Ep 5. Michael's Ancient Things

Michael Field is in seclusion. Katherine and Edith and their beloved dog settle into their London home to write for each other. They set their sights on a future audience by committing every word they wrote to be preserved and published. 

Episode Lyrics 

A window full of ancient things, and while, 

Lured by their solemn tints, I crossed the street, 

A face was there that in its tranquil style, 

Almost obscure, at once remote and sweet, 

Moved me by pleasure of similitude - 

For, flanked by golden ivories, that face, 

Her face, looked forth in even and subdued 

Deep power, while all the shining, all the grace 

Came from the passing of Time over her, 

Sorrow with Time, there was no age, no spring: 

On those smooth brows no promise was astir, 

No hope outlived: herself a perfect thing, 

She stood by that reliquary 

Simple as Aphrodite by the sea. 

Epilogue

The Moon Rose full (continued) 

Female Chorus

And in a circle moved around, 

Responsive to her music's sound, 

That through the silent air stole on, 

Until their breathless dread was gone, 

And they could dance with lightsome feet, 

And lift the song with voices sweet. 

Then once again the silence came.

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.

If you are enjoying Veritable Michael and want to support our show, please consider making a donation.

A full transcript of this episode can be found here.

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, video content or just to tell us that you're loving the podcast - go to shadowopera.com/veritable-michael or via our Instagram.

Transcript

Sophie Goldrick: 0:04

This podcast captures the making a 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. In our previous episodes, we have followed Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper through the ups and downs of their unconventional relationship and remarkable writing career under the pseudonym Michael Field. They have had dizzying triumphs and crushing defeats, heady romance and devastating tragedy, the latest being the failure of their first staged play, and the death of Edith's father, James. Despite all of the peaks and troughs, Edith and Katherine are as devoted to one another now as they ever were. Episode Five opens on the dawn of the 20th century and in the wake of the tragic death of Edith's father, James Cooper, in a dramatic fall from a precipice in the Alps. After his funeral Katherine and Edith walked to the place he fell from and exchanged rings. They saw Edith's sister Amy marry and move away from the family home, and Michael Field took this chance to have their own home for the first time. Number one, the Paragon in Richmond, the entire house would now run to the beat of Michael Field's artistic drum. Their new home could truly be a paradise for creativity, art and ritual; think somewhere between the Garden of Eden and Grey Gardens. In addition, men had played a consuming role in Michael's life up until now, whether that be caring for James or obsessing over Bernhard Berenson. With the loss of both they now had an opening- a space for something new, a muse, an idol, someone to admire. Who, or what could they hold up now as their object of adoration? So Newsflash, it's a dog! Now, while you may have thought this story was eccentric up until now, trust me, it's about to get even more wacky. A few months after James's funeral, Katherine and Edith's friends The Sturges brought them a three month old red-gold. Chow Chow puppy. They named him Whym Chow, after Edward Whymper the mountaineer who had helped them look for James. This dog is handful, but they are absolutely obsessed with him instantly. Katherine writes in her diary on the day he arrives... "Friday evening, January 28. Whym Chow arrived, dusky Sable, a wolf with civilizations softness, and oriental with Husky passion, white rolling eyeballs, the power of inward frenzy, velvet manners, and the savagery of Eastern armies behind." She then writes, "I will never make him a Christian dog. I will civilise the seven devils, Oh I love him. Henry loves him. He is Michael's own little Brimstone soul. Henry loves him. Amen." So, that's a lot. You know how it is when you're grieving and you project all that emotion on to a little fluffy dog. But Whym stepped heroically into the void James had left behind and became the fulcrum of Michael's existence. But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. And tragedy struck when Whym Chow fell ill and died in 1906. I'm reading here from We Are Michael Field by Emma Donoghue. "On first of February they buried Whym Chow under the altar of Dionysus in the garden" Errr sidenote, they did build an altar to Dionysus in their garden, of course."With an eclectic service that included one of John Gray's Catholic poems, Katherine wore a black hat with horse plumes. They began writing an entire book of poems published years later, under the unabashed

