by Hermione Lee
32. Sergeant, p.238.
33. Letters to Mr Weber, Dec 12 1944, Jan 3 1945, RC.
34. Letter to ‘unknown friend’ (possibly F. O. Matthiessen) Nov 22 1935, Morgan.
35. Letter to Mr Oliver, Dec 13 1934, Morgan.
36. Letter to Sergeant, Aug 16 1946, Morgan.
37. Letter to Henry Taylor, Jan 16 1933, UVA.
38. Edward Wagenknecht, Review of Brown and Lewis, Chicago Sunday Tribune Books, March 8 1953.
39. Letter to Carrie Miner Sherwood, Dec 9 1935, RC. Woodress II (p.559) says that Cather exaggerated the episode. She had merely refused permission to the ‘Frigidaire Corporation’ to use her name.
40. Letter to Carrie Miner Sherwood, June 9 1943, RC.
41. The first Warner Brothers film version of 1924, with Irene Rich as Marian, was more faithful to the story, though it did have Niel proposing to Marian.
42. Willa Cather’s Will, 29 April 1943, County Court, Webster County Nebraska, RC. ‘Paul’s Case’, adapted in 1980 for TV, was first published in 1905 and so fell into the public domain. Crane, p.354.
43. Letters to Irene Weisz, Jan 6 1945, Newberry; to George Seibel, Aug 21 [1932], RC.
44. Sergeant, p.265.
45. Letter to Sinclair Lewis, Mar 22 1944, RC.
46. Mildred Bennett: Personal communication to the author, April 1987.
47. Woodress II, p.437.
48. Lewis, p.173. There is a strange anticipation of the hand trouble in ‘Old Mrs Harris’, where Vickie has an infected cut in her finger and has to carry her hand in a sling; the ‘throbbing finger’ is a kind of ‘companionship’ in her misery (OD, p.155).
49. A gall bladder operation could interfere with the functioning of the bile ducts and frequently led to digestive problems of the kind Cather suffered (Anthony Eden was another patient with the same complaint in 1956).
50. Letter to Irene Weisz, Oct 14 1938, Newberry.
51. Woodress II, p.497, Lewis, pp.193–4.
52. Letter to Sinclair Lewis, Jan 14 1938, Yale.
53. Lewis, p.184.
54. See Ch. 4, p.71, for Tennant’s continuing friendship with Lewis after Cather’s death.
55. Letters to Stephen Tennant: [n.d.]; Oct 21 1945; Feb 16 1945; [n.d.] postmark Oct 1944.
56. Letter to Carrie Miner Sherwood, Mar 22 1941, RC.
57. Letter to Irene Weisz, Feb 27 1942, Newberry.
58. Brown, p.288.
59. Alfred Knopf, op. cit., p.218. Sergeant, p.273. See Sigrid Undset: A Study in Christian Realism, A. H. Winsnes, translated P. G. Foote (London: Sheed & Ward, 1953).
60. Letters to the Miners, May 16 1941, Feb 19 1942, RC.
61. Letter to Irene Weisz, Jan 6 1945, Newberry.
62. Bennett, p.52. Woodress II, p.480, refers mistakenly to Cather’s friendship with Jan Masaryk.
63. Menuhin, op. cit., p.130.
64. Sergeant, p.251.
65. Letters to Carrie Miner Sherwood, May 2 1932, Jan 31 1933, RC.
66. Menuhin, op. cit., p.129.
67. Letter to Carrie Miner Sherwood, June 28 1939, RC.
68. Letter to Carrie Miner Sherwood, December 1940, RC.
69. Lewis, pp.171–2.
70. Lewis, p.168.
71. Menuhin, op. cit., p.130.
15. THE IMMENSE DESIGN OF THINGS
1. Letter to Carrie Miner Sherwood, June 28 1939, RC.
2. See O’Brien, pp.373–6, and Rosowski, pp.220–21, on ‘The Joy of Nelly Deane’ in relation to LG.
3. ‘Some say the world will end in fire,/Some say in ice./From what I’ve tasted of desire/I hold with those who favour fire./But if it had to perish twice,/I think I know enough of hate/To say that for destruction ice/Is also great/And would suffice.’
4. See Blanche Gelfant, ‘The Disembodiment of Lucy Gayheart’ in Women Writing in America; Voices in Collage (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1984), pp.321–2, on the importance of ‘inspiration and aspiration’ in LG.
