10. A Falling Out Among Friends — Willa Cather and Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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KIM ASKEW [HOST]: Hi, and welcome to this week’s “Lost Ladies of Lit” mini episodes. I’m Kim Askew…
AMY HELMES [HOST]: And I’m Amy Helmes. Last week we introduced you to Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s The Home-maker, and if you go to our show notes for that episode, you’ll see some amazing still photos from the silent film adaptation of that book. Since then, I found a review of the movie from August 8, 1925 in a publication called Moving Picture World, which sounds like the old-time version of The Hollywood Reporter, or something like that.
KIM: Yes. Very much so.
AMY: So the review is unlike anything you would find today in terms of movie criticism, so I’m just going to read a few lines. It said: “This is a box-office picture par excellence for all audiences. It is hard to conceive an audience that will dislike it. The drama is simply done but so tense and absorbing in its import that it will hold the eyes glued to the screen. Women will eat it up, and cry, and men will like it fully as well as the women, for it does man no injustice by putting woman on an unscalable pinnacle.”
God forbid it would do that, Kim!
KIM: I know, seriously, the patriarchy is even in the review of the movie! I’m not even sure what to make of that review! That’s hilarious. Reviews have changed, as well as movies. So Canfield Fisher, as we mentioned last week, she was great friends with author Willa Cather, and we love this idea of women writers supporting one another in their careers. We are all on board with that. That said, their friendship was not without some bumps — actually, some major drama — which we’re going to tell you about.
AMY: Yeah, it was kind of crazy. In fact, these two women ended up not speaking to one another for 15 years, and I can’t imagine. I mean, Kim, I can’t imagine not talking to you for two days let alone 15 years!
KIM: I know. That’s never going to happen. It’s some serious bad blood, though. And they originally became friends in 1891, but from 1905-1921 they didn’t speak to each other hardly at all, it was “cold shoulder” time. Their feud was actually prompted by a story that Willa Cather published in 1905 in a collection called The Troll Garden, which is actually a perfect name for the collection given what Amy’s going to tell you next.
AMY: So here’s the backstory to what went wrong: In 1902, the two women were pal’ing around in Europe together, and they were joined by another friend of Canfield Fisher’s named Evelyn Osborne. Sounds great right? Sounds like a fun time.
KIM: Mm-hmm.
AMY: Well, side note: Evelyn had a large and very noticeable scar on her face. So three years later, Canfield (We’ll just call her Canfield because she hadn’t married yet, so her last name was just Canfield) she was reading a manuscript of Cather’s for The Troll Garden and in a story called “The Profile” she encountered a character that was a young woman with a disfiguring facial scar.
KIM: Mmm.
AMY: Hmm. So I’m going to read you a few sentences of what Cather wrote about this scar: It had evidently been caused by a deep burn, as if from a splash of molten metal. It drew the left eye and the corner of the mouth; made of her smile a grinning distortion, like the shameful conception of some despairing medieval imagination. It was as if some grotesque mask, worn for disport, were just slipping sidewise from her face.
So, I read the entirety of the short story, it’s very short, but it goes on to have an ending out of something from Edgar Allen Poe, honestly. It’s a pretty salacious little story.
KIM: Oooh, that’s pretty harsh. Wow. Ouch. So Canfield read this, and she immediately freaked. She of course recognized that this character had been inspired by her friend, Evelyn, and she was not having any of it. She wrote to Cather and begged her to remove it from the manuscript.
AMY: She said in that letter: “I am quite sure you don't realize how exact and faithful a portrait you have drawn of her. … Oh Willa don’t do this thing. . . . I don’t believe she would ever recover from the blow of your description of her affliction.”
KIM: Whoa, you can tell how distressed she is by those lines. So how did Cather respond?
AMY: Well, pretty indignantly, actually. She wasn’t about to change a word of her depiction, and she told Canfield that the character had very little to do with Evelyn, even though there were a couple other similarities besides the scar, mind you. But Canfield was so furious that she went over Willa Cather’s head and actually contacted her publisher directly.
