Of course the shock was great and the struggle very hard at first. I write this that you may both understand 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:
Think of us as living in retreat, as indeed we are.... Henry has very sharp pains, with moments of agony every day to bear. The Beloved is showing 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 1911, I stood in 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 1912, 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 1913, from the Masefields’ house at 13 Well Walk, Hampstead (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 hæmorrhage 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 1914, however, she was at work again, collecting early poems of Henry’s to 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.