We have seen Tagore for a quarter of an hour—;seen the patient and quiet beauty of a lustrous-eyed animal. He is full of rumination, affability; and his smile is a jewel, the particular jewel of his soul.
And in 1913, the last year of her life, when Mr Rothenstein had been making a sketch of her head for a portrait, she wrote him thanks which were both critical and appreciative, concluding:
It is a lovely and noble drawing: it is such a revelation of a mood of the soul—;so intense, I said, seeing it at first—;that is how I shall look at the Last Judgment, “When to Thee I have appealed, Sweet Spirit, comfort me.”
It is significant that, wherever they went, the servants fell in love with Henry. Her manner, always gracious, was to them of the most beautiful courtesy and consideration. Michael was more imperious, more exigent. Warm and generous in her friendships, she yet was capable of sudden fierce anger for some trivial cause—;when, however, she would rage so amusingly that the offender forgot to be offended in his turn. She might banish a friend for months, for no discoverable reason, or might in some other rash way inconsiderately hurt him; but, though she would be too proud to confess it, she would be the unhappiest party of them all to the quarrel. “Of the wounds she inflicts, Michael very frequently dies,” she once wrote in a letter.
But of her devotion to Henry, its passion, its depth, its tenacity and tenderness, it is quite impossible to speak adequately. From Henry’s infancy to her death—;literally from her first day to her last—;Michael shielded, tended, and nurtured her in body and in spirit. Probably there never was another such case of one mind being formed by another. There surely cannot be elsewhere in literature a set of love-songs such as those she addressed to Henry; nor such jealousy for a comrade’s fame as that she showed to the reviewers after Henry’s death; nor such absolute generosity as that with which she lavished praise on her fellow’s work, and forgot her own share in it. But there is not room, even if one could find words, to speak of these things. One can only snatch, as it were in passing, a few fragments from her letters. And this I do, partly to bring home the other proof of Michael’s devotion, namely, that she always did the very considerable business involved in the collaboration, and wrote nearly all the social letters: but chiefly so that some direct glimpses may be caught of her warm human soul.
Thus we may find, in her correspondence with Mr Elkin Mathews about Sight and Song in 1892, one proof out of many which the poets’ career affords of their concern for the physical beauty of their books. They desired their children to be lovely in body as well as in spirit; and great was their care for format, decoration, binding, paper, and type: for colour, texture, quality, arrangement of letterpress, appearance of title-page, design of cover. In every detail there was rigorous discrimination: precise directions were given, often in an imperious tone; experiments were recommended; journeys of inspection were undertaken; certain things were chosen and certain others emphatically banned. But in the midst of exacting demands on some point or other one lights on a gracious phrase such as “We know you will share our anxiety that the book should be as perfect as art can make it”; or, this time to the printers, “I am greatly obliged to you for your patience.”
Again, Michael is discovered, in 1901, when a beautiful view from the old bridge at Richmond was threatened by the factory-builder, rushing an urgent whip to their friends. That which went to Mr Sydney Cockerell ran:
If you think our rulers incompetent, prove yourself a competent subject. The competent subject does not plead evening engagements when a buttercup piece of his England, with elms for shade and a stretch of winding stream for freshness, is about to be wrenched away. He toddles over to the Lebanon estate, notes the marked trees, learns what trees are already felled, makes himself unhappy ... and then goes home and writes to the papers.
In a letter to Mr Havelock Ellis, in May 1886, there is a picturesque but concise statement of the manner of the poets’ collaboration: