Michael Field and Fin de Siecle Culture and Society MICHAEL FIELD AND FIN-DE-SIECLE CULTURE & SOCIETY The Journals, 1868-1914, and Correspondence of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper from the British Library, London Contents listing PUBLISHER'S NOTE EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION BY DR MARION THAIN CONTENTS OF REELS DETAILED LISTING BRIEF CHRONOLOGY Michael Field and Fin de Siecle Culture and Society Publisher's Note The “binary star” – as Browning called them - that was ‘Michael Field’, shone brightly from the first appearance of their play Callirrhoe in 1884 to their deaths in 1913/14. Katharine Harris Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece, Edith Emma Cooper (1862-1913), collaborated in writing verse and drama and were “closer married” than many of their heterosexual friends. They were familiar figures in the art world and were close friends with Berenson and Ruskin. Robert Browning was the first to acclaim their “genius” in poetry and they were widely published in periodicals. Collected volumes of poetry included Bellerophon, Underneath the Bough, Long Ago, Sight and Song, Poems of Adoration and Mystic Trees. They also wrote 27 dramas, mainly based on legends and historical figures, many of which explore the relationship between love and death. Given the range of their interests and the wealth of their connections, they are ideally situated to illuminate many aspects of late Victorian and early Modernist culture. Their diaries and letters are both voluminous and clearly written – yet they have remained inaccessible to most scholars until now. There is much on: Death – which assumed a central role in Victorian culture following the death of Prince Albert in 1861 – is a recurring theme in their diaries and their works. They do not merely note the passing of Arnold, Browning, Whitman and Tennyson – they describe ritual and remembrance with descriptions of funerals, clippings from the press and poems written for the occasion. They explore their feelings and record the reactions of others. The same attention is provided for the deaths of family members and favourite dogs. The death of Queen Victoria provokes an outpouring of reflections on the importance of the Queen and the character of the Victorian Age. Sex – the 1880s and 1890s were a time of sexual experimentation and scandal. Their own same-sex relationship changed over time from that of artistic collaborators in the style of Beaumont of Fletcher, to that of soul mates and lovers, and is beautifully described in the diaries and letters. There is also much on their homosexual and bisexual friends and acquaintances such as Ricketts and Shannon, J A Symonds, Oscar Wilde and Alfred Douglas. Religion – there is much on spirituality in the diaries, from accounts of dreams featuring the deceased, to contemplation of the importance of mystery. Their own conversion from Paganism to Catholicism is described and their correspondence with John Gray and Ruskin explores the importance of vows, the attraction of mystery, and the role of religion in human life. Art – there are many first-hand accounts of galleries visited and exhibitions attended in Britain, France and Italy. There are anecdotes of Millais and Rossetti, Walter Pater and Vernon Lee, and discussions of aestheticism. Correspondence with Bernard Berenson in London, Florence and America explores issues of taste and value. Literature – French and English writing is examined in detail, from George Meredith to Paul Verlaine. They list the books they read and give their reactions. There is a wonderful description of their visit to the bookseller to purchase a Yellow Book which “is full of cleverness such as one expects to find in those who dwell below light + hope + love + aspiration”. Contemporary theatre is well documented, including the reception of their works. Early correspondence with Browning discusses their identity and the evolution of their writing, giving a fascinating glimpse into the role of a literary mentor. There are also subversive ideas about the “great illusion” of the Victorian age and issues such as education, the franchise, free trade unions, class, science and imperialism. Dr Marion Thain provides a detailed introduction to the diaries and letters, setting these in context. A brief listing of the key subjects and events covered by the diaries has also been supplied to help readers. <back Michael Field and Fin de Siecle Culture and Society Editorial Introduction by Dr Marion Thain This microfilm facsimile copy includes the 30 volumes of diary material of ‘Michael Field’, together with 8 bound volumes of correspondence between Michael Field and others, held in the British Library.1 Michael Field was an aunt and niece couple who not only published poetry and drama under the single male pseudonym, but who also lived their lives through that name, among other sobriquets. Katharine Bradley, the aunt (1846-1914), was known primarily as ‘Michael’ to her friends, but was also commonly called Sim by her lifelong companion and niece, Edith Cooper (1862-1913). Cooper was known primarily as ‘Henry’ or ‘Field’, but other names proliferate in the diaries. The name ‘Michael Field’ is therefore a bipartite name, signifying the assumed names of two separate women, as well as appearing to signify one single male identity: Bradley and Cooper used the composite single name ‘Michael Field’ to represent their unity in both literary and personal arenas. The two women were everything to each other. When Cooper’s mother was invalided after the birth of her younger sister, Bradley stepped in and took on the role not only of aunt but also of guardian and teacher; soon the two women were also filling the roles of mother and daughter, sisters, literary collaborators, and, eventually, lovers. In 1884 (when Cooper was 22, and Bradley 38) they published their first work in the name of Michael Field - the verse-drama Callirrhoë. From then on their lives became intertwined in the identity of Michael Field. Bradley and Cooper’s life-narrative, recounted in both letters and diaries, is split along some very dramatic fault-lines. The early conversion to Paganism (on the acquisition of a pet Skye Terrier) was mirrored by an equally cataclysmic conversion to Catholicism (on the death of a pet Chow dog, much later on in their lives). It is a life-story with a dramatic tripartite structure in which the protagonists are involved in key moments of transition. The story of Michael Field is based around a complex and compelling personal mythology, but there is a danger of only ever labelling Bradley and Cooper as eccentric, and seeing the madness of their personal symbolism, and never seeing their story as engaged fully with the major issues of the period. Rather, their lives display a thorough engagement with the late-Victorian and early twentieth-century world, both in terms of the people with whom they associate, the issues with which they are concerned, and also in the manner in which they choose to construct their narrative. In their work we often see ingenious and unusual approaches to paradigmatic turn-of-the- century concerns. The Diaries There is no autobiography of ‘Michael Field’ as such, but the life-story of the two women is represented in the 28 large volumes of diaries which they co-wrote. The diary is (except for an anomalous first volume) specifically the diary of Michael Field, not that of Edith Cooper and Katharine Bradley, and begins in 1888 when Edith was 26 and Katharine 42, after they had established their dual identity. The first volume of the diaries is an exception, written by Bradley on her own during an extended trip to Paris in 1868-9. This narrative is dominated by the death of Alfred Gérente, the brother of her friend, to whom she had formed a passionate romantic attachment. Volumes 2 to 29 cover the years from 1888 to Katharine’s death in 1914, and bear the title ‘Works and Days’, inscribed in the front of volume 2. Volume 30 contains miscellaneous, loose material collected from vols. 1-28 into two separate folders. In Bradley and Cooper’s published drama and poetry, the pseudonym can be understood, at least initially, as a deliberate ploy to persuade the general public that they are receiving work from a single male author (and the function of the pseudonym in the published work is much discussed by critics2), but in the diaries that are reproduced here, the name has no such function. In their life-writing, the women’s self-creation through this sobriquet expresses their unity, but it does not efface their distinctness: the diaries do not pretend to record the life of a single male, as two different hands record the experience of two clearly differentiated personas. Clearly the name ‘Michael Field’ was much more than a literary pseudonym: it was an expression of their actual, lived, identity. The diaries are hardbound, scrapbook-size volumes, bound with dark blue board or vellum. Even after disregarding the typed indexes and the pencil-marked editorial comments left by Thomas Sturge Moore (Michael Field’s literary executor) when he edited the text into the selected published volume, Works and Days3, one is left with a carefully constructed set of diaries which were clearly conceived of by the authors as constituting a book rather than simply a repository for odds and ends and personal reminders. The first volume of the Michael Field diary proper (1888-89) has the title of the whole work – Works and Days – added retrospectively, squeezed in at the top of the first page, above the first line of text which had been written on the top printed line of the page. At some point the women have gone back with a red pen and used it to organise the volume, adding other subtitles to the volume in the same red ink – such as ‘French Books’ heading a list at the back of this volume of French titles.