The forest knew you and was glad,
And laughed for very joy to know
Her child was with her; then, grown sad,
She wept because her child must go.
And you would spy and you would capture
The shyest flower that lit the grass;
The joy I had to watch your rapture
Was keen as even your rapture was.
The forest knew you and was glad,
And laughed and wept for joy and woe.
This was the welcome that you had
Among the woods of Fontainebleau.
One is not surprised to see how brightly our poets struck the imagination of the few who knew them, particularly of their poet and artist friends. Mr Charles Ricketts, Mr and Mrs Berenson, Father John Gray, Mr and Mrs William Rothenstein, and, later, Mr Gordon Bottomley were of those whose genius set them in tune with the fastidious, discriminating, and yet eclectic adoration of beauty which was the inspiration of Michael Field. They have all confessed the unique charm of the poets (a charm which consisted with “business ability and thoroughly good housekeeping”); and Mr Bottomley has contrived, by reflecting it in a poet’s mirror, to rescue it from Lethe:
The marvellous thing to me is the way in which their lives and their work were one thing: life was one of their arts—;they gave it a consistency and texture that made its quality a sheer delight. I have never seen anywhere else their supreme faculty of identifying being with doing.
I do not mean simply that this beauty of life was to be seen in their devotion to each other; though there was a bloom and a light on that which made it incomparable. Nor do I mean only their characters and personalities, and the flawless rhythm, balance, precision that each got into her own life—;though these, too, contributed to the sensation they always gave me of living as a piece of concerted chamber-music lives while it is being played.
But, beyond all this, I mean that this identity of life and art was to be seen in the slight, ordinary things of existence. They did not speak as if their speech was considered; but in the most rapid, penetrating interchange of speech, their words were always made their own, and seemed more beautiful than other people’s. This always struck me anew when either of them would refer to the other in her absence as “My dear fellow”: the slight change in the incidence and significance of the phrase turned the most stale of ordinary exclamations into something which suddenly seemed valuable and full of delicate, new, moving music. It seemed said for the first time....
With Miss Cooper in particular one had the feeling that her mind moved as her body moved: that if her spirit were visible it would be identical with her presence. The compelling grace and sweet authority of her movement made me feel that her own Lucrezia would have looked so when she played Pope. It is of the great ladies of the world that one always thinks when one thinks of her.
Mr Ricketts first met the poets in 1892, when he and Mr Shannon were editing The Dial. Michael Field became a contributor to that magazine, and the acquaintance thus begun ripened into close friendship and lasted for twenty years. In memory of it Mr Ricketts has presented to the nation a picture by Dante Gabriel Rossetti which now hangs in the National Gallery of British Art. Its subject, Lucrezia Borgia, was treated by Michael Field in her Borgia tragedy, and is one of her most masterly studies. I am indebted to Mr Ricketts for many facts concerning the poets’ lives in their Reigate and later Richmond periods, and for some vivid impressions of them. Thus, at their first meeting:
Michael was then immensely vivacious, full of vitality and curiosity. When young she had doubtless been very pretty, and for years kept traces of colour in her white hair. But if Michael was small, ruddy, gay, buoyant and quick in word and temper, Henry was tall, pallid, singularly beautiful in a way not appreciated by common people, that is, white with gray eyes, thin in face, shoulders and hands, as if touched throughout with gray long before the graying of her temples. Sudden shadows would flit over the face at some inner perception or memory. Always of fragile health, she was very quiet and restrained in voice and manner, a singularly alive and avid spectator and questioner, occasionally speaking with force and vivacity, but instinctively retiring, and absorbed by an intensely reflective inner life.