As to our work, let no man think he can put asunder what God has joined. The Father’s Tragedy, save Emmeline’s song and here and there a stray line, is indeed Edith’s work: for the others, the work is perfect mosaic: we cross and interlace like a company of dancing summer flies; if one begins a character, his companion seizes and possesses it; if one conceives a scene or situation, the other corrects, completes, or murderously cuts away.
To the same correspondent she wrote in 1889, on the subject of religion:
If I may say so, I am glad of what you feel about the Son of Man, the divineness of His love and purposes towards the world. There is an atrocious superstition about me that I am orthodox ... whereas I am Christian, pagan, pantheist, and other things the name of which I do not know; and the only people with whom I cannot be in sympathy are those who fail to recognize the beauty of Christ’s life, and do not care to make their own lives in temper like His.
And in 1891, because Henry was recovering from her Dresden illness, Michael wrote in jocular mood:
As you are a follower of Dionysos, I charge you get me Greek wine. The Herr Geheimrath has ordered it for several weeks for Edith, and in England they make as though they know it not.
One finds in letters to Miss Louie Ellis amusing evidence of both our poets’ love of beautiful clothes, as well as of Michael’s gift of humorous expression. Thus, in 1895, just before a visit to Italy, she wrote:
I dream an evening frock to wear at Asolo. It is of a soft black, frail and billowy, and its sleeves are in part of this, with silvery white satin ribbon tied about. If you have a better dream, send word; if not, tell me how much (I mean how little) the gown would be. I want this to be not expensive—;not the evening gown, but an evening gown.
And later, after the frock was received, she wrote:
How often, from “Afric’s coral strand,” will a voice of praise go up to Louie for that perfect silk gown; I shall want to be in little black frills for ever.... Do you know where in the city I can get a big shady hat to wear with it in Italy? Not a monster, but of a kind Theocritus would admire.
The following too brief passages are from some of Michael’s letters to the Rothensteins: the occasion of the first being to commiserate them on the discomforts of a removal: