But in Scene 2 levity is turned to fear. Cesare, who was last in his brother’s company two nights before at a banquet given by their mother, Vanozza de’ Catanei, is commanded to the Pope’s presence, and succeeds in turning his father’s suspicion in the direction of the Orsini. In Scene 3 the Pope, in desperate anxiety, is watching from a window of the Vatican the darkening Tiber, where fishermen are dragging for Giovanni’s body. He turns suddenly to the cardinals about him:

As he wrathfully dismisses the circle Madonna de’ Catanei enters:

At this moment a waterman is brought in. He relates how he saw a body brought down to the Tiber, and where it was flung into it. A messenger is sent to direct the dragging of the fishermen to the spot he indicates; and the Pope returns to the window to watch the lights of their boats. The psychology of this passage will be observed. When the Chamberlain enters and gives the Pope the fatal news he appears not to hear, but continues something he had been saying. Then he is silent while rapid question and answer pass between the cardinals; but at the mention of Giovanni’s wounds he falls to the ground with a cry:

One must not stop to analyse the play, or even this first act, completely. But one ought at least to indicate its extraordinary combination of subtlety with passion. In the scenes we have glanced at, the Pope passes from pole to pole of his nature. The poets have the difficult task of indicating this transit—;from vast sorrow and horror, through remorse and penitence, suspicion, wrath, and dread at the accusation laid against Cesare, to forgiveness, reconciliation, compliance, and even a compact with Giovanni’s murderer. In a cold historical statement one either finds these facts incredible, or is tempted to account for them, in Renaissance fashion, by believing the Borgia nature to have been something monstrous and unhuman. From the artistic standpoint such a transition would appear well-nigh impossible to represent convincingly. Yet it is done, and we never question that the thing really happened so. The means used to this end are often very quiet. By the lightest touches—;a broken phrase, an exclamation, or even a silence—;the poet will register the swiftly changing current of emotion. One cannot easily illustrate this by quotation; but an example occurs in a passage already quoted—;that in which the Pope, having seen a vision of Giovanni, is filled with remorse. It will be remembered that he rails against his children, and particularly Lucrezia. Yet two minutes afterward, when he inquires for her and is informed that she is praying in the convent, he murmurs “Sweet soul!”; and one sees his rage and remorse crumble, and the whole fabric of his penitence come toppling down. In touches like this the incredible is made to look only too easy to the ductile Borgia temperament. But they are often the merest hints, as in this tiny masterpiece, Scene 4. The papal Court is by this time seething with rumour. Suspicion has fallen upon one after another of the enemies of Giovanni; but within the innermost circle there is a whisper that Cesare was the murderer. It is this that has driven Lucrezia to her convent; but at midnight she creeps out and comes to Cesare:

One leaves Borgia reluctantly, having done so much less than justice to it: nevertheless, it is refreshing to turn to Deirdre after an atmosphere so charged and tropical. Not that Deirdre is set on any lower plane of emotion, for it also deals with vast passions. But in this play we pass visibly to a more northerly latitude, to an austerer race and a more primitive age; and it is in an air swept clean by storm that the business of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind goes forward.

Michael Field has made a noble rendering of this old Irish story which, its subject dating from the first century, suggests a cause no less remote than that for the ancient feud between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. The story is well known: the birth of Deirdre and the prophecies of doom to Ulster through her; the defiance of the doom by Conchobar the king, and the fostering of Deirdre to be his wife; the carrying off of Deirdre on the eve of her wedding by Naisi and their flight to Alba; the invitation to Naisi and his brothers to return under Conchobar’s promise of forgiveness; and the treacherous assassination of them upon their arrival. There are many variants of the legend; and our poet has chosen the oldest of them all, that preserved in the Book of Leinster, for the chief events of her drama. She was compelled to alter the story at one point, for it would hardly have been convenient to represent the Sons of Usnach slain, all three at one stroke, by the magic sword. But in varying the manner of their death she was enabled to adopt another form of the legend, in which Naisi and his two brothers were overcome by a Druid’s enchantment, and, believing themselves to be drowning, dropped their weapons and were immediately overpowered by Conchobar’s men. There was, however, a difficulty here too; for whereas three heads lopped off at one blow was a little too dynamic even for the purposes of drama, an unseen spell of wizardry was altogether too static; and the poet therefore contrived a scene in which Naisi’s comrades are actually drowned, and he, left alone to protect Deirdre, is slain by Eogan.

