IIGHAED FIELD 
 
 MARY* STURGEON 
 
 fMm 
 
 vi'm 
 

 ^ CA ■ 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4699.F45Z8 1922 
 
 Michael Field. 
 
 3 1924 013 344 282 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013344282 
 
MICHAEL FIELD ^ 
 
 J*i ♦ BY MARY STURGEON 
 
 THE HARRAP LIBRARY 
 
"... the titio friends . . 
 Who sought perfection and achie'ved far more' 
 Gordon Bottomley 
 
"^^^^ 
 
 Katharine Bradley 
 
 and 
 
 Edith Cooper 
 
MICHAEL 
 FIELD * * 
 
 BY MARY ^TURGEON 
 
 AUTHOR OF " STUDIES OF CONTEMPORARY 
 poets" "WESTMINSTER ABBEY" ETC. 
 
 « n 
 
 NEW YORK j». j». j||. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN 
 COMPANY 1922 
 

 y 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by 
 
 Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd. 
 
 \ 
 
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 irresist- 
 ible. 
 
 But although it has been a joy to try to re- 
 trieve 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 re- 
 members guiltily the many friends of the poets 
 whom she has harried, and kindly Hbrary staffs 
 (in particular at the Bodleian) who gave gener- 
 ous 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 Beren- 
 son, and Mr Charles Ricketts ; Dr Grenfell, Sir 
 Herbert Warren, and Mr and Mrs Algernon 
 
 7 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 Warren; Miss S. J. Tanner, Mr Havelock 
 Ellis and Miss Louie Ellis; the Misses Sturge; 
 Professor F. Brooks and the Rev. C. L. Brad- 
 ley; 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, de- 
 signed 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 Fitz- 
 william 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 Mari- 
 amne, Deirdre, and In the Name of Time); to 
 Mr T. Fisher Unwin, Messrs Sands and 
 Company, and Mr Eveleigh Nash ; and to 
 8 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Mt Heinemann for Mr Arthur Symons's poem 
 At Fontainebleau. 
 
 A Bibliography is appended of all the 
 Michael Field books which have been pub- 
 lished 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 
 
 1 1 
 
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 
 1 885, Browning was at a dinner-party 
 given by Stopford Brooke. He had re- 
 cently 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 Callirrhoe had been pub- 
 lished; 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 re- 
 presentative there in 1749, with his son and 
 grandson after him, were merchants of sub- 
 stance 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 
 
 13 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 in drama; and, more significant still, there 
 is one Charles Bradley who was "a proUfic 
 and meditative writer both of prose and 
 song." 
 
 Katharine Harris Bradley, the elder of the 
 two poets, was born at Birmingham on Octo- 
 ber 27, 1846. Her grandfather had migrated 
 there from Ashbourne in 18 10, 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 import- 
 ance 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 i860, James Robert 
 Cooper, and went with him to live at Kenil- 
 worth. Her daughter, Edith Emma Cooper, 
 was born there, at their house in the High 
 Street, on January 12, 1862. 
 
 H 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 Derby- 
 shire 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 cul- 
 tured people. When Katharine was two years 
 old her fatheir died from cancer — a disease 
 which afterward carried ofF her mother, and 
 
 15 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 grftup from 
 time to time attempted, such as the representa- 
 tion 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 evi- 
 dently 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, 
 i6 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 Kath- 
 arine, 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 College de France, Newnham, Uni- 
 versity College, Bristol, and numerous private 
 
 17 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 tutors) fruits more solid and mature than even 
 Katharine herself. 
 
 When the poets removed to Stoke Bishop, 
 Bristol, in 1878 it was with intellectual appe- 
 tites 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 Fran- 
 cesca," 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 
 18 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 in morning sunlight their strenuous happy ex- 
 istence, their eager welcome to the best that hfe 
 could offer, and their fortunate freedom to grasp 
 it, whether it were in books or art, in sunny as- 
 pects or beautiful new Morris designs and tex- 
 tures. 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 I 
 Flaubert, Verlaine, with all those 
 Precious, little things in prose, 
 
 Bliss-compelling, 
 Howsoe'er the story goes : 
 
 19 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 Kath- 
 arine 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 
 ' aesthetic dress ' was being very consciously 
 worn — all by the same kind of people. Kath- 
 arine 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, 
 20 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 and were deeply interested in ethical matters. 
 They were devotees of reason, and would sub- 
 scribe to no creed. Katharine was a prime 
 mover of the Anti- Vivisection Society in Clif- 
 ton, 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 gar- 
 ments 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 Bellerophon 
 (with the accent, please), which they published 
 in 1 88 1, signed "Arran and Isla Leigh." But 
 such portentous facts kept them very grave ; 
 and their solemnity naturally provoked the 
 
 21 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 mirth of the irreverent, especially of under- 
 graduate friends down from Oxford, who knew 
 something on their own account about aesthetic 
 crazes and the leaders of them. Thus a certain 
 Herbert Warren came down during one vaca- 
 tion and poked bracing fun at them. The story- 
 makes one suppose that he must have disHked 
 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 mis- 
 chievously asked him in Katharine's presence, 
 " Who are this aesthetic crowd .? " he promptly 
 replied, "They're people as green as their 
 dresses." 
 
 But their women friends were more favour- 
 ably 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 grace- 
 ful 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 naive 
 signs they were of budding individuaUty. Their 
 a2 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 friendship, too, was clearly on the grand scale 
 and in the romantic manner. They were, in- 
 deed, 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 companion- 
 able 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 con- 
 stantly gave a sense of seclusion from life, of 
 natures set -a little way apart. It was an im- 
 pression 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, 
 
 23 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 conse- 
 quence. 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 
 24 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 occa- 
 sioned by the death of Edith's father in the 
 Alps. He and his younger daughter Amy were 
 there on hohday 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 re- 
 covered for many months. 
 
 That is only one of several psychic experi- 
 ences 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 
 
 25 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 confined 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 exist- 
 ence until the publication of Callirrhoe 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 
 26 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 pseudonym under which they now hid themselves 
 was chosen somewhat arbitrarily, ' Michael ' be- 
 cause they liked the name and its associations, 
 'Field' because it went well with 'Michael.' 
 But it is true also that they had a great admira- 
 tion 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 be- 
 came Henry for Katharine, and Katharine was 
 Michael to her and to their intimates. 
 
 Callirrhoe 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 appear- 
 ance. Thus the Saturday Review talked of " the 
 immutable attributes of poetry . . . beauty of 
 conception . . . strength and purity of language 
 . . . brilliant distinction and consistent develop- 
 ment of the characters ... a poet of distinguished 
 powers " — all of which is very true. The Spec- 
 tator 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 
 
 27 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 are allowed to hear the voice. The Athenaeum 
 saw "something almost of Shakespearean pene- 
 tration"; 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 " Dray- 
 ton 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 paeans 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 re- 
 veal the " immutable attributes of poetry " ; their 
 " ecstasy " grew and deepened ; their " Shake- 
 spearean penetration " became a thing almost 
 uncanny in its swift rightness ; their " creative 
 28 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 intelUgent reviewers had predicted, and be- 
 came highly accomplished dramatic poets. But 
 in the meantime the critics learned that Michael 
 Field was not a man, and work much finer than 
 Callirrhoe passed unnoticed or was reviled ; while 
 on the other hand Borgia, published anony- 
 mously, 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-rolHng coterie, 
 and to pay the proper attentions to the Press. 
 Or it may be that something in the fact of a col- 
 laboration was obscurely repellent ; or even that 
 their true sex was not revealed with tact to sensi- 
 tive susceptibiHties. 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 pubHc recognition. 
 The poets did not greatly care about the neglect. 
 
 29 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 hostihty. Swinburne 
 had shown interest in their work, and Oscar 
 Wilde had praised it. Therefore only rarely did 
 they allow themselves a regret for their unpopu- 
 larity. But they were human, after all, Michael 
 particularly so ; and once she wrote whimsically 
 to Mr Havelock Ellis, " Want of due recogni- 
 tion 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 inde- 
 pendent were they, that when it comes to a ques- 
 tion of influence, proof of it is by no means 
 certain after the period of their earliest plays, 
 where their beloved Elizabethans have obvi- 
 ously wrought them both good and evil. Traces 
 of Browning we should take for granted, he 
 30 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 
 ©f 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 
 Callirrhoe \ 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 tem- 
 per. Very early they had confronted reaUty, 
 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 
 
 31 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 delib- 
 erately 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 
 32 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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, tem- 
 perance, 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 con- 
 sist with feminine power, even feminine power 
 of a rather low vitality, hardly needs to be re- 
 marked, since Emily Bronte 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 sim- 
 plicity 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 
 
 c 33 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 creature in this bad world has any right to 
 be so innocent as all that ! 
 
 Happily we are not concerned with the imp- 
 ishness of the satirical spirit: we have simply to 
 note that it was a physical and mental (and pos- 
 sibly 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 Prankish 
 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 Beren- 
 son, and jolly times in Paris, with peeps at lions 
 artistic and literary. It was on one of these occa- 
 sions that their British eyes were assailed (not 
 34 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 de- 
 lightedly watched their joy in the woods of 
 Fontainebleau, and afterward wrote a poem to re- 
 capture 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 
 
 35 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 knew them, particularly of their poet and artist 
 friends. Mr Charles Ricketts, Mr and Mrs 
 Berenson, Father John Gray, Mr and Mrs 
 WilHam 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 abiHty 
 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 incom- 
 parable. Nor do I mean only their characters and 
 personalities, and the flawless rhythm, balance, pre- 
 cision 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 
 36 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 pre- 
 sence. 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 1 892, when 
 he and Mr Shannon were editing The Dial. 
 Michael Field became a contributor to that mag- 
 azine, 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 
 
 37 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 indebted to Mr Ricketts for many facts con- 
 cerning the poets' lives in their Reigate and 
 later Richmond periods, and for some vivid im- 
 pressions 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 percep- 
 tion 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 re- 
 tiring, 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 con- 
 temporary, 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 
 38 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 many of the thoughts of a child." Both were 
 witty, but Michael, the richer and more spon- 
 taneous 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 story- 
 teller. 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 Christ- 
 mas, but after that I must go away at once." 
 
 Henry was not a sedulous correspondent : in- 
 dulged 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 emana- 
 tion 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 frag- 
 ments 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 ! 
 
 39 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 
 intimite. 
 
 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 recueille- 
 ment, 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 vras so. 
 40 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 Car- 
 lyle 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 coal- 
 esce. The Muse is but a music-girl. I like the 
 bold treatment of the sea- washed body." 
 
 She sketches an illuminating comparison be- 
 tween the art of Pierre Loti's Pecheur d'Islande 
 and that of Millet; and declares that Huys- 
 mans' 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 
 
 41 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 farb as a wroodland 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 (Flau- 
 bert'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 aud- 
 ible capacity for suffering, as it were. His courteous 
 exterior hides a strong nature; there is something, 
 one feels, of Denys I'Auxerrois in him — a Bacchant, 
 a Zagreus, 
 
 A criticism of the comedy of the nineties, 
 42 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 
 iEolian 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 con- 
 tinuance 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. 
 
 43 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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, con- 
 cluding : 
 
 It is a lovely and noble drawing: it is such a revela- 
 tion 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, com- 
 fort 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 
 44 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 in- 
 volved 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 
 
 45 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 dis- 
 crimination : 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 Rich- 
 mond 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, 
 46 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 state- 
 ment 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 per- 
 fect 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 Chris- 
 tian, 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 1 8 9 1 , because Henry was recovering 
 from her Dresden illness, Michael wrote in 
 jocular mood : 
 
 47 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 : 
 48 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 wzs a. 
 triumph. It w^as 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 un- 
 fortunate catastrophe to a parcel of birds' eggs 
 sent to a certain small John in January 1 907 : 
 
 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 inno- 
 cents, 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 
 D 49 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 19 10, having both been ill, 
 they conclude thus an invitation : 
 
 Try to come on Wednesday. We are gradually 
 gathering together the teeth, glasses, wigs, and com- 
 
 50 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 plexions 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 sugges- 
 tion, too, that they removed from Reigate to 
 the small Georgian house at i 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, 
 
 51 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 invi- 
 tation 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 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 Edin- 
 burgh on May 8 th 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 con- 
 templative habit of mind — that in turn operat- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 claimed : " 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 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 bibUographical. 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 in- 
 stinct then, an intuitive, hardly conscious, but 
 integral element of character, became now a 
 passionate conviction. 
 
 In February 1 9 1 1 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 under- 
 stand 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: 
 54 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 Think of us as living in retreat, as indeed we are. 
 . . . Henry has very sharp pains, writh moments of 
 agony every day to bear. The Beloved is show^ing 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 191 1, I stood in 
 
 SS 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 19 12, 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 191 3, from the 
 Masefields' house at 13 Well Walk, Hamp- 
 stead (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 haemorrhage 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 19 14, however, she was at work 
 again, collecting early poems of Henry's to 
 
 56 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 con- 
 fessor, Father Vincent McNabb, a Dominican 
 priest who was at that time Prior at Hawkes- 
 yard. One of the few recorded incidents of her 
 last days (it was on August 24th, 19 14, just a 
 month before she died) is touchingly charac- 
 teristic. Father Vincent had taken tea with her, 
 and Michael, propped by her pillows, yet con- 
 trived 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 win- 
 dows giving on to an unkempt lawn and a 
 tangle of shrubs ; summer dying outside, and 
 
 57 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. 
 
 Ill 
 
 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. 
 58 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 IV 
 
 O friends so fondly loving, so beloved, look up to us, 
 
 In constellation breaking on your errand, pros- 
 perous, 
 
 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 pro- 
 foundly 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 great- 
 ness 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 vast- 
 ness of the danger gave to the national spirit, 
 
 59 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 and she longed to serve. " I want to live now 
 the times are great," she wrote to Mrs Ber en- 
 son. " 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 1 3th : 
 
 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: 
 60 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 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 kneel- 
 ing 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 in- 
 volved 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 
 
 61 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 quote from her copy of St Augustine : "Aime^ 
 done, 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 dili- 
 gently, 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, sv/ift 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 
 62 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL 
 
 done it. The collaboration was so close, so 
 completely were the poets at one in the imagin- 
 ative effort, that frequently they could not 
 themselves decide (except by reference to the 
 handwriting on the original sheet of manu- 
 script) 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 blossom- 
 ing 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 resem- 
 blance 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. 
 
 63 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 Dio- 
 nysian 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 Maenad still. 
 
 64 
 
11. 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 appear- 
 ance first in the spring of 1893, and was well 
 received. The Athenieum 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 weak- 
 ness of some of the pieces. Thereupon, with 
 a gesture that is entirely their own in its grace 
 and emphasis, the poets confessed their repent- 
 ance for the defective work by immediately cut- 
 ting the book to the extent of one-half, and 
 reissued it in the autumn of 1893 with the 
 careful legend " Revised and Decreased Edi- 
 tion." The story, however, does not close on 
 that access of humility which, on a comparison 
 of the two editions, would certainly appear 
 
 E 6^ 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 somewhat excessive. But humility was not, at 
 any rate with Michael, a pet virtue. Repent- 
 ing 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 defi- 
 ance to the critics of number one, and a recom- 
 mendation 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 2 1 st, 
 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 publish- 
 ing a third edition in an invitation from the 
 66 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 United States to contribute a volume to the 
 "Old Worid " 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 disap- 
 pointed, 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, illu- 
 minating much more than the lives of two 
 maiden ladies in the second half of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 67 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 Such a spiritual history would be complete, 
 in extent at least, for it would begin with 
 Michael's earliest work in The New Minne- 
 singer (that title at once suggesting the German 
 influence in English life and letters at the 
 moment, 1875), '^'^'^ 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 con- 
 cern 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 plea- 
 sant 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 im- 
 portant, 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 JVild 
 Honey (1908), a collection covering about ten 
 years of her life, brings us down to the epoch 
 68 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 of religious crisis and reconciliation with the 
 Church of Rome. Then, with tragic inspira- 
 tion quelled by Christian hope and submission, 
 all her creative energy flowed into the Catholic 
 lyrics contained in Poems of Adoration (19 12) 
 and Mystic Trees (19 13). 
 
 One does not pause long on The New Minne- 
 singer 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 Bellerophon, 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 apti- 
 tude to sing about it; and where it is insisted 
 that the singer shall be faithful to her own 
 feminine nature and experience. All through 
 
 69 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 fellow- 
 ship. 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 (19 14). 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 
 70 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 the younger Michael, such a piece as The Quiet 
 Light: 
 
 After the sunset. 
 
 Before the night, 
 There comes a season 
 Of quiet Hght. 
 
 After the dying. 
 
 Before the death. 
 There comes a drawing 
 
 Of quiet breath. 
 
 Hush of the daylight, 
 
 O whisper why 
 That childUke 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 emo- 
 tional 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 
 
 71 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 McNabb a few days before she died, in exulta- 
 tion 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 
 
 72 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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 recog- 
 nizes 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 con- 
 centration 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 
 
 73 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 pieces which throw some light on the poets' 
 lives. And although I do this from an un- 
 ashamed 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 not- 
 withstanding (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 doubt- 
 ful whether Laura or Beatrice or the Dark 
 74 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 Lady had a tenderer wooing. They explain, of 
 course, the shghtness of a more usual (or, as 
 some would put it, a more normal) love-interest 
 in Michael's work. But it need not be sup- 
 posed that there was anything abnormal in this - 
 devotion. On the contrary, it was the expres- 
 sion of her mother-instinct, the outflow of the 
 natural feminine impulse to cherish and pro- 
 tect. 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 blos- 
 somed quickly in hot, bright colour, and died 
 with sudden vehemence. 
 
 IS 
 
76 
 
 MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 Across a gaudy room 
 
 I looked and saw his face, 
 Beneath the sapless palm-trees, in the gloom 
 
 Of the distressing place. 
 
 Where everyone sattired. 
 
 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: 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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. 
 
 tf * * 
 
 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. 
 
 77 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 w^ould drop, and my eyes w^ould fill. 
 
 And the angel fly. 
 
 If we were concerned with the art of this 
 verse rather than its tale one would be com- 
 pelled to consider a touch of rhetoric and a 
 violence of gesture which are characteristic of 
 Michael not at her best; but which do corre- 
 spond 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 
 78 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 those early days when they had not yet em- 
 barked 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 : 
 
 79 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 per- 
 fection 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 
 80 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 that the reader cannot credit a dual author- 
 ship, 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. 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 pecuhar 
 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 con- 
 trasts 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 vraves 
 
 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 ! 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 It is evident that Michael knew herself and 
 her impulsive and exuberant Muse, which, to 
 quote one of the irl-everent faithful among her 
 friends, would sometimes merely " fizz " into 
 expression. That it could be too facile, and 
 was, by comparison with Henry's depth, super- 
 ficial, 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 contribu- 
 tion to the fellowship, nevertheless, in swift per- 
 ception, 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. 
 
 83 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 sur- 
 rounded 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 
 84 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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 com- 
 mended 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 
 
 85 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 
 86 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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. 
 
 87 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 LYRICS 
 
 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 per- 
 fect work than either of those two, both of 
 which include poems of very various date, cir- 
 cumstance, 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 interrup- 
 tion 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, 
 
 89 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 com- 
 90 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 petent 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. 
 
 91 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. 
 
 92 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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. 
 
 (X 
 
 'y^A.x.K-ZjtX^ v^'-SSvv,. 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 191 2, and Mystic Trees in 19 13. 
 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 Juven- 
 94 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 tutem Meant and The Homage of Death. The 
 two volumes therefore provide material for a 
 useful study from the point of view of the col- 
 laboration; 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 sweet- 
 ness and strength and clarity, in their sense of 
 form, and in terse, vigorous expression. Be- 
 tween 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 
 
 95 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 evi- 
 dence 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 over- 
 whelmed. 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 
 yy' 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 
 96 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 first poem quoted below. Here the conception 
 of Christ the wine-treader is treated with magni- 
 ficent 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. 
 
 G 97 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 I 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. 
 98 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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; 
 
 99 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 JUFENTUTEM ME AM 
 
 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 cvsry halt of change ! 
 lOO 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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 strenu- 
 ously. She developed, for example, a prosely- 
 tizing 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 on- 
 slaught of her blithe attacks. Indeed, it occa- 
 sionally 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 
 
 lOI 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 — impul- 
 sive, 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 ! Tou 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, Callirrhoe, the 
 1 02 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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 pos- 
 sessed 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 Callirrhoe 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. 
 
 103 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 Thence came the scheme oi 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 : 
 104 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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 i 
 
 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 
 
 105 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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! 
 1 06 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 A FRIDAY NIGHT 
 
 The Questioner 
 
 " Lo, you have wounds and you are speeding fast! 
 
 The hght is gone ! 
 Have you no cloak to screen you from the blast ? 
 It is not well 1 " 
 
 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 
 
 107 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 
 io8 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 folk, we need take only the little poem which 
 follows. But we ought to remember the occa- 
 sion 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 direct- 
 ness, and their young faith and enthusiasm. 
 Did she realize, one asks oneself, how she had 
 
 109 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 Uke, 
 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 
 ioy of her life, she should have written such 
 poems. For here it is certainly relevant to re- 
 member 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 inti- 
 mates, 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 faith- 
 fully kept. Not until her fellow was dead, when 
 Michael had, in fact, laid her in her coffin, did 
 no 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 she break silence to the friend who was with 
 her in that ordeal. Two days later a haemor- 
 rhage made it impossible to conceal her con- 
 dition any longer. " God kept her secret," said 
 Father McNabb, " until the moment when it 
 was no longer necessary"; and without dis- 
 loyalty 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 sec- 
 tion 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 over- 
 whelmed 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. 
 
 HI 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 ! 
 
 CJPUT 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. 
 
 112 
 
THE LYRICS 
 
 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 ! 
 
 113 
 
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 attri- 
 butes of a tragic poet are not necessarily re- 
 vealed in the externals of his art : more than 
 another he is difficult to recognize by his 
 theme, form, and manner. If he could be con- 
 fidently 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 in- 
 tensely, with a fierce dramatic impulse driving 
 114 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 signi- 
 ficant. 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 indi- 
 cate 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 pos- 
 sibly from Gibbon or some much earlier his- 
 torian, 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 
 
 "5 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 of this book. There are, as I said, twenty-seven 
 of them ; and they were wrought between the 
 years 1 8 8 1 and 1 9 1 1 . 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 per- 
 formed 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 Domnd) 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 percep- 
 tion the wild-rose exquisiteness of the spirit of 
 the play. The Tragic Mary was printed at 
 116 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 
 1 9 14 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 1 905 and 1 9 1 1 
 {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 biblio- 
 phile; 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 
 
 117 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 signi- 
 ficance 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 them- 
 selves almost automatically into three groups. 
 The division is, indeed, so simple as almost to be 
 suspect, and so definite as almost to be mechan- 
 ical. 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 1 8 8 1 to about 1 890. 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 
 118 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 like- 
 ness 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 syn- 
 thesis, it wheels back to close the cycle upon 
 
 119 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 the idea of destiny. Vast passions are now the 
 poet's theme. Destiny, consisting in some 
 overmastering elemental force, is now her in- 
 spiration. But it is no external, supernatural, or 
 superhuman force. It subsists in nature, and 
 resides within humanity : it belongs inalien- 
 ably 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, Cal- 
 lirrhoe, 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 Callirrhoe comes from Pau- 
 sanias; but our poet has modified the original 
 
 I20 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 Callirrhoe, 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 Callirrhoe 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 Callirrhoe 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 
 
 121 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 — 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 in- 
 fused 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 con- 
 tribution 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 Callirrhoe 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. 
 122 
 
THE TRAGEDIES— I 
 
 He came to gladden and exalt, all such 
 Must suffer. . . . 
 
