary adventures in that region), the two -ladies had their measure of Victorian reticence; though that did not -decline upon Victorian prudishness. But Michael wrote love-poetry of -another kind than the romantic, in a series about her fellow which is -probably unique in literature. It will be found in the third book of -_Underneath the Bough_, and is supplemented by pieces scattered through -later books, notably a small group at the end of _Mystic Trees_. Those -poems are a record of her devotion to Edith Cooper, and it is doubtful -whether Laura or Beatrice or the Dark Lady had a tenderer wooing. They -explain, of course, the slightness of a more usual (or, as some would -put it, a more normal) love-interest in Michael’s work. But it need not -be supposed that there was anything abnormal in this devotion. On the -contrary, it was the expression of her mother-instinct, the outflow of -the natural feminine impulse to cherish and protect. And this she -herself realized perfectly; for there is a passage in one of her letters -to Miss Louie Ellis which runs: - - I speak as a mother; mothers of some sort we must all become. I - have just been watching Henry stripping the garden of all its roses - and then piling them in a bowl for me.... - -But that Michael was ‘normal’ in the mere sense of having had -love-affairs there is proof enough without recourse to the vulgarity of -spying into every lyric for a record of actual experience. Her dramatic -instinct would make that pitfall even more dangerous in her case than in -most, so that one would not dare to venture in the direction at all -without a warrant. But, armed with the poet’s confession, one may quote -from a tiny sequence which has an almost tropical breath. It tells of a -passion that blossomed quickly in hot, bright colour, and died with -sudden vehemence. - - Across a gaudy room - I looked and saw his face, - Beneath the sapless palm-trees, in the gloom - Of the distressing place, - Where everyone sat tired, - Where talk itself grew stale, - Where, as the day began to fail, - No guest had just the power required - To rise and go; I strove with my disgust: - But at the sight of him my eyes were fired - To give one glance, as though they must - Be sociable with what they found of fair - And free and simple in a chamber where - Life was so base. - - As when a star is lit - In the dull, evening sky, - Another soon leaps out to answer it, - Even so the bright reply - Came sudden from his eyes, - By all but me unseen. - Since then the distance that between - Our lives unalterably lies - Is but a darkness, intimate and still, - Which messages may traverse, where replies - May sparkle from afar, until - The night becomes a mystery made clear - Between two souls forbidden to draw near: - Creator, why? - - * * * * * - - We meet. I cannot look up; I hear - He hopes that the rainy fog will clear: - My cheeks flush him back a hope it may, - And at last I seek his eyes. - Oh, to greet such skies-- - The delicate, violet, thunder-gray, - Behind a spirit at mortal play! - Who cares that the fog should roll away? - - * * * * * - - As two fair vessels side by side, - No bond had tied - Our floating peace; - We thought that it would never cease, - But like swan-creatures we should always glide; - _And this is love_ - We sighed. - - As two grim vessels side by side, - Through wind and tide - War grappled us, - With bond as strong as death, and thus - We drove on mortally allied: - _And this is hate_ - We cried. - - * * * * * - - Go to the grave, - Die, die--be dead! - If a Judgment-Angel came and said - That I could save - My heart and brain, if I could but will - For a single moment that you should die, - I would clasp my hands, and wish you ill, - And say good-bye. - - Go to the grave, - Die, die--be dead! - If the Judgment-Angel came and said - That I could save - My body and soul, if I could but will - For as long as an hour that you should die, - My hands would drop, and my eyes would fill, - And the angel fly. - -If we were concerned with the art of this verse rather than its tale one -would be compelled to consider a touch of rhetoric and a violence of -gesture which are characteristic of Michael not at her best; but which -do correspond with the turbulent youthful emotion out of which the poems -were born. Michael’s authentic love-story, however, is that which -centres upon Henry; and the poems to Henry express a master-passion. -There was an element of her nature as strong and as constant as its -poetic impulse, and that was her affection for her fellow. Indeed, she -was greater as a lover than as a poet; for her life was her finest poem, -and Henry was its inspiration. It follows that she was never so happy as -when she was engaged upon this theme; and that the sequence I have -mentioned is a joyful record of the fellowship. Here is a piece which -describes the sealing of the bond between the poets in those early days -when they had not yet embarked on their great quest: - - It was deep April, and the morn - Shakspere was born; - The world was on us, pressing sore; - My love and I took hands and swore, - Against the world, to be - Poets and lovers evermore, - To laugh and dream on Lethe’s shore, - To sing to Charon in his boat, - Heartening the timid souls afloat; - Of judgment never to take heed, - But to those fast-locked souls to speed, - Who never from Apollo fled, - Who spent no hour among the dead; - Continually - With them to dwell, - Indifferent to heaven or hell. - -Next we may take a portrait of Henry in her girlhood when the two began -to collaborate, this giving incidentally a description of what was, on -the testimony of intimate friends (and, indeed, of the poets -themselves), their method of work: - - A girl, - Her soul a deep-wave pearl - Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries; - A face flowered for heart’s ease, - A brow’s grace soft as seas - Seen thro’ faint forest-trees: - A mouth, the lips apart, - Like aspen-leaflets trembling in the breeze - From her tempestuous heart. - Such: and our souls so knit, - I leave a page half-writ-- - The work begun - Will be to heaven’s conception done - If she come to it. - -Exactly in that way the two would often co-operate, working together -actually on one piece. When it was a question of a big work--of a -tragedy or a chronicle-play--there was, of course, a united exploration -of the ground and a mapping of it. The two poets would go together to -the British Museum or some other great library for the research. The -scheme was then fully discussed, ideas were exchanged, conceptions of -character formed and tested, and scenes allotted to suit individual -taste or aptitude. But the collaboration was even more intimate than -that. They would readily interchange their parts; and frequently they -would be engaged together upon a page, a speech, or even a single line. -It is therefore no poetic licence which declares that the half-written -sheet of one would be completed to perfection by the other, but only -further proof of the way in which the diverse elements of these two -minds were fused in a union so complete that the reader cannot credit a -dual authorship, and the poets themselves could hardly distinguish their -individual contributions. - -There is among the poems to Henry a dainty mock-pastoral in praise of -her beauty which might have been written by an Elizabethan songster to -his mistress; and a sonnet called _Constancy_ which speaks with graver -passion: - - I love her with the seasons, with the winds, - As the stars worship, as anemones - Shudder in secret for the sun, as bees - Buzz round an open flower: in all kinds - My love is perfect; and in each she finds - Herself the goal; then why, intent to tease - And rob her delicate spirit of its ease, - Hastes she to range me with inconstant minds? - If she should die, if I were left at large - On earth without her--I, on earth, the same - Quick mortal with a thousand cries, her spell - She fears would break. And I confront the charge, - As sorrowing and as careless of my fame - As Christ intact before the infidel. - -There are pieces which reveal Henry, quieter perhaps, but deeply tender -toward her fellow: - - My lady hath a lovely rite: - When I am gone - No prayer she saith - As one in fear: - For orison, - Pressing her pillow white - With kisses, just the sacred number, - She turns to slumber; - Adding sometimes thereto a tear - And a quick breath. - -There is a short poem in which Michael is thinking about the nature of -Henry’s genius, and perceives its tragic power as her peculiar gift: - - Apollo and the Muses taught thee not - Thy mighty strain, enchantment to the mind, - Thralling the heart by spell of holy fears; - Awful thou sought’st Erinys’ sacred grot, - And the Eternal Goddess, well-inclin’d, - Hath given thee songs, for the dull life of tears. - -And in another piece she compares and contrasts her own gift with that -of Henry in imagery as brilliant as its criticism is just: - - Mine is the eddying foam and the broken current, - Thine the serene-flowing tide, the unshattered rhythm. - Light touches me on the surface with glints of sunshine, - Dives in thy bosom disclosing a mystic river: - Ruffling, the wind takes the crest of my waves resurgent, - Stretches his pinions at poise on thy even ripples: - What is my song but the tumult of chafing forces, - What is thy silence, Beloved, but enchanted music! - -It is evident that Michael knew herself and her impulsive and exuberant -Muse, which, to quote one of the irreverent faithful among her friends, -would sometimes merely “fizz” into expression. That it could be too -facile, and was, by comparison with Henry’s depth, superficial, is true. -Michael had not the syllogistic mind of her fellow, and arrived at -conclusions by an intuitive process rather than by reasoning. She was -capable of unintelligent questions and occasional stupid moods that -exasperated the critical type of mind which is so much cleverer than -that. But she brought a positive contribution to the fellowship, -nevertheless, in swift perception, intense ardour, keen sensibility, and -above all in the generosity of temper that found its chief expression in -devotion to her fellow-poet. Thus the most gracious of her love-lyrics -is that in which, after having fostered the younger mind with infinite -sympathy, making possible all that it became and achieved, she withdraws -herself to cede the higher place to her lover: - - Methinks my love to thee doth grow, - And this the sign: - I see the Spirit claim thee, - And do not blame thee, - Nor break intrusive on the Holy Ground - Where thou of God art found. - - I watch the fire - Leap up, and do not bring - Fresh water from the spring - To keep it from up-flaming higher - Than my chilled hands require - For cherishing. - - I see thy soul turn to her hidden grot, - And follow not; - Content thou shouldst prefer - To be with her, - The heavenly Muse, than ever find in me - Best company. - -The love-story of Henry’s life was not so frankly revealed; she was -never so forthcoming as Michael. Nevertheless, there was such a story, -and in outline it seems to have been one of the convergence of kindred -minds, of friendship growing to passion, of love declared and -reciprocated, but not fulfilled because of some other tie which bound -both lover and beloved. - -It is not difficult to see how such a crisis might arise in Henry’s -life. Delicate in health and shy of temperament, she was from her -childhood sheltered by Michael, and surrounded by a love which she was -accustomed to accept as simply as the air she breathed. Just so -unconsciously she would receive the homage offered by their friends, -drifting into a closer relation with one of them, both of the lovers -cheated by the tranquil air which overlay her depth of feeling, until a -sudden surprising passion overtook them. That the awakening for Henry -meant renunciation sounds a little old-fashioned to a current philosophy -which sees no virtue in the verb ‘to renounce,’ and demands fulfilment, -not only as the highest good, but as the holiest duty of the human -creature. But either that modern doctrine is not so new as it sounds, or -these two ladies were in advance of their time, for they held it, and -(at least in their art) persuasively commended it. They wrote a charming -play, _The Cup of Water_, deliberately to claim the woman’s right to -love, and to demonstrate the cruelty and waste of frustration. And they -once said, in a whimsical letter to a friend: - - Doing and being good is all very well in its way; but it is not the - same thing as doing and being happy. If the Lord had a lion’s mouth - (like the one at Venice), how many complaints I should drop into it - about his treatment of young women. All the plants have some - sunshine: why not some love in each woman’s life? - -Nevertheless, when it came to the test of action, theory went to the -winds, and Henry renounced her lover for her fellow. She held herself -bound by every tie of tenderness and gratitude, and no other course was -conceivable save to shut the gates of the fortress and bar them against -that clamorous joy. - - Speak not, reveal not.... There will be - In the unchallenged dark a mystery, - And golden hair sprung rapid in a tomb. - -Human instinct may rebel at the spectacle of life so baffled; and common -sense, in its short way with problems, may deny a valid cause for the -sacrifice. But a longer vision is compelled to observe that fulfilment -was not, after all, withheld. It came on the spiritual plane, however; -for it is safe to say that we owe the finest work of Michael Field to -the fact that Henry did not marry her lover: - - Then let a mourner rise and three times call - Upon our love, and the long echoes fall. - -Before leaving the volume called _Underneath the Bough_ it is convenient -to take examples of lyrics in a different kind from those we have been -considering. Thus we may select two or three pieces which an easy label -would describe as nature-poems. There are not a great many which answer -fully to that description, for although our poets adored the beauty of -the physical world, their Muse was too prepossessed by the movement of -human life to surrender itself completely to Nature. Yet by certain -aspects of Nature they were deeply stirred--great spaces, lofty skies -measured by masses of moving cloud, trees blown by the wind--in short, -by just those features in which in old Italian painters people have -agreed to see the signs of a religious sense: - - O Wind, thou hast thy kingdom in the trees, - And all thy royalties - Sweep through the land to-day. - It is mid June, - And thou, with all thine instruments in tune, - Thine orchestra - Of heaving fields, and heavy, swinging fir, - Strikest a lay - That doth rehearse - Her ancient freedom to the universe. - All other sound in awe - Repeals its law; - The bird is mute, the sea - Sucks up its waves, from rain - The burthened clouds refrain, - To listen to thee in thy leafery, - Thou unconfined, - Lavish, large, soothing, refluent summer-wind! - -The two pieces which follow are chosen because they illustrate the touch -of fantasy which our poets often added to their nature-poetry--a touch -which gives such grace and charm to the lyrics of their earlier plays. - - I will sing what happened to-night on high: - In the frank, wide sky - The wind had put the sun to rout, - The tossed west clouds were floating about; - From the wreath above me, staid and prim, - A star looked out, - Preparing to trim - Her lamp, and to shine as she had shined - Worlds out of mind: - When lo! she felt the wind on her face, - And for joy of him - She left the place - Where she had shined - Worlds out of mind, - To run through the frank, wide sky: - She was veiled by the clouds a moment or two, - Then I saw her scouring across the blue, - For joy of the wind. - - * * * * * - - Where winds abound, - And fields are hilly, - Shy daffadilly - Looks down on the ground. - - Rose cones of larch - Are just beginning; - Though oaks are spinning - No oak-leaves in March. - - Spring’s at the core, - The boughs are sappy: - Good to be happy - So long, long before! - -The volume called _Long Ago_ was published as early as 1889: that is to -say, four years before _Underneath the Bough_ and nineteen years before -_Wild Honey_. It is, however, a more perfect work than either of those -two, both of which include poems of very various date, circumstance, and -merit. _Long Ago_ possesses a unity which they lack, and which -characterizes the spirit as well as the form of the book. The fact of -its having been designed as a whole and wrought to a finish without any -long interruption may account for its effect of singleness in impulse -and style; but its more satisfying inner unity no doubt arises from the -harmony that existed between the poets and their theme, Sappho. Critics -notwithstanding, it was not so audacious as it seemed for two Victorian -ladies to plunge into the task of rendering Sapphic ecstasy. For, first, -the leader of the sally was herself a flame of Dionysiac fire; and the -inscription on the banner of her life, from its beginning to its end, -was love. There would appear to be a real resemblance between Michael’s -intensity, her exuberance and quick lyrical impulse, and the legendary -Sappho. And this, restrained by Henry’s sense of form and deepened by -their classical lore in poetry and philosophy, should surely have armed -them for the adventure. - -There is an ironic flavour now in tasting the comments on the book at -its appearance. One of the faithful held up protesting hands at the -poets’ audacity. Another described the book as a “ludicrous and -lamentable attempt.” Yet Browning praised it, and marked some of the -pieces in the manuscript “Good” and “Good indeed!” Meredith wrote to the -poets to express his joy in it. The _Academy_ reviewer, in June 1889, -predicted that it would some day be described as “one of the most -exquisite lyrical productions of the latter half of the nineteenth -century”; while Wharton, in the preface to the third edition of his -_Sappho_, speaks of the “felicitous paraphrases of Michael Field,” and -quotes from four of them. The contrast between the two opinions is as -amusing as such things are apt to be to those who are not the subject of -them; but Michael Field did not see the joke (perhaps her sense of -humour _was_ deficient), and the severer judgments pained her. They were -probably based on an assumption that the poets were trying to recreate -Sappho, a project which might have justified brickbats if it had ever -been entertained. But their aim was simply to make short dramatic lyrics -out of the scenes suggested to their imagination by the Sapphic -fragments. The verdict of those most competent to judge the book is, on -balance, that they succeeded remarkably well; while as to the average -reader, he will surely find something most attractive in the flashing -moods of the verse, in its grace and finish, and in its complete -harmony. Truly pagan the work is, whether in its sunny aspects or its -dark ones, whether in its philosophy or its art. The pursuit of joy, the -adoration of beauty, the ecstasy and the pain of love, the gay light and -colour of the physical world, its sweet scents and sounds, its lovely -shapes and delicate textures, are all here, their brilliance but the -brighter for the shadow that flits about them of death and its finality. - - They plaited garlands in their time, - They knew the joy of youth’s sweet prime, - Quick breath and rapture. - Theirs was the violet-weaving bliss, - And theirs the white, wreathed brow to kiss, - Kiss, and recapture. - - They plaited garlands, even these, - They learned Love’s golden mysteries - Of young Apollo; - The lyre unloosed their souls; they lay - Under the trembling leaves at play, - Bright dreams to follow. - - They plaited garlands--heavenly twine! - They crowned the cup, they drank the wine - Of youth’s deep pleasure. - Now, lingering for the lyreless god-- - Oh yet, once in their time, they trod - A choric measure. - - * * * * * - - Yea, gold is son of Zeus: no rust - Its timeless light can stain; - The worm that brings man’s flesh to dust - Assaults its strength in vain: - More gold than gold the love I sing, - A hard, inviolable thing. - - Men say the passions should grow old - With waning years; my heart - Is incorruptible as gold, - ’Tis my immortal part: - Nor is there any god can lay - On love the finger of decay. - - * * * * * - - Thou burnest us; thy torches’ flashing spires, - Eros, we hail! - Thou burnest us, Immortal, but the fires - Thou kindlest fail: - We die, - And thine effulgent braziers pale. - - Ah, Phaon, thou who hast abandoned me, - Thou who dost smile - To think deserted Lesbos rings with thee, - A little while - Gone by - There will be muteness in thine isle. - - Even as a god who finds his temple-flame - Sunken, unfed, - Who, loving not the priestess, loves the fame - Bright altars spread, - Wilt sigh - To find thy lyric glory dead? - - Or will Damophyla, the lovely-haired, - My music learn, - Singing how Sappho of thy love despaired, - Till thou dost burn, - While I, - Eros! am quenched within my urn? - - * * * * * - - I sang to women gathered round; - Forth from my own heart-springs - Welled out the passion; of the pain - I sang if the beloved in vain - Is sighed for--when - They stood untouched, as at the sound - Of unfamiliar things, - Oh, then my heart turned cold, and then - I dropt my wings. - - Trembling I seek thy holy ground, - Apollo, lord of kings; - Thou hast the darts that kill. Oh, free - The senseless world of apathy, - Pierce it! for when - In poet’s strain no joy is found, - His call no answer brings, - Oh, then my heart turns cold, and then - I drop my wings. - - When through thy breast wild wrath doth spread - And work thy inmost being harm, - Leave thou the fiery word unsaid, - Guard thee; be calm. - - Closed be thy lips: where Love perchance - Lies at the door to be thy guest, - Shall there be noise and dissonance? - Quiet were best. - - Apollo, when they do thee wrong, - Speechless thou tak’st the golden dart: - I will refrain my barking tongue, - And strike the heart. - -To pass immediately from _Long Ago_ to the poets’ last lyrical works may -seem a wilful act, considering the length of time between the books, and -their amazing unlikeness. Yet there is a very great interest in the -contrast and all that it implies, and a piquancy which one may hope is -not too irreverent in the reflection that at the root there is no great -difference, after all, between the Lesbian songs and the Christian ones. - -The volume called _Poems of Adoration_ was published in 1912, and -_Mystic Trees_ in 1913. They were both signed Michael Field, but the -first is all Henry’s work with the exception of two pieces, and the -second is all by Michael except the poems called _Qui Renovat -Juventutem Meam_ and _The Homage of Death_. The two volumes therefore -provide material for a useful study from the point of view of the -collaboration; and they are a positive lure to a comparison with the -devotional poetry of the seventeenth century, notably, of course, with -Herbert and Vaughan. One would not go so far as to claim an absolute -likeness between Henry and George Herbert, if only because Henry does -not spread herself in tedious moralizing nor indulge in _concetti_. To -that extent her work is purer poetry and, one would suppose, purer -religion than that of the old poet; and she rises oftener to sublimity. -But in essentials the two are close akin--in sweetness and strength and -clarity, in their sense of form, and in terse, vigorous expression. -Between Michael and Vaughan the likeness is even closer, and would tempt -one far if it were not that our limits prevent straying. But indeed the -human and spiritual values of the two books transcend mere literary -questions so greatly as to make those look trivial and even impertinent. - -For _Poems of Adoration_ was published only a few months before Henry -died. Much of the book was composed at dead of night, during great pain, -when, as her father confessor has remarked, “most of us would be trying -not to blaspheme.” The poems are in fact those of a dying woman, and -one who had refused herself any alleviating drug. Two of them, _Extreme -Unction_ and _After Anointing_, were written when she was at the point -of death and had received the last offices of the Church. Some bear -evidence of acute crises of body or soul; and in some the vision of the -mysteries of her faith is so vivid that the poet herself is almost -overwhelmed. Once or twice, when she has gone to the limit of spiritual -sight, she falters; but never does that fine intelligence stumble into -the outer darkness. Perceiving that it is coming near the verge of -sanity, it draws back in time to leave the vision distinct and credible. - -To the strict eye of criticism these poignant facts may appear -irrelevant. I cannot bring myself to think that such splendour of soul -has no relation to the art that it produced; but those persons who -insist on cleaving the two asunder may be reassured as to the technical -accomplishment of this poetry. Often cast into something of the poets’ -earlier dramatic form, its music is sweet, its measures are rhythmical, -and its language has force and clarity. It has a majesty which proclaims -its origin, and one has no need to know the circumstances of its birth. -Imagination rises, swift and daring, to heights which are sometimes -sublime, as in the first poem quoted below. Here the conception of -Christ the wine-treader is treated with magnificent audacity of image -and metaphor, while underneath runs a stream of thought which, though it -makes great leaps now and then, pouring its strong current into cataract -as it goes, yet bears its craft safely up and on. - - -DESOLATION - - Who comes?... - O Beautiful! - Low thunder thrums, - As if a chorus struck its shawms and drums. - The sun runs forth - To stare at Him, who journeys north - From Edom, from the lonely sands, arrayed - In vesture sanguine as at Bosra made. - O beautiful and whole, - In that red stole! - - Behold, - O clustered grapes, - His garment rolled, - And wrung about His waist in fold on fold! - See, there is blood - Now on His garment, vest and hood; - For He hath leapt upon a loaded vat, - And round His motion splashes the wine-fat, - Though there is none to play - The Vintage-lay. - - The Word - Of God, His name ... - But nothing heard - Save beat of His lone feet forever stirred - To tread the press-- - None with Him in His loneliness; - No treader with Him in the spume, no man. - - * * * * * - - O task - Of sacrifice, - That we may bask - In clemency and keep an undreamt Pasch! - O Treader lone, - How pitiful Thy shadow thrown - Athwart the lake of wine that Thou hast made! - O Thou, most desolate, with limbs that wade - Among the berries, dark and wet, - Thee we forget! - - -THE BLESSED SACRAMENT - - Lo, from Thy Father’s bosom Thou dost sigh; - Deep to Thy restlessness His ear is bent:-- - “Father, the Paraclete is sent, - Wrapt in a foaming wind He passeth by. - Behold, men’s hearts are shaken--I must die: - Sure as a star within the firmament - Must be my dying: lo, my wood is rent, - My cross is sunken! Father, I must die!” - Lo, how God loveth us, He looseth hold.... - His Son is back among us, with His own, - And craving at our hands an altar-stone. - Thereon, a victim, meek He takes His place; - And while to offer Him His priests make bold, - He looketh upward to His Father’s face. - - -THE HOMAGE OF DEATH - - How willingly - I yield to Thee - This very dust! - My body--that was not enough! - Fair was it as a silken stuff, - Or as a spice, or gold, - Fair to behold! - - Beloved, I give Thee all - This Adam’s Fall, - This my desert-- - Thy Father would not let Thee see - Corruption, but I give it Thee. - Behold me thus abhorred, - My penance, Lord! - - A handful in Thy Hand, - As if of fair, white sand, - Thou wroughtest me; - Clean was I for a little while.... - This dust is of another style; - Its fumes, most vile of sin - To stink begin. - - * * * * * - - O Victor King, and when - Thou raisest me again, - For me no fame; - Just white amid the whiter souls, - Efface me ’mid the shining stoles, - Lost in a lovely brood, - And multitude: - - My soul even as the Maid - Cophetua arrayed - In samite fine; - And set her by Him on His throne, - O Christ, what homage can atone - For this caprice in Thee - To worship me? - - -_QUI RENOVAT JUVENTUTEM MEAM_ - - Make me grow young again, - Grow young enough to die, - That, in a joy unseared of pain, - I may my Lover, loved, attain, - With that fresh sigh - Eternity - Gives to the young to breathe about the heart, - Until their trust in youth-time shall depart. - - Let me be young as when - To die was past my thought: - And earth with straight, immortal men, - And women deathless to my ken, - Cast fear to naught! - Let faith be fraught, - My Bridegroom, with such gallant love, its range - Simply surpasses every halt of change! - - Let me come to Thee young, - When Thou dost challenge _Come!_ - With all my marvelling dreams unsung, - Their promise by first passion stung, - Though chary, dumb.... - Thou callest _Come!_ - Let me rush to Thee when I pass, - Keen as a child across the grass! - -_Mystic Trees_, the last book which Michael gave to the world, is more -strictly theological than Henry’s. Always less the philosopher than her -fellow, she took her conversion to Catholicism, in externals at least, -more strenuously. She developed, for example, a proselytizing habit -which a little tried the patience of her friends, especially those who -remembered her as a joyful pagan. That her Christian zeal was as joyful, -to her, as her paganism had been did not much console them, or soften -the onslaught of her blithe attacks. Indeed, it occasionally led her to -acts which she herself afterward repented of. Thus there is a comic -touch in the spectacle of Michael, truly English as she was, urging upon -Ireland, in the person of a poor old Irishwoman, every benefit but that -one which the old woman craved for. For Michael went to great pains to -help her, and to get her placed in a home, and she subsequently wrote to -a friend, “I am so deeply regretting my part in putting an Irishwoman -in a Nazareth house: their love of freedom is so great.” The little -parable holds Michael’s character almost in entirety--impulsive, eager, -generous, wilful, rash; and then deeply penitent and rushing to make -noble amends. - -But that over-zeal had a significance for her artistic life too. She -wrote in a letter to another friend, “I will pray for Orzie’s -conversion: _O Louie, be religious! You cannot ‘laugh deep’ unless you -are._” In the phrase I have italicized Michael is surely confessing, -though it may be without intent to do so, that her religion is now -awaking in her the same ecstasy which had formerly been awakened by the -poetic impulse. To herself it seemed that she had suffered an enormous -change, and that she was no longer the old Michael. And it is true that -for a time the tragic inspiration of her art was suspended. Perhaps that -follows of necessity from the nature of the Christian doctrine, its -hope, its humility, its vicariousness, and its consolation. Yet the -moment one turns to these religious lyrics one finds the same ecstasy -with which the earlier Michael had adored the beauty of the world and -had sung the love of Sappho. So, too, in the first work which Michael -Field had produced, _Callirrhoë_, the theme is none other than the -worship of the god by love and sacrifice. That, in fact, is the meaning -implied in nearly all her poetry, as it was the motive force of all her -life; and the only change that has occurred when we reach, with _Mystic -Trees_, the end, is that the name of the god is altered. But whichever -god possessed her had the power to make Michael “laugh deep” in a -rapture which, whether of delight or rage or sorrow, was always an -intense spiritual joy--which is simply to say, to evoke the poet in her. -The exaltation of spirit which in _Callirrhoë_ said of Dionysos “He came -to bring Life, more abundant life,” and declared “Wert thou lute to -love, There were a new song of the heaven and earth,” is the same as -that which wrote to a friend in early days, “We are with the nun in her -cell as with the pagan at the Dionysos’ feast”; and which affirmed in a -letter to another friend that she welcomed inspiration from whatever -source, “whether the wind and fire sweep down on us from the mighty -realms of the unconscious or from the nostrils of a living God, Jehovah, -or Apollo, or Dionysos.” - -But, as we said, to herself she seemed a new creature; she had found a -treasure and must run to share it, even as she had burned to impart the -Bacchic fire thirty years before. Thence came the scheme of _Mystic -Trees_, which, as Father Vincent McNabb suggested to me, seems to be -unique in religious poetry. The book contains a cycle of poems, designed -to express the mysteries of the Roman Catholic faith as they are -celebrated in the seasons of the Church. The “Trees” of the title are -the Cedar and the Hyssop, used as an image of the Incarnation: the great -Cedar, the Son of God, becoming the little Hyssop, which, in the lovely -cover-design by Mr Charles Ricketts, stands on either side of the Cross -with bowed head. - -The book is divided into three parts, with a small group of poems added -at the end, which Michael wrote while Henry was dying. In the first -part, called “Hyssop,” the story of the Redemption is unfolded in a -series of poems representing the life and death of Christ. It is -possible to quote only two or three of the incidents thus treated, but -we may take first this one describing the presentation of the infant -Christ in the Temple: - - -THE PRESENTATION - - They say it is a King - His Temple entering! - - The great veil doth not rock - With gust and earthquake shock: - - But all the air is stilled - As at a law fulfilled. - - Dreams from their graves rise up-- - Melchizidek with cup; - - Abraham most glad of heart, - A little way apart. - - Mary, to keep God’s word, - Brings Babe and turtle-bird. - - Lo! Simeon draweth in, - And doth his song begin! - - Great doom is for her Son, - And Mary’s heart undone. - - Oh, Simeon is blest, - Christ in his arms is prest! - - Mary’s sweet doves are slain, - She takes her Babe again: - - And in her heart she knows - He will be slain as those: - - And on her journey home - She feels God’s kingdom come. - -Passing some intervening poems, we take from the same sequence these two -members of a group of imagined incidents on the evening of the -Crucifixion: - - -SUNDOWN ON CALVARY - - Where art Thou, wandering Bird? - Thy sweet voice is not heard - On this wild day, - When the Father mourns the Son, - When the Son no Father hath, - And Thou hast but chaos for Thy path. - - The Father keeps the Sepulchre, - The Son lies quiet there. - Where is thy place? - Where rest in a world undone? - Holy Ghost, a multitude - Guards the Cross; there hardly canst Thou brood. - - To the dark waters haste, - Spread pinions on the waste; - There breathe, there play; - Forsake the Wood! - There is no resting-place for Thee - On this lovely, noble, blighted Tree. - - * * * * * - - But lo, it is sundown; - The bodies taken down, - Quiet the hill: - The Tree drips blood on the path: - And, the jolted beams above, - Croons, calls across the evening-winds, a Dove! - - -A FRIDAY NIGHT - - _The Questioner_ - “Lo, you have wounds and you are speeding fast! - The light is gone! - Have you no cloak to screen you from the blast? - It is not well!” - - _The Answerer_ - “Show me the way to Hell, - I must pass on.” - - _The Questioner_ - “There is indeed hard by a little gate: - But there thou shalt not go. - Thou art too fair; - Golden thy hair doth blow.” - - _The Answerer_ - “There I must go: - I have an errand there for those that wait, - Have waited for me long.” - - I showed the gate. - - Now is He shut within, and I am found - Alone with blood-stains on the ground. - Would I could go down to that dim - Murk of the shades to those that wait for Him! - -We may take from the second part of the book, called “Cedar” and -dedicated to the Virgin, two short pieces which help to illustrate the -sweetness of this poetry, its tenderness, its intimacy of approach to -divine things, and its innocence. - - -CALLED EARLY - - It is a morning very bright; - Through all the hours of the long starry night - Mary hath not been sleeping: for delight - She hath kept watch through the starry night. - - Joseph comes to her quietly: - “A journey I must take with thee, - Mary, my wife, from Galilee.” - He saw that she had wept, - And all her secret kept. - - -UNDER THE STAR - - Mary is weary and heavy-laden - As a travailing woman may be. - She calleth to Joseph wearily, - “At the inn there is no room for me, - Oh, seek me a little room!” - - Joseph returns. “In a cattle-shed - Hard by, I will make for thee thy bed-- - Dost fear to go? - O Mary, look, that star overhead!” - And Mary smiled--“Where the cattle low - My Son shall be loosed from the womb.” - -From the third part, which is called “Sward” and therefore is obviously -dedicated to ordinary folk, we need take only the little poem which -follows. But we ought to remember the occasion of it, that Michael had -been compelled to go alone to Mass because Henry was too ill to -accompany her. - - Lovingly I turn me down - From this church, St Philip’s crown, - To the leafy street where dwell - The good folk of Arundel. - - Lovingly I look between - Roof and roof, to meadows green, - To the cattle by the wall, - To the place where sea-birds call, - - Where the sky more closely dips, - And, perchance, there may be ships: - God have pity on us all! - -Michael said, in a letter to a friend, “_Mystic Trees_ is for the -young”; and one perceives the truth of that. But I do not think that her -word ‘young’ means only ‘youthful,’ although children would probably -understand the poems readily, and a certain kind of child would delight -in them. Nor do I think that they were written with any special audience -in mind. But the poet, in reading them afterward, recognized their -childlike qualities of simplicity and directness, and their young faith -and enthusiasm. Did she realize, one asks oneself, how she had in them -recaptured her own youth and its lyrical fervour? She was nearly seventy -years old when she wrote them, which is a wonder comparable to Mr -Hardy’s spring-songs in winter. And though we may accept, if we like, -the dubious dictum of the psycho-analyst that every poet is a case of -arrested development, that does not make any less the marvel that in old -age, after the lyric fire had subsided and the sufferings of her fellow -had destroyed the joy of her life, she should have written such poems. -For here it is certainly relevant to remember that at this time Henry -was dying, and that Michael herself was suffering, silently, the torture -of cancer. “Michael has a secret woe of her own,” was all that she -permitted herself to reveal, in a letter to her closest woman friend. -But so stoical was her courage, and so composed her manner, that the -hint was not taken, and no one guessed that she too was ravaged by the -disease. Before her intimates, as before the world, she kept a cheerful -face, in terror lest her fellow should come to know of her state. Her -doctor knew, of course, and Father Vincent McNabb. But they were under a -bond to spare Henry the added anguish of knowing the truth, and the bond -was faithfully kept. Not until her fellow was dead, when Michael had, in -fact, laid her in her coffin, did she break silence to the friend who -was with her in that ordeal. Two days later a hæmorrhage made it -impossible to conceal her condition any longer. “God kept her secret,” -said Father McNabb, “until the moment when it was no longer necessary”; -and without disloyalty to the godhead of the heroic human spirit, we may -accept that word from one who brought consolation and devoted friendship -to the poets’ last sad days. - -It was, then, during the closing weeks of Henry’s life, and while -Michael was suffering that sorrow and great bodily pain, that she wrote -_Mystic Trees_. Yet the poems manifestly bear within them a deep -creative joy, and breathe sometimes a holy gaiety of spirit; and it is -only at the end of the book, in a tiny section containing four short -poems, that the poet allows her anguish of body and mind the relief of -expression. For that brief space, so rightly named “A Little While,” the -inspiration to “laugh deep” failed, and stark tragedy overwhelmed her. - - -BELOVED, MY GLORY - - Beloved, my glory in thee is not ceased, - Whereas, as thou art waning, forests wane: - Unmoved, as by the victim is the priest, - I pass the world’s great altitudes of pain. - But when the stars are gathered for a feast, - Or shadows threaten on a radiant plain, - Or many golden cornfields wave amain, - Oh then, as one from a filled shuttle weaves, - My spirit grieves. - - -SHE IS SINGING TO THEE, _DOMINE_! - - She is singing to Thee, _Domine_! - Dost hear her now? - She is singing to Thee from a burning throat, - And melancholy as the owl’s love-note; - She is singing to Thee from the utmost bough - Of the tree of Golgotha where it is bare, - And the fruit torn from it that fruited there; - She is singing.... Canst Thou stop the strain, - The homage of such pain? - _Domine_, stoop down to her again! - - -_CAPUT TUUM UT CARMELUS_ - - I watch the arch of her head, - As she turns away from me.... - I would I were with the dead, - Drowned with the dead at sea, - All the waves rocking over me! - - As St Peter turned and fled - From the Lord, because of sin, - I look on that lovely head; - And its majesty doth win - Grief in my heart as for sin. - - Oh, what can Death have to do - With a curve that is drawn so fine, - With a curve that is drawn as true - As the mountain’s crescent line?... - Let me be hid where the dust falls fine! - - - - -III. THE TRAGEDIES--I - - -The important fact concerning Michael Field is, of course, that she is a -_tragic_ poet. The truth may seem too obvious to need stating, when we -glance down the list of her works and observe that of the twenty-seven -complete plays created within thirty years every one has a tragic theme. -But the attributes of a tragic poet are not necessarily revealed in the -externals of his art: more than another he is difficult to recognize by -his theme, form, and manner. If he could be confidently measured by a -rule and appraised on a formula, many anomalies might be drawn to our -net, including the urbane and essentially comic spirit of the author of -_Cato_, and (not using too fine a mesh in the net) the mere dramaturgic -facility of the author of _Herod_. With such as these, behind the -formula of tragedy nothing remains--no tragic vision, no sense of -inimical and warring forces, no terror at their subtle and formidable -power, no pity for human creatures doomed to live. But surely it is in -these imponderable things that the tragic poet is made manifest, whether -they take the garment of tragedy or, as often with Thomas Hardy, gleam -sombrely in a lyric. It is in possessing them, and possessing them -intensely, with a fierce dramatic impulse driving them, that the -greatness of Michael Field consists. - -Yet, once assured of the nature of our poet’s genius, the mere data of -manner become significant. All the plays are tragedies, some of them in -Elizabethan form, of five-act length. The very titles are eloquent. -Michael Field took thought for the naming of her plays; and although she -was often content to adopt simply the name of the protagonist, that is -always resonant. Thus _Attila_, _Borgia_, _Mariamne_, _Deirdre_, -_Tristan_, _Fair Rosamund_ are words with solemn echoes; but, more than -that, they indicate the vast issues to which this mind was drawn, and -suggest the range of which it was capable. Sometimes a phrase was chosen -for a title, as _The Tragic Mary_. This was lifted, with -acknowledgments, from Walter Pater; and no apology is needed on that -score, for surely it is no minor part of a poet’s equipment to know how -“to take his own wherever he finds it.” In that sense _The Race of -Leaves_ may be said to have been lifted too--from Homer and Marcus -Aurelius; _The World at Auction_ possibly from Gibbon or some much -earlier historian, and _In the Name of Time_ certainly from Shakespeare. - -A complete list of the plays, with their dates, will be found in the -Bibliography at the end of this book. There are, as I said, -twenty-seven of them; and they were wrought between the years 1881 and -1911. The last four were not published until after the poet’s death; but -of these _In the Name of Time_, which did not appear until 1919, was -being written so long before as 1890; and _A Question of Memory_ was -first printed for the actors when the play was performed at the -Independent Theatre in October 1893. - -Besides complete plays, however, there is a masque called _Noontide -Branches_ (printed at Oxford by the Daniel Press in 1899), which has -charming associations with the late Provost of Worcester and Mrs Daniel. -And there is a trialogue called _Stephania_ which was published in 1892. -Indeed, the bibliographical interest of this poet’s work is very great, -and would touch the history of several private printing-presses during -the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Thus _Fair Rosamund_ and the -poet’s Roman trilogy (_The Race of Leaves_, _The World at Auction_, and -_Julia Domna_) were issued from the Vale Press of Mr Charles Ricketts, -and nobly decorated by him. His border for _Fair Rosamund_ is more than -a lovely symbol; it expresses with the last fine touch of perception the -wild-rose exquisiteness of the spirit of the play. _The Tragic Mary_ was -printed at the Chiswick Press in 1890: its binding was designed by -Professor Selwyn Image, as also was the frontispiece of _Stephania_. -_Whym Chow_, the rarest of the Michael Field books and the most curious -in content, can hardly be said to have been published at all. It was -printed in 1914 at the Eragny Press of Mr and Mrs Lucien Pissarro. Only -twenty-seven copies were printed, and of these perhaps not more than -half a dozen were given to intimate friends who might be trusted, if not -to understand the poems (for they are extravagant and obscure), at least -to sympathize with the occasion of them. - -For all of their books, with one exception, the poets took pains to -secure a comely form and adequate binding, often of white vellum. Even -the group which appeared anonymously and in temporary covers between -1905 and 1911 (_Borgia_, _A Question of Memory_, _The Tragedy of -Pardon_, _Diane_, _The Accuser_, _A Messiah_, _Tristan_) were printed -with distinction on good paper. That the poets had sufficient means and -leisure to indulge their taste may rejoice the bibliophile; but there is -no doubt that the cost of books so produced was too high to gain them a -large public. At one time they themselves suspected this, and -experimented with a cheaper form. Hence the one exception (_Brutus -Ultor_) to their practice. This work was published in 1886 as a small -paper-covered booklet at the price of ninepence. Michael wanted, in her -own phrase, “to reach the Demos”; and it is possible that she did so. -But the Demos did not respond sufficiently to cause her to break her -rule a second time. - -Here, then, is a very large body of poetic drama, engaged upon subjects -drawn from the literature and the history of many countries and many -epochs. How to arrive at the significance of a total so extensive and -various? A coherent impression of it would be difficult in any case; and -within these narrow limits it may well be impossible. There is, however, -one helpful fact, for the tragedies divide themselves almost -automatically into three groups. The division is, indeed, so simple as -almost to be suspect, and so definite as almost to be mechanical. It -corresponds, too, in the most approved manner, with the early, middle, -and later periods of the poet’s life. Thus there are, in progressive -order from the beginning of her career, her English, Latin, and Eastern -periods. The first deals with themes from Scottish chronicles and -English history, and extends from 1881 to about 1890. In the second -group, published from 1892 to 1903, the subjects are mainly drawn from -Roman history; and the third, published from 1905 until the end, has -for its outstanding features two plays of a projected trilogy from -Josephus, another called _A Messiah_, and one which handles an -Abyssinian love-tragedy. - -Yet these categories are not quite so clear-cut, after all. One soon -finds plays which do not correspond to the order to which they are -supposed to belong, and discovers, on investigation, that they were not -written in that order. But one makes at the same time the much more -satisfying discovery that there are, within each group, affinities which -hold the plays by a stronger bond than the arbitrary likeness of theme. -Thus in the English period, the stage of the poet’s grave and strenuous -youth, ideas are a motive force. This body of drama, if too dynamic to -be ‘high-brow,’ may be justly defined as ‘intellectual,’ with a strange -pouring of the new wine of modern thought into the old bottles of -Elizabethan form. But with the approach of the Latin period the centre -of power shifts from ideas to art. Form is now as important as, or more -so than matter; and the two cannot be separated. The value of the work -now is in its unity of beauty and truth. But when the last phase has -come, and tragic vision has ranged far enough among the elements of its -universe to make a final synthesis, it wheels back to close the cycle -upon the idea of destiny. Vast passions are now the poet’s theme. -Destiny, consisting in some overmastering elemental force, is now her -inspiration. But it is no external, supernatural, or superhuman force. -It subsists in nature, and resides within humanity: it belongs -inalienably to the stuff of which man is made: it is the tragic shadow -of life itself. - -Coming at once to the English group, it is amusing to find that this -starts off with a Greek play! That is to say, the earliest work -published by the poets as Michael Field, _Callirrhoë_, has a Greek -theme. It is a fact which at first glance threatens to embarrass our -nice clear categories; but we remember in time that there is something -almost absurdly native in the familiar spectacle of a Greek subject in -the hands of a young English poet. Of course! What else, what other, -could one expect?--at least down to the epoch of yesterday to which our -poet belonged. Was not this dependence upon the classics largely -responsible for the revolt of contemporary poets--as witness Anna -Wickham: - - We are outwearied with Persephone, - Rather than her, we’ll sing Reality. - -The story of Callirrhoë comes from Pausanias; but our poet has modified -the original by basing the motive of the plot upon the origin of the -worship of Dionysos, which, as she admits, must have been much earlier. -The anachronism is deliberate, however, and does not vitiate the theme, -which is already un-Greek in its preoccupation with romantic passion. -For Callirrhoë, a maiden of Calydon, is beloved to distraction by the -Dionysiac priest Coresus. She loves him in return (or at least our poet -makes us suspect so), but will not marry him because she cannot worship -the new god. He thereupon calls down a curse upon her city, and the -people begin to sicken and die of the plague. They send to consult the -oracle at Dodona, and it is decreed that Callirrhoë must be sacrificed -to Dionysos unless some one else will die in her stead. No one offers, -however, and she goes to the altar prepared to die. Coresus makes ready -to slay her, but when the moment comes to strike he kills himself -instead of her. His sacrifice convinces Callirrhoë of the truth of his -religion. Now that he is dead she realizes that she had loved him, and -she kills herself as an offering to his god. - -The play is a living work despite its ancient theme, its rather cumbrous -machinery, and its mixed elements. But apart from certain passages of -great imaginative beauty, its chief interest lies in the fact that its -motives--love, self-sacrifice, enthusiasm--were the ruling motives of -the poets’ lives and a frequent theme of their art. Therein, of course, -lies the significance of their modification of the old story. Love they -always saw as the greatest good of life, self-sacrifice as the dearest -end of life, and enthusiasm (here enters Dionysos) as the means to -life’s noblest expression. In this last element the work remains Greek, -though Englished in so much else. Michael was, in that sense, a Thracian -born, and she had compelled a peace with Apollo. She infused the play -with the spirit of Dionysiac worship because that spirit was her own. -And when one remembers the spiritual truth that was implicit in the cult -of Dionysos, its contribution to the world’s growing belief in -immortality, and its connexion with the origins of tragedy, there is -peculiar appropriateness in such a subject for Michael Field’s first -essay in drama. Thus the key-pieces to the poet’s meaning are found -where Coresus is pleading with Callirrhoë for his love and his religion. -He has begged her to join the Maenads’ revel, and so set her spirit -free; and he declares of his god: - - He came to bring - Life, more abundant life, into a world - That doled its joys as a starved city doles - Its miserable scraps of mummying bread. - He came to gladden and exalt, all such - Must suffer.... - _Callirrhoë._ ... Of old the gods - Gave culture by the harp, the helm, the plough, - Not by the ivy-wand. - _Coresus._ Seems it so strange - That Semele’s sublime audacity - Should be the origin of life urbane? - We must be fools; all art is ecstasy, - All literature expression of intense - Enthusiasm: be beside yourself. - If a god violate your shrinking soul, - Suffer sublimely. - _Callirrhoë._ Yet I hold it true, - Divinity oft comes with quiet foot. - _Coresus._ To give a moment’s counsel or to guard - From instant peril. When a god forsakes - Olympus to infuse divinity - In man’s mean soul, he must confound, incite, - O’erwhelm, intoxicate, break up fresh paths - To unremembered sympathies. Nay, more, - Accompany me further in my thought-- - Callirrhoë, I tell you there are hours - When the Hereafter comes and touches me - O’ the cheek. - - * * * * * - - _Callirrhoë._ I tremble at your god, for terrible - In wrath I fear him; though you speak him fair. - - * * * * * - - _Coresus._ Turn not away, Callirrhoë; by goads - The ox-souled must be driven; yield response - To Heaven’s desire of thee; love humanly. - Love is the frenzy that unfolds ourselves; - Before it seize us we are ignorant - Of our own power as reed-bed of the pipe. - The rushes sang not; from Pan’s burning lips - Syrinx sucked music. Wert thou lute to love, - There were a new song of the heaven and earth. - _Callirrhoë._ ... I will not yield my love - To Bacchic priest.... - _Coresus._ ... As unseasoned wood - That smokes and will not kindle is flung by - For any refuse purpose, while the train - Of torchlight sinuous winds among the hills, - A starry serpent, so art thou cast out, - An apathetic slave of commonplace, - Sluggish and irreceptive of true life, - From all high company of heavenly things. - Go to your home. - - _Callirrhoë._ O, Heaven shelter it! - _Act I, Scene 3_ - -There is much that one would like to quote from this play, including the -faun scenes (written by Henry) that have already been adopted into -certain anthologies. Machaon, too, sceptic and humorist, might be used -to confound the dullards who said that Michael Field had no humour. -There is salt enough in him to give the whole tragedy another flavour, -and he breaks at least one of the precious unities. His rationalism is -away in a much colder region (he usually speaks in prose); and his -conversion to the cult at the end is out of character. But though one -may not linger on him, one must stop for a moment at Henry’s faun song. -For here, very delicately and quietly, a greater theme is stated. And if -we seek in this first work for an early glimpse of the larger vision -which the poets attained at last, seeing the tragic element of life as -life’s inescapable shadow, it will be found, quite unself-conscious, in -this playful song. - - I dance and dance! Another faun, - A black one, dances on the lawn. - He moves with me, and when I lift - My heels, his feet directly shift. - I can’t out-dance him, though I try; - He dances nimbler than I. - I toss my head, and so does he; - What tricks he dares to play on me! - I touch the ivy in my hair; - Ivy he has and finger there. - The spiteful thing to mock me so! - I will out-dance him! Ho! Ho! Ho! - _Act III, Scene 6_ - -_Fair Rosamund_, which appeared in the same volume with _Callirrhoë_, -possesses equal dramatic power with greater control and a clearer sense -of direction. The play is built with more economy; the movement is -quicker, and the lyrical passages really belong to the setting and are -not simply interludes to provide relief. Of the works of the first -group, _Fair Rosamund_ is perhaps the most perfect artistically, which -may have been the reason why the poets chose it for reproduction in the -Vale Press. But just because it is so balanced, and entirely free from -afterthought, it is not fully typical of this group. We pass it, -therefore, with two short quotations, and in addition only this fragment -from Rosamund’s farewell to the King, to illustrate how our poet will -sometimes gather infinity into a gem-like phrase: - - Dear, my lord, - There are some thoughts - That through this stormy weather of my soul - Cannot now travel toward you. - _Act II, Scene 5_ - -In Act I, Scene 3, spies have just informed Queen Elinor of the King’s -love for Rosamund, and of the place where he has hidden her: - - _Q. Elinor._ Thank God for boys! - To have reared a treasonous brood from his own blood, - To have it at my call! - -[_To the King, who has entered._ - - I tell you to your face, that boy of ours, - Crowned Henry, has my love, because he has - My bridegroom’s eyes; but for the rest, my lord, - You’re old to think of love: when you were young - You thought not of it. - - _K. Henry._ I embraced your lands, - Not you. - - _Q. Elinor._ Plantagenet, you wronged yourself - As you had made the day and night your foe, - And roused - The violated seasons to confer - Each his peculiar catastrophe - Of death or pestilence.--_Embraced my lands!_ - I’ll shatter you - As Nature shatters--you as impotent - As the uprooted tree to lash the earth.... - _Embraced my lands._--Ah, I forget myself, - The loveless are insensate to presage; - ’Tis in calamity’s harsh stubble-field - They learn to suffer. I’ll be harvester, - And sickle your ripe joys. - -The last scene is in Rosamund’s room at Woodstock. It is night, and she -is waiting for the King. But Queen Elinor has found the clue to the -labyrinth, and is at this moment approaching the secret bower, intent -upon killing her rival: - - _Rosamund._ White moon, art thou the only visitant? - Thou lookst like death! - Dost glisten through the trees - My Henry bows his plumes to in the gloom? - He comes to-night; for good Sir Topaz said, - “My lady, put you on the crimson gown - The King had wrought for you, and ask no more, - But trust an old man’s word. - And be you ready.” It’s a silver night; - I’ll put me out apparel. How blood red - Burn the dark folds! I cannot put it on; - And yet I will. My lute; what is’t I want-- - God, or the King? - -[_Sings._ - - Love doth never know - Why it is beloved, - And to ask were treason; - Let the wonder grow! - Were its hopes removed, - Were itself disproved - By cold reason, - In its happy season, - Love would be beloved. - - No; it hurts sharper. I must just sit down - On the edge of the bed, and comb my hair and wait-- - - * * * * * - - I cannot think at all. How beautiful - This gold made silver in the moonlight! What! - Would Heaven age me for my Love? Let’s look - In the mirror. Rosamund, you’re worshipful. - [_Starting back._] ’Tis thus, - Even thus, he swore that he should come to me. - His very words! The prophecy’s fulfilled,-- - I’ll comb my hair down to my very feet. - A step!--my heart, some patience. Henry, speak; - Bid it take courage! [_Enter Elinor._] God! the Queen! - - _Q. Elinor._ The Queen, who’ll give you access to your God; - The wife, who’ll doom the leman. - -_Act II, Scene 8_ - -But coming now to the plays which are completely representative of the -poets in this period, we may glance at _The Father’s Tragedy_, _William -Rufus_, _Canute the Great_, _The Cup of Water_, and _The Tragic Mary_. -These, with three others, appeared within the dates 1885 and 1890--not a -poor record of five years’ work, and one which reminds us that our poets -laboured at their art as only the genuine artist does. They drew the -themes of these plays mainly from English history and Scottish -chronicles; and they selected them, all except that of _The Tragic -Mary_, ultimately for an idea that lay behind them. Obviously, -therefore, this work is not entirely disinterested art: it anticipates, -to that extent, the problem-play, the intellectual drama, and even (so -far as concerns his influence in this country) Ibsen. Indeed, a -remarkable aspect of the group is the way in which, despite its romantic -tone and its Elizabethan form, it yet foreshadows the movement that -English drama was about to make toward a ‘realistic’ presentment of -life. There may be a piquancy in thinking of Michael Field the romantic -as the forerunner of Mr Bernard Shaw and Mr John Galsworthy: and it is -not certain which would be the less pleased at the comparison, -ancestress or descendants. The latter, following a poetic age with -inevitable comedy--inevitable if only from reaction--were compelled to -decline upon prose as their medium; and the great merit of Michael Field -is that, belonging to the poetic age and possessed of the poet’s ardour -and imagination, she yet kept near enough to the actual world to see the -evils that existed there. Happily removed from them by circumstance and -temperament, she yet kept her eyes clear and her sympathies alert. Her -prologue to _The Father’s Tragedy_ is apt to this point, for there she -warns - - the light and easy-souled - Who shun the joyless truth in human things - -to turn to more congenial pages than her tragedies. It is evident that -she was concerned, thus early, with the _joyless truth_ which was to -take possession--absolute and somewhat depressing possession--of the -dramatists who came after her. Unlike them, however, by giving her truth -the form of poetry she endowed it with the joyousness of art. She saw -it, too, in the round: there is a largeness in her conception of it -which gives her ‘intellectual drama’ greater dignity, and one would -suppose greater permanence, than later ‘realistic’ work. Yet when one -observes the ideas that govern some of her plays in this kind--parental -tyranny, the land question, marriage, or the conflict between an older -and a newer order of civilization--one recognizes at once the likeness -to the motives of much more recent drama. Indeed, we might go further -and demonstrate a rather later play--_Attila_--as an anticipation of -Freud and the psycho-analysts. - -_The Father’s Tragedy_, a play in five acts and a great many scenes, was -written almost entirely by the younger of the two poets. Some parts of -it were composed by her at the age of sixteen, and were in fact the -means by which Michael discovered her dramatic talent. At the date of -its publication (1885) Henry was only twenty-three, and it had been -completed some months before. The play is, therefore, the work of a very -young mind, and one is not surprised that its main feature is a vigorous -and sympathetic study of youth. What does surprise one, however, is that -the study of age in this struggle between a father and a son is also -sympathetic; and although it is the son who is the victim of the father, -the play is called, significantly, the _father’s_ tragedy. Which is to -say that the profoundest depth of the tragedy is seen to be the moral -defeat (one ought rather to say the moral annihilation) of the father. -That is a conception not so youthful, perhaps, as the age of the author; -just as the fierce dark strength of the drama would not appear to accord -with her sex. There is something Brontesque in the sombre power of this -tragedy; something too much of horror, barely relieved by two or three -short scenes of hectic gaiety when the young prince has escaped -temporarily to his boon companions. But only imagination of the highest -kind could have conceived it. - -The plot comes from _Scotichronicon_ and the old chronicler Wyntoun, -whose words are in one place almost exactly quoted. Robert III is shown -to be pious, weak, superstitious, affectionate, desiring only the ‘good’ -of his heir, the young Prince David, Duke of Rothsay. But David, -intensely alive in his buoyant young manhood, loathes the dour ‘good’ -that is forced upon him, and combats it. He has, in fact, more strength -than his father, and the struggle becomes bitter and tragic only when -Albany, the King’s brother, backs the King with a strength equal to -David’s own, overbears the father’s weakness and perverts his affection, -and eventually compasses the Prince’s death. The crisis is the enforced -marriage of David to a bride whom he detests, he having been literally -sold to her father as the highest bidder for a great match. He breaks -into the council-chamber at the moment when the King and Albany are -settling the price that the bride is to pay for him. Albany bids him be -seated. - - _Rothsay._ In the market-place - Slaves stand for sale. I will not sit; I’ll stand - In purchasable shame before you all - Who bargain for my manhood; stand and watch - My father sell the birthright of my flesh; - Yea, stand and bear a sacrilege my youth - Must damn itself to credit. - - _King._ David, peace! - - * * * * * - - _Rothsay._ Nothing glorious - Is marketable--fame, nor love, nor deeds - Of any virtue, youth nor happiness; - Nothing, oh nothing, but the meanest things, - Of which I am the meanest. On my soul, - You drag me in the dirt, and there I’ll lie - And dash it in your faces.... - - _Albany._ Wherefore all this noise - And rampant passion? We would understand - The tossing cause thereof. - - _Rothsay._ Speak it! Oh no! - ’Twould want an old and worldly merchant, one - Who has a counting-house. I’m still a prince - About the lips, nor know your tricks with coin, - Your sales of man for woman, your low truck - And miserable frauds. You’ve ruined me, - And thrown my youth down to the bottom step - Of Pride’s high stairs. I’ll never climb again. - - * * * * * - - Oh, write your contract, for it joins my life - To snaky-headed Sin, in whose hot breast - I’ll know what pleasure is. Call forth your priest-- - He’s but a pander in the guise of Heaven. - Let Hymen’s torches flare--they smell of pitch - And sulph’rous fever of contemn’d desire; - Ring from your steeples--’tis the curfew-bell; - Prepare your bridal-veil--’tis hiding night; - Present your hateful bride to pulseless arms-- - And Lust receives the harlot in its clasp. - _Act I, Scene 3_ - - _Rothsay._ Oh, all the shame - You’ve struck into my being will be there, - When it is opened to its secret depth - Before the Judgment seat, and lo! old men - Will answer for the sins that they have done - Across the years to those in backward Time’s - Most lovely season. - _Act II, Scene 2_ - -The scenes in Act IV, when Rothsay is starving to death in Falkland -Castle, are vividly imagined: - - _Rothsay._ I can only think - Of bread, bread, bread!... - ... Oh, without - Are many cornfields--and the river! God! - I scarcely can remember anything - But the white floods, and the last scrap of meat - I emptied from my wallet. - - * * * * * - - I ever thought - Death was a shadow.--I myself am Death. - I fed and never knew it: now I starve. - Here is the skeleton I’ve seen in books! - ’Tis I--the knarled and empty bones. Here--Here-- - The grinning dints! I thought Death anywhere - But near my life; and it is in the pith - And centre of my body. Horrible! - _Act IV, Scene 2_ - -King Robert does not know that David is dying, and the tragic irony of -Scene 5 of this act is masterly. It is a wild night, and the King, -crouching over the fire of a room high up in the castle, hears the wind -shriek outside and thinks of his boy, whom he believes to be merely shut -up like a naughty child to recover from his rage: - - _K. Robert._ My poor lad, - My David, who is fearful of the dark, - Would he were here this bleak and scolding night! - He used to throw a cushion on the floor, - And lay him down as featly as the hound, - His foolish yellow head against my knee; - And so he’d laugh and chat and sing old songs, - Or gaily sneer at our last grave debate, - Drop sudden crude suggestions that anon - Our older counsel ripened into act; - Until for some light word I’d give rebuke, - When either with a peal of raillery - He’d toss me back a penitent bright face, - Or with a shaded humour spring apart, - No place from me too far. Good Albany, - You would not have our Rothsay longer shut - In such grim-tempered darkness? - _Act IV, Scene 5_ - -_William Rufus_ (1885), a full-dress drama of five acts, is without a -woman character. It is based on Freeman’s history of Rufus, and was -suggested to the poet, as she explains in the preface, by a visit to the -New Forest. There she found the stone which marks the spot where Rufus -fell, pierced by an arrow glancing from an oak, “as if directed,” to use -her own phrase, “by Nature’s anger at the destruction of her -food-bearing fields for the insolence of pleasure.” - -So there, again, peeps out the ulterior motive. The idea of the play is -explicitly to be the land question; and that it had, in fact, a -political bearing is confirmed by the poet’s letters on the subject. Yet -one is glad to discover, as we quickly do, that here as elsewhere in her -intellectual drama Michael Field has been better than her creed: her -dramatic instinct has subdued the idea to itself. So that, if we had no -other evidence than that of the play, we should be convinced that the -idea grew out of the theme, and was not imposed upon it. It was never a -case of the poets’ exclaiming, “Go to, we will write a problem-play!” -but rather of a sudden perception, in their travels or their reading, -“What a subject for drama!” and then, as an afterthought, “And see what -profound significance!” But as a fact all the evidence points in the -same direction: a character would arrest them, they would be attracted -by its story, would absorb themselves in the study of it, and become -literally possessed by it--working out the implicit idea as something -subsidiary. - -In this play the idea is completely assimilated to imagination. There is -no bald presentation of it on the plane of everyday existence, for that -surely is a function of comedy. And though the King’s cruelty in -appropriating the peasants’ land is shown in its effect upon the lives -of individuals, a larger vision of the problem is presented in the -figure of one old man, Beowulf, who is, as it were, the wronged spirit -of the Earth in human shape. In him the idea is made both concrete and -spiritual, as the genius of poetry can make it. He is a very real, -rough-hewn old countryman, with a vigorous part in the movement of the -drama; and yet there is a touch upon him that is weird and -supernatural, which relates him to fierce elemental forces and makes him -at one and the same time a rustic and an avenging deity. He is blind; -his eyes were put out long ago for trespass; and he feels his way to the -gallows where the body of his grandson has now been hanged for killing a -deer: - - _Beowulf._ I feel it’s here; I have no need to see. - I’m glad they murdered him, not made him dark; - For now he’s dead the Earth will think on him - As she unweaves his body bit by bit. - She’ll have time like the women-folk at work - To turn all over in her mind, and get - His wrongs by heart. - ... Who is here? - - _Wilfrith._ Wilfrith! I often come to pray for him!... - - _Beowulf._ Pray! Pray! Are you a wench to chatter so? - Does not your tongue grow rigid in your head, - A corpse to bear that silence company? - Have you no death in you? Oh, say your prayers; - I will keep mourning in my ruined ears - The passing of his voice. - _Act II, Scene 1_ - - _Beowulf._ Do you think the Earth’s a thing that makes your flesh - Soft for the worms?--the harvests lie asleep - Upon her bosom; she has reared the spring; - The seasons are her change of countenance; - She lives, and now for many thousand years - Hath ruled the toiling and the rest of men. - ... She’ll judge. - - _Old Man._ Do thou make known this matter to the Lord; - He will avenge. - - _Beowulf._ The Lord! Oh, He’s above! - There’s something lying at the roots of things - I burrow for. - _Act IV, Scene 1_ - - _Beowulf_ [_his last speech, after Rufus has been - killed_]. Yea, bear him through the woods like a gashed boar, - Present him dripping to your angry God; - He may not be implacable. In haste - Cloak the foul thing beneath the minster tower; - Heap soil on him.... - ... There are worms - About his darkness; I am satisfied. - _End of Act V_ - -The people of this drama are vigorous creatures, as sharply drawn and -clear-cut as types, but very far from the merely typical. The poet has -created, and not constructed, them; and each one possesses his own soul. -Rufus is a credible villain, a man and not a monster. He can melt at the -sight of filial piety, unbend to a jest, warm to affection. Anselm may -stand as a figure which shall represent the insulted Church, but he is -a very holy and gentle old priest. Philosopher and saint, he was, of -course, historically studied; but he is, despite verisimilitude, an -almost complete embodiment of the two qualities of our poet’s mind which -make so rare a combination--her religious temper and her philosophic -intellect. Two short quotations from him may help to illustrate this: - - _Anselm._ God gives His bread to children who are sweet - With golden faith; to thinkers and to men - Of striving reason He presents a stone. - - * * * * * - - Faith is the child’s gift, and Philosophy - The man’s achievement. Blessèd toil, to walk - Where babes are carried past on angel-wings. - ... It is Philosophy - That knocks at Heaven’s gate: Faith finds the door - Wide open. - _Act II, Scene 2_ - -But of all the characters, one supposes Leofric to have engaged the -poets’ affection most. He is a ‘mason’: which is to say he is the -architect, sculptor, and builder all in one who was the medieval artist. -It is evident that the poets had particular joy in imagining him, -absorbed and happy in his real world of art, with the actual world as -mere stuff for his modelling. If Leofric ever allows himself to be -disturbed by the King’s greedy inroads, it is from no ‘political’ -reason, but simply that the noisy hunters make such havoc of the -woodland peace: - - _Leofric._ ... A horn! - Methinks the forest hath another use - These precious hours of morning, when the world - Is at some process of its perfecting - ’Twere well to learn the trick of. Wilfrith toils, - Tearing yon fibre from the ground a-sweat - With effort; while for me!--my eyes are full; - I have no want; the world is excellent; - There is no prickle in the holly wrong. - How bossily it clusters! - ... Oh do not think - We travel so untreasured in resource - We needs must earn the bread of every joy - By sweat of soul. If life’s a desert--Ah! - There’s manna in the waste; it lies about, - And the wise idle soul is satisfied. - _Act I, Scene 4_ - -The motive of _Canute the Great_ (1887) presents a curious difficulty. -For if we are to accept the poet’s own statement of what she meant by -the play (and it does seem as if she ought to have known), then we are -forced to conclude that she attempted the impossible, and therefore -failed. But one has the suspicion that she did _not_ quite know what she -meant by it--which is not so impertinent as it sounds, and only means -that her artistic instinct was stronger and truer in this case than her -philosophy. For in the preface she declares that she is here dealing -with the theory of evolution; and she elaborates an idea which, had it -really operated as a motive force, would surely have paralysed her Muse -and struck it dumb. Canute, however, is no paralytic: on the contrary, -he has his creator’s vehement life and passion, at least for the first -half of the drama. But in those scenes he is far enough from any -abstract theory. Yet when his vitality flags, as it does sometimes, and -when the play becomes, as a consequence, to that extent unsuccessful, -the cause lies in a certain resemblance which the theme does bear to the -poet’s definition of it. For it is possible to regard the character of -Canute in the abstract as a transition between two ages and a link -between two orders of civilization. That is, of course, the meaning -which the poet saw in it--when she was writing her preface. But in the -process of making the drama the wise æsthetic impulse seized and worked -upon something simpler, more definite, and more moving--the potential -conflict that exists everywhere and always among human creatures between -their instincts and their reason. That, surely, is a tragic motive of -universal validity; and it may precipitate at any moment, and at any -stage of civilization, the revolt of the half-tamed instincts which is -true stuff of tragedy, whether it be enacted within the small orbit of -an individual soul or in the insane immensity of a world-war. So long as -Canute is at grips with the rebel powers--dramatized in his struggle -with Edmund--he is a great dramatic figure; but when his creator raises -the conflict--with his penitence for Edmund’s death--to the plane of -pure thought, the life goes out of him and he becomes but a type, though -a very noble one, of spiritual struggle. Even at those moments, however, -one may find passages where the æsthetic sense has subdued theory to -itself with fine effect. Thus the poet has touched Canute’s love for -Emma with symbolism, seeing her as the gentler and riper civilization -into which Canute is adopted; and again, the wild Northern land of his -origin, the elements which went to the making of his race, the secret -compulsive urge of heredity, are embodied in the figure of a weird -prophetess who is to him his other self, the incarnate spirit of those -ancient forces. The speech which follows is made by Canute when he is -recalling his first meeting with Emma. There are passages with her, -love-scenes between the young sea-king and the mature queen, which are -adroitly and boldly handled, and are drama in essence and in fact. But -here, in a reverie, is the poet’s opportunity for putting her theory -into a symbol: - - _Canute._ ... Above me bent - A sweet, soft-shouldered woman, with supreme, - Abashing eyes, and such maturity-- - The perfect flower of years--such June of face.... - So ceremonious, and yet so fearless - In passionate grace, that I was struck with shame, - And knew not where I was, nor how to speak, - Confounded to the heart. She made me feel - That I was lawless and uncivilised,-- - Barbarian! In all my brave array - I shrank from her, as she had caught me stripped - For some brute pastime. Is this womanhood? - There’s more to see each time one looks at her, - There’s music in her; she has listened much, - Pored o’er the lustrous missals, learnt how soft - One speaks to God.... - _Act I, Scene 4_ - -Another and more powerful example of our poet’s genius for giving form -to the abstract, and triumphing dramatically over a most stubborn -theory, is in her creation of Gunhild, the Scandinavian prophetess. -Gunhild is something more than a symbol--though she is that, and stands -for ancestry, the ancient gods, and the wild fight with nature of the -barbaric order which Canute is renouncing. But she is, besides, a -terrifying old witch: an ugly, clinging creature who will not be cast -off. She enters to Canute just at the moment when he is thinking of -Emma: - - _Canute [to Hardegon]._ Whom hast thou brought? - A brooding face, with windy sea of hair, - And eyes whose ample vision ebbs no more - Than waters from a fiord. I conceive - A dread of things familiar as she breathes. - - _Gunhild._ O King. - - _Canute._ Ay, Scandinavia. - - _Gunhild._ He sees - How with a country’s might I cross his door; - How in me all his youth was spent, in me - His ancestors are buried; on my brows - Inscribed is his religion; through my frame - Press the great, goading forces of the waves. - - _Canute._ Art thou a woman? - - _Gunhild._ Not to thee. I am - Thy past. - - _Canute._ Her arms are knotted in her bosom - Like ivy stems. What does she here, so fixed - Before my seat? - - * * * * * - - _Gunhild._ Hearken!... All eve I stood - And gathered in your fate. You raise your hands - To other gods, you speak another tongue, - You learn strange things on which is Odin’s seal - That men should know them not, you cast the billows - Behind your back, and leap upon the horse. - You love no more the North that fashioned you, - The ancestors whose blood is in your heart-- - These things you have forgotten. - - _Canute._ Yes. - - _Gunhild._ But they - Will have a longer memory. - - * * * * * - - ... Oh, indestructible - Are the first bonds of living. Fare thee well. - Thou wilt engender thine own ancestry; - Nature will have her permanence. - - _Canute._ And I - Will have my impulse. - - _Gunhild._ Oh, the blue fir-bough, - The bird, the fern, and iris at my feet! - The whole world talks of birth, it is the secret - That shudders through all sap. [_Exit._ - _Act I, Scene 4_ - -In illustrating poetic drama, one chooses inevitably such passages as -these, where poetic imagination is concentrated at high power. But they, -by their nature, cannot represent the suppler and swifter dramatic -qualities of this poetry. And they do no more than hint at what is, in -our poet, a very great gift--psychological insight flashing into -expression as vivid and as true as itself. It is well-nigh impossible to -illustrate this by quotation, because the effect is cumulative. The -phrase which darts into the mind is full of what the mind already -holds, but which was dark and inchoate until the flash came. One or two -minor examples may be given from this play, as when Edric (conceived by -the poet as entirely base) is sounding Canute on the subject of a -marriage with Emma: - - _Canute._ I have no doubt - But I shall marry. - - _Edric._ Where’s the wife to match - An eagle of your plumage? - - _Canute._ All the world - Is full of stately women. - - _Edric._ I have seen - But one, the late king’s widow. She is prime - Among all dames. - - _Canute._ You think that you have seen her, - Because you know she has a radiant skin, - And strange, proud eyes! - -And again, when Edric asks for some message, a “sugared speech” to take -to Emma: - - _Canute_ [_aside_]. The fool! - I cannot speak.--Take her my silence, Thane. - - _Act I, Scene 4_ - -_The Cup of Water_, published in the same volume with _Canute_, is an -idyll whose delicate beauty one almost fears to touch. That it too -astonishingly carries a problem one would hardly guess; and even in face -of the poet’s confession of the fact, and her anxiety lest the problem -should be misunderstood, one would demur that here again her practice -has been better than her precept. For these exquisite love-scenes, these -magnanimous friends and lovers, and this clear greatness of thought -issuing simply in noble action might bear some relation to a ‘marriage -question’ in Utopia, but would have little enough to do with such a -problem in the actual world. That, however, is rather a cause for -rejoicing to those who can delight in the ideal beauty of the work, and -who can see in its ethical audacity an innocence which only could dare -to follow up so boldly a logical attack upon the conventions of -morality. - -The theme was adopted from a projected poem of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; -but in taking it over our poet has moralized it far from its origin. The -story as she tells it is concerned with the love of a young king, -Almund, for a peasant-girl, his renunciation of her from motives of -loyalty, and his ultimate discovery that in giving her up he has sinned -against something in her and in himself which has a deeper sanction than -loyalty--that, in a word, fulfilment is a higher good than renunciation. -But this he finds out too late: - - _Almund._ I shall find - All the great years of Hell inadequate - To mourn this mighty error and defeat-- - To put such gift away, and youth and manhood - Stirring within me! _Act III, Scene 2_ - - * * * * * - - Oh, we must learn - To drink life’s pleasures if we would be pure, - Deep, holy draughts.... _Act III, Scene 2_ - - * * * * * - - Love, Love, Love, - Without which we are made of the mere clay - Of the world’s agèd floor. _Act II, Scene 1_ - -In the first scene the King and his friend Hubert have encountered Cara -in the forest, and have begged of her a drink of water. She does not -know them, and is unconscious that both are enchanted by her wild -prettiness. She fills her cup with water, and brings it straight to -Almund, though Hubert teasingly tries to intercept it; and the King -desires her to serve his friend first. The merest touches put us in -possession of the tragic knot--that both of the young men love her and -that she loves Almund; but that he, in the moment of realizing his -passion, feels upon him the bonds of honour to his betrothed wife and -loyalty to his friend. As they ride away, his mind is full of the -conflict: - - _Almund_ [_aside_]. She is mine. - The water came not straighter from the earth, - Than she herself to me. - - _Hubert._ You are unmindful. - I vainly prate to one in reverie-- - Indifferent to my fortune. - - _Almund._ May you win her! - You are my friend. - - _Hubert._ I doubt not she will listen; - The small, cold cheek grew ruddy. We shall wed, - When you espouse your Millicent. - - _Almund_ [_aside_]. Thus God - Severs, without the clemency of death. - - _Act I, Scene 1_ - -Scene 2 proceeds to Hubert’s wooing of Cara, whom he seeks next day in -the forest. But her thoughts are far away from him: - - _Hubert._ Oh, now I know there is _for ever_ - To make room for such loving. - - _Cara._ Do you think - That he can love like that? - - _Hubert._ You mean the king? - - _Cara._ No, not the king. My lover is a man - Who tells me he is thirsty.... - -Hubert tries to make her understand the facts: that the King is -betrothed already, and that he cannot therefore love her. - - _Cara._ ... He is mine; - A thief has hold of him, my own, my own, - My king, my love, my love! - - _Hubert._ He never was, - Never will be your love.... The king would laugh - To hear you chirp such folly. - - _Cara._ It’s more wicked - Than anything that’s done.... - And it is such a lie! The king would laugh? - He had a still, grave face; I am quite sure - That he would never laugh at anything - So terrible and sudden. Why, the oak - Has a white, bony bough amid the leaves; - That’s where the lightning struck. I do not laugh, - I think what it must suffer ’neath the green, - So scathed and ugly. - - _Hubert._ Cara, do not put - Such hatred in your eyes; if the great lady - Who loves the king-- - - _Cara._ Great ladies cannot love. - You must be poor and famished to be hungry. - - * * * * * - - If you meet him, - Oh, tell him I am his, a weary child, - Tired out since yesterday. - -[_Exit Hubert mournfully._ - - I’ll go along - The wood, and say it over to myself, - _He cannot, cannot love me_; but I know - Deep in my heart he does. There was a gift-- - The king had something for me in his eyes; - And when he waved good-bye ... I am quitesure - God made him for me: he will come again. - -_The Tragic Mary_ (1890) returns to chronicles for its subject, and -belongs to our first category for that reason only. It has no -specifically intellectual theme, and for its tragic motive should rather -be classed in the third group of dramas, where “passions spin the plot.” -Not that the poet has neglected the element of fatal circumstance in -Mary’s life, nor the very intricate machinery of action in which she was -involved. The incidence of political intrigue, domestic plot, and -religious feud is clearly shown, and their mere data are used to carry -forward the brisk movement of the play. The Marian legend is, in fact, -handled boldly; some of the blackest charges against the Queen are -confronted, even those on which the historian has pronounced that there -is no evidence. But the whole tragedy is seen in its relation to -character, with Mary as the centre and source of it, not merely because -she is a beautiful queen precariously enthroned among false enemies and -falser friends, but because she carries in her nature the seed of -tragedy. Admirable balance is kept in picking a path through the mazy -inconsistencies of the old story: neither extreme of antithetical -judgment is adopted. And if Michael Field has not plucked out the heart -of Mary Stuart’s mystery, she has at least brought it out of the region -of the incredible. Her Mary is human: of such vivid humanity, indeed, as -to draw for that reason the lightnings of fate. She is a richly dowered -nature, capable of intense love and fierce anger and deep tenderness, -free and frank to the world’s measure of indiscretion, sensitive, eager, -and responsive to the world’s measure of excess; and of clemency wide -enough for the silly and the cynical to ban as complaisance. She has a -swift, gay temper; but underneath the flashing faults of incaution and a -rapier wit there lies an innocence which is from its nature incapable of -suspecting evil in others, or of calculating beforehand how her ardour -and friendliness would appear to meaner eyes. She is, in short, an -imperfect but large-hearted human creature; and she discovers that to be -one inch greater than a small world is to draw inevitably, if not the -bolts of Jove, at any rate the slings and arrows of a punier race. - -It is, however, in comprehending Mary Stuart’s womanhood and its bearing -upon the tragedy that this study by a woman poet may claim its proper -value. No Cleopatra this: no male apprehension of femininity as sheer -sex-impulse. Mary’s love of loving and of being loved is shown to be -profound and instinctive, an impulse to give, to cherish, and to bless -which every normal woman shares in some degree. Michael Field has seen -it for the complex and subtle power it is, and not merely as a lure to -attract a lover. Raised as it is, in Mary Stuart, to the measure of her -human stature--the range of her sympathies, the keenness of her -perception, her gift of understanding, the goodwill that prompts her -clear intimacy of approach--it is a power that becomes a danger in a -circle which could not rise to the same height. But it was a danger -primarily to herself: she was its chief victim. - -“Terrible in love: no compromise between ecstasy and death,” says one of -her Maries; and another, speaking of her manner to those she deems her -friends, that she is “fond and familiar”; while a third declares of her -sympathy and insight, “There is not a balmy nook of one’s soul -undiscovered of her.” Thus, too, after she has dismissed Bothwell, -indignant at his proposal of marriage so soon after Darnley’s death, her -anger ebbs as she remembers how _natural it seems to hear the man’s love -in his voice_. And on another occasion, when she is thinking of him -after Darnley has deserted her: - - ... It was for courtesy - I stooped and let Lord Bothwell kiss my hands, - _For sweet to me is love in human eyes, - As daylight to the world_. - _Act III, Scene 1_ - -One observes, too, how the feminine author has perceived the incidence -of the feminine instinct of self-accusal on Mary’s tragedy, arriving by -intuition at a truth of psychology which the mental doctors declare to -be invariable. To a sensitive nature that instinct will often give the -colour of guilt, or will at least render disavowal impotent. Thus the -ancient lie attributing complicity in Darnley’s murder credibly takes -its rise in an access of remorse for an imagined sin--as when Mary, in -the shock of the news of Darnley’s death, remembers how she had once -wished him such an evil fate, on the night that he murdered David -Riccio: - - ... Heaven has crept - Into my ancient thoughts, and done the deed, - I, David,--I half-prompted in my prayers, - When I besought God’s pity on your soul. - I am a guilty woman.... - _Act III, Scene 7_ - -And again, when she is thinking of Bothwell’s wooing and her growing -love for him: - - I never shall grow holy among men, - And yet I wish them ever good, not evil, - And long to give them pleasure of such portion - Of wit or beauty as were made my dower. - -It is significant, too, that Mary’s motherhood is seen to be a deep -force in her, and therefore in the tragedy. She is found to be an -instinctive mother, not only in the primary fact of rejoicing to bear a -child, but in a profound sense of the value of life and an urgent -impulse to protect it. Hence the supreme villainy of David Riccio’s -murder is seen by our poet to lie in the fact that he is struck down in -Mary’s presence, and desperately clinging to her for help, when she is -within a few weeks of the birth of her child. And this by the husband -whose sacred duty was to protect her. That is perceived to be Darnley’s -unpardonable sin, and it prepares for much that follows. But observe how -the poet has indicated the greatness of a mother-instinct which leaps to -parry even a shattering blow like this. Mary sees that she is hemmed in -by plots, that her life is in danger; and she makes a swift plan to -escape through the vaults of the ruined Abbey of Holyrood. But it is a -daunting project: - - ... If I were struck stone-dead - For horror at the grim, distorted tombs; - If I should bring forth a strange, spectral child, - To catch the bats that flit from roof to roof, - And wink at daylight! God, it shall not be! - For I will nurse him royally with my soft, - Wild, wayward songs, and he shall lie and laugh - Across my knees, until the happy tune - Drop off into a drowse. - _Act I, Scene 3_ - -There is much to illustrate this aspect of Mary’s womanhood; but one -other short quotation must suffice. It is after the birth of her son, -and she has forgiven and reinstated Darnley. Lethington has presented -another petition to her, and she replies: - - I live now but to pardon and make peace, - I am a mother. - -Technically, the drama must, of course, be considered as a -chronicle-play; and this cancels a criticism which might otherwise hold, -that the end of the play, when Mary gives herself up and Bothwell flees, -is weak. But the five acts go with a swing till that point is reached, -and the energy of movement gets into the verse. That is often vehement -to the measure of the vehement passions it expresses; and the relief of -a character like Lethington, ironical, subtle, sceptical of the whole -world but the innocence of his queen, is proportioned to the emotional -intensity of the play as a whole. Bothwell is a finely contrasted study, -compelling our belief in his lawless force, and in his mere physical -reaction to Mary’s influence. His psychology, true as hers, chimes -responsive to the masculine instinct of resentment in moments of mental -crisis: when passion pulls fate down upon him, he is, in his angry -conviction, the wronged one, and wronged by the woman. Thus Mary, to -him, is a temptress love, - - The infamous soft creature with her sighs, - Her innocence and wonder! - -and he has been damned by her love. There is a scene between Bothwell -and his wife, Jane Gordon, which is good in itself for its dramatic -truth and its utility in the action, but which has the further interest -of revealing the Queen as she looks through such different eyes. In -Mary’s womanhood, seen thus from perhaps a dozen different angles, there -is in truth an “infinite variety,” no gusty variation on the single -theme of passion. - -In Act III, Scene 2, Jane Gordon has consented to release Bothwell from -his marriage with her, so that he may win the Queen: - - _Bothwell._ It is a desperate scheme! - How cold, and yet how kindly, are your eyes. - I never hate you--her I often hate. - - _Lady Bothwell._ Poor lady, for you love her! I have been - More fortunate in winning your respect. - You are a gallant fellow; but too wild - For the great fireside virtues.... - -Bothwell tries to make his wife divulge what are Mary’s feelings toward -him: - - _Lady Bothwell._ For her sake - I am unknitting, James, our marriage-bond; - I shall not then report her. - At your feet - The gown of Spanish fur I recognize - As her own mother’s wear. She loved her mother; - She would not part with that except to one - She trusted with a child’s simplicity. - Prove worthy of her faith. [_Exit._ - - * * * * * - - _Bothwell._ Fie, this woman - Leaves me with branded cheeks. To bid her - pack; To break up house, to get myself divorced - From one so noble and so tolerant - Just for a giddy hope!--Ho, Paris, - put This trumpery away. [_Kicking the Spanish fur._] - I must to-morrow - Betimes conduct the queen - to Callander. - _Act III, Scene 2_ - -Contrast the way in which Lethington--scholar, wit, and -statesman--reacts to Mary’s character. There is a scene with him when -the Queen is in the deepest gulf, her courage broken by treachery, her -love for Bothwell humiliated, her life so netted in intrigue that she is -helpless and despairing. With almost every soul about her counsels -proved false, she still believes in Lethington, and he is in truth her -friend. But he, with his itch for policy, had given his support long ago -to the Bothwell conspiracy against Darnley, believing in good faith -that it might help the Queen. Now the Bothwell marriage has proved -disastrous: the people are in revolt, and Mary is accused of hideous -crimes that she cannot refute. She turns for advice to the one man whose -wisdom and whose honour she believes that she can trust; and Bothwell, -enraged and brutally jealous, breaks upon their conference: - - _Bothwell._ ... Since you thwart me - And magnify this pard--I will unfold - The smooth and cowardly creature you esteem. - This man heard Morton promise me your hand, - And to and fro he journeyed prospering - My heady plans; he is the sorcerer - To lure your mates to death, one after one; - He sits, and sees them drop away from you, - But yet he meddles not. Now chat together; - He will advise you how you may entoil - A second victim. I will leave you now. [_Exit._ - - _Queen._ To think that you were with me at Dunbar! - - _Lethington._ You saved my life. - - _Queen_ [_looking toward the door_]. He cannot be a king; - They wither, or are murdered, or grow mad - Who link themselves with me in sovereignty. - Twilight and ruin settle on us both! - Oh, might we be forgotten; could we lie - In the blank pardon of oblivion! That, - Alack, can never be; there is no man - Can give me safety, or protection, or - Peace from vicissitude; I have no lover, - Servant or friend; and yet I am beloved - Even to marvel. I can pray no more, - I have no more dependence upon God; - And none on any of His creatures, none. - Go, tell my story as you learnt it, add - New matter. If I sat beside the fire - In prison with my maids, and never spoke, - While you put forth fresh libels, or confirmed - The common talk, you could not injure me: - My silence would have privilege. - - * * * * * - - _Lethington._ Libellers - Are sure of popularity. My brain - Treasures a rare, untarnished miniature. - With that I shall not part. [_She gazes at him, - sobbing._] Nay, pardon now, - Full pardon, great, obliterating sea - Of love o’erwhelm me! You have heaven’s own measure: - The seventy-times-and-seven is in your eyes, - Immeasurable grace.... - God shield you from dishonour! May He draw - Blood of me, when my life has other use - Than to protect your titles. - _Act V, Scene 3_ - - - - -IV. THE TRAGEDIES--II - - -Michael Field’s second dramatic period synchronizes almost exactly with -the ‘eighteen-nineties.’ That is to say, it was contemporaneous with -Wilde, Beardsley, and _The Yellow Book_, and belonged in time to that -decadent decade which has gained its reproachful title mainly because -work like that of our poet was ignored, and eyes were drawn exclusively -to the swagger of a noisier set. In all that clamour there was hardly a -word uttered about her, though a stray reviewer here and there tried -vainly to rouse the literary world to the fact that it had in its midst -a veritable dramatic poet. - -The seven plays came out one by one and passed quietly into the hands of -the very few--book-lovers or poetry-lovers--who really cared for fine -work. And nothing more was heard of them or their authors. Of the -noisier and naughtier set a good deal was heard; and yet it may be that -in the last judgment of literary values these seven plays will go far to -redeem their epoch, vicariously, from a reproach too lightly made. - -This poet and her work are in truth far enough removed from decadence. A -heroic temper was hers, and mental courage, rare in her day, to face and -present the problems of life. A robust and militant morality--no less -moral because it sometimes shatters indignantly a mere moral -convention--informs her drama. She did not belong to any set, and was so -far from swagger that her idea of advertisement was to print at the end -of her books the bad as well as the good reviews. She lived secluded in -the suburb of a great town, and there she laboured, with no hope of -reward, at her daily toil in the service of poetry. Nevertheless, even -so far withdrawn, the spirit of the age reached her and laid its mark -upon her work. And that, ultimately, is the reason why this drama of the -second period reveals itself, despite a continued sense of moral and -spiritual problems, as drama in which Art is the primary value. If ever -artist wrought, as some devout lover, for the sake of Art, it was -Michael Field in this body of work; which, though it bears no relation -to the trivial contemporary _cliché_, “Art for Art’s sake,” will be a -bulwark (in the day of reckoning that one has foreseen) to the truth -underlying that cry. But perhaps that is simply because this poet, as -artist, _was_ the devout lover, the reckless spendthrift of herself, the -tenacious, tireless, painstaking follower of a vision. - -But the proximate cause of the change from the characteristics of the -first period lies in the changed conditions of the poets’ life--that, -in its turn, of course determined by their mental development. They were -in many ways different people from the authors of _Callirrhoë_. Six -years of living, as the artist lives, and the production of nine plays -and at least one book of lyrics, had re-created them. Travel had made -them free of a larger world, larger not merely in physical extent. For -they were avid of the best in life; and they had the taste to gather and -the temper to assimilate the finest things that the old cities of the -Continent could offer. But whereas their early impulse had been toward -Teutonic culture (Goethe had drawn them, and the German philosophers), -now it was the art and the thought of the Latin races which held sway. -Visits to Italy, and art friendships there and in London: research into -medieval Latin chronicles, into French and Italian history: residence in -Paris and contact with the Gallic sense of form--all helped the trend of -their mind. And when they determined to leave Clifton and settle at -Reigate, the act was almost symbolic. For they removed themselves into -what was at once a bigger and a smaller world, the resources of the -metropolis lying accessible to the deliberate limits of their social -existence, much as their greater mental area now lay subject to a -stricter rule. - -As a consequence, these plays are different in material, in spirit, and -in manner from the plays of the first period. The material comes from -the subjects which were most attractive to them at the time, much of it -from old Roman history and the chronicles of medieval France. In spirit -the work is withdrawn from the temporary, the immediate, and the actual, -and is concerned with the more permanent issues of life; and in manner -the sense of form which now ruled their æsthetic has constrained them to -a finer balance, a sharper definition, and a greater simplicity of -structure. The cumbrous Elizabethan machinery has been scrapped; and -with a more careful economy of means, the plays are compressed into -smaller compass. The wearisome and often redundant fifth act has -disappeared. Three acts are the rule, with a fourth as an occasional -exception. There is no subdivision into scenes, the movement of each act -thus flowing uninterrupted. There are fewer long speeches, fewer -soliloquies: dialogue is more nervous and forcible. Fine poetry is not -wanting, but it is now in smaller proportion to dramatic and -psychological truth. And action goes forward at its proper pace, pushed -by the emotion of the moment, and freighted only by its just weight of -reflection. - -As a handy label, it is convenient to classify this drama as a Latin -group. Its most prominent feature is, indeed, a Roman trilogy which the -poets were engaged upon (though not exclusively) for seven years. These -three plays are, in historical order, _The Race of Leaves_ (1901), _The -World at Auction_ (1898), and _Julia Domna_ (1903). Another Roman play, -despite its title, is _Attila, my Attila!_ (1896); and two whose -subjects belong to French history and are drawn from medieval Latin -chronicles are _Anna Ruina_ (1899) and _In the Name of Time_. This last -was, by the evidence of letters, being worked upon as early as 1890, but -it was probably not finished until much later; and one imagines that -after the poets’ conversion to the Roman Church theological scruples -withheld them from publishing it. It did not appear until after their -death, in 1919; but it belongs, in spirit and in form, to their work of -the nineties. - -Anna Ruina, a Russian princess, daughter of Jaroslav, became queen to -Henry I of France in the middle of the eleventh century. Henry was -prompted to seek a wife in so distant a country because nearer royal -houses were already allied; and the medieval popes had an uncomfortable -habit of excommunicating princes who married within the forbidden -degrees. His Russian wife secured him from such molestation; but when, -after his death, his widow married his kinsman Raoul, Conte de Valois, -the pope of the moment annulled the marriage and ordered Raoul to take -back his former wife--a woman notoriously evil--whom he had divorced. -Our play is concerned with the loves of Anna and Raoul, their struggle -with the Church, and the disastrous conflict between Anna’s passion and -her piety which brought ruin on them both. - -So much it seems necessary to premise concerning this somewhat -unfamiliar story, which the poets appear to have gathered from French -and Latin chroniclers who stress very quaintly Anna’s piety. One old -historian thus describes her: - - Icele dame pensoit plus aux choses a venir que aux choses presentes - ... dont il avint qu’ele fist estorer a Senliz une Yglise en l’enor - S. Vincent. - -The Abbey at Senlis which she built, and in particular St Vincent’s -tower, is used very effectively both as a setting for the play and as a -symbol of that in Anna’s character which was deep and strong enough to -defeat her love. The strength of this religious sense, and the -consequent rigour of the conflict, are of course to be measured by her -love; for which reason the whole first act is devoted to a vigorous -presentment of Anna, the widowed queen, mother and regent of the young -king, putting off her royalty to claim Raoul’s love, and sweeping aside -every obstacle in order to become his wife. It is, therefore, as no -feeble puppet of the Church that she twice betrays her love to her faith -at the crucial moment; for she has force, decision, independence of -character. It is from something deeper than these, which also the poet -is careful to indicate in the first act--a religious instinct which lies -at the roots of her nature and which is, in some of its aspects, -identical with her love. Thus when, in the opening of the second act, -the Pope orders her to renounce Raoul, she at first joins in his -defiance, and yields only to the archbishop’s lurid prophecy of the -damnation present and to come which she will bring upon Raoul. The third -act finds her in retreat at the convent which she endowed, profoundly -discouraged and disillusioned. She perceives her act to have been -foolish and futile, of the worst cruelty to Raoul, because it has driven -him back to his wife and a life of debauchery. At the command of the -Church, in a kind of perverse obedience, he has taken back the -repudiated Aliénor, and both have plunged into an orgy of sensuality. -Stories of their abandoned living penetrate the Abbey walls, are -whispered among the sisterhood, and reach Anna’s ears. They cost her -remorse for her own folly, and wrath against Raoul’s infamous wife. The -act opens in the convent garden on a winter afternoon. Twilight is -falling rapidly, and an old nun who has been talking to Anna puts away -her gardening-tools and goes into the convent. Anna, left alone in the -gathering darkness, sees the gate open and the figure of a man enter. -She recognizes instantly that it is Raoul; but he strides forward -without knowing her. - - _Raoul._ What are you, - Crossing my pathway, like a ghost? - - _Anna._ You come? - - _Raoul._ To search this convent. Aliénor, my wife, - Is here in hiding. I am come to kill her. - Say where she hides. - - _Anna._ I cannot. - - _Raoul._ By all saints, - You are a hypocrite. I shall discover - My victim in your bleating flock. [_He passes on._ - - _Anna._ I think, - Oh, I believe he does not know my voice; - He passes on beyond me--to what deed? - To one most righteous, one that long ago - He should have wrought. But is it possible - That she abides here? Ah! I recollect.... - I have the clew!--My lord! - - _Raoul_ [_turning_]. And who are you? - Your name? Your purpose? [_Coming closer._] - Well, my crystal flower, - What is the part you play? Are you a Queen, - My Countess, or a little temptress nun? - Give me the word. - - _Anna._ Who am I--dear, my lord, - Your handmaid if you come, wronged in your honour, - To punish treason. I will lead the way. - But first a light.... [_Stooping to kindle the - lantern._] This evening in the dark - A woman crept along; the chapel door - Received her. But I have not seen her face. - -[_Looking toward the chapel._ - - How dark and shut! - She sleeps, if she is sleeping, in a tomb.... - If she is sleeping. - - _Raoul._ Is the chapel locked? - But you have entry. Give me up the key. - - _Anna._ Then waken her. To slay one in one’s sleep - Is like a murder. - - _Raoul._ Anna, you are cold, - These hands are far more icy than the keys.... - Some wrath is in your heart. - - _Anna._ O love, beloved, - That she could so betray you! Take the light, - Swift to your vengeance! - - _Raoul._ Guide me to the door.... - There is the siren in your voice. I falter.... - Say, Anna--we are lovers, it is dark, - And if I have your love that is revenge, - The sweetest to my lips. - - _Anna._ Go, strike her dead. - It is my swift command. Betwixt us twain - There is no secret moment while she lives. - Strike swiftly, for I perish. - - _Raoul._ But lead on; - It was your promise.... - - _Anna._ I will look no more - Upon her face, or dead or living. Strike, - With an open-dealing justice. - -[_She turns with the lantern away._ - - _Raoul._ And no light, - Your will, but shifting Luna. - -[_He disappears in the gloom._ - - _Anna._ I would pray.... - -[_Facing the tower._ - - How still and awful! I could wish the bells - Would jangle on my ear: through the open turret - Two stars at gaze, but no sharp monitor. - And there is peril. Treason moves about - Somewhere, though indistinct. Some wrong is done - That the wide stream of starlight warns me of. - What is it? [_She remains looking steadily up._ - - _Raoul_ [_returning_]. But the door is barred within.... - I cannot enter. Quick, take up the lantern - And light me to my work.... You will not come? - ... You are dazed, - Staring at that high belfry. Off again! - An instant, you have lost the scent, poor Lulla! - What puts a woman off the scent of life - Like this religion! [_Catching her wrist._] But you shall not damn me - A second time with your uncertain strength - And eddying virtue. Come, take the lantern - And tremble to the doorway. - -[_She holds the light steadily, looks in his -face, and stretches her arm as a -barrier between him and the chapel._ - - - _Anna._ ... Count of Valois, - No further! I am taken unawares - In a great sin. That woman is my foe, - I am thirsting for her death.... We may not touch her. - She is in sanctuary. - - _Raoul._ But I am come, - An angel sent to carry her to hell; - She is misplaced among the just, and if - You would escape damnation with the damned, - Light me to fling her down the great abyss. - Unbar your arms. - - _Anna._ She rests beneath my roof, - The tower I raised, and, as I am a Queen, - Her life shall be untouched. - -_Act III_ - -_In the Name of Time_ is the most exciting of Michael Field’s plays, -because it presents the high adventure of a soul. It is the work of her -mid-career, the expression of a mature philosophy, and of fine, though -not faultless, technique. It was conceived and in great part written -when she was in love with life, a worshipper at the altar of her art, -and--this is the most significant condition of its being--when she was -entirely free from theological prepossession. For the play is concerned -with an idea--the greatest of all, perhaps, since it is the idea of God. -Carloman, the protagonist, determines in its first lines to possess _the -Great Reality_; and the drama follows him through one avenue after -another of baffled quest until, dying in a prison, he murmurs his latest -creed: - - ... I for myself - Drink deep to life here in my prison cell. - _Fellowship, pleasure, - These are the treasure_-- - So, I believe, so, in the name of Time.... - -One sees why, after the poets became Roman Catholics, they hesitated to -publish this work; for the protagonist is that Carloman (son of Charles -Martel, King of the Franks to A.D. 741) who renounced a kingdom for the -monastic life. But in Michael Field’s presentation of him he is no -submissive son of the Church. He has the independence and audacity of -intellect of the poets themselves at this period; and he is the absolute -visionary which they were capable of being and sometimes were. -Nevertheless the play is not a polemic; and though it is vastly -interesting on the speculative side, it is no philosophical treatise. It -is genuine drama, and a striking example of the way in which our poets -could at this stage fuse thought and form. Carloman’s spiritual -adventures move us because they are enacted in human stuff; the events -of his life utter his character. We see them through the renunciation of -his royalty, the abandonment of his faithless wife and their child, the -first convent life and its disillusion, the craving for freedom and the -reawakening of ambition, the journey to Rome and dismissal to a second -monastery, the revolt against bondage, the escape and armed rebellion -against the Pope, the return to his home and his now prostituted wife, -his recapture, imprisonment, and death. But being thus true to life, -these spiritual adventures are, in their primary quest, inconclusive. -For all the passion of pursuit, the vehement rejection of the outworn, -the eager clutch at experience, the joyful confidence at every new turn -of the road that now at last the Great Reality is in sight do but lead -Carloman back to the common things of life, and only furnish him with -light enough to keep a foothold in the actual world. Carloman does not -find the Great Reality, though glimpses of its nature fitfully shine on -him. But he discovers how to live--that human existence to be tolerable -must be sweetened by fellowship and ennobled by pleasure. Those bare -elements are all that he attains; but he throws off, in the process of -arriving at something so simple, hints and gleams of truth more complex -and more vivid. To gather merely those flashes may do an injustice to -the work as drama; but one must risk that, for its thought is at least -of equal importance. And since these fragments express the character of -Carloman as he passes stage after stage of his quest, it follows that -they cannot be a coherent philosophy. - - There is no vanity in life; life utters - Unsparing truth to us,--there is no line - Or record in our body of her printing - That stamps a falsehood. Do not so confound, - Father, life’s transience and sincerity. - - * * * * * - - The thing to do - Is simply just the sole thing to be done. - - * * * * * - - There should have been no tears, no taking leave, - A freeman can do anything he will. - - * * * * * - - Oh, do not put your trust in Time; - Put on at once _forever_, leap to God! - Have done with age and death and faltering friends, - Assailing circumstance, the change of front - That one is always meeting in oneself, - The plans and vacillations--let them go! - And you will put on immortality - As simply as a vesture. - - * * * * * - - Heaven detests - A beggar’s whining. God is made for Kings, - Who need no favours, come to Him for nothing - Except Himself. - - * * * * * - - We must escape - From anything that is become a bond, - No matter who has forged the chain--ourselves, - An enemy, a friend: and this escape, - This readjustment is the penitence.... - - * * * * * - - But there is no such thing-- - A vow! As well respect the case that sheathes - The chrysalis, when the live creature stirs! - We make these fetters for ourselves, and then - We grow and burst them. It is clear no man - Can so forecast the changes of his course - That he can promise _so I will remain, - Such, and no other_. Words like these are straws - The current plays with as it moves along. - - * * * * * - - ... You cannot see that Time - Is God’s own movement, all that He can do - Between the day a man is born and dies. - ... Think what the vines would be - If they were glued forever, and one month - Gave them a law--the richness that would cease, - The flower, the shade, the ripening. We are men, - With fourscore years for season, and we alter - So exquisitely often on our way - To harvest and the end. - - * * * * * - - It never is too late for any seeing, - For any recognition we are wrong. - - * * * * * - - Earth’s wisdom will begin - When all relationships are put away, - With their dull pack of duties, and we look - Curious, benignant, with a great compassion - Into each other’s lives. - - * * * * * - - _Pepin._ And are you not a rebel? - - _Carloman._ I am, I am, because I am alive-- - And not a slave who sleeps through Time, unable - To share its agitation. - - * * * * * - - The God I worship. He is just _to-day_-- - Not dreaming of the future,--in itself, - Breath after breath divine! Oh, He becomes! - He cannot be of yesterday, for youth - Could not then walk beside Him, and the young - Must walk with God: and He is most alive - Wherever life is of each living thing. - To-morrow and to-morrow,--those to-days - Of unborn generations. - -The Roman trilogy dramatizes the epoch in which the decline of the -Empire began, and covers, in the period from A.D. 180 to 212, the -disastrous reigns of Commodus, of Didius Julianus, and the co-emperors -Caracalla and Geta. The interlude of Pertinax and his heroic effort to -stop the downward movement is not treated, except that his assassination -is the starting-point of _The World at Auction_; and the military -adventures of Septimius Severus offered the poets no suitable material. -The three plays have not, therefore, a common protagonist: royal persons -were killed off too quickly to be of service in this respect. But there -is, nevertheless, a real bond between the three plays in the idea of the -State; and there are physical links in certain persons of the drama. -Thus Marcia, the noble Christian slave who was so closely associated -with Commodus that her figure appears engraved with his on certain coins -of the period, plays a very important part in the two first tragedies, -with Eclectus her lover. Fadilla, sister to Commodus, and Pylades, a -Greek dancer and pantomime, appear in all three plays--Pylades giving -the poets a welcome opportunity to present the character of artist that -they always delighted in. - -The first play of the trilogy, _The Race of Leaves_, is concerned simply -with the downfall of Commodus. There is, of course, no deliberate -presentation of a problem in any of these plays of the second period, -though a problem of some sort is implicit in every one. It is not, in -the trilogy, capable of statement as one clear force fighting another to -a single issue; but as the complex, fluctuating, diverse elements of the -epoch, making for conflict of morals, of religion, of class, of -political and Imperial interests. And if it be protested that that is -altogether too vague and abstract as a motive for drama, the reply is, -of course, that it is by no means presented as theory. It is wrought -into the persons of the drama and impels them. Imagination has so -possessed itself of the historical situation that what was rotten in the -State has crept insidiously into the life of the play, which goes to its -tragic end in consequence. - -It would be a fascinating study, illuminative of the different mental -processes of the historian and the poet, to compare, throughout the -trilogy, what Gibbon made of the same materials. One must not be -beguiled far along that path; but in respect of Commodus, he is for -Gibbon (and, of course, the evidence supports his judgment) an unnatural -monster with “every sentiment of virtue and humanity extinct.” Which is -to say that the historian has collated the facts and fitted them -together into a certain pattern. The poet has done more than that. She -has absorbed the spirit of the time; she has penetrated to the very -soul of each of the persons of her drama, and that sympathetically: she -has _felt_ not only their individual reaction to the forces of their age -of transition, but the subtle, disintegrating influence of the age -itself. - -Hence no rigid datum is postulated, even about Commodus. We see him, -through the action of the play, in the process of becoming what he was. -We see how and why he became a creature so abandoned to lust and cruelty -that Marcia, a Christian and his loyal friend, could yet bring herself -to mix for him the poison-cup. We see the whole desperate business -already implicit in his origins: not, as Gibbon somewhat mechanically -saw it, from the partiality of Marcus Aurelius for his beautiful young -son, but from the elements in Commodus of Faustina’s amoral nature, and -his reaction from his father’s stoical austerity. Thus we find Fadilla, -in Act I, speaking to her sister Lucilla of their father: - - Philosophy, - That smiles on life, till life is made ashamed, - And sunders from each end for which it throbs, - Praise, glory, pleasure, how should it direct - Youth through its awful rapine? By the gods - Marcus is held as good and our fair mother - As evil ... yet our father poisoned life - In each of us from childhood, for his voice - Withered illusion, and our urgent youth - To him was nothingness, to us a lie - That could not prove the truth it made us feel. - He spoke of us as leaves within a wind, - Leaves shaken diversely: and so we are, - Unhappy children! - -There are indicated in Commodus from the beginning the portents of what -he afterward became; but there are also spiritual graces (his love for -Marcia, his love for his sister Lucilla, and his faith in Cleander) -which hold him to humanity and reasonableness. But the seed comes to its -fruit through the logic of events: the grace and sweetness of humanity -wither as, one by one, those whom he loved and trusted prove traitors. -His deepest affection had been for Lucilla, and her plot to murder him -shakes him to the soul. But he cannot bring himself to sentence her, and -it is only under the shock of another perfidy that he is hardened -sufficiently to order her death. That act is the spiritual crisis of his -life, for in committing it he sins against the last ray of light left in -him. When Cleander is revealed as a traitor, and Commodus rushes out to -destroy his sister, he does in fact compass his own destruction, both -moral and physical. The scene occurs in Act II, and I quote it for the -reason that it is the crucial incident of the drama. But the rightness -of its psychology steadily wins the mind as one perceives how the -memory of Lucilla’s crime works in him at first to reject the warning of -Marcia and Fadilla because they are women; the reaction to pity after he -has condemned Cleander; his revulsion to hatred of Marcia because she -brings evil tidings and comes in ugly clothing; the swift change when he -appeals to her sympathy; his turning to perverse rage again when she -cannot weep with him for the traitor, and he rushes out to sentence -Lucilla--this, finally, in order to avenge himself on Marcia because she -had begged him to spare his sister. - -Fadilla and Marcia have broken upon his revels, dressed in mourning as a -sign of their ominous news, and Commodus has commanded them to speak at -once, on pain of death: - - _Marcia._ ’Tis you must die, - My lord, unless--[_to Fadilla_]--but tell him, Princess, all. - He will believe a lady of his blood. - Tell him of ruin, tell him he has lost - The Roman people, tell him he has lost - The moiety of his guard, that he must dread - From his own subjects what could never chance - By hand of barbarous nation. - - _Eclectus._ All is lost; - Your Guard is broken; you are now defenceless, - And on the brink of slaughter.... - - _Fadilla._ Outside these walls a fiery hatred marshals - The citizens. They have a single shout - Of hunger after justice, and one name - For all they hate--Cleander. Every voice - Demands his head. - - _Commodus._ An execrable plot! - I cannot listen any more to words; - They are the language of conspirators. - [_To Marcia._] But you have put your beauty quite away, - Made yourself hideous, distasteful. There - Again I catch design; my sister too-- - Cleander smote her lover. Envious, Ha! - That was Lucilla’s keynote. Agony! - I will not give him up. - - _Marcia._ He is a traitor. - I say this in Truth’s name. - - _Commodus._ And through your eyes - I look as to the bottom of the well. - Marcia, come nearer! You are deadly sure ...? - - _Marcia._ Eclectus! - - _Commodus._ No, swear to me by your eyes.... - - _Marcia._ Cleander is a traitor. He has brought - A host together, he has armed your people - To strike you dead unless you quell this strife: - He fraudulently bore the public grain - To private granaries, till famine raged, - And still it rages on. Although I tremble - To move you with the sorrow worst to man - Of finding falsehood in the services - That fashioned every day, I, who must die - So soon beside you, yet proclaim with Rome - Cleander is a traitor. [_She gazes into his eyes._ - - _Commodus._ So you doom him, - So! Woman, how I hate you. From his youth - When every office nearest to myself - Was his, and he familiar with my pleasures, - My needs, my health, my privacy, my sleep, - Even then he was a traitor? All must end - If such a hollow, such inanity - Gape round me as existence. [_Re-enter Cleander._ - ... Let him die! - - _Cleander._ ... The cup! - - _Commodus._ He promised me - To bring it. It is brought. A poison-bowl! - Drink, drink, Cleander; pledge me! - -[_Cleander drops the cup and crouches at his feet._ - - _Cleander._ I am lost, - Crushed by your sudden anger. Could I drink? - ’Twas an oblation. Are you not a god, - And through my service? Dare you cast me off? - Dare you discard such deep fidelity? - Gods do not so desert. - - _Eclectus._ You are condemned. The crowd impatient. - - _Cleander._ Master, by our youth, - By all my fond devotion.... If I erred, - It was for you. I twisted circumstance - For you, I stole, I lied.... - - _Marcia_ [_calling_]. Laetus! - - _Cleander._ Her voice-- - The harlot, my accuser! - - _Marcia._ Laetus! [_Laetus enters with soldiers._ - - _Commodus._ Take - Your victim, offer him! - -[_Cleander is dragged away. Commodus wraps -his face in his mantle._ - - I shut my ears. - Truly I am a god; ’tis on this wise - The gods abandon, deaf to circumstance. - You cannot rate him. Why, he kept my rooms: - A little Phrygian slave, the cryer offered, - They bought him for me, and he jigged a dance - Of the mountain-loving Mother the first night - He placed my pillow. Marcia, cling to me! - - _Marcia._ My lord! - - _Commodus._ Cling, cling as to a drowning man. - O Veritas, I loved him. Do not weep. - -[_A distant cry and shouts are heard._ - - For me, I must. A ghost cries after me; - And at the little bloodless Hades-moan - My heart grows soft. - - _Marcia._ Oh, steel yourself. Cleander - Has fallen justly. - - _Commodus._ So you will not weep! - He shall have justice in the Shadow-land. - Some parchment--Quick!