5. See Gelfant, op. cit., Rosowski, pp.219–31, and David Stouk, Willa Cather’s Imagination (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), p.214 ff.
6. Gelfant refers to LG’s ‘Keatsian imagery’ as an expression of Lucy’s impossible ‘Romantic’ desire for transformation, p.126.
7. The Fischer-Dieskau Book of Lieder, translated by George Bird and Richard Stokes (London: Gollancz, 1976), p.335.
8. S. S. Prawer, The Penguin Book of Lieder (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), ‘Introduction’, p.17.
9. Prawer, op. cit., p.13. G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, translated by T. M. Knox (Oxford: OUP, 1975), vol. II, pp.941, 946, 950.
10. ‘Do you know the land where the lemons bloom’; ‘Only he who knows longing/ Knows what I suffer’. Mignon’s songs are from Wilhelm Meister (Vickie’s reading in ‘Old Mrs Harris’, OD, p.105), and were set by all the great lieder composers. See The Fischer-Dieskau Book of Lieder, p.270.
11. Rosowski, p.215 ff.
12. Cather loved George du Maurier’s Trilby (1894) and often referred to it in her 1890s reviews. KA, pp.357, 366, 362–5.
13. See Rosowski on Sebastian as Dracula, p.225.
14. Letter to Zoë Akins, April 19 1935, Huntington. Fryer writes on The Master Builder as a source for Alexander’s Bridge but not for LG.
15. Gelfant, op. cit., p.135.
16. Henrik Ibsen, The Master Builder, Act 2, translated by Una Ellis-Fermor (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), p.171.
17. A. S. Byatt, ‘Afterword’ to LG (Virago, 1985), p.258.
18. Karl Miller, Doubles (Oxford: OUP, 1985, 1987), pp.43–7.
19. Letter to E. K. Brown, Oct 5 1946, Newberry; Letter to Carrie Miner Sherwood, Dec 9 1935, RC.
20. Lewis, p.176.
21. Sergeant, p.258.
22. Quotations from ‘A Chance Meeting’ from NOF, pp.1–45.
23. O’Brien, pp.322, 326.
24. O’Brien, p.324, says that the name of the villa, that of a cruel matriarchal goddess, intensifies the sense of Madame Grout’s oppressiveness. Perhaps; but presumably Cather did not invent the name of the villa.
25. The Art of Willa Cather, ed. Bernice Slote and Virginia Faulkner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974), p.82.
26. Julian Barnes, ‘The Thunderous Presence of l’homme-plume’, Times Literary Supplement, October 7–13 1988, no. 4, 462, p.1090.
27. Woodress II, p.475.
28. Letter to Mrs Ackroyd, Dec 27 1941, UVA.
29. Rosowski, p.244, uses Cather’s letter to Sinclair Lewis (January 14 1938, Yale) about the presence of ‘evil’ in the world as the key to SSG, which she sees as a Gothic exploration of the psychological problem of evil.
30. Letter to Viola Roseboro, Nov 9, 1940, UVA.
31. Brown, p.308.
32. Letter to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Sept 12 1913, Morgan.
33. Lewis, p.182.
34. Letter to Miss Masterson, March 15 1943, RC.
35. Letter to Laura Hills, Nov 8 1940, Morgan.
36. Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1949), p.28.
37. E. L. McKitrick, ed., Slavery Defended: The Views of the Old South (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1963), p.20.
38. Nye, op. cit., p.28.
39. Cather used the alternative spelling, ‘Sibert’.
40. KA, pp.268–70.
41. Stephen Vincent and Rosemary Benet, ‘Willa Cather: Very Civilized and Very American’, New York Herald Tribune, Books, Dec 15 1940.
42. Letter to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Oct 14 1940, Vermont.
43. William J. Grayson, ‘The Hireling and the Slave’, 1856, in Slavery Defended, p.61.
44. Woodress II, p.504.
45. George Kates, ‘Willa Cather’s Unfinished Avignon Story’, Five Stories by Willa Cather (Random House, Vintage Books, 1956), pp.177–214.
46. ‘Avignon’ manuscript, UVA.
47. Lewis, p.193; Woodress II, p.493
.
48. Bennett, pp.217, 257.
49. Mari Sandoz, soon after, also wrote a story of a young schoolteacher trapped in a Nebraskan blizzard: Winter Thunder (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1951, 1954).