 CalUrrhoe. . . . 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. 
 
 CalUrrhoe. Yet I hold it true. 
 
 Divinity ott comes wfith 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'erwrhelm, intoxicate, break up fresh paths 
 To unremembered sympathies. Nay, more. 
 Accompany me further in my thought — 
 Callirrhoe, I tell you there are hours 
 When the Hereafter comes and touches me 
 O' the cheek. 
 
 Callirrhoe. I tremble at your god, for terrible 
 In wrrath I fear him ; though you speak him fair. 
 
 Coresus. Turn not away, Callirrhoe; by goads 
 The ox-souled must be driven; yield response 
 To Heaven's desire of thee; love humanly. 
 
 123 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. 
 
 Callirrhoe. ... 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. 
 
 Callirrhoe, 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 
 124 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 un- 
 self-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 wilt out-dance him! Ho! Ho! Ho! 
 
 Act III, Scene 6 
 
 Fair Rosamund^ which appeared in the same 
 volume with Callirrhoe, possesses equal dra- 
 matic 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 
 
 125 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 quota- 
 tions, 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. 
 
 j^ct 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, 
 126 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 kill- 
 ing 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, 
 
 127 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 " 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 ; 
 128 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 com- 
 pletely 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 
 
 I 129 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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, follow- 
 ing a poetic age with inevitable comedy — 
 inevitable if only from reaction — were com- 
 pelled 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 tra- 
 gedies. It is evident that she was concerned, 
 thus early, with the joyless truth which was to 
 take possession — absolute and somewhat de- 
 pressing possession — of the dramatists who 
 came after her. Unlike them, however, by 
 giving her truth the form of poetry she en- 
 dowed it with the joyousness of art. She 
 saw it, too, in the round: there is a largeness 
 130 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 in her conception of it which gives her ' intel- 
 lectual drama ' greater dignity, and one would 
 suppose greater permanence, than later ' real- 
 istic ' 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 ^\2.j—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 six- 
 teen, 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 sur- 
 prise 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 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 tra- 
 gedy; 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 Scotkhronicon and the 
 old chronicler Wyntoun, whose words are in 
 one place almost exactly quoted. Robert III is 
 shown to be pious, weak, superstitious, affec- 
 tionate, 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, over- 
 bears the father's weakness and perverts his 
 affection, and eventually compasses the Prince's 
 132 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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, 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 /, 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 ! 
 
 134 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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. 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 dis- 
 cover, as we quickly do, that here as elsewhere 
 in her intellectual drama Michael Field has 
 been better than her creed : her dramatic in- 
 136 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 stinct 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 pro- 
 found significance! " But as a fact all the evi- 
 dence 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 — work- 
 ing out the implicit idea as something subsidiary. 
 In this play the idea is completely assimi- 
 lated to imagination. There is no bald presen- 
 tation 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 ; 
 
 137 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. 
 
 jict II, Scene i 
 
 Beowulf. Do you think the Earth's a thing that 
 makes your flesh 
 Soft for the worms ? — the harvests lie asleep 
 138 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 Upon her bosom; ,she has reared the spring; 
 The seasons are her change of countenance ; 
 She hves, and now for many thousand years 
 Hath ruled the toihng 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 IF, Scene i 
 
 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 crea- 
 tures, 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 
 
 139 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 veri- 
 similitude, 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. Blessed 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 Leo- 
 fric 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 
 140 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 wood- 
 land 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. 
 
 Jet I, Scene 4 
 
 The motive of Canute the Great (1887) pre- 
 sents 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 
 
 141 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 philo- 
 sophy. 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 aesthetic 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 
 142 
 
THE TRAGEDIES— I 
 
 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 Ed- 
 mund'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 aesthetic 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 
 
 143 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. ... . , „ 
 
 Ja 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 stub- 
 born theory, is in her creation of Gunhild, the 
 Scandinavian prophetess. Gunhild is some- 
 thing 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, 
 144 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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. 
 
 K 145 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 in- 
 evitably 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 — psycho- 
 logical 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, 
 146 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 he)'. 
 Because you know she has a radiant skin. 
 And strange, proud eyes ! 
 
 And again, when Edric asks for some mes- 
 sage, a "sugared speech" to take to Emma: 
 
 Canute [^asidel. 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 deli- 
 cate 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 
 
 147 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 conven- 
 tions 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 — 
 148 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 aged floor. Act II, Scene i 
 
 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 {asidel. She is mine. 
 
 The water came not straighter from the earth. 
 Than she herself to me. 
 
 Hubert. You are unmindful. 
 
 149 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. 
 
 Jci I, Scene i 
 
 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. 
 150 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 Car a. 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 quite 
 
 sure 
 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 
 
 151 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 for that reason only. It has no specifically in- 
 tellectual 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 circum- 
 stance 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 con- 
 fronted, even those on which the historian has 
 pronounced that there is no evidence. But the 
 whole tragedy is seen in its relation to char- 
 acter, 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 in- 
 credible. Her Mary is human : of such vivid 
 humanity, indeed, as to draw for that reason 
 152 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 ex- 
 cess; 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 
 
 ^53 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 keen- 
 ness of her perception, her gift of under- 
 standing, 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 sym- 
 pathy 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 Darn- 
 ley's death, her anger ebbs as she remembers 
 how natural it seems to hear the maris 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 i 
 
 One observes, too, how the feminine author 
 has perceived the incidence of the feminine 
 154 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 instinct of self-accusal on Mary's tragedy, 
 arriving by intuition at a truth of psychology 
 which'the mental doctors declare to be invari- 
 able. 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 ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^ 
 
 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 mother- 
 hood 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 
 
 ^55 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 fact of rejoicing to bear a child, but in a pro- 
 found 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 unpardon- 
 able 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 oflF into a drowse. 
 
 Act I, Scene 3 
 
 There is much to illustrate this aspect of 
 156 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 Mary's womanhood ; but one other short quo- 
 tation 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, compel- 
 ling our belief in his lawless force, and in his 
 mere physical reaction to Mary's influence. 
 His psychology, true as hers, chimes respon- 
 sive 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 
 
 157 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 con- 
 sented 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 : 
 158 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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. 
 
 Jci 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 help- 
 less and despairing. With almost every soul 
 about her counsels proved false, she still be- 
 lieves 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 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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, 
 1 60 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — I 
 
 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 
 Newr matter. If I sat beside the fire 
 In prison w^ith my maids, and never spoke. 
 While you put forth fresh libels, or confirmed 
 The common talk, you could not injure me : 
 My silence wrould 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 
 
 161 
 
IV. THE TRAGEDIES-II 
 
 MICHAEL FIELD'S second dramatic 
 period synchronizes almost exactly 
 with the ' eighteen-nineties.' That is 
 to say, it wast contemporaneous with Wilde, 
 Beardsley, and The Tellow 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 
 162 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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 cliche^ " Art for Art's 
 sake," will be a bulwark (in the day of reckon- 
 ing that one has foreseen) to the truth under- 
 lying 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 
 
 163 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 changed conditions of the poets' life — that, in 
 its turn, of course determined by their mental 
 development. They were in many ways dif- 
 ferent people from the authors of Callirrhoe. 
 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 deter- 
 mined 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. 
 164 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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 tem- 
 porary, 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 aesthetic 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 
 
 165 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 this drama as a Latin group. Its most pro- 
 minent 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 heaves 
 (1901), The World at Auction (1898), and Julia 
 Domna (1903). Another Roman play, despite 
 its title, IS Attila, my Attilal (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 1 9 1 9 ; 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 de- 
 grees. His Russian wife secured him from 
 166 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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 con- 
 cerning 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 I'enor S. Vincent. 
 
 The Abbey at SenHs 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 reHgious 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 
 
 167 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 preaentment of Anna, the widowed queen, 
 mother and regent of the young king, putting 
 off her royalty to claim Raoul's love, and sweep- 
 ing 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 Alienor, and 
 both have plunged into an orgy of sensuality. 
 Stories of their abandoned living penetrate the 
 Abbey walls, are whispered among the sister- 
 i68 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 hood, 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. Twi- 
 light 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. Alienor, 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 ? 
 
 169 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. 
 
 ^nna. 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, 
 170 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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, 
 
 171 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 Staring at that high belfry. Off again ! 
 
 An instant, you have lost the scent, poor Lulla ! 
 
 What puts a woman oflF the scent of life 
 
 Like this religion ! [Catching her wrisf.] 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. j , tjt 
 
 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 philo- 
 172 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 sophy, and of fine, though not faultless, tech- 
 nique. 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. 
 Fellow shi-p^ 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 
 
 173 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 confi- 
 dence 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 dis- 
 174 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 covers 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 writh age and death and faltering friends. 
 Assailing circumstance, the change of front 
 That one is always meeting in oneself, 
 
 175 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 The plans and vacillations — let them go ! 
 And you will put on immortality 
 As simply as a vesture. 
 
 * * * 
 Heaven detests 
 
 A beggar's w^hining. 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, 
 176 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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. 
 
 * * 4f- 
 
 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 
 
 M 177 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 covers, in the period from a.d. i8o 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 
 miUtary 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, never- 
 theless, 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 Py- 
 lades, 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 delib- 
 erate presentation of a problem in any of these 
 178 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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 reli- 
 gion, 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 his- 
 torical 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 his- 
 torian 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 sup- 
 ports his judgment) an unnatural monster with 
 " every sentiment of virtue and humanity ex- 
 tinct." 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 ; 
 
 179 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 she has penetrated to the very soul of each of 
 the persons of her drama, and that sympathetic- 
 ally : she has felt not only their individual reac- 
 tion 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 some- 
 what 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 
 l8o 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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 suffi- 
 ciently 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 Tightness of its 
 
 i8i 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 psychology steadily wins the mind as one per- 
 ceives 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 reac- 
 tion 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 sym- 
 pathy ; 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. . . . 
 182 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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. Cljjander 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 
 
 183 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 famiUar 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 oS ? 
 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 ! 
 184 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 Mar da. Laetus ! [Laetus enters with soldiers. 
 
 Commodus. Take 
 
 Your victim, offer him ! 
 
 [Oleander 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. 
 Por 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 j ustly. 
 
 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. 
 
 185 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 de- 
 votion 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 Praetorian Guard has just assas- 
 sinated the uncomfortably virtuous Pertinax, 
 i86 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 and the Imperial seat is vacant. We are intro- 
 duced 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 Praetorians 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 Caesar ; 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 ? A 1 1 
 
 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, 
 
 187 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 If once a state of servitude is owned. 
 We traffic in all creatures, and, if fate 
 Allow the traffic, we are justified. 
 
 Mania. 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 
 
 l88 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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 
 appalHng 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 comprehen- 
 sible. But the poet brings to it the light of 
 vision, and sees in Julia Domna, their mother 
 — a woman of rare beauty, grace, and intelli- 
 gence ; 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 
 
 189 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 pro- 
 mises 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 
 190 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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 con- 
 text something may remain of the imaginative 
 truth which sees Caracalla, lulled for the mo- 
 ment 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 re- 
 joinder, " I am not kneeling," are supreme 
 touches, awful in their brief, pregnant, startling 
 Tightness. 
 
