University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for

Fall 1982

The Childhood Worlds Of Willa Cather

Mildred R. Bennett willa Cather Pioneer Memorial in Red Cloud

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly

Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons

Bennett, Mildred R., "The Childhood Worlds Of Willa Cather" (1982). Great Plains Quarterly. 1623. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1623

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 CHILDHOOD WORLDS OF WILLA CATHER

MILDRED R. BENNETT

She was a good artist, and all true art is foot, on horseback and in our farm wagons.,,2 provincial in the most realistic sense: To be familiar with Willa Cather's childhood, of the very time and place of its making, then, is to gain a special entry into her art. out of human beings who are so particu­ Willa Cather was born on December 7, larly limited by their situation, whose 1873, in her Grandmother Boak's house in faces and names are real and whose lives Back Creek Valley, Virginia. Her grandfather, begin each one at one individual unique William Cather, a county sheriff and a strong center. Union man, had done much to unify the Katherine Anne Porter divided community after the Civil War, includ­ ing using his Northern money to provide Willa Cather, as Katherine Anne Porter schooling for the young people of the valley. realized, was a provincial or regional writer who Virginia Boak, Willa's mother, was one of the could derive the universal from the specific, as young Confederates whom he helped, and there the best artists do. For Cather, the specifics was little strife between her and her husband to which she returned throughout her career Charles. Virginia Cather combined the qualities were the people, places, and things of her of natural mother and Southern belle that childhood in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, and would distinguish Willa's portrait of her as Red Cloud, Nebraska.1 "The ideas for all my Victoria Templeton in "Old Mrs. Harris." novels have come from things that happened During the Back Creek Valley years, she bore around Red Cloud when I was a child," she three more children, Roscoe, Douglass, and once said. "I was all over the country then, on Jessica, but she always maintained her fine figure and aristocratic role, even while she enjoyed nursing her babies and never, as many Mildred R. Bennett is the founder of the willa Southern ladies did, turned them over to Cather Pioneer Memorial in Red Cloud; Nebras­ former slave wet nurses. ka, and author of The World of Willa Cather Charles Cather and his brother George served (1951). Her numerous articles on Cather in­ as deputy sheriffs to their father and ran the clude a contribution to Prairie Schooner (1959). family sheep business, buying and raising lambs

204 THE CHILDHOOD WORLDS OF WILLA CATHER 205 to sell on the Washington and Baltimore were also Willa's introduction to nature, school, markets. In June, 1873, when George left American history, and the Old World. As soon Back Creek Valley to pioneer in Nebraska with as she could walk, she roamed hills and fields his wife, Frances Smith, his share of the work rich in wildlife and varieties of trees and flowers. passed to Charles. A year later, grandfather Although she was too young to attend regular­ William went to visit George, and Willa and her ly, Willa often went with her father to the parents moved into Willow Shade, the home­ neighborhood school, where she sat and lis­ stead William had built on the side of a moun­ tened-and I dare say asked questions. Charles tain. Through the basement kitchen of the Cather's love of history impelled him to make house of Willa's childhood ran a spring that his oldest child aware of the local heritage and kept the dairy products cool. to impart it to any interested listener.3 He Even before George moved to Nebraska, the undoubtedly took her to the home of Lord Cather men had been interested in the West Fairfax, Greenway Court, which inspired her and had visited Colorado. William Cather early story, "A Night at Greenway Court." wanted to move the whole family to Nebraska, The hired women who worked at Willow Shade because he believed that the humid atmosphere no doubt contributed another kind of history­ of Back Creek encouraged the tuberculosis that family stories, superstitions, and folklore. afflicted so many of the Cathers. When his Willa Cather's interest in France began in the father, James Cather, died, William became house of her friend, Mary Love, whose mother head of the family. He had just returned from was the daughter of a former United States his visit to George, with the four orphaned minister to France. Willa questioned Mrs. Love children of a brother who had lived in Mis­ about her years abroad and admired her many souri. After finding homes for three of the treasures from France.4 Another comrade was orphans among the Virginia Cathers, William Marjorie Anderson, the prototype of Mahailey and his wife moved to Nebraska with their in One of Ours and of Mandy in "Old Mrs. widowed daughter, her little girl, and the fourth Harris." Marjorie's mother, who figured as Mrs. orphan. Two weeks after the group arrived, Ringer in Sapphira, worked in the kitchen at William's daughter died, leaving another orphan Willow Shade. Although Marjorie was retarded with her grandparents. Mobile families and and could not profit from Willa's attempts to orphaned children distributed among relatives teach her how to read, she was a companion on provided the background for Jim Burden in Willa's trips into the hills. My Antonia. Willa Cather's nine years in Virginia were her William, a patriarchal man, wanted to keep preparation for Nebraska. The contrast between his family around him, and his move to Ne­ the two environments could not have been br~ska increased the pressure on Charles and more startling. Climate and surroundings were Virginia to follow, but Virginia did not want to radically different, and friends, doctors, and leave her friends, her home, or the mountain education had, it seemed, been left behind. In countryside. (I doubt that Willa, who always Nebraska, chickens let out of their coops were hated change, did either.) However, Willow lost for good in the never-ending red grass that Shade's large sheep barn, containing a grinding stood as high as the young trees planted by mill for sheep provender, burned down, and hopeful settlers. Willa Cather later emphasized William refused to rebuild, virtually forcing the break that she felt with the past in Jim Charles to join him in Nebraska in 1883. Yet Burden's arrival in Nebraska in My Antonia, but the uprooting did not come before Willa's she was not quite as lost as he. Her household imagination had stored up many experiences that first year in Nebraska included her parents she later drew on in writing. and brothers and sisters, her grandmother The Virginia years are portrayed in most Rachel Boak, Mrs. Boak's granddaughter Bess detail in Sapphira and the Slave Girl, but they Seymour, Bess's half brother, Will Andrews, 206 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1982 and Willa's friend Marjorie Anderson, whose that Willa learned Latin from her two grand­ mother had entrusted her to Mrs. Cather's mothers are probably what Elsie Cather termed personal care. This extended family settled on "Willie's little stories.,,6 Neither grandmother William Cather's homestead, about fifteen miles seems to have been a Latin scholar, and Willa northwest of Red Cloud. It was April, not liked to fictionalize about herself, inventing autumn as it was for Jim Burden, and the spring three birth dates, December 7, 1874, 1875, promised much. During the intense summer, and 1876-the last a biological impossibility, Virginia Cather, pregnant for the fifth time, since her brother Roscoe was born in June, was bed-ridden and eventually lost the baby. 1877. Even if they did not teach her Latin, Willa was left free to explore the new country Willa's grandmothers served her well. Rachel and to meet the neighbors. She had her own Boak became the title character in "Old Mrs. pony and sometimes fetched the mail from the Harris," and Caroline