50. WP, pp.36–7.
51. Woodress II, p.416.
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Short titles and abbreviations used in the text and notes are given first. Other works referred to are listed in the notes. For works by Willa Cather, dates are given of first publication and of the editions I have used. The definitive Autograph Edition of her novels was published by Houghton Mifflin between 1937 and 1941. Spellings from the editions I have used have been retained, even where inconsistent.
NOVELS
AB: Alexander’s Bridge, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1912; New York: Bantam Books, 1962.
OP: O Pioneers!, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913; Virago, 1983.
SL: The Song of the Lark, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1915; London: Jonathan Cape, Traveller’s Library, 1932. Second Edition: Autograph Edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1937; Virago, 1982.
MA: My Ántonia, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1918; Virago, 1980.
OOO: One of Ours, New York: Knopf, 1922; Virago, 1987.
ALL: A Lost Lady, New York: Knopf, 1923; Virago, 1980.
PH: The Professor’s House, New York: Knopf, 1925; Virago, 1981.
MME: My Mortal Enemy, New York: Knopf, 1926; Virago, 1982.
DA: Death Comes for the Archbishop, New York: Knopf, 1927; Virago, 1981.
SR: Shadows on the Rock, New York: Knopf, 1931; Virago, 1984.
LG: Lucy Gayheart, New York: Knopf, 1935; Virago, 1985.
SSG: Sapphira and the Slave Girl, New York: Knopf, 1940; Virago, 1986.
All page references in the text are to the Virago editions except for Alexander’s Bridge and the 1915 Song of the Lark.
COLLECTIONS OF STORIES
CSF: Collected Shorter Fiction, 1892–1912, edited by Virginia Faulkner, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965, revised 1970.
OB: The Old Beauty and Others, New York: Knopf, 1948; Vintage Books, 1976.
OD: Obscure Destinies, New York: Knopf, 1932; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1965.
TG: The Troll Garden, New York: McLure, Phillips & Co, 1905; edited by James Woodress, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
UV: Uncle Valentine and Other Stories: Willa Cather’s Uncollected Short Fiction, 1915–1929, edited by Bernice Slote, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973.
YBM: Youth and the Bright Medusa, New York: Knopf, 1920; Vintage Books, 1975.
COLLECTIONS OF NON-FICTION
AP: April Twilights, Boston: Gorham Press, 1903; New York: Knopf, 1923.
BOHLKE: Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches and Letters, ed. L. Brent Bohlke (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987).
KA: The Kingdom of Art: Willa Cather’s First Principles and Critical Statements 1893–6, edited by Bernice Slote, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966.
NOF: Not Under Forty, New York: Knopf, 1936.
WCOW: Willa Cather On Writing, New York: Knopf, 1949.
WP: The World and the Parish: Willa Cather’s Articles and Reviews, 1893–1902, edited by William M. Curtin, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL WORKS
BENNETT: Bennett, Mildred, The World of Willa Cather, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1951, 1961.
BROWN: Brown, E. K., Willa Cather: A Critical Biography, New York: Knopf, 1953.
FRYER: Fryer, Judith, Felicitous Space: The Imaginative Structures of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
LEWIS: Lewis, Edith, Willa Cather Living, New York: Knopf, 1953.
O’BRIEN: O’Brien, Sharon, Willa Cather: The Emerging Voice, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
ROBINSON: Robinson, Phyllis, Willa: The Life of Willa Cather, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983.
ROSOWSKI: Rosowski, Susan, The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather’s Romanticism, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
SERGEANT: Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley, Willa Cather – A Memoir, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co, 1953.
SLOTE: Slote, Bernice, Introduction to KA.
WOODRESS I: Woodress, James, Willa Cather: Her Life and Art, New York: Pegasus, 1970.
WOODRESS II: Woodress, James, Willa Cather: A Literary Life, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CRANE: Crane, Joan: Willa Cather: A Bibliography, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1982.
CORRESPONDENCE: LOCATIONS OF MAIN COLLECTIONS
DUKE: William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.
HOUGHTON: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
HUNTINGTON: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
MORGAN: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City.
NEWBERRY: The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois.
NSHS: The Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, Nebraska.
RC: The Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Museum, Red Cloud, Nebraska.
UNEB: The Love Library, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska.
UVA: The Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.