Another modification, with less warrant from the documents, perhaps, but of even greater interest, is that which introduces into this primitive world the first gleam of Christianity. The fact might suggest that the Deirdre play was written after the poets’ conversion, did one not know that they were at work on the theme some time before. But it is extremely probable that the passage in which the wise woman Lebarcham tries to turn Conchobar from brooding on vengeance by the tale of a new god who refused to avenge himself on his enemies was inserted after the first draft of the play was made. It is written in prose, and, placed at the beginning of Act III, hardly affects the subsequent action. From that point of view it might be considered superfluous; but Michael, though not Henry, was capable of so much over-zeal. She was, however, also capable of justifying her act artistically. The interpolation is at least not an anachronism. It is possible, there in Ireland, that even so early had penetrated “the story of how a god met his death ... young, radiant ... bearing summer in his hands.” But it might have been a menace to the unity of the drama: it might have destroyed the satisfying wholeness which, in whatever form one finds it, the pagan story possesses. Michael Field avoided that calamity. She threw her glimmer of Christian light across the scene in such a way that it reveals more strongly by contrast the dark elements of which the story is composed. By it one instinctively measures the barbarity of the age out of which the story came, and realizes its antiquity. The poet does not allow it to influence action, for that would weaken the tragedy; but she uses the occasion to humanize and make credible that which, in the Conchobar of the records, seems almost monstrous. In those ancient tales Conchobar plans his vengeance on Naisi and his brothers with a coldness that is diabolic and a precision almost mechanical. He provides for his own safety, too, with comical caution, carefully sounding one after another of his knights until he finds one who does not immediately threaten to kill him for suggesting such a dastardly deed as the murder of the Sons of Usnach. Yet, as our poet has re-created Conchobar, he is a human soul driven this way and that in a running fight with passion; pitiable in his hopeless love for Deirdre, comprehensible in his wrath against Naisi, sinister and terrifying in his revenge. And underneath the overt drama lies a profounder irony; for while he is plotting in his heart the enormous treachery, Lebarcham tells of the young god who was betrayed by his friends, and he says:

The play is written in five acts and a prologue; but is not divided into scenes. Its form is for the most part blank verse—;the iambic pentameter of Michael Field which is so often neither iambic nor a pentameter. Her verse is, indeed, a very variable line, changing its unit as frequently as will consist with a regular form; and as flexible, sinewy, and nervous as will consist with dignity, grace, and splendid colour. Prose passages occur in Acts III and V; and a form of lyrical rhapsody is used to express the Druid prophecies and Deirdre’s lament. The use of lyrics in her drama was not new to Michael Field, who from the beginning could always relieve the strain of intense emotion by a graceful song. But in this case she is following, with her accustomed fidelity, lines laid down in older renderings of the legend.

The most notable feature of this play is its ending. No author of the more important modern versions of this theme has dared to take his conclusion from the oldest one of all. Usually he has preferred the variant which tells of Deirdre, broken-hearted at Naisi’s murder, falling dead into his grave. This is, of course, in some respects a more ‘poetic’ passing: it lends itself to romantic treatment, and its tragedy is more immediate and final. Moreover, from the dramaturgic point of view the action is easier to handle and more certain of its effect. Michael Field was not, however, attracted by mere facility. Truth drew her with a stronger lure, and to her the more ancient story would make a claim deeper than loyalty. For she would see Deirdre’s survival not only as a more probable thing, but as something more profoundly tragic; and the manner of her death, when it came, as more clearly of a piece with the old saga and essentially of Deirdre’s wilful and resolute character.

Deirdre is no Helen, though her legend has features so similar. The mere outline of her which the old story gives indicates a creature who will compel destiny rather than suffer it; and our poet has but completed, imaginatively, what the original suggests—;a girl whose instinct of chastity drives her away from marriage without love; whose ardour and courage claim her proper mate; whose fidelity keeps her unalterably true; and whose head is at least as sound as her heart is tender. For although she is a rather tearful creature, she is also very astute; and Naisi need not have died quite so young if he had only listened to her warning and condescended to take her advice. Deirdre is, in short, of her race and of her time as surely as Lucrezia Borgia is a daughter of Pope Alexander VI and a child of the Italian Renaissance. Michael Field’s range in the creation of women characters is very wide, and the verisimilitude with which she presents natures so alien from herself as the courtesan and the voluptuary might be astonishing if one thought of her simply as a Victorian lady, and not as a great creative artist. Nevertheless, in the re-creation of Deirdre one feels that she must have taken an especial joy, as witness the opening passage of Act I, where Lebarcham and Medv the nurse are discussing their fosterling. It is the morning of her sixteenth birthday, and King Conchobar is coming to the little secluded house where Deirdre has been brought up to claim her as his bride:

Again, in the same first act, when Deirdre has prevailed on Lebarcham to bring Naisi to the hut, and the two have spoken of their love, it is she who at once perceives where that confession must lead. Naisi would rather kiss and part than rob the mighty Conchobar of his bride. But for Deirdre, having kissed, there shall be no parting:

It is, however, in the last act that Michael Field again triumphantly proves her mettle as poet and dramatist. She had stubborn material here, harsh and crude stuff which kept the poets long at bay. For Deirdre’s end as related by the old bard is a bit of primitive savagery matched in terms of the plainest realism. Conchobar, after Naisi is enticed back to Ulster and murdered, takes possession of Deirdre; and she remains in his house for a year. But her constant reproaches and lamentation weary him; and at last, in order to subdue her, he threatens to lend her for a year to the man she hates most, Eogan, the slayer of Naisi. She is thereupon driven off in Eogan’s chariot, apparently subdued, seated in shame between him and Conchobar. At a gross taunt from Conchobar, however, she springs up, and flings herself out upon the ground. “There was a large rock near: she hurled her head at the stone so that she broke her skull, and killed herself.”

Our poet does not try to make this pretty or pleasing: and at one point at least she uses the exact terminology of the translation from which she worked. Its brutal elements are not disguised: Deirdre’s humiliation and the animal rage of Conchobar and Eogan remain hideous even after the poet, accepting all the material, has wrought it into a tragedy of consummate beauty. Its beauty has, indeed, more terror than pity in it—;it is brimmed with life’s actual bitterness—;but the depth and power of this Deirdre are not equalled by any other.

In quoting the closing passage of the play one does not afflict the reader by a comment on it; but there is a technical point which should be noticed. It is the device of the Messenger by which the poet avoids the representation of Deirdre’s death. The manner of that death was not only too awkward to present, but its horror as a spectacle was too great for artistic control. In causing it to be related by the charioteer Fergna, the poet has, in classic fashion, removed it from actual vision, but has enabled the mind to contemplate what the eyes could not have borne to look upon.

The chariot has driven off with Deirdre, Eogan, and Conchobar; and Lebarcham watches it till it passes out of sight beyond the mound that marks Naisi’s grave. Then she turns away, lamenting; and suddenly Fergna, the charioteer, re-enters, scared and breathless:

* * *

In concluding this very brief survey of Michael Field’s life and poetry, one turns back with a sense of illumination to her sonnet called The Poet, which has been already quoted. For therein Michael Field has indicated the nature of her own genius and the conditions of its activity. She was not thinking of herself, of course, but of the poetic nature in the abstract, when she declared in the first two lines of the sestet that the poet is

Those verses apply in some degree to the whole race of poets, which is, indeed, the test of their truth. Yet it is significant that in choosing precisely that form of expression for the truth, Michael Field has inadvertently stated the essential meaning of her own life, of her long service to literature, and of the peculiar greatness and possible limitation of her poetry.

“A work of some strange passion.” Strange, indeed, and in many ways. For, first, it is no common thing to find, in a world preoccupied with traffic and ambition, two souls completely innocent of both. Not small souls, nor stupid nor ignorant ones—;as clever people might aver in order to account for the phenomenon—;but of full stature, intelligent, level-headed, and with their sober measure of English common sense. They knew themselves, too—;were aware that they possessed genius, that they had first-rate minds and were artists of great accomplishment. Moreover, for the larger part of their life they were on terms with ‘the world’; they welcomed experience as few Victorian women dared, gathered knowledge eagerly wherever it was to be found, and had business ability sufficient to direct prudently their own affairs.

