Tag: Biographical

What is ‘Sight and Song’?

“The aim of this little volume is, as far as may be, to translate into verse what the lines and colours of certain chosen pictures sing in themselves ; to express not so much what these pictures are to the poet, but rather what poetry they objectively incarnate. Such an attempt demands patient, continuous sight as pure as the gazer can refine it of theory, fancies, or his mere subjective enjoyment.”

— Sight and Song preface

What makes Sight and Song unique as a poetry collection is its relationship with historical images. The collection is created from a series of visual encounters with paintings, which at the time would have been viewed within continental galleries and private collections. These poems are “songs” emerging from “sights” – they come from the sensations produced from observing, from channelling the emotional passions and desires evoked from viewing into words. Some have remarked upon the somewhat lyrical nature of the verse, attributing a musical rhythm to the inflection associated with the structure of these poems. Perhaps Sight and Song was intended to be read as simultaneously something of a songbook. Either way, Bradley and Cooper expected their readers to already know the surrounding narrative and subject matter of each poem – each verse is dedicated to well known pieces, among them La Gioconda and Primavera – and their poem titles ‘frame’ select biographical details pertaining to these images.

Masterfully, the Fields oscillate their poems in Sight and Song from objective to subjective perspective. Incorporating these alternate perspectives accesses simultaneously a psychological point of view and a historically sublime one. It allows the Fields to “objectively incarnate” the intricacies of the historical event a painter is depicting but equally maintain a finer, more human lens, illuminating the more innate qualities of the picture we perhaps did not notice before. Upon reading their poems, one immediately will have to re-inspect the painting, for they illuminate details previously obscured – such is the beauty of ‘seeing’ through another’s poetic gaze. By these means, the Fields revisualise and reinvent the paintings through the poems.

Bernard Berenson, though conversing about other aspects of the Fields’ work, metaphorically claimed that the Fields were “putting new wine in old bottles” [1]. Sight and Song does just that; it communicates new and decadent wine thoughts through the old historical bottles of time.

This blog examines two poems from Sight and Song, La Gioconda and The Rescue.

Footnotes

[1] Martha Vicinus, “Faun Love: Michael Field and Bernard Berenson,” in Women’s History Review 18, No. 5 (November 2009): 755.

Introducing the Fields

The pseudonym of Michael Field was operated by two female poets, lovers and aesthetes named Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. When their true identities were discovered, they were often referred to as the “Fields” or the “Michaels”.

Cooper was the niece and ward of Bradley, moving in with her aunt in the late 1870s. This was because her mother, Emma Cooper, who played an integral role in shaping the life of her younger sister Katherine, became somewhat of an invalid after the birth of her second daughter. Katherine offered to become legal guardian of her niece and thus began a later lesbian relationship and co-authorship over the next forty years.

Edith Cooper wrote poetry by the age of ten, apparently translated Virgil by her early teens, and enjoyed using obscure philosophical concepts to test her elders’ knowledge. Her aunt Bradley recognised a part of herself in her and referred to Edith as inheriting the “Bradley force”, unlike her sister Amy, who Katherine never quite connected with on the same level as she had Edith.

Though born in Birmingham, Katherine’s family came from Derbyshire ancestors who settled in Ashbourne. Business ran in the blood, for Katherine and Emma’s father, Charles Bradley, worked within the tobacco industry in Birmingham and left a stream of profits which allowed for Edith Cooper and Katherine Bradley’s later financial independence.

1 The Paragon, Richmond, London where the Fields later resided to be closer to their friends Ricketts and Shannon

This also left room for a rather lavish lifestyle, and the Fields became staunch aestheticists and connoisseurs of art, music and poetry, regarded as highly educated and cultured individuals. Bradley and Cooper were also followers of Walter Pater. They travelled extensively to continental galleries and exhibitions, read from classical to Renaissance works, and drifted among numerous literary circles. Among many others, they became known to Oscar Wilde, Elkin Matthews, Alice Meynell, Vernon Lee, and even John Ruskin. Robert Browning and William Rothstein were close friends, and in particular the Fields fostered a unique bond with painters and partners Charles Rickettsand Charles Shannon.

The Fields were known to develop fond nicknames for their friends. Among such nicknames were the “old Gentleman” for Robert Browning himself, “Painter” for Charles Ricketts, “Doctrine” for Bernard Berenson and “The Roadman” for publisher John Lane. Even their fellow canine companion Whym Chow, one of many pets but beyond doubt their most beloved, was often shortened to “Whymmie”. Their adoration for Whym was so strong that fourteen years after the Chow passed away in 1914, they even dedicated a poetry collection to their dear friend, entitled “Whym Chow: The Flame of Love”. The loss of Whym also disturbed their writing for a time, the women plagued by grief.

Katherine Bradley with Whym Chow, circa 1914

The Fields were also married, though refrained from shocking family and friends with this information, instead reserving such a status as something to be used solely in their private letters to one another. But they were not married in the literal, ceremonial sense: they kept their finances separate and had no children. Marriage for Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper was more of a metaphor for their unique kind of bond – they lived rather a wedded lifestyle, would always love each other yet develop crushes on other men and women (as they did for Bernard Berenson), and always present a united front despite any conflicts, regarding themselves as untiring, godlike lovers rather than loyal spouses.

Indeed, the nature of the Fields’ relationship calls into question the values we associate with marriage in the late 1800s when compared with marriage in the present, and lesbian homosexuality in particular [1]. Their relationship was something else entirely. As their operation of the title ‘Michael Field’ suggests, their relationship was of a special unanimity, a shared oneness which perhaps illustrates their own version of ‘marriage’ – they were connected in mind as much as they were in proximity. Only together could they be ‘Michael Field’. This is likely why even after Robert Browning revealed their co-authorship, Bradley and Cooper still insisted upon being seen as one male author. ‘Michael Field’ was not just an interplay between male, female and Sapphic identities but also a homage to their oneness, a symbol of their devoted literary, cultural and personal union.

Footnotes

[1] See Kate Flint, “Unspeakable Desires: We Other Victorians,” in The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Literary Culture, (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2016), 205.