Willa Cather--American historian

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m i a Gather American Historian

by

Frances Katherine Pennington

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Maeter of Arte

in the 0ollege of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, of the

University of Arizona

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CHAPTER I — INTRODUCTION p. 1A Definition of the term historian as used in this

paper.B Application of this definition to Willa Gather

1 Her interest in physical backgrounds2 Her interest in national types3 Her interest in cultures

C Style of V/illa GatherCHAPTER II — -VILLA GATHER’S "MATERIAL* — A STUDY

OF HER LIFE p. ?A Youth

1 In Virginia2 In Nebraska

B Later Life1 As a teacher and reporter2 As a member of McClure’s staff3 As a novelist and short story writer

CHAPTER III ~ HER USE OF THIS "MATERIAL" IN DEPICTINGTHE LIFE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE p. 2:

A In Nebraska1 In pioneer days2 In periods of later development

91)788

B In Colorado C In Hew Mexico D In Quebec

CHAPTER IV — COHCLUSIOH BIBLIOGRAPHY

p. 107 p. 109

SSwStNBJLjx..IffifaPQnaiilfln

Yiilia Gather has occupied herself chiefly in an effort to recapture for the Twentieth Century American reader a vision of the romantic past — the pioneer days — of his country* Miss Gather is in a sense a historian of American life. "The circumstances which have the most influence on the happiness of mankind," says Macaulay in his essay en­titled History, "the changes in manners and morals, the transition of communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to humanity — these are, for the most part, noiseless revolutions. Their prog­ress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties, and recorded in no archives. They are carried on in every school, in every churchy behind ten thousand counters, at ten thous­and firesides." It is only in the sense that these "noise­less revolutions" are history that Y/iiia Gather is a histo­rian. In the majority of her works there are few historical charactersthat is, characters whose deeds have been record­

's B. Macaulay, History, f P* •

s

ed in chronicles 3 and few so-called Mimportant events" — the doings of armies and governing bodies. The two excep- tions to this rule are Shadows on the Rock and Death Comesfor.... miat she does and does exceedingly wellis to recreate various periods in the development of the American people.

In these evocations of the past she shows a deep and quietly enthusiastic love of the great natural baclcgrounde of her country — the vast prairies of Hebraska, covered withshaggy red grass and rustling fields of yellow corn; the mo-

■ : .4;.. ■notonoue deserts and ever-changing skies of Hew Mexico $ the

■ ■ - ■ ' : ' ■ " . •great thick-walled churches on the rock of Quebec.

^ Against thdse backgrounds Miss Gather makes play a varil^fChsrscters. In general (though not always) her peo­ple are immigrants, representing the non-Anglo-Saxon elements of American society; and few writers have portrayed so sym­pathetically, so underotandingly, the character of these peo­ple whose industry and courage have done so much in build­ing up America. Miss Gather is peculiarly Interested in the conduct of peoples in new and strange environments — what they bring to their new homes, and how, in turn, their con­tributions are modified by contact with strange conditions. She depicts the early Scandinavian, Bohemian, German, and Russian settlers of Hebraska, the French and Spanish of Hew Mexico, the French of Seventeenth Century Quebec. Each one has hie own peculiar culture which he has brought with him

. . . :

s

from the Old Country and which he le painstakingly trying to transplant in the Mew — the peculiar sense of "our way,« which Mother Auclair in Shadows on the Hock bequeathes to her daughter — • "something so precious, so intangible; a feeling about life that had come down to her through so many centuries and that she had brought with her across wastes of obliterating and brutal ocean. The sense of ’our way1 — that was what she longed to leave with her daughter. She wanted to believe that when she herself was lying in this rude Canadian earth, life would go on almost unchanged in this room with its dear (and,to her, beautiful^ objects; that the proprieties would be observed, all the little shades of feeling that make the commonplace fine. The individuality, the character, of Mother Auclair*s house, though it appeared to be made of wood and cloth and glass and a little silver, was really made of very fine moral qualities in two women; the mother’s unswerving fidelity to certain traditions, and the daughter’s unswerving loyalty to her mother’s wish."

And the contribution, Miss Gather feels, of these immi­grant people has been very precious in the uplifting of Amer­ican civilization, for they have brought with them character­istics which are lacking in the old American stock — a true

mere existing— a freedom from the stultifying effects of a conventional and standardized pattern of conduct, a genuine

Tv/ilia S. Gather, * PP. 25-26,

4

appreciation and love of art and artists — a true sense of values. It is these immigrants, as Miss Gather says, that add the splash of color to the landscape.

Miss Gather1s style has a close relationship to her qualities as a historian of American life. In general, it may, as G* W, gruteh suggests, be termed elegiac rather than heroic. He thus defines his tuo terms$ "Havelock Ellis drew a useful distinction between what he calls the Hordic and the Celtic treatments of the past, fhe uninstructed reader of Homer might very reasonably suppose that the poet was con­temporary with the events which he described, whereas in thecase of a Celtic epic, it is always perfectly evident that

• . . ’ 1 ■

the author is dealing with those things which for him, as well as for the reader, are remotely picturesque. The Greeks,in other words,,preferred to treat the past as though it

■ - , : • • • ‘were present beeauee they were interested in a dramatic imme­diacy, but the Celts deliberately evoked the pathos of dis- tance, because that pathos was to them the essence of poetry."

Miss Gather, Krutch believes, belongs to the Celtic type; at least she is a writer in the elegiac mood. She treats of periods of our history about which others have written , stern stories of heroic deeds. But this she has not chosen to do* s w never writes of a period as if it were, present.The reader never has the sense, as he has in Kristin Lavrano-

J. W. Krutch, "Thm Patiios of Distance," nation. 125:390, October 12, 1927.

5

flatter, of actually living in thev time described. Miss Gather io always in the present looking backward. She is recalling scenes| characters, events, which she has at on® time known, but which are softened by memory. She is celebrating an age that no longer exists. Her method, like that of the Celtic epic, is idealization; but her idealization, unlike that of the Celtic epic, comes not from exaggeration, which she i® careful to avoid, but from the abstraction of desirable detail. Thi®, however, might be considered a fora of exaggeration.When one reads the pioneer section of Hv AntoniaT one feels that it has reality, that it is very like experiences one has had in childhood. But one seldom feels that it is like the life one knows today, the stirring tumultuous life about him. This process of abstraction is probably unconscious with Miss Gather. Certainly it is a tendency common to all of us to remember chiefly the pleasant things of the past.

This mood of Miss Gather*s has reflection in the struct­ural devices of her stories. In Hv Antonia Jim Burden, in his later life, is trying to give the reader a sense of that "precious incommunicable past" which he has shared with Anto­nia. The novel is, as it were, his memoirs of/ that period of his life. In A Lost Lady. Neil is thinking of the.beautiful woman who has spread her radiance over his youth. Death Comes for the Archbishop is written largely retrospectively. The reader is told the details of Latour’s youth only when he is dying. Even when Miss Gather ie dealing with

s

a period which is practically contemporary, as in the Pro*- fessorlo Houso* she is regretting an age and a type of person that are passing#

In this paper I will give first an account of ftilia Gather’s life, since, her work being so much an evocation of her own memories, it is valuable to know how, and under what conditions, she acquired these memories. The remainder of the paper discusses such of Miss Gather's works as seem to show her conception of American life of the past. I have chosen to group her works by the sections of country with Which they deal — Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, and Quebec — not because I believe such an arrangement has any special significance, but simply as a convenient device.

.CHAPTER XI YfILLA CAT HER IS."MATBRIAL" —

A.W M , .SF.,HgR,MZ8

It la always necessary to know something of M s life to understand and appreciate a writer’s works. But in the case of such an author as v/illa Gather, who, one critic has declared, is limited by "a meager endowment of genu­inely creative imagination to materials of her own obser-

; 1mtlon,'* such a knowledge is peculiarly important.

v/illa Sibert Gather, daughter of Mary Virginia and Charles F. Gather, was born on a farm near Winchester, Vir­ginia, December 7, 1876. Her ancestors on both sides, who had originally migrated from England, Ireland, and Alsace, had been Virginia farmers for three or four generations.Life here was sedate, ordered; the people in the "good" families were born good; the poor mountain folic were never expected to rise from their lowly condition; and foreigners were considered with condescension.

From this settled, definitely arranged life V/illa Gather was taken when she was eight years of age to Nebraska, where her father bought a ranch near Red Cloud, a small town on the Burlington railroad. Life here was very different from that in Virginia. The country was but thinly settled; the

1 ..... .......... .... . ..Manley and Rickert, Contemporary American Literature, p.15

8

principal occupation was not farming, but feeding the immense herds of cattle driven up from the plains of Texas. Host of the vast prairie country from the Missouri river to Denver was still open grazing land. The people in the vicinity of the Gather home were largely foreign — Swedes, Danes, Nor­wegians, Bohemians, Germans, a few Russians and French.This was indeed a pioneer community, for as late as 1860 there was a general belief that the western half of Nebraska would forever remain a desert. Life here was rigorous;lightning, hail, prairie fires, drouths, blizzards often

, 1threatened the very existence of the community.

Wills Gather had a pony and spent ;: many days of her1 „ - :childhood riding over the grass-covered prairies becoming familiar with her neighbors, in whose customs and characters she was intensely interested. The life of every family, she declared later, was like that of a Swiss Family Robinson.She said of this period of her life in an interview with Latrobe Carrol:

I grew fond of some of these immigrants — particu- larly the old women, who used to tell me of their home conn- \ try. I used to thinfc them underrated, and wanted to explain vthem to their neighbors. Then stories used to go round and /round in my head at night. This was , with me, an initial !impulse. I didn't know any writing people. I had an enthu- \siasm for a kind of country and a kind of people, rather than ) an ambition.2

1 'Publisher*□ Biographical Sketch.

2L. Carroli "Life and Works of Willa Gather,"

53:212, May, 1921.

9

; ■ ■ • . . ■. .

One of these Immigrants, a child with whom Wllia played,was to appear later as Antonia in the novel, MyAntonia.MissGather says of her in the same interviews "Shuwas a Bohemian,who was very good to me when I was a child, I saw a greatdeal of her from the time I was eight until I was twelve•

1She was big-hearted and essentially romantic.

During her childhood V/illa did not attend school. She read aloud at night to her two grandmothers. She also began the study of Latin, in which she early attained facility.When her father later moved his family to Red Cloud, she en­tered high school, and continued her study of Latin with an old English gentleman, who was an excellent scholar, and with whom she continued reading even after she entered college.

She attended the University of Nebraska during the Chancellorship of James Canfield, father of Dorothy Canfield Fisher. This university was then just beginning to show the possibilities of the impressive size and influence it later achieved. There were on the faculty cultured men from the East, Among these were Fling, a professor of history, who seems to have had much influence on Hiss Gather; Sherman, who was just then developing his system of literary anal­ysis; Edgrin, the great Sanscrit scholar, afterwards oec-

2rotary for the Nobel Peace Society,

. L. Carrol. "Life and Works of Willa Gather," 53$213* Hay, 1921. ; .

2 Anonymous* The r," Present-Day

Among the students as well as among the faculty wore persons who were later to become prominent — Harvey New- branch, who has had a distinguished career on the World- Herald § Heartley Alexander, teacher, philosopher, and poet; KeeneAbbott, novelist; and Edward Ford Piper, poet. Dorothy Canfield, not yet old enough to be a student in the univer­sity, was often seen on the campus and was a friend of Mies Gather's. In this connection there is an interesting story. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Gather collaborated in the writ­ing of a short story, entitled Fear thatWalks bv Noonday, in which fodbball was strangely mingled with the supernat­ural. This story was published in the undergraduate liter­ary magazine in 1895. For many years it lay forgotten in the files; then an enterprising book dealer came upon it.He saw the value of a work to which two such famous names were attached, and at once sought to commercialize it. The two writers did not wish this youthful indiscretion added to the sum total of thoir works. Fortunately for them the story was in the hands of a scrupulous book dealer, who agreed not to continue with the project. It was thought best to issue the story in a small edition in order to destroy its first edition value,. Twenty or so cppies were printed

and promptly bought up.But Hiss Gather made other and more serious attempts

; : :

•Chronicle and Comment," Bookman, 74x381, December, 1931.

12

a literary career. Yet for the next nine years she published practically nothing besides a volume of verse, April Twilights, and a few stories for the magazines. She was, however, during these years, adding new material to that fund of experience from which she was to draw liberally in the future — "too interested," as she says, "in finding out something about the world and its people" to write.

The next few years after her graduation she spent in Pittsburg, teaching English in*the Allegheny High School and working on the Pittsburg Leader. She chose this city rather than New York because she had personal friends there • She also went abroad for a long period. The first year she spent in Europe she was very homesick for the plains country, which had ever been her greatest love. She says:

I hung and hung about the wheat country in Central Franco, sniffling when I observed a little French girl rid­ing on a box between her father*s feet on an American mowing machine, until it occurred to me that maybe if I went home to my own wheat country and to my own father, I might be less lachrymose. It is a queer thing about the flat country — it takes hold of you, or it leaves you perfectly cold. A greet many people find it dull and monotonous; they like a church steeple, and old mill, a waterfall, a country all touched up and furnished, like a German Christmas card.I go everywhere, I admire all kinds of country. I have tried to live in Franco. But when I strike the open plains, some­thing happens. I’m home. I breathe differently. That love of great spaces, of rolling open country like the sea — it’s the grandpassion of my life. I have tried for years to get over it. I have stopped trying. It’s incurable. 1

Publisher’s Biographical Sketch, p. 3.1

11

at writing during her years at college. Her material came from her experiences among the immigrants of the prairie and her desire to defend then. In her own wordst

Back in the files of the college magazine there were once several of my perfectly honest but very clumsy attempts to give the story of some of the Scandinavian and Bohemian settlers who lived not far from my father's farm. In these sketches I tried to tell about the people without any re­gard for style. These early stories were bald, clumsy, and emotional. 1

Later her ideas changed$As I got toward my senior year, I began to admire for

the first time writing for writing's sake. In these days no one seemed so wonderful as Henry James9 for me, he was the perfect writer.2

Mis® Gather, during her college earner, did some pro­fessional work in writing. She was the literary and dramatic critic for the Hebraska State Journal, and astonished greatly her fellow students and townspeople by daring to criticise some of the celebrities who visited Lincoln. She was una­fraid of names like Booth and Barrett, and ventured to ex­pose the mistakes of Frederick Ward and Louis James in the text of Henrv IV when they presented their Shakespearian drama on the Lincoln stage.

At nineteen years of ago Miss Gather was graduated from the university, seemingly ready to enter immediately into

2"Chronicle and C< mt." 74:381, December, 1931.L. Carrol, "Life and Works of .Villa Gather,*'

831214, May, 1931. 7Anonymous, "The Youth of Wllla Gather." Present-Day

American Literature. 1:29, July, 1928.

But Hiss Gather had not forgotten her literary ambition# While she was in Pittsburg, she was working on a group of short stories, which she sent in 1904, in the form of a man- uscript entitled Troll Garden to the McClure-Phillips Pub­lishing Company. So favorably impressed was S. S. McClure with the collection that he telegraphed Miss Gather to come to New York immediately for a conference* He published her stories and two years later, in 1906, offered her a position on his magazine. With some hesitation she accepted his prop­osition. She disliked to undertake a work which would proba­bly employ moot of her time just at the moment when success in her literary work seemed most promising. What finally persuaded her was that she objected to using her art as s means of earning her living; this position would render that mmeeeesary. As she expressed it; "I didn't ^sh to write directly to sell. I didn't wish to compromise,. Not that the magazine demands were wrong. Bat they were definite."

Two years after joining the staff of McClure's, she became the managing editor, a position which she held for four years. During this time she did little writing, but

- traveled extensively in Europe and in the American South­west — New Mexico and Arizona. It was while thus engaged that her interest in the desert country was first aroused. She describes her experience;

jjr ' ' «..... ' «'L. Carrol, "Life and Works of Wilia Gather*.*

Bookman* 53t214, Hay, 1921.

14

When I first went into the Southwest some fifteen years ago, I stayed there for a considerable period of time.It was then much harder to get about than it is today. There were no automobile roads and no hotels off the main lines of the railroads. One had to travel by wagon and carry a camp outfit. One traveled slowly, and had plenty of time for reflection. It was then very difficult to find any one who would tell me anything about the country, or even about the roads. One of the most intelligent and inspiriting persons I found in my travels was a Belgian priest, Father Haltermann, who lived with his sister in the parsonage behind the beauti­ful old church at Santa Crus, Hew Mexico, where he raised fancy poultry and sheep and had a wonderful vegetable and flower garden. He was a florid, full-bearded farmer-priest, who drove about among his eighteen missions with a spring wagon and a pair of mules. He knew a great deal about the country and the Indians and their traditions.1

It was with a delightful sense of freedom that Miss Gather in 1912 found herself financially able to give up

She retired to Cherry Valley, Hew York, where she began work on Alexander's Bridge, a moralistic novel in the manner of Edith Wharton. She describes the composition of this work,which she afterward admitted was outside the range of what she calls her "material!"

with ______ _____________________„ ____ ______ _____— -great deal of experience to become natural. People grow in honesty as they grow In anything else. Mpaihter- ofi writer must learn to distinguish what is his own from what he admires.2

From this time until the present day Hiss Gather has

the first time the attempt to make a between the .............