They would have denied that there was anything of the fanatic or the visionary in the dedication of themselves to their art, believing fanaticism to be incongruous with the undiluted English strain of which they boasted. And, indeed, there is something typical of the race in this deliberate setting of a course and dogged persistence in it. Yet there is hardly an English precedent for their career; and it is to France one must look—;to the Goncourts or to Erckmann-Chatrian—;to match the long collaboration, or to find similar examples of their artistic method. And not even there, so far as I know, will be found another such case of disinterested service.

But the lines we have noted have an application to the work as well as to the life of Michael Field. They may be used almost literally, to summarize in a convenient definition the nature of her poetry. For in this body of work one sees passion as an almost over-powering element, and it is of surprising strangeness. However fully one may recognize the truth that there is no sex in genius, I suppose that we shall always be startled at the appearance of an Emily Brontë or a Michael Field. They seem such slight instruments for the primeval music that the earth-mother plays upon them. And their vehemence mingles so oddly with tenderer and more delicate strains that it will always be possible for a reviewer to sneer at what is “to the Greeks foolishness”—;he having no perception of the fact that in gentleness added to strength a larger humanity is expressed. Such an eye as Meredith’s could perceive that, and, catching sight of some reviewing stupidity about it, would flash lightnings of wrath in that direction, and send indignant sympathy to the poets.

There is strangeness, too, of another kind in the passion which was the impulse of this poetry. Under the restraint that art has put upon it, it is, as we have seen, an elemental thing. It is a creative force akin to that of Emily Brontë or of Byron, and is tamer than their wild genius only in appearance. Its more ordered manner grew from two causes: that one of the collaborators blessedly possessed a sense of form, and that both of them lived withdrawn from the brawl of life. They were placed, perhaps, a little too far from “Time’s harsh drill.” Their lives were, on the whole, easier and happier ones than are given to most people. That is why the loss of their Chow dog caused them a grief which seems exaggerated to minds not so sensitively tuned as theirs. Until the agony of the last three years overtook them, their share of the common lot of sorrow had been the barest minimum: adversity did not so much as look their way: poverty laid no finger on them, and was but vaguely apprehended, in the distance, as something pitiful for its ugliness. Therefore, secure and leisured, they envisaged life, in the main, through art, through philosophy, through literature, and hardly ever through the raw stuff of life itself. And thence comes the peculiar character which the passion of their poetry acquired, as of some fierce creature caught and bound in golden chains.

It may be that this seclusion from life will be felt in Michael Field’s poetry as a limitation; that the final conviction imposed upon the mind by the authority of experience is wanting; and that the work lacks a certain dry wisdom of which difficult living is a necessary condition. It may be so; but I do not think the stricture a valid charge against their work, first because of our poets’ great gift of imagination, and second because they chose so rightly their artistic medium. Comedy may require the discipline of experience, the observing eye constantly fixed upon the object, and a rich knowledge of the world; but surely tragedy requires before everything else creative imagination, sympathy, and a certain greatness of heart and mind. Those gifts Michael Field possessed in very large degree; so large that one often stands in amazement before the protagonists of her drama, demanding, in the name of all things wonderful, how two Victorian women “ever came to think of that.” A Renaissance pope, a Saxon peasant, or a priest of Dionysos—;decadent emperors, austere Roman patriots, or a Frankish king turned monk—;those are only a few of the surprising creatures of her imagination, conceived not as historical figures merely, but as living souls. And by the range of her women characters—;from the dignity of a Julia Domna to the wild-rose sweetness of a Rosamund; from the Scottish Mary, with her rich capacity for loving, to the fierce chastity of an Irish Deirdre, or the soul of goodness in a courtesan; from the subtlety of a Lucrezia Borgia to the proud singleness of a Mariamne; from the virago-venom of an Elinor to the sensitive simplicity of a country-girl, or the wrong-headedness of a little princess whose instincts have been perverted by frustration—;Michael Field has greatly enriched the world’s knowledge of womanhood.

She did not set out to do that, of course. Her sanity is evident once more in the moderation with which she held her feminist sympathies, despite the clamour of the time and the provocation she received from masculine mishandling of her work. Herein too she had removed herself from “Time’s harsh drill,” having too great a reverence for her art to use it for the purposes of propaganda. That fact leads us again to her sonnet and the light it throws upon herself. For in studying her work one sees that she fulfilled completely her own conception of the poet—;as an artist withdrawn from the common struggle to wrestle with a fiercer power, and subdue it to a shape of recognizable beauty.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Of the works of Michael Field, published to 1919