title Whym Chow: 5:12

Flame of Love." So, it's clear Katherine and Edith were absolutely heartbroken. This catastrophe created a need in them both for a sense of ritual grief and an afterlife in which they might never be parted from one another and reunited with Whym. This period saw a fashion among queer artists for conversion to Roman Catholicism, including the poet John Gray, who's mentioned in the funeral service, and on whom Oscar Wilde supposedly based the infamous Dorian Gray. But John Gray gave over his wanton ways to become a devout Roman Catholic, and he met with Katherine and Edith a few weeks after Whym Chow's death. And before long, they too were converts. It promised a united afterlife, exacting rituals, rich symbolism and art and lots of holy, chaste men to idolise. However, the process of confessing their sins had Edith and Katherine in some state of concern over their own relationship, as any sex outside of marriage was a sin. We see this referenced in the diary by Edith, she took a vow of chastity before her baptism in 1907. It seems pertinent now to return to our episode one discussion about the aspects of Michael Field's, romantic relationships that are troubling. I think we've established they had a fruitful artistic union, and were devoted to each other in more than just a romantic sense. But Katherine and Edith were in a romantic relationship. They were close relatives, and there stood an age gap of 15 years between them. This is problematic, and it needs scrutiny. But the more you read, the harder it can be to hold these conflicts in your mind together, especially now we know so much about them from their diary. Or do we? I spent some time speaking with Marion Thain about this very thing. But in the case of Michael Field, we confront the fact that this was an incest relationship and a relationship that would I guess, today be an illegal relationship under our law. I know for me personally, I can't defend it or explain it away. But I know that they really did love each other. And I wondered if you had any thoughts to share on how this discomfort sits with you? I guess you can only really speak personally, because how else can we remark but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Prof. Marion Thain: 7:51

Yeah. And people are often saying, you know, is it is it right to ask of the past the questions that we have today in the 21st century? And I think it absolutely is legitimate to ask of the past the questions that we have from today, we just shouldn't be surprised if the past answers in a language that we don't fully understand. And I think that in in summary is is how I see this issue. But there are a few things that I would say to try and help us come to this issue and try to think about this issue. One is that we really do have to remember what a what an aesthetic document, what a crafted document, the diary is, is not a transparent window on their lives, or on the past, any more than a Facebook page, or an Instagram feed is a transparent window on any of our lives today. And I think we need to, we need to make that comparison and say okay, they were writers, their whole raison d'etre in life was to create, to to hone, to craft. And they did that with their own life story as much as they did that with the story of others in their poetry, and in their verse dramas. So what we're seeing in the diary, is, is a construction, is a lived construction, they lived through this construction, as well as wrote this construction. But this is a fancy way of saying that, in a sense, we don't know what happened. We don't really know. We weren't there. We don't have documentary evidence, we have their own version of how they wanted to be seen. And when we think about Instagram, when we think about Facebook, we all know that that's not necessarily the warts and all version. So I think it's really important to start from that acknowledgement. Because I do think they theorise their relationship through the poetry, through the diaries, in ways that are in a sense, quite compelling, and that perhaps mean that we sidestep some of the problematic issues because of the way they talk about it. But that is not to say that we shouldn't be worried or that there is isn't anything to be concerned about here? It's just that we don't have that transparent window to get back to some of these issues. They theorise their relationship, we can't think that they transparently represent their relationship. That they theorise their relationship is a key engine, their desire for each other is a key engine of their aesthetic craft. It's a key engine of the work that they do. And they present it in that way. And I think what often comes out from their queer theory, if you like they are theorisers of queer. And we have to recognise that they're playing that role in quite a sophisticated way. What comes out from that is often a sense, actually, of balanced mutuality. And I think that's one of the things that invites us not to be as concerned when we read the diaries, as we are when we when we hear in abstract that there was this relationship, it was between an aunt and niece, and you know, that raises all kinds of really problematic thoughts in our minds. But then as we start to enter into their construction, their world, it's hard to really hold on to those concerns in a very potent way, because of the way they talk and theorise about their relationship. That's not to say we should let these questions go. Let me let me stress that, as I say, we can absolutely legitimately ask these questions. It may just be difficult to get answers, that we fully understand to those questions.

Sophie Goldrick: 11:30

Marion's thoughts on this are really useful for us in considering this thorny issue. But she also helpfully put me in touch with another Michael Field scholar, Carolyn Dever, who has a new book 'Chains of Love and Beauty' about the diary. We had a great chat.

Carolyn Dever: 11:46

Hello, I'm Carolyn Dever. And I come to you from Hanover, New Hampshire in the US where it's six degrees outside and snowing. I am a scholar of 19th century British literature and culture. I teach in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. And within the next few weeks, my book 'Chains of Love and Beauty, the Diary of Michael Field' will be real in the world. And for the first time, we'll have the opportunity to really understand the the project of the diary from Michael Field's perspective, what they were attempting to accomplish with this amazingly innovative work.

Sophie Goldrick: 12:28

Carolyn and I kind of had parallel experiences when it came to reading the diary for the first time. How amazing it felt to have a voice speak directly to you from the past. It blew my mind. I'll let Carolyn tell you more...ordinary diary. I mean, you know, you better than anyone, it ain't an ordinary diary. So as soon as you started reading, it was like, Oh, my God, oh, my God. It's like singing itself. So yeah, I mean, that was our origin story. Could you tell me a bit about your origin story because

Carolyn Dever: 12:58

similar to tell you the truth, I was interested in writing a book, an academic book, that in my mind, I was calling Queer Domesticity and I went for a walk with a friend of mine who was visiting Nashville, Tennessee, which is where I lived at the time. And she said, Oh, you have to look at Michael Field's diary next time you're in London. And I was like, that is such a good suggestion. I knew of it. But kind of like most of us. I didn't know it. How could you? So I remember that my next trip to London went to the manuscripts room. And this is where your story and my story converge, because I picked a volume at random, opened it and started to read. And my mind was blown. Like, right then I knew this is material that the world needs. This is a beautiful, extraordinary literary work, that we need to find ways of communicating outwards. And to have played a part in that is the great honour of a lifetime. It took me many years to read through the diaries, twenty to be specific, and

Sophie Goldrick: 14:09

that makes me feel better. Carolyn is carrying. It has taken us since 2017. Like what's been taking us so long...

Carolyn Dever: 14:16

I know, but it was but I you know, I don't live in England and I spent lots and lots and lots of time there, working really hard and doing other stuff and having a kid and so forth. And it was just a labour of love over the years. And here we are.

Sophie Goldrick: 14:32

So I wanted to get Carolyn's take on the aspects of Michael Field's relationship that concern us. She had a lot to say, especially about power imbalances. Heads up the imbalance might not be in the direction you were expecting. This is obviously a sensitive subject. So feel free to comment as little or as much as you would like. We've been having a few discussions about how to reconcile The incest aspect of their relationship and what might have been an abuse of power or a grooming scenario, early in their relationship with obviously the mutual affection and reciprocity that is evidenced in their writing about each other. And, of course, the body of work that they created, which is remarkable, and we want people to know about it. But obviously, in the 21st century, reconciling these kinds of problematic themes with impressive bodies of work is a difficulty that we have. So I wondered if you had any comment on that, or how you hold those two things in your mind at the same time,

