Michael Field — Reading Notes

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 Collège de France, Newnham, University College, Bristol, and numerous private tutors) fruits more solid and mature than even Katharine herself.

When the poets removed to Stoke Bishop, Bristol, in 1878 it was with intellectual appetites 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 Francesca,” 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 in morning sunlight their strenuous happy existence, their eager welcome to the best that life could offer, and their fortunate freedom to grasp it, whether it were in books or art, in sunny aspects or beautiful new Morris designs and textures. 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! Flaubert, Verlaine, with all those Precious, little things in prose, Bliss-compelling, Howsoe’er the story goes:

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 Katharine 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 ‘æsthetic dress’ was being very consciously worn--all by the same kind of people. Katharine 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, and were deeply interested in ethical matters. They were devotees of reason, and would subscribe to no creed. Katharine was a prime mover of the Anti-Vivisection Society in Clifton, 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 garments in ‘art’ colours, and dressed their hair in a loose knot at the nape of the neck.