V/illa S. Gather, Letter to The Commonweal, reprinted Publisher's Biographical Sketch, p.!?.

of Villa Gather,"L. Carrol, "Life and V< 631214, May, 1921.

151

matter that her experience had given her and the manner of writing which she admired. "And from the first chapter I de­cided not to write at all — simply to give myself up to the pleasure of recapturing in memory people and places I had believed forgotten." In doing this she was following the advice of her friend, Sarah Orne Jewett, an author of New England local color stories, an edition of which Hiss Gather has edited. Mrs. Jewett had told her young friend that if her life had lain in a part of the world that was without a literature, and if she could not describe it truthfully in the form she most admired, she would have to make a kind ofwriting that would tell it, no matter what she lost in the

1process.

0 Pioneers1 was followed by The Song of the Lark.My jCntoniar Youth and the ]rskSsA.

Doath omes for the Archbishon. Shadows on the Bock, and Obscure Destinies. These works have procured for her great fame in the United States and a steadily growing European reputation.

V/e have many pictures of V/illa Gather in these later years of her life. V/e see her in her apartment in New York in that section of Greenwich Village in which the crooked streets have something of the air of the Old World in their lingering touches of Georgian architecture. V/e see her sitting here — a bright scarf around her shoulders , he^blue eyes

L. Carrol, "Life and Works of v/illa Gather," Bookman. 53*214, May, 1921.

1

16

contrasting with her dark lashes and strongly marked brows and bar etraigbt shining black hair. From the wall a pic­ture of George Sand by Couture looks down upon her.

To the interviewer who comes to visit her she talks upon a variety of topics. Now she speaks of Swinburne, whom she ha# met in the British Museum with Sidney Colvin 5 now she gives a discourse on the art of cooking, which she be­lieves one of the most important things in life. The English and Americans, she declares, are sadly deficient in this art, in which the French excel. This is due, she believes, "to the fact that in all matters of art and taste the French are older, more sensitive, backed by traditions of greater purity and age and are instinctively connoisseurs in the art of living, a gift the English and Americans have never acquired. Once, she goes on to relate, she had a French cook who had made her life a joy; but on losing her, she had to employ a negro, who did well enough when she kept to the dishes she knew, but who, in spite of all Miss Gather's objections, in­sisted upon putting cream in the soup. And cream in soup is a thing which Hiss Gather cannot endure! She sums, up her ideas on cooking with these words:

The things that any sensitive person eats must attract the palate and the eye to fulfil successfully their func­tion. Is cooking important? Few things in life are more sot My mind and my stomach are one! I think and work with what­ever it is that digests.

— ----------------------------- ---------— ------ :------—W. Tittle, "Glimpses of Interesting Americano," Century

110*310, July, 1925.IMd, p, 311.

Z DO

she is not tempted to desert her native land for a life abroad. She feels that she cannot produce her peculiar type of work away from the American idiom. "It touches," she says, "the spring of memory, wakening past experiences and knowl­edge necessary to my work. I write only of the Middle West­ern American life; that I know thoroughly, and must bo here, where the stream of life flowing over me touches springs that release early-caught and simulated expressions . . . •I stayed for a time at the Ville d'Amoy g'ranc^ , and loved the life there so much that I could hardly tear myself away; but I was so busy drinking in the beauty of that place that I could not work. Those wonderful French skiest They fasci­nated me. They are different from the hard, bright skies of Hew -York.I went from there to Paris, hoping to achieve a working state of mind, but again it proved impossible; The Seine absorbed my thoughts. I could look at it for hours, as it reflected every mood of the ever changing skies, and the colorful life surging around me was utterly distracting.

Hew York has no such effect on her. Here she works for six months of the year in seclusion from her family and friends. She compares her work with the systematic practice of a pianist, who does hie daily stint just as he takes his bath or breakfast. She spends from two and one-half to three hours a day, usually in the morning, in writing. She says to

110s318,1| ^ ® ,i925!apae‘3 Of Interesting Americans,"

18

z

devote more time to it would bring her no benefit, for making a chore of her writing would kill her enthuoiaom, The rest of the day is consumed in attending to her housekeeping$ in

of which she ie physically fit, a writer as to a

to visit members of her family in Nebraska, Colorado, and HewMexico. This is for her a period of relaxation, absorption,and "refreshment at the fountain head" of the life that shewrites about. Her visits to her old home of Bed Cloud, of whichshe is the moat honored citizen, are important events in thelife of the people there* They observe everything she does andthen write magazine articles about her. One such an account tellsof her visit one year to a family reunion at Christmas, At thattime (1927) V/iila Gather1s mother and two sisters were at RedCloud. One sister is the wife of a Rod Cloud banker, and theother is reputed to be one of the best teachers that the Lin-eoln High School has ever had. The writer of this article, aneighbor of the family, was Invited to a tea on a Thursdayafternoon following Christmas. This was too important anoccasion to be ignored, so grandmother was drafted to takecare of the children while mother went to the tea. She------1-----------:------ :---------- -------- --------- :-----

w. Tittle, Pp . Cit.

found the Gathers possessing the delightful Southern hospi­tality, which they had preserved from their far-off Virgin­ia days. After a period of conversation, which was not lit- erary, tea was served. This with Miss Gather was a ceremony. She had a special technique In preparing it for her guests.

M1Go in and ask each lady,' she directed, •how she likes her tea. Then tell me, and I'll fix it for her. It will savepassing around all these things' — pointing to the usual

1sugar, creamy and lemons."

After the tea was over, she called her guests' attention to a group of figures on a table in front of the window. They were a Holy Family similar to those Hiss Gather describes in

They were figures about six inches high of the Christ Child, Mary,- Joseph, the V/ise Hen, the Shepherds, and the gifts they had brought. They were arranged on a thick carpet of pine needles. The Child and its parents were at the top of several tiny steps, and the others in the various stages of coming up. She lit the six or eight candles that were stationed among the figures, just at dusk. She spoke of the Madonnas

'I have two Marys, one French, and one German. It was hard to decide which to use. The French mother is charming, but she looks a little affected. I finally chose the German one. The French mother might love her child, but I felt sure that the German mother would take better care of it.. 1

Miss Gather'a little nephew was fascinated by these figures, hut was troubled by a certain deficiency.There were many oxen among thes^r figures, but no cows, and he was sure

such a small baby would be in need of milk.- Therefore, he

" 1J. F., "Willa Gather in Rod Cloud,*

Ican Literature. • l:~nQ. -July. 1928.

20

persuaded some one to go with him to the fiver and ton cent store, where he purchased a toy cow. Back home with his precious package, he sought out hi® Aunt Wills, and presented it together with a pair of scissors to her. She clipped the string and found the cow. She immediately gave it a promi* neat position among the delicate and costly figures which she had imported from Italy and France.

But Miss Gather was not always recognized and honored by her fellow townspeople. On another of her Christmas holi­days in RearClptid she happened one day to go into a drug store. She saw a farmer, whom she did not know, puzzling over the selection of a book for a gift. Finally, he decided on One.-CTfi Qnro. She, wishing to be kind, went over to him and asked him if he would like her to autograph the book*He looked at her with a puzzled expression, and, coming tothe conclusion that he did not know her, replied haughtily:

2"Bo, I don't want nobody writin* in my books."

Villa Gather once said that all art was merely remem­bering. Whether or not this is true in the generalization, it le certainly true of her works. She is constantly dom­inated by the sense of her past life, continually trying through the symbolism of her novels and short stories to recapture her ehildhood and youth. For, she believes, it is

- : ' ^J. F., "Willa Gather in Red Cloud," Praaent^Dny

Literature, 1:31, July, 1928.Ibid, p. 30.

21

in the period before one reaches the age of fifteen that thebasic material with which a writer works is acquired. "Theseyears," so she says, "determine whether one’s work will

1be poor and thin, or rich and fine." These years were for her "rich and fine."

Now, as a result, when she site down to write in her lew York apartment, "turns of phrase, forgotten for years, come back like white ink before a fire."

L. Carrol, "Life and Works of Willa Gather," 531212, May, 1921*

lv

22

CHAPTER III — WILLA GATHER'S USE OF HSR "MATERIAL" IN DEPICTING THE LIFE

OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

VJilla Gather is a product of the Middle West, and it is of the Middle West that she writes beat. She is a true daughter of the Middle Border. Into her broad sympathy she takes both the landscape and the people, the eager land- hungry immigrants, who have brought with then from Europe their heterogeneous cultures.

The Nebraska of which Miss Gather writes, though still largely unsettled, was not a pioneer community in its primi­tive stages. Many of the steps of frontier development had already been taken. These, however, had been unnaturally de­layed because of a peculiar conception of the nature of the country. The early explorers who made expeditions into the great plains country beyond the bend of the Missouri river, were unimpressed by its possibilities, and gave it the nameof The Great American Desert, since nothing grew there ex-

1cept grassi One, Major Long, traveling in 1320, had declared the region from the Rockies to the 49th degree of north lat­itude to be "wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course

w 1 — : ' ' Frederick L. Paxson, Historyof the American Frontier,

p. 216.

23

uninhabitable by a people depending on agriculture for their •ubeietence."Another averred that it combined "within itsfrightful and extensive territory the Steppes of Tartary,

Xand the moving sands of the African desert." This legend persisted to such an extent that it was decided that this re­gion, being uninhabitable for the whites,-was an ideal one for the Indians. They could hunt buffalo here forever undis­turbed. The policy of establishing on the Great Plains a permanent frontier was thus formulated between 1825 and 184o. The influx of white population was gradual. Even the organi­zation of Nebraska as a territory was more the result of po­litical exigencies — the struggle between the slavery and anti-slavery states, and a desire for a route for a trans­pacific railroad — than of any pressure of population. In 1867 it was admitted as a state. Miss Gather writes, presum­ably, of the Nebraska she knew in her childhood — the ear­ly period of the 80*8 and 9o*s , though the back movement in

\A host Ladv refers to a period considerably earlier than that. Then the dangerous process of Indian removal had already tak- on place, railroads had come in to furnish the farmer with

was generally prepared for the onrush of settlement.It is the life of these people of. Nebraska In pioneer

Frederick L. Paxaon, History of the American FrontierT1

24

Xdays that moat interest her — the period of her own youth5the time when the struggles with the soil, with summer drouths9with winter blizzards were tests of character5 the time when,as she says, "the attainment of material prosperity was a

1moral victory."

In those days the landscape, nature in all its aspects - ' '' - - /

and with all its force, was very near to the inhabitants.The prairie was there, very near. It was rich, fecund. Forman it held infinite promise. But it was wild. It must besubdued before it would yield up to man its riches. And itresisted the conquest."It was like a horse that no one knows

■ 2how to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces."Like the wild temperamental thing that it was, the prairiehad its moods — generally it was happy$ sometimes it wassad) but, perhaps owing to the idealistic haze through whichMias Gather saw everything pertaining to her youth, it wasseldom cruel, harsh. If one rides — in imagination — throughthe night in the lumbering wagon with Jim Burden, one feelsthe immensity of it, that prairie where "there is nothingbut land) not a country at all, but the material out of which

3 :.countries are made." Above the immensity of land was animmensity of sky, "a complete d<..'..1 .'.' '.''..'....."

"Nebraska* End of the Fi: September 5, 1927.

“a^ataaia, p. 22.•- 0—Pioneers 1, p. 22.

" Nation. 1171237,

unlimited by any encirclement of mountain ranges. In the bright light of day it was seen to poeeeee the same limitless quality; was like the sea with shaggy red grass* the color of wine-stains, as water — and when the wind blew through the grass, "the whole country seemed to be running" — as if the grass were but a loose hide under whleh the buffalo herds were galloping. The roads, bordered by bright yellow sunflowers, which grow from seeds scattered by the Mormons on their way to Utah, ran through the grass "like wild things."

when on® goes with Jim and his grandmother to dig pota­toes in the garden, one feels the geniality, the warmth of the fresh bright morning when the wind blows lazily, and the tawny hawks circle overhead. The soft soil is warm, fragrant; the giant grasshoppers leap about. The mood is one of beauti­ful' serenity, contentment.

Even in winter when the blonde cornfields were faded intoghastliness, and the red prairies turned to dazzling white-

1ness, the mood was one of zest. The very cold, the very fe- roeity of the blizzards seemed a challenge to human ingenuity, a challenge which was met with bouyancy by the people, in whom Hiss Gather finds the characteristics of a Swiss Family Robin- sene When the blizzard snowed them in, they dug tunnels to the out-houses that they might feed their stock. The basement

P* 22.1 .

kitchen of the Burden*s house was snug and tight, and grand­mother cheerfully assumed the task of keeping it warm, and its occupant* happy and well-fed.

The prairie winter in its sternest mood is found in. .

0 Pioneers!!.There, the land was an antagonist of the pioneer farmer, an antagonist Which resisted conquest. "But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the lit­tle beginnings of human society that struggled in its somber wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become bitter $ because he felt that men were too weak to make any marks here, that the land wanted to be letalone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar

1savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness."

The prairie, gray and somber, under leaden sky, had be- come unkind to John Bergson. Ho believed that mischance hung over it, that its genius was unfriendly to,man. One winter he lost his cattle in a.blizzard; the following summer one of his horses broke its leg in a prairie dog hole; another time his hogs all died of the cholera; again and again his crops failed. Eventually, it was too much even for his stur­dy Strength, and, after eleven years of struggle, he died.It was, in part, the same hardness of the land that drove Mr* Shimerda to suielde* * .

In these instances Miss Gather is obviously in a .

-Q Pioneers!, p. 151

*

sterner, more serious rnood , But even here there is no such sense of the sweat and heartache and the toil involved in the con­quest of the soil as there is in Hamlin Garland®s l.:ain Traveled Roads. Her landscape is in general a selected land­scape. Perhaps, this selection is due simply to the passage of time. Hiss Gather is describing the country of,her youth, preserved for her only in memory; and memory, reputably kind, tends to forget defects. But if only a partial pic­ture, tho picture is exceedingly vivid. It appeals to all of the senses — bright yellow sunflowers bordering a winding road, warm fragrant breezes from off. the prairie blowing

27

Then one might almost call it an emotionalized landscape — we realise it through the reactions of the characters of the stories to it — Jim Burden®a strange mood of common content­ment, his sense of separation from everything in this life as he sits alone in the potato patch§ his awe at tho vast loneliness of the prairie night.

But whether in the genial, youthful mood of Kv Antonia, or in tho harder mood of 0 Pioneers!f or in the expansive tone of A host Badv, Miss Gather always gives to her pioneer settings the elements of challenge, which has a formative influence upon her characters. These characters of Hiss Gather accept this challenge in various ways, such as befit their diverse qualities. Some are successful; some fail; but in all Miss Gather manages to find some seeds of heroism.

It is the spirit of these pioneers that so appeals to a per­son of Mies Gather's type — one with an innate love of fine things, be they of character or of art. To be a pioneert ahesays, one must "enjoy the idea of things more than the things

1themselves." The pioneer had the vision, the power to feel the future stirring under the uncultivated soil, and the un­conquerable will to make that future come into being. Old Captain Forester, Miss Gather's gallant builder of railroads, gives expression to this ideas

My philosophy is that what you think of and plan for day by day. in spite of yourself, so to speak — you will get. You will get it more or less. That is, unless you are one of these people who get nothing in this world. • • •If you are not one of those, you will accomplish what you . dream of moot * . . because a thing dreamed of in the way I mean, is already an accomplished f act. All of our great West has been developed from such dreams $ the homesteaders, and the prospectors, and the contractors. We dreamed rail­roads across the mountains. . . .'2

Because they care more for "the idea of things than for the things themselves," they possess courage and confi­dence in the face of present difficulties, while they dream of future success. Neighbor Roeicky was such a character.He had a philosophy of life. Some years there would be hard­ships, certainly; the wheat would freeze in the ground when the seed was so high, and he would have to sell his stock because he had no feed; but then there would be other years when everything turned out well and he caught up. His wife

2 SUStaffiftEgt ,P- 48 A Lost Lady, pp. 54-55

1

29

sums up M b way of living}"So he carried our supper down, an1 a bottle of my

grape wine, an* everything tasted good, I can tell you.The wind got cooler as the sun was goin* down, an* it turned out pleasant, only I noticed how the leaves were turned up on the linden trees. That made me think, an1 I asked your father if that hot wind all day hadn't been terrible hard on the gardens and the com.

‘ Corn,1 he says, ''there ain't no corn.1'"Jhat you talkin' about?' I said. Ain't we got forty

acres?" . • .t(lV/e ain't got an ear,'' he says, ‘nor nobody else ain't

got none. All the corn in the country was cooked by three o'clock today, like you roasted it in an oven.'