Carolyn Dever: 15:40

that's the challenge to hold those two things in your mind at the same time. Like you. I mean, I'm sure you have had the experience as I have had in introducing the topic of Michael Field to people who are not familiar with them, and explaining that there are two women, an aunt and a niece, who were also lovers, who published as a male poet named Michael Field. And where people's minds start to get blown is aunt and niece and lovers. Like how does that work? What's the age gap? What's the power imbalance? And I think, to begin to understand that, and as I teach it with my students, we talk about options available to women, especially intelligent, educated women. In the second half of the 19th century. Women who had, as Edith Cooper and Katherine Bradley both did, aspirations for artistic greatness, and they were extremely ambitious, not in a worldly sense, but to achieve the highest heights of their art as poets and as aesthetes. For them, the bond of love was lived art. It was a bond of poetry that brought with it eroticism, and a bond, and a kind of singleness of purpose that connected them erotically as well as practically. I think the power imbalance is a really, really serious question. And I do not think it goes away once they become an established, figure established as Michael Field, I think the power imbalance is a huge feature of their relationship until the end of their lives. The most of the power resides in the hands of Edith Cooper, the niece, who was one foot out the door for a lot of the time that they were together. So the tension and the stress in their relationship, frequently had to do with the degree to which Cooper could depart, or would stay. With regard to incest. I don't think incest ever occurred to them. I don't think they thought that incest is something that could happen between two women. I don't know that they ever thought about whether or not incest could happen between two men. I think incest was a category in their world that had to do with reproduction, dangers of reproduction, dangers of harming children. I think what they were trying to do was artistic in a way that's very hard for us to understand now, but is really about coming together as one voice. As I'm sure you know, and I know you've talked about, they believed themselves to be a better poet, than Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning, because they spoke in one voice. The Brownings were two voices, Michael Field was one voice, their merger as an artistic voice was the mechanism of achievement for their work as artists, or as an artist. And that's kind of the centre of what they're attempting to do, doesn't necessarily solve our contemporary questions about incest and power dynamics, but they were really trying to do something that was more about art, than is about traditional notions of domesticity or conventional marriage that we project back on to Victorians.

Sophie Goldrick: 19:55

The name Michael Field hasn't appeared in the papers in quite a while, but they continue to write poetry and keep their diary. If they are to be forgotten in their time, then their diary, their greatest work, remains their last hope for finding the appreciating audience they longed for. As the Thames slowly flows past their window, Michael is fading. Edith, who had battled illness most of her life is diagnosed with terminal cancer aged only 49. It's a devastating blow.

Edith Cooper: 20:32

February 1911. There can be no removal, only a hideous operation of alleviation from what has to come. The doctor, Scottish, kind and fond of me, is hard and speaks intemperately. He's a hard executioner and he goes soon. It was like this when the vet left me with the news of Whym, only then the tears came. I'm too cold for weeping, drifts of bitter rain...

Sophie Goldrick: 21:16

We've returned to No 1. Paragon in 1913. Two years since Edith's diagnosis. By this time Katherine had been diagnosed herself with breast cancer in June of that year, a fact she conceals from Edith. Edith dies in December, and Katherine less than a year later. We arrive here on an evening in September a few months before Edith's death. She reads one of their poems aloud to cousin Francis, about the passage of time adding to the beauty of objects and people. Katherine observes and captures this poignant scene in the diary,

Katherine Bradley: 21:57

It is cousin Francis's last night. I am listening to Henry's voice, Henny, reading my love poems aloud to Francis. I've never listened to them before. She reads the famous sonnet 'A Window Full of Ancient Things.' For a little while, I am in paradise. It is infinitely soft between us, warm buds open. Francis, who has loved me so well, listens to the singing'mid the bows that is not for him. Listening is he would

