Ep. 3 Michael's Wilde Adventures

Michael Field is the toast of the town. They are rubbing shoulders with Oscar Wilde — he’s a fan! Edith falls for another. What will this mean for Michael Field?

EPISODE LYRICS

EDITH'S WALTZ
We go into our bedroom which leads from the salon — 
it looks impossible at first sight — so small a bed. 
We have a sense we are beginning a life 
in which the impossible becomes possible.

As I pass through the door Bernhard says 
“How charming you are looking” 
and I feel an angry self-depreciation at the remark… 
After a walk with Bernhard 
we light our own lamp in the dark salon.
 A young Americaine comes in 
— a little shapely dusk thing, 
with fire-flies in her pupils 
 A despair lies over me —
I cannot play with life as she can.
 Bernhard plays too, 
and I feel heavy.

In course of conversation he says that a 
“place becomes provincial by believing it is not so. 
No place is so provincial as London”. 

The Americaine goes — will Bernhard go 
is a question that almost stops my heart. 
Yes — he gives his hand to all, and goes. 

There is no beauty like freedom.
No grace that must not be foregone for freedom.

Mary shows me the studio under our vine tree where a painter lives with his mistress. We seem to live in the air of a French novel. 

At Duval’s we chose a table 
They come in. 
We watch them
They come up to us,
Bernhard says:

“Miss Cooper and I should marry and be miserable ever after.” 

I am powerless to shake off such remarks with irony or wit.
 I suffer and I hate. 
But it is true — we give one another no pleasure; 
the fascination we have for each other 
makes us wretched.

DEEP APRIL
It was deep April, and the morn
Shakespeare was born;
The world was on us, pressing sore;
My love and I took hands and swore,
 Against the world, to be
Poets and lovers evermore,
To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore,
To sing to Charon in his boat,
Heartening the timid souls afloat;
Of judgement never to take heed,
But to those fast-locked souls to speed,
Who never from Apollo fled,
Who spent no hour among the dead;
Continually
With them to dwell,
Indifferent to heaven and hell.

Veritable Michael — a podcast opera
This podcast captures the making of Veritable Michael, a new opera based on the true story of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper — two Victorian poets who lived, loved and wrote under the pseudonym, Michael Field. This podcast combines Katherine's and Edith's journals, poetry and letters with an original score by Tom Floyd, and interviews with guest speakers. Join the Shadow Opera team as we dive into Michael's fascinating and queer world.
Support the show

A full transcript of this episode can be found here.

Veritable Michael  is a Shadow Opera production.
Music composed by Tom Floyd.
Words by Michael Field.
Created and produced by Sophie Goldrick and Tom Floyd.
Artwork by James Long.

Performances by Lizzie Holmes, Sophie Goldrick, James Long and Patrick Neyman.

Thanks to our guest speakers, Professor Marion Thain, Dr Ana Parejo Vadillo and Dr Sarah Parker.

Veritable Michael is generously supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, The Stephen Oliver Award and The Countess of Munster Musical Trust and our incredible band of crowd-funders.

For more information go to our Instagram. 

Transcript

Sophie Goldrick  0:04  
This podcast captures the making of Veritable Michael, a new opera by Tom Floyd and Sophie Goldrick. In May 1884, London awoke to the news of an exciting new playwright and poet bursting onto the scene to rave reviews. Michael Field not only won the praise of the papers, but also piqued the interest of literary giants Robert Browning and Oscar Wilde. But Michael was hiding a secret

Veritable Michael tells the true story of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, two poets who lived, loved and wrote under the pen name, Michael Field, and their struggle with Victorian patriarchy.

Welcome to Episode Three. To bring us up to speed. We've heard the origin story of Michael Field, how Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper pledged themselves in artistic and romantic union under that name. Their first offering was received rapturously by the critics. Robert Browning wrote a fan letter to Michael Field in the hopes of soliciting his identity and starstruck Edith replied to Browning revealing their secret identity. This juicy gossip ended up being leaked to the newspapers, and Katherine dispatched a ferocious letter to Browning, furious with him for his indiscretion. So what did this revelation mean? Was their unmasking the end of their writing career? In this episode, we are checking in with Michael Field a few years after the first plays were published. Interestingly, Katherine and Edith have continued to write under the name Michael Field even after their identity was revealed. This hasn't ended their career, although the initial excitement of the critics has cooled. In fact, in the intervening years, they have been busier than ever. This episode begins in 1891. And Michael Field has published seven more verse dramas and a collection of poetry to boot. 

