Copyright © 1989 by the Willa Cather Pioneer ISSN 0197-663X Memorial and Educational Foundation Fall, 1989 Special Literary Issue Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsle VOLUME XXXIII, No.3 Guest Editor, Ronald W. Butler RED CLOUD, NEBRASKA

ately, that in Willa Cather Living EDITOR’S NOTE: The preparation of this special literary edition of the Lewis had without acknowledg- WCPM Newsletter has been done as a tribute to the ongoing work of ment used some of t he remarks Mildred R. Bennett, who for forty years has been the backbone of Willa about Cather and her fiction he Cather studies, in celebration of her eightieth birthday, September 8, had made in letters to her and to 1989. Cather m the latter he requested Lewis return to him (as Cather had promised him she would in- Edith Lewis Living struct Lewis to do). Although Lewis assured Tennant that his By PATRICIA L. YONGUE letters were tied up in neat University of Houston, Houston, Texas bundles in Cather’s secretary At her own request, Edith their forty-year life together and just as Cather had left them, and Lewis’s gravestone near the foot Cather’s naming of Lewis as her she would do what Tennant of Willa Cather’s, in the old, se- executor, literary trustee, and an asked (1947 fragment), she told questered Jaffrey Cemetery, is heir make axiomatic a desire to him later (May 23, ?1948) that small m much smaller than Ca- share a visible eternity with she could not destroy his letters ther’s -- and was, until recently, Lewis, or whether Lewis alone and that Miss Bloom (Cather’s unmarked. It was Lewis who had insisted on that intimacy is a private secretary) would send worked so diligently in 1947 to very speculative matter. them to him in the event Lewis secure that location for her Lewis’s proposal to lie in should "get killed." Tennant, friend, perhaps already antici- death as she had apparently however, never received his let- pating it for herself, in the face lived, anonymously, in the ters. Lewis also wrote (May 23, of word that the little cemetery shadow of Willa Cather, sug- ?1948) that she had never read was already full. Tennant’s letters to Cather ex- gests that she perceived herself cept one that Cather showed We still do not know officially -- and wanted us to perceive her her, but that Cather had quoted whether Cather wanted to be -- as one with Cather, a part of frequently from them, such was buried in Jaffrey~ although it is her greatness. Forty years of her regard for the brilliant young very likely that she did, and we serving Cather, of freeing her aristocrat. And Lewis passion- have no idea if she wanted to be from duties and loneliness that ately gilded the lily several times buried with Edith Lewis. Lewis would have impinged on her pro- (as Tennant’s correspondents, wrote to Cather’s British friend fessional life and leisure, and thirty years of devotional pro- myself included, tended to do), Stephen Tennant (fragment of a not the least of which was when 1947 letter) that Cather had once tection and control of Cather’s she told the delighted Stephen told her and one of her nieces affairs might entitle Edith Lewis that Cather spoke of him as she that she wished to be buried to such a view. And in the spirit of unity it seems she had indeed had spoken of no other of her there. Cather loved Jaffrey; she friends. found there solitude and a com- forged for herself a version of forting and peaceful place to Cather’s own chosen epitaph, a Marilyn Arnold, in her intro- write; and she often invited her line from My Antonia: "That is duction to the new edition of friends to visit her there. Most of happiness; to be dissolved into Willa Cather Living, argues the the time, though, she went with- something complete and great."’ likelihood that Edith Lewis did out Edith Lewis. In fact, as far as This final act, however, may examine the correspondence we can tell, Lewis only once ac- have been the consummation of Cather did not destroy, bor- companied Cather to Jaffrey -- a series of such acts which belie rowed from it, and then herself to read proofs, one of the major conflicting motives. Stephen destroyed the letters. It happens services she performed for Ca- Tennant, to whom Edith Lewis that Lewis’s stalling assurances ther from the beginning of their became early attached after Ca- to Stephen Tennant of the safety relationship. Whether, then, ther’s death, told me, affection- of his letters coincided with her

Page 12 efforts to get Alfred Knopf to nant’s arguments in behalf of a prise. After every session with see it her way with respect to a biography moved her at once to Brown, Lewis wrote, she felt that much "dreaded" biography of write Alfred Knopf and tell him she had betrayed Willa Cather Cather and with her invention of to go ahead with the plan. She by allowing any biography to be a Cather in Willa Cather Living. sounds very confiding, but she written at all. Cather depended My own sense, similar to Marilyn is quite circumspect about re- mightily on her friends to pro- Arnold’s, has always been that vealing to Stephen just exactly tect her, to keep "the cheap and she was using Tennant’s letters what her negotiations with the vulgar and the merely curi- to help her frame and express Knopf had been. In her first let- ous" people away from her. She certain thoughts about Cather ter to Stephen (September 5, needed the security of knowing which she may, after so long a ?1947), who was persistent in her friends were loyal (June 3, silence, and given her propen- his inquiries about a biography, ?1948 or 1949). But, Lewis con- sity toward self-effacement, she acts as if she and Knopf cluded, Brown’s Life would be have already felt incapable of were of a mind about finding the the ultimate protection against voicing on her own. In the 1947 right person to take on the task. the world, if it were properly writ- fragment, she even told Tennant Tennant may have briefly,enter- ten. that the loving way he wrote tained the idea of doing it him- In the first place, the biog- about Cather echoed her own self, but Lewis, despite her con- raphy was not to be an amassing thoughts. In 1948, apparently in tinuing paean to Stephen’s thor- of detail. It was to be a very response tohis declaration that ough understanding of Cather definite portrait of a very definite Lucy Gayheart was a wonderful, and of the sort of biography that artist. Detail was to be used as sensitive novel, she said that needed to be written, never sug- Cather herself used it, selective- she had just been re-reading gested that he apply for the job. ly, to capture the essential, not Lucy the winter prior to Cather’s E. K. Brown had, according to accidental realities of life. To death and had told Cather that Lewis, always been the strong- this end, Lewis compiled (in she (Lewis) had been too hard on est candidate; from her point of increments) a set of notes for it earlier. view, he was the most trust- Brown which would contain all Plagiarism, however, is by no worthy, the one who would do the material she would allow means the issue here. Nor is ex- the job as she would have published and which she re- ploitation. Appropriation of wanted it done. Willa Cather had garded as pertinent to the life of Willa Cather and the desire -- liked Brown’s Yale Review essay an artist. She said that she also the utter need -- to possess and on her fiction, Lewis said, and copied for him a set of notes she control her is. she herself had just read a pre- had made from Tennant’s letters Perhaps the need to assert release copy of Brown’s study of to her that Brown found both herself and to govern in a way Matthew Arnold and was im- stimulating and useful. How she could not while the very pressed by his handling of form seriously Brown, or Leon Edel, dominant Willa Cather was alive and his intellectual integrity. He who finished the biography, is embodied in Edith Lewis’s at- seemed a man likely to distrust took this latter material has tempt to supervise the first feeling as a guide to writing a gone unremarked. biography~ of Willa Cather. biography. In the February 3, Lewis’s sustained worry over ?1948 letter to Stephen Tennant, Lewis’s surviving letters to the biography begins to take the Stephen T.ennant from 1947 she said she wished she could get someone like Sidney Colvin, form ofa complaint that, I think, through 1952 provide a sus- registers an ambivalence, if an tained, if incomplete, narrative the Keats biographer, to write of her project. It was, for a long Cather’s life; so many other unconscious one, about Willa biographers were more in- Cather -- an ambivalence not time, her obsession. surprising in one who, even Lewis and Alfred .Knopf, Ca- terested in promoting their own brilliance over that of their sub- voluntarily, has made one’s life a ther’s publisher after 1920, had service to another. On June 20, been conferring over the possi- ject. Lewis wrote Tennant (April bility of doing a biography 3, ?1948) that his own appraisal 1952, Lewis wrote to Tennant of Brown’s essay on Cather that she had been working with (February 3, ?1948), a venture solidified her decision to go Leon Edel on his completion of Lewis feared, particularly, we suspect, because she was not with Brown. the biography (she does not asked to do the biography her- The letters through 1952, mention how she feels about self. She wrote Stephen Tennant though they warmly endorse Edel or discuss how he was that she and Knopf probably Brown for his capability and selected), and she compares her ought to do it, because someone courtesy, emphasize the oppres- situation to that of the ancient else was likely to write one and sive burden of monitoring the mariner, with an overpowering to write it wrong. In an April 18, biography and also her deter- weight, an albatross, hanging 1948 letter, she said that Ten- mination to control his enter- from her neck. ’~

Page 13 Such an analogy admits, no seem entirely warm and sharing ther, under the guise of devotion doubt, to a guilt she had had -- a passion, a union of spirits, to her. She even agreed to send from the beginning about allow- at the very least a Sherlock him money when his family was ing any biography -- any inva- Holmes-Dr. Watson camara- forced to restrict his limitless sion of privacy -- to take place derie. But evidence (from Ca- extravagance. This, I think, is at all. She emphasized Cather’s ther’s correspondence and the another sign of deep-seated refusal to be intimidated when it correspondence of others) grievance, even if it is at the came to guarding_the things she thwarts this image, especially same time an attempt to express cared most for, and so, then, Cather’s attachment to other oneness with Cather by imitat- ought Lewis to remain staunch. women, such as Louise Pound, ing her generosity to her needy Lewis was reasonably anxious Isabelle McClung, Dorothy Can- family and friends like Isabelle over conflicting desires to pro- field (Fisher), Elizabeth Ser- McClung. claim the Willa Cather she geant, and Zo~ Akins, women In May of 1955, Edith Lewis "knew" and to protect "her" very unlike the self-effacing and wrote to Tennant, triumphantly, Willa Cather. Obviously, she servile Edith Lewis. Cather’s that she had replaced the realized that there would be, or reliance less and less upon George Sand etching by Couture had always been, gossip about Lewis as a traveling companion, that at Cather’s request hung their relationship, and she may unless there was work to be over the mantelpiece of their have felt a biography under her done, likewise indicates a per- home at 5 Bank Street for as governance could overwhelm ception of the relationship long as they lived there (1912: the "cheap and the vulgar and unlike the one Lewis projects 1927) and had continued its life the merely curious" images peo- but probably realized she never over the mantelpiece at 570 Park ple entertained. She was had. Lewis was a competitor for Avenue. She said she replaced it hopeful about Brown and his in- Cather’s attentions, and her with one of Stephen’s paintings tegrity and kindliness, but she omission from Willa Cather Liv- of a flight of doves. She was did not relent in her determina- ing of any but the most meas- happy, she declared, not to have tion to bind him to her notes. ured of comments about these to look at the domineering face Edel’s intervention at the end, other .women (some, like Ser- of Sand any longer. She pre- however, surely disturbed her geant, she omits entirely) sug- ferred, instead, the comfort and universe. So had Mildred Ben. gests her grievance against sense of escape and relief pro- nett’s publication in 1951 of The these women -- and against vided by Stephen’s doves. World of Willa Cather and the Willa Cathero knowledge that one of Cather’s The Sand etching hanging dearest friends, Elizabeth Shep- The final and perhaps greatest over the mantelpiece, the Brown ley Sergeant, was writing Willa part of Lewis’s albatross had biography that hung like an alba- Cather: A Memoir. Lewis’s own then to be Willa Cather herself. tross from her neck -- Edith publication of Willa Cather Liv- Years of repressed resentment Lewis needed a freedom from an ing (the letters to Tennant I have over her subordinate status and oppressive Willa Cather, for silence, not to mention the whom she had made possible so read do-not mention this at all), alienation from her own family in tandem with the Brown biog- much freedom, and even a re- raphy and Sergeant’s memoir, that began after she and Cather venge. The former she secured started to live together, must somewhat by the control she poses many questions. What did have surfaced in those years she fear she had not been able exercised for thirty years over to control? What had Mildred following Cather’s death. She our scholarly research and to a Bennett done to worry her, and saw herself for the first time in certain extent exercises to this what was Elizabeth Sergeant control of Willa Cather, for the day. Cather’s inheritance also about to do? first time able to make her own freed her. Stephen Tennant gave "tiny" voice heard. her the freedom to speak and to Part of the albatross Lewis Stephen Tennant, an in- take over one of Cather’s special bore was her loyalty to Cather. A dulged, then forty-one-year-old friends. Lewis’s revenge like- second part was her need at aristocrat, was charmed by wise has its source in her rigor- least to be in control of some- Edith Lewis’s flattery and con- ous governance of Cather’s life thing, and she saw that she was fidence. She knew immediately and literary affairs, but it is losing Willa Cather to others how to respond to him. He more gained finally, ironically, by her who, she felt, had less right to than any of Cather’s friends who burial in the Jaffrey Cemetery. her. A third part of the burden, continued a relationship with Lewis told Stephen Tennant however, might have been her Lewis unwittingly allowed her to that her major difference with own compulsion to protect the indulge herself. In her letters to Cather had always been over image/fantasy she nursed of her him, Edith Lewis seems, also un- "places," which may have been relationship with Cather, which wittingly, gradually to appro- a reason why she was an in- in Willa Cather Living is made to priate Stephen away from Ca- frequent traveling companion;

Page 14 though I think not, since she Manor and allowed me to use his On May 28, 1914, more than a speaks very warmly of her "ad- private collection of letters from year before Lewis and Cather ar- ventures" with Cather on the Willa Cather, Edith Lewis, and rived, a caravan of six cars had few trips she made with her. Jaf- other literary figures of his gleefully chugged its way up the frey was a place to which she acquaintance. Stephen died in mesa, and the road they took had been a stranger. And it was March of 1987, having refused to was officially opened to the a very precious place for Cather, leave a will. The majority of his public on July 4 of the same a place where Cather invited estate has been sold at auction. year, with a good deal of cele- people dear to her, a place Hugo Vickers, the biographer of bration (D. A. Smith, "Love Af- where she could also be by her- Sir Cecil Beaton, purchased the fair," 7; Torres-Reyes 39-40.). self. It is fitting that Edith Lewis Lewis letters, and Philip Hoare, Horses and wagons did remain in the end intruded upon that who is writing a biography of in use for a time, but the auto solitude.~ Stephen Tennant, has been re- quickly gained favor. In fact, ac- cently given access to them. I cording to the superintendent’s NOTES am also grateful to Edith Lewis reports, well over half of the IWilla Cather, My Antonia, herself, with whom I corre- visitors that summer arrived in (Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1918) sponded for the three-year cars, either their own or vehicles 20. period before her death in 1972 rented from a local garage (see 2My great debt is to the late and with whose cause I am sym- Rickner 8/3/15, 9/15/15, and The Honourable Stephen Napier pathetic. I hope my paraphrases 10/16/15). Understandably, then, Tennant who over the past of Ms. Lewis’s letters do her the park brochure for the season decade gave me his hospitality justice. of 1915 is full of references to numerous times at Wilsford automobiles, including a rule that teams and wagons still have the right of way and another rule that cars must never exceed fif- teen mph and must go even Edith Lewis’s Tall Tales of the Southwest slower under certain well- By DAVID HARRELL defined circumstances (29). University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico What’s more, according to the granddaughter of C. B. Kelly (the "Esa mujer!" (That woman!). In 1915, Mesa Verde had been man who took Lewis and Cather It was with this contemptuous a national park for nine years, to the ruins), Kelly had quit us- epithet that one of the relatives and it was under the direction of ing a team and wagon as soon of Padre Martinez of Taos re- its third superintendent, Thom- as the automobile road was ferred to Willa Cather, the Anglo as Rickner. Local guides had opened. He still operated out of writer who misrepresented the been taking tourists to the ruins the same livery, the Kelly and good pioneer priest by casting ever since the 1890s, and they French Auto Livery, but he used him as a self-indulgent villain were continuing to do so under cars exclusively (Bader) -- two opposed to the beneficent new the auspices of the federal gov- five-passenger Studebakers archbishop (Mares). With less ernment. Getting to Mesa Verde (Rickner 3/11/15). Of course, it’s contempt, perhaps, but certainly was still something of an adven- conceivable that, given her aver- as much frustration, one might ture, however, involving, as sion to travel by auto (see Ben- Lewis says, a scenic train ride use the same exclamation for nett 27 and 150), Cather could Edith Lewis, whose memoir of from Denver to Durango to Man- have prevailed upon Kelly to use Cather .has often proved unreli- cos and then special transporta- the older mode of transporta- able (Woodress, "Biography"). A tion to the park itself. For Lewis tion.’ By her own account, he case in point is Lewis’s account and Cather, this transportation used both cars and wagons; and of the trip that she and Cather was decidedly nineteenth-cen- the journey, once very hard, was took to Mesa Verde, Colorado, tury -- "a team and driver" -- then very easy (Rosowski and and Taos, New Mexico, in the because nothing more modern Slote 82-83). But however they summer of 1915. For some rea- was available: "1 do not remem- made the ascent, Lewis and Ca- son, Lewis consistently misrep- ber seeing any automobiles in ther would surely have seen resents conditions at both that country then -- but in any automobiles somewhere "in places to make them seem con- case, there was no road up the that country" as they were siderably more primitive than Mesa Verde that an automobile bouncing picturesquely up the they actually were. The result is could travel" (Lewis 94). This mesa. a narrative that is as "striking" assertion makes the Mesa Verde in its historical errors as in its seem hardly more accessible Once they arrived on the general reader appeal (see than Tom Outland’s Blue Mesa. mesa, Lewis says, they had the Brown 195). Such was not the case, however. whole place virtually to them-

Page 15 selves: "Very few people visited seum at the camp (Torres-Reyes all this for only $2.50 per day the place then -- we were, I 89), but in the meantime this (Taos Valley News), about what think, the only guests for the cabin would suffice as a means Lewis and Cather had paid for greater part of that week..." of displaying the artifacts un- accommodations at Mesa Verde (95). This is possible but not like- covered in the various ruins. And (see T. Rickner 10/11/15). ly. The summer of 1915 was the it gave Fewkes a place to give According to the locals’ column busiest season yet for the park, his campfire talks during bad in the paper, which printed with visitors numbering 110 in weather (Torres-Reyes 189). visitors’ names and sometimes June, 173 in July (Rickner Another cultural development of their points of origin, the Barker 8/3/15), and 380 in August (Rick- sorts, with which Cather would House and the Columbian at- net 9/15/15), the month that have been less pleased, was the tracted virtually all of the tour- Lewis and Cather were there. movie crew tramping about the ists. As they did at Mancos and Anticipating these increased mesa that summer (see D. A. Mesa Verde, however, Lewis and numbers, Superintendent Rick- Smith, Shadows, 102). However, Cather came and went unnoted, ner had placed a rather anxious as one who "didn’t like the cine- eluding somehow the watchful order that February for twice the ma" (Woodress, Life, 352), Ca- eye of the same editor who, on number of circulars as the ther would have been gratified August 31, reported, "Herbert season before (2/10/15). It could to know that no copy of the film Cheetham came down from the be, as one observer has sug- is extant, only a reference to it in hills .... " gested, that to someone accus- Rickner’s letters as an upsetting Like travel anywhere in those tomed to the crowds in New experience (D. A. Smith, letter). days, travel to Taos was less York and other eastern cities, After their celebrated rescue convenient than it is now, or the number of visitors looked and the return trip to Mancos, than it was even in 1952 when like "very few" indeed (Fleming), again by team and driver, Lewis Lewis published her memoir. But especially when spread through and Cather proceeded to Taos, the town wasn’t as isolated as those canyons and mesas. But "then little visited and very iso- Lewis would have us believe. On tourists were there in sufficient lated -- one had to drive a long August 31, 1915, the Taos Valley numbers to make Oddie Jeep’s way by team to get there, over a News reported on the numerous tent camp near Spruce Tree rough road." And once there, visitors arriving "via auto" and, House a fairly promising enter- they found "no American hotel on September 7, issued this prise. According to the park or boardinghouse"; therefore, proclamation/exhortation: "It is superintendent, who was also having reached the very fringe of understood that Taos has been Oddie’s father, the camp had placed on the Tourist Map of "good accommodations for thir- civilization, the two adventurers had to accommodate them- [the] Bureau of Travel and it is ty people, and all comfortably selves in "a rather primitive but now up to Taos County to see provided with new tent bed- comfortable adobe hotel run by that her roads are put in better rooms, and excellent beds" a Mexican woman" (Lewis 99), condition."’ The same issue (Rickner 4/19/15), a description This hotel may well have been also interviewed some local with which Cather would concur the Columbian, as James Wood- vacationers who said, "traveling (see Rosowski and Slote 83). by auto is the best way to enjoy There was even a telephone line ress suggests in his allusion to Mabel Dodge Luhan’s descrip- a trip." If Lewis read this issue from the camp to the park office tion of the place in December of the paper, she must have felt in Mancos (TorresoReyes 66). 1917 (Life, 265), about a year and left out as she and Cather The park also offered some a half after Lewis and Cather ar- rambled about the countryside 3 cultural amenities. Most eve- rived there. But it may also on horseback or at the reins of a nings, Jesse Walter Fewkes, the have been the Barker House or team. archeologist in charge, gave Trujillo’s Hotel and Restaurant, What Lewis says about the ac- campfire talks for the benefit of which, like the Columbian, ad- commodations and transporta- tourists curious about the ruins vertised in the local paper for tion in Taos is misleading and the people who once inhab- the increasing tourist trade. The enough, but she saved her great- Columbian far outdid its compe- ited them. As these talks were est misstatements for the art held beside the tent camp -- tition, however, with this entic- scene. "There was no artist col- often with very dramatic effects2 ing ad that ran at least from the ony in Taos then," Lewis says, -- Lewis and Cather could hard- summer of 1915 through the win- "though one or two painters ly have missed them. Also, a~t ter of 1917-18: "Now under New lived there quietly" (99). In the Spruce Tree Camp itself there Management, .... First Class Ac- summer of 1915, probably no was a "small log cabin that commodations," an "Excellent one was living in Taos quietly served as a museum" (J. E. Table," and rooms "All Furn- because that was the season Smith 9). One of Rickner’s priori- ished with Electric Lights." Best that saw over a hundred artists ties was to establish a real mu- of all, the hotel was able to offer descend upon the town, having

Page 16 been attracted there by traveling in Santa Fe. And the front page by Cather. Such an attempt exhibitions of the resident ar- of the issue for September 7, would account quite nicely for tists’ work "and by enthusiastic when Lewis and Cather were the exaggerations Lewis makes. reports of settlers and visitors" still there (see Lewis 99; and As she was writing her memoir, (Coke 27; see also Gibson 29). In Woodress, Life 265), carried a and perhaps even before then, fact, so many artists arrived in story about an exhibit at the up- Lewis certainly realized how im- such a short time that they coming state fair in Albuquer- portant the Southwest was to placed something of a burden que. "[C]onservatively valued at Cather’s art. Knowing this, upon "the limited local facili- $50,000," the collection com- perhaps she wanted to create ties" (Gibson 29). This may have prised paintings by "The group the impression that Cather had been the biggest invasion, but it of twenty or more artists of na- put that region on the literary was not the first. Artists had tional reputation now spending map just as she had done for been coming to Taos ever since a large part of each year in the Nebraska. Thus, she portrays the 1840s (Reeve 32); and the art picturesque village of Taos.’’~ the places they visit as remote, colony itself, which Lewis says Taken as a whole, these activi- primitive, and largely unknown, didn’t exist in 1915, is usually ties constitute a remarkable as if waiting for aesthetic dis- said to have begun in 1898 (see achievement for a community covery. Reeve 34, La Farge 222, and Gib- with no artist colony and only At Mesa Verde there were al- son 25), if not earlier. one or two painters. ready a museum of sorts, an in- Interestingly, one of the Faced with all of these contra- formal lecture series, and an ex- founders of the colony, Ernest L. dictions, one has to ask why tensive bibliography convenient- Blumenschein, was on an illus- Lewis described conditions as ly enumerated in the park bro- trations assignment for Mc- she did. That she simply remem- chure that Lewis and Cather Clure’s Magazine when he first bered them incorrectly can be must have seen; yet none of this came to the Southwest in the discounted by the extent of the does Lewis mention. Taos was winter of 1898 (Coke 13). He re- details and the consistent pat- crawling with artists -- some of turned that summer with tern toward primitivization. It them with international reputa- another McClure’s illustrator, may be that, a writer herself, she tions -- yet Lewis acknowl- Bert Greer Phillips, and the Taos was indulging her novelistic edges only one or two. With art colony was born. Blumen- bent with a little embroidery, such omissions, Lewis goes a schein, if not also Phillips, was perhaps with the idea of reju- long way toward presenting still drawing for McClure’s when venating the American frontier Mesa Verde and Taos as rich but Cather started to work there in as a literary theme. She does overlooked material, gems from 1906 (see Reeve 35). He also seem no less skilled than Cather the past that had scarcely begun illustrated books by Jack Lon- in "obliterating from a historic to sparkle in the light of the don, Stephen Crane, Booth Tark- scene its modern encrusta- modern day. This is just the sort ington, and Willa Cather (Coke tions" (see Brown 270); and, as of presentation that would have 18). Leon Edel has pointed out, come naturally to someone who, As a muse, Taos was quite Lewis was certainly capable of in Sharon O’Brien’s words, effective in truly American ways; creating "an overlay of folklore" "knew how to create the emo- as a market, however, it was too (189). Perhaps she was simply tional and psychological sanc- far from the people with the expecting too much. Marilyn Ar- tuary Cather needed to write" money to buy paintings. So in nold has said, not altogether (353); and it also would attract 1912, six of the full- or part-time facetiously, that for Lewis "con- what James Woodress calls resident artists established the ditions became primitive when "the polarity in Cather between Taos Society of Artists to ar- she and Cather had to prepare primitivism and civilization [that] range traveling exhibitions of most of their own meals." Or adds tensio~ to her fiction" (Life the members’ paintings. Their maybe it’s nothing more than a 297). efforts were so successful that bad case of tourist vision, that As the author of a memoir by 1915 "the Taos painters were skewed perspective that still af- originally intended to provide in- well known across the nation, flicts visitors to the Southwest formation for an authorized biog- their paintings had become in- -- New Mexico in particular -- raphy and as Cather’s literary ex- creasingly popular, and mu- and causes them to return to ecutor, Lewis was in the posi- seums and galleries in the major their Eastern climes with some tion either to correct the record cities welcomed Taos Society of of the strangest impressions. orto distort it, In the case of this Artists’ exhibitions" (Gibson Still another possibility is sug- important "first trip together to 27-28). According to the town gested in a comment by Patricia the Southwest" (Lewis 93), she paper during August and Sep- Lee Yongue, who says Lewis’s clearly chose the latter. Know- tember 1915, there were also fre- tendency toward primitivization ing this -- and recalling James quent exhibitions locally, often may be an attempt to "do right" Woodress’s words of caution

Page 17 one is tempted to entertain 4A year later, in 1916, the ther. Ed. Bernice Slote and Vir- doubts about the rest of the paper was still harping on the ginia Faulkner. Lincoln: U of Ne- memoir as well, and one is in- same theme (see the issues for braska P, 1974: 185-204. clined to look for corroboration August 1, 15, and 22). Fleming, Robert E., interview in other biographical and his- ~As pleased as the local’ paper in Albuquerque, NM, 7 Decem- torical sources before relying was about the influx of artists, ber 1987. too heavily upon this one. What the artists themselves were Gibson, Arrell Morgan. The James Woodress says about Ca- apparently concerned about Sante Fe and Taos Colonies: ther "rewriting the story of her public relations. When in 1917 Age .of the Muses, 1900-1942. own life" (Life 273), treating it, in he received an award of a gold Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1983. fact, "as though it were fiction" medal and $1,000 for one of his La Farge, Oliver. Sante Fe: (Life 42), may apply equally well paintings, artist E. L. Blumeno to Lewis, who seems just as in- The Autobiography of a South- schein hastened to point out western Town. Norman: U of Ok- tent upon defining Cather’s liter- that the award was really for ary persona as was Cather her- twelve years’ work and therefore lahoma P, 1959. self, no matter how many facts "not very good pay." "He does Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Liv- of history must be altered in the not want it thought that the ar- ing¯ 1953. Lincoln: U of Nebraska process. Esa mu]er! tists of Taos are in the habit of P, 1976. NOTES receiving so much money for Luhan, Mabel Dodge. Edge of I Patricia Lee Yongue has their pictures. He has been here Taos Desert. Vol. 4 of Intimate pointed out an interesting paral- for twelve summers and most of Memories. New York: Harcourt, lel with one of Cather’s stories. those summers he has spent Brace, 1937. Near the end of "The Best every cent of his money to pay Mares, E. A. "Padre Martinez." Years," Miss Knightly (now Mrs. the expenses of the long trip Presentation at the Third Nation- Thorndike) chooses a buggy from New York to Taos and al Seminar on Willa Cather, 18 over an automobile when she return" (Taos Valley News, June 1987, in Hastings, NE. plans her visit to some of the 11/13/17). O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: schools she used to supervise 6Considering this possible The Emerging Voice. New York: (Cather 128-29). motive, it’s interesting to note Oxford UP, 1987. 2Jack Rickner, the middle son that twice in his introduction, E. The Prehistoric Cliff Dwell- of Superintendent Thomas K. Brown emphasizes Cather’s ings: Mesa Verde National Park. Rickner and one of Fewkes’s "discovery" of the Southwest, Washington: Government Print- former assistants, recalls his the first time calling it "the prin- ing Office, 1915. role in the production: "Dr. cipal emotional experience of Willa Cather’s mature life" (xxii; Reeve, Kay Aiken. The Making Fewkes gave talks at a camp fire of an American Place: The De- on the ledge below the museum see also xxiv). velopment of Santa Fe and Taos, looking toward Spruce Tree WORKS CITED House .... Across the canyon New Mexico, as an American there was a ditch cut in the rock. Arnold, Marilyn, letter to the Cultural Center, 1898-1942. Un- We took black powder and fuse. author, 22 March 1988. published Ph.D. Dissertation, ¯.. When he came to the point in Bader, Jean Kelly, interview in Texas A & M U, 1977. Ann Arbor, Mancos, CO, 4 August 1987. Mh University of Microfilms In- his lecture where the ball of fire ternational, 1983. came out of the earth we set the Bennett, Mildred R. The World powder off -- and the Indians of Willa Cather. 1951. Lincoln: U Rickner, J. E., letter to the came out of the ground on to of Nebraska P, 1961. author, 26 August 1988. this earth. That was their belief." Brown, E. K. Willa Cather: A Rickner, Thomas. Corre- 3Mabel Dodge Luhan found Critical Biography. Completed spondence. Mesa Verde Nation- rooms rather dimly lighted by oil by Leon Edel, 1953. Lincoln: U of al Park Library, Vault. lamps and beds with "thin Nebraska P, 1987. Rosowski, Susan J. and Ber- springs and thinner mattresses Cather, Willa. "The Best nice Slote. "Willa Cather’s 1916 ¯.. [that] curved into wide hol- Years." In The Old Beauty & Mesa Verde Essay: The Genesis lows." Evidently, the hotel’s Others. 1948. New York: Vintage, of The Professor’s House". year-old two-story addition of 1976. Prairie Schooner. 58, 4 (Winter twenty-four rooms -- a "much 1984): 81-92. needed improvement [that] wiil Coke, Van Deren. Taos and provide excellent quarters for Sante Fe: The Artists’ Environ- Smith, Duane A., letter to the the many visitors who come to ment: 1882-1942. Albuquerque: author, 4 October 1988. Taos" (see the Taos Valley U of New Mexico P, 1963. ---. "A Love Affair that Almost News, 12/5/16) -- did not im- Edel, Leon. "Homage to Willa Wasn’t . . . Durango and Mesa press her. Cather." In The Art of Willa Ca- Verde National Park." In Mesa