Sophie Goldrick: 28:23

know that Edith and Katherine made detailed and explicit demands on their chosen executor Thomas Sturge Moore of exactly how their work was to be stored and protected for their future audiences. They were concerned that their diaries may contain scenes and opinions that might offend those still living, so Katherine and Edith instructed that their 29 volumes of diary were to remain closed for 15 years. They wanted them published in their entirety. And then the collection along with all their correspondences (they kept everything) was to be donated to the British Museum and Oxford University. Sturge Moore was extremely diligent in carrying out their wishes as best he could. And these enormous volumes are held to this date with all their inserts intact, in two parts. Now at the British Library, and the Bodleian Collection. Publishing the diaries, or the manuscript, as they called it, in its entirety was a more difficult matter. An edited collection was published by Sturge Moore in 1934, but was not really a complete picture of this phenomenal work. Professor Marian Thain, who we've consulted in this podcast, was responsible for a huge digitisation project, which saw every page in the diary, some 10,000, being scanned and held in a public archive online. You can see it for yourself. It has been the backbone of our research for Veritable Michael. More recently, Carolyn Dever, another podcast contributor, at Dartmouth College has taken the baton and is in the process of leading a team of academics to completely transcribe the diaries, so they can be searched and referenced easily. For anyone who's had to decipher Katherine Bradley's handwriting, it sounds like heaven on earth. These documents are perhaps Michael Field's greatest work, their life's work. The notebooks themselves being part of it, full of texture, flowers, pamphlets and other indications of this living breathing artwork. I spoke with Carolyn Dever about what it's like to encounter them in person...because I have not seen the diaries in the flesh. But I know that they... although I know they pulled out the various objects that were part of it. But I would love to hear your experience of coming to the diary for the first time, the actual object of the diary. And what that was like,

Carolyn Dever: 30:40

oh, it's, it's thrilling. Coming coming to those books in person is absolutely thrilling, sometimes moving, sometimes like moving me to tears. And one of the things that moves me to tears when I'm working with the books is when I can see tears. When sad things happen in the diaries, very frequently there are there are signs of dysregulation, there are signs of ink blotches, because of tears falling on the page. There are signs of personal emotional disturbance by traumatic events or deaths, or humiliations that that happen. The diaries are sturdy, and beautiful, about 29 volumes and very tall, white notebooks, for the most part, there are a few exceptions to this rule. The diaries, each volume, typically though not universally, starts on the first of January, and ends on the 31st of December. And the there are moments throughout every year that are the same. So birthdays and death anniversaries and wedding anniversaries and important events. So there's a structure. And then within that structure of each volume, there's this terrific enormous novel of of what they want to write about in that year. So in my book, I describe the diary volumes as serial numbers of or serial parts of one very, very, very large novel, where they're formally connected with one another. But in terms of the activities described, very diverse. The books have postcards and photographs, they have newspaper clippings, they have mysteriously torn out pages or parts of pages, they have scribbled over points, and sometimes you can read what's underneath the scribble. And sometimes you cannot. They have flowers, for example, in the 1897 diary, which is the volume in which James Cooper dies in Switzerland. And Edith Cooper and Katherine Bradley exchanged rings on in a field where they thought he might have gone to his death. They plucked flowers from that field, and they sewed them in to the first page of the diary. So when you open that volume of the diary, you don't know what's going to happen in July. But you see the flowers that were recouped from the site as a kind of promise of what's going to happen half a volume later.

Sophie Goldrick: 33:50

So, Tom, we're here at the end, we have made it,

Tom Floyd: 33:55

we did it.

Sophie Goldrick: 33:57

We did it. Everything's recorded. Everything is in everyone is interviewed.

Tom Floyd: 34:02

Not everything is edited. Not everythingis edited. You can't have it all. Okay, it's pretty close. How do you feel? It's quite, it's quite a project. I think the the length it's taken us to get to this point is it's quite something. But we were talking before about sort of how rare it is you get to take your time on a project. Most opera projects are, you know, into rehearsal rooms out of rehearsal rooms, it all happens within six weeks, you blink and you miss it. And there's not a lot of time for kind of getting under the skin. Whereas being a bit of a background project has been such an interesting thing in itself. But yeah, definitely time to wrap it up.