In case you don't have time or inclination to read all seven plays. Here's a quick fire summary for you. The Father's Tragedy: A Medieval Scottish king, wayward son and conniving uncle with a Duchess scorned and mad as hell, a bit like the Lion King, but not as happy an ending. William Rufus about the war-waging, monk-murdering King of England his poor subjects starving to death in an upstairs-downstairs view of medieval life. There's even a local council meeting. He gets shot "by accident" in the New Forest and nobody really minds. Loyalty or Love, which the tale of love, nationhood and political intrigue in Palermo in the 1100s. Somewhere between House of Cards and Love Island. The Tragic Mary about the long suffering Mary Queen of Scots who had a generally tough time. Brutus Ultor: to Ancient Rome where Brutus must deal justice to his traitorous sons and Lucretia take her own life after denouncing her rapist... so that's cheery. And finally Canute the Great is a pretty confusing sprawling Norse epic with another awesome witchy woman and the OG Cougar, aiming her affections at a much younger man. Go girl. 

These plays have had mixed reviews in the press, but some of their peers are definitely fans. Oscar Wilde said they made Mary Queen of Scots quote, "closer to flesh and blood" than other playwrights had. While impacting their critical reception, the intrigue of their identity has made them quite in-demand as guests among London's fashionable set. Michael Field's celebrity brought Katherine and Edith in contact with other renowned writers, which they reveled in, though it also meant keeping the company of society ladies, which they loathed. We find in the diaries of 1891 and 1892, a number of invitation cards to attend concerts, private gallery exhibitions and 'at-homes', soirees where writers and fashionable socialites might rub shoulders and sip champagne. Very fabulous indeed. A number of important acquaintances of Michael Field were made in the living room of one Mrs. Chandler-Moulton, a visiting American and talented poet in her own right. She had married a wealthy publisher who supported her writing and, having had a rather severe and lonely Calvinist upbringing, she became a passionate party giver. Her 'at-homes' appear many times in the diary and brought Michael Field in the orbit of Oscar Wilde. The encounter was helpfully documented by Katherine in their diary so naturally, this is a scene we will explore in our opera. It's not finished yet, but we wanted  to whet your appetite with their conversation. So here's Katherine's entry in the diary 

Katherine Bradley  5:06  
July 21 1890, Edith continued the conversation for I, from afar, recognised Oscar Wilde and desired to make his better acquaintance. He has a brown skin and coarse texture, incentive surface and no volcanic blood fructifying it from within. Powerful features, a firm jaw and fine head with hair that one feels was more beautiful some years ago. It is pathetic when bright hair simply glows dull instead of turning grey. The whole face wears an aspect of stubborn sense, but the dominant trait of that face is humour.

Oscar Wilde  5:49  
There is only one man in this century who can write prose

Katherine Bradley  5:52  
You mean Mr. Pater?

Oscar Wilde  5:54  
Yes! Take Marius the Epicurean, any page! French is wonderfully rich in colour words.

Katherine Bradley  6:02  
We agreed English was poor in such. I instanced bluish-grey as a miserable effort. And he dwelt on the full pleasantness and charm of the French colour words ending in -artre, bleuartre, etc. We agreed the whole problem of life turns on pleasure.

Oscar Wilde  6:25  
One is not always happy when one is good, but one is always good when one is happy.

Katherine Bradley  6:31  
He has a theory...

Oscar Wilde  6:33  
It's often genius that spoils the work of art. The Brontes, Jane Austen, George Sand, I class them all under the head of 'genius'. Genius killed the Brontes.

Katherine Bradley  6:44  
There is one sentence of Mr. Paters I would not say I could never forgive, for I recognise its justice, but from which I suffer and which is hard to bear, that in which he speaks of 'scholarly conscience' as male. I do not remember where the passage occurs.

Oscar Wilde  7:04  
It is Appreciations, in the essay on Style. Page seven, left hand side, at the bottom.