Page 18 Verde Occasional Papers. Colo- of the Interior, National Park read any of these epistles, but rado: Mesa Verde Museum Service, 1970. David Stouck, the Canadian Ca- Association, Inc., 1981. Woodress, James, "Cather ther scholar, has seen at least --. Mesa Verde National Park: Biography Redivivus." Address one which warns the receiver Shadows of the Centuries. Law- given at the Third National Sem- about that "wretched Mildred rence: U of Kansas P, 1988. inar on Witla Cather, 14 June Bennett." Smith, Jack E. Mesas, Cliffs 1987, in Hastings, NE. Her attempts to thwart re- and Canyons. Colorado: Mesa ---. Willa Cather: A Literary search antagonized Mrs. Sher- Verde Museum Association, Life. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, wood, who exclaimed, "1 guess I Inc., 1987. 1987. know what is better for ’Willie’ than Miss Lewis and we’ll go Taos Valley News. Various Yongue, Patricia I.~ee, letter to the author, 21 June J1988. right ahead." The immediate issues, 1915-1917. Santa Fe: result was that Mrs. Sherwood’ New Mexico State Records Cen- (NOTE: This study was aided put all her resources at my dis- ter and Archives. by a grant from the Student Re- posal, including her letters from Torres-Reyes, Ricardo. Mesa search Allocations Committee Miss Cather. But on the other Verde National Park: An Admin. of the Graduate Student Associ- hand, Miss Elsie Cather (Willa’s istrative History, 1906-1970. ation at the University of New youngest sister) would not talk Washington DC: US Department Mexico.) with me. A friend in Red Cloud told her, "Elsie, that book will be published and if there are errors in it that you could have cor- rected, you will have only your- At the Feet of Willa Cather: self to blame." Miss Elsie Ca- A Personal Account of Edith Lewis as Protector ther, being an intelligent and reasonable person, saw the By MILDRED R. BENNETT truth of this statement and com- Willa Cather Foundation, Red Cloud, Nebraska municated to her friend that if I Edith Lewis, long time trusted My first encounter with Edith would try again, she would talk friend of Willa Cather, executor Lewis came in 1947. I had al- to me. I then spent a week at her of her estate, inheritor of one- ready begun research on Willa Lincoln home going over every third of that estate, and self- Cather with the help of Carrie word of The Wor/d of Willa Ca- appointed protector of her pri- Miner Sherwood, who had ther and received her excellent vacy and her legends, spent a known "Willie" since 1883. Mrs. suggestions and corrections. lifetime helping and sustaining Sherwood insisted that I should She said she would have talked Willa Cather, and perhaps en- talk with the Menuhin family, to me sooner but she didn’t want couraging some of her idiosyn- who had meant so much to Willa to hurt "dear Edith." crasies. However, an objective Cather in her declining years. When I visited New England I examination of the relationship That fall I planned to go to Cali- wanted to talk to Dorothy Can- suggests that without Miss fornia and I wrote Mrs. Menuhin field-Fisher, but when I called Lewis, Willa Cather could not asking her if i might visit with her home her husband said she have achieved so great a literary her about Miss Cather. I en- was not home, and that she stature. The Gods are kind: closed my parents’ address and would not feel right about talk- telephone-number. Edith L. Lewis, born ca. 1882, ing with me unless I had Alfred possibly in Moline, Illinois, went The first day after my arrival I Knopf’s permission. I obtained one year to the University of Ne- received a cordial telephone call that permission by telephone. braska in Lincoln and then to from Mrs. Menuhin inviting, me Mr. Knopf said he could see no Smith College where she gradu- up to Los Gatos. But the next conflict of interest in my having ated in. 1903. Although Dorothy morning I had a telegram can- a conversation with Mrs. Fisher. Canfield knew her in those Lin- celling the invitation and saying. When I did visit with her, coln years when Willa Cather at- she had talked with Edith Lewis Dorothy Canfield Fisher asked tended the University, authori- and it was no. time for any biog- me, "What is the matter with ties seem to agree that Miss Ca- raphy of Miss Cather. (Willa Ca- Edith Lewis?" I said I had no ther met Edith Lewis in 1902 ther had died that spring.) idea. She said she felt that she when the former visited in Lin- When I returned to Nebraska, had-been shut out of the Cather- coln. The two began sharing an Mrs. Sherwood had received a Lewis friendship in the last few apartment when Willa Cather re- letter asking her not to talk with years. She said after Willa Ca- turned from Boston in 1908 and me or have anything to do with ther and Edith Lewis started liv- continued to do so until Cather’s me. Similar letters went out to ing together, Edith Lewis, who death in 1947. all relatives and friends, i did not had just begun to publish, pub-

Page 19 lished no more. Mrs. Fisherand Brown with his biography com- her Cather letters, which she other friends expressed concern missioned by Alfred Knopfi were had deposited there. When I ar- for this cessation of creativity. published as her memoir: Willa rived, Mr. Adams, the director, From that time on, apparently, Cather Living (1953). Her influ- said I could not read the Ser- Edith Lewis submerged her own ence on Brown’s biography geant letters -- no explanation. talents to help Willa Cather’s shows in the respectful tone of However, he said I could read work. Willa Cather: A Critical Biog- the other Cather |etters in their On my 1948 trip east, Mr. raphy (Brown indeed wrote with rare collection. When I inquired Knopf arranged a visit with Miss Edith Lewis looking over his in that section, the girl said they Lewis. She had alerted the door- shoulder) and in content, pas- had no Cather letters, i went sages directly echo Lewis’s ac- back to Mr. Adams, who then ac- man at the Park Avenue apart- companied me to the room and ment and he admitted me readi- count of events. In some essen- ly: Miss Lewis, with a white tial details where fact contra- told the girl to let me see certain dicted what Cather had led documents. After he had dis- straight bob and a friendly smile, appeared the girl said, "We’re greeted me at the door. Later, in Lewis to believe, Lewis gave way -- momentarily. Brown, in a not supposed to admit that we recalling that visit to friends, have any Cather letters." When I Miss Lewis said I took off my personal conversation with me, recalled great difficulty with did see the collection -- not Ser- shoes on entering the apart- geant’s -- I also found one note ment, and this is true, but not Miss Lewis over Cather’s birth date, which historical record set from Edith Lewis which showed from a worshipful attitude, but the letters had passed through because the streets were mud- in 1873 and Cather had set in dy. A gracious hostess, she 1876; although Lewis finally con- her censorship. No informative asked about my husband and sented to letting him use 1873 in correspondence remained. son, but when Miss Cather’s his book, she put 1876 on the In the years since Miss name came up she became tombstone in Jaffrey. Lewis’s death, ! have thought most agitated. During the half In our 1948 conversation, I much of the dependence these hour that we talked, she twisted mentioned that a new house two women placed on each her little linen handkerchief was being erected between Ca- other, i think Miss Lewis delib- nearly to shreds. ther’s grave and Monadnock erately put herself at Willa Ca- She had read the manuscript Mountain, and added that the ther’s feet and gloried in her of my book and did not like it. I sight distressed me. "Well, if position there. And after Miss had included some pages from you feel bad about it, how do Cather’s death she rose to an old album where Willa Cather you think I feel?" Miss Lewis guardian of the legends Miss Ca- as a child had written her favor- replied. ther had insisted were fact. ite occupations: "Sliceing The interpretation of devotion Since Dorothy Canfield Fis her toads," her favorite author: differs, of course, according to had mentioned Edith Lewis’s "Sheakspear," her favorite who is perceiving it. I then com- publication, John March searched amusement: "Vivisection," mented on her devotion to Ca- and found the two following chief ambition: "To be an M.D.," ther, and she responded that poems..Published in 1905, these and her idea of perfect happi- Miss Cather had given her much give one a clue to why their ness: "Amputating limbs." Miss more than she had given Cather. friendship began and lasted. If Lewis banged her fist down on Other accounts, however, stress you listen you can hear echoes these pages and said, "You Miss Lewis’s friendship. Mrs. of Housman, and Cather ~her- can’t use these. They’re letters." Sherwood described Edith’s self. Miss Lewis’s response gave in- assistance in both Cather’s art dication of the protective atti- ~and life: she read all scripts ALIENS tude she assumed toward Wi|la aloud for Miss Cather~s ear, and ¯ Edith L Lewis Cather’s literary effects. she selected clothes which Published in Scribr~er’s .Magazi~ne, 37 (March 1905) Still, within the first year of might please her, bringing them Cather’s death, Edith Lewis’s at- home.for her friend to try on, ap- tempt to control anything about praise, and discard if she chose. Still are =the many houses, Miss Cather extended to any Edith Lewis’s considerable And still the long Street kind of biography. "Who are you power in regard to Cather ar- lies; that you think you can write a chives-has become its own Themoon above the house- book about Willa Cather when legend in Cather scholarship. tops even I wouldn’t think of it?" she Again, Lewis assumed the role Shines through cloud- demanded during our conversa- of guardian. When I visited Eliza- travelled skies; tion. But she did write about beth Shepley Sergeant in 1955, From lands of spendthrift Willa Cather, and her notes, orig- she suggested I go to the Mor- treasure inally intended to help E. K. gan Library in New York to read It looks and lights the way

Page 20 Of those whose beggared Young lovers give their braska, to the Basilica of our footsteps hearts away. Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico to Outmarch the sleeping day. the cathedral in Santa Fe. She But here the late and treasures his kindness in re- Of those to whom the languid dawn membering her, which no one darkness Mounts slowly through else can do or has done, and Brought not their heart’s the bitter air, signs herself in terms well desire, And in the streets of known to Cather researchers, But filled their cup with breathless stone "Faithfully yours." longing A thousand weary By 1960 this missionary Fa- And fed their veins with travellers fare: ther had also been to Red Cloud, fire; All save some lad whose Nebraska, and had talked with Who up and down the pave- captive heart, Mrs. Sherwood and me. He did ments On dream-worn pathways not mention Miss Lewis to us From eve till morn must go, fled afar, nor us to her, I discovered later. Pursuing dreams that lead Beneath the gold of wind- In a note to Mrs. Mellen (one of them swept skies, Miss Cather’s favorite nieces, In ways i do not know. Goes carolling the daughter of her sister Jessica), morning star. Down there go lads that he explains his discretion in not wander Miss Lewis’s friendship with a upsetting anyone over the nega- With pulses hot as mine; missionary priest who has asked tive feelings between Miss Slow are their feet to follow to remain anonymous, a great Lewis and those of us in Red There where their thoughts Cather enthusiast, began not Cloud. When he is with her, he incline; too long after Miss Cather’s does not mention Carrie (Sher- Far are the lips that death. The letters which she wood) or Mildred. When he is cherished, wrote to him begin in October with us, he does not mention The hearts they lay beside, 1956. She is sending him George Miss Lewis. He ends with saying And far to find by starlight Kates’ reproduction of the Avig- he feels like the man in Alexan- The joys of rooming-tide. non story in the volume Five der’s Bridge with two women in Stories by Willa Cather. She says They walk all night for his life. Kates’ essay tells all she can say In November, Miss Lewis re- solace, about the unfinished stow. In sponds to his article about And hem alone sit I, December she writes that Mr. Christian Science. He had been And weigh the heavy Kates has written of his meeting looking into the possibility that footfall with the aforesaid priest and she Cather’s study of Mary Baker Of each who hurries by; is sure the two enjoyed their Till one, beneath his Eddy had some influence on her visit. She knows whatever com- own beliefs. Miss Lewis reminds trouble ments come from him about him that she was working as a More wistful than the rest, Miss Cather’s books will be sin- proof reader on McClure’s when Looks up, and knits my cere and appreciative. The next burden Miss Cather was researching letter discusses the friendship the Christian Science articles in To thatwithin his breast. between Willa Cather and Sigrid Boston; she used to go up to Undset who, when she lived in Boston to read the proofs with AT MORNING Brooklyn, often came to visit Miss Cather and then listen to Edith L. Lewis Miss Cather, and they talked of the comments about the sub- Published in Harper’s, many books but not of their own. ject. In regard to Quimby, one of 112 (December 1905) 2 She thanks Father for the spiri- the early proponents of Chris- Now in the fields the dew is tual bouquet he sent. Her kind tian Science, Miss Lewis calls wet feeling toward the Catholic him and others like him philos- Upon the green stalks of church becomes more evident. ophers of humble origin who ga- the rye; In June 1960, she says she thered disciples about them and Far from the land of has not written because she has instructed them. She does not aching thoughts, been ill. She wishes she could think Miss Cather could have By streams I know, the see the Santa Fe sky again. She taken their doctrines seriously. aspens sigh; comments that Willa Cather’s Miss Lewis says that whatever And light beneath the books have now been translated ideas Miss Cather had of dual- trembling clasp into twenty-five languages, in- ism in human nature, she did not Of hedges hung with cluding Chinese and Malayan. get them from Quimby. Nor sweets of May In August 1960, Edith Lewis would she have been influenced Between the kisses of thanks him for his masses by Mrs. Eddy. Miss Lewis adds delight offered from little towns in Ne- that in all her years with Miss