 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 
 
 191 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. 
 192 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 Caracalla [with a slow smile]. But there is a 
 power 
 I may myself invoke. 
 
 yulia 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. 
 
 yulia 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 Ste- 
 ■phania (1892), a trialogue dealing not very 
 convincingly with the vengeance taken by the 
 
 N 193 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 wife of the Roman consul Crescentius on 
 Otto III. There is much interest and not a 
 little beauty in this play, but no dramatic con- 
 viction. 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 sug- 
 gest a local and temporary phase. For just as 
 neither Honoria nor the ' new woman ' of the 
 nineteenth century was really new and tran- 
 sitory, 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 
 194 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — II 
 
 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 conven- 
 tion. The poet wrought better than she knew, 
 and gave in her Honoria a woman's presenta- 
 tion of the woman's right to love and mother- 
 hood. 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 in- 
 tending to do so) an almost pathological study of 
 
 I9J 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 re- 
 peats, therefore, that the problem, though dis- 
 tinct 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. 
 
 196 
 
V. THE TRAGEDIES-III 
 
 THE last group of tragedies is that which 
 was pubHshed from the year 1905 on- 
 ward to the poets' death — and after- 
 ward ; 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 meek- 
 ness, 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 1 have elsewhere 
 
 197 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 stated, must be put back as far as 1890; A 
 Question of Memory was written and played in 
 1 893. 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 1 905, 7!^!? Accuser by January 1 907, 
 and one at least of the Tristan plays by 1 903. 
 
 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 calcu- 
 late, and too proud to dissemble — compels 
 catastrophe. Herod's passion passes into a de- 
 stroying madness. Ras Byzance consumes his 
 universe in the hell of his own jealousy; and 
 the messiah Sabbatai, distilling a cold spiritual 
 198 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 over- 
 whelming that she deals here ; and since she is 
 a tragic poet, she sees the vast forces accom- 
 panied by their curse, and life persistently 
 followed by its attendant shadow. 
 
 The Herodian trilogy is the clearest illustra- 
 tion 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 Hke lightning 
 in a night of storm, and laying bare in one 
 instant the whole earth and sky. In these plays, 
 and especially in Queen Martamne, this char- 
 acteristic economy is practised to an extent 
 which sometimes almost defeats itself. 
 
 199 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 render- 
 ing 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^ ver- 
 tuous 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. 
 200 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 transforma- 
 tion 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 be- 
 tween 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 
 
 20I 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 which attracts the modern romantic, though it 
 was, of course, irrelevant to Josephus. To him 
 the damning fact about her was that she per- 
 mitted 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 rela- 
 tives. 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 state- 
 ment 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 
 202 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 defence when she is accused, no protest when 
 she is condemned; and the poignancy of her 
 tragedy lies largely in her silence and her isola- 
 tion. 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 ob- 
 sessed by the thought of her : 
 
 Cypres. 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. 
 
 Cypres. 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, 
 
 203 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 appari- 
 tion 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 — 2. 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 strength- 
 ened in his project by her opposition to it, he 
 204 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III ' 
 
 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. . . . 
 
 205 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 ex- 
 pedition, 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 
 206 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 much more the poet can see need not be indi- 
 cated 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 ? 
 
 \Mar'taTnne 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. 
 
 [Alariamne 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. 
 
 207 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 I was sad, and he was sorrowful to death 
 That he had sworn a cruelty and wrong 
 So unavaihng 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 rafid 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, 
 208 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 re- 
 sembles their earlier chronicle-plays rather than 
 those of the last period. Written in six acts 
 and a great many scenes, it has not the sim- 
 plicity 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 Renais- 
 sance, centred upon the portentous Borgia 
 trinity — Pope Alexander VI and his children 
 Cesare and Lucrezia. 
 
 o 209 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 ambi- 
 tion dominates it ; and the last and deepest im- 
 pression 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 
 
 Jet FI, Scene 3 
 210 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 concentra- 
 tion 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 irre- 
 sistible, 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 marshal- 
 ling, 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 au- 
 thorities on the subject were Gregorovius and 
 Yriarte. The fresh data of Professor Wood- 
 ward, pubUshed 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 fol- 
 lowed, is now accused (in what looks to the 
 
 211 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 docu- 
 mented as the murder of the Duke of Gandia, 
 the Pope's remorse and penitence, his com- 
 plicity after the event, his support of Cesare's 
 schemes, his death at the crisis of Cesare's 
 fortunes. Thus, too, we have Lucrezia's be- 
 trothal 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 con- 
 veniently 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 be- 
 trayal 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 
 212 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 ! 
 
 \BAs'tng 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 humanlores — so the salt 
 Of the strong farce compelled me. 
 
 Do you stoop 
 To anger ? Consul Julius Caesar 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 
 
 213 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 records, but which possess the essential truth 
 of being in character; and the scenes they 
 inspire are the fruit not of dramatic imagina- 
 tion 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 judg- 
 ments, 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 Holi- 
 214 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 ness 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. 
 
 \H.e 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, 
 
 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 ! JofFre, Lucrezia — 
 JoiFre must mind his government afar, 
 
 1 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 
 
 215 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 re- 
 volve 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 
 216 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 and cunning, militant and politic, barbarous 
 and polished; frivolous, worldly, and voluptu- 
 ous, 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 // 
 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 mur- 
 derer, and the subdual of his will to Cesare's 
 immense designs. In Scene i, on the occasion 
 
 217 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 mis- 
 tress, 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 : 
 218 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 Hving, 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 
 
 219 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 ! 
 
 \tle 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. 
 220 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 Fanozza. 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 righteous- 
 ness 
 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, 
 
 221 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 combina- 
 tion 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 diffi- 
 cult task of indicating this transit — from vast 
 sorrow and horror, through remorse and peni- 
 tence, suspicion, wrath, and dread at the ac- 
 cusation 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 Renais- 
 sance fashion, by believing the Borgia nature 
 to have been something monstrous and un- 
 322 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 human. 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 master- 
 piece. 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 ; 
 
 223 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 but at midnight she creeps out and comes to 
 Cesare : 
 
 Lucre%ia. 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 for- 
 gotten 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 lati- 
 tude, to an austerer race and a more primitive 
 224 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 age; and it is in an air swept clean by storm 
 that the business of sowing the wind and reap- 
 ing 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 forgive- 
 ness; 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 con- 
 venient 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, 
 
 p 225 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 believing themselves to be drowning, dropped 
 their weapons and were immediately over- 
 powered 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 brood- 
 ing 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 HI, hardly affects the sub- 
 sequent action. From that point of view it 
 might be considered superfluous ; but Michael, 
 though not Henry, was capable of so much 
 226 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 over-zeal. She was, however, also capable of 
 justifying her act artistically. The interpola- 
 tion is at least not an anachronism. It is pos- 
 sible, there in Ireland, that even so early had 
 penetrated " the story of how a god met his 
 death . . . young, radiant . . . bearing sum- 
 mer 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 pro- 
 vides 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 
 
 227 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 pro- 
 founder 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 pro- 
 logue ; 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 
 228 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 not new to Michael Field, who from the begin- 
 ning could always reUeve 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. 
 
 229 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 in- 
 stinct 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 ItaUan Renais- 
 sance. 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 open- 
 ing passage of Act I, where Lebarcham and 
 Medv the nurse are discussing their fosterling. 
 230 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 It is the morning of her sixteenth birthday, and 
 King Conchobar is coming to the httle secluded 
 house where Deirdre has been brought up to 
 claim her as his bride : 
 
 Medv. But look at her ! 
 
 Leharcham. Ay, Medv, it is not for our eyes to 
 look. 
 The beauty! • 
 
 Medv. She is dreaming. 
 
 Leharcham. 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. 
 
 Leharcham. A wanton laugh ! 
 
 Medv. No, no ! Dear heart, she has no wan- 
 tonness ; 
 And yet I am afraid to hear her laughter. 
 It is so low and sure. My maid, my maid I 
 
 231 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 con- 
 fession 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. 
 232 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 toward 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 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 dis- 
 guised : 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 
 234 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 repre- 
 sentation of IDeirdre's death. The manner of 
 that death was not only too awkward to pre- 
 sent, 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. 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 Leharcham. 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 0^1, until the little crests at last 
 Rose over it; then she awroke 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. 
 
 Leharcham. 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. . . . 
 236 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 He returns^ — 
 
 The king ! He leads the horses of his car 
 Slowly along. They come, but yet as night 
 Comes by long twilight. 
 
 Leharcham. Lonely Conchobar! 
 
 [Re-enter Conchobar solemnly leading 
 the chariot. 
 O king . . . 
 
 Conchobar. Your horses, Fergna ! Take the 
 reins 5 
 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 laughj. 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, 
 
 237 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 hy Fergna. 
 Conchohar. The land ! . . . I wended 
 hither : car and horses 
 Are wending from me. Did I move Hke 
 
 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 
 238 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 pre- 
 cisely 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 great- 
 ness 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 accompHsh- 
 ment. 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 
 
 239 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 was to be found, and had business ability suffi- 
 cient to direct prudently their own affairs. 
 
 They would have denied that there was any- 
 thing of the fanatic or the visionary in the 
 dedication of themselves to their art, believing 
 fanaticism to be incongruous with the undi- 
 luted 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 appli- 
 cation to the work as well as to the life of 
 Michael Field. They may be used almost 
 literally, to summarize in a convenient defini- 
 tion 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 sup- 
 pose that we shall always be startled at the 
 appearance of an Emily Bronte or a Michael 
 Field. They seem such slight instruments for 
 240 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 re- 
 viewing stupidity about it, would flash light- 
 nings 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 Bronte 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 Uves 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 exag- 
 gerated to minds not so sensitively tuned as 
 
 Q 241 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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 some- 
 thing pitiful for its ugliness. Therefore, secure 
 and leisured, they envisaged life, in the main, 
 through art, through philosophy, through litera- 
 ture, and hardly ever through the raw stuff of 
 life itself. And thence comes the peculiar char- 
 acter 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 inay require the 
 discipline of experience, the observing eye con- 
 stantly fixed upon the object, and a rich know- 
 ledge of the world ; but surely tragedy requires 
 before everything else creative imagination, 
 242 
 
THE TRAGEDIES — III 
 
 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 — deca- 
 dent emperors, austere Roman patriots, or a 
 Prankish king turned monk — those are only a 
 few of the surprising creatures of her imagina- 
 tion, 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 Rosa- 
 mund; 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 
 
 243 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 sympathies, despite the clamour of the time 
 and the provocation she received from mas- 
 cuUne 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 with- 
 drawn from the common struggle to wrestle 
 with a fiercer power, and subdue it to a shape 
 of recognizable beauty. 
 
 
 
 
 244 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Of the works of Michael Field, published to 1919 
 
 The New Minnesinger. (Arran Leigh.) Longmans, Green 
 
 and Co. 1875. 
 Bellerophon. (Arran and Isla Leigh.) C. Kegan Paul. 1 8 8 1 . 
 Callirrhoe, 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. 1 890. 
 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 t Elkin Mathews. 1896. 
 Fair Rosamund. Reissued from the Vale Press. Decorated 
 
 by Charles Ricketts. 1 897. 
 The World at Auction. The Vale Press. Decorated by 
 
 Charles Ricketts. 1898. 
 Anna Ruina. David Nutt. 1 899. 
 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 
 
 245 
 
MICHAEL FIELD 
 
 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. 1 9 1 1 . 
 
 The Accuser, Tristan de Leonois, and A Messiah. (Anony- 
 mous.) Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd. 191 1. 
 
 Poems of Adoration. Sands and Co. 191 2. 
 
 Mystic Trees. Eveleigh Nash. 191 3. 
 
 Whym Chow. Privately printed at the Eragny Press. 191 4. 
 
 Dedicated. G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. 191 4. 
 
 Deirdre, A Question of Memory, and Ras Byzance. The 
 Poetry Bookshop. 191 8. 
 
 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 con- 
 trolled by the Poetry Bookshop. 
 
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