‘You mean you won't get no crop at all?r I asked him.I couldn't believe it after he had worked so hard.'

"•g© crop this year,1 he says. 'That's the reason.we are havin' a picnic. Y/e might as well enjoy what we got.* 1

No one will deny, I believe, that the pioneers who built up America possessed vision, determination, constancy, self-reliance, an incurable optimism. It was these people of the West — considering the West not as a permanent section, but as an ever-moving frontier — that gave to America one of its most characteristic philosophies — the belief that... everything was good and was going to continue getting big­ger and better. Closely connected with this was that belief that America was the greatest nation and that Americans were. the greatest people in the world. This conviction that things were going to get bigger and better, this ability to vision railroads over the mountains and cornfields on bare prairies, wee -uhundotibtedly an important factor in bringing into ex­istence those railroads and these cornfields. It was also

1 .Obscure Destinies, p. 46.

a factor in building up vast and extravagant systems of canals and public works; in demanding easy money, and great possi­bilities of expansion*

So far one will agree that Miss Gather has caught what is perhaps the typical spirit of the pioneer. But she goes farther. She declares that the Old West "had been settled by dreamers, great-hearted adventurers who were impractical to the point of magnificence| a courteous brotherhood, strong in attack, but weak in defense| who could conquer but could not hold.'! Moreover, she would have us infer, that they pos­sessed-a higher standard of integrity than the men of today. Judge Pomeroy is highly indignant when the stockholders — who belong to the younger generation -- attempt to force Captain Forrester to declare a bankAof which he is an offi­cer, insolvent, in order that the depositors may share the loss with the stockholders. In telling the story to Mrs. Forrester, Judge Pommeroy explains, "By God, Madam, I think I*ve lived too long. In my day the difference between abusiness man and a scoundrel was bigger than between a

1white man and a niggerl" And he continues in reference toCaptain Forrester, " . . . to that crowd outside the bankdoors hie name meant a hundred cents on the dollar, and,

1by God, they got it!"

But when one remembers the Credit Mobilier scandals

Laflr.». p. 92-- -1

31

of the railroad construction period, and the cut-throat com­petition between the early lines, one doubts if the differ­ence between the business man and the scoundrel was greater then than it is today# Here Miss Gather has yielded to her

vtendency to idealize the past at the expense of the present.

She recognises also those who, as Captain Forrester says, "get nothing in the world," the misfits who, either because of an essential fineness or an essential weakness, are unable to cope with this new environment. Such was Mr. Shimerda, the music-loving father of Antonia. These men are usually forgotten; yet they, too, have contributed some­thing in the way of delicacy and refinement to the spirit of the feet*

It is in the immigrants who flooded to America in thousands, and there began that process of intermingling European culture on American soil which has formed so im­portant a part in our history that Miss Gather is peculiarly interested. This process was not a new one, but had its start with the establishment of the first colony. At the begin­ning there were Puritan and Cavalier, Quaker and Dutch, and some amalgamation of white and Indian. Then came the negroes as slaves. In these groups Mias Gather is not so much interested. Moreover, in her works we find very few pictures of what are ordinarily called Americans (a term which is practically im­possible to define). 3he deals chiefly with the later Euro­pean immigration which flowed into the Middle West — the

3%

Germans9 Swedes, the Russians, the Bohemians. These immigrants brought with them ambitions, talents, ways of living which changed, and in turn were changed by the communities into whioh they moved.

First these people were possessed of the belief, bred into them by generations of tenantry, that land in itself was desirable. To get land at all was to them wonderful; to get it cheap, a miracle. This is one of the all powerful forties that bring them to this, new land. John Bergson had this belief to a great extent. He owned six hundred and forty acres, only half of which ho was ever able to cultivate. The original half section of his homestead and timber lands had been enough for him, yet when his brother grew discouraged, gave up the struggle, and returned to the city, he bought his half section. To his daughter Alexandra, he gave this love of the land. She was a true daughter of the soil, large­boned, strong-muscled, tanned, placid. To her the land was '

1rich, strong, and beautiful. She loved to drink in the breath of it. The soil to the father, for all his love of it, had been an enigma; but the daughter studied it, eventually comprehend­ed, it. She, like a true pioneer, realized its future. When . her brothers, worn by the conflict, wished to go forward to the river lands, where apparently the soil was richer, back­ward to Ohio or Illinois, where the land had proved habita­ble — anywhere to e scape their present situation — it wasw * Y " 7 ‘.V 1. V-'" . !_ . .. • . . ... . '...... ' . .....'..

O...P,inaaerai ,p. 58.

33

•he who prevailed upon them to remain. She had faith that’•some day the land will he worth more than we can raise onit*” Hence she persisted, even bought the adjoining sectionfrom some neighbors who were leaving. Then earn her reward}the soil had simply been playing its little game, pretendingto be poor when it was really rich, because no one knew howto work it right, "and then, all at once, it worked itself.It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it wasso big, so rich, that we suddenly found that we were rich,

W 2just from sitting still."

As a part of this love of the land was the fact that in their home countries the ownership of land had been an in­dication of social distinction, of an elevated station in

3life. Hobody in Rosicky'e family had ever owned land. In his youth he had lived in the city and learned to hate it. How when he was growing old, the best thing that he coulddesire for his boys was that they remain on the land. There

/

"what you had was your own. You didn't have to choose be­tween bosses and strikers, and go wrong either way. You didn't have to do with dishonest and cruel people. In the country if you had a mean neighbor, you could keep off his land and make him keep off yours. But in the city, all the foulness and misery and brutality of your neighbors was 1 * 3

1 ' :Dorothy Dondore, The Prairie and the Making of Middle teESs&t Pe 328.2-Zionee£3j., p. 116.3

Destinies, p. 31.

34

1tras a part of your life."

Closely connected with this was the pride of ownershipin other things — in homes, in produce from gardens, indomestic animals. Pete, the short, bow-legged Russian ofMy Antonia, was intensely proud of his cow, for in his coun-2try only rich people had cows. Ho would talk to her in Russian, and when he finally had to sell her, he wept sin­cere tears.

But for all the desire for land, the average immigrant in Miss Gather*s stories had but little knowledge of how to use it. Many had never been farmers before they came to Amer­ica to take up their homesteads. They had been handworkera*

• 3at home; tailors, locksmiths, joiners, cigar make%9." This made greater the hardships they had to face in the new country.

Many of the other problems which the immigrants had to confront were connected with the land. To give themselves their initial start and then to fulfil., their passion, like like that of Alexandra, adding quarter section after quarter section to their farms required money, which meant the mort­gaging of the farm. The mortgages had to be repaid by back­breaking hours of toil, by sleepless nights of worry. Hence, it came about that the money lenders became the villains ofthe community* It is of significance that the one truly un-

— — ;DqqtW.es, p. 59.

2 ,My Antonia, p. 39.

M i m s z s l i p * 22.

35

eympathetie character in My Antonia was the money lender and land speculator, V/ick Cutter. In him are concentrated all un­desirable qualities. To the immigrants who understood little English his methods were a mystery. This year they would bor­row a hundred; next year another, and each time a bonus was added to the principal. Soon they discovered that their mort­gages were growing more rapidly than any crop they could

1plant. In ALost Lady the thoroughly disagreeable character of Ivy Peters is known to be engaged in shady transactions inland.

Together with their hunger for land these immigrantsbrought with them other things which had origin in theirnative land. Some of these were simply memories of betteror worse days in the Old Country — memories which, whatevertheir nature, were usually recalled with a note of sadness.In the Swedish ilbtnfer. one of Miss Gather*s early poems, themother tells her.daughter a merry story of the "Old Countreenand the child, sitting on her knees, wonders why her mothersmiles so sadly in telling so glad a tale. Some old Swedishladies, with their brown dried faces "as full of wrinklesas a washerwoman's hands," would chatter incessantly overtheir work about their happy youths as dairy maids in Gott-

: 2land. A grasshopper which chirps gaily in the protecting warmth of her hands reminds Antonia of an old beggar woman

Xntonia. p. 57.

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that she had known In Bohemia, who, if one took hep in and gave her a warm place by the fire, sang old songs in a cracked voice#

Sometimes the stories of their old home are brought forth as a defense against humiliating present circumstances, Mr, Shimerda has to accept gifts from his neighbors during the dismal days of the first hard winter, but he would have everyone know that he was no beggar, but had occupied a high

position in his native country. His daughter, Antonia, also rises sympathetically to the defense of his loneliness to Jim Burden, the narrator of the story:

“My papa sad for the Old Country. He not look good.He never make music any more. At home he play violin all the times for weddings and for dance. Here never. When I beg him to play, he shake head no.Some days he take violin out of his box and make with his fingers on strings, like this, but he never make music. He don’t like this kav/n-tree."

“People who don’t like this ceuntree ought to stay at home,” I said severely, “we d6n’t make them come here.“

“He not want to come, nev-eri” she burst out. “My mam- enka make him come. All the time she say, ’America big conn- tree; much raeneyi much land for my boy, much husband for my girls.’ My papa he cry for leave his old friends what make music with him. He love very much the man what play the long horn like this — ” she indicated the trombone. "They go to •chool together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she want Ambrosch for be rich, with many cattle.“1

Some of these remembered stories have the touch of Old World romance as if drawn from the dark, aged forests of Bohemia oh the vast steppes of Russia. The black-bearded morose Russian, who is taken for an anarchist because he * 1c_______ ___ '

My Antonia, p. 57.1

a?

cannot apeak English and moves his arms wildly, tells sucha story of the bride and groom he had thrown to the pursu-

/3ng wolves on a freezing night. The stories which Antonia tells of nobles, of great forests full of game, and of one white hart, all have the same flavor.

Among these memories are certain national distrusts, which are sometimes carried over into the new land. There is, for instance, an antipathy between the Bohemian^Mrs. Shimerda, and the Austrian farm hand of the Burdens — an antipathy which had been bred into the people by centuries of Austrian domination over Bohemia.

Chiefly these pioneer immigrants had to devote theirefforts to the procuring of the necessities of life --food, clothing, and shelter — "just not to perish; just to2hold one's own in the hard bedrock of existence'J1 was their task. Yet even under such conditions one finds among the pioneers — especially among the immigrant pioneers — traces of culture which they had brought from their old homes, v/eVa they in the Old World or the New. During the week Alexandra is too busy working in the fields, in caring for her chick­ens, in churning butter to read anything except the news­papers, But on Sundays she reads many books, rereading some several times. She knowby heart long portions of the Frith-

,1 of Saga, she 38 fond of Longfellow, the Golden Lerrend. and the .Spanish Student, and cant., reprimand her brothers

I-----:---------------:------------------- :------------Stuart P. Sherman, Critical Woodcuts, p. 41

38

with apt stories from Hans Christian Andersen. Yet, as Hiss Gather says, Alexandra possessed not one speck of imagination*

Carl, whose mouth had grown bitter from the hardness of the prairie, nonetheless managed to cherish and develop, la spite of his environment, a love for art. He treasured a mag­ic lantern for which he painted on glass scenes from Hans Christian Andersen,

There was in these pioneers also an innate, if unde* veloped, love of music. The devotion of Mr. Shimerda to his fiddle lias already been mentioned. The Russian Peter enter­tained his friends with gay Russian tunes on his harmonica. And every Saturday when there was merry-making in the garden household, and corn was popped and taffy made, Otto Fuchs, the Austrian farm hand, sang* "For I am a Cowboy and I know I've Done Wrong," or "Bury, Me Hot on the Lone Prairie." On Sunday he sang a strong baritone in the church choir.

The immigrant, too, was eager in his quest for knowl­edge, He was more than anxious to learn the ways and ideas of the native Americans. Mr. Shimerda, remembering the cul­ture of the Old Country, desired that his daughter become familiar with the Hew.

We went with Hr* Shimerda back to the dug-out, where Grandmother was waiting for us. Before I got to the wagon, he took a book out of his pocket, opened It, and shewed me a page with two alphabets, one English and the other Bohe­mian. He placed this book in my grandmother's hands, looked at her ontreatingly, and said with an .earnestness I shall never forget, "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Antonia."!

* P# 301

Some of Hies Gather1o romantic railroad barone brought with them from the East large libraries, but not so much be­cause they read them as because gentlemen had ouch things. They, themselves, were too much occupied with visions of the future to be much interested in the past.

Perhaps more than any interest in books, the people of the pioneer V/est had interest in religion. They built their sod church houses on the level prairie. Though not so strong­ly developed as among the inhabitants of the more settled ■ ; 'regions, their religion was sincere and devout, and had a froedon from set doctrines, a tolerance of conflicting creeds which that of the older communities lacked. Most of the Bohe* mians were Catholic#, but in general their Protestants neigh­bors did not shun them for that reason, YJhen Ur. Shimerda knelt before the Christmas tree, Grandfather Burden put hisfingers to his brow and bowed hie head, "thus Protestant!*-

1ing the atmosphere." When Mr. Shimerda left the grandfather

2commentedi "The prayers of all good people are good."

Mies Gather finds in the religion of these people a simplicity and dignity not seen in more sophisticated groups. In the Burden family evening prayer was held. Grandfather put on his silver-rimmed spectacles and read in his deep voice from the Bible. Again, when Hr. Shimerda1s funeral

-----1---- ;------:----i----- ;-------------- :----------------BLAWaaia, p . 99.2Ibid., p. 100.

services were held and he was buried at the section Mr#. Shimerda asked that he give a prayer in English, in order that the people who had collected night understand.The prayer was remarkable in its simplicity and sympathy.

He began, "Oh* great and just God, no man among us knows what the sleeper knows, nor is it for us to judge w%at lies between him and thee." He prayed that if any man there had been remiss towards the stranger come to a far country, God would forgive him and soften his heart. He recalled the promises to the widow and fatherless, and asked God to smooth the way before this widow and her children, and to incline the hearts of men to deal justly with her.In closing, we are leaving Hr. Shimerda at "Thy judgement seat, which is also Thy mercy seat."l

Grandfather Burden has a patriarchal quality which la not eeen in Mies Gather*# ether characters.

However, Miss Gather does show something of narrowness among these people. The o&ly Catholic graveyard in the vicin­ity was too far away; and, anyway it was doubtful if a man who had killed himself could be buried there. Therefore, officers of the Norwegian chureh were consulted, but they decided also that their graveyard could not take Hr. Shimerda. At this Grandmother was indignant:

"If these foreigners are so clannish, Hr. Bushby, we*11 have to have an American graveyard that will be more liberal- minded. I'll get right after Josiah to start one in the Spring. If anything were to happen to me, I don't want the Norwegians holding inquisitions over mo to see whether I'm good enough to be laid among them." 2

The earlier inhabitants of the prairie, whether immi­grant or native American* whether Protestant or Catholic, 1

1 , • -Hy Antonia, p. 134.

2Ibid.f p. 128.

41

had to live under very primitive conditions. Moat of their housea were built of sod — "the uneaeapable ground in an­other form " — and were "tucked" away in the low places of the prairie where they could scarcely be found. A descrip­tion of such a dwelling is found in My Antonias

As we approached the Shimerda dwelling. I could see nothing but rough red hillocks, and draws with shelving banks and long roots hanging out where the earth had crum­bled away. Presently, against one of these banks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with some wine-colored grass that grew everywhere.!

Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seised Grandmother's hand. . . . The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over as if trying to hide from us. Yulka was^on the floor at his feet, her kitten in her lap. . . . Antonia was washing dishes and pans in a dark corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched on a gunny sack stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered he threw a grain sack at the bottom of the door.The air in the cave was stifling, and it was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung over the stove, threw out a feeble yellow glimmer."2 •

The disagreeable conditions existing in this household. Miss Gather says, were probably due to the new environment in which the Bohemians found themselves. At home Mrs. Shi­merda might have been an excellent housekeeper. In this pic­ture, one notices there is no idealization.

In other sod houses the conditions were different:Ivar led Alexandra to his little cave house. He had but

one room, neatly plastered and whitewashed, and there was a wooden floor. There was a kitchen stove, a table covered with oil ©loth, two chairs, a clock, a calendar, a few books on the window shelf; nothing more. But the place was as clean as a oupboard.3

1 Hy Antonia, p. 24.

OPioneersi. p. 41.Ibid., p. 83.

3

42

The Burden's two story white frame house, with its warm, oozy cellar kitchen, which was the center of all activities, was considered a mansion on the prairie.

In these dwellings the women, in many cases grieving at being thus uprooted from their former homes, stoove hero­ically to preserve tho peculiar way of doing things vfcleh they had in the Old Country, whether that country had been Bohemia, Norway, or Virginia. Mrs. Bergson, the wife of John Bergson, was such a woman. She had a mania for preserving, and could have been happy on a desert island if she but had a garden and something to preserve. "She had never forgiven John Bergson for bringing her to the end of the earth $ but, now that she m s there, she wanted to be let alone to recon­struct her old life in so far as that was possible. She could still take some comfort in the wprld if she had bacon

1in the cave, glass jars on the shelf, and sheets in the press."

Her great fear, like that of so many pioneer women, was that she would again be uprooted from the little spot of the Old Country she had recreated, and be forced again to face the hardship of a primitive life. This was a constant danger About which they had to worry, for their husbands were usually possessed by that restless urge to be ever mov­ing forward, which was a typical trait of the pioneer#

While clinging to the old, many of the younger immigrants

i : 1 :.•......... ......

O Pioneers!f p. 30#

43

sought eagerly to learn the new. Antonia loved to help Grand­mother Burden in her work in the kitchen, and watched her every movement in order that she might learn more about cooking and housekeeping.

To the native American population the ways, tho dress, the religion, in fact almost everything about these immigrants seemed strange. The old ladies gasped with perhaps justifia­b l y horror when they saw housewives leave smears of dough in their mixing bowls in order that the residue might ferment and serve as yeast in the making of the next bread, and when they heard that these same women wrppped their food in feather quilts to keep it warm. Grandmother Burden did not appreciate Mrs. Shimerda's gift of dried mushrooms, which had been care­fully treasured on the long voyage over# Grandmother Burden feared that they might be some kind of poison*

These foreigners being a mystery to the native Americans, many strange qualities were attributed to them. As mentioned above, Pavel, the Russian, because his language was not under­stood, and because he wore a black beard, and waved his arms in wild gestures, was believed to be an anarchist. Jake Har- pole, the Virginia mountain boy, nodded approvingly when #im Burden bashfully refused to make friends with Antonia, and remarked that "you are likely to get diseases from foreigners."

This lack of understanding and appreciation of these im-

.. ........................... .... ... ..................................... .................................................... — •■■■1 /i& jif lia a ia t p . s .

44

migrants has always troubled His a Gather, and^ao liao been mentioned above, the desire to defend them was the foroe which first caused her to begin to write. Hiss Gather com­plains that settlors from Hew England and the South were un­willing to profit from the older traditions — that they were utterly without curiosity regarding them* She iron­ically remarked that Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1920, might have worked as a hired hand on a Nebraska farm — as he did on a Dakota one — for a year, and the Southern farmer would never have noticed anything unusual about him. The New Eng­land farmer might have noticed that he was rather more in­

telligent than the ordinary farm hand, but would have conse­quently distrusted him.

The secret of Miss Gather's success in these books treating of pioneer Nebraska — with its immigrants and na­tive Americans — lies in her difference from these Hew En­gland and Southern farmers, in that she has for these pi@n- •neera warm sympathy and understanding. Tolstoy once declared that art consists in the communication of feeling. He went on to tell how he had read a story in a child's magazine of k... a mother who was preparing to make of wheat flour an Easter cake for her children; some chickens got into the house, while she was gone, and ate the flour. She scolded the children for their neglect in watching it; but then, seeing them crying bitterly, decided to make the cake of

oifted rye flour. “Rye bread we bake is akin to any cake,"the mother tells them; and the ehiMren, now restored to joy,looked forward to the Easter cake with more pleasure thanbefore. Tolstoy declared that this story aroused in him morefeeling than did any of the stories of Bourget and otherswhich he read at the same time. It had the quality of infec-

’ ■ ■ ■ ■ 1 tiouaneas which he demanded of art.

’.Villa Gather* s stories of pioneer Nebraska have the same quality as this tale of the mother and the rye bread. Hiss Gather describes the simple lives of these European immi­grants and settlers from the South and Hew England — their problems, their hardships, which never ascended to the point of catastrophe, their joys. The reader feels happiness at their little triumphs and sorrow at their failures in their endeavors to cope with their environment. The lives of these people — unimportant people as the world would consider them,4#olng unimportant things — are not treated ironically or bitterly as so many other writers have treated them, but kindly and with all the warmth of Miss Gather* s broad sym­pathy. 'This sympathy is infectious, and we come to catch the spirit, the mood of the pioneer life, better than we could from any history- 7/e feel the emotion which results from the experiences. Thus we can forgive Miss Gather for giving u# only a partial view, for seeming to tell us that almost all European peasants are warra- roading was entirely romantic. i

i : 1Tolstoy, 7/hat is Art? p. 472,

-hearted and that rail-

Hioo Gather realized that thio heroic period of her pioneers was brief, that it lasted but an instant compara­tively, and then forever vanished, crushed in the onrush of population, "civilization." Miss Gather's experiences are akin to those of her character in A Lost Ladv.

He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of a pioneer. He had oome upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in buffalo time a traveler used to come upon the embers of a hunter1s fire on the prairie, after the hunter was up and gono; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened grass where he had slept and where hie pony had grazed told the story.

This wao the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put the plains and mountains under iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for root and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions these men had seen in the air and followed, — these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces, and this would always be hi®.: 1

Perhaps this account® for the mood of Virgilian sadness which eo many of the critics have commented on in Miss Gath­er's works.

With the coming of the second wave of population, with the crowding in of many settlers, the very face of Miss Gather's prairie had changed. The shaggy red coat had disap­peared. Mow the prairie was a vast checkerboard of equmroe of wheat and corn, "light and dark, dark and light." Tele­phone wires bordered the white roads, running at right angles, daily painted farm houses, big red barns, light steel windmills, were scattered among the "green.and brown and

T

47

1yellow fields." Here and there on the prairie had sprungtowns, "clean, well-planted little towns,'* with white fences

• ■ . . . '

and good green yards about the dwellings, wide dusty streets,2

and shapely little trees growing along the wooden sidewalks." In the center of the towns were usually two rows of brick store buildings, a schoolhouse, and several churches.

The change in the landscape was accompanied by a change in the character of the people. The sons and daughters of these pioneers no longer had to face an environment that tests character. They had grown up to be interested chiefly in material comfort, in purchasing, as Miss Gather complains, whatever was expensive and ugly. They lacked the vision, the breadth, the "princely carelessness" of.the pioneer. They had cut hie magnificent tracts of land into petty little strips. Their destruction of the. beauty of the pioneer world to bring material profit Miss Gather finds typified by the draining by Ivy Peters of the beautiful F.oxBsster marsh, in which the old railroad builder had taken so much pride.

with the development in material comforts, there had been no corresponding development in the finer side of char­acter. Rather there had been an increasing narrowness, con­formity to convention, lack of appreciation of beauty. The lives of the people of the small towns as well as those onthe farms have become fitted into small grooves, from which

_ * '

;.- .............. —0 Pioneersi. p. 75.My Antonia, p. 165.

48

they cannot escape. Jin Burden# as lie grew older and moved to town, felt the repression of his environment. He could find but few ways to amuse himself on the long evenings*He could hang about the drugstore, listening to the old men talking politics or telling raw stories; or ho could converse with the station agent, whose favorite avocation was writing letters to the railroad officials asking for a transfer*

These were the distractions I had to choose from. There were no other lights burning down town after nine o’clock.On starlight nights I used to pace up and down these sold streets, scowling at the little sleepy houses on either sidefwith their storm windows and covered back porches.They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch posts horribly mutilated by the turning: lathe* Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain!The life that went on within them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny People’s speech, their voices, their very glances became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark. The growing )tle§ of ashes and cinders in their back yards were the only evidences that the wasteful, consuming process of life went on.l

Among these people of the small towns and the thriving cities, striving after material rewards, creeping around in furtive fear of what their neighbors will say of them, is a claps which is in a sense comparable to that of the pioneers, that carries on in their spirit. This class is represented

My Antonia, p. 250.1

4@

by the artiste — the musicians, the sculptors, the painters.These seem to Miss Gather, like the pioneers, to have a vis-SoB, a dream, and a determination to achieve it. The materialwith which they have to work is not untilled prairies norhigh mountains, but their own potential talents. The pioneer^Mies’ Gather says, when he looked out upon his cultivatedfields might have exclaimed, "I made this with the work ofmy own hands and back." The same is true of the artist, foras the old German singing master of Thea Kronberg, who became

1a great opera star, cays, "Every artist makes himself born." The opposing factors with which these artists have to strug­gle are not obstacles of a natural environment, such as the blizzard, the drouth; but those of social environment — the repressive codes of conduct, the typical American contempt of the gracious things of the soul and mind.

It has been said that Miss Gather is never bitterly ironic in her treatment of the people of Main Street and of Zenith; that she has always for them an understanding sympa­thy. In general this is true — and herein lies one of the chief differences between Miss Gather and the other writers in the same field, such as Sinclair Lewis. However, in some of her short stories of artists she approaches bitterness.In two this tendency is particularly noticeable — A Gold Slipper and The Sculptor's Funeral (neither of which,

- ; - :Sam?, P* 53,.

60

incidentally, is laid in lletoraekA, but may be conveniently considered here). In the first Marshall McKann; is a typ­ical American business man of the city, nsolid" and respec­table, who was born a Presbyterian, a Republican, and a coal mine owner, who favored all majorities and established prec­edents, and was hostile "to fads, to enthusiasms, to indi- vidualiems, to all changes except in mining machinery and

in methods of transportation#"He detested, while secretly fascinated by, such "fluffy-

rufflo people" as musicians, sculptors, and actors.His admir­ation was all for those Who really accomplished something substantial in life — the corporation managers, the bankpresidents. One evening as he was returning from a concert,

' ' ' ' / ' 'which his wife had forced him to attend, he met on the trainthe singer who had just given the concert. She had noticedhis disapproval of her and sought to discover his reason forit. He protested that art was really an affectation on bothsides, that most people went to concerts because they feltit was proper to do so. She retorted, "Don't people go tochurch in precisely the same way? If there were a spiritualpressure iervfc machine at the door, I suspect that not many2of you w o u M ever get to your pews."

When he inquired how hhe knew he went to church, she replied, "Oh, people with these ©M, ready-made opinions

1 : ' ”Imthrll§a§,l,.tte,JgfeW p. M9.2 -!&!&.* p. 159.

KL

1usually go to clunrelu*

She then defendeS her uaefulnoea by telling hot? many peo­ple her music did give pleasure to, how she supported her fam­ily with the money she earned, how she gave time and money to her talented students, and to the really gifted ones, her wish, her desire, her delight — things such as he, a pru­dent man, could never give.

She maintained that she was more broadminded than he be­cause she felt that she could become very much interested in coal, while he, devoted to his coal, his religion, and his only relaxation of fishing, had only a distrust of her pro­fession.

In TheSculptor*s Funeral Miss Gather shows the small­town reaction to a similar situation. Harvey Merrick, who

had made a brilliant reputation as a sculptor, died of tuber­culosis while still young, and a friend returned with hie body to the small Kansas town, which had been his birthplace • That night the citizens of the town, who collected in the dismal livingroom of his house to hold the death watch over the body, discussed Merrick* a character. His friend heard such remarks as these:

"ft’s too bad the old man*s sons didn’t turn out better. He spent enough money on Harve to stock a dozen cattle farms, and he might as well poured it into sand holes. If Harve had stayed at home and helped nurse what little they had, and had gone into stock on the Old Man’s bottom farm, they might have all been well fixed.”

52

•What Harve needed was a course in some first-class Kansas City business college. . .

They deprecated the idea that his death was caused by tuberculosis with the remark* "There is no disputin' that Harve frequently looked on the wine when it was red, also variegated, and it shore made an uncommon fool of him."1

Of hie success in his work, of his fame in the artistic world, these people had absolutely no appreciation.

This problem of the artistic temperament in a narrow materialistic world weighed upon Miss Gather until she fin­ally wrote an entire book on the subject — One of Ours.This time the scene was laid, not in a city or small town, but on a farm in a prosperous Nebraska community. The hero is Claude Wheeler, a youth impelled by vague aspirations, ambitious, feeling that there must be something in life worth striving for , something which he is unable to find in his straightened Nebraska environment — a romantic idealist,J. Middleton Murray calls him. Sometimes • • • "the old be­lief flashed up in him with an intense kind of hope, an in­tense kind of pain — the conviction that there was something

- 2 -splendid about life if he could but find it."

Claude wished to go to the state university, but his mother insisted that he go to a narrow denominational col­lege. Then, just as he was beginning to see some possibili­ties of the future in his education, he was forced by hie materialistic father to return home to manage the farm. Finally he married a frigid, undomestic wife, who eventually deserted him to go to her missionary sister in China.

1Youth and the Bright Medusa, p. 264.

2 ---- :--------------------—One of Ours, p. 44.

53

Always, as Dorothy Canfield Fisher puts it, he was un­satisfied — unsatisfied rather than dissatisfied. Religion offered him no satisfaction — though he respected it in his devout, but simple mother — because he felt that the men who made it must be like the men who taught it — "young men who went into the ministry because they were too timid or lazy and wanted society to take care of them; because they wanted to be pampered by kind trusting women like his mother." He could not find pleasure in the company of those who had aspirations similar to his own, because having been brought up on the conviction that it was beneath the dignity of anAmerican to explain himself, he had become inarticulate, and2was regarded by ouch people as a clam. There was no purposein striving to get money, when money could buy nothing hewanted. Having money brought security, perhaps, but it was

3perfect security that killed the best qualities in one.

Then, just when he seemed moot strongly bound by thesefetters, which perhaps a stronger nature might have broken,the World War came^and Claude found himself swept away inthe enthusiasm of it. For the first time he discovered anideal, a cause which seemed worthy of striving to achieve."History had condescended to such as he; this whole brilliantadventure had become the day's work . , . the feeling of

1 'One of Ours, p. 44.

2Ibid., p. 102.■Ibid, i p. 415.

3

54

1purpose strong in his breast*"

He enlisted and went to France. There his mind and soul were awakened by hie contact with what J. Middleton Murray calls the European tradition. But with this awakening came an increasing resentment;.at the manner of life that he had previously had to live. He was invited by a fellow officer to visit a cultured French home; once there he found himself extremely uncomfortable, and he told his friend that he must go. The off leer asked him why, V/as there something disagree­able in the atmosphere? "No," he replied, "something agree­able •" And in the presence of this "something agreeable" he was torn between envy and generous admiration. He grew bitten

If he had been taught to do anything at all, he would not be sitting here tonight a wooden thing among these liv­ing people. He felt that a man might have been made of him, but nobody had taken the trouble to do it; tongue-tied, foot-tied, hand-tied. If one were born into this world like a bear cub or a bull calf one could only paw and upset things, break and destroy all one's life.2

Finally Claude died on the battlefield in October, 1918, "believing his own country better than it is, and France better than any country can ever be. And these were beauti­ful beliefs to die with."

One of_Ours raised a storm of discussion in 1922 when it was published, probably because of the fact that it was

. •.* > .. . . ----- .-.■ ..... .V.-.

0BS_a£_2Mfl,. p. 468.Ibid.. 418. .

IkMii. P-. 416.

55

awarded the Pulitzer Prize for that year as being the novel that best presented "the wholesome atmosphere of American manners and manhood•" Obviously it does not. It rather shows how these very /'manners and manhood" have restricted the

• ,3 ■development of the potentialities of Miss Gather's romantic Idealist, have made it preferable that he die on a battle­field in France rather than live on a farm in Nebraska* Reasonable objections have been made to this death, as a

mere deus _ex machina. which really does not at all salve1

the complex problem which Miss Gather has propounded.It would have been better if she had let him live and face the difficulties that awaited him after his awakening — let him meet that disillusionment of his ideal of war.Murray declares: "Indeed he departs in a cloud of glory, but with none of his pressing accounts settled — neither his domestic account trtth his wife, nor the larger account with American society."

Secondly, it has been pointed out that Hiss Gather is inaccurate in several historical details. She has the war enthusiasm develop in America some time before it actually

a .did; moreover, she moves up (as she herself admits in a foot­note) the date of the outbreak of influenza on the trans­ports. But infinitely more important than these, it is main-

J. Middleton Murray, "Hies Willa Gather," Nation and Abheneum, 33:54, April 14, 1923.2

Heywood Broun, as quoted In Current Opinion. 731495, November, 1922.

tallied by critics who are competent to judge (as I am not)that she, in the latter part of her novel, misrepresentsentirely the war. It is outside her "material", and reallyunderstanding very little about it, she manipulates it tosuit her purposes. "Obviously," Heywood Broun declared inan article in the New York World, "there are some who foundexaltation in the war, . . . they remain exceptional. • • •She does not know enough of the situations concerning which

1she writes in the latter part of her book."

But I think it is unfair to say that Miss Gather does not realize — at least to some extent — the horror of the war. She sees it through the eyes of her romantic idealist, and presents it chiefly as it appeared to him; yet there is some indication of another point of view, represented by Claude’s friend, Gerhardt. When Claude declared, "I never knew anything worth living for, till the war come on#" Gerhardt drily replied, "You’ll admit it is a eostly way to provide adventure for the young."

That Else Gather also has some intolerances of her own is made manifest in this novel by her attitude toward pacifists, prohibitionists, and vegetarians, all of whom she depicts as singularly frigid, bloodless people.

The element of the population of the Middle West which withstood most effectively this suppression, this standard­ization, was the immigrant. Again and again in her works Miss Gather gives us examples of how the immigrant has made

■ cHeywood Broun!, as quoted in Current Opinion.