Cather served as the basis farmer who served as postmaster. She also for Grandmother Burden in My Antonia. loved to visit the immigrant women-Swedish, While the people, plants, and animals of the Danish, Czech, Russian, German, and French­ new country charmed Willa, her mother dis­ even though she could not speak their languages. liked the isolated homestead and urged Charles Nothing, she later said, excited her more than to move into Red Cloud, where the schools spending a day with one of them, watching her were supposed to be better. Because he was not churn, make bread, or perform similar tasks. a farmer at heart, he complied, and in the fall She felt then as if she had got inside another's of 1884 he sold his farm equipment and stock skin, the kind of empathy she aimed for in her and moved to a house at Third and Cedar finest fiction.5 streets in Red Cloud. He had arranged to buy, Willa later romanticized that first year in but the deal fell through, and he had to rent Nebraska. She claimed that she picked wild the only house available, the "Newhouse" flowers and sat with them in her lap, crying property, where the Cathers lived for twenty over them because they had no names and no years. Cather described this small, overcrowded one seemed to care for them. Legend also has house in The Song of the Lark, "Old Mrs. it that she did not attend school in the country, Harris," "The Best Years," and other stories. but roamed the land "like a wild thing." How­ At one time twelve people lived there, under ever, country life was neither uncivilized nor the management of Virginia Cather; the warm without graces. Willa said her Aunt Franc and comfortable atmosphere of the home was (George's wife), who was a graduate of Mount created in part by Grandmother Boak and Bess Holyoke Female Seminary, scattered more Seymour. On winter nights Charles would pull manna in the wilderness than anyone else. down the ornate kerosene lamp and read to the Frances Cather, whom Willa eventually trans­ children. These sessions introduced Willa to muted into Claude Wheeler's mother in One of most of the literature, especially the poetry, Ours, organized a literary society at which that she loved. members discussed transcendentalism and other The geography of Red Cloud is. reflected topics. She was also a botanist who had pressed in the layout of Moonstone in The Song of the the prairie flowers and classified them by both Lark. The town's strange configuration resulted technical and common names. No doubt this from the rivalry between J. L. Miner and his reality was less interesting to Willa Cather the brother-in-law will Jackson, who had married writer than the image of a child weeping over a Julia Miner. Jackson owned the land around the heap of flowers. However much Willa may have depot, and in about 1882 he donated land for wandered in the summer, records show her the St. Juliana Falconieri Church, named in enrolled in New Virginia school in the winter honor of his wife. The large Burlington and of 1883-84, although the term may have lasted Missouri Hotel and Eating House and several only three months. On the other hand, accounts other establishments were built on this south THE CHILDHOOD WORLDS OF WILLA CATHER 207 side of town. But then Miner, who owned land interesting information about everybody in the farther up the hill, "nailed down" what even­ county. On weekday mornings, Willa would tually became the main part of town by build­ loiter about the Miner's house until Carrie left ing a fully equipped brick department store at for work, then follow her to the store, asking the corner of Third and Webster, where it still questions about the people in the community. stands. Willa liked to sit on the plank sidewalk She hesitated to follow Carrie inside, however, south of the high-windowed brick wall and because she sensed that Mr. Miner considered watch the white dust roll upward from slow her a nuisance. wagon wheels, or listen to Mr. Miner and Mr. One of the people Carrie told her about was Richardson talk politics and business, conver­ Fannie Fernleigh. Fannie had taught music in sations she would recreate in "Two Friends." Lincoln before she secured the backing of cer­ The major resource of the town for Willa tain local businessmen and opened a lavish Cather was its people, transients and long-term house of prostitution on the west edge of Red residents alike. The alcoholic music teacher Cloud, just outside city limits. Painted bright Shindelmeisser she transmuted into Thea Kron­ red to be seen from miles away, the establish­ borg's beloved Herr Wunsch in The Song of the ment was given various names: Magenta Bagnio, Lark. The town had considered him unfit to House of the Soiled Doves; The Red Rooster. teach respectable girls until Mrs. Miner recog­ When Fannie came into the store, the young nized his skill and engaged him to teach her salesmen, who were not always so distant, daughters. Willa also took lessons from him, but refused to wait on her, and Carrie herself had she was more interested in listening to him play to cut the yards of satin and quantitites of lace or telling her about the great composers than in that were needed for the girls'dresses. Some­ practlcmg herself. When the exasperated times the girls themselves came to buy babies' teacher complained to Mrs. Cather, Willa's things and children's clothes for little brothers