KIM: That’s really bold, wow. But also, I mean, on the end of being her friend, Evelyn, that’s being a really good friend. To reach out like that and try to stop it.
AMY: And actually, the publisher listened and agreed to remove the story from the collection, so it seemed for a moment like maybe everything was settled down, however two years later, “The Profile,” this same short story appeared in McCall’s magazine.
KIM: Uh-oh. I’m guessing Canfield wasn’t too happy when she saw that.
AMY: Nope. But it actually gets worse if you can believe that. It appears that Willa Cather basically doubled down on the insult, because she later published a story that was an obvious satire of Canfield’s own mother, Flavia, who was an artist. So that story was called, “Flavia and Her Artists,” and really, there’s no disguising the fact that she was using Canfield’s mom in her depiction. It was pretty blatant.
KIM: No, that is harsh, and it would be the last straw for Canfield. So with the exception of a few letters they exchanged, that was the last of the authors’ interaction for 15 years.
AMY: Yeah, and then at one point, the ice began to thaw. So, Canfield got married and she wound up writing a review of Cather’s latest book for the Yale Review. And that review was pretty positive and diplomatic, even given the hurt feelings. So she took the high road there, and it prompted Cather to write to Canfield Fisher and suggest that they get together. They were slowly able to make amends from there, and it seems as though Cather at long last acknowledged that maybe she had been out of line. And she said ‘I have matured a little bit since then’ so that kind of went a long way toward smoothing things over.
KIM: I’m glad they worked it out in the end, though it’s kind of amazing that they did considering how bad that was. I mean, it’s pretty rough on a friendship. I imagine it would have been pretty divisive, so good for them, just to kind of make up.
AMY: Yeah, put it behind them. But it does sort of beg the question of a writer: Are you willing to offend or betray or hurt somebody’s feelings in the pursuit of your own writing? You always hear this edict that writers, to be any good, have to be brutally honest, you know? But I, personally, I don’t know that I’m capable of that. Which, maybe, that’s a problem, I don’t know. But I’m always too conscious of who’s reading it and what they might ultimately think of what I put down.
KIM: I know what you mean… It’s part of the reason I could never be a critic as a profession. I’d be worried about hurting someone’s feelings or somehow impacting their career. I just couldn’t live with that I don’t think.
AMY: Yeah, but Kim, you actually kind of faced this conundrum, this idea of writing about real people when you wrote a personal essay for the anthology The May Queen. So I’m wondering, was that difficult to write about your own history and relationships knowing that the people involved would read it?
KIM: That’s a great question. So the actual writing of it wasn’t difficult at all. That was just easy. But after the book came out, and I went on the book tour and read it aloud, I did have some lingering regrets. And having had that experience, I’d probably think twice before I revealed anything about my friends or family in the future, particularly in a nonfiction format. So with fiction though, there’s room for disguise. I think people could think, “Oh, maybe that’s me,” but they might think [characters] that you didn’t intend to be them are them. So it gives you a lot of room. Not that I’ve done that, friends and family who are listening! I’ve not done that!
AMY: I think it’s one thing to sort of decide for yourself whether or not you want to “go there,” so to speak, but in this case of Willa Cather, she was sort of dragging Canfield Fisher’s friends and family into it, which doesn’t really seem like fair game.
KIM: Nope.
AMY: But then, on the other hand, as a writer, you’d kind of hate to feel as though things are “off limits” to your imagination. I mean, why can’t you be inspired by the events and people you encounter in your life?
KIM: Yeah, that’s a really difficult one. I mean, if you’re a writer on the level of Willa Cather, maybe somehow all bets are off. Your art might have to come first, but if you can stomach it. I feel like using Canfield Fisher’s mom’s unique name was probably going too far, and was unnecessary, but I think maybe Cather’s intention might have been to wound! I mean, she used her mother’s name!
AMY: Yeah, she could have changed that name.
KIM: Exactly.
AMY: Even if she’d been inspired by her mother, there was no need to use the specific name.
KIM: Yeah, that seems purposeful.
AMY: That was pointