Michael Field

Title: Michael Field

Author: Mary Sturgeon

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

Language: English

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

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/68213

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

THE HARRAP LIBRARY

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 BY MARY STURGEON

Katharine Bradley

and

Edith Cooper

The latter from a miniature by Mr Charles Ricketts in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

MICHAEL FIELD

BY MARY STURGEON AUTHOR OF “STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARY POETS” “WESTMINSTER ABBEY” ETC. 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

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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{8} 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{9} 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

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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{14} 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.{15}

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{16} 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,{17} 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{18} 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{19} 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.

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

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,{21} 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{22} 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{23} 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:

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{25} 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{26} 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):

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