mother assured him that the girl was learning and sisters back home. The girls were neither the things she needed. Like Mrs. Kronborg, local nor immigrants-no one seemed to know Mrs. Cather understood her gifted daughter. where they came from. In A Lost Lady, Cather Mrs. Miner, who first appreciated Shin del­ used Fannie as Nell Emerald, the Denver meisser, was the daughter of an oboist in Ole madam who tells Frank Ellinger that no decent Bull's Royal Norwegian Orchestra, owned the man would take a prostitute out driving in first harpsichord and the first piano in town, broad daylight. and played arias from the popular operas of the On the other end of the social spectrum, day. Her daughters practiced diligently, espe­ Carrie introduced Willa to Silas and Lyra cially Mary, who could play Willa's favorites Garber, who became Captain and Mrs. For­ by the hour. Willa frequently accompanied the rester in A Lost Lady. Governor Garber, a Miners to St. Juliana's, where she heard the fine Civil War officer who had served as governor of ecumenical choir sing the Gloria and Ave Maria. Nebraska, had married as his second wife Lyra, Mrs. Miner could also tell stories of her child­ a startling beauty from California. About the hood in Norway, such as the time she met the age of her stepson (a fact that interested dowager queen on the grounds of the summer gossips), the young Mrs. Garber continued to palace and talked about flowers with her. Mr. love parties and excitement while her husband Miner, equally interesting, had been born in grew older and more settled in his ways. At first Ireland and had lived for a while in Galena, Willa merely heard of the parties from Carrie, Illinois, where he knew Ulysses S. Grant. Mary but later she, like the young Niel Herbert, was Miner's calm disposition and interest in music included, and came to love and admire Mrs. quieted Willa, while Carrie Miner, four years Garber. Carrie herself was a character to fire her elder, satisfied her curiosity. Carrie helped Willa's imagination. She was the one person manage her father's store and was full of Willa Cather could not dominate, and neither 208 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 1982 could anyone else. Her father treated her like a Cutter in My Antonia. Like his fictional coun­ son and put her in charge of the store when he terpart, Bentley quarreled constantly with his went home for meals, even on Saturday nights wife and threatened to cut down the cedars in when the railroad crews came in to cash their front of their house to deprive her of her pay vouchers. Miner would put a loaded re­ precious privacy. He never did, however, and volver on the counter and tell Carrie to use it they stand by that house today. The couple if necessary, but she never needed to-everyone eventually moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, respected her. Throughout her life she retained where Bentley shot his wife while she was em­ her power over people, managing even the broidering a tablecloth. After she fell forward vagrants who sometimes hid in the sunflower­ dead, he went downstairs and shot himself. filled dry creek bed at Third and Cedar streets. Willa Cather said that those who live by the Cather used the Miners as the Harlings in My imagination find that it is that part of their lives Antonia, and Carrie became the somewhat that endures in the memory. Certainly Willa awe-inspiring Frances Harling. lived so. She wrote original plays and drama­ Mr. and Mrs. Wiener, whom Cather called tized fairy tales, then directed the children's the Rosens in "Old Mrs. Harris," were other performances of them, usually in the Miners' neighbors who influenced Willa. Jews from New front parlor. Mrs. Miner and her hired girl, York with a deep understanding of French and Annie Sadilek, frequently helped with the German culture, they moved into an elegant costumes. Annie, the prototype of Antonia, apartment above their newly built clothing was herself an important character in Willa's store. Willa loved to visit them, attracted by imagination. The best known of Willa's theatri­ their library and the breadth of knowledge they cals, "Beauty and the Beast," was staged in the made available to her. Mr. Wiener loaned Opera House for the benefit of the victims of Charles Cather the money to pay for Willa's the Blizzard of '88. Mary Miner played Beauty, first year at the University of Nebraska, and and Willa was so convincing as the father that she felt forever indebted to him and his wife. the audience did not recognize her. 7 The pro­ Another helper was will Ducker, a student of gram netted more than forty dollars, a consider­ Greek and Latin. She studied gratefully with able sum in those days. Willa also led the other him, although she was more interested in Latin children in the construction of Sandy Point, as a gateway to the classical world than as a a play town framed by plum bushes, just south study in itself. Her formal schooling provided at of the Cather home. The town consisted of least one bona fide mentor, Eva J. King, the wooden packing boxes the Miner girls had teacher who later appeared as Miss Knightly in coaxed from their father, two boxes on top of "The Best Years." Not even from her idolized each other representing a .two-story building. Miss King could Willa learn mathematics, and Willa was mayor, banker, and newspaper editor. it was not until just before graduation from the Mary Miner made candy, and her sister Irene University of Nebraska that she was able to pass and a friend ran a millinery shop where cus­ an examination qualifying her in that subject. tomers could tryon hats on the upper floor. She later said that when something difficult The boys floated bonds to build a bridge across loomed ahead she had nightmares about not a ditch. The children also staged circuses in the passing math. hayloft of the Miners' large barn. River crea­ Not all the people Willa knew in Red Cloud tures-frogs, lizards, and turtles-made up the were benevolent, however. M. R. Bentley, once sideshow. mayor of the town, was a notorious wo"manizer Some of Willa's make-believe was more seri­ and money grabber whose hired girls, always in ous. Intending to become a doctor, she signed danger of seduction, occasionally had to be herself "Wm. Cather, M.D.," and constructed a sent away. Bentley's unsavory activities gave laboratory in the back of her father's real estate Cather the material for the villainous Wick and loan office. There she chloroformed frogs, THE CHILDHOOD WORLDS OF WILLA CATHER 209 stray cats, and even a family dog, and dissected at such an opera house convinces the heroine of them scientifically. In her high school gradua­ Lucy Gayheart that life is to live. tion address in 1890 she criticized the town Willa Cather's childhood provided her with ladies' disdain of her medical hobbies, pro­ much of the material out of which she pro­ claiming the importance of scientific experi­ duced her fiction. Red Cloud in particular pre­ mentation over superstition. 8 Her interests sented a blend of unspoiled nature with the brought her the friendship of all of the three achievements of cultured people like the Red Cloud doctors. She admired the well­ Garbers, the Wieners, and the Miners. She could educated and politically active Dr. Damerell, explore the river bluffs south of town, or and worked summers for Dr. Cook, the phar­ civilize them by reading, with her friends, macist, earning money for books, a magic Idylls of the King and Sohrab and Rustum. lantern, and wallpaper for her attic room. Her Willa led the children as they became pirates on favorite was Dr. McKeeby, whom she later the river island, explorers, or anything else they immortalized as Dr. Archie in The Song of the chose. In her fiction she was often fondly to Lark. McKeeby's wife supposedly resembled remember boys camping on a river. Her years of the frigid Mrs. Archie, and when the news­ roaming through nature and drinking in the papers linked McKeeby with the girls from particular achievements of the people of Red Fannie Fernleigh's, his friends felt that if ever a Cloud kindled Willa Cather's imagination and man were justified in patronizing Fannie's left an indelible mark upon her writing. place, he was. His notoriety, however, seems to stem from the fact that he had cared for one of NOTES Fannie's girls, who had broken her leg in a 1. Katherine Anne Porter-, "Critical Reflec­ carriage accident. McKeeby often took Willa tions on Willa Cather," afterword to Cather's on country calls, and once she helped him give The Troll Garden (New York: New American chloroform to a boy whose leg he amputated. Library, 1961), pp. 149-50. A wide-open town for saloons, gambling, 2. From an interview by Eleanor Hinman, and prostitution, Red cloud let the world pass Lincoln Sunday Star, November 6,1921. through it on eight trains a day, four in each 3. Carrie Miner Sherwood heard it from direction. Traveling salesmen spent weekends Willa in 1883, soon after the family arrived in there, and many other travelers stopped to eat. Nebraska. 4. According to interviews with her sister The trainmen would signal ahead to the Bur­ and correspondence with her son, Mary trea­ lington and Missouri Hotel and Eating House sured her childhood letters from Willa, which the number of diners, and by the time the train were lost after Mary's death in the 1940s. arrived, the meals would be ready. Willa and the 5. H. W. Boynton, "Chapters in 'The Great Miner girls often waited at the depot for dig­ American Novel,'" New York Evening Post, nitaries to alight or for the arrival of opera or November 13, 1915. theatrical companies on their way to a per­ 6. While I was working on The World of formance at the Opera House. willa Cather, Elsie often questioned certain The upstairs hall at the Opera House had be­ "facts." "Is that really true," she would ask, come a community center as well as a home for "or is it one of Willie's little stories?" traveling performers. Local youngsters pro­ 7. The Red Cloud Evening Chief, February 6, 1888, singled Willa out for her ability to play duced Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and other a man, commenting that she "carried it through light fare. Willa's high school graduation exer­ with ... grace and ease." cises were held in the Opera House in 1890. 8. Cather argued that novices cannot become Here she saw "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and other experts without experimentation. For a full dis­ popular shows, and here she heard Blind cussion of her "medical" period, see my The Boone, the black pianist who suggested Blind World of Willa Cather, rev. ed. (Lincoln: Uni­ d'Arnault in My Antonia. A road performance versity of Nebraska Press, 1961), pp. 109-18.