Page 21 Cather, she never discussed have finished Churchill’s Marl- Edith Lewis died a Roman religion or religious philosophy. borough. She still may have to Catholic, August 12, 1972, in And if Cather ever did talk about read him over. "Faithfully New York at the age of ninety. such subjects, she would have yours." Mrs. Ruddy, the woman who done so with two or three of the In August 1965, the mission- took care of Edith Lewis in her priests she knew well -- such as ary priest had visited her and later years, wrote our priest perhaps, Father Fitzgerald in she wishes Cather could have friend that Miss Cather did not Red Cloud. known him, how she would have want anyone to know about her On November 24, 1960, Miss enjoyed him. She discusses the charities; Miss Lewis handled Lewis thanks him for his letter Father’s articles on Dante and the household money. One of and article. Now she signs her- how she has read Longfellow’s the maids told Mrs. Ruddy that self "Faithfully yours" in almost translation, that she had a four- Miss Cather would give a trusty the same handwriting as Cather volume prose translation by Nor- maid ten dollars extra and warn herself. ton which she had read many her not to tell Miss Lewis. Gil- In January 1965, she gives him times. She loves the meeting be- bert, the doorman, told Mrs. her unlisted telephone number. tween Dante and Beatrice: "How Ruddy that Miss Cather would She still has her lovely Irish hast thou dared to approach this ride only in a green taxi. She Catholic nurse. She is able to place! Dost thou not know that wanted her books printed only go out for short walks and can man is happy here?" Thanks him with hard covers. Mrs. Ruddy still read and enjoy it. She’s again for visiting. "Yours with all claims to have persuaded Miss my good wishes." Lewis to let Death Comes for the reading Churchill’s six-volume Archbishop be published in Life of Marlborough. "Faithfully In October 1965, Miss Lewis paperback. Mrs. Ruddy argued yours." tells him she has sent him her that Miss Cather would not want May 22, 1965. She has had to extra four volumes of Norton’s to deny the children the privi- change nurses -- her former one translation of Dante, She had lege of reading her book. Gilbert has gone to Rome and there bought one while in college and also told Mrs. Ruddythat Miss married a Baltimore business the other later because it was a Cather and Miss Lewis did not man -- in a new kind of cere- revised edition -- not much dif- care if their guests had money, mony where both partake of the ferent. Again she mentions but they must be intellectual. bread and wine. She will say a Beatrice’s words previously Edith Lewis lies now at the prayer for him. "Faithfully quoted -- her favorite passage. yours." feet of Willa Cather, a place she She so much enjoyed his visit. chose a long time ago for life Sometimes after this favorite and for death. nurse had left, Miss Lewis’s mis- "With many good wishes alo sionary friend and the former ways." nurse happened to visit 570 Park Avenue on the same afternoon. Apparently they had a joyous EDITOR S NOTE: The three preceding essays on Edith conversation. Then not too long Lewis were presented at the October 1988 meeting of the West- after, Miss Lewis became ill and ern Literature Association in Eugene, Oregon. A fourth essay, went to Roosevelt Hospital on Marilyn Arnold’s "Edith Lewis’s Memoir of Willa Cather," was the West side. She asked for a adapted from the Foreword to the new edition of Edith Lewis’s priest to come, but messages Willa Cather Living: A Personal Memoir, Athens: Ohio UP, July got mixed and no priest arrived= 1989, cloth $22.95, paper $12.95. She had been thinking of seek- ing membership and baptism into the Roman Catholic Church, but this commitment Cather’s One of Ours: A French Perspective did not occur then~ Later she By MICHEL GERVAUD again became seriously ill and University of Aix en Provence, France asked for visitation and baptism in her own apartment on Park It is a well known fact that literature, art, land and people, Avenue. This was accomplished, Willa Cather had a deep appre- and its way of life.~ Indeed, she but still no priest came for ciation of European culture, the was an "inveterate Francophile" regular calls until our old friend, ancient but still very much alive as her publisher and friend the the missionary priest, inter- civilizations of the Old Contin- late Alfred Knopf once re- vened and obtained proper visi- ent. marked. tations. Of all European countries, When I first discovered Willa In June 1965, she is thankful France was, beyond doubt, the Cather some twenty-five years she can still read but sorry to one she cherished most -- its ago, I felt deeply moved by what

Page 22 her friend, Elizabeth Sergeant, frustrated young man rejecting pean history helped shape his described as her "devotion to the materialistic prosperity of attitude toward the war. At first and insight into French cul- Nebraska before and during Claude thought that the Ger- ture.’’~ Reading her books, I was World War I and finding fulfill- mans, "this splended people" exploring a new world -- Ne. ment in the war against Ger- whose solid virtues he had been braska and its mosaic of immi- many does not entirely do jus- able to appreciate in the farmers grant communities u and yet I tice to the book. Unden!ably, of German origin in Nebraska, did not feel lost. To get ac- Claude, the idealistic young "had made some great mistake" quainted with that American man, is willing to die for a cause. and would soon "apologize" writer I did not need to go into But far more important, in my (166). Soon, however, the inva= cultural exile. The familiar land- opinion, is the realization by sion of Belgium, a neutral coun- marks were there. ¯ Claude, upon coming into con- try, by the German armies, the The better I got to know her tact with France, that he can destruction of Louvain and its works, the more fascinated and find there new reasons to live prestigious university, and puzzled I was by the intensity of and even be happy at last, once atrocities on civilian popula- her attachment to France and the war is over. And this, to me, tions convinced Claude and an French values. I wondered, and I excludes any so-called "death increasing number of Americans am still wondering, how it was wish" on the part of Claude, who that "an unprecedented power she could be so partial to my can not be described either as a of destruction, . .. [s]omething country and its people when she war-lover. When he was staying new, and certainly evil, was at could be so impatient with her with the Jouberts, Claude felt work among mankind" (167). As fellow Americans. But such is that "he was having his youth in a result, as shown by Claude and France .... He was beginning the nature and mystery of love; ’’~ other Nebraskans, American its intensity does not neces- over again. He even planned to public opinion little by little sarily depend on the intrinsic buy a little farm in France and grew hostile to Germany, al- qualities of its object. It can only "stay [t]here for the rest of his though at the time very few be accepted gratefully, as a gift life" (406). Americans favored a U.S. inter- from the Gods. Granted that, Willa Cather’s introduction to vention in a war thousands of one is no more tempted to ques- French culture was initially miles away, when America was tion the validity of Willa Cather’s achieved through literature enjoying peace and prosperity enthusiastic comments on the mainly (although not exclu- -- after all, quite a legitimate French, even when she found in sively) -- Victor Hugo and the and normal reaction -- until it 1902 that the very porters spoke giants of fiction, Flaubert and became clear that neutrality was French "almost as music is Balzac. She also got acquainted impossible for a country as phrased,’’2 a talent I had not so with French history through powerful as the United States far perceived in French porters. Michelet and his vivid resurrec- with international concerns and Quite obviously, in One of tion of the past (what she called interests to defend. Ours she communicated her the "romance of history"). Just at the beginning of the passion for all things French to Claude discovers France War, the first crushing defeats Claude Wheeler, the young Ne. through history essentially. of the French armies, the Ger- braska farmer, making him one Willa Cather lent her young mans close to Paris (twenty of the fifty thousand Americans roughneck her fascination with miles or so, at Meaux) caused who died on the battlefields ~of medieval history and architec- dismay among the Wheelers, France during World War I. ture. To Willa Cather the great certainly representative of the Taken as a whole, One of Ours cathedrals of France or the average Americans in that re- is certainly not Willa Cather’s Papal Palace at Avignon sym- spect, Although Mrs. Wheeler best novel, but it does not de- bolized the permanence of civili- was convinced that the Ger- serve the hostility of critics who zation, the soul of old nations. mans were better Christians pronounced the book a failure as Claude, likewise, writing a than the French and that Paris a war novel. The truth is that One thesis on Joan of Arc, asso- was a beautiful but wicked city of Ours is not a war novel. Ac- ciates her with visions of "a -- with a venerable Christian tually, the war proper is limited great church . . . cities with past, however -- she considered to the last book, and even then walls" -- thus preparing himself that the fall of Paris would be a there is hardly any description for his encounter with France tragedy and she rejoiced when of real fighting, which Willa and its ancient past, although the French at the battle of the Cather avoided as much as pos- "[a]t that time he had never seen Marne stopped the. German sible. The deep meaning and a map of France, and had a very offensive in early September purpose of the novel lies else. poor opinion of any place farther 1914. As to Claude, more signifi- where, I believe. Even to present away than~ Chicago’! (62). No cantly, he had started dreaming One of Ours as the story of a doubt Claude’s interest in Euro- of fighting for Paris; now for him

Page 23 "the capital . . . of the world" hundreds of years. Truly what prised to see trees along the (172), a town which, ironically takes place during that crucial edges of every field -- "didn’t enough, he never was-to visit episode is Claude’s integration they take the strength out of the during the few months preced- into French heritage -- without soil?" (340). Well, maybe they ing his death in action. Paris, rejecting his ties with his own did, but what is implied by Willa "the place where every dough- native land. "He felt distinctly Cather is that in the Old World, boy meant to go" (341), was to that it went through him and the sense of beauty was insepa- remain a confused image for farther still.., as if his mother rable from farming itself. Gen- him and his men who envisioned were looking over his shoulder" erations of men had tended their our capital as a city of "spires (343). To me, this "unique expe- fields as if they were gardens -- and golden domes past count- rience" is the key to the whole not merely exploiting the soil ing" with buildings higher than meaning of the novel. It is but lovingly landscaping it for in Chicago -- "They attributed nothing less than the moment centuries. In that respect pro- to the city of their desire incal- when Claude truly feels adopted ductivity was not the supre.me culable immensity, bewildering by France and is definitively ac- goal. That reminds me of An- vastness, Babylonian hugeness credited, reaching a point of no tonia, who loved her fruit trees and heaviness -- the only attri- return. "as if they were people," carry- butes they had been taught to ing water to them after working admire" (341). Of course, far easier to per- all day in the fields.’ ceive are the geographical links To Claude, more cultured than established by Claude and his Gardens, which play such an his men, there is, woven into the men between Nebraska and important role in the civilizing long history of Paris with its "flowery France," displaying in process, as described by Willa "pages of kings" (169), an idea the summer of 1918 its fields of Cather in some of her major of permanence -- a major theme works, are also present in One of wheat, oats, rye and even alfalfa Ours. In spite ~of the devas- in Willa Cather’s fiction -- -- much to the amusement of which he highly values; indeed, the young soldiers -- as in their tations inflicted by the war, the life for him had no meaning prairie states. As those were the great sorrows affecting the without something that "en- days when highly efficient weed- families Claude meets, the dured." It is highly revealing to French stubbornly take care of killers had not yet been in their gardens as microcosms of note that upon catching sight of vented, the fields are strewn the French coast, at the end of with cornflowers and poppies harmony and peace in a world of the voyage of the Anchises, his unknown to Claude’s men (with chaos and violence, whether it is impression~ is that of a "pillar of the exception of one Austrian the simple intimate garden at eternity," "strong," "self-suffi- boy from Omaha) -- a discovery the Jouberts’, or the garden cient," "unshaken," "mighty" which creates a sensation around the Red Cross barracks when he had expected to find a among them. They also remark among ruins tended by a former "shattered" country, a "bleed- the presence of "American soldier with one arm, or the fine ing France" (319). In keeping binders, of well-known makes" formal garden of the upper-class with this idea of eternity, it was (Deering or McCormick, I sup- Fleurys, with the rows of plane particularly appropriate for Willa pose) well maintained not by trees cut square, its beds of Cather to have her young hero "peasants," i.e. backward peo- gorgeous flowers, and rose come to the full awareness of ple, "but by wise-looking old gardens. In such tragic circum- the past as a permanent living farmers," (The young ones, of stances, the French looking element of a civilization as "a course, are on .the battlefront.) after their gardens are not life rooted in the centuries" in But the most cheering sight is engaged in any frivolous occu- the Gothic church of St. Ouen in~ that of the tree dearest to the pation. (They never are in-Ca- Rouen, She presents Claude’s heart of Willa Ca’ther: "the ther’s fiction!) They are doing no experience as a kind of illumina- familiar cottonwoodi growing less than maintaining civiliza- tion in the course of which the everywhere" persecuted by the tion, affirming the vitality of the Prairie boy frustrated by a prosperous Nebraska farmers "French soil" no matter what selfish, careless father in his for being too common and re- the Germans did to it. aspirations to culture, at last, in placed by more "noble trees’.’ Claude, thanks to his gift of this centuries-old French like maple and ash. Apparently sympathy, but also his Nebraska church receives his share of the the French are not prejudiced rural background, gets a deep in- legacy of ages. Here the past i~s against these beautiful trees, sight into the land and the way it palpable, pulsating, part and and Claude feels "they were a reflects the soul of a people un- parcel of an uninterrupted tradi- real bond between him and this broken by the war, but he is also tion, reaching him at last as the people" (340). However, the acutely aware that to really get light from some distant star hav- pragmatic, efficiency;minded to know a people one must ing traveled through space for young American farmers are sur- speak its language. Claude is

Page 24 very desirous to speak French tongue, spoken by Mme. Joubert ent cultural and social back- but he is discouraged by its diffi- as a lesson of energy. grounds, Claude, talking with culty. We see him in July 1917 Finally, in spite of the lan- the young woman, experiences, perusing a French phrasebook perhaps for the first time in guage barrier and his fear of France or even in the United made up, says the narrator, of "the treacherous ’French polite- sentences chosen for their use- States, "the feeling of being ness,’ "Claude wins the esteem completely understood, of being fulness to soldiers, such as, of and sympathy of the people he all things, "Non, jamais je ne no longer a stranger" (391). On encounters in France, especially this occasion, the situation is regarde les femmes," (No, I the Jouberts, whose affection never look at the women!) (244). Claude feels was "genuine and quite original. This is not any The only explanation to me for more an American trying to get personal" (405). However, meet- acquainted with France, but an this strange sentence is the anxi- ing the Fleurys, the upper-class ety of American military chiefs family, proves to be quite an aristocratic French woman, the to guard the doughboys against descendant of a family of ordeal for Claude. In this refined soldiers, wishing to know about venereal diseases -- a serious environment, Claude feels waste of man power -- when miserable and "out of place." Claude’s native land, Nebraska, you think that up to the summer Actually, the real trouble, as which perhaps Claude did not of 1917 the French army had re- consider worth talking about. made clear by Claude himself, is Olive de Courcy, genuinely in- ported a million cases of VD not with the Fleurys’ manners, since the beginning of the war. terested, intently listening to totally devoid of any trace of Claude, dreamily imagines Ne- Claude, arriving in France and haughtiness, but with Claude’s braska: "Flat -- covered with putting his French to the test, deep sense of frustration and grain, muddy rivers. I think it does not say anything noble and despair at having been deprived must be like Russia" (389). Quite historic, such as the famous by his insensitive father of the curiously it is this young French "Lafayette, nous voila." He only proper education that would woman who has the power to asks the French cheese woman, I~ave made "a man of him" and arouse in Claude’s heart the dor- "Avez-vous du fromage, Ma- enabled him to share in the in- mant love for his own land and dame?" (324). And it works. He terests of this cultured French place, lying buried under layers and his men can buy cheese at family, such as music, which of frustration and bitterness. two and a half times the normal "has always been like a religion market price. But Claude is less in this house" (418) says his On a more personal level, successful with a child whose friend, David Gerhardt, the dis- Claude’s encounter with Olive very simple and friendly ques- tinguished former violinist, at de Courcy, the opposite of Enid, tion he cannot answer, much to once admired and envied by the bigoted, castrating girl he his confusion and distress: Claude for his brilliant accom- had the misfortune to marry, is "Unless I can learn to talk to the plishments and especially his the counterpart of his memor- children of this country,... I’ll command of the French lan- able experience in the Church of go home!" he thinks (328). It is guage. St. Ouen in Rouen. Something true that American soldiers fas- In reality, Willa Cather’s sym- unique has also taken place be- cinated French children. Fred- pathetic presentation of her tween the two young people, erick Palmer, a famous war cor- young Nebraskan hero -- so causing Claude to wonder: "Two respondent, observed that the much of a brother to her -- people could hardly give each smattering of French American shows that there is little ground other more if they were together soldiers managed to get was for Claude’s almost masochistic for years" (391-92). essentially picked up from chil- self-depreciation. Indeed, we dren. Here, maybe, we witness-the can imagine, what Claude was beginning of a romance. They On the whole, Claude’s atti- too modest to realize was that agree to meet again after the tude to the French language is perceptive and friendly French war. In a Hollywood version of ambivalent. On the one hand, he people would appreciate him for just what he was: a fine hand- One of Ours, we can imagine~ experiences paralyzing self- Claude would be wounded in ac- consciousness and frustration, some young man, intelligent, tion and nursed by Olive de but he sees French also as a sensitive, generous, eager to positive encouragement to form understand and to learn -- a Courcy. He then would marry her strong ties with the people. man with solid qualities and and look after her estate, living a Above all, he perceives in the potentialities. In that respect, happy life in France and having language itself what it reveals nothing could be more meaning- many Franco-American children. about the national character. ful than his encounter with the But Claude, upon taking leave, Thus in a famous passage, too gracious Mademoiselle Olive de prophetically thinks that he had long to be fully quoted here, he Courcy, just behind the battle left something "which he would sees French, this exacting front. Despite their vastly differ- never find again" (392).