Katherine Bradley  7:11  
And in all this memory the one error was that it is page eight.

Sophie Goldrick  7:26  
Oscar Wilde receives recurring mentions in the diary from both Katherine and Edith over the years. We can see that they were in the same social scene and it's clear there's a mutual respect between them. Though no acquaintance of Michael Field was immune to their knack for scathing criticism, least of all Wilde, though he famously held his own in this shady arena. So I'd like to think of it as a meeting of equals. I chatted about this with Sarah Parker.

I'll just read this little quote here, it's from 1891 so this is a little bit later. This is Edith. "We visit Oscar Wilde, being received by Mrs. Oscar in turquoise blue, white frills and amber stockings. The afternoon goes on in dull fashion until Oscar enters. He wears a lilac shirt, heliotrope tie, a great primrose pink, a very Celtic combination, ma fois!  His large presence beams with a mirth of a Greek god that has descended on a fat man of literary habits." Which I just think is hilarious and paints a brilliant picture of of him. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what significance as an aesthetic, as a writer, anything you know about the relationship he had with Michael Field?

Dr. Sarah Parker  8:42  
Yeah. So I, looking into this again, reminding myself and I just put down "love/hate relationship". I feel it's... so that description. I mean, it's obviously got slightly insulting element to it, but it feels like they start out with this admiration for him. And I think just before that, that meeting you just described, Katherine Bradley kind of makes a beeline for him at this party. She's... I think it's George Moore that's talking to her she's like, "Yeah, get out of the way, that's wild over there." So you can see that there's... and then they have this wonderful conversation about our words for colours. That's it in in the English language. 

Sophie Goldrick  9:21  
Bleuartre

Dr. Sarah Parker  9:21  
Yeah, exactly. So So I went back and kind of reminded my myself of that, because the bits I remembered was what happens later when he snubs them in an art gallery because they've been rained on and they're not looking so hot that day. And then suddenly those descriptions of him that are, yeah, slightly catty, but also interestingly evocative and kind of charming in their own way, suddenly turned into even more insulting right? He just becomes this elephantine...

Sophie Goldrick  9:55  
Elephantine is the word that's used

Dr. Sarah Parker  9:58  
there's there's definitely I think... interestingly... kind of anti-Irish...

Sophie Goldrick  10:05  
Yeah, slightly racist overtones. 

Dr. Sarah Parker  10:07  
Yeah. I'm so glad I didn't have to break it to you about Michael Field's horrible conservativism. You should talk to Alex Murray who's been, yeah, he gave a paper about this, talked about Katherine Bradley waving a copy of the Daily Mail at the Sun...not the Sun newspaper!

Sophie Goldrick  10:24  
As the person who's been... because I'm playing Katherine and you know, it's been an interesting one because Edith is arguably the more perhaps alluring of the two characters. And so I find myself having to stick up for Katherine quite a lot, but then sometimes she's indefensible.

Dr. Sarah Parker  10:40  
I mean, I love I say I love just love problematic women writers at this period like I love them. I don't know if you've come across Eliza Lynn Linton, if you haven't, that can be your next opera.  You know, these like anyone who's kind of anti-suffrage and nasty and also usually a bit queer as well I'm just I'm that I'm there is no problem there!

Sophie Goldrick  11:01  
They had no interest in bringing other women along. Really, they're not into a collective movement. They're just like we are all right. We've got enough cash to do whatever we want. We're gonna go do that. Thank you very much. Have a nice life.

Dr. Sarah Parker  11:12  
Exactly. Yeah, totally.

Sophie Goldrick  11:16  
So Katherine and Edith, like all of us, are imperfect creatures. But it took a kind of courage to chart your own course at this time, particularly for a woman. Even now we seem to insist that for women and other marginalised artists is not enough to make great work. You also have to be an activist. This didn't really concern Katherine and Edith. That might make them seem really self-focused, but at this point in their lives, Michael Field's social network was expanding. This included Oscar Wilde of course, but importantly another of Mrs. Chandler-Moulton's  guests, enter Bernhard Berenson.