Sophie Goldrick: 34:45

Yes, I think so. I think the other advantages like you're working on operas or different projects, at the different opera houses we work at and then when you're on your own time, I'm choosing to spend my own time with you and Lizzie and Katherine and Edith so that is definitely the definition of a passion project. I think, you know, it's where I go when it's my day off. So that's, that's been great but I think are definitely like a day off to be an actual day off at some point soon.

Tom Floyd: 35:16

I love it. You're saying that you're spending it with Katherine and Edith as well because that's so how I've seen it as well. You spend so much time with these two with and I think that's the thing with like making, making Opera from biography, which I know is something new to us and it's not new to opera you know, there's there's lots of very reasonably famous examples. With Satyagraha and Nixon in China, Powder her Face with the Duchess of Argyll - they did the BBC drama recently. I don't know if people saw that? But that that exists as an opera by Thomas Ades which is just completely amazing. And, Anna Nicole by Turnage isn't it?

Sophie Goldrick: 35:55

Turnage exactly. Yes. Yeah.

Tom Floyd: 35:58

So I think it's amazing when you see these pieces, because I think what opera does interesting with biography is you're not trying to tell that story, in its kind of detailed biographic sort of sense. You're using it as a vehicle to capture the not just the emotion, but the kind of the just the human spirit of those stories. Something

Sophie Goldrick: 36:21

It can also be about capturing a moment in time and I think Satyagraha is a really good example of that, because it's far from biography, filmic biography of Ghandi, you go to the Ben Kingsley version for that, you know, this is much more like this moment in his life, but not an actual, like 'someone said this and someone else said that and this is what happened.' It's not that at all. It's like, a kind of fantastical, jumping off point where the gods of the Bhagavad Gita come down and join Ghandi and some other crazy stuff happens. And I'll use that Marion Thain excellent term of liminal, I would say she says opera is a more liminal art form. And I think that's exactly right. You're not living in a literal space, you're living in a space, it's completely removed from reality, if you want. And I think for us, that's been really freeing. And lucky thing too, because there's things we grapple with their, with their biography that are difficult.

Tom Floyd: 37:24

Yeah, that's exactly was gonna say, actually, which is not that you're trying to avoid dealing with these things. But I think for both of us, when you've been looking at this story, you can't help but want to get to the bit which feels most true to us, which is that these are two women deeply in love, and living this kind of life in union, you're fully aware of the problematic themes there. But somehow, I think once you do step into this kind of operatic telling of the story, it feels, it gets you closer to I think, what feels like the essence of their story. As you've heard from interviews, you know, they wouldn't have even had the word incest for for what they were doing. That wasn't that would not be a label that they felt applied to them in any kind of meaningful way. So I think opera has been a great vehicle for kind of exploring their story.

Sophie Goldrick: 38:11

And in using the diary, which I don't know what you think, you obviously, in your composing process, setting poems is quite an usual vehicle for a composer to work through. But I don't know, it seemed to come to life to me when I heard you... obviously, the things you'd written with the poems were brilliant, but something happened when you started setting the prose texts out of the diary, which became a really, like, it just breathed life into moments and scenes and real people in in a kind of fantastical version of their life. Could you tell me a little bit about how that process was for you? And if it's something you'd had experience with before?