Page 25 His mother’s reflection, so one of her last great joys. In a Warren, Edward Wagenknecht, often quoted, Claude "died be- sense we French people could Joseph Wood Krutch, Robert lieving his own country better well say that Willa Cather from Morss Lovett, Glenway Wescott, than it is, and France better than Nebraska was really "one of and others. A gifted poet and any country can ever be" (458), ours," while remaining at heart a writer.of short stories as well as first of all clearly indicates that solid American who said she novels, Roberts was born in Claude had not rejected his own could not write away from the Perryville, Kentucky, in 1881, country, however severely he American idiom2 and, after having taught school judged it -- a projection of Willa in Springfield, Kentucky, the Cather’s own disenchantment, NOTES birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, no doubt. Secondly, the judg- I Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, attended the University of ment confirms Claude’s ideal- Willa Cather: A Memoir (1953; Chicago while in her thirties. I ized or mythic vision of France, Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1963) first read The Time of Man as an the nation he had elected, and 241. undergraduate in Brooklyn in where he felt he was beginning a ¯ Willa Cather, Willa Cather in the fifties and considered it then new life. Truly we could talk Europe (New York: Knopf, 1956) superior to My Antonia as a about the "French dream of 95. woman’s story, and still so con- Claude," the immigrant in re- 3Willa Cather, One of Ours sider it, despite my extensive verse, finding the "promised (New York: Knopf, 1922) 410-11. study of Cather’s fiction. Both land" in the Old World, as em- 4Willa Cather, My Antonia novels concern girls growing to bodied by "beautiful France" (in (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918) womanhood, being jilted, strug- Willa Cather’s words). Definite- 383. gling on the land as wives of ly, France came first in Claude’s poor farmers and mothers of heart. In his friend David he had 6In 1917, the American inter- many children. Where Cather ex- vention in France was decisive. at last found a person he could Without the help of the Ameri- plores the purposes of her male admire "without reservations" narrator, Roberts focuses ex- (411). The phrase applies to can Expeditionary Forces (AEF), haustively on Ellen Chesser, her France as well. He admired it the Allies, exhausted, having heroine, getting into her mind as without reservations. sustained millions of casualties, she tries to order and under- could not have won the war, in Such was the case with Willa all likelihood. In preparing this stand her experiences. Rob- Cather. If she ever was aware of paper I found the following book erts’s unique experiments with France’s weaknesses, she had particularly useful and illumi- flow of consciousness enable deliberately chosen to ignore nating: Edward M. Coffman, The the reader to know her heroine them. She never saw the French War to End All Wars: The more thoroughly than we can Baylisses trying very hard to American Military Experience in know Antonia Shimerda. The Time of Man is the less self- make France ugly. Claude died World War I (Racine: U of with "beautiful beliefs’." As for Wisconsin P, 1986). conscious and more intimate Willa Cather, this very American novel. writer, she never gave up her While my subject here is Rob- warm loving vision of France, (This paper was presented as erts’s second ranking novel, The right or wrong! And the libera- the featured address at the Ca- Great Meadow, which I will try to tion of rny country in 1944, a ther Spring Conference in Red compare to Cather’s Shadows liberation in which again many Cloud, Nebraska, on May 6, on the Rock (published a year Americans lost their lives, was 1989.) later than the Roberts novel), I would like to comment briefly on a scene near the end of The Time of Man which recalls a Coming of Age and similar one near the end of My Antonia and suggests the differ- Domesticating Space in the Wilderness: ing approaches these authors Roberts’s The Great Meadow take to their heroines as well as possibilities for future in-depth and Cather’s Shadows on the Rock comparison of the two novels. By JOHN J. MURPHY Pregnant for the fourth time, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah Ellen tries to envision her born Willa Cather needs little intro- of her six novels, The Time of and unborn children duction to readers of American Man (1926) and The Great Mea- as men and woman, as they literature, but Elizabeth Madox dow (1930), are truly great Amer- would be ... all standing Roberts unfortunately does- I ican novels, the first enthusi- about the cabin door until say unfortunately because two astically praised by Robert Penn they darkened the path

Page 26 with their shadows, all ask- who experience conflicts with her to keep the Sabbath and ing beyond what she had to their fathers as they set child- "take care the least one always give, always demanding, hood aside, who function within and don’t let hit fall into the always wanting more of her orderly views of the universe, embers" (77). Her special gift to and more of them always and whose development is pat- her daughter is precious wanting to be. She took up terned against and representa- spoons. the bucket and went down tive of the development of their Cather’s heroine, C~cile Au- the hill to the spdng, walk- fledgling nations, respectively, clair, also receives her most ing quickly as if she were of the independence of the direct schooling from her pursued. "Out of me come United States and of distinct mother who, when dying, in- people forever, forever," Canadian identity. structs her daughter in the ways she said as she went down We first meet Roberts’s hero- of running the household, espe- the hill path. (321) ine, Diony Hall, at sixteen, cially taking care of the linens. This recalls the explosion of seated in the house of her fa- She tells her, "You will see that children from ~,ntonia’s fruit ther’s plantation and repeating your father’s whole happiness cave, but notice that Roberts aloud, "1, Diony Hall," while depends on order and regularity, gives us the reflection from the behind her spread the floor, and you will come to feel a pride mother’s perspective rather than arose the walls, and outside in it. Without order our lives from the poeticizing perspective reached the clearings into infin- would be disgusting, like those of a narrator on vacation, Ca- ity (9-10). Later she looks down of the poor savages" (24). C~cile ther’s Jim Burden. The reader from a hilltop toward the planta- takes these directions to heart participates in Ellen’s wonder as tion house and, "in mind," goes and is discovered by her father to what comes from her body, "within the house and up the one cold night protecting their and the novel comes full Circle stairs to her own sleeping place, box of parsley from frost. She as Ellen’s children’s lives dupli- where she lay down on her own also benefits domestically from cate her own at the novel’s soft bed and drew the coverlet his lifestyle. Euclide Auclair beginning -- when they .as chil- over her .... Shut securely maintains Parisian dinner habits dren of a tenant farmer (she had within.., a hushed voice farther and helps with household been the child of a tenant within saying some mute word, chores, and his house and shop farmer) move from place to as ’come,’ or ’here you will find remind the colonists of France: place and ask questions about me’ " (18): Besides milking and "the interior was like home to life, the heavens and their garden chores, Diony’s and her the French-born" (22). destination. sister Netty’s prime activity is The challenge of the wilder- Discussing The Great Mea- cloth-making: knitting, weaving, ness brings home to C~cile the dow and Shadows on the Rock and spinning. After her marriage meaning of her mother’s advice brings up the problem of defin- and during her journey to Ken- and the importance to civiliza- ing western American literature tucky, cooking, housekeeping, tion of domestic chores. When because Roberts’s novel espe- and eventually child-rearing are Pierre Charron, her future hus- cially has all the ingredients of a added to cloth-making. In the band, takes C~cile on an excur- days before Diony’s departure, sion to the Harnois farm on the Western -- movement west- her mother, Polly, schools her, ward, mountain men, Indians, Isle of. Orleans, the wilderness bison, etc. -- although it goes and they, as a woman and a challenges the household. Al- no farther west than eastern woman, would listen to- though she delights in Pierre’s Kentucky. Shadows on the Rock gether in silence to the stories of the woods and his is even "easterner" in setting after-wisdom that would desire for open places, she finds and might be classified as gather about these utter- roughing it difficult and pleads Northern if there existed such a ances. Through the killing with him for an early return to classification for novels. Que- of the swine and the prep- Quebec. As she approaches the bec is the frontier, and from it arations of the meat, city in his canoe, it becomes for scouts, trappers and mission- through the boiling of the her the epitome of order in the aries explore the Indians’ wilder- soap and the making of the wilderness. When she returns to ness. What makes these novels summer linen, [Polly] con- her own kitchen, she recognizes comparable, besides their colo- templated [her daughter’s] the necessity of being sur- nial settings (Meadows opens in departure, her care contin- rounded by the utensils of the Virginia in the 1770s, and ual from speech to speech. household in order to create Shadows in Quebec in the (72) civilized space and that it has 1690s) is that they focus on Mother gives daughter seeds, not been to please her father heroines who define themselves advises her to grow gourds for and carry out her mother’s within domestic spaces and utensils, gives her cuts of wishes that she has devoted her- through domestic activities, women cloth, and blankets, tells self so faithfully to domestic

Page 27 order: "Now she realized that who loves her sister Diony "with la Victoire, the setting up of the she did [all these things so care- idolatry and clung to her" (22). creche, the sledding scene, and fully] for herself, quite as much" Diony amuses Betty with imag- so on. In the last mentioned of (197-98). This reflection is note- inary visits to Tidewater cities, these, as she pulls Jacques up worthy because it advances to their relatives’ great houses the hill before a setting sun and C~cile toward womanhood: "she under "fine trees that came from beneath the evening star, had grown at least two years France" and with great dining C6cile’s fondness for childhood older in the two nights she had halls with long tables and chairs becomes explicit: "A feeling been away. She did not feel like at their sides and "Silver spoons came over her that there would a little girl, doing what she had to eat with and fine napkins to never be anything better in the been taught to do." wipe your fingers on after you dip in your plate. Fine wine to world for her than this; to be In Meadow the confrontation pulling Jacques on her sled, drink, from Italy. Chinaware and with the tender, burning sky between household and wilder- silver and salt cellars," and so ness is more dramatic and ex- on (23-24). Diony and Betty imag- before her, and on each side, in tended -- in fact, it occupies the ine chariot rides, religious the dusk, the kindly lights from Kentucky half of the novel. rituals, expensive gowns, neighbours’ houses" (104). Diony cannot flee back to the cloaks, capes, and silk shoes. C~cile’s woodsman, the coun- orderly life she left behind in When Diony accepts Berk Jar- terpart of Diony’s Berk Jarvis, is Virginia. During her journey into vis’s offer to marry him and jour- Pierre Charron, who, like Berk, the wilderness, she loses her returns in spring as the man of a mother’s precious spoons but ney with him to Kentucky, she is sorrowful that she must break new season in terms of C6cile’s eventually replaces them with maturity. Pierre comes in buck- wooden ones of her own mak- her promise to visit someday ing. She also learns how to make with Betty the coastal land of skin as "hero of the fur trade and a broom by shredding a hickory their forebears, "and she felt a the coureurs de bois" and is pole, to sew moccasins, and to pain arise within her to know "quick as an otter and always cook game meats and journey that she would hurt Betty...". sure of himself" (170). He is the cakes. Butter and sugar making, (60). Frenchman of the New World, the bartering of seeds and Complicating her struggle for the Canadian hero who com- needles for delicacies like independence are the protests bines "the good manners of the sweets occupy her time, and of her father. Thomas Hall at Old World" with "the dash and eventually, when all the pre- first refuses to have his daugh- daring of the New" (172). Pierre cious cloth from the plantation ter taken into the wilderness, will take C~cile from little runs out, she experiments with and he gives vent to his dis- Jacques as she matures, al- nettle cloth from herbs and approval by pounding the table though their first "date," the dif- makes yarn from buffalo wool. and going out to hammer a shoe ficult trip to the Harnois farm on She carries on the traditions of for his horse. Diony is "abashed the Isle of Orleans, is rather un- her mother with new materials at her father’s words, at his happy. C~cile somewhat halt- and realizes with some resent- strong blow on the table, sick- ingly moves toward maturity; ment the role women play in the ened by them until her breath one minute, when modeling the process of civilization. Men ex- was slow in her throat and her grown-up gowns she has been periment with law, from revenge head bowed" (68). But Thomas sent from France, she seems a expeditions to the formation of Hall finally acquiesces, and woman, but in the next she courts, "but the women gave Diony begins the long gray wait lapses toward childhood. It is fit- their thought to other things and for Berk Jarvis, her frontiersman, ting that after she receives the followed a hidden law..." (136). to return the next spring, marry new clothes, Pierre returns to In order to achieve the inde- her, and take her away. Thus, a take her, her father, and little pendence and growth necessary break with her sister and the Jacques to dinner with the cap- to recognize this hidden law past as well as a distancing from tain of Le Faucon. C6cile’s con- compelling woman to contribute her father are prefatory to matur- cern over what to wear indicates in her unique way to civilizing, ation. her young womanhood, while Diony Hall Jarvis must separate In Shadows, C~cile’s child- her excitement over the cap- herself from a cherished child- hood and dependence are re- tain’s parrot indicates her child- hood, an immediate past en- lated to her childish exploits ishness: "The idea of a talking shrining her father and sister, with the waif Jacques Gaux and bird was fascinating to her -- and further distance herself to her harmonious fidelity to her seemed to belong with especial- from the Tidewater area of Vir- father. The novel’s childhood ly rare and wonderful things, like ginia, the country of her fore- scenes with C~cile and Jacques orange-trees and peacocks and bears. Her closest relationship are many and memorable: the gold crowns and the Count’s in her early years is with Betty, candlelighting at Notre Dame de glass fruit" (215).~