73:495, November, 1922.

use of situations which the Anglo-Saxon element had ignored,Antonia is a typical example of one who feels and re­

sists the attempt to make her conform. When Antonia came to town to work as a "hired girl" she came first into contact with this force, to which her romantic, warm-hearted nature was entirely unsuited. At first her mistress, a Norwegiant protected her, because there was an essential harmony be­tween them. "They had strong, independent natures, both of them. They knew what they ^i iked, and were not always trying to imitate other people. They loved children and animals and music and rough play and digging in the earth. They liked to prepare the rich, hearty food and see people eat it5 to make up soft white beds and see the youngsters sleep in them. They ridiculed conceited persons and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down in each of them there was a kind of joviality, a relish of life, not over delicate, but very invigorating*"

When the people tried to make; Antonia fit into their no­tion of propriety, to stop attending the Saturday night dances given at the tent, she refused^and lost her job in consequence. At these dances the "hired girls" really experienced the joy of living, while the youth of BlackwloS',^ with their "reepeet for respectability," looked on in envy. And these girls, who

1 /Ely Antonia. p« 205*

aa their beauty stood out against the conventional background, were considered & menace to the social order, were sending home their money, helping pay for" plows,, and steers. So, consequently, it was these foreign families who first became prosperous; their girls married sons of other families, usu­ally of the same nationality; and the Blackhawk merchants made most of their money selling provisions and automobiles to the very women who used to work for their wives as servants.

Antonia eventually found success, eventually lived out her potentialities, though her success was not to be measured in terms of material standards. She married a Bohemian far­mer, who "never seemed to get ahead," yet their family with their tall straight sons and daughters seemed to possess a keener power of enjoyment than others. This was the destinyto which Antonia was best fitted, for "shewas a rich mine

1of life, like the founder of early fcaces," and had the power by a look or a gesture to reveal the meaning in common things-. "She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crabapple tree and look at the apples to make you feel2the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last."

Thus Antonia managed to find something splendid in life*.for which Claude searched so long^in the common things abouther. Others among the foreigners possessed the same secret.■ "1 -J— — ~"

Mv Antonia, p. 398Ibid., p. 399.

2#

Claude felt M s German friends, the Erlicha, with their generous hospitality, their appreciation of literature and music, and their fine carelessness of wealth, had it. Alex­andra, with her love of the soil and her inherent executive ability, exemplified in another phase the finding of that "something."

The process of what is called the "Americanization,MMiss Gather seems to believe, has, on the whole, a distinctlyharmful effect on these people. She tells how in the earlierdays the Bohemians in the towns had beer gardens, such asthe one described in the Bohemian Girl, with tables and benchesscattered among the gooseberry bushes and under the littlecherry trees, where the people collected, and on certain daysgave classic plays in the Czech language. But "Americanization"changed all this, for, as Miss Gather says, our lawmakershave the belief that a person is a better American if he knowonly one language instead of two. And it sometimes changedthe character of the immigrant, who was not able to withstandits inroads, as were the Erlichs and Antonia. The Bohemiangirl, in the story of the same name, said in speaking b£ herfather, "There are so few of his kind left. The second gen-

1©ration are a tame lot." And Miss Gather shows how some of' them are when they take over the bad qualities of the Amer­ican* Two of Alexandra's brothers are as absorbed in the

"Bohemian Girl", McClure's. 34*434, August, 1912.1

proceoo of money-making as any American. But the third, her younger brother, a college graduate, showed what night re­sult when the more desirable traits of the Americans were imitated.

Hiss Gather's settings for her stories are, as we have seen, limited largely to those regions with which she is very familiar, and with which she became accustomed early in life. Colorado is one of these sections, and she returns to it several times acabackground: for her stories* Here, as elsewhere, she chooses, in general, to write of the barren desert sections rather than the wooded mountain regions.

She treats the early history of Colorado, the Coloradoafter the days of Pike's Peak gold discovery, in the latterpart of Death Comes for the Archbishop. Goldseekera from allparts of the country now flowed in, and the slopes of themountains, before but rarely penetrated even by tradersand trappers, wore now dotted with camps. "Thousands o£people were living in tents and shacks, Denver was full ofsaloons and gambling houses. . . . At Camp Denver there was

nothing to be bought but tobacco and whiskey. There wereno women there, and no cook stoves. The mines lived on half

1baked dough and alcohol." Yet amid this rough society, there were many good Catholics, some of whom were having to die without the last rites of the church, for there wag no priest in that region.

T, p. 247.

To fill thio need Father Vaillant , he who was ever eh®sen to undertake .difficult tasks, was sent as a priest to this country. He fitted out a wagon, light yet strong, to carry him over the hills and through the narrow gorges; This wagon served him both as a house and as an altar in his outdoor services. The church in Denver indeed was under a roof, but the windows were boarded up, because no one in the congregation would pay anything for them. It was not so much that the members of the congregation were lacking in wealth or generosity, as that they needed the extra money to push their flourishing enterprises — their mines and their sawmills. So energetic was Father Vaillant that he had organised before his death a very strong diocese in Colorado, of whioh he was subsequently made bishop. And so complicated was his scheme of church finance, that he had difficulty explaining it to his superiors.

Colorado directly, but gets an indirect view from stories brought back to New Mexico. Conditions are contrasted with those in New Mexico — the slow moving life of the generous, warm-hearted Mexicans with the rough, hurried existence of the people of this new frontier. '

But in other works Miss Gather gives a direct pictureof Colorado. In her first full lengthnovel, she presents a small desert town of that state in the period from 1890 through 1900. The heroine of the story is

es

fhea Kronberg, another of Miss Gather's artists, a muoieiemf who found her way from a little town of Moonstone to a career

f. f , f'' ".4

of fame as an operatic singer* Thea, the daughter of a Swed­ish Methodist minister, had, like the pioneers, the will to succeed. Her old German music master, who had the true Ger* man passion for music, gave her a motto to remember: "nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. . . . There is only one big thing — desire.. And before it, when it is big, all is little." In Thea's life there was one driving force, one interest — her love of her art. In the face of it fami- ly ties, love, were unimportant. Her egoism was so great, so all powerful, that it became admirable. The character ofThea seemfr! modeled upon that of Olive Premstad, a Swedish

: " 2,opera star, about whom Miss Gather once wrote an article.

JL»To one who is studying ’.Villa Gather as a historian of American life this novel is chiefly interesting in that[it presents a picture of the Colorado desert brilliantly colored, of the little town "set out in the sand and lightly shaded by grey-green tamarisks and cottonwoods, . . . the light- reflecting, wind-loving trees of the desert, whose roots are always seeking water and whose leaves are always talking about it^ of the sheer drop of the canyon, its great wash of air." \

"Three American Singers." McClure's. 42:33-48f December,

v/illa Gather as quoted by Remf Rapin in Willa Gather, p. 41.1913.

It depicts| moreover, the social life of the town, the class distinction between those who live on the east side of the railroad and those who live on the west, the petty bick­erings, jealousies of the people, who do not appreciate Them's

scription of ajust

as there are there differences of culture

p. 41,Wills Gather, as quoted by Rene1 Rapin in Wills Gather.

64

country. Old Hrs. Harris telle of the conflict of the soul that comes with planting one culture in the midst of another. The Templetons, their large family of children, and Grandma Harris come from Tennessee to Colorado, and attempt to bring the old standard of living to the new country. A conflict, results between the easy-going culture of Tennessee, where appearances must be maintained, and the thriving, industrious ways of the West, where women do their own housework and suc­ceed in keeping their kitchens as shining and immaculate as their parlors*

It is around Mrs* Harris that the story is centered*She in her neat black dress is quite happy to stay in the kitchen and do all the work, if her only daughter, Victoriaj may remain in the parlor and be a lady. Her kind intentioned neighbor does not realise that she, by giving Grandma Harris tea and cake, is making her unhappy by increasing her fear that the neighbors think she is “put on" by her family.

People who belong to clubs and relief corps lived dif­ferently, Mrs. Harris knew, but she herself didn't like the way they lived. She believed that somebody ought to be in the parlor, somebody in the kitchen. She wouldn't for the world have Victoria (her daughter) go about every morning in a short gingham dress, with bare arms, and a dust cap on her head to hide the curling kids as these brisk house­keepers did. To Mrs. Harris that would have meant real poverty, coming down in the world so far that one could not keep up appearances. Her life was hard now, to be sure, since the family went on increasing and Mr. Templeton's means went on decreasing; but she certainly valued respec­tability above personal comfort, and she could go on a good way yet if they always had a cool pleasant parlor, with Vic­toria properly dressed to receive visitors. To keep Vic­toria different from the ordinary women meant everything to Mrs. Harris.• 1

* ' - - ', pp. 134-135.

In this story also Miss Gather has shown a Jewish family, the Rosens, who are very philosophically inclined, and much more interested in books than are their neighbors. It is Mrs. Rosen who aids Vickie, the granddaughter, when she wishes to go to college. He advisee her that it v js well to go to college without having any definite goal to achieve. For,he declare#, "A great man once said* *Lo but n'eot rien;

1le chemin, e*eat tout.*"

When Willa Gather turned from Colorado, Nebraska--w.,- the Middle Weot-and their people, she departed from what, in the truest sense, is her material. It is in accordance with her theory that this should be true, for her knowledge of this section was acquired before she was fifteen years of age. Yet her change from the Middle Nest to the Southwest,, from the prairie to the desert, was not a sudden departure. A study of her works gives evidence of a gradually develop­ing interest in the region of sandy deserts and turquoise skies. In Spanish Johnny, a character in an early poem of the same name, and one which she develops more fully in The Sonn- of the Lark, she evinces interest in the Mexican. Later, in The Song, of the Lark, she has the heroine regain her spirit and vitality in a cliff-dwellers1 canyon in Northern Arizona. Again Tom Outiand in The Professor's House spends his youth in exploring cliff-dwelling ruins in the Southwest.

Even Claude Wheeler, in visiting the state capitol at Denver, takes quite an unaccountable interest in cliff-dwelling relics at the museum.

Miss Gather, in the passage given above in connection with her biography, tells her experiences in Hew Mexico, and how her interest became centered in the life of the peo­ple there, particularly that of the heroic Catholic priests who founded the great system of missions in that country* During the twelve years that followed her first visit there, she returned again and again, and was always fascinated by the story of the mission churches, which seemed to her to have a moving reality about them. "The hand carved beams and joists, the utterly inconceivable frescoes, the countlessfanciful figures of the saints . . . seemed a direct ex-

1presslon of the very real and lively human feeling.'1 Yet during this time she had no idea of writing a story about them, believing that to be the business of some Catholic writer. But she was becoming peculiarly interested in a certain one of these missionaries. She says:

Meanwhile Archbishop Lamy, the first bishop of New Mexico, had become to be a sort of invisible personal friend* I had hoard a great many interesting stories about him from very old Mexicans and traders who still remembered him, and I never passed the life size bronze of him which stands under a locust tree before the Cathedral in Santa Fe without wish­ing I could learn more about a pioneer churchman who looked so well bred and distinguished. In his pictures one felt the same thing, a something fearless and fine and very, very

1Publisher’s Biographical Sketch, p. 18.

67

well bred — something that spoke of race. What I felt curi­ous about was the daily life of such a man inaerude frontiersociety« ■ '

But since she had no childhood memories she could evoke regarding the archbishop and his time, she had to draw upon sources outside herself. First were the stories, which she mentions, told by the very old Mexicans, and then she dis­covered a book — the Life of the Bight Reverend Joseph P. Machebeuf, by William Joseph Hewlett, a priest who was an associate of Machebeuf*a in Denver. The book was almost as valuable as a revelation of the character of Archbishop Lamy as of Machebeuf, since the two were close friends from early youth. The book contained many letters of Father Mache*

beuf to his sister in France, in which he described his expe­riences in Hew Mexico. From this book, and particularly from these letters, Miss Gather obtained material from which she wrote a novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop.^This material gave her historical details of the people, the events, the conditions of the Hew:Mexico of the period from the 1850*8 to the 1880*8. But more important, as she declares, she ob­tained from it the mood, |the spirit in which these mission­aries "accepted the accidents and hardships of a desert country, and the joyful energy that kept them going."

To convey this mood Miss Gather believed a certainJostyle necessary. She had always, she said, wished to*some­

1Publisher*o Biographical Sketch, p. 18.

thing in the style of legend, the exact reverse of the dra­matic. This kind of writing would be like frescoes, similar to those of the life of Saint Genevieve which she had seen in her student days, in prose — something without accent end without any artificial elements of composition, some­thing in which the "martyrdoms of saints are no more dwelt upon than the trivial incidents of their lives . . . as though all human experiences, measured against one supreme spiritual experience, were of about the same importance."This style requires that the writer merely touch upon inci­dent# and then pass on, without attempting to get from them their full dramatic possibilities. In this kind of writing, Miss Gather believed, one might best impart to the reader the mood of the missionaries. And one’s language must be somewhat stiff, formal, and contain something of the trite phraseology of the frontier. Somerftheae phrases she used as a violinist uses a note from a piano to tune his violin.

The result m owhich possesses more of the characteristics of the historical novel, in that it describes people and events which have actually been recorded in written chronicle3 than any other of her works. Yet even here there is a difference. It is im­portant to notice that 17111a Gather in her story changes the names of her principal characters, that Lamy becomes Labour*

..— ' L-.........-.—...'■.....—..... ’'............... -..-.—..-.......-.............

Publisher’s Biographical Sketchs p. 19.1

that IlacliGbeuf becomes Vaillant. This would seem to signify that she had made a declaration of independence, that she had refused to be bound by actual facts, that she wag tell­ing the reader that this was a work of the creative imagi­nation. However, the incidents of the story are largely those taken from Hewlett's book, plus some of her own experiences which seemed to harmonize with the mood of the story.

her interest in ways of living. As she said, she was most curious to learn how such a man as Lamy, with, his background of fino French culture, would react to the situations of the crude frontier society. Moreover, she likes to study the ways in which the great system of living — Catholicism — has been established among the primitive people of Hew Mexico.

The physical background in Death Comes for the Archbishop Is presented with consumW%.art. In its creation Miss Gather needed no documentary aids, but had simply to recall vivid memories. This^natural background furnished a considerable part of the hardships the archbishop had to encounter, to overcome. This geometric landscape must inevitably seem fan­tastic to one who has not lived in the far West, and thus it seemed to Latour, loot and wandering through it.

The country in which he found himself was so featureless or rather, it was so crowded with features all just alike#As far as he could see, on either side, the landscape was heaped up with monotonous red sand hills, not much larger than hay.-cocks, and very much the shape of hay cocks. One could not have believed that in the number of square miles a man is able to sweep with his eye there eouM have been

80 many uniform red hills . . . . They were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wandering in some geomet­rical nightmare; flattened cones they were, more the shape of Mexican ovens than hay cocks — yes, exactly the shape of Mexican ovens, red as brick dust, and naked of vegetation except for small juniper trees. And the junipers, too, were the shape of Mexican ovens. Every coninal hill was spotted with smaller cones of juniper, a uniform yellowish-green, as the hills were uniform red. The hills thrust out of the ground so thickly that they seemed to be pushing each other, elbowing-.eatih other aside, tipping each other over.1'!

Above the monotony of landscape was the variety of an ever changing sky. -

There was always activity overhead, clouds forming and moving all day. Whether they were dark and full of violence, or soft and white with luxuriant idleness, they powerfully effected the world beneath them. The desert, the mountains, the mesas- were continually reformed and recolored by the cloud shadow#.*2

Here and there on the sandy desert were oases — littlegreen strips of running water, cottonwoods, adobe houeee.Again there was Aeoma -- "aloud-set Acoma1* — the littletown built upon high naked rocks, Inhabited by Indians,"bora in fear and dying by violence," who had taken thisleap away from the earth to find "the hope of all suffering

i.and tormented creatures — safety." Elsewhere on the highermountain® were forests of blue-green fir. In almost every one of the little towns of adobe huts were small missionchurches, some of then very old. In general, the landscape

itof lew Mexico had the appearance of incompleteness — as if, with all the material for world-making assembled, the Crea­tor had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point

Ibid*, p* 98*p. 96.

of being brought together,'on the eve of being arranged into. . 1

mountaino, plains, and plateauo.MNew Mexico of the period of which Miss Gather writes —

from 1848, the time of the acquisition by the United States by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, to 1880, the date of the death of the Archbishop — had a historical background as well as a natural one. It was not in any sense a new commu­nity. It had behind it more than two centuries of Spanish occupation, during which Spanish culture had become inter­mingled with the indigenous Pueblo Indian culture. The re­gion known as New Mexico, which in 1848 comprised all of what i o % w Mexico, part of which is now Colorado, and nearly all of which is now Arisona* had its first permanent Spanish settlement in 1598 at San Gabriel, fairly near the present site of Santa FeV Somewhere between 1605 and 1608 the town of Santa Fe was founded. The period between that date and 1848 was a checkered one for the Spaniards. They had a double purpose — economic and religious — in their penetration to the distant land. They wished to secure such products as the region might agfora, especially those of mines; and they wished to bring Christianity to the natives. In achievement of these aims there was frequent conflict, in 1680 a terrible Indian rebellion against Spanish dominion occurred. The Span­ish power was completely overthrown. For ten years the Indians

retained supremacy; then they were crushed with extreme cru­elty by the Spanish leader, De Vargas. Then when Mexico threw off the yoke in 1821, all Spaniards were ordered from the territory. This had its effect on the Franciscan Friars, moot of whom were Spanish* This resulted in a scarcity of . priests in the twenty Indian puebloes and the one hundred and twenty-two towns in Hew Mexico. As a result the once pros­perous missions fell into decay, and there was much corruption among the.ineapable priests, who were sent to replace the old ones. These conditions lasted and were growing worse until General Kearney took possession of Santa Fe for the United States. In 1851 it was organized as a territory. Then begins that period of which Uilla Gather writes -- a period in Which the Americans ruled, but in which the Spanieh-Indian people were still dominant. It was also a period of warfare with the Indians — the Apaches, the Comanches,- the Havajos.

