The Influence of Willa Cather's French-Canadian Neighbors in Nebraska in Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock
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University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Winter 2000 The Influence of Willa Cather's French-Canadian Neighbors In Nebraska in Death Comes For The Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock Kathleen Danker South Dakota State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Danker, Kathleen, "The Influence of Willa Cather's French-Canadian Neighbors In Nebraska in Death Comes For The Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock" (2000). Great Plains Quarterly. 2178. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2178 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. THE INFLUENCE OF WILLA CATHER'S FRENCH .. CANADIAN NEIGHBORS IN NEBRASKA IN DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP AND SHADOWS ON THE ROCK KATHLEEN DANKER You see, there are all those early memories; one cannot get another set; one has but those. Shadows on the Rock' ~lla Cather's high regard for French tradi Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the tions and culture is reflected in many of her Rock as her French Catholic novels because of writings, including the novels 0 Pioneers! the heritage and faith of their main charac (1913), One of Ours (1922), The Professor's ters. Edith Lewis, Cather's long-time compan House (1925), Death Comes for the Archbishop ion, recorded that, for Cather herself, writing (1927), Shadows on the Rock (1931), and her the second of these two books served as a kind last, unfinished narrative set in A vignon. Of of continuation of the "Catholic feeling and these works, readers sometimes think of Death tradition" of the first. 2 French culture can be seen not only in the religious beliefs of the characters and the ar chitecture of their churches but in the domes tic: life Cather portrays in these two works. The devotion of the main characters to their families and to the traditional arts of garden Kathleen Danker teaches at South Dakota State University. She has published on the works of Elizabeth ing, preparing food, and keeping well-ordered Cook-Lynn, Linda Hasselstrom, and Willa Cather. households, and the zest with which they share Ms. Danker is currently working on translating the food, wine, stories, and celebrations with Winnebago trickster tales of the late Feliz White Sr. of friends and neighbors, reveal the influence of Winnebago, Nebraska. their Gallic background. Along with their descriptions of French Catholicism and culture, Death Comes for the [GPQ 20 (Winter 2000): 35-541 Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock are similar 35 36 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 2000 in that both appear to be exceptions to Cather's her pastor, John Mallory Bates, the rector of well-known statement that "most of the basic Grace Church in Red Cloud. material a writer works with is acquired before However, Cather's experience of pioneer the age of fifteen."3 It seems that the subjects life in Nebraska during her youth was not con and settings of these novels derive entirely fined to the town of Red Cloud. Indeed, it is from sources Cather encountered and places likely that some of the childhood memories she visited after leaving Red Cloud, Nebraska, that informed her writing of Death Comes for in 1890 at age sixteen: from historical texts, the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock were from her study of literature, art, and music, more directly French. W oodress characterizes and from her adult travels in France, Quebec, Cather as "a Francophile since early child and the southwestern United States. hood" and cites as sources of this early attrac Therefore, it is something of a puzzle that tion stories she heard about France from Mrs. Cather referred to writing Death Comes for the Love in Virginia and Mrs. Wiener in Red Archbishop as "like a happy vacation from life, Cloud, novels she read by French authors, and a return to childhood, to early memories"4 and "the joie de vivre of the French Canadian settle that Edith Lewis, in describing the genesis of ment north of Red Cloud. "9 Shadows on the Rock, recalled that at her first This settlement of immigrants from the view of Quebec Cather was "overwhelmed by province of Quebec was located only four miles the flood of memory, recognition, surmise it northwest of the homestead where Cather and called Up."5 To what memories and recogni her family first lived in Nebraska, so Cather's tions do these accounts refer? acquaintance with it probably dates from her The architecture of Quebec no doubt re earliest years in the state. Considerably before minded Cather of that of northern France, but the age of fifteen, she could have begun to there are other possible interpretations of acquire memories and material from this source Lewis's remarks. Cather biographers E.K. about French Catholic pioneers and their Brown and James Woodress have noted that church, clergy, community, and traditions on both Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shad which she could draw to enrich her later writ ows on the Rock reflect Cather's continuing ings about the French experience in North interest in pioneer experience such as she first America. encountered in Nebraska, what Brown calls Between the mid-1870s and mid-1890s, "the story of man's capacity to establish do over sixty French-Canadian families, prima minion over the immutable."6 Brown also feels rily from villages around Montreal, emigrated that Cather's depiction of Quebec and its in to homesteads in an area of south central Ne habitants in Shadows on the Rock is colored by braska straddling the county line between her nostalgia for the family life she had known northwestern Webster and northeastern as a child, that the "novel in which Willa Franklin counties, close to the head of the Cather traveled farthest from Red Cloud drew Little Blue River. Part of a widespread move most of its emotional power from her memo ment to the United States from the province ries of life there."7 of Quebec in the nineteenth century, they left Similarly, L. Brent Bohlke has written that their country primarily because of a scarcity of "although [Death Comes for the Archbishop] is land and employment opportunities.lo set in the American Southwest, it has many One such early settler, Desire Genereux, deep roots in the Nebraska of Cather's early came to Nebraska in 1874 from the vicinity of years."8 In particular, Bohlke believes Cather's St. Ambroise de Kildare in Quebec. He made portrayal of Bishop Latour in the novel to be the last part of the trip in a covered wagon in influenced by her admiration and affection for which he continued to live until he laid claim two Episcopalian clergymen: her bishop, the to a homestead south of the Little Blue River Right Reverend George Allen Beecher, and in Webster County's Harmony township. CATHER'S FRENCH-CANADIAN NEIGHBORS 37 Genereux's wife, Cordelia, and oldest child, edition for "Alphonsine") indicates that she Joseph, came to join him the next year, and he had learned at least some of them orally.15 shortly thereafter built a blacksmith shop and There were also French Canadians around a sod house. By 1883, when nine-year-old Wheatland named Uklid, Cecelia, Clutilda, Willa Cather moved with her family from Vir Pierre, Jean Baptiste, and Alphonse, the same ginia to neighboring Catherton township, or variants of names that Cather used for fic Genereux had constructed a frame house for tional characters in Shadows on the Rock. 16 his growing family, and there were about thirty One of the most striking aspects of Cather's five other French-Canadian families in the treatment of the French Canadians in 0 Pio area. Many homesteaded close to Genereux in neers! is her picture of French community and a settlement that came to be called Wheatland personal life ordered around the Catholic after the name of the nearest post office.ll Church-its faith, its celebrations, its build How well did Willa Cather get to know her ings, and its clergy. Historical accounts, church French-Canadian neighbors? There is little records, newspaper files, and family stories direct evidence. She told an interviewer in about the French Canadians in Nebraska re 1915 that as a child she spent time visiting veal the historical bases of this aspect of the with the immigrant families in her area and novel. These accounts also depict religious would ride home in what she termed "the most values and cultural traditions similar to ones unreasonable state of excitement," feeling as Cather portrayed again in Death Comes for the if she "had got inside another person's skin."12 Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock. And in an essay published in the Nation in Both of these later novels emphasize the 1923, she wrote that on Sundays during her importance of the church and clergy, espe youth it was possible to drive to churches where cially French clergy, to Catholics in frontier services were conducted in Swedish, Danish, societies. In Death Comes for the Archbishop, Norwegian, German, or Czech, or to "go to Bishop Latour organizes a new vicariate in New the French Catholic settlement in the next Mexico, an area of the Southwest that has county and hear a sermon in French."!3 When long been neglected by Rome.