Page 28 Her father’s plans to return to father’s girl. He nutures in her a welled up, vague desires France provide the push that love for words and for intellec- and holy passions for some C6cile needs toward maturity. tual order. A student of Bishop better place, infinite re- While Euclide Auclair anxiously Berkeley, he reads to her from grets and rending farewells awaits his boss Count Fron- The Principles of Human Knowl- mingled and lost in the tenac’s recall to France, his edge, and she commits to mem- blended inner tinkle and daughter has a falling out with ory long passages concerning clatter. These remem- him because her associations the existence of reality in the brances were put into her are Canadian rather than Pari- Eternal Mind and concerning own flesh as a passion, as sian and she wants to remain in creation through knowledge: if she remembered all her Quebec. The proposed return to origins, and remembered "Oh, to create rivers by knowing every sensation her fore- Europe causes her to lose inter- rivers, to move outward through est in the household and take a the extended infinite plain until bears had known, and in somewhat defiant tone toward the front of all this mass him. She does not want to give it assumed roundess. Oh, to arose her present need for up her world, and she weeps in make a world out of chaos" (21). Berk and her wish to move Diony’s father, like his French all the past outward now in the cathedral for "all that she counterparts in Shadows, be- must lose so soon" (230). As she conjunction with him. They shares with Jacques a loaf of lieves in the conquest and indiv- went quickly along the idual creation of the world road, the seven pack bread on Cap Diamant and through the so-called developed watches the sun set over horses making a seven- civilizations: "Civilized Man is keyed music that played Quebec, she contemplates forever spreading more widely escape to the wilderness and about her choice and over the earth, historic Man wrapped it in a fine pride. identifies herself as Canadian bringing such men as have no and independent from her The air was pleasant, the father. Subsequently, however, history to humble themselves hills vividly seen, the water Frontenac’s request to return to and learn their lesson. It’s a in the creek being bright France is refused by the Court, strong mark of the hidden pur- over the brown of the and Auclair decides to stay with poses of the Author of all things stones. (85) his boss in Canada. Domestic ..." (72). Thomas Hall concludes his speech to his daughter with Like her mother’s gift of peace now returns, and as Fron- his reason for agreeing to sur- tenac sickens and dies, C~ile spoons, her father’s gift of render her to Berk Jarvis and the books is lost during the journey, plays mother to her somewhat wilderness: "It will never be said confused and abandoned father. but Diony is able to apply what of me I hindered Diony." The the books have taught her, just She realizes that he has always challenge for Diony is to per- lived under the shadow of the as she is able to improvise ceive her own life in terms of domestically in the wilderness Count’s paternity:. "She felt as if this destiny. Her father’s pres- a strong roof over their heads from what her mother had taught had been swept away" (259). Her ent to her is books, probably one her about how and what women father’s idea that his time is over of them The Aeneid, from which contribute to the voyage of challenges her renewed efforts he quotes excerpts of the fate- civilization. In effect, she is able to restore domestic peace, driven voyage of civilization to fuse domestic arts and the from Troy to Rome. With a sense philosophy of the books: "Re- which is not achieved until the of destiny, then, Diony begins final arrival of Pierre Charron. As membering some phrases from Canadian protector, Pierre takes her journey to the music of a book which was now more over from the French protector, horse bells, aware of taking her than half forgotten she had a the Count, and in demanding cherished past into the future. sudden sense of herself as eter- supper from C~cile, he encour- As the caravan moves, nal, as if all that she did now ages her to resume her efforts she knew herself as the were of a kind older than kings, toward household order. As he daughter of many, going older than beliefs and govern- and her father ddnk the Count’s back through Polly Brook ments" (149). She is able to golden wine, C6cile’s doubts through the Shenandoah detect the "Author of Nature, and loneliness melt away. Her Valley and the Pennsyl- the great Mover of the Universe" maturity and that of the new vania clearings and road- by "signs that appear in the Canadian country are simultane- ways to England, Metho- mind" (121) and to feel "the ous, and Pierre becomes master dists and Quakers, small power of reason over the wild farmers and weavers, going life of the earth" (197). And she of both. back through Thomas Hall is able to understand that her Despite her dispute with her to tidewater farmers and life in Kentucky is the "begin- father, Roberts’s Diony, like Ca- owners of land. In herself ning before the beginning," and ther’s C~cile, is very much her then an infinity of hopes to envision sheep sprinkled over

Page 29 pastures, stone walls and rail ish little frock, and she eval Catholicism. C6cile’s faith fences setting bounds to the took her own garment to is that of the nuns, whose world land, neighbors, places to sell her body again, buttoning is a contained and well-ordered the growth of the farm, bridges the front opening gravely, fortress, like the altar of Notre over streams, fine cattle yielding and she went gravely down Dame de la Victoire, a universe milk and cream, and bees in the stair, being no longer in comprised of hives near the dwellings, and, as awe of adult being. Her this all-important earth, the faithful daughter of Thomas mind sank into a maze, created by God for a great Hall, to envision a developed both ways, Betty’s way and purpose, the sun which He society with letters written, Polly’s way, being equally made to light it by day, the knowledge, "wisdom brought known to her, and the year moon which He made to under beautiful or awful sayings continued to make seasons light it by night, -- and the and remembered, kept stored over her. (41-42) stars, made to beautify the among written pages and The paragraph immediately vault of heaven like brought together then as books" above this one reads, "Diony... frescoes, and to be a clock (126). heard the great ticking [the turn- and compass for man. And The coupling of t~e. nation ing of the year]. There was war in in this safe, lovingly ar- and the heroine is very delib- Boston, the colony fighting the ranged and ordered uni- erately achieved by Roberts. King’s men. Some said that all verse ~.. the drama of man Diony’s vision is of a civilization the colonies could snatch them- went on at Quebec just as realized, the completion of what selves free" (41). After Diony has at home, and the Sisters begins in the novel’s first pages agreed to wait for Berk, and played their accustomed with the reflection "1, Diony." A immediately before she receives part in it. (97) key scene occurs when she ap- a proposal from a Tidewater The convent and the kitchen are proaches the threshold between gentleman, "News came from vital in extending order over the childhood and adulthood, be- Philadelphia... : Congress had wild places of the world, and tween her sister and her mother, declared the colonies free" (58). C~cile and her nun friends are Polly, and tries on her mother’s Just as the colonies separate associated with Virgil’s hero dress: from the parent country, Diony Aeneas. Cather uses a line from it swallowed her into its will leave her parents, and like Book 27 of the Roman epic folds. The drooping round- the new nation, move westward about Aeneas bringing his gods ness of the dress made her into the new Eden, to Latium: afraid to know that she through orchards of crab Inferretque deos Latio. would come to a stature trees where the crab apples When an adventurer carries that would fill it. She was hung.., onto the great fer- his gods with him into a fearful of the dress .... But tile plateau .... Diony remote and savage country, when she had stood a mo- could not now remember the colony he founds will, ment.., a change spread what lay far behind. Over from the beginning, have over her knowledge of the her though flowed contin- graces, traditions, riches of dress, and she took up the ually a freshness as if the the mind and spirit. Its garment with a sweet loath- world were newborn. While history will shine with ing that turned all to joy as she rode through a low- bright incidents, slight, she put it on anew. She lying valley approaching a perhaps, but precious, as in brushed the folds of the ford . . . a parrakeet flew life itself, where the great cloth with her hands, slow- over the trail .... There was matters are often as worth- ly, accepting her new self bright yellow shading to less as astronomical dis- and being ready to run to orange over its head and tances, and the trifles dear meet all that would come to neck and its body was as the heart’s blood. (98) her. Standing in the gar- bright green. (103-04) ment, she felt herself bur- Cather’s epilogue suggests This is the exotic land of the such fulfillment and the passing geon slowly to a roundness future and of self-definition, and and firmness that satisfied although painful times await of the torch from the past to the it, that lifted its limp folds her, this colorful image will sus- future. Set fifteen years after the and swelled the shoulders end of the action, in August and arms, that poised the tain her significant efforts 1713, it is a scene between skirt to a fine point of toward civilization fulfilled. Euclide Auclair and Bishop grace. Then she took the In Shadows, the march of Saint-Vallier, who has recently dress gravely from her body civilization to which C6cile con- returned from France. The and hung it on its peg in the tributes receives impetus from Bishop tells of the sadness at corner beside Betty’s child- the orderly world vision of medi- Court over the deaths of the

Page 30 Duke and Duchess of Burgundy ucts, I think, of artists with romantic era in which the delu- .and their infant son. But Auclair serious civilizing purposes. sion and fall of Marian Forrester tells of C~cile and Pierre’s hap- Willa Cather would have ad- mean for the young man the py family of four sons, the Cana- mired and echoed her sister corruption of time, the death of a dians of the future. Canada is novelist’s somewhat homey dream, and the encroachment of preferred over France: Auclair statement that "it is the function the "coarse" bourgeoisie and "believed that he was indeed of art to enlarge one’s experi- rampant materialism. As long as fortunate to spend his old age ence, to add to man more toler- she lives, Niel cannot forgive his here.., to watch his grandsons ance, more forgiveness, to in- lost Mrs. Forrester for her spiri- grow up in a country where the crease one’s hold on all the out- tual failings -- defrauding Indi- death of the King, the probable lying spaces which are little ans to mitigate the ill effects of evils of a long regency, would realized in the come and go of her financial disaster, conduct- never touch them" (279-80). everyday" (Rovit 8). ing amorous affairs with un- The heroines of these novels worthy lovers, and, especially, are relatively obscure women, WORKS CITED for refusing to immolate herself who keep houses, raise chil- on the funeral pyre of the dead Cather, Willa. Shadows on the Captain Forrester. dren, and make do with what Rock. New York: Vintage, 1973. they have in difficult environ- The most simple interpreta- ments, yet they are associated Roberts, Elizabeth Madox. tion of Cather’s A Lost Lady is to The Great Meadow. New York: in each case with Virgil’s hero New American Library, 1961. see the heroine through Niel’s bringing the gods into a new eyes and to assume that Cather land. Both novelists are aware ---. The Time of Man. [New is, like Niel, indulging in a that civilization begins in the York]: Grosset and Dunlap, 1926. "supine romanticism" (Hicks kitchen with the domestic arts. Rovit, Earl H. Herald to Chaos: 710), a nostalgic longing for the Of course, these novels are not The Novels of Elizabeth Madox days of promise, youth and vitali- the same, but they have impor- Roberts. Lexington: UP of Ken- ty for the now grey prairie towns tant similarities and are prod- tucky, 1960. and for the men who built them. Another more likely interpreta- tion is that Niel represents a longing of the past familiar to all Cather’s A Lost Lady and Flaubert’s of us -- including Cather -- the yearning for an idealized time Madame Bovary:. Re-envisioning Romanticism and place, a lost naivet6 and By LINDA M. LEWIS innocence, a dream that "what Bethany College, Lindsborg, Kansas you think and plan for day by day ¯.. you will get" -- as Forrester Marian Forrester, of Cather’s charm, and rejects the go- novel A Lost Lady, is the viva- getting materialism of his own says (54). In this revisionist ver- cious young wife of an aging generation for the beauty of the sion of traditional romantic long- railroad contractor who gradual- past age represented by the For- ing, Cather turns the tables ly loses first health, later wealth, resters. upon the aesthetic predeces- and as a result is reluctantly im- The stow begins in nostalgia sors of Mrs. Forrester, most prisoned in a fading mansion on with the sentence: "Thirty or notably Flaubert’s Madame the edge of the little praide forty years ago, in one of those Bovary, and makes an admirer of town of Sweet Water where -- grey towns along the Burlington the lost lady, rather than the lady according to her -- "nothing Railroad, there was a house well herself, an ineffectual and ideal- ever does happen" (132). As Cap- known from Omaha to Denver istic dreamer of romantic escap- tain Forraster and his genera- for its hospitality and for a cer- ism. tion of dreamer entrepreneurs tain charm of atmosphere. Well Remarkable similarities exist who opened the West die off, known, that is to say, to the rail- between Cather’s Marian For- younger businessmen move in road aristocracy of that time..." rester and Flaubert’s Emma Bo- like parasites to cash in on the (9). The novel ends on a similar vary. Both are vivacious raven- work of their predecessors, note with Niel looking back haired women who love music, carve up estates, and defraud upon an age "already gone." dancing, gaiety, mimicry, laugh- the naive with their shyster tac- "The taste and smell and song ter, and the admiration of men. tics. Niel Herbert, a local lad of it, the visions those men had Both marry older men whose through whose sensibilities the seen in the air and followed, -- first wives have died, and both stow is filtered, admires the these he had caught in a kind of exist in an immediate environ- Captain and his empire-building afterglow in their own faces" ment made up almost entirely of companions, loves the Captain’s (169). The reader experiences men and boys -- Emma Bovary lady for her beauty, grace, and with Niel an elegiac lament for a with her adoring husband

Page 31 Charles (the bungling village Niel, who sees Ellinger’s rest- (76) is cut off and isolated, and doctor), as well as Yonville’s less muscular energy as evil. there her complexion pales, her apothecary, merchant, tax col- When Marian sweeps from a intellect withers, and her soul lector, and priest, Emma’s room, "the train of her velvet shrivels. Marian Forrester says lovers, and Justin, the servant dress caught the leg of his she is "stranded" (63) in a coun- lad who worships her and unwit- broadcloth trousers and try where nothing happens and tingly supplies the arsenic for dragged with a friction that nothing matters, that she is her suicide; Marian Forrester crackled and threw sparks" (60). "struggling... to get out of [a] with the Captain and the empire- (The tangling of the woman’s hole" (126), and she too shrivels, builders who are his friends, and train and the man’s trousers is her complexion fading from hya- after the Captain and the old an image repeated numerous cinth white to the ivory of fading West have died, with a younger times in Emma’s history -- gardenias.I In her depression generation of Sweet Water boys beginning with her nuptial Emma becomes anorexic and fa- whom she vainly teaches to ape party.) tigued; when Marian Forrester the ways of gentlemen. The Both women have a passion cannot escape the dullness, she group includes Niel, who be- to escape the mundane and, in too is weary and pale, and she gins adoring Mrs. Forrester in their desired flight, both are overindulges in French brandy. childhood as Justin adores compared to birds -- Emma’s The situations (if not the sen- Emma, but who witnesses what fluttering hand is like a captive sibilities) of the husbands are he considers her spiritual sui- turtledove, "une tourterelle cap- also similar. Charles Bovary is a cide, the "poison... at work in tive" (164), while Mrs. Forrest- slow-witted officer de sant~, her :body" (131). (Interestingly, er’s fingers are "light and fluttery whom Emma despises for his her second affair is with Ivy as butterfly wings" (96). Emma is bourgeois tastes, bovine ways Peters, whom the neighborhood adept at dovelike poses, "ces and uncultivated mannerisms, boys had called "Poison Ivy.") poses de colombe assoupie" even as she is infuriated by his Both novels involve two af- (293), and her dreams fall in the moral superiority (337). Bovary fairs -- the first with a virile mud like wounded swallows, does not suspect Emma’s af- older man of the wodd, the sec- "comme des hirondelles bless- fairs, but precisely in admitting ond with a calculating young 6es" (204). When she plummets his wife’s affair, Forreste r estab- lawyer or law student on the rise into an abyss of adultery, deceit, lishes (at least to Niel) his own in the world-- in Emma’s case, insanity and debt, she longs to moral superiority to the "[p]oor Leon Dupuis, and in Mrs. For- "s’6chappant comme un oiseau, ¯ .. misguided" lady (151). And rester’s, the unscrupulous Ivy aller se rajeunir quelque part, Niel, to whom the Captain re- Peters. Both Raubert and Ca- bien loin, dans les espaces im- veals his insight by commenting ther use descriptions of gar- macul6s" (323). Mrs. Forrester’s upon "Mrs. Forrester’s elegant ments as images of seduction. relationship with the shyster Ivy handwriting" in a letter about to Though in androgynous ca- Peters is foreshadowed by the be posted to Ellinger, sees For- prices Emma dresses in man- "wild and desperate" female rester’s great integrity in his nish-iooking hats or vestcoats, woodpecker that Ivy blinds (25), knowing, accepting, and forgiv- she is described in four- and when Niel comes back ing. While Bovary seems a flounced dresses, satin slippers, home to a Mrs. Forrester dunce and simpleton, though, and barrage gowns. Marian For- trapped by poverty, her hus- Forrester is lord of his manor, a rester wears "a swirl of foamy band’s illness, and the incapaci- prince among fellows, and is de- white petticoats" (42), white lace tating isolation, he finds her ly- fined in organic metaphors -- an hats, dangling pendant earrings ing in a hammock "like a bird "old tree" (115), a "man of iron" shaped like fleurs-de-lys, and caught in a net" (110). In both (126), a fallen mountain (41). many tings, in the seduction novels, the image suggests to Finally, money grubbing mate- scene between Emma and her the respective narrator flighti- rialism triumphs in each novel. first lover, Rodoiphe (known for ness and fragility. In Madame Bovary, the apothe- his many mistresses, brutal tem- The chief similarity between cary Homais uses his glib perament and shrewd intelli- the heroines is the boredom and tongue, his ties to the press, and gence), Raubert describes the entrapment of a life far removed his influence in the town to rise cloth of her dress clinging to the from the centers of activity, to prominence, while Emma is a velvet of his coat: "Le drap de sa style, novelty, and excitement -- suicide, Bovary dies in poverty, robe s’accrochait au velours in Emma Bovary’s case, Rouen and their orphaned child is put de I’habit" (Madame Bovary or Paris; in Marian Forrester’s, to work in a cotton mill. In A Lost 177). Similarly, Frank Eilinger, California or Denver. The key- Lady the self-confessed shyster Marian’s first lover, has a bad note for Flaubert’s Emma is en- Ivy Peters rents the Forrester reputation with women, a "scan- nui. Her life in the flat "countr6e place, drains the Captain’s love- dalous chronicle" (50), says b&tarde" of Yonville-I’Abbaye ly marsh to plant wheat, and in-

Page 32 stalls his horses in the Captain’s The foolish and shallow hero- The suggestion that Cather’s barn and, eventually, himself in ine of Flaubert’s mock romance novel is a revision of the bored the Captain’s bed. He purchases represents a sentimental long- adulteress in Flaubert is not to the house that he had coveted ing for romantic escapism. suggest that Cather’s art is as a symbol of the "high-and- Critics long ago pointed out that merely derivative. If Morrow is mighty" (27) "chesty old boys" in Flaubert’s declaration, right, a writer cannot enter into (104) -- as Peters terms the em- "Madame Bovary, c’est moi," he dialogue with an earlier text pire builders -- just as he had is in fact having it out with his without allusions to that text. wanted Mrs. Forrester because own proclivity for romanticism And if Harold Bloom is right in she was a "stuck-up piece" (22), and announcing once for all that The Anxiety of Influence: A in Peters’ mind, a thing or object romantic art -- at least as re- Theory of Poetry, each work of formerly owned by the fallen cently practiced -- is merely so art is a "misprision" or delib- entrepreneur. With the numer- much sentimental escapism.~ erate misreading of a previous ous similarities in situation and To achieve his purpose, Flaubert work; each poet re-envisions the imagery, it is small wonder that makes Emma appear not only vision of the predecessors in critics have from the beginning pathetic, but also foolish. She whose shadow she or he works. noted the similarity between devours sentimental novels of Bloom says that the influence Flaubert’s Emma Bovary and Ca- gothic passion, wishes to live in need not make the revisionist ther’s lost lady.¯ a chalet or cottage with a hus- less original (7), but rather that Cather’s biographers have band who wears a black velvet one strong poet’s work expiates established that she was an ad- cloak, imagines that she is loved for the work of the precursor, or mirer of Flaubert. As a student by Edgar of Lucia di Lam- later visions cleanse themselves at the University of Nebraska, mermoor or by the tenor who at the expense of earlier ones sings Edgar, and wants Ro- (139). Thus for Bloom, all art is a she often carded a copy of dolphe to elope with her to some deliberate recasting of existing Madame Bovary (Brown 61). An 4 older Cather’s favorite Flaubert magnificent city with "des art. work was not Madame Bovary, dbmes, des ponts, des naivres, Cather’s novel extols the past, but Salammb~ (O’Bden 324), and des for~ts de citronniers et des but her heroine does not long for she was to characterize Bovary cath~drales de marbre blanc" escape into an unrealistic dream type heroines as "spoil[s] of the (217), where they will ride in gon- as Emma does. Nor does she es- poets" (O’Bden 182). in a review dolas and swing in hammocks. pecially wish to be exalted as an of Kate Chopin’s The Awaken- In Flaubert’s satiric rejection of icon on Niel’s pedestal. Never- ing, a work Cather thought too romantic exoticism, he pokes theless, in spite of herself, she much like Fiaubert’s, she says fun at Emma and at human is his "aesthetic ideal" (87), a beings, in general, for we all romantic figure in his personal there was no need for a second have the need to dream dreams novel on "so tdte and sordid a and escape the mundane. In fact mythology. With her blue-black theme" as Flaubert’s original Emma’s young lover Leon ro- hair, triangular cheeks, many- (Curtin 697). Why then would Ca- manticizes her as an Odalisque coloured laughter and voice that ther write a novel that evokes "burn[s] through the common- memories of such a famous and the amorous heroine of all place words like the colour in an predecessor?. novels, poems, and plays (293), opal" (133), the lost lady is for and Flaubert says that every Niel a symbol for all that is ex- Nancy Morrow, in "Willa Ca- bourgeois has believed himself quisite and fine, and like a single ther’s A Lost Lady and the Nine- capable of stormy passions and blossom, she has "the power of teenth Century Novel of Adul- lofty enterprises, the most suggesting things much lovelier tery," suggests that Cather is mediocre libertine has dreamed carrying on a dialogue with Flau- of Oriental queens, and every than herself" (172). She is his bert’s novel, along with Tol- essence of a heroic and beauti- notary bears within himself the ful past, and Niel cannot forgive stoy’s Anna Karenina and other remains of a poet (321). In his her for shattering his nostalgic works that stress the moral im- mockery, Flaubert tries to dreams of that past. plications of the adulteress’ act detach himself from Emma, more than Cather does (300). whom we are not meant to per- Recent criticism has noted While Morrow deals with the ceive as a tragic heroine. Rather, the romanticism and romance in moral values of nineteenth cen- she suggests mawkish senti- A Lost Lady. Susan Rosowski tury heroines and their male mentality in life and art, as well calls the novel "classically creators versus those of Marian as the novelist’s own chagrin at romantic" and interprets it in Forrester and Willa Cather,. I am his desire to live in an ivory terms of a Keatsian ode, the here concerned with the writers’ tower when -- as he writes in a drama of a mind engaged with manipulation of the familiar letter to Turgenev -- he is ac- an object -- the mind being adultery plot for purposes of tually drowning in a "tide of Niel’s and the object his lost commentary on art and life. shit" (Letters, 200). lady (116-29). It is interesting

Page 33 that in perceiving her as an ob- Niel’s dreams, like his read- Captain Forrester sitting by his ject, Niel does no better than ing, are escapist, nostalgic, and sundial, she accepts that time Peters, who desired the "stuck- vicarious; his romantic adven- cannot be halted and the past up piece." In "The Broken tures from the past build no cannot be reclaimed. Except of World: Medievalism in A Lost roads and create no new worlds. course in memories and, as Ca- Lady," Evelyn Thomas Helmick Even his professional choice ther does, in art. .reads the novel as a chivalric dramatizes this fact. He had romance, saying that the Cap- served as law clerk for his uncle NOTES tain represents an idealized when law was a gentleman’s ’Flower imagery is used ex- code, specifically, that of King profession, but he gives up the tensively in the novel. While the Arthur; Niel, whose name means law to hucksters like Peters and most frequently noted is the "champion," is a young knightly decides upon architecture, a Shakespearean allusion, "Lilies protagonist; Mrs..Fon’ester, the "clean profession," as his uncle that fester smell far worse than fallen Guinevere, is a "polished Judge Pommeroy puts it (93). AI- weeds," Niel’s response when goddesswoman, the embodi- though an architect is a builder, he hears Marian Forrester and ment of chivalric ideal" (43). Like nowhere does Niel speak of his Frank Ellinger in bed, the Flaubert, Cather plays delib- vision for building and creating. images for flowers as symbols erately upon dreams, romances, His misty dreams are for the of Marian blend the images of and idealized longings. time whose glory was spent the Virgin and of female sexuali- While dreaming is merely before he arrived upon the ty, argues Kathleen L. Nichols, scene, whose epic heroes have in "The Celibate Male in A Lost escapism in Flaubert, it is in been laid low by time and Cather both pragmatic vision Lady’. The Unreliable Center of and nostalgic longing. For the change. The great actors are Consciousness." Captain and his peers, dreams gone and only the "stage hands 2See, for example, Regis Mi- are the prelude to action. For- [are] left" (167). Because he does chaud, The American Novel To- rester says, "We dreamed the not dream dreams upon which Day (239). railroads across the mountains, he can act, Niel is himself one of 3See Stratton Buck, Gustave just as I dreamed my place on those stage hands. Flaubert (70). Buck suggests not the Sweet Water" (55), and Niel The criticism has noted that only that Flaubert is Emma, but refers to the "visions those men Niel is an unreliable interpreter, he is also Justin. That is, Jus- had seen in the air and fol- and the text points out his pride, tin’s fascination with Emma is lowed" (169). "Dream" or "vi- monastic cleanliness and severi- like Flaubert’s (at age fourteen) sion" had no pejorative conno- ty, his critical habit of mind, and for Madame Schl~singer. tation when the homesteaders, "stiff" qualities. Niel is not ¯ In Willa Cather: The Emerg- prospectors, and contractors Cather. Unlike Flaubert, who is ing Voice, Sharon O’Brien re- were envisioning the future; sen- writing his way out of roman- jects Bloom’s "Freudian reading timental dreams of the past are ticism, Cather is using it as her of literary psychohistory" (163), quite another matter. own aesthetic ideal, and at the and says that Cather was not en- same time distancing herself Niel’s romantic dream, like gaged in an Oedipal struggle Emma’s, is sentimental longing from Niel in somewhat the same with forefathers she wanted to for an unreality -- for the long manner as Flaubert distances supplant or overpower, but himself from Emma. It could be rather she was trying to forge, ago or far away in preference to argued that Cather, like Niel, is both present and future. She ran- not break, claims of inheritance charmed by Mrs. Forrester, just and legitimacy, investing male sacks Walter Scott and other as Flaubert, like Justin, is fas- works of romantic adventures to artists with privilege and cinated in spite of himself -- or authority and looking for evi- create settings and characters perhaps because of himself. As for her daydreams; he reads Don dence of female creative power. novelist, Cather also admits to Although Bloom’s theory unfor- Juan, Tom Jones, Wilhelm Meis- being haunted by the past; in ter, and Ovid, and the essays of tunately accounts for only the "On the Art of Fiction," she says male writer killing off his pro- Montaigne because he is inter- the artist’s vision is "blurred by genitor and is therefore rejected ested, not in what men had the memory of old delights he by a number of feminist critics, thought, but about "what they would like to recapture" (104). Bloom does explain the modern had felt and lived" (81), and As artist, Cather takes the mid- writer as adoring and admiring, perhaps, as Kathleen Nichols dle road between fleeing the and certainly identifying with has pointed out, because the past (as Mrs. Forrester does) and and emulating the creative sexual adventures and peccadil- dreaming it (as Niel does). She genius in whose shadow he los in fiction serve as alternative cannot lay the past to rest, for it writes -- as Blake and Shelley to his personally repressed sex- is the material of which her best admire Milton and invest him uality (16-17). works are woven. Perhaps, like with poetic authority. Whether

Page 34 or not we call it the "anxiety" of O’Brien, Sharon. Willa Cather: Rosowski, Susan J. The influence, Cather’s adoration of The Emerging Voice. New York: Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Flaubert and her taking him to Oxford UP, 1987. Romanticism. Lincoln: U of Ne- task over his love obsessed braska P, 1986. heroine who "demands more romance .out of life than God put in it" (O’Brien 181) certainly parallels, for example, Shelley’s Sexual Imagery in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady admiration of Milton and his By RONALD BUTLER "dialogue with the text" of the Owensboro Community College, University of Kentucky predecessor. Owensboro, Kentucky WORKS CITED When Willa Cather wrote A "whole figure seemed very Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Lost Lady in her fiftieth year, she much alive under his clothes, Influence: A Theory of Poetry. was at the peak of her creative with a restless, muscular energy New York: Oxford UP, 1975. powers. Since many regard this that had something of the cruel- ty of wild animals in it" (46). In Brown, E. K. Willa Cather: A novel as Cather’s masterpiece and Marian Forrester as one of contrast to Ivy’s eyes like a Critical Biography. Lincoln: U of snake’s, Frank’s eyes "had Nebraska P, 1953. her finest characterizations, it has been the subject of much re- something wolfish in them" (65). Buck, Stratton. Gustave Flau- cent attention. One aspect of Adolescent Niel Herbert’s grey bert. New York: Twayne, 1966. this novel which has not been eyes, though "rather moody and Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. adequately explored, however, challenging" (33), do not sug- New York: Knopf, 1923. is the strong sexuality which gest an animal image. Awaken- -.. Willa Cather on Writing: forms one of its major elements. ing in Mrs. Forrester’s bedroom, Critical Studies on Writing as an Previous studies have shown he looks about the half-darkened Art. New York: Knopf, 1920. how effectively Cather has used room "wonderingly" (27), and Curtin, William, ed. The World sexual imagery in My Antonia the best he can do to suggest and the Parish: Willa Cather’s (1918) and One of Ours (1922).’ animalism is to wear a "wolf- Articles and Reviews, 1883-1902. In A Lost Lady she again uses skin" coat (36); later he thinks to Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1970. this type of imagery to define himself that he has "the nature of a spaniel" (170). Flaubert, Gustave. Madame her characters and reveal the Bovary (Moeurs de Province). depths of their complex relation- Cather uses the suggestive ~..P~t~is: Bibliotheque-Charpentier, ships. comment throughout the novel 1930. Though the opening of A Lost to keep sexuality in the fore- --. The Letters of Gustave Lady shows the Forrester place ground. For example, she in- Flaubert. Ed. Francis Steeg- in an idyllic setting with its dulges her sense of humor in muller. Cambridge: Belknap, sandy creeks and marshy mead- presenting Niel Herbert as the 1982. ows, and its "fine cottonwood innocent in the presence of grove that threw sheltering arms Frank Ellinger. In one scene, Helmick, Evelyn Thomas. to left and right,’’2 Cather wastesEllinger offers the cherry in his "The Broken World: Medieval- no time in informing the reader cocktail to young Constance ism in A Lost Lady," Rena- there are serpents in the Sweet Ogden, and later refuses her a scence 28 (Autumn, 1975): 39-46. Water, which does not tempt second cocktail, offering her Hicks, Granville. "The Case Mrs. Forrester because of its only the Maraschino cherries. Against Wiila Cather," English "mud and water snakes and But, she says, "1 want the one in Journal 21 (1933): 910. blood-suckers" (18). This intro- your glass .... I like it to taste of Michaud, Regis. The Ameri- duction of the serpent becomes something!" Mrs. Forrester can Novel To-Day. Boston: Little, significant when Cather de- laughs, and asks Niel, "won’t Brown, 1931. scribes Ivy Peters as having very you give the child your cherry, Morrow, Nancy. "Willa Ca- small eyes with an absence of too?" When he does so, Con- ther’s A Lost Lady and the Nine- eyelashes which "gave his stance "took it with her thumb teenth Century Novel of Adul- pupils the fixed, unblinking and fore-finger and dropped it tery." Women’s Studies 11 hardness of a snake’s or a into her own, -- where, he was (1984): 287-303. lizard’s" (21-22). quick to observe, she left it Nichols, Kathleen L ’%he Celi- Cather presents Frank Ellin- when they went out to dinner" bate Male in A Lost Lady:. The ger and Ivy Peters, successive (46-47). In another scene, Mrs. Unreliable Center of Conscious- lovers of Marian Forrester, with Forrester, in arranging a card ness." Regionaliem and the images of animals, repeatedly game, asks Constance, "will you Female Imagination (4.1): 13-23. suggesting sexuality. Frank’s play with Niel? I’m told he’s very