--[_Exit._ - - _Fadilla._ What moves him? - - _Marcia._ Something moves, - Something! When men rise restless from their tears - One must not ask their errand.... - -[_Re-enter Commodus._ - - * * * * * - - - _Commodus_ [_to Pylades_]. Bear this sentence - Forth to the hall, to Laetus. It condemns - One I found wholly guilty: she must die. - - _Fadilla._ Gods, ’tis Lucilla! - - _Commodus._ Bear the sentence, beauty.... - Ah, Marcia, this is well; you do not move. - - _Marcia._ How could I? - - _Commodus._ What a rigid ugliness you stand. I hate you. - -_The World at Auction_ follows _The Race of Leaves_ historically (though -it appeared earlier) with the inglorious episode of the reign of Didius -Julianus. This is he who is said to have bought the Empire with his -fortune and to have paid for it with his head; and that barter is the -whole plot of the drama. _Julia Domna_ takes up the chronicle after the -death of Severus has left his sons Caracalla and Geta joint emperors. -Its plot is concerned with the jealous struggle between the two brothers -and its fatal issue, which all the astuteness and the passionate -devotion of their mother, Julia Domna, could not avert. - -Lack of space prevents one from dealing fully with these plays; and from -_The World at Auction_ it is impossible to do more than quote, from the -initial incident of the barter, Marcia’s protest. The Prætorian Guard -has just assassinated the uncomfortably virtuous Pertinax, and the -Imperial seat is vacant. We are introduced to the house of Didius, and -are shown his wealth, his vanity, his weakness, and the greed and -ambition of his wife and daughter; that is to say, the elements which -make for his downfall. His treasurer, Abascantus, enters with the news -that the Prætorians are putting Rome up for sale, and he proposes that -Didius shall bid for it. Marcia interposes, horrified: - - Rome for sale! - The empire offered! Didius, do not listen; - There is no verity behind this cry; - The world may be possessed in many ways, - It may not know its lord; but oh, believe me, - It has its Cæsar; nothing alters that, - No howling of a little, greedy crowd. - Why should you rule this city? Have you raised it - To higher honour? Have you borne its griefs? - Will it remember you? - _Act I_ - -There follows a masterly passage in which Didius vacillates between the -indignation of Marcia and the persuasions of his family. At length he -yields to them (though still half afraid of Marcia) to the extent of -sending Abascantus to bid for him; and then turns whining to Marcia: - - _Didius._ Is Rome bought and sold? - Alas, you see, she is. A purchaser - Is not ashamed to trade in noblest blood, - If once a state of servitude is owned. - We traffic in all creatures, and, if fate - Allow the traffic, we are justified. - - _Marcia._ You are forbidden; something holds you back. - Rome to be bought! [_Showing the city._] Look there! - - _Didius._ But if I stood, - An army at my back to overwhelm, - You would not interpose. - - _Marcia._ It is the strong, - And they must be accoutred by the gods-- - What helmets and what spears!--who may prevail - In circumstance so awful. Dare you call - The Mighty Helpers who have fought for Rome - To aid you in this enterprise? I know - The day will come she will bear many evils, - And many kingdoms build their seat on her: - But touch her with a manacle for gold! - O Didius, do not dream that what is done - Of foolish men can ever come to pass; - It is the Sibyls’ books that are fulfilled, - The prophecies--no doings of a crowd. - They are laid by as dust. “If fate allow,” - You say, “the traffic”! You may change the current - And passage of whole kingdoms by not knowing - Just what is infamy; a common deed - It may be, nothing monstrous to the eye, - And yet your children may entreat the hills - To hide them from its terror. - _Act I_ - -_Julia Domna_, the last of the three plays, is terrible in the fierce -truth of its imagination, and contains in Act II the most powerful bit -of drama that these poets have written. Once again they have taken the -bare bones of history and made of them human creatures of almost -appalling vitality and strength. The emperors Caracalla and Geta pursue -a vague and erratic course through the scene of the historian, and a dry -phrase about “fraternal discord” does not much illumine it or make it -comprehensible. But the poet brings to it the light of vision, and sees -in Julia Domna, their mother--a woman of rare beauty, grace, and -intelligence; able, subtle, of irresistible attraction and powerful -personality--the cause of the insane jealousy between the brothers which -not only explains their career, but makes the catastrophe inevitable. -And what gives this play its almost awful force is that Julia Domna, -though loving deeply both her sons, herself precipitates the tragedy and -brings about Geta’s murder. In this element of the drama there is a -tragic irony which gets itself wrought into the mere dramaturgic irony -of Act II with a total effect of great intensity. When the act begins -Julia is rejoicing that she has succeeded in keeping both her sons in -Rome. There had been a plan to divide the Empire and to give a separate -rule in East and West to each of the two brothers; but she--her -affection mastering prudence--had opposed it. She could not tolerate the -pain of parting from Geta; and the plan was defeated. The opening -conversation skilfully reveals the dangerous situation that she has thus -created. Her two sons, ravenous for her favour and openly loathing each -other, refuse to meet. It is only in deference to her that they consent -to inhabit the same building, where they are lodged in separate suites. -So long as she does not swerve a hair’s breadth from impartiality, and -so long as her wit can devise means to soothe and flatter each in turn, -she can hold them from violence. But secretly she is not quite -impartial. For Geta, her younger son, with his sunnier and gentler -nature, she has a deeper tenderness. And that betrays itself when, -taking Caracalla in what seems a propitious mood, she proposes to him a -reconciliation with his brother. His wrath is the more deadly in that he -had felt himself, a moment earlier, alone and secure in his mother’s -affection. He dissembles, and promises to make friends; but when Julia -Domna goes out to bring Geta, he quickly plots to kill him. He hides -soldiers behind his mother’s throne, instructs them to act upon a given -signal, and when Geta enters receives him with a speech of welcome. The -tragic irony of the scene is complete; Geta’s death, when it comes, is -of the last horror, and his mother’s agony a thing only to be realized -by a woman and expressed by a great poet. - -The act is so complete a unity that to detach a part of it must -necessarily do the poet an injustice. One risks taking the central -passage, however, in the hope that even out of its context something may -remain of the imaginative truth which sees Caracalla, lulled for the -moment by his mother’s welcome, and exultantly promising her a boon, for -that reason turned to fury the more vengeful when the boon that she -names is begged for Geta. One may be prepossessed; one may, with the -cumulative weight of the whole tragedy in one’s mind, see more in a -phrase than the poets intended to put there. Nevertheless, it does seem -to me that Caracalla’s answer to his mother, “Rise from your knees,” and -her frightened rejoinder, “I am not kneeling,” are supreme touches, -awful in their brief, pregnant, startling rightness. - -Caracalla, happy to find his mother alone, has been protesting his love -for her: - - _Caracalla._ As wine - I have flushed your face. Are you so weary now - And so dejected? But your very raiment - Shines in my presence and casts off a dust - Of little stars. - ... What is the boon? - - _Julia Domna._ What boon? - ... I had forgot. - - _Caracalla._ But I will grant it, - I must in this great prodigy of joy - To find you thus, to give you health again - Simply by breathing near you. Majesty, - No son, but Hercules I think in me - Has pulled at Juno’s breasts again. I smack - The flavour still of those first draughts. Beloved, - If you would ease my reeling brain, confer - Some labour on me, some attempt; for you - I would disjoint the hills. - - _Julia Domna._ Nay, of myself - And for myself I cannot heave a wish. - - _Caracalla._ But for your greater honour--a fresh palace, - Baths of more tempered coolness, any jewel - That the East buries.... - - _Julia Domna._ ... For my greater honour, - And pride of glory! But there is a thing.... - Come to me, for you cannot understand - Unless I speak it close. - -[_She stretches her arms to Caracalla, and -whispers to him._ - - _Caracalla._ Rise from your knees. - - _Julia Domna._ I am not kneeling. - -[_Caracalla is silent. She turns away, -terrified._ - - _Caracalla_ [_with a slow smile_]. But there is a power - I may myself invoke. - - _Julia Domna_ [_turning to him_]. O Caracalla, - Your daemon, the low voice of your own soul. - - _Caracalla._ You cannot name the power.... - -[_After a pause, with a deep inclination._ - - When least you hope, - Your prayer is heard. Lo, I extinguish strife - With Geta, in your presence meet him here, - Within your room; and we will give this palace - One hearth, one board, one audience-chamber, one - Glad-smiling Lar--for we will be as one, - And rule as one. You shall embrace him even - Before my eyes. Go, fetch him out of exile; - Bring him to me. - - _Julia Domna._ If from your soul you speak.... - - _Caracalla._ By Vesta’s Sacred Relics. - - _Julia Domna._ You will meet him? - - _Caracalla._ Within the hour. - - _Julia Domna._ And will become as one? - - _Caracalla._ Ay, as one son. - -[_Julia Domna, still keeping her eyes on -him, goes out._ - - The Syrian bitch, what guile! - -[_Calling to the soldiers in the anteroom -to order the murder of Geta._ - - Tarantus, heigh! - -Other Roman work of this period is _Stephania_ (1892), a trialogue -dealing not very convincingly with the vengeance taken by the wife of -the Roman consul Crescentius on Otto III. There is much interest and not -a little beauty in this play, but no dramatic conviction. One comes, -therefore, finally, to _Attila, my Attila!_ (1896), which refuses to be -passed over in complete silence, though it does not lend itself to -quotation. The intellectual motive here is much more conscious than in -the other plays of the group. Indeed, the play is in spirit a survival -from the earlier period, and belongs to this one only in external things -of matter, form, and date. - -Honoria, the heroine, is described by the poets as “the new woman of the -fifth century,” and the mere record of that fact is enough to indicate -the nature of the problem which will be dealt with. But Michael Field -did herself a greater injustice than usual in trying to define the -meaning of this drama in terms which suggest a local and temporary -phase. For just as neither Honoria nor the ‘new woman’ of the nineteenth -century was really new and transitory, but rather a reassertion of very -old and permanent things, so this play belies its preface; and instead -of treating a mere ‘movement’ in a given epoch, it is found to deal with -perennial human stuff. - -Honoria, the little princess of A.D. 450, to whom even Gibbon was -sympathetic, is no mere smasher of windows--though she does that too in -her own way, by an illicit union with a young chamberlain of the palace -whom she loves against prudence and convention. She is, however, in her -complete significance, something more than a rebel against convention. -The poet wrought better than she knew, and gave in her Honoria a woman’s -presentation of the woman’s right to love and motherhood. She had -formulated the idea before, tentatively and somewhat in disguise, in -_The Cup of Water_; and her letters at that time amusingly reveal both -trepidation lest her real meaning should be discovered, and anger at the -blunderers who did not detect it. She need have had no fear: no one -guessed. The time was not ripe; and now, ten years after, with the -production of _Attila_, it still was not ripe. It may even be that we -have had to wait for the teaching of Freud to make plain all that is -implied in this play. Of him the poets knew nothing; and could they have -known, would have disliked intensely, as most healthy minds do, his -obsession with the idea of sex. Yet they have done the poet’s work so -well--which is to say, they have observed so carefully, thought so -fearlessly, and so vividly imagined--that they have presented (without -in the least intending to do so) an almost pathological study of -suppressed instinct: one which illumines and is in its turn illuminated -by the residuum of truth which does underlie the fantastic theories of -the psycho-analyst. - -Yet once again it is necessary to qualify an impression of too stark a -problem. One repeats, therefore, that the problem, though distinct and -weighty, is implicit; it grew up in the artist’s despite. Honoria is not -a peg on which to hang a theory or a puppet with which to illustrate -one. She is a creature of great vitality who wins our affection and our -pity by her eager challenge of life and her disastrous defeat. We watch -her developing from an immature and impulsive girl who follows -innocently her newly awakened maternal instinct into a woman whose rich -emotional power and mental strength have been thwarted by repression and -perverted to an insane infatuation for the Hun king, Attila. But it -follows from those elements that the chief value of the play is its -psychology and not its dramatic power. The work will charm for half a -dozen reasons--its sympathy with the youthful rebel, its gem-like -utterances on love, its mental courage, its penetration, its dramatic -truth; but it never rises to the force of the great scenes of the -trilogy. - - - - -V. THE TRAGEDIES--III - - -The last group of tragedies is that which was published from the year -1905 onward to the poets’ death--and afterward; but it was not a product -of their latest creative activity. That activity was lyrical: or, if it -ventured at all into the region of tragedy (as in an unpublished piece -called _Iphigenia in Arsarcia_) it was with tragic genius shorn and -subdued by Christian hope, Christian meekness, and Christian triumph -over death--which is to say, that it was tragedy no longer. - -One may not assert in round terms that, of the eleven plays in this last -group, not one was written after Michael Field entered the Roman -Catholic Church in 1907. But the evidence suggests that they were all -conceived before that date; and although certain revision may have been -done afterward to some of them, the more important plays were completed -before the poets’ conversion. - -After that event their minds were possessed by the exaltation of the -mystic, and their days were largely occupied in devotional exercises. -Obviously they were not in the mood for the objective imagining of the -dramatist; and an artistic cause is thus added to the philosophic one -for the suspension of dramatic impulse. - -_In the Name of Time_, as I have elsewhere stated, must be put back as -far as 1890; _A Question of Memory_ was written and played in 1893. -_Deirdre_ in its first form was in existence years before they died, and -with _Borgia_ would rank in style with their earlier chronicle-plays. -These two belong to the last dramatic phase only in their tragic motive. -_Mariamne_ was finished in 1905, _The Accuser_ by January 1907, and one -at least of the Tristan plays by 1903. - -I have called these plays an Eastern group, because the most prominent -of them are Eastern in theme--and for another reason. But several come -much nearer home for their subject. Two of them, _Tristan de Leonois_ -and _The Tragedy of Pardon_, deal with different aspects of the Tristan -legend; and one treats (_en fantaisie_) of that great lover, Diane de -Poytiers. Nevertheless, whatever the theme, all possess the -characteristic which makes a second reason for describing them as -Eastern--namely, an almost Oriental violence of passion. Thus Cesare -Borgia is hurled to the abyss down the immense ascent of his ambition. -Deirdre’s love--too noble for caution, too great to calculate, and too -proud to dissemble--compels catastrophe. Herod’s passion passes into a -destroying madness. Ras Byzance consumes his universe in the hell of his -own jealousy; and the messiah Sabbatai, distilling a cold spiritual -pride, cries from its lonely central ice, “I am a god,” only to shrivel -incontinently at the first touch of the world’s derision. It is as -though Michael Field were consciously ruled in this last phase of her -Tragic Muse by the lines from the _Antigone_ which she has set upon the -first page of her _Deirdre_, “Nothing that is vast enters into the life -of man without a curse.” For it is with the vast, the excessive, the -overwhelming that she deals here; and since she is a tragic poet, she -sees the vast forces accompanied by their curse, and life persistently -followed by its attendant shadow. - -The Herodian trilogy is the clearest illustration of this, because the -material has been reduced to its simplest elements. It is, too, a good -example of the poet’s dramatic art in its final manner, since therein is -developed almost to an extreme her compacted, elliptical method of -presentation. She had from the first a gift of seizing character into -expression which, though intensely poetical, was often abrupt, -fragmentary, and disjointed; the swift words leaping from the cloud of -passion like lightning in a night of storm, and laying bare in one -instant the whole earth and sky. In these plays, and especially in -_Queen Mariamne_, this characteristic economy is practised to an extent -which sometimes almost defeats itself. - -Only two plays of the trilogy were completed, _Queen Mariamne_ and _The -Accuser_. But neither suffers from the absence of the third; for while -the first is the tragedy of Mariamne and the second the tragedy of -Herod, the two together form a complete dramatic presentment of the -historical figure of Herod the Great. It is a subject made for drama; -and although for a century before Michael Field no great rendering of it -had been made, the _flair_ of the early seventeenth-century dramatists -had unerringly tracked it down and fastened upon it. Fenton’s _Mariamne_ -(a hundred years later) is a rather blustering affair, mainly occupied -with intrigue and family feuds, and presenting Mariamne as an inferior -kind of gramophone with a very limited number of records. - -But a pleasing and significant fact about the origins of Michael Field’s -_Queen Mariamne_ is that this was the subject of the first English drama -ever published by a woman. In 1613 a play appeared called _The Tragedie -of Mariam, the faire Queene of Jewry, written by that learned, vertuous -and truly noble Ladie, E. C._ And although there has been some question -as to which of two possible individuals this “truly noble” E. C. -represented, both of them were women; and it seems to have been -established now that the author was certainly Lady Elizabeth Carew. -Whether our poets knew of this play and its authorship does not appear: -they seem to have gone straight to Josephus for their material, and to -have been completely loyal to him. Indeed, so close do they keep to the -historical record of their persons, that the transformation they effect -is the more magical. They take the rugged facts, and breathe life into -them. Thus their Mariamne grows out of history like a tree out of a bare -hillside, made from the rock and rooted in it, and yet a new and living -thing. She is very clearly and strongly drawn, a nature that clings with -racial tenacity fast to the ties of family, and which therefore cannot -forget the dead grandfather and brother who lie between herself and -Herod. She does not wish to avenge them: she possesses an integrity -which holds her loyal to the man her husband “who had slain her kin”; -but she cannot love him, and she finds it impossible to be polite to his -relatives. That intriguing Idumean set! Mariamne the Maccabee, impolitic -and proud, allows herself to sneer at their Edomite origin and their -creeping ways. But she will not countenance, either, the plots of her -own mother; and stands alone, a noble if scornful figure, between their -snarling camps. - -The question as to whether Herod’s passion for Mariamne does at last win -her love is one which attracts the modern romantic, though it was, of -course, irrelevant to Josephus. To him the damning fact about her was -that she permitted herself to be haughty to her husband; and Michael -Field respects her original so far as to leave the question unsolved. -Yet it is possible to see in a hint or two the gradual filming over, so -to speak, of the wounds that Mariamne had suffered at Herod’s hands; and -an appeal to his love, as to a refuge, from the spiteful, clamorous -hatreds of both their families. The tentative response makes her tragedy -the more poignant. But even had she loved Herod, her pride could not -have borne the insult of that fatal summons to his pleasure. The -Asmonean princess denied the Edomite, and, lighting up his wrath, -thereby fell into the hands of those malignant enemies their relatives. -These, when Herod would have annulled the death-sentence passed on her, -fanned his jealousy and outraged pride, and compassed her end. - -Mariamne’s death, even in the plain statement of the historian, is one -of the sublime tragedies of the world. Our poet does not move a hair’s -breadth from the facts, nor colour them. She was probably tempted to do -so, for there is a sense in which the facts were undramatic enough to -defeat her. Mariamne makes no defence when she is accused, no protest -when she is condemned; and the poignancy of her tragedy lies largely in -her silence and her isolation. This pitiful loneliness is difficult to -handle as drama; and the poet has been so true to the record that, after -the short crucial scene at the beginning of Act V which provokes the -catastrophe, Mariamne has no more to say than a single line as she goes -to her execution. Yet the whole act is permeated by her personality and -visibly moved by the forces that the poet has set alight in her. Thus -even Salome and Herod’s mother, spying fearfully upon Herod after the -sentence has been decreed, are obsessed by the thought of her: - - _Cypros._ Do you hear him--hear my son; his ceaseless treading - As the creatures tread at night? - - _Salome._ I hear him, mother; - He is stepping out her doom. - - _Cypros._ You hear his treading, - Soft on the carpet, struck against the marble? - Would she were dead, who hated him to death! - - * * * * * - - _Salome._ Had he but looked on her, - Those mournful, sable eyes and lids in shadow - Under the pearl-laced crown, that brow in shadow, - And the obdurate mouth had been a charm - To honour as to fortitude. But, mother, - She strives to send no message; she is silent - As trophies or cold statues. - _Act V, Scene 2_ - -Thus Herod, the first fury of his anger spent, begins to be possessed by -the haunting apparition of Mariamne which will not leave him any more; -and to dream, while there is yet time, of reprieve: - - _Herod._ But there are fortresses-- - Masada by the Dead Sea coast; - There I could bury her as in a coffin, - Each sigh of wind a death-song over her. - Were not that best? A tower her monument, - Yet she not dead, not out of all account, - Still mortal.... - Unseen of living nature, but alive.... - With the cloud eyes of her, the silken cheek, - Even the voice of rough-edged undertone, - Enamouring offence. There none would love her, - None! But my treasury - Would have sealed riches, not a destitute, - Defaulting cave. Among the coins and jewels, - Locked-up regalia and spoil--a queen.... - The difference!... - There in the rusty gloom accessible. - The difference! I think she shall not die. - _Act V, Scene 2_ - -Salome, however, has different views on the matter; and though Herod is -at first strengthened in his project by her opposition to it, he -reverts to the mood of vengeance when a member of the Sanhedrin comes to -plead for Mariamne’s life: - - _Herod._ My wrath is on you. - Old man, I am the judge, I am the king-- - There will not be a queen: I am her husband. - ... Go back, - Far off!