VERMONT: The Bailey/Howe Library, The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I AM grateful to the British Academy for a personal research grant in 1987 which enabled me to visit Nebraska, and to the Department of English at the University of York for its invaluable provision of research terms. I thank the following librarians for their help in providing access to Cather materials: Inge Dupont at the Pierpont Morgan, Robert Hall at the Clifton Waller Barrett Library at the University of Virginia, Elsie Thomas, Lynn Porn and Joseph Svoboda at the Love Library, University of Nebraska, and Sue Fintel and Ann Billesbach at the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Museum. I am grateful for assistance and for materials sent by mail to the William Perkins Library at Duke University, the Huntington Library, the Houghton Library at Harvard, the Newberry Library at Chicago, the Nebraska State Historical Society, and the Bailey/Howe Library at the University of Vermont. The resources of the Brotherton Library at Leeds have been of enormous value to me.
Personally, I am indebted for help, inspiration, advice and encouragement of very various kinds to: Julian Barnes, Mildred Bennett, Jacques Berthoud, Christopher Butler, A. S. Byatt, Portia Dadley, Maura Dooley, Ruth Ellison, Nicky Grene, Hugh Haughton, Tom Heacox, Robert Heyder, Ernest Hofer, Pat Kavanagh, Benjamin Lee, Josephine Lee, Alan MacDonald, Sharon O’Brien, Ursula Owen, Alexandra Pringle, Susan Rosowski, Joan Scanlon, Alistair Stead, Richard Verdi, Hugo Vickers, and most of all, Jennifer Uglow. Anne Tindall typed with unfailing patience and efficiency. My greatest debt is expressed in the dedication.
PERMISSIONS
THE AUTHOR gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint the following: Julian Barnes © 1988, for quotation from ‘The thunderous presence of l’homme-plume’, TLS, Oct 7–13, 1988; Elizabeth Bayd and the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Museum for Annie Pavelka’s letter; Jonathan Cape Ltd and the Estate of C. Day Lewis for quotation from Virgil’s Georgics, translated by C. Day Lewis; Victor Gollancz Ltd for quotation from The Fischer-Dieskau Book of Lieder, Victor Gollancz Ltd, English translation © George Bird and Richard Stokes, 1976; Houghton Mifflin Company for quotations from My Ántonia, © 1918, 1926, 1946 Willa Sibert Cather, © 1949 Houghton Mifflin Company, renewed 1954 by Edith Lewis, renewed 1977 by Bertha Handlam, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company; for quotations from O Pioneers!, © 1913 and 1941 Willa Sibert Cather, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company; for quotations from The Song of the Lark, © 1915 and 1943 Willa Sibert Cather, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company; fo
r quotations from Alexander’s Bridge, © 1912, 1922 Willa Sibert Cather, renewed 1950 by Edith Lewis, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for quotations from Death Comes for the Archbishop, © 1927 Willa Sibert Cather, renewed 1955 by the Executors of the Estate of Willa Cather, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; for quotations from My Mortal Enemy, © 1926 Willa Sibert Cather, renewed 1954 by Edith Lewis and the City Bank Farmers’ Trust Company, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; for quotations from Not Under Forty, © 1936 Willa Sibert Cather, renewed 1964 by Edith Lewis and the City Bank Farmers’ Trust Company, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; for quotations from Obscure Destinies, © 1930, 1932 Willa Sibert Cather, renewed 1958, 1960 by the Executors of the Estate of Willa Cather, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; for quotations from One of Ours, © 1922 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., renewed 1950 by Edith Lewis and the City Bank Farmers’ Trust Company, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; for quotations from The Professor’s House, © 1925 Willa Sibert Cather, renewed 1953 by Edith Lewis and the City Bank Farmers’ Trust Company, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; for quotations from Sapphira and the Slave Girl, © 1940 Willa Sibert Cather, renewed 1968 by Edith Lewis and the City Bank Farmers’ Trust Company, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; quotations from Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art, © 1949 the Executors of the Estate of Willa Cather, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; for quotations from Youth and the Bright Medusa, © 1920 Willa Sibert Cather, renewed 1948 by the Executors of the Estate of Willa Cather, reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; Karl Miller, © 1985, for quotation from Doubles, Oxford University Press, 1985, 1987; Charles P. Olson Estate, © 1947, for quotation from Call Me Ishmael, 1947, Jonathan Cape 1967; Penguin Books Ltd for quotation from Sketches from a Hunter’s Album by Ivan Turgenev, translated Richard Freeborn, Penguin Classics 1967, © Richard Freeborn 1967; University of Nebraska Press for quotations from Willa Cather’s Short Fiction, 1892–1912, © 1965, 1970, University of Nebraska Press.