Page 35 good," but Niel thinks Frank the closing days of his life Though she does not even look would be a better partner for watching time being "visibly de- up "but went on rolling out Constance and says to her, voured" on his sun-dial (111), pastry" (170), this sight, over- "probably you are used to play- and "watching the sunset glory whelms Niel, who goes down ing with Mr. Ellinger" (56). Later on his roses" (114). the hill "for the last time" and that night Mrs. Forrester tells The relationship between Mar- never sees Mrs. Forrester again. Frank to "Take care, I heard silk ian Forrester and Frank Ellinger The reader, however, has seen stockings on the stairs" (60), is up front in its sexuality and this relationship evolving from which comment indicates to the presents few interpretive prob- the beginning of the novel, and reader involvement between lems for the reader. She has but Willa Cather handles it carefully Frank and Constance. The to touch the sleeve of Frank’s by use of a symbol associated reader is encouraged to consid- coat with her white fingers and with Ivy m his gun. When he first er underlying meanings in such this touch "went through the appears on the Forrester place passages by other more explicit man, all the feet and inches of carrying a gun, the other boys examples, such as when Mrs. him," and, as she turns away tell him he had better hide it, and Forrester tells Niel that Bohe- from him, "the train of her velvet though Ivy thinks, "I’m just as mian Mary’s sweetheart is sure dress caught the leg of his good as she is" (20), he does put to come through the heavy drifts broadcloth trousers and his gun and gamebag behind a of snow to see her. "1 am blind dragged with a friction that tree. After Ivy begins to assert and deaf," she says, "but I’m crackled and threw sparks" (60). his power over the Forresters he quite sure she makes it worth On the next morning before their tells Niel "I’m just mean enough his while!" (76). Such com- sleigh ride, Frank "looked even to like to shoot along that creek ments, however, merely prepare more powerful and bursting with a little better than anywhere the setting for much more expli- vigour than last night" (61), and else" (105). Later Niel observes cit sexual imagery, always with the effects of this power on Mrs. Ivy on the Forrester place "with Marian Forrester as the central Forrester are shown when she his gun, talking to Mrs. For- figure. directs Frank deeper into the rester" (119). And after the Cap- Cather defines the relation- ravine to cut cedar boughs. As tain’s death, when his widow in- ship between Marian Forrester Adolph Blum observes her, vites the boys at her dinner party and the most important person "when the strokes of the hatch- to the summer place she hopes in her life, her husband Daniel, et rang out from the ravine, he to have in the Sierras, she not in terms of sexuality but could see her eyelids flutter acknowledges Ivy’s control by rather by the absence of it. In the ¯.. soft shivers went through her saying, "Ivy can bring his gun beginning of their relationship body" (67). As Susan Rosowski and shoot game for us" (163). when he is carrying her out of writes, "the non-judgmental This comes as no surprise to the the canyon where she has fallen Adolph Blum provides the lens reader who has already observed and broken her legs, she "could for presenting profoundly sexual that Ivy slits the eyes of the feel his heart pump and his qualities in Mrs. Forrester.’’~ woodpecker he has knocked out muscles strain" (165), and she Through this lens the reader of the tree on the Forresters’ quickly recognizes him as her knows exactly the relationship place only,after Niel informs him balance. When he asks her to between them, but Niel must the bird is a female (23). marry him, "he didn’t haveto ask learn the cruel facts when he Ivy’s manner toward Marian twice" she says (166). But, hears Frank’s laughter "fat and Forrester throughout portrays twenty-five years older than his lazy" which "ended in some- the conqueror. When Niel re- wife, Daniel Forrester has grown thing like a yawn" coming from proaches her for permitting Ivy’s old in Sweet Water, and as the behind the green shutters of rudeness, she says "we have to novel begins he has had a ter-~ Mrs. Forrester’s bedroom (86)~ get along with Ivy Peters, we rible fall from a horse "which The relationship between simply have to" (123). She has broke him" (13). Cather never Marian Forrester and Ivy Peters allowed Ivy to invest her sav- describes Daniel Forrester in confronts the reader as ob- ings, and later she places all of terms of sexual energy, but viously as that with Frank Ellin- her legal affairs in Ivy’s hands. rather as one who when he lays ger, but again Cather uses a Ivy has completed his conquest his hands on "a frantic horse, an traumatic’ scene to open Niel’s of Mrs. Forrester long before the hysterical woman, an Irish work- eyes. Having gone to visit Mrs. scene Niel witnesses between man out for blood,.., brought Forrester, he accidentally sees them. them peace" (48-49). After his through the dining room window Niel Herbert’s complex rela- first stroke he leans upon two Ivy Peters walk up behind her tionship with Marian Forrester, canes and "looked like an old "and unconcernedly put both though never overtly sexual, has tree walking" (115). She has arms around her, his hands strong sexual overtones. Susan become his nurse as he spends meeting over her breast" (169). Rosowski writes, "Unable to ac-

Page 36 commodate sexuality in his a sudden distaste for coarse where Mrs. Forrester talks to Ell- imaginative concept of her, Niel worldlings like Frank Ellinger" inger on Judge Pommeroy’s draws back in disillusionment.’’4 (84-85). telephone. The setting for this scene, fraught with sexual Although this statement is true, This scene suggests that the it does not mean that Niel him- undercurrents, includes "thun- relationship between Niel and derstorms and torrential rains" self does not have unrecognized Mrs. Forrester, far from being and the bursting of the Sweet sexual feelings for Mrs. For- asexual, is, indeed, similar to Water out of its banks. She rester. This novel does deal with the relationship between Ham- crosses the flooded marsh to the emergence of sexuality in let and his mother. This passage use the Judge’s long-distance the adolescent Niel, and Cather parallels that of Hamlet trying to telephone to call Ellinger, who never attempts to disguise this dissuade Gertrude from return- had abandoned her to marry fact. As twelve-year-old Niel ing to his uncle’s bed: Constance Ogden. Just at the awakens from unconsciousness Queen. O Hamlet, thou has point where she is about to dis- in Mrs. Forrester’s bedroom, she cleft my heart in twain. grace herself, Niel, in one of his "ran her fingers through his Hamlet. Oh, throw away the many efforts to save her, takes black hair and lightly kissed him worser part of it, "the big shears left by the tinner on the forehead. Oh, how sweet, And live the purer with and cut the insulated wire be- how sweet she smelled!" (29). At the other half. hind the desk" (134). This sym- nineteen Niel realizes that other Good night. But go not to bolic cutting of the cord after women do not have "that some- my uncle’s bed. the bursting forth of the waters thing in their glance that made Assume a virtue, if you suggests a new birth for Niel, one’s blood tingle" (41). Later, have it not. and, as Blanche Gelfant writes, aged twenty, standing with her (3.4.156-60) the severing of "a relationship on the bridge over the creek on ’’5 the Forrester place, a creek sig- Though Cather here makes no he cannot abide. nificantly frozen in this scene, specific reference to Hamlet, Though this act signals a Niel points out the new moon to she does show Niel turning to change in the relationship be- Mrs. Forrester, who says she Shakespeare’s "Sonnet 94" to tween Niel and Mrs. Forrester, it saw it "over the wrong shoul- express his disgust over having does not bring an end to his der," to which Niel replies "No heard Ellinger’s "fat and lazy" ambivalent through still unrec- you didn’t. You saw it over laughter coming from Mrs. For- ognized sexual feelings toward mine." When she says "My dear rester’s bedroom. " ’Lilies that her. When after two years Niel boy, your shoulders aren’t broad fester,’ he muttered, ’filies that returns to Sweet Water, finding enough," instantly Niel recalls fester smell far worse than her lying in a hammock, "he an image of Frank Ellinger’s "ob- weeds’ " (87). stepped forward and caught her jectionably broad" shoulders, Is it far-fetched for us to think suspended figure, hammock and "the intrusion of this third of Mrs. Forrester and Niel’s rela- and all, in his arms. How light person annoyed him" (78). tionship as that of mother and and alive she was! like a bird son? By tradition the name Mari- caught in a net. If only he could When Niel learns of Ellinger’s an suggests maternity, and she rescue her and carry her off like visiting Mrs. Forrester in Cap- seemingly accepts this maternal this," Niel thought. And is this tain Forrester’s absence, he role. When Niel is leaving for not the same yearning ex- decides not to call on her. He Boston, she says to him, "Don’t pressed when he thought his sleeps lightly and awakens to bother about your allowance. If shoulders were broad enough? the puffing of the switch engine. you get into a scrape, we could Mrs. Forrester too seems to be "He tried to muffle his ears in manage a little cheque to help caught up in the moment: "She the sheet and go to sleep again, you out, couldn’t we, Mr. For- showed no impatience to be re- but the sound of escaping steam rester?" (99). And when he re- leased, but lay laughing up at for some reason excited him" turns, she seems much more him with that gleam of some- (83-84). He thinks of the roses than friend when in an un- thing elegantly wild, something growing in the Forresters’ guarded moment she tells Niel, fantastic and tantalizing, -- marsh, and "an impulse of affec- "Every night for weeks, when seemingly so artless, really the tion and guardianship" draws the lights of the train came most finished artifice! She put N iel to the marsh where he swinging in down below the decides to "make a bouquet for her hand under his chin as if he a lovely lady." He plans to leave meadows, I’ve said to myself, were still a boy" (110). the roses just outside her bed- ’Niel is coming home; there’s In one other scene Niel re- room window where "when she that to look forward to’ " (111). turns to the Hamlet role, trying opened her shutters to let in the But the mother-son relation- to tell Mrs. Forrester how the light, she would find them, -- ship is nowhere more evident townspeople are gossiping and they would perhaps give her than in the climactic scene about her and Ivy Peters. She

Page 37 shocks him by saying, "If you Niel’s character which he has sented at the Western Literature came to see me any oftener than not the maturity to recognize or Association Meeting in St. Paul, you do, that would make talk. understand. MN, October 7, 1983. You are still younger than Ivy, -- *A Lost Lady (1923; New York: and better-looking! Did that NOTES Vintage, 1972) 11. never occur to you?" To this Niel IThe studies referred to are ~Susan Rosowski, "Willa Ca- replies coldly, "1 wish you Blanche H. Gelfant’s "The For- ther’s A Lost Lady: Art Versus wouldn’t talk to me like that" gotten Reaping Hook: Sex in My the Closing Frontier," Great (154). Niel is unable to consider Antonia," American Literature Plains Quarterly 2 (Fall 1982): himself consciously as a possi- 43 (1971): 60-82; Stanley Cooper- 241. ble lover of his idealized lady man’s "The War Lover: Claude 4 Rosowski 241. and thus cannot come to terms (Willa Cather)," in World War I with his ambivalent feelings and the American Novel (Balti- ~Gelfant 61. toward her. Years after he has more: Johns Hopkins, 1967) 129- 6My Antonia (1918; Boston: lost his lovely lady he can "think 37; and my "Sexual Imagery in Houghton Mifflin, 1961) 321. of her without chagrin," but, Willa Cather’s One of Ours," pre- significantly, only after she returns to him, not as Daniel For- rester’s widow, but much more safely as Daniel Forrester’s wife, Editorial Board: "a bright, impersonal memory," J. Rosowski, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, and "he came to be very glad Susan Nebraska that he had known her, and that she had had a hand in breaking Loretta Wasserman, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, him in to life" (171). Michigan Cather shows Niel in his rela- Mildred R. Bennett, Willa Cather Foundation, Red Cloud, Ne- tionship with Mrs. Forrester at braska crucial periods in his develop- ment into manhood -- at age twelve, on the verge of adoles- cence; at nineteen, on the brink of maturity; at the "natural turning-point" between nine- teen and twenty, which Cather calls "a very great difference" (69); two years later when he has "seen the world" in Boston and has found in it."nothing so nice as you, Mrs. Forrester" (110); and finally at around forty, when he has been able to fit his life in Sweet Water into perspective. Marian Forrester’s affairs with Frank Ellinger and Ivy Peters are clearly defined through sexual image and sexual conquest. The much more complex relation- ship with Niel Herbert, however, Cather handles on the level of a boy who could have said, as Jim Burden said to )kntonia, "I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister -- anything a woman can be to a man.’’6 Niel has these same adolescent con- flicts about the "aesthetic ideal" (87) who proves herself to be a woman. Cather uses sexual imagery to reveal depths of

Page 38 NEW BOOKS My Antonia: The Road Home ...... cloth, $17.95 Cather: Early Novels and Stories... cloth, $27.50 by John J. Murphy paper, 6.95 Library of America Edition Twayne’s Masterwork Studies Selected and with notes by Sharon O’Brien Approaches to Teaching ...... cloth, $32.00 The Troll Garden, 0 Pioneers!, Cather’s My Antonia paper, 17.50 The Song of the Lark, My Antonia, Edited by Susan J. Rosowski: One of Ours The Modern Language Association REISSUED by the University of Nebraska Press: Willa Cather Living ...... cloth, $22.95 Willa Cather on Writing ...... $6.95 by Edith Lewis paper, 12.95 Not Under Forty ...... $6.95 Reissued by Ohio University Press Willa Cather in Europe ...... paper, $7.50 Foreward by Marilyn Arnold Willa Cather - 24 Stories ...... $5.95 Great Short Works of Willa Cather . . . paper, $5.95 Selected and with introduction by Edited by Robert K. Miller, Jr. Sharon O’Brien Harper & Row, Perennial Library New American Library

YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN THE LIFE AND GROWTH AIMS OF THE WCPM OF THE ORGANIZATION ¯ To promote and assist in the development and preservation ¯ By being a Cather Memorial Member and financial contri- of the art, literary, and historical collection relating to the life, butor: time, and work of Wllla Cather, in association with the Ne- BENEFACTOR ...... $1,000.00 and over braska State Historical Society. ANNUAL MEMBERSHIPS ¯ To cooperate with the Nebraska State Historical Society in Patron ...... $100.00 continuing to identify, restore to their original condition, and Sustaining ...... 25.00 preserve places made famous by the writing of Willa Cather. Family ...... 15.00 ¯ To provide for Willa Cather a living memorial, through the Individual ...... 10.00 Foundation, by encouraging and assisting scholarshl p in the Foreign Subscription add $5.00 field of the humanities. to membership category ¯ To perpetuate an interest throughout the world in the work WCPM members receive: of Willa Cather. Newsletter subscription Free guided tour to restored buildings BOARD OF GOVERNORS ¯ By contributing your Willa Cather artifacts, letters, papers, Keith Albers Robert E. Knoll Susan J. Rosowaki and publications to the Museum, William Thomas Auld, M.D. Ella Cather Lewis David E. Scherman By contributing your Ideas and suggestions to the Board of Bruce P. Baker, II Lucia Woods Lindley C. Bertrand Schultz * Mildred R. Bennett Catherine Cather Lowell Madan Schultz Governors. W. K. Bennett, M.D. John Mamh Margaret Cather Shannon Don E. Connors Dale McDole Betty Sherwood ALL MEMBERSHIPS, CONTRIBUTIONS AND Josephine Fdsble Midam Mounfford Helen Cather Southwlck BEQUESTS ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE David Garwood John J. Murphy Mamella Van Meter Under Section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1965 Ron Hull Hamj Obitz

Page 39 Call for Papers Nonprofit Organ. on Cather U.S. POSTAGE PAID Red Cloud, NE Permit No. 10 Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial First Annual Amedcan 326 North Webster Red Cloud, Nebraska 68970 Literature Association Meeting May 31-June 3 San Diego, California

Address papers to Willa Cather Foundation by January 15, 1990