--Bid those that sit and croak with you - Remember how august the Sanhedrin - Would rule the sons of Jacob. Say the king - Will turn not from his sentence for an hour. - - _Shemaiah._ God save you! - - _Salome._ Herod-- - - _Herod._ I shall stay here, Salome; not with you, - But not alone.... There is no track for sleep - To wander after me; I shall not sleep. - Send Nicholas to read his History. - - * * * * * - - If I listen - To Nicholas it will be as a sea-- - What men have done and suffered--as a sea - Pouring upon my ears; and it will tangle - Imagination that it shall not raise me - My bridal chamber at Samaria, - The adored head on my bosom, the young body - Loving me close, in very oneness, flesh - Even of my flesh--our bridal a flower’s heart - Of balsam, and our secrecy.... To-morrow - The people watch her to her death. - Salome, - Call Nicholas.... - - I shall stay here, for dawn - Comes on the other side: the sun - Comes on the other side. - Send Nicholas! - -Of the final scene, and of the rendering of Herod’s madness after -Mariamne’s execution, one can only say that history provided the poets -with a magnificent opportunity and that they rose to the height of it. -But it is necessary to quote at least one other passage to illustrate -the progress of the plot through the development of character. Accident -plays no part in the march of the story: intrigue notwithstanding, the -protagonists are betrayed from within, and events proceed inevitably, -like a conspiracy of life itself. Almost any scene would indicate this; -but one chooses that which follows, for the further reason that it -treats a well-known incident of the story, and one which reveals at once -Herod’s character and the nature of his love for Mariamne. I mean, of -course, the secret command which he gave on two separate occasions when -starting upon a dangerous expedition, that if he should die Mariamne -should be instantly killed. It is an action in which the elements of his -nature are stripped bare by his frantic passion. At least, the casual -eye will see nothing more in it than a savage and treacherous cruelty -verging on madness. How much more the poet can see need not be -indicated in giving this quotation from Act II, Scene 2. Herod has -returned in safety from Rome, and discovers that Joseph, who had charge -of Mariamne, has betrayed to her the order to slay her in the event of -Herod’s death. His jealousy immediately concludes that she has bribed -Joseph by her favour: - - _Herod._ Could he have said it of himself alone? - Could he have dared so break his oath? My silence-- - Was it unsealed by him? - - * * * * * - - Mariamne, so you pleaded for your life, - And you prevailed. Will you not plead with me? - Will you not recollect and feign again - To me, your husband, with the words you feigned, - The love you feigned to love ... or was the man - Beloved, who was your lover? - -[_Mariamne stands quite still._ - - Is this pride? - You are a Maccabee, an Israelite, - King Alexander’s daughter--I of Edom, - Descended from a slave of Ascalon, - Not to be answered by your royal lips. - -[_Mariamne sighs a little: then, raising -her eyes, speaks quietly._ - - _Mariamne._ How was it drawn from him? - As the night comes up into the evening-tide. - I was sad, and he was sorrowful to death - That he had sworn a cruelty and wrong - So unavailing to repent, if done. - Spare him, lord, in belief of my clear words. - -[_Herod gazes at her with awe, then muffles -his face in his robe, and speaks slowly._ - - _Herod._ Were you so sad at dying, when to die - Was but to rise up at my bidding, _Come!_ - Was but to quicken to my cry, _Receive me - Back in your arms?_ Oh, you are slow of heart! - When I was dying of the pest in Rome, - And knew not I should look upon you more, - Death was not cold, death glowed with Mariamne, - I had prepared her welcome on that shore! - -[_She flashes one rapid glance at him._ - - _Mariamne._ I will wait you on that shore, my lord the king. - - _Herod._ O my gazelle, my noble distance-keeper, - Wilt thou indeed await me? Then why tarry? - - _Mariamne._ But do not cast between us any more - One that is dead. Spare Joseph, merciful! - - _Herod._ The dead between us, Mariamne? Doe - Of the high places.... How? - - _Mariamne._ My grandfather ... - -[_He grips her wrist._ - - [_In a whisper._] My brother.... - - _Herod._ Peace! Were you drowning in my arms, - Your voice would sink before me so, your thoughts - Would drop bewildered so.... - - * * * * * - - _Mariamne._ Spare Joseph, merciful! - - _Herod._ Mariamne, I would reason with you. Speak! - I would question the great blood in you: a servant - False to his oath, a soldier in accord - With foes, a sentinel - Who to the nearing spy betrays the path-- - Can such men live? Are they for kings to use? - -[_She moves away, looking out over the -tombs of her ancestors. He follows._ - - Flesh of their dust, pronounce: can such men live? - -The poets call their _Borgia_ a period-play; and in its large scale, its -manner of handling history, and its elaborate construction it resembles -their earlier chronicle-plays rather than those of the last period. -Written in six acts and a great many scenes, it has not the simplicity -of design of _Mariamne_, _A Messiah_, or _Ras Byzance_. It moves through -a wider circuit, embraces many more incidents, and develops character at -greater leisure. It has, of course, a complex and exacting theme; one of -no less magnitude, indeed, than the Italian Renaissance, centred upon -the portentous Borgia trinity--Pope Alexander VI and his children Cesare -and Lucrezia. - -Nevertheless, though the full measure of the play cannot be gauged -except by reference to the complexity and sheer extent of its material, -the tragedy is reducible to much simpler terms. For it is as the rise -and fall of Cesare Borgia that one finally sees it: his stupendous -ambition dominates it; and the last and deepest impression of it is the -news of his end brought to Lucrezia by his page Juanito, who had found -his mangled body: - - _Juanito._ Dawn found me tangled by the night, and crying - In the alien, stone wilderness, a captive. - They brought his arms, - His sparkling arms; they questioned of the Prince - Who wore them. - - _Lucrezia._ But the moment.... - - _Juanito._ Of a sudden - The foe retreated, leaving me: I reached - The rough-hewn gorge.... - -[_Near to her and in a changed voice._ - - He lay there, naked; - He lay--his face under the sky: his wounds - A hero’s--twenty-three; across his loins - A bloodied stone, his life-blood round the rocks, - His hair a weft of red. How beautiful, - And wild and out of memory was his face! - The great wind swept him and the sun rose up.... - _Act VI, Scene 3_ - -That scene is a lasting memory, as, indeed, are others to which we shall -come; but the play’s the thing. The poets seem to indicate this in their -sub-title, suggesting that the value of the work is its value as a -whole; and bare courtesy would constrain one so to regard it. But that -is not an easy thing to do. Poetic drama always draws heavily on the -concentration and imaginative sympathy of its readers; and this one more -than most makes that demand if one is to appreciate it fully. As -tragedy--that is, as pure art--its appeal is direct and irresistible, -and could not be escaped by the most casual person who is likely to take -up a book of this kind. But the casual person will not, perhaps, -perceive its other significance--in values of history, of portraiture, -of the marshalling, selecting, and grouping of facts, of the evocation -of atmosphere, of what is, in short, the re-creation of a very brilliant -epoch. - -Take the historical aspect first. At the time the poets wrote their play -the principal authorities on the subject were Gregorovius and Yriarte. -The fresh data of Professor Woodward, published in 1913, and the dry -light in which he presents the life of Cesare Borgia, were not -accessible to them. Moreover, Yriarte, whom they seem to have chiefly -followed, is now accused (in what looks to the lay mind so much like -the invariable formula of successive ‘authorities’) of inaccuracy. It -would not be surprising, therefore, if the poets were caught out in -matters of fact or, a graver fault, in false deductions from the facts, -to accord with Yriarte’s romanticism. An obvious defence would be at -hand. But the truth is that there is no need to take up the cudgels for -them on this score. Apart from scenes of minor importance, they have -selected as the main events of their ‘plot’ incidents so well documented -as the murder of the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s remorse and penitence, -his complicity after the event, his support of Cesare’s schemes, his -death at the crisis of Cesare’s fortunes. Thus, too, we have Lucrezia’s -betrothal and marriage with Don Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglia, Cesare’s -hatred of her husband, his assassination, and Lucrezia’s remarriage with -Don Alfonso of Este. And for Cesare himself such established facts are -taken as will conveniently serve to reveal his character; for example, -his renunciation of the cardinalship, his military ambition, his -marriage of policy, and his master-stroke of treachery in the betrayal -of the Condottieri at Sinigaglia. Details of policy are avoided. -Cesare’s campaigns, important as they are, are wisely indicated by these -unmilitary authors only in their effect on his fortunes. While as to -more sinister things, rank scandal with which the air of the time was -foul, a quotation will best illustrate our poets’ method of dealing with -material of this kind. In Scene 4 of Act IV Cesare and the Pope, having -discussed matters of weight, are reminded by a paper lying on the ground -of things more trivial: - - _Cesare._ What is this parchment? - - _Alexander._ You have read it, - They told me. ’Tis the libel from Taranto - Sent to Savelli. - Christ, we are a kindred! - Carnage and rapine, perfidy.... - - _Cesare._ Why mince it? - Assassination, incest! - -[_Rising from the ground with clenched hands._ - - _Alexander._ But the Latin! - The dulcitude of apophthegm, the style! - What sap in all this rankness. Cesare, - I laughed an hour, applauded with wet eyes-- - _Literae humaniores_--so the salt - Of the strong farce compelled me. - Do you stoop - To anger? Consul Julius Cæsar laughed - When choice Catullus spat an epigram, - And dined him that same evening. - -One does not claim exact historical accuracy for the play, of course. -Certain incidents are introduced which will not be found in the -records, but which possess the essential truth of being in character; -and the scenes they inspire are the fruit not of dramatic imagination -alone, but of that power operating upon very great knowledge of the life -of the time and the place. It is, indeed, in its re-creation of that -life that the chief interest of the play resides. As scientific history -it may fail the test--though not by a very wide margin. But scientific -history never yet re-created life, and perhaps one has as little right -to expect from it this, the great function of art, as to expect of art a -precise accuracy. Yet one may claim for Michael Field that she has -achieved the re-creation with a high degree of truth to fact; and -further, that the poetic truth of her creation comes surprisingly near, -in its implicit judgments, the final verdict of the historian. There is, -of course, no overt judgment in her work: the human spectacle holds us -too fascinated, pitiful, and terrified to leave room for censure. We are -not concerned to weigh the guilt of Lucrezia, allured and appalled as we -are by her fatal suppleness and passivity. We are in no mood to reckon -the total of Cesare’s crimes, terrified as we are at the stupendous -force to which they but serve as a convenient means. And it is not our -poet’s doing, but of the mere data of history, that Rodrigo Borgia, his -Holiness Pope Alexander VI, pronounces inexorable judgment on himself. -This he does when, stricken by the murder of his son Giovanni, Duke of -Gandia, he is filled with remorse and penitence. A vision of his son in -Paradise induces the softer mood: - - _Alexander._ Poto, - There was no scar on him, not the least wound; - That is the truth: and he stood armed again. - As bright as San Michele he looked down - Upon us from the wall, his gonfalon - Swathing around him as he stood. His face - Was to me as an angel’s. - [_He weeps quietly._] I repent, - I will change all to meet that boy again - In Paradise, no wound on him, no scar. - And yet the sight of him, - O Poto, drove down to the rasping quick - Of conscience through my heart. All shall be changed, - The Vatican be cleared of sin. These bastards.... - Let me not see them more! Joffré, Lucrezia-- - Joffré must mind his government afar, - I banish him. Lucrece--oh, I shall gather - The seas between us; she shall dwell in Spain, - Dwell in Valencia, deep, where I was born, - White little demon-girl! - -[_He rises, trembling, and Poto robes him._ - - No priest henceforward - Shall hold two benefices; simony - No more shall breed among us. God would punish - Some sin in us; it could not be Giovanni - Deserved a death so cruel. Gently, Poto, - You are too violent. - - _Poto._ Patience, Holiness, - You slit the silk. - _Act I, Scene 5_ - -A cardinal point is the poet’s conception of her three Borgia persons as -one, united by every possible tie--of blood, of sympathy, of ambition, -of deep affinity. They are devoted to each other, and vowed as one mind -to the aggrandizement of Cesare. Indeed, the core of the tragedy is, -astonishingly, this simple human feeling. But the affection between them -might never appear, under their sinister star, as a natural family bond. -It was suspect from its origin. Thus the thread which binds the play -together, and might have been so clear and firm a line, wavers and slips -in those slippery high places of Renaissance Italy; and, however -innocent in fact, takes from so much corruption the colour of guilt. -Round the three persons of her trinity Michael Field has made to revolve -the vivid life of the epoch they made and were made by--warm, coloured, -gay, radically unmoral and strictly religious, sparkling with wit and -gravely learned, rejoicing equally in the sensible world and the things -of the intellect, adoring art and pursuing science; at once fierce and -cunning, militant and politic, barbarous and polished; frivolous, -worldly, and voluptuous, and yet saintly, serious, and capable of -profound concentration and dogged industry. - -The magnificence of the Renaissance is here--in feasts, dances, military -triumphs, and ecclesiastical pomp: in Cesare’s resplendent trappings -that provoke the covert sneer at the French Court, and in Lucrezia’s -countless pearls. The art of the Renaissance enters, with Pintoriccio -and Michelangelo and others, to foster Cesare’s love of exquisite -handicraft. Its poetry comes in the person of Cavaliere; its science in -the engineering works of Leonardo; its statecraft in that astute and -watchful envoy from Florence, already brooding upon his _Il Principe_. -And its very atmosphere clings about the scene, bright with a kind of -glare, almost dazzling the spiritual sight; hot, heavy, and enervating -to the moral sense. The poets were apparently well justified in calling -their _Borgia_ a period play. - -The subject of Act I would make a complete tragedy in itself, and has in -fact been so treated by other poets. Its central event is the murder of -the Duke of Gandia, the Pope’s sorrow and penitence, his discovery that -Cesare is the murderer, and the subdual of his will to Cesare’s immense -designs. In Scene 1, on the occasion of Lucrezia’s betrothal, the Duke -is reported missing. Poto, the Chamberlain, suggests that he shall be -searched for; and the Pope turns to the company, which includes his -young mistress, Giulia, with a jesting protest: - - _Alexander._ O Poto, Poto, search - His haunts! The malice of these chamberlains! - Madonna Giulia, Monsignore Poto - Would search the place where Don Giovanni hides. - Have mercy on my son! - - _Giulia._ Monsignore finds - Your Holiness so jovial he is conquered - By the same vein. - - _Lucrezia._ Excuse him! - - _Alexander._ Even our ladies, Poto, - Plead for the Duke’s seclusion. Without doubt - He waits for sundown to forsake the place - Where he was sociable. - -But in Scene 2 levity is turned to fear. Cesare, who was last in his -brother’s company two nights before at a banquet given by their mother, -Vanozza de’ Catanei, is commanded to the Pope’s presence, and succeeds -in turning his father’s suspicion in the direction of the Orsini. In -Scene 3 the Pope, in desperate anxiety, is watching from a window of the -Vatican the darkening Tiber, where fishermen are dragging for Giovanni’s -body. He turns suddenly to the cardinals about him: - - - _Alexander._ Where is he--my young son, - My beautiful Giovanni? You stand round, - Wise with the Church’s wisdom, but where is he? - He may be living, tortured, gagged.... He is not! - No, there is come a change in me: I know - He is not breathing with me any more, - And yet I cannot bid you pray for him; - I do not count him dead. He is but lost, - And lost so deep I do not think a creature, - Not even his Creator knows the place - That he has wandered to.... - - _Cardinal Borgia._ Have faith, his body will be found. - - _Alexander._ His body! - When last I saw the boy - He shook his golden poll with merriment - That I received his Spanish mistress here, - A most devout and humble Catholic, - With eyes dark wells for Cupid’s thirst. He laughed, - Till all the room was sunbeams from his mirth. - If God - Turn such a thing as that to carrion--then - I shall curse God. [_Turning to Lucrezia._ - Well, wanton, you look white! - What comfort have you? Would you be a nun - That you crept to San Sisto from your palace - Soon as you heard? Is not this missing boy - Your brother?... - You have been with the boy: you know - Where he loved, where he was hated. All our loves - And hates are in your hands. You have grown more blind - Than any woman ever made herself - That she might see in the dark. - Give up your witness. - -[_Lucrezia remains before him silent, -with open mouth._ - - A little devil, circumspect, - When I would have rank truth. - -As he wrathfully dismisses the circle Madonna de’ Catanei enters: - - _Alexander._ God’s breath, - His mother! - -[_She falls at his feet: he raises her._ - - O Vanozza, - Poor heart! - - _Vanozza._ My Lord, your Holiness, I came-- - Forgive me. - - _Alexander._ Nay! - -[_He falls sobbing on her shoulder._ - - We mourn together. Where we had a son - For eyes’ delight, there is nothing. - [_Soothing and patting Vanozza._] Hush, you must not! - Little beloved, you suckled him. You must not! - Go home; pray to Madonna.--She will hear. - And let me see your face. - [_Drawing her veil._] It is the same; - As honest and as good. - - _Vanozza._ I have good children. - I am so richly blessed ... and this dear boy, - A Prince from Spain, came back again and kissed me. - - _Alexander._ Good son and enviable righteousness - To kiss this face in filial piety. - There, there, you must forget him! - -At this moment a waterman is brought in. He relates how he saw a body -brought down to the Tiber, and where it was flung into it. A messenger -is sent to direct the dragging of the fishermen to the spot he -indicates; and the Pope returns to the window to watch the lights of -their boats. The psychology of this passage will be observed. When the -Chamberlain enters and gives the Pope the fatal news he appears not to -hear, but continues something he had been saying. Then he is silent -while rapid question and answer pass between the cardinals; but at the -mention of Giovanni’s wounds he falls to the ground with a cry: - - _Alexander_ [_watching_]. A constellation! - Malign, bright stars! Giovanni! But the lights - Are moving onward to Sant’ Angelo. - They move along in state. It is my son! - They dazzle me.... They pass me.... - -[_Enter Monsignore Burchard._ - - _Burchard._ Holy Father, - The illustrious Duke of Gandia has been found - In velvet coat and cloak, the dagger sheathed, - His ducats in his purse. - - _Alexander._ It sails, it sails, it sails - On to Sant’ Angelo. The torches ... - - _Cardinal Segovia._ Nothing is stol’n? - - _Burchard._ No, not a single gem. - - _Cardinal Segovia._ Vendetta? Are there wounds? - - _Burchard._ I counted seven. - One mortal in the throat. His hands were tied. - - _Alexander_ [_with a howl like a lion’s_]. God, by God’s blood, my curse! - -[_He falls in a swoon._ - -One must not stop to analyse the play, or even this first act, -completely. But one ought at least to indicate its extraordinary -combination of subtlety with passion. In the scenes we have glanced at, -the Pope passes from pole to pole of his nature. The poets have the -difficult task of indicating this transit--from vast sorrow and horror, -through remorse and penitence, suspicion, wrath, and dread at the -accusation laid against Cesare, to forgiveness, reconciliation, -compliance, and even a compact with Giovanni’s murderer. In a cold -historical statement one either finds these facts incredible, or is -tempted to account for them, in Renaissance fashion, by believing the -Borgia nature to have been something monstrous and unhuman. From the -artistic standpoint such a transition would appear well-nigh impossible -to represent convincingly. Yet it is done, and we never question that -the thing really happened so. The means used to this end are often very -quiet. By the lightest touches--a broken phrase, an exclamation, or even -a silence--the poet will register the swiftly changing current of -emotion. One cannot easily illustrate this by quotation; but an example -occurs in a passage already quoted--that in which the Pope, having seen -a vision of Giovanni, is filled with remorse. It will be remembered that -he rails against his children, and particularly Lucrezia. Yet two -minutes afterward, when he inquires for her and is informed that she is -praying in the convent, he murmurs “Sweet soul!”; and one sees his rage -and remorse crumble, and the whole fabric of his penitence come toppling -down. In touches like this the incredible is made to look only too easy -to the ductile Borgia temperament. But they are often the merest hints, -as in this tiny masterpiece, Scene 4. The papal Court is by this time -seething with rumour. Suspicion has fallen upon one after another of the -enemies of Giovanni; but within the innermost circle there is a whisper -that Cesare was the murderer. It is this that has driven Lucrezia to her -convent; but at midnight she creeps out and comes to Cesare: - - _Lucrezia._ Madonna Adriana brought me here; - She stays without: I go back to the convent. - Cesare--tell me all that I should pray. - - _Cesare_ [_turning his head back towards her from - the couch_]. Amanda, that your scruples be removed. - That I be Cesar. - - _Lucrezia._ Take a little rest. - - _Cesare._ Shall you, from prayer? - To-night you look a sibyl. - Who did this deed? - - _Lucrezia._ Let Juan play the lute; - You must have music through these restless nights. - How lost you look! - - _Cesare._ You startled me. How lost! - -[_He closes his eyes._ - - _Lucrezia._ He is dreaming; he has quite forgotten me. - Come, Adriana, soft! As an astronomer - He must not be disturbed: he is quite lost. - -One leaves _Borgia_ reluctantly, having done so much less than justice -to it: nevertheless, it is refreshing to turn to _Deirdre_ after an -atmosphere so charged and tropical. Not that _Deirdre_ is set on any -lower plane of emotion, for it also deals with vast passions. But in -this play we pass visibly to a more northerly latitude, to an austerer -race and a more primitive age; and it is in an air swept clean by storm -that the business of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind goes -forward. - -Michael Field has made a noble rendering of this old Irish story which, -its subject dating from the first century, suggests a cause no less -remote than that for the ancient feud between Ulster and the rest of -Ireland. The story is well known: the birth of Deirdre and the -prophecies of doom to Ulster through her; the defiance of the doom by -Conchobar the king, and the fostering of Deirdre to be his wife; the -carrying off of Deirdre on the eve of her wedding by Naisi and their -flight to Alba; the invitation to Naisi and his brothers to return under -Conchobar’s promise of forgiveness; and the treacherous assassination of -them upon their arrival. There are many variants of the legend; and our -poet has chosen the oldest of them all, that preserved in the _Book of -Leinster_, for the chief events of her drama. She was compelled to alter -the story at one point, for it would hardly have been convenient to -represent the Sons of Usnach slain, all three at one stroke, by the -magic sword. But in varying the manner of their death she was enabled to -adopt another form of the legend, in which Naisi and his two brothers -were overcome by a Druid’s enchantment, and, believing themselves to be -drowning, dropped their weapons and were immediately overpowered by -Conchobar’s men. There was, however, a difficulty here too; for whereas -three heads lopped off at one blow was a little too dynamic even for the -purposes of drama, an unseen spell of wizardry was altogether too -static; and the poet therefore contrived a scene in which Naisi’s -comrades are actually drowned, and he, left alone to protect Deirdre, is -slain by Eogan. - -Another modification, with less warrant from the documents, perhaps, but -of even greater interest, is that which introduces into this primitive -world the first gleam of Christianity. The fact might suggest that the -Deirdre play was written after the poets’ conversion, did one not know -that they were at work on the theme some time before. But it is -extremely probable that the passage in which the wise woman Lebarcham -tries to turn Conchobar from brooding on vengeance by the tale of a new -god who refused to avenge himself on his enemies was inserted after the -first draft of the play was made. It is written in prose, and, placed at -the beginning of Act III, hardly affects the subsequent action. From -that point of view it might be considered superfluous; but Michael, -though not Henry, was capable of so much over-zeal. She was, however, -also capable of justifying her act artistically. The interpolation is at -least not an anachronism. It is possible, there in Ireland, that even so -early had penetrated “the story of how a god met his death ... young, -radiant ... bearing summer in his hands.” But it might have been a -menace to the unity of the drama: it might have destroyed the satisfying -wholeness which, in whatever form one finds it, the pagan story -possesses. Michael Field avoided that calamity. She threw her glimmer of -Christian light across the scene in such a way that it reveals more -strongly by contrast the dark elements of which the story is composed. -By it one instinctively measures the barbarity of the age out of which -the story came, and realizes its antiquity. The poet does not allow it -to influence action, for that would weaken the tragedy; but she uses the -occasion to humanize and make credible that which, in the Conchobar of -the records, seems almost monstrous. In those ancient tales Conchobar -plans his vengeance on Naisi and his brothers with a coldness that is -diabolic and a precision almost mechanical. He provides for his own -safety, too, with comical caution, carefully sounding one after another -of his knights until he finds one who does not immediately threaten to -kill him for suggesting such a dastardly deed as the murder of the Sons -of Usnach. Yet, as our poet has re-created Conchobar, he is a human soul -driven this way and that in a running fight with passion; pitiable in -his hopeless love for Deirdre, comprehensible in his wrath against -Naisi, sinister and terrifying in his revenge. And underneath the overt -drama lies a profounder irony; for while he is plotting in his heart the -enormous treachery, Lebarcham tells of the young god who was betrayed by -his friends, and he says: - - Hush, woman, for my heart is broken. Would I had been there, I who - can deal division between hosts. I would have set the Bound One - free. If I could avenge him! - -The play is written in five acts and a prologue; but is not divided into -scenes. Its form is for the most part blank verse--the iambic pentameter -of Michael Field which is so often neither iambic nor a pentameter. Her -verse is, indeed, a very variable line, changing its unit as frequently -as will consist with a regular form; and as flexible, sinewy, and -nervous as will consist with dignity, grace, and splendid colour. Prose -passages occur in Acts III and V; and a form of lyrical rhapsody is used -to express the Druid prophecies and Deirdre’s lament. The use of lyrics -in her drama was not new to Michael Field, who from the beginning could -always relieve the strain of intense emotion by a graceful song. But in -this case she is following, with her accustomed fidelity, lines laid -down in older renderings of the legend. - -The most notable feature of this play is its ending. No author of the -more important modern versions of this theme has dared to take his -conclusion from the oldest one of all. Usually he has preferred the -variant which tells of Deirdre, broken-hearted at Naisi’s murder, -falling dead into his grave. This is, of course, in some respects a more -‘poetic’ passing: it lends itself to romantic treatment, and its tragedy -is more immediate and final. Moreover, from the dramaturgic point of -view the action is easier to handle and more certain of its effect. -Michael Field was not, however, attracted by mere facility. Truth drew -her with a stronger lure, and to her the more ancient story would make a -claim deeper than loyalty. For she would see Deirdre’s survival not only -as a more probable thing, but as something more profoundly tragic; and -the manner of her death, when it came, as more clearly of a piece with -the old saga and essentially of Deirdre’s wilful and resolute -character. - -Deirdre is no Helen, though her legend has features so similar. The mere -outline of her which the old story gives indicates a creature who will -compel destiny rather than suffer it; and our poet has but completed, -imaginatively, what the original suggests--a girl whose instinct of -chastity drives her away from marriage without love; whose ardour and -courage claim her proper mate; whose fidelity keeps her unalterably -true; and whose head is at least as sound as her heart is tender. For -although she is a rather tearful creature, she is also very astute; and -Naisi need not have died quite so young if he had only listened to her -warning and condescended to take her advice. Deirdre is, in short, of -her race and of her time as surely as Lucrezia Borgia is a daughter of -Pope Alexander VI and a child of the Italian Renaissance. Michael -Field’s range in the creation of women characters is very wide, and the -verisimilitude with which she presents natures so alien from herself as -the courtesan and the voluptuary might be astonishing if one thought of -her simply as a Victorian lady, and not as a great creative artist. -Nevertheless, in the re-creation of Deirdre one feels that she must have -taken an especial joy, as witness the opening passage of Act I, where -Lebarcham and Medv the nurse are discussing their fosterling. It is the -morning of her sixteenth birthday, and King Conchobar is coming to the -little secluded house where Deirdre has been brought up to claim her as -his bride: - - _Medv._ But look at her! - - _Lebarcham._ Ay, Medv, it is not for our eyes to look. - The beauty! - - _Medv._ She is dreaming. - - _Lebarcham._ She sees true; - Therefore she is no poet. Gentle Medv, - My sister with the mother-eyes that rest - But when they rest on her, she is not ours, - Nor fate’s, nor any man’s; for she will choose, - Close prisoner as she is, her destiny, - Choose for herself the havoc she will make, - The tears that she will draw from other eyes, - The tears that will burn through her, the delights - That she will ravish from the world. She knows - So definitely all she wants: such souls - Attain. She is not dreaming; look at her! - - _Medv._ She does not sigh as other maids kept close; - She is soft as a wood-pigeon, but no crooning-- - And when I speak of love--King Conchobar - To be her lord--she laughs. - - _Lebarcham._ A wanton laugh! - - _Medv._ No, no! Dear heart, she has no wantonness; - And yet I am afraid to hear her laughter, - It is so low and sure. My maid, my maid! - What shall I do that bitter day the King - Tears her away from me? - - _Lebarcham._ Be comforted. - She loves you, she will bless you all her years: - But if she hate--I would not be the creature - To cross her path, not if I were the chieftain - Of Ulla, or of Alba, or the world. - - _Medv._ She has no malice. Would you slander her? - - _Lebarcham._ I praise her! She can hate as only those - Of highest race, without remorse, for ever. - -Again, in the same first act, when Deirdre has prevailed on Lebarcham to -bring Naisi to the hut, and the two have spoken of their love, it is she -who at once perceives where that confession must lead. Naisi would -rather kiss and part than rob the mighty Conchobar of his bride. But for -Deirdre, having kissed, there shall be no parting: - - _Deirdre._ But we shall never part again, O Naisi, - Bear me away with you. I cannot speak, - Not much, not anything to listen to, - Yet I shall lie awake at night to ease - The pain it is to think of you by thinking - More constantly each moment. Bear me with you - To Alba, to the loveable, soft land. - -[_Naisi pauses stupefied: then turns away._ - - _Naisi._ But he has waited - For sixteen years; I am his chosen knight: - At dance, at feasting never has he turned - His eyes on woman, or if idly turned - An instant, he was back with Lebarcham - Asking of thee, thy years. - Where are you stepping? - Your feet are towards the waves. - - _Deirdre._ For I shall travel - Either across this narrow sea with you, - Or else alone with the currents and the creatures - That travel fleet and silent underneath. - - _Naisi._ O vehement, mad girl, it is for freedom - That you would draw this ruin on us all, - On the great King my Overlord, on Erin. - It is not well. - Women are ever captive - In their spirits and their bodies: so the gods - Have fashioned it and there is no escape. - - _Deirdre._ You will not give me love? - - _Naisi._ Your liberty - I shall not give you, if I give you love. - Love is the hardest bondage in the world. - I would not put such chains on any woman - To love me.... - - _Deirdre._ Let me be with you, the name - Of being with you call it what you will-- - Bondage or freedom, I should still be happy, - Yea, for a year, yea, for a brood of years. - -It is, however, in the last act that Michael Field again triumphantly -proves her mettle as poet and dramatist. She had stubborn material -here, harsh and crude stuff which kept the poets long at bay. For -Deirdre’s end as related by the old bard is a bit of primitive savagery -matched in terms of the plainest realism. Conchobar, after Naisi is -enticed back to Ulster and murdered, takes possession of Deirdre; and -she remains in his house for a year. But her constant reproaches and -lamentation weary him; and at last, in order to subdue her, he threatens -to lend her for a year to the man she hates most, Eogan, the slayer of -Naisi. She is thereupon driven off in Eogan’s chariot, apparently -subdued, seated in shame between him and Conchobar. At a gross taunt -from Conchobar, however, she springs up, and flings herself out upon the -ground. “There was a large rock near: she hurled her head at the stone -so that she broke her skull, and killed herself.” - -Our poet does not try to make this pretty or pleasing: and at one point -at least she uses the exact terminology of the translation from which -she worked. Its brutal elements are not disguised: Deirdre’s humiliation -and the animal rage of Conchobar and Eogan remain hideous even after the -poet, accepting all the material, has wrought it into a tragedy of -consummate beauty. Its beauty has, indeed, more terror than pity in -it--it is brimmed with life’s actual bitterness--but the depth and power -of this Deirdre are not equalled by any other. - -In quoting the closing passage of the play one does not afflict the -reader by a comment on it; but there is a technical point which should -be noticed. It is the device of the Messenger by which the poet avoids -the representation of Deirdre’s death. The manner of that death was not -only too awkward to present, but its horror as a spectacle was too great -for artistic control. In causing it to be related by the charioteer -Fergna, the poet has, in classic fashion, removed it from actual vision, -but has enabled the mind to contemplate what the eyes could not have -borne to look upon. - -The chariot has driven off with Deirdre, Eogan, and Conchobar; and -Lebarcham watches it till it passes out of sight beyond the mound that -marks Naisi’s grave. Then she turns away, lamenting; and suddenly -Fergna, the charioteer, re-enters, scared and breathless: - - _Lebarcham._ Speak, Fergna! Are they dead? - - _Fergna._ I scarce may say. - The woman’s shoulders panted on the rocks, - And over her a struggle fiercely raged - Of Conchobar with Eogan. - - _Lebarcham._ Fosterling, - My Deirdre! Had they cast her from the car, - That thus she lay on the sharp rocks of stone? - - _Fergna._ None touched her. She had gazed on yonder mound, - Setting her eyes on it, while car and horses - Moved on, until the little crests at last - Rose over it; then she awoke and swept - One fierce glance over Eogan, set before, - And slid one glance as fierce toward Conchobar, - Behind her and more close! It was one hatred, - The hatred of each glance. A shudder ran - All through my body: and through all the air - Ran laughter. - - _Lebarcham._ Hers?--her laughter? - - _Fergna._ No, the king’s. - And then his words, the words of jest that followed! - “Deirdre, the glance a ewe - Would cast between two rams you cast on us, - Eogan and me.” - She started, and the horses - Started beneath my hand. I tightened rein, - And the whole chariot shivered as she leapt - Upon the rocks before her. Then those two - Sprung to the place where she was dashed, their breath - Whistled like winds: their crossing swords, with gnash - Of hungry teeth, affrighted me. I fled, - Leaving behind the chariot stopped by trees, - Rock-rooted.... - He returns-- - The king! He leads the horses of his car - Slowly along. They come, but yet as night - Comes by long twilight. - - _Lebarcham._ Lonely Conchobar! - -[_Re-enter Conchobar solemnly leading -the chariot._ - - O king.... - - _Conchobar._ Your horses, Fergna! Take the reins; - Lead them.... - - _Fergna._ My lord, forgive me. I will lead them - Back to their stable. - - _Lebarcham._ Deirdre? Where is Eogan? - And Deirdre--where? - - _Conchobar_ [_with a hoarse laugh_]. Ho, they have passed the borders, - Passed from my realm. - Nay, Fergna, - Lead the great car, checking the horses’ heads - Beside yon barrow of a hero: there - Unyoke them. Dig a neighbour sepulchre. - And let the bases of each monument - Touch where they spring. - - _Fergna._ My lord ... and shall I seek - Among the rocks? - - _Conchobar._ You shall but lift its burthen - Forth of the chariot to the hollowed grave. - - _Lebarcham._ O Deirdre! She is hidden by that cloak. - O shattered loveliness of Erin, hidden - From the ages, evermore! Thy Lebarcham, - Who saw thee come from hiding to our light, - Will go with thee along - To thy last screening cover, to thy tomb. - -[_Exit, following the chariot led by Fergna._ - - _Conchobar._ The land!... I wended hither: car and horses - Are wending from me. Did I move like that, - So solitary, dark above the grass?--But - to no goal. In one of those near graves - She will be with him, one of them will open; - There can but be one tomb. The chariot lingers - Its way in happy sloth: so wheat is carried - Till night-fall to the barn.... - -[_He remains watching in the silence._ - - The car - Has turned the cromlech.... - So wheat is carried. - - * * * * * - -In concluding this very brief survey of Michael Field’s life and poetry, -one turns back with a sense of illumination to her sonnet called _The -Poet_, which has been already quoted. For therein Michael Field has -indicated the nature of her own genius and the conditions of its -activity. She was not thinking of herself, of course, but of the poetic -nature in the abstract, when she declared in the first two lines of the -sestet that the poet is - - a work of some strange passion - Life has conceived apart from Time’s harsh drill. - -Those verses apply in some degree to the whole race of poets, which is, -indeed, the test of their truth. Yet it is significant that in choosing -precisely that form of expression for the truth, Michael Field has -inadvertently stated the essential meaning of her own life, of her long -service to literature, and of the peculiar greatness and possible -limitation of her poetry. - -“A work of some strange passion.” Strange, indeed, and in many ways. -For, first, it is no common thing to find, in a world preoccupied with -traffic and ambition, two souls completely innocent of both. Not small -souls, nor stupid nor ignorant ones--as clever people might aver in -order to account for the phenomenon--but of full stature, intelligent, -level-headed, and with their sober measure of English common sense. They -knew themselves, too--were aware that they possessed genius, that they -had first-rate minds and were artists of great accomplishment. Moreover, -for the larger part of their life they were on terms with ‘the world’; -they welcomed experience as few Victorian women dared, gathered -knowledge eagerly wherever it was to be found, and had business ability -sufficient to direct prudently their own affairs. - -They would have denied that there was anything of the fanatic or the -visionary in the dedication of themselves to their art, believing -fanaticism to be incongruous with the undiluted English strain of which -they boasted. And, indeed, there is something typical of the race in -this deliberate setting of a course and dogged persistence in it. Yet -there is hardly an English precedent for their career; and it is to -France one must look--to the Goncourts or to Erckmann-Chatrian--to match -the long collaboration, or to find similar examples of their artistic -method. And not even there, so far as I know, will be found another such -case of disinterested service. - -But the lines we have noted have an application to the work as well as -to the life of Michael Field. They may be used almost literally, to -summarize in a convenient definition the nature of her poetry. For in -this body of work one sees passion as an almost over-powering element, -and it is of surprising strangeness. However fully one may recognize the -truth that there is no sex in genius, I suppose that we shall always be -startled at the appearance of an Emily Brontë or a Michael Field. They -seem such slight instruments for the primeval music that the -earth-mother plays upon them. And their vehemence mingles so oddly with -tenderer and more delicate strains that it will always be possible for a -reviewer to sneer at what is “to the Greeks foolishness”--he having no -perception of the fact that in gentleness added to strength a larger -humanity is expressed. Such an eye as Meredith’s could perceive that, -and, catching sight of some reviewing stupidity about it, would flash -lightnings of wrath in that direction, and send indignant sympathy to -the poets. - -There is strangeness, too, of another kind in the passion which was the -impulse of this poetry. Under the restraint that art has put upon it, it -is, as we have seen, an elemental thing. It is a creative force akin to -that of Emily Brontë or of Byron, and is tamer than their wild genius -only in appearance. Its more ordered manner grew from two causes: that -one of the collaborators blessedly possessed a sense of form, and that -both of them lived withdrawn from the brawl of life. They were placed, -perhaps, a little too far from “Time’s harsh drill.” Their lives were, -on the whole, easier and happier ones than are given to most people. -That is why the loss of their Chow dog caused them a grief which seems -exaggerated to minds not so sensitively tuned as theirs. Until the -agony of the last three years overtook them, their share of the common -lot of sorrow had been the barest minimum: adversity did not so much as -look their way: poverty laid no finger on them, and was but vaguely -apprehended, in the distance, as something pitiful for its ugliness. -Therefore, secure and leisured, they envisaged life, in the main, -through art, through philosophy, through literature, and hardly ever -through the raw stuff of life itself. And thence comes the peculiar -character which the passion of their poetry acquired, as of some fierce -creature caught and bound in golden chains. - -It may be that this seclusion from life will be felt in Michael Field’s -poetry as a limitation; that the final conviction imposed upon the mind -by the authority of experience is wanting; and that the work lacks a -certain dry wisdom of which difficult living is a necessary condition. -It may be so; but I do not think the stricture a valid charge against -their work, first because of our poets’ great gift of imagination, and -second because they chose so rightly their artistic medium. Comedy may -require the discipline of experience, the observing eye constantly fixed -upon the object, and a rich knowledge of the world; but surely tragedy -requires before everything else creative imagination, sympathy, and a -certain greatness of heart and mind. Those gifts Michael Field possessed -in very large degree; so large that one often stands in amazement before -the protagonists of her drama, demanding, in the name of all things -wonderful, how two Victorian women “ever came to think of that.” A -Renaissance pope, a Saxon peasant, or a priest of Dionysos--decadent -emperors, austere Roman patriots, or a Frankish king turned monk--those -are only a few of the surprising creatures of her imagination, conceived -not as historical figures merely, but as living souls. And by the range -of her women characters--from the dignity of a Julia Domna to the -wild-rose sweetness of a Rosamund; from the Scottish Mary, with her rich -capacity for loving, to the fierce chastity of an Irish Deirdre, or the -soul of goodness in a courtesan; from the subtlety of a Lucrezia Borgia -to the proud singleness of a Mariamne; from the virago-venom of an -Elinor to the sensitive simplicity of a country-girl, or the -wrong-headedness of a little princess whose instincts have been -perverted by frustration--Michael Field has greatly enriched the world’s -knowledge of womanhood. - -She did not set out to do that, of course. Her sanity is evident once -more in the moderation with which she held her feminist sympathies, -despite the clamour of the time and the provocation she received from -masculine mishandling of her work. Herein too she had removed herself -from “Time’s harsh drill,” having too great a reverence for her art to -use it for the purposes of propaganda. That fact leads us again to her -sonnet and the light it throws upon herself. For in studying her work -one sees that she fulfilled completely her own conception of the -poet--as an artist withdrawn from the common struggle to wrestle with a -fiercer power, and subdue it to a shape of recognizable beauty. - - - - -BIBLIOGRAPHY - -_Of the works of Michael Field, published to 1919_ - - - _The New Minnesinger._ (Arran Leigh.) Longmans, Green and Co. 1875. - - _Bellerophôn._ (Arran and Isla Leigh.) C. Kegan Paul. 1881. - - _Callirrhoë, and Fair Rosamund._ J. Baker and Son. First edition in - spring of 1884; second edition in autumn of 1884. - - _The Father’s Tragedy, William Rufus, and Loyalty or Love._ J. - Baker and Son. 1885. - - _Brutus Ultor._ J. Baker and Son. 1886. - - _Canute the Great and The Cup of Water._ J. Baker and Son. 1887. - - _Long Ago._ G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 1889. - - _The Tragic Mary._ G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 1890. - - _Stephania._ Elkin Mathews and John Lane. 1892. - - _Sight and Song._ Elkin Mathews and John Lane. 1892. - - _A Question of Memory._ Elkin Mathews and John Lane. 1893. - - _Underneath the Bough._ G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. First edition in - spring of 1893; second edition in autumn of 1893; third edition, - published by T. B. Mosher, Portland, Maine, 1898. - - _Attila, my Attila!_ Elkin Mathews. 1896. - - _Fair Rosamund._ Reissued from the Vale Press. Decorated by Charles - Ricketts. 1897. - - _The World at Auction._ The Vale Press. Decorated by Charles - Ricketts. 1898. - - _Anna Ruina._ David Nutt. 1899. - - _Noontide Branches._ The Daniel Press. 1899. - - _The Race of Leaves._ The Vale Press. Decorated by Charles - Ricketts. 1901. - - _Julia Domna._ The Vale Press. Decorated by Charles Ricketts. 1903 - - _Borgia._ (Anonymous.) A. H. Bullen. 1905. - - _Queen Mariamne._ (Anonymous.) Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd. 1908. - - _Wild Honey._ T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. 1908. - - _The Tragedy of Pardon, and Diane._ (Anonymous.) Sidgwick and - Jackson, Ltd. 1911. - - _The Accuser, Tristan de Leonois, and A Messiah._ (Anonymous.) - Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd. 1911. - - _Poems of Adoration._ Sands and Co. 1912. - - _Mystic Trees._ Eveleigh Nash. 1913. - - _Whym Chow._ Privately printed at the Eragny Press. 1914. - - _Dedicated._ G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 1914. - - _Deirdre, A Question of Memory, and Ras Byzance._ The Poetry - Bookshop. 1918. - - _In the Name of Time._ The Poetry Bookshop. 1919. - - NOTE.--The volumes containing _Borgia_, _Queen Mariamne_, _The - Tragedy of Pardon_, and _The Accuser_ are now controlled by the - Poetry Bookshop. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL FIELD *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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