The importance of Santa Fe was largely due to its posi­tion on bhe Santa Fe Trail, that route of commerce from the Mississippi to the Spanish settlements of the Southwest. The frequent arrival of richly laden caravans made Santa Fe often a city of big activities. Yet withal the country was remote. The havoc and turmoil of the Civil War affected Hew Mexico but little. Hews was slow in reaching there. There were no railroads 5 practically no roads of any kind.

It is in this environment that Willa Gather lays.her novel. The story, which is very slight and is told largely

73

retrospectively, goes thus: Jean Laiour and Joseph Vaillant became friends while students at the seminary at Montferrand in Claremont in France. The elequent plea of the Bishop of Ohio made: them resolve to go overseas to the great new na­tion that was growing up in America. In order to avoid the gxpeeted opposition of their parents, they slipped away early one morning in a "diligence?: fo^ Paris. After a few weeks of preparation they sailed for the United States. They served as missionaries in Ohio for ten years. After the annexation of Hew Mexico to the United States, the diocese of Santa Fe was separated from that of Durango, and Latour was appointed as hew bishop. He chose his old friend Father Vaillant as vie.

'-ar. Then followed a number of years of missionary work in Hew Mexico, occupied with ridding the church of the corrup­tion that had fallen, upon it, of reawakening the sleeping faith of the gentle Mexican and Indian population, of build­ing churches and schools, of planting gardens, and finally of building tho cathedral at Santa Fe*. This edifice was designed by French architects in imitation of those churches Latour had known in France. With the Gadsden Burchaoe more territory was added to Bishop Latour1o already vast diocese. He sent Father Joseph to reestablish tho worship in the old mission church, the San Xavier, at Tucson. Later Father Jo­seph was recalled to Santa Fe, when Latour desired hie com­panionship. Finally the two friends were separated. The discovery of gold near Pike's Peak, Colorado, caused a great

Inrush of population to that district. Father Joseph *raa sent ae vicar to the new field. There he showed his great talents in building up the church. Later he became the first bishop of Colorado| and when he died, no building in Denver could hold the vast multitude which came to his funeral. In the meantime Father Latour had been raised to the position of archbishop. He went to Denver to hold the funeral service of hie friend, came back to Santa Fe, where he soon died, surviving his friend only a few months.

The important facts of the lives of these two friends as given by Miss Gather arc almost exactly those of Hewlett. There is one change: Hiss Gather has Father Machebeuf die before Latour, while actually he survived his friend by several months. Probably she makes this change to avoid the artistic difficulty of having her principal character die before the end of her story. .

An examination of the two books — Rowlett's and Death Comoo for theArchbishop, reveals how heavily Miss Gather leans upon the former. In regard to the incidents of the youth of Latour and Vaillant Hiss Gather follows Hewlett especially closely. 7/hen the archbishop was old he loved to let memories of his past life flash through his mind. Especially vivid to him were those of his childhood and youth in Riom. He recalled the day of his and Father Joseph's departure from their na­tive city to Paris to join the missionary expedition to America. Both the young priests knew their parents would

otrongly oppose their resolve; hence they decided to steal away in civilian clothes. They met at dawn in a field ja#t outside the town. Joseph had almost lost his courage. He was in a predicaments ha felt he could not break his father’s heart by leaving him; nor yet could he break the vow he had made to Heaven to make the journey. Father Latour encouraged him as the two paced up and down, arm in arm, in the dim light until the "diligence" arrived. Kiss' Gather takes this story almost in its entirety from Hewlett.

^memory of his youth which Father Joseph often smilingly recalled was his planning a season of special devotion to the Blessed Virgin for Hay. He remembered how his stern su­perior had at first coldly disapproved of his idea; then had relented; how he (Father Joseph) had written to hi® aiator* asking her to make some artificial flower® for his altar; how generously she had responded; and how she had rejoiced that his Hay devotions had such a large attendance.

A portion of Miss Gather’s story goes thus:Young Father Joseph bore hie rebuke with meekness, and

went sadly to his own chamber.There he took his rosary and spent the entire day in prayer. "Hot according to my desires, but if it is for thy glory, grant me this boon, 0 Hary, my hope." In the evening of the same day the old pastor sent for him and unsolicited granted him the request he had ®o sternly denied him in the morning. How joyfully Father Jeseph had written all this to his sister, Philomene, then a pupil with the nuns of the Visitation in their native Riom, begging her to make him a quantity of artificial flowers for his May altar. How richly she had responded!— and she rejoiced no less than ho that his Hay devotions were so largely attended by the young people, in whom in whom a notable increase in piety was manifest. 1..... 1............. "................ ............ ’

Death Cornea for the Archbishop. p» 203.

76

The similarity is seen both in the subject matter and

the phraseology:Hot discouraged, however, the young curate went to his

room, and, taking hie rosary, he spent the rest of the day in prayer. He prayed, not that he might have his own way, but that whatever was for the glory of God might be done, and ho felt confident that llary would arrange all things for the best.

That same evening the pastor called him and said,"You wish to celebrate the month of Hay, do you?" "Yes sir," answered the young curate. "Do you think this devotion will do any good to the parish?" asked the pastor. "I am sure it will," replied Father Machebeuf, with warmth of manner and conviction in tone. "Thengo and do as you wish in the matter," said the venerable cure", and no permission over brought greater joy to young Father Machebeuf than that conveyed by the words.

Immediately he wrote his young sister, who was a pupil with the nuns of the Visitation in his native town of Riom, expressing his lively joy and requesting her to make up and send to him a supply of artificial flowers for his Hay altar. This she did with great pleasure, and she was delighted to learn and record the fact that the May devotions were numer­ously attended and resulted in a great increase in piety in the parish of Cendre."!

Sometimes Miss Gather meetly takes the suggestion of a story from Howiett, and amplifies it with her imagination,and perhaps with details she learned from stories told her. ■ - .

by people in Hew Mexico. Such a one is the story of how Father Joseph acquired his span of beautiful mules which afterwards always served him and Archbishop Latour in their journey® across the desert, Hewlett's story is (quoting Machebeuf)i

Some four years ago, when we had so much traveling to do all over Hew Mexico, it happened that ny saddle horse

1William Joseph Hewlett, The Life

Joseph P. Machebeuf. pp. 34-35.

77

gave out near Albuquerque. There was the ranch of a rich Mew Mexican cloee by, and I went to try to borrow a horso to take me to Santa Fe. I was not acquainted with the proprietor *f the place, but I introduced myself and made known my wants. •Certainly,11 said the owner, “but do you prefer a horse to a mule? “ In a few moments both home and mule were brought out, and I was told to take my choice. ."No!" said I, “you will know more about them than I do and can make a better Choice." "Very well," said he, "that bay mule is a good trav­eler, gentle under the saddle and in the harness — in fact, he is my favorite animal," "And how long may I keep him?"I inquired, "a week, a month, or a year?" "Oho!" answered the man, "I think I see your point, Senor Vfccario. Just a minute." and with that he sent a peon for another mule which was a perfect match for the first. “How," said he, "there arc two mules. Do you think you need them both?" "Surely," said I, "Bishop Lany needs a mule as badly as I do; but how long may wo keep them?" "I leave that to you, Senor Vocario," . he answered,."and I shall not object to your time." "Then," said I, "wo will need them for sixteen years!" "All right,Senor Vicario," he returned*."You have said it. You may take the mules, and I am happy to do you this little service."

It is with this incident as a basis that Miss Gather develops her remarkable story, which is so revelatory of Father Joseph's character, as well as that of his Mexican host. Incidentally, this is one of the few places in her book in which Mias Gather displays a sense of humor.

This process of comparison could be extended much far­ther. There are many other instances in which Hiss Gather drew upon Hewlett for details — the story of the Moorish boll, the description of Father Joseph's wagon, in which he 1traveled to Mexico; the dislike of Latour for the wooden - I. ; /churches of Ohio, a point which ideally fitted into Hiss ^ Gather's characterization of the bishop. But these illustra­tions are sufficient to show the tendency.

I — — -Hewlett quoting Father Ussei, pastor of v/aloenberg,

Colorado; also quoting Machebeuf, pp. 816-217.

78

Though the facts of these two men's lives arc largely true to history, their characters are chiefly creation® of Mioo Gather's imagination. In many respects they are direct opposites, and a combination of their qualities would prob­ably represent Miee Gather's ideal character — though such . a combination would perhaps be impossible to achieve. Latour was the idealist — a man of delicate perceptions, a student and a philosopher, careful of habit and exquisite in manner. Hi© beautiful courtesy was always present, whether he were in the humblest Indian hut or in the houses of the wealthy Spanish landowners• The Indians and Mexicans came to admire this quality in him. Moreover, he loved beautiful things — a pair of silver candlesticks brought from France, the yel­low stone of Just the right shade, from which he had built his cathedral. The ugly wooden churches of Ohio outraged M e artistic sensibilities* Yet he found it difficult to adapt himself to now environments; he made new friends but slowly, and in consequence treasured the old ones. Such a man as Latour was a product of race, generations and genera­tions of traditions had gone into the making of him. Ho represents the ideal of one side of Miss Gather's character. Ho has much which she #nds: missing in Anglo-Saxon society.

Father Joseph was the realist, who got along with every­one, who soon found himself at homo in every environment; who wan an excellent executive, an expert financier; who collected the money to build the churches; and who, above

r*

79

ally loved a good meal and a glass of rare old French nine.He represented the other side of Mias Gather ~~ the side that worries about the creafei in her coup and which finds the executive abilities of Alexandra admirable.

An apt characterization of these two men is found in the statementof one of these two persons in the book who said that when he wished to please Bishop Latour he gave him something to look at, but when he wished to please Father Joseph, he gave him something to eat. Yet Father Joseph's love for food and wine was not unconnected with his spiritual

activity, for they were immediately converted intg the-energy whieh enabled him to throw himself with such joy into the hardships and dangers he had daily to meet. He was the son of a baker, the typical representative of the French middle class. • - '

However, it is not entirely true to say that few of the traits of character of these men are found in Hewlett's bi­ography. The peculiar energy and vitality that enable Vail- lant to escape death so many.times in spite of his frail body, and which gave him the nickname of "Trompe-la-morte,M is mentioned there. Also, his motto, "Rest in Action," is recorded there. But Howiett's only reference for any fondness of food was a statement that Father Joseph was as enthusias­tic in showing a new cook how to fry a beefsteak, as he was in instructing a new priest in his■duties.

Archbishop Lamy, although one writer declared him to be

80

one of the moot saintly men that ever lived, is remembered in history as an organizer of churches and a builder of cathedrals — a reformer. It seems rather doubtful to me thatsuch a man as Hiss Gather represents him, could have gained such a reputation.

Since the two leading characters are priests, it is natural that Death Comes the Archbislion should be con­cerned largely with the presentation of-the religion of lew Mexico — the Catholicism as it existed among the Mex­icans and Indians. The formerly prosperous system of missions had fallen into decay at the time of Bishop Lamy's arrival In Hew Mexico. Father Machebeuf, in a letter to his sister, deplored conditionst

This is a country of ancient Catholicity, but, alas, how times have changed! Instead of that piety and practical religion which marked the days of the mission, we now have but the foie and the exteriors of religion. The people are all very exact in their attendance at the church services, they observe all the feasts and keep all their confratern­ities and societies, but the reception of the sacraments is sadly neglected when it is not entirely abandoned. In a population of 70,000, which includes the converted Indians, there are but fifteen priests, and six of these are worn out by age and have no energy. The others have not a spark of seal, and their lives are scandalous beyond description."1

Of the latter class was Padre Ga&agos, the genial, popular priest of Albuquerque, who wag a member of a promi­nent Mexican family — a man who loved to dance the fandango,play poker with the Americans, and go hunting. He always kept his cellar well stocked with wines and whiskey. A

Joseph P. Machebeuf, p. 164.Right Reverend

81

wealthy Mexican widow was hostess at his supper parties,en­gaged his servants, and made lace for his altars,napery for

1his tables• Altogether, Padre Gallegos sadly neglected hie duties, and he was one of the first that Bishop Latour removed in his reform. Father Joseph was delighted to take charge of this, the second: largest settlement in the diocese.

Another and more difficult case was that of Padre Mar­tinez — a man of powerful personality, the virtual dictator in both spiritual and secular affairs of Taos and the sun* rounding region. It was generally believed that he was the power behind the revolt of the Taos Indians, which had occurr­ed five years before Latour*s arrival, and in which the American governor and a dosen others had been murdered. But when the rebellion had proved unsuccessful, and seven of the participants had been sentences to hang, he made no effort to rescue them. He was a true representative of the old, lawless frontier, which even in that day was rapidly dying out. The disorder of Martinez' s house, with dusty books and boots and clothing piled on the tables and chairs — in spite of the presence of many serving women — disturbed Father Latour*o fastidious taste. For his vow of celibacy he had no respect,- and he endeavored to defend his violation of it by citations from Saint Augustine. Yet there is some­thing admirable in the strength, the force, of Padro Marti-

1 - • - ■Emm...fifflMajCar..Argh^shgp, P. sa.

#*

ties1a character. He oeema a repreaentative of the new world that is protesting against accepting the traditions of the old, and in many respects a patriotic Mexican resenting for­eign interference. He defends himself in Miss Gather’s story*

Our native priests are more devout than your French Jesuits. Y/e have a living church here, not a dead arm of the European church. Our religion grew out of the. soil, and has its own roots. We pay a filial respect to the person of the Holy Father, but Rome has no authority here. Y/e do not require aid from the Propaganda, and we recent its inter­ference. The church the Franciscan Fathers planted here was cut off j this is the second growth, and is indigenous. Our people are the most devout left in the world. If you blast their faith by European formalities, they will become infi­dels and profligates.1

Padre Martinez* s celebration of high mass was beauti­ful. He had a fine baritone voice, depth of emotional power, and neglected no phase or gesture of the service.

naturally, when Bishop Labour attempted to remove Padre Martinez from office, he encountered difficulties. At first the Padre agreed to resign on the condition that he be allowed to continue the celebration of Mass on certain solemn occa­sions, and to perform certain other duties. But soon he and his successor were in difficulties, and Martinez and a friend, a fellow priest, Lucero, formed a schismatic church.

This brings us to Father Lucero, who had a master vice of a different kind, miserliness. Though reputed wealthy, he lived in abject poverty. He never bought anything: clothes, food, furnishings for his house were all picked up here and there. Yet he was not oppressive in his exactions from the

83

1people in his parish.

These two were the leaders of the schism, and when.Father Latour was no longer able to ignore it, he sent Father Vail- lant to publish a warning for three weeks, and in the. fourth to excommunicate the two leaders. The schism did not entirely disappear until the death of both Padre Martinez and Padre Lucero#

Such were some of the problems which Latour had to face and solve, and they were ones which Bishop Lamy had actually to meet, for these three rebellious priests are historical characters, (incidentally, Miss Gather does not change their names) and account® of their doings — very like Hiss Gather's, except that sometimes Padre Martinez is presented in a more favorable light -- are to be found in most standard books of that period.

These priests had several means of support, raraong which wertfees charged for various ceremonies such as weddings and baptisms. The fees charged were often exhorbitant, and con­dition* of morality which many travelers describe as deplor­able, resulted. One, Davis, made a trip through Hew Mexico in the 1850*8, and on his return to his home in the East, wrote a book, El Gringo, in which, among other things, he described this lack of morality, which was caused by the high cost of baptisms and marriages. But, he said, since the coming ofBishop Lamy, these conditions had been considerably remedied.************%*****"****

V7. Yf. H. Davis, El Gringo. Chapter 4, pp. 234-56.

Miss Gather tells how Bishop Latour came upon a beau­tiful oasis in the desert, where he was welcomed with joy by the inhabitants, who declared he must have been sent there by the blessed Virgin to baptise the children and sanctify the marriages. The grandfather told how his oldest son had made a trip all the way to Albuquerque r to find a wife and get married. "But the priest had charged him twenty pesos, and that was half he had saved to buy furniture and glass windows for his house. His brothers and cousins, discour­aged by his experience, had taken wives without marriage sacraments

Again Father Vaillant stopped, one day at the rancho of a wealthy Mexican, Manuel Lujon, to perform the same ceremo­nies. He arrived while the men were yet working in the fields. Manuel wished that he mightihave food and drink and generally refresh himself while waiting for the men to finish their work. But Father Vaillant insisted upon beginning immedi­ately. Thereupon Manuel, of a practical turn of mind, sug­gested that the baptism be performed first. At which Father Joseph was indignant and exclaimed,

"Mo, I tell you, Lujon, the marriages first, the bap­tisms afterwards. That order is but Christian. I will baptise the children tomorrow morning, and their pirents will have at least been married overnight."2

• ■

Boyowere sent out to the fields to get the men; an altar wi s improvised at one of the "s^La?" floors were scrubbed,

85

chairs placed/Senor Lujon went out towards the servants1 quartern to bring the candidates for the marriage sacrament# The women were gating and snatching up their best shawls. Some of the men even washed their hands. The household crowd­ed in the great l,sala: * and Father Vaillant married the couples in groat haste.

But Miss Gather recognized that not all of the Mexican priests were like Lucero and Martinez. Some were devout, sincere, kind-hearted. Such a one was the old, white-haired priest, almost blind, in the clean little towh of Isleta.He was very poor and lived on beans and conn meal mush, as he was too soft-hearted to take pesos from his: people. He raised parrots, because his Indiana prized their feathers highly for ornaments. He was simple and very superstitious, but possessed a quality of "golden goodness."

Under Father Latour, as in reality under Bishop Lamy, conditions were changed. Latour declared his purpose! "I shall reform these practices throughout my diocese as rapid­ly as possible. I hope it will be but a short time until there is not a priest left who does not keep all the vows g he made when he bound himself to the service of the altar."

Many of the priests were replaced by French priests from Latour*s own Auvergne. In addition to his reform of the clergy Bishop Latour established church schools. He brought back from Provincial Council at Baltimore five nuns,

Sisters of Loretta, to establish a school for girls in' 1 ' '....... ' "" ; i ' " " ' V •

Death Comes for the Archbishop# p. 56.Ibid., p* 147.

in Santa Fo, Buildings were erected, and fruit trees and flowers were planted in a garden between the academy and the bishop's residence, so that the place became one of beauty, and was much admired.

Archbishop Latour's crowning achievement was the build* ing of the two-towered Cathedral at Santa F<f — a tawny church against rose-colored hills. His ancestors had built churches in Clermont, and he wished to build the first Ro­manesque church in the Hew World — a church that should look like

the best of the old cathedrals of the nidi in France —■ ,' ■ , ■ .

"nothing sensational, simple honest building and good stone 1cutting." Ho brought an architect arid several stone cuttersfrom M - Toulouse for the construction. Sventdally_. ■ ; ;he so changed the aspect of Santa Fe and its vicinity thatit came to be called little Auvergne.

The Mexicans, as presented by Miss Gather, with whomthese priests worked, were a simple, warm-hearted generouspeople. Even in those regions where the priests had all goneaway and the churches were deserted, the Mexicans treasuredthe memory of their religion, and welcomed joyfully any newteacher of it. Father Joseph speaks affectionately of hie

Vi"loot Catholics, whom he discovered on hie trip to the San Xavier Mission near Tucson. He found hundreds of families, who had never seen a priest, yet were all full of devotion and faith which had nothing to feed upon but mistakenT 111 ' ' Ll * "T T 7 * 1 U""" J.ir:t'T---T pinrr^ c - rum t n tm r r ■ mm r ~ " w ni ur.............. .. T rim ° irrmnm- rnnrtrTi : ni i

87

superstitions. Father Valllant declares?They remember their prayers all wrong. They cannot

read, and since there is no one to instruct them, how can they get^right? They are like seeds, full of germination, but with no moisture. A mere contact is enough to make them apart of the church. The more I work with the Mexicans, the more I believe it was people like them that the Savior had in mind when he said, “Unless ye become as little children.“ He was thinking of people who are not clever at things of the world, whose minds are not upon gain and worldly advancement. These poor Shristiana are not thrifty like our country people at home; they have no veneration of property, no sense of material values. 1

was necessarily theatrical. They threw their shawls on the ground for Father Latour to walk upon; they kissed his Episcopal ring; their altars were gaudily decorated; their figures of Christ were aginized, their saints dolorous. Such display was distasteful to Latoufc, but he appreciated the necessity of it.

Perhaps connected with their love of display in their

of Albuquerque found as much pleasure in being devout under Father Joseph as they had in being scandalous under Father Gallegos.

As a part of tho outward evidence of their religion, these people had a collection of stories of miracles which had not occurred in a distant land, but which had happened to Mexicans right hero in Mexico. One of these told how the Virgin had appeared to a poor neophyte in Mexico City and made him tell the Bishop to build on that spot a church.

Death Comes for the Archbishop, p. 47.

V

and as a sign, had painted upon his poor mantle a marvelous picture of herself, in robes of blue and rose and gold.And on that spot was erected a shrine "to contain the mi­raculous picture, which since that day has been the goal of countless pilgrimages." Another story related.how Father Junipers, the builder of missions in California, had been entertained during one of his journeys across the desert by the Holy Family, in the guise of kindly Mexican peons.

Other things which these Mexicans inherited from the past were not so beautiful as the legends of miracles per­formed. They had as well many traditional superstitions and rites. The people of Abiguiu celebrated the Passion Week by cross bearings and bloody scourging©. A description of what one person did in such a ceremony is given by one of Miss Gather10 characters.

He tried to be like the Savior, and had himself cru­cified. Oh, riot with nails! He had himself tied upon the cross with ropes, to hang there all night. . . . But he was so heavy that after he had hung there a few hours the cross fell with him, and he was very much humiliated. Then he had himself tied to a post and said he would hear as many stripes as our savior*- sin thousand, as was revealed to St. Bridget. But before they had given him a hundred, he fainted. They •courged him with cactus whips, and hie back was so poisoned that he was sick up there for a long while.

The pure-blood Indians were even more superstitious, more devoted to mysterious rites than the half-breed Mexicans. In fact, upon most of them Christianity was merely a veneer . which covered the old belief, the old mode of worship which they inherited from their ancestors. Some tribes, for instance, the Havajos, refused entirely to accept Christianity. Many

stories were circulated about the religion of the Pecos, sto­

ries about a fire that was perpetually kept troroing, of a worship of snakes, to which babies were sometimes fed. One night Jacinto, a Pecos Indian boy, and Bishop Latour were caught in a snow-storm. For shelter Jacinto led Father La- tour to a cave in the mountains, where apparently some mys­terious ceremony of the tribes was held. He made the Bishop swear he would never tell what he had seen there♦

The Indian belief had its more pleasant side. The In­diana had a simple philosophy drawn from observation of na­ture. One night Latour and Jacinto were sitting outside the Indian's hut, looking up at the stars*- the Bishop with his

coat wrapped about him, Jacinto with his blanket."Many stars," Jacinto said presently, "v/hat you think

about the stare, Padre?""The wise men tell us they are worlds like ours, Jacinto.Tho end of the Indian'o cigarette grew bright and then

dull again before he spoke. "I think not," he said in the tone of one who had considered a proposition fairly and rejected it, "I think they are leaders — great spiritsS"1

Sometimes Bishop Latour grew discouraged before his great task of bringing Christianity to the Indiana and the Mexicans. Doubt and coldness clutched at hie heart and prayer seemed to him but empty words. "His work seemed super­ficial, a house built upon the sands. His great diocese was still a heathen country. The Indians traveled their old road ©f fear and darkness, battling with evil omens and ancient shadows. The Mexicans were children who played with their

90

1religion.“

These moods did not last long; then he would see how Christianity brought comfort into some life, and he himself would be comforted. Father Vaillant, with M o optimistic faith, never felt such doubts.

Though religion, Catholicism, as one writer says,Ilea at the heart of this book, there are many traditions, customs, ideals shown in it, which arc other than religious.Y.Tc had first the Indian culture; then the Spanish, which 'was imposed upon it; then the mixture of the two in the Mexican; and finally the French, as brought by Father La- tour and Father Vaillant.

Miss Gather describes in detail two tribes of Indians — the Pecos, a sedentary tribe which lived in the rather elab­orate pueblos, and the Havajos, a wilder tribe who lived in hogans. She mentions the Apaches, the most feared tribe of the Southwest, and the Acomao, who dwelt on the rocks.The Indians, as described by Miss Gather, had instinctive good manners, as did Jacinto and the Havajo chief, Eusebio. There was about then a native dignity. Their taste too in general was good. Their blankets, of which they wore very proud, were of good design.

7/e also get from Miss Gather an excellent picture of the houses in which they lived. Jacinto's was, perhaps,

T

91

typical of pueblo Indians. Jacinto led the bishop to a par­ticular dwelling in the row;, of little houses all just alike, and all built together. "There was a ladder before Jacinto*s door which led up to the second story, and that was the dwelling of another family; the roof of Jacinto’s house

made a veranda for the family above him. The bishop bent hi® head under the low doorway and stepped down; the floor of the room was a long step below the door sill — the Indian way of preventing drafts. The room into which he deecendedwas long and narrow, smoothly whitewashed and clean, to tho

1eye, at least, because of its very bareness." A few fox pelt® and strings of green and red peppers were on the walls, and richly colored blankets on the floor.

The Pecos village which Hiss Gather describes had as a matter of fact been deserted before the period of Ameri­can occupation. The hogans of the Navajos, who owned great herds of sheep, were booth-like huts, furnished with skins and blankets#

The Spaniards who came over as gold-seekers, mission­aries, officials in the institutions established, brought their own peculiar culture* But by the time of which Hiss Gather writes this had largely intermingled with the nativeculture. However, in the Olivares, Hiss Gather found a typ­ical wealthy Spanish family. Father Latour delighted to -----s------ :------------------------ ------------------ -----

flteULf E. 222#

92

visit this house and sit in its rooms, graced by old mifcrors, engravings, and upholstered divans, where sideboards were stocked with plate and Belgian glass. He loved to hearMadame Olivares sing old French, Spanish, and American

1 .songs.

The Mexicans had some of the qualities of both theIndians and the Spaniards. They were hospitable; they wel-

. ' 'v1corned the wandering priests. If they lacked some of thedignity of the Indian and the pride of the Spaniard, theypoesesed good taste. The wooden figures of the saints, evenin the poorest Mexican homes, were more beautiful than thefactory made ones he had known in Ohio. These here werehand-carved and painted with colors now softened by time. Ho

2two were alike• The furniture of the Bishop's house, whichhad been bought from the displaced Mexican priest, was "heavy

3and clumsy, but not unsightly." It had been made from tree boles and put together with wooden pins instead of nails.The houses in which the Mexicans lived likewise showed good taste • The thick adobe? walls were whitewashed inside and out; in their very bareness there was something comely.At one of these houses Father Latour served a delicious meal of Frljoles, cooked with meat, bread, goat's milk,

fresh cheese, and ripe olives.•-----s----- !— :— — ----------— --------------------------

Jteath.Coses,Jfcc.the Azsbhiahop# p. -T-77,2 \ . ,%bid# ])# 33#Ibid# p# 23#3

93

Into this environmsnt of mingled Indian, Spanish and Mexican cultures came our two Frenchmen. Latour, as has been said above, found it difficult to adapt himself to the new conditions, while Vaillent soon suited himself to any con­dition. The Bishop had naturally higher, more philosophical idea of religion than did the Indians, and their tendency toward theatrical display was often distasteful to him. But in other respects he was in harmony with his environment.The Indians appreciated his good manners. Jacinto admired Latour1 e way of meeting peoSte.He had the same manner for all. Ke would turn from the American governor to the Indian without any visible change of countenance.

Though Father Joseph was remarkably adaptable in gener­al, he found it difficult to learn to like the food. Boiled mutton, the favorite dish of the Mexican, was not to his taste. One evening he got permission from his host to go into the kitchen and broil a piece of mutton to ouit him­self — rare. At dinner his host took a slice, for the sake of politeness, but did not eat it. At another tine, on Christmas Eve* Father Joseph prepared a special celebration, a dinner for himself and the bishop. Among other things, an onion soup was served.Latour philosophised concerning its

"Soup like this is not the work of one man. It is tho result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup."l

94

The wild| lawless phases of life which such a communityas How Mexico must have had interests Hiss Gather butlittle. Howeverj she does not ignore entirely these elementswhich for an average historian would have obscured all others.The period covered in Death Comes for the Archbishop|wa3 aperiod of Indian wars and raids among the Apaches, the Nav-ajos,and the Hopis. Many people believed there would neverbe peace between the Havajos and the Apaches until the lastHavajo and the last Apache were killed. Miss Gather tellsof the expulsion of the Havajos by the Americans, led byKit Carson, from their own reservation to the Bosque Redondo,2three hundred miles awey on the Pecos river. She speaks of hunting Kavajos as one of the sports of the young Mexicans before American occupation. She also mentions an Apache raid in Conejo Valley, in which many inhabitants were killed. Mies'- Gather also relates how Father Latour and Father Vail-lant narrowly escaped from a robber, an American, who wanted their mules. And on another night the two missionaries are startled by the sound of rifle shots and blood-curdling yells, and the galloping horses of some drunken cowboys celebrating a church festival.

Kit Carson is a fairly important character in Deathbut here, as elsewhere, Hiss

Gather refines him to fit into the Gather mould.... , . % "" T

395. Ibid., 185.

p. 275.

95

His face was both thoughtful and alert$ anxiety had drawn a permanent ridge between his blue eyes. Under his

blonde mustache his mouth had a singular refinement. His lips were full and delicately modeled. There was something curiously unconscious about his mouth, reflective, a little melancholy — and something that suggested a capacity for tenderness.1

bishop lacks reality, that it is a picture of a beautifulbut shadowy world, from which arc omitted all unhannoniouo

“Life is gently set in a sanctuary and seen through a stainedglass window. They are

tiono to the 11 does have a

or see that any story laid in the fantastic setting of old Hew Mexico — with its “cloud-set Acoma," its cathedral rocks, its pueblo Indian villages, its green little oases — is realistic. Yet it is not an impossible task. Other writers have made en-

er's experience very real and very much alive.Perhaps this sense of unreality is the result of nat-

Conrad Fadiman, “Villa Gatheri the Past Recaptured.“ Nation, 1351604, December 7, 1932.

96

later works), as the critic mentioned above points out, in whom any severe conflict, either physical or emotional, would be unnatural. The archbishop is obviously such a char- acter. Perhaps, to a mind such as Miss Gather*s, Indian massacres, the revels of drunken cowboys, even commercial projects, were unimportant in comparison with the kind of food the people ate, the kind of houses they lived in, and the kind of God in whom they believed.

But it seems to me that the moot important reason for the impression which the book makes upon the reader is the j end which Miss Gather set out to achieve. In view of this purpose she might even consider these criticisms compli­mentary. She has said she wishes to reproduce the mood of cheerful optimism with which these missionaries met their daily hardships. Undoubtedly she has done it. Moreover, she wishes to do something in the style of legend — some­th inp' in which martyrdom is no more dwelt upon than the trivial incidents. Thus Miss Gather touches upon the ex­pulsion of the Mavalos. but (fives it no more emphasis than Fath&p apAD&patlon of tliG onion g o u d#

The lump from How Mexico

in terms of miles across the continent, in terras of differ­ences in climate and landscapes, was a very natural one for Miss Gather. From a consideration of French missionaries

bishop to Quebec in though a long one

in Hew Mexico, she turned to the study of other French mis­

97

sionaries and their fellows in Canada#However, Mies Gather declares, she used a different

title.the roefc.

whichTo mo

culture, There

srsssj K : tn sss :rssi % ::.:ton i r j

it what would correspond to a sympathetic musical setting; tried to develop it into a prose composition not too con-

roMotneo^ond^ull o f p i % % % i ^ t i o n r * ' laeklnc inNow it seems to me the mood^of the misfits among the

first settlers . . . must have been just that. . . . It is very hard for an American to catch that rhythm — it's • so unlike ua.l

its

8gives one a better its limitations, the

Gary, a

by hisdaughter, Cecils,

of the

8*216, October lY^lSdl.

98

little colony, to Quebec,Quebec — the rock — they found so very different from

their gentle France. Auclair, standing on Cap Diamant, watched disappear the ship that brought food, luxuries, news, hope, to the little French colony of the north. Cap Diamant was the highest ledge of the fortified cliff of HKebeeM — "a triangular headland wedged in by the joining of two rivers, and girded about by the greater river as by an encircling arm.*1 Below him was the French stronghold — spires and slated roofs and dormer windows of gray churches and convents, fortifications, gardens, following the natural irregularities of the headland, with no building on the same level with any other. Below all was the lower Town, built on the narrow strip of beach between the river's edge and the towering cliff. From the opposite shore the black pine forest stretched back into the continent no man knew how far. The forest was to the man of Quebec mystery, annihi­lation. “There European man was quickly swallowed up in si­lence, distance, mould., black mud, and the stinging swarms of insects that bred in it." The river, the great St. , Lawrence, thafmoved, glittered, changed," offered to the colonists of Quebec their only way of escape, their only connection with the outer world.

The climate of Quebec was as hard, as unyielding, as^ " . . . . . . . . ' i ' '1 ' - 'r " , r i ' ' / ' 1 T i ' r 'I i l 1 i J . . . . . . . i j "i n

ZMsIs.* P» 7#

99

hostile as the rock itself. The winters were long, bitterly cold; walls were built thick to keep out their icy penetra­tion. Heavy snows fell. On clear days, when there was nofog, "the sunlight on the glittering terraces of rocks was

1almost too intense to be bourne.'"

In this alien, this hostile environment, the en­deavor of the Auclairs was to preserve their old kind of life just as they had had/it in France. Thus the sort of house they lived in was very like their old salon in Paris, for L'adame Auclair had brought all their old furniture with her. "There was the same well-worn carpet, made at Lyon, the wal­nut diningtable, the two large arm chairs and high-backed sofa, upholstered in copper-red cotton velvet, the long win- dow curtains of similar velvet lined in brown, the same candelabra and China shepherd boy sat on the mantel, the same color prints of pastoral scenes on the walls."

The same care an! order were preserved in every act of their daily lives, When Madame Auclair grew very ill, she gave her daughter instructions how she might carry on this life.She warned her that her father's food must be carefully prepared, that the chocolate must be just right, that the sheets must be changed every two weeks, and that they must be carefully laundered. These were the ways she had learned

12 p. 98.

I&M*» p* 23.

100

in France, where they did everything in the best manner.It was thus that France got her reputation ao the most civ­ilized nation in the world. Cecil® endeavored in every way to uphold the traditions her mother had bequeathed her. On very cold nights, C&cile's father heard her climb from bed, move about, cover something. It was the parsley, which, carefully protected, grew in a box. It had never frozen in her mother’s time; Cecil® was determined it should not freeze in here. Later in the story, when Cecils went to visit her cousins, who lived on an island in the river, she was made so unhappy by their lack of order, their lack of neatness, their pillow cases that were not too clean, that she returned home before her visit was over.

Their idea of a well ordered universe had been fixed in their minds and in their habits of life by the teaching of the Catholic Church in France and Sad been transplanted by them into the wildamsess. Religion was very near to them, nearer than to the Mexican in the Southwest, for there it was at least in part superimposed. The Canadians felt the presence of God in the beauty, the grandeur, of the land­scape, in the miracles which were performed here in Canada. The stories of these were told and retold by the firesides during the long severe winters. The story of Jeanne Le Ber, one of these, tells how Jeanne, a wealthy and beautiful girl, left her life of ease for the hard one of the recluse, and how one night two angels came and mended her broken

spinning wheel. Wherever this account went, it brought pleas­

ure, beauty, fragrance.The people have loved miracles for so many hundred

years, not as a proof or evidence, but because they are the actual flowering of desire. In them the vague worship and devotion of the simple-hearted assumes a form. From being a shapeless longing, it becomes a beautiful image; a dumb rapture becomes a melody that can be remembered and be repeated; and the experience of a moment, which might have been lost ecstasy, is made an actual possession and earn be bequeathed to another,1

The celebration of festivals, ceremonies, exactly asthey had been celebrated in France was of importance to

these people. One reads how the Auelairs had sent to them& "Holy Family" for Christmas. It resembles that one MissGather herself has — the one described above. The HolyFamily had been shipped from France, carefully packed ina crate of straw. The figures were arranged in a windowunder a little booth of fir branches. All the figures wereplaced just as tradition said they should be. "The infantwas not in his mother's arms, . . . but lay rosy and nakedin a little straw-lined manger. . . . The Blessed Virgin

wore no halo, but a white scarf over her head. . . . SaintJoseph, grave old man in browh, was placed opposite her,2and the ox and the ass were before the manger.":

When all was complete, Jacques, a little boy, brought a little wooden beaver, which a sailor had carved for him, and contributed it to Cecile for her Holy Family. Cecile

i m - , Pe 108.

was puzzled} it was so entirely untraditional to have a beaver in such a place. One of the old women relieved her by saying, "Put it there with the lambs before the manger. Our lord died for Canada as well as the world over there, and the beaver is our own special animal.»

Auclair was the misfit that Hiss.Gather chose:.td; study He never learned truly to like Canada5 he always looked forward to the time when Count de Frontenac would return to France and take him and Cecils with him. Auclair; was continually telling his daughter stories of the old country of the king, of the beautiful houses, of the fruits and vegetables. He endeavored to keep her accent pure, so that the people at home would not think her provincial when she returned.

Cecil®, though she liked her father*s stories, and wished to do everything exactly as her mother had done it in Franco, nevertheless was a true pioneer, and loved her new country. When she thought that at last they were to re­turn to France, she became very unhappy. But it so happened that they did not go. Count Frontenac died, and they had to remain. Ceclle married an old friend, a fur trader, andthey had four children — "the Canadians of the future, the

2true Canadians — as Bishop Saint-Vallier said of them.

102

XIMA-., P. 278.

Just enough historical facts are given to fix the time and general setting. The story covers the period from 1697 to 1713 — the time of the French and Indian wars in Amer­ica. In 1697 King William's War had just ended, and in 1701 Queen Anne's War began and lasted until 1713, when the Peace of Utrecht was signed. l,!iso Gather mentions the attack of Phipg and his naval force from I'assachusotts upon Quebec, but in general she does not treat this phase of Canadian history.

The historical characters of the story, Frontenac,Bishop Laval, Bishop Saint-Vallier, are likewise sketchily drawn. Like the other characters in the book they are but shadows that pass and contribute to the mood of the story. The most important of them was Count do Frontenac, who was probably the greatest of the French governors.Strong of character, shrewd, he was an excellent organizer, and, above all, knew how to deal with the Iroquois, the enemy of the French, as no one else did. Under him Hex/France increased in strength. However, Hiss Gather does not present him in the stirring moments of his life, but in hie hours of quiet — in his study giving a glass of fruit to Cecil©, who always admired it; in his bed, dying, dreaming of an o M house Anar Pontoise in France, where, when he was a child, his nurse had taken him. Thus we see him in

He was nearly eighty years old, but he had changed but

little since Cecil® could remember, except that his teeth had grown yellow. He still walked, rode, struck as vigor­ously an ever, and only two years ago had gone hundreds of miles on one of the hardest Indian campaigns of his life*When Picard spoke to him, he laid down his pen, beckoned to Cfcile with a long forefinger, put his arm about her familiarly, and drew her close to his side, inquiring about her health and her father’s; As he talked to her. his eyes

when she was little she liked to sit on his knee, because he wore such white linen, and satin waist-coats with jeweled buttons. He took care of his person when he was at home, nothing annoyed him so much as his agent’s neglecting to send him his supply of lavender water by the first boat in the spring. It vexed him more than a sharp letter from the minister, or even the? king.l

On the publication of this book Hiss Gather was greeted

for the first time with a storm of criticism. It was declared "’that she was a tired woman in a large city looking wist­fully from an apartment to the past," that she "refused to express a moral issue in terms of adult experience," that she had never come to grips with the life of her time, thatshe wrote as if maos production and technological unemploy-2ment and cyclical depressions did not exist." It was re­peatedly pointed out that though Miss Gather wrote of a time when the French and the English were struggling for the supremacy of a continent, when brave explorers were following rivers and streams far back into the forests, when Indian massacres were common, she described little or none of this, that her story had the beautiful calm of avision.

f.:! .

---------

?SV.: ‘ ‘V p. 52.

fenceA. Y/insten in "A De-

74t634, March, 1932.

Aroused by this criticism, Mias Gather answered with a letter in which she declare$:

An orderly little French household that went on trying to live decently, just as ants begin to rebuild when yen kick their house down, interests me more than Indian raids and wild life in the forests. And . . . having adopted a tone so definite, once having taken your scat in the close air of the apothecary*s fireside, you can’t explode into . military glory any more than you can pour champagne into salad dressing. (I don’t believe much in.rules, but Stev­enson laid down a good one when he said you couldn’t mix kinds.) And really a new soeiety begins more with the salad dressing than with the destruction of Indian villages.These people brought French culture there and somehow kept it alive on the rock, sheltered and tended '&t and on occasion died for it, as if it were really a eacreu lire — and all this temperately and shrewdly, with emotion always tempered with good sense.1

One of the most recent of Miss Gather’s critics, A. Win­ston, also rose to her defense. He declared first that in each case in her choice of a child for her principal char­acter "Miss Gather has referred to the feeling, to the clear­er, more vivid emotion, not to the facts or narrower world of childhood.” Like Wordsworth, Miss Gather seems to be­lieve that the child is able to see a glory in the universe that is hidden from the adult.

v/insten denies that Miss Gather makes better characters and scenes by setting then in the past; she simplifies some­what for the sake of her idea; but on the other hand makes them extraordinarily vivid by the use of sensuous imagery.

A. Winsten, MA Defense of Willa Gather,M Bookman. 74:6*4, March, 1932.

p. 656.

He will not grant either that the story is lacking in con­nection with present day reality.He points out that the Quebec of today is more like a part of France than any other part of Canada is like. England. He ends: "Does it seem strange to us, even unreal, that today, twenty miles from Quebec, thqre should be a house of great healing power, and a small town slowly building a great cathedral? How does it happen?It happens because there was a beginning two hundred year®

n 1ago of which was the expression

1A. #insten^ "A Defense of Willa Gather," Bookman.

74:639, March

107

CHAPTER IV — C0NCLUSI0H

Wills. Gather may, I believe, be called a historian in the sense of Macaulay^ definition of the term.

jjFirst, she gives us natural backgrounds, vividly, sen­suously depicted — shaggy grass-covered prairies and pros­perous farmlands in Hebraeka$ little desert towns in Colo­rado; barren deserts, brilliant skies, and small Indian pueblos in New Mexico; the great rock of Quebec. All of these, with the possible exception of Quebec, are those with which she became familiar rather early in life.

jjhe presents to us, secondly, characters, chiefly for­eigners, the non-Anglo-Saxon elements of the population of America; and with her understanding sympathy makes a considerable contribution to our knowledge of the processes

in pioneer conditions when a direct conflict with natural elements brings out that which is strongest in their characters.

Moreover, Miss Gather concerns herself with certain basic ideas. Like her pioneer she is often more interested in the idea of things than in the things themselves. Her ideas have to do usually with values, with ways of living,

with, as Winston says, "the peace, whatever it may be, that a man makes with his god before ho dieo." These are the

things that she considers most important in life. If she ignores in general cyclic depressions, Indian raids, battles, it is not because she is not aware of the existence of these things, but because she considers them of less importance. They must be, to use her own figure, always the champagne rather than the salad dressing of the life of the community. Possibly, this quality in Miss Gather is a trace of the James influence that has always remained with her.

^Finally, Miss Gather shows us a picture of an age, a heroic age of pioneers that she came upon just as it was disappearing; she succeeds in communicating to us, in making us share with her, that which Jim Burden called "the pre­cious incommunicable past."

109

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS OF WILLA GATHER

BOOKS

# Gather, Wil^a Sibert, , A. A. Knopf, 1923.#

#

#

#

#

w April Twilijzhta — poems, Boston,R. G. Badger, 1903.^^ r*,™*-***

Hew York, A. A.

Houghtonllv Antonia. Boston and Hot; York,

Mifflin Company, 1918.

A. Knopf, 1926.

A. Knopf, 1932.

, Hew York, Alfred

Hew York, Alfred

i New York, Alfred A.Knopf, 1922.

' ■ ■ , .

" 0 Pioneers1. Boston and Hew York,Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913.

Hew York,Alfred A. Knopf, 19;

Alfred A. Knopf,i Hew York,

# Indicates in this study.

books and articles especially valuable

116

# Gather, Y/illa Sibert, Hew York, Houghton .

# "York, Alfred A. KncW

COHTRIBUTIOHS TO PERIODICALS

Cat

October, 1912,"Behind Singer Tower," Collier'#,

49$16-17, May 18, 1912."Bohemian Girl," McClure*g ,

39:420-43, August, 1912,"Eleaner* s House," McClure*#,

29*623-30, October, 1907."Training for the Ballet," McClure*#.

41*85-95, October, 1913."Letter to Commonweal," in

Publisher*8 Booklet, p. 16."Nebraska: End of the First Cycle,"

Nation. 117*236-38, September. 5. 1927."New Types of Acting," licClure*#.

42*41-51, February, 1914."Novel Demeuble," New Republic. 30*

56, April 12, 1922.

M## "Ardessa," Century. 96* 105-116, May, 1918

"A Likeness" — Scribners. 54*711-712,

##

# " "Shadows on the Rock: A letter,", 8*216, October 17, 1931

Ill

# Gather, Wilia Sihert, "Spanish Johnny," McClure’o, 39:204, June, 1912.

" "The Joy of HolUo Deane,"Century. 82:859-67, October, 1911.

79:135-40, October, 1907."Three American Singers, McClure’s.

42:33-48, December, 1913."Street in PackingtoY/n," Century.

90:23, May, 1915."The Bookkeeper’s Wife," Century.

92:51-59, May, 1916.

28:492-97, March, 1007.

II

SUPPLEMENTARY WORKS

Boynton, P.H.of **"

* University

Canby, H. S., Definitions, Series 2, New York, Harcourt, 1922*

Cockayne, Charles A., ed. Modern Essays of Various. Types. New York, Merrill, 1927.

Collins, J., Takinr? the Litorarv Pulse. Doran, 1924. Davis, W. V/. H., El Grinko. New York, Harper Bros., 1857.

Gay, Robert M., ed.Little, 19237"

Teas, 1926. |S New York,

# Hewlett, William «T

LautA^oderiekEi 7 l f e o iC ^ ^ ^ % 3 l !

aulay, Thomas B p Little LlaatomioeoR, Hew York,

# Llanley and Rickert Her York, 19

Michaud

Overton, Grant,

company,# Publisher's Biographical Sketch, Hew York, Alfred A.

# Hapin, Reno, waiajCather, Hew York, Robert 11. McBride' ' " ' - f. '

# Sherman^Stuart P., Critical Woodcuts. Hew York, Scribners,The ^ % l ^ E n o y e l o p e d l e ^ V e l . « , Hew York, Robert Van Boren, C. C.,

V/hipple, Thomas K.

PERIODICALS

# Anonymous,, Is75, November

* Present- iber, 1930.

W "Wllla Gather*8 Story of an American Soldier,M Current Opinion. 73$594-95, November, 1922.

J.F., "\7illa Gather and Red Cloud," Present-Day AmerZl:30-31, July, 1928.

Booth* A.,"America*s Twelve Greatest Women," Goodhouoo- keenlngt 93$34-3S+, September, 1931.

Boynton, H. W., "A Lost Lady,'October 27, 1923.

111:98-99,

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"Sweeping the Skyg109:280-81,. November 11,

C M b y >

Carrol, Latrbbe, "Life and WArke of Y/illa Gather," Bookman. 531212-16, May 1921.

Cooper,^C., "0 Pioneers!", Bookman. 37:666-67, August,

# Cross, Governor V/., "Men and Images," Saturday Review of Literature. 8:677-78, August 28, 1931.

# Editors, "Chronicle and Comment," Bookman. 74:381,December, 1931.

# Fadiman, Conrad, "Willa Gather: The Past Recaptured,"Nation, 1351563-64, December: 7, 1932.

Gale,Zona, "My Favorite Character in Fiction," Bookman 631323, May, 1926.

Kronenberger^ B.,^v.Tilia Gather," Bookman. 74:134-40,

Krutch, Joseph Wood, "Second Best," Nation. 121:336, September 23, 19334

* "The Pathos of Distance," Nation.125:390, October 12, 1927.

Presont-Dav sr. 1930.

#

114

L.L., "A Broken Epic," Nation, 115:388, October 11, 1922,

Morris, L., "V/illa Gather," North American Review, 2191641-53, May, 1924.

Murray, J. Middleton, "Miss Yiilla Gather," Nation and, Atheneuia, 33:53-56, April 14, 1923.

Porteffield, A., "Willa Gather," London Mercury, 13:516-24, March, 1926.

Raocoe, B., "Contemporary Reminisencec," ArtsandDeco­rations. 20:28, April, 1924.

# Seldes, Gilbert, "Claude Bovary," Dial. 73:438-40, October, 1822.

Sergeant, E. S., "Willa Gathers YJork and Personality,"" " — ''^1, 431291-94, June, 1925.

# Stuart, H. L., "Death Comes for the Archbishop,"September 4, 1922,

# Tittle, "Glimpses of Interesting Americans," Century. 110*309-13, July, 1925.

YJhitman,. J., "Eminence Comes for Miss Gather,"Independent. 119:283, September 17, 1927.

// YMnston, Archer, "A Defense of v/illa Gather," Bookman, 74:634-40, March, 1932.

"Obscure Destinies," Bookman. 75:649, October, 1932.

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