Katherine and Edith spent 1892 preparing to write their next volume Sight and Songin which they aimed to describe great works of art through poetry. At one of Mrs. Chandler-Moulton 'at-homes', they met Bernhard Berenson, a young American art expert. He was sparkling with knowledge and very handsome also, which let's be honest, didn't hurt. In preparation for their new book, Katherine and Edith gleefully put themselves entirely in his hands. Throughout the winter and spring they are schooled by him in all manner of great paintings, and taken to exhibitions all over London. When the summer comes all head to Paris, the balmy weather, the art, the poetry, all sets the scene for the growing frisson of attraction between Edith and B. B, as he was commonly known, the tension was palpable. However, BB came to Paris with the indomitable Mrs. Mary Costelloe, an American feminist who had an Irish husband she kept somewhere out of the way. Her presence definitely ruffled Edith's feathers, and where was Katherine in all of this?

So Tom, and I were struck by this relationship between Edith and Bernhard. He seems hugely significant in the diary. So I spoke with Marion Thain to discover. Was this one sided fantasy, or perhaps a threat to Michael Field? 

The relationship with Bernhard obviously occupies a huge raft of space in their diary content, and a lot of emotional space for Edith particularly. Could you remark at all on the significance of that obsession, that love relationship? However you might categorise Edith's feelings towards Bernhard?

Dr. Sarah Parker  13:53  
Bernhard Berenson was clearly rather charismatic, clearly a figure who had quite a pull for Edith. What is little known and what what friends and scholars who've been working on on Bernhard Berenson have been been showing me, is that this was some to some extent mutual. So Bernhard Berenson can write very scathingly about both Bradley and Cooper. But actually at times, Bernhard and Mary, Mary Costelloe and Bernhard Berenson were writing about just how incredibly attractive Edith Cooper was, how how charismatic in a sense, she was in her own way to Bernhard. So there's great complexity in that relationship. It's easy to say Bernhard Berenson was just out for everything he could get in that relationship. You know, were they paying him as their tour guide in Italy and then he was you know, kind of ignoring them because he was obsessed with Mary at that time, you can easily write it off in that way. But what what scholars in Italy looking into the Berenson archive are uncovering is a much more nuanced picture from his side as well. We have very clearly documented the obsession with Berenson through the diary. But what's fascinating is there a very complex and nuanced picture from his side coming out of both an attraction, very genuine attraction it seems, but also something that seems like contempt at times as well. So they... every now and again a man comes into their lives and there is attraction there for one or the other of them and this isn't something... a man or indeed a woman comes into their lives and there's that that scenario where perhaps one of them worried a bit about being the other one being stolen away from them. There's all of that going on. And there's these sort of rather complex feelings around these affairs being recorded in the diary. But yes, it's part of that fluidity I think that we're seeing there part of that desire to be able to roam around these spheres in quite subtle and sophisticated and complex ways

Edith Cooper  16:32  
June 26th 1891, Paris    

We go into our bedroom which leads from the salon — it looks impossible at first sight — so small a bed. We have a sense we are beginning a life in which the impossible becomes possible.  As I pass through the door Bernhard says 

Bernhard Berenson  17:01  
“How charming you are looking” 

Edith Cooper  17:05  
and I feel an angry self-depreciation at the remark. After a walk with Bernhard, we light our own lamp in the dark salon. A young Americaine comes in — a little shapely dusk thing, with fireflies in her pupils. A despair lies over me — I cannot play with life as she can. Bernhard plays too, and I feel heavy. 

In course of conversation he says that a 

Bernhard Berenson  18:11  
“place becomes provincial by believing it is not so. No place is so provincial as London”.

Edith Cooper  18:16  
 The Americaine goes — will Bernhard go? is a question that almost stops my heart. Yes — he gives his hand to all, and leaves. There is no beauty like freedom. No grace that must not be foregone for freedom.  

Mary shows me the studio under our vine tree where a painter lives with his mistress. We seem to live in the air of a French novel.  

At Duval’s we chose a table — They come in. We watch them — they come up to us, Bernhard says 

Bernhard Berenson  19:26  
“Miss Cooper and I should marry and be miserable ever after.”   

Edith Cooper  16:35  
I am powerless to shake off such remarks with irony or wit. I suffer, I hate. But it is true — we give one another no pleasure; the fascination we have for each other makes us wretched. 