Tom Floyd: 38:52

No, it's definitely new. I think we spoke before about how at college I remember being told."Don't try setting prose". Prose is really hard to set. And it's really difficult. And I think what's been really interesting project is so much of what we've actually ended up treating has been prose, it's been the diary. Not to say that haven't been poems as well. And like you say, poems, it's a much more kind of safe ground. And that is text that's been put together with a musicality in mind, you know that the poet is thinking about metre. And that gives you a lot to then work with, but when you're dealing with just pure sort of, it's not unconsidered, because they put so much thought into the way they wrote that diary. But there's no sort of metre structure to any of the writing there. You're you have to answer a whole extra set of questions as a composer about how you're going to make that work musically. And, in a weird way, the sort of challenge with that, I think, has actually led to something that for me was much more fun to write. And I think, for you and Lizzie, you seem to kind of really take to what that meant for the characterization of what you're saying. as well, oh, it's, it's really amazing in terms of your singing self and your acting self and where that can meet in opera because sometimes opera can be a bit unfriendly to, I don't know, being in touch with a heightened reality sure, but a reality of real of a real character and their real motivations and really how they might communicate and recit is always, recitative, which we have in lots of operatic traditions, has always been the place where business and action take place. But what I loved about this was, it was still emotional. So this was still emotional content in a way that you might ordinarily speak. And it just was really vivid. I, you know, I remember when you first did Edith's waltz, and that's before we were working with Lizzie, and I sang through it, and I was like, "Tom, this is amazing." And, and I really feel like that was such a jumping off point into the next sort of stage of writing Veritable Michael, it felt that way. Anyway. Yeah, I think a lot of that goes back to just the joy of reading the diary. That, you know, they are so funny. They they write the scenes, which I mean, a lot of it you read and you think, Oh, very interesting, a great sort of window into their lives. But ultimately, I can't see what we're going to do with this. There's You can't treat everything there's way too much there. But you stumble across some of the scenes, a lot of them then pointed out to us in books like We Are Michael Field. And the Bernhard scene was one where we knew straightaway, we're going to treat it because it was just so vivid, this kind of love-sick Edith. And she's slightly leaning into that we think on some level. But then also the kinds of drama of her sitting in the restaurant in Paris with Katherine feeling pretty sort of left out of it all. And then Bernhard arriving, I think with Mary or even another woman,

Sophie Goldrick: 41:51

yeah, with Mary Costello

Tom Floyd: 41:53

It is with Mary. And just you can, it's all so vivid, the way they write it that you sort of really want to them musically treat it. And this is the thing, you know, with the diaries, you find these moments. They're so detailed in there sort of in the in the way they capture their story, that when you're reading it, you're constantly sort of getting references to the things that they're writing at the time. So you can then go read the play that's, you know, being written at the time this thing is happening in their life, which is always quite interesting. Or you might get, I remember when we did A Window full of Ancient Things,' the last source of the penultimate song, in our opera, that all came from another diary excerpt where it was right at the end of Katherine and Edith's life, where Katherine is watching Edith, reading this poem, to their cousin Francis. And it's a really beautiful tender scene just to read in the in the diary, you know, at any kind of treatment at all. It's a really beautiful scene to sort of see this triangle. And Katherine talks about how, although you're just reading the poem to Francis, she knows it's really being read to her across the room. And I remember sort of seeing the mention of the poem and thinking, oh, please be a good poem. Please be a good poem...

Sophie Goldrick: 43:06

And it's a good poem, result! Or you start to wonder, you know, knowing the created nature of the diary, as well, it's like, was that the actual poem she was reading? Or did she go... hmmm What would have been... What would have been the best poem I ever wrote that would fit into the scene really well?'

Tom Floyd: 43:24

I love that. It's like she's helping us curate our piece. I think they may well, could be something in that because the poem fits. It's all about the passing of time and how time contributes to the beauty of things sort of. She's walking past to sort of always picture it's like a sort of an old tat, sort of antique shop. Yeah, like

Sophie Goldrick: 43:46

when I've been in Lyme Regis or somewhere down a little seaside town, and there's a sort of tat shop and you look in the window, and there's a bunch of well, junk in there.

Tom Floyd: 43:53

It's the perfect poem without being overly sentimental, and yet carrying all the themes of a life. Well, well, a short life. Yeah,

Sophie Goldrick: 44:01

In Edith's case gosh tragically short. And I mean, I think also that helps us to think about where you might have reservations about setting somebody's personal diary. For example, if you set my diary aged 15, I think that would be a harrowing experience

Tom Floyd: 44:15

Next project! Next Project!

Sophie Goldrick: 44:18

Noooooo! However, knowing that they created and pub... wanted this diary published, they put it in the British Library. It gives you permission, I think, to run with the diary as as kind of artwork to be heard, seen, read, lived, acted out. I think that's what they wanted.