Lizzie Holmes  20:42  
It's so fun coming out of that song because there's this like whole soundscape as well that Tom has created the clattering...

Sophie Goldrick  20:48  
I love all that foley stuff, that's what's great about doing the podcast, you can really get the sense of place 

Lizzie Holmes  20:53  
Yeah,the clattering of...

Sophie Goldrick  20:55  
...the cutlery in the background, but also that she's so in the pits. She's in this lovely kind of sexy bistro and she's there just

Lizzie Holmes  21:02  
well you can feel her heart pounding I get so kind of het up and excited when singing this and the the anticipation of Bernhard coming into this restaurant and then the bubble bursts obviously as he arrives with this other woman

Sophie Goldrick  21:19  
and then Katherine's there, I'm assuming, sitting there watching this whole thing like watching Edith fall in a bin about someone who isn't her.

Lizzie Holmes  21:26  
Do you think she's enjoying that?

Sophie Goldrick  21:29  
No, I don't think she ever enjoys when Edith suffers to be honest with you. She's...

Lizzie Holmes  21:32  
Edith suffers hard doesn't she?

Sophie Goldrick  21:34  
She does. And everyone suffers...

Lizzie Holmes  21:36  
And she's got such a kind of an infatuation. You were saying it's a mutual...

Sophie Goldrick  21:41  
Yeah, there's good evidence, to suggest that Bernhard was pretty infatuated with Edith as well. But of course, ultimately, he sticks it out with Mary Costelloe so 

Lizzie Holmes  21:48  
and so were there... so we had Bernhard, are there any other kind of lovers on the scene? 

Sophie Goldrick  21:54  
Well, we know of a couple and one of them relates to... well, two. There's two other love interests for Katherine and one of them happens before she falls in love with Edith, a while before on her trip to Paris when she was a young woman. She sees a photo of a man called Alfred Gerente, and he's the brother of a friend of hers. And he's very handsome. And he's got dark hair. And he had a dead wife who, it was very, very kind of musical... dramatic.... And he's got a big tortured love affair, which she really admired. So he's like suffering in grief over this dead wife. And so she meets this guy, Alfred, and she falls madly in love with him instantly. And she writes in her diary, "Oh, to be at the bottom of the Seine!" So she's really feeling her oats, which is very nice for her. And she does meet him at a party and he teases her a little bit and it "embarrassed and delighted" her, she said, "I saw he had been told what I thought of him. And I could not help laughing" secretly though she thought that he might fancy her back. And then she thought that they, she was planning her future life in Paris being in love with Alfred.

Lizzie Holmes  23:11  
It's so lovely hearing about this because it it sounds really when you read that the quote out It sounds quite like Edith Yeah, obviously because you're so much younger.

Sophie Goldrick  23:21  
Yeah, that thing about youthful passion. But the clincher with this is that she wakes up the next day after this party. Alfred has unfortunately died. Yeah, I know. And then Katherine and Alfred's sister who's the friend, the friend of Katherine's, share this hysterical grief, they have a weeping sadness over his untimely death.

Lizzie Holmes  23:43  
What did he die of?

Sophie Goldrick  23:44  
I actually don't know. But she just says she "Watched over the body of a perfect man." That's was her quote. And really, she said she would have preferred to have been alone with the body because her grief was infinitely more than his sister's. She was now "Sure that he loved me, as he never spoken ungentle word against me." They had met one time so basically, her summing up of this one day romance was "At times I say it was awful of God to put such love before me and snatch it out of my grasp, then I think I cannot praise him enough for so fully answering my prayer that I might know the height and depth of human love. I can never love another. I am very happy."

Lizzie Holmes  24:29  
It's just perfect order for poet noj?

Sophie Goldrick  24:32  
She didn't have to touch him or like, clean up his dirty socks or any of that stuff. You just got to love the idea of him and then he conveniently died. 

Lizzie Holmes  24:39  
And now she can feel she can fuel all of her future writings with this,

Sophie Goldrick  24:43  
this non-existent relationship, but that's very Katherine... but I think that's really interesting. I hadn't really picked that up, that she needed to kind of have that same obsessive, fantasizing about their loved ones. 