Tom Floyd: 44:40

I think so I'd love to say that we were as clear on all that at the beginning of the project.

Sophie Goldrick: 44:43

I don't think that's true,

Tom Floyd: 44:44

I think. I think we've learned some very useful things along the way about why this project is permissible. At the beginning, I think we're just like, This is great story. And there's a lot of material here for us to play with. But I think the longer that we've been with it and the more that we've spoken to all our wonderful guests, and the more we kind of realised that they're asking for treatment, and it won't just be us, of course, there are other creative responses to their lives out there. So I hope that I hope that, you know, keeps being the case. And it's just sort of, you're so aware of the where, where their story finished in terms of their lifetime, that they really were left in obscurity that there was this. I mean, this, this, this brings us to our epilogue, you know, this idea of silence descending. A life that sort of started with, a creative life that started with such promise and such sort of vibrancy,

Sophie Goldrick: 45:34

they kind of fell in the cracks really, also, in literary terms. They didn't quite have the opportunity to become the modernist, they might have been to join the next wave of writing in the 1920s and onward, which, certainly, Edith and Katherine but Edith, especially, I think, would have been at the exact right age to do if she'd lived longer. So things lost, you know, quiet silence.

Tom Floyd: 45:59

I mean, and this is why I think why we reached for that stanza from, it's the same poem as where we took the prologue from

Sophie Goldrick: 46:07

Have you got it? The Moon Rose full...Should I read it?

Tom Floyd: 46:12

Go on read it , So this is a long poem, so it's the ones from the Sapphic collection where they took a load of Sapphic lines. So the Ancient Greek writer Sappho who's really connected with a lot of sort of feminism and lesbian artwork, and then they sort of expanded on these fragments and turn them into their own sort of poems. So that's where our prologue was lifted from and then I remember just reading the whole poem and there was the stanza quite near the end which just seems the perfect note to leave our opera on.

Sophie Goldrick: 46:43

Okay, I've got it here. And in a circle moved around responsive to her music sound that through the silent air stole on until their breathless dread was gone. And they could dance with lightsome feet and lift the song with voices sweet then once again the silence came.

Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper: 47:57

And in a circle moved around, Responsive to her music's sound, That through the silent air stole on, Until their breathless dread was gone, And they could dance with lightsome feet, And lift the song with voices sweet. Then once again the silence came.

Sophie Goldrick: 49:42

So we have come to the end of the lives of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, but it is far from the end of Michael Field's story. While they experienced the pain of moving into obscurity in their lifetime, they were convinced they would find their tribe eventually. 100 years on it I think it's safe to say they have. With many books being published about them and surely a TV series in the works, interest in their life and work is increasing. So why is that? Their queerness, their feminism, they were women who charted their own course, were tenacious in the face of many setbacks. They were women who, dissatisfied with the world they saw, devoted themselves to creating one of their own design, their sense of humour, they were pretty bonkers, but self aware, their commitment to their art and living their art in every aspect of their life. There's something fierce and inspiring in that. It's a rich life, carefully documented, so there's a lot there that can speak to us now. It's been quite a journey for us making this piece. And whilst we don't know what Katherine and Edith would have thought of the project, the fact that people are hearing their words and turning their lives into art. Well, we'd like to think it would have delighted them. Shadow Opera has some live performances of Veritable Michael coming up later in 2022, watch this space. In our next and final episode, we bring you the opera in its entirety. With all the musical scenes and a few best bits from our guests. It'll give a feel for what the complete work will be like. Join us next time for Veritable Michael - the opera. 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, Professor Carolyn Dever, Dr. Anna 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, and our incredible band of crowdfunders. For more information, video content or just to tell us you're loving the podcast, go to shadowopera.com/veritable-michael or via our Instagram. Don't forget to rate review and subscribe to the podcast.