Lizzie Holmes  24:55  
Yeah, it really does sound like that. So that was the earlier kind of passion in Katherine's life and you mentioned there was one more

Sophie Goldrick  25:01  
Well, she has another one later in life, which is her cousin Francis, who just follows them around like a devoted old pet really. She doesn't really show much interest in just interest in Francis, because she's got Edith by then. But certainly, Edith was not short on admirers. After the trip to Paris, where she meets BB, they traveled to Germany actually, Edith gets quite ill with scarlet fever, like quite ill 

Lizzie Holmes  25:25  
because she is very sickly. 

Sophie Goldrick  25:26  
Yeah, she's very prone, got low immune system, and he's very prone to getting sick. So she falls ill in Germany, and has to go into a hospital to recover for quite some months. And they, you know, I think that obviously put some serious stakes behind it for them. For Katherine especially she's like, this girl can't die. The quote here is "We make a vow that nothing but death shall sever us." But from September that they're in Germany, Edith's writing the diary every single day. And starts to notate this story of the German nursemaid who's taking care of Edith has completely fallen in love with her, not least because she's had to have rather a severe haircut. For her scarlet fever. They cut the hair really short. And this is when she's given the nickname by K atherine of Heinrich of Henry, because she's got this little boyish haircut and she starts wearing boys, a boy's little jacket, just kind of playing the Cherubino, you know, she's doing the boyish look, and the nursemaid falls head over heels in love with Edith. 

Lizzie Holmes  26:31  
I love that. 

Sophie Goldrick  26:32  
So Katherine's there coming, bringing grapes or whatever you do. Bringing in the Heat magazine. Bringing the diversion in the visitation time and then when Katherine's away the nursemaid's bringing the coffee as they say. I've got a quote here. "Whilst I'm away Pussie drinks kaffee with sister for an hour. Sister kisses her with a kiss that plunges down among the wraps. Yes, as the wolf did when she sought the child. Oh, Eros a fatal kiss!"

Lizzie Holmes  27:01  
And that's Katherine writing? 

Sophie Goldrick  27:03  
Well, it's Katherine speaking. I've discovered subsequently it's Edith's handwriting so it's definitely Katherine's voice but Edith has written it down.

Lizzie Holmes  27:12  
So do you think Edith's imagining that that's what Catherine's thinking?

Sophie Goldrick  27:16  
I don't... I think Katherine was giving out... dictating her diary entry for the day. That's what I mean, they share everything.

Lizzie Holmes  27:22  
It's amazing so there then kind of like sharing in it. It's like a couples who go swinging or stuff and then they come back and share their sex stories. Just a fun.

Sophie Goldrick  27:30  
A little kinky kind of voyeurism in the background there. Edith writes  "My Love and I have our first Springtide kisses shine brief and full of the future." She's talking about Katherine there "For pussy feels his cheeks reclaimed by life." But then she says "My love was a little jealous, stormily tearful that nurse should have forestalled her on my lips, but I know whose kisses were Vernal." That means like spring-like "Vernal not received for what had been but for what should be. Still the motherliness and the wonderful passion of nurses gave me delight." So definitely, Edith is enjoying being snogged by this nurse. I'm not sure it's above board, entirely professional behaviour?

Lizzie Holmes  28:11  
Yeah, this is above and beyond personal care.

Sophie Goldrick  28:13  
Deeply personal care. And this funny this one they write out like a little script. The nurse says"Ich bin so hungrig"  I am so hungry. 

Lizzie Holmes  28:22  
Oh my gosh. 

Sophie Goldrick  28:24  
Edith says "when two nestle together in English we call it Ein Love" and then Nurse says "Meine Edith gibt nicht kein Love" Edith gives me NO love. Edith then gives the nurse a "clap round the honest cheek" slaps across the face and kisses her and the Nurse says "Danke, danke." So they're snogging, and they're slapping each other in the face. Who knows what's going on?

Lizzie Holmes  28:54  
That's the most amazing scene I can just see it all playing infront of me.

Sophie Goldrick  28:58  
So that's gotta be in the opera. I can sort of imagine some large breasted Trunchbull  of a woman in a nurse's uniform getting smacked around the head and saying thank you. 

Lizzie Holmes  29:07  
I love it. 

Sophie Goldrick  29:11  
So I'll just pause there for a second. Here we're having a laugh at this preposterous scene but it's important to check in are we laughing with them or at them? This can be a problem with women as funny and absurd as these two I spoke to Marion about it. 

I wondered how much you felt that Michael Field sort of play with the idea of loving or unrequited love or lover as maybe an aesthetic creation for the purposes of their writing. That some of these infatuations were perhaps more fuel for the fire of the diary then they were for genuine reciprocity or feeling.

Prof. Marion Thain  29:57  
That's a really interesting question and I would want to slightly trouble that question by saying, I think in a way, there isn't a separation between their life and their art, their whole, their art is, is their life and their life is their art in a rather fundamental way. So it's hard to sort of disentangle the two and see one as instrumentalist for the other, that's for sure. You see this in their relationship with their pet dog, you know, which is truly beloved and becomes this incredibly pivotal figure in their poetry. But in a sense, that is the pivotal figure that the dog was in their lives as well, that they're not sort of using the dog for the poetry it's really a fair reflection of just how the symbolic proportions that this dog had taken on for them in their personal lives. And I think it's the same in these relationships that they are clearly deeply felt. When you read the diaries you realize how deeply felt they are. And how traumatic in a sense, all of this is for them. At the same time, I also think there's a slight touch of self-parody, sometimes in the days, I think, we don't know sometimes whether we're laughing with them, or whether we're laughing at them. And that's a very interesting feature of reading the diaries and I, I think we're often laughing with them. I think there is a certain distance that's introduced, when they write the diaries. It's passionate. It's heartfelt, it's absolutely personal. But I think there's also this crafting, this aesthetic crafting that goes on in the diaries, just as it goes on, in writing the poetry or writing a verse dramas. And so I think often there is a slight hint of self-parody  that is part of the artistic quality, if you like, and I think that's what's really engaging for me about the diaries. But it is sometimes hard to know whether you're laughing with them or whether you're laughing at them at some of these moments. Even at some of these moments of crisis, you still don't know whether you're laughing with them or whether you're laughing at them. But they were so self-aware as writers that I'm tempted to think that we are laughing with them a lot of the time.

Sophie Goldrick  32:14  
So yeah, we had poor old German Nursey, she's left behind, unfortunately. But um, obviously that's an intense experience. We've had Bernhard, the infatuation there. The German nurse, scarlet fever...

Lizzie Holmes  32:29  
It's been a busy trip 

Sophie Goldrick  32:30  
It's been a mad summer. And I think for Edith obviously, cause it was happening to her but for Katherine watching it, and maybe being like, she was gonna lose Edith, I think, 

Lizzie Holmes  32:32  
...because it was serious. 

Sophie Goldrick  32:39  
Yeah, she was seriously ill. But she was also seriously obsessed with these other people. So yeah, but it's an interesting thing to see that they were although they were very into their relationship with each other. They were these other people in the in the mix, but they always seem to come back and recommit to their relationship with each other 

Lizzie Holmes  32:57  
and reconnect as well in their writing 

Sophie Goldrick  33:00  
yes definitely, I would say, that's definitely true. This brings us in the opera to the next piece of music, which we've called Deep April, which was a poem that Katherine wrote after this experience, on a train, and we've recorded it already, but I thought I would read you the poem,

Lizzie Holmes  33:16  
please. It's so moving, the words as well.

Sophie Goldrick 33:21  
It was deep April, and the morn Shakespeare was born; The world was on us, pressing sore; My love and I took hands and swore, Against the world, to be Poets and lovers evermore, To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore, To sing to Charon in his boat, Heartening the timid souls afloat; Of judgement never to take heed, But to those fast-locked souls to speed, Who never from Apollo fled, Who spent no hour among the dead; Continually With them to dwell, Indifferent to heaven and hell. 

Lizzie Holmes  34:01  
And I'm just thrown back to Tom's setting of, the music as well and it is such a reaffirmation of their love, isn't it? 

Sophie Goldrick  34:11  
Well, this commitment to be poets and lovers evermore and then all of this mythology about the underworld, so obviously, the death, you know, Lethe and Charon  it's the it's the land in mythology of the underworld where the dead souls live. So obviously, that was weighing on her with possibly having thought she might lose Edith. But somehow that in their union, they're indifferent to heaven or hell. And I think also it's going to come up more, you know, some of the conversations around what it's like to be a queer person at this time. Are they offending God or not? Does it matter? and I love that indifferent to heaven. And hell, they are in a world of their own making indifferent to both and I just think it's a really beautiful poem.

Lizzie Holmes  34:56  
I think this is one of my favorite of their pieces. 

Sophie Goldrick  34:59  
Definitely. I think it's as near to a marriage vow as you're able to get as a Victorian queer woman.

Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper  36:30  
It was deep April, and the morn Shakespeare was born; The world was on us, pressing sore; My love and I took hands and swore, Against the world, to be Poets and lovers evermore, To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore, To sing to Charon in his boat, Heartening the timid souls afloat; Of judgement never to take heed, But to those fast-locked souls to speed, Who never from Apollo fled, Who spent no hour among the dead; Continually With them to dwell, Indifferent to heaven and hell. 

Sophie Goldrick  39:43  
This scene is a significant moment in our opera and is a reaffirmation of Katherine and Edith's love for one another. I remember this was the first thing Tom wrote and when we began working on it together, him telling me this would be the first point where Katherine and Edith would sing in duet, which I think is a musical symbol for their intertwining. It's easy for us to forget that being in a committed queer relationship at that time was not a simple thing. However, Michael Field were not without a tribe. We know of a number of queer artist couples living in London in the 1890s. You may recall back in episode one, we came across Michael Field via a piece of jewelry. Well the artist who made it Charles Ricketts was in a queer relationship with another artist Charles Shannon. They were devoted friends. Ricketts taking great pains to create the ravishing editions of their later plays and poetry, the books being objects of art in themselves. At this point in our story, there was a vibrant queer scene in London, though living a fully open life was not really an option. However, in 1895, the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde saw the queer community swiftly retreating into the shadows. It's hard to describe the effect Oscar Wilde's treatment had on other queer artists. And Katherine and Edith personally. They certainly wrote about it in their diary, I spoke to Marion about it. 

I know with Oscar Wilde's arrest that must have opened or made concerning for homosexual people at this time, a certain exposure or a certain scrutiny that might have been uncomfortable?

Prof. Marion Thain  41:26  
Absolutely. I mean, there was great consternation around what that meant, with the, with that era's identification of different sexual and gender types came a kind of exposing of people in a way and, you know, to identify something is to give it visibility. And that can be very empowering, that can be very enabling, but it's also to expose it to other kinds of threats. And there was certainly amongst the circle that Michael Field moved in, there was certainly some real panic and some real anxiety around that time when when Oscar Wilde was arrested, when all of that was going on. There's a lot of expression in letters in diaries, that talks about that case, in really, really concerned ways. So I think it was a moment of panic. Not as you rightly say, because they identified as the the masculine or the mannish invert, because they didn't they took great pleasure and great pride in in their, their dresses and their beautiful fabrics and a lot of things that were very clearly part of a feminine identity, but they also wanted the right to move intellectually into what were seen as sort of male spaces and take male freedoms where they were they wanted to.

Sophie Goldrick  43:03  
So it's been a bittersweet chapter of Michael's story. They have been tested and come out the other side stronger than ever, but the world feels a more hostile place than before. As for so many queer artists they turn to their work for refuge. In our next episode, we returned to where we began, the theatre. For the opening night of Michael Field's stage debut, A Question of Memory. Michael Field are primed for theatrical triumph. Will they succeed? Join us for Michael's Closing Night. Veritable Michael is a Shadow Opera production, music composed by Tom Floyd words by Michael Field, Created and produced by Sophie Goldrick and Tom Floyd, performances by Lizzie Holmes Sophie Goldrick James Long and Patrick Neyman. Thanks to our guest speakers Professor Marion Thain Dr. Ana Parejo Vadillo, and Dr. Sarah Parker. Veritable Michael is generously supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, the Steven Oliver Award, and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust, as well as our incredible band of crowdfunders. For more information, video content or just to tell us you're loving the pod, go to shadowopera.com/veritable-michael or our Instagram. Don't forget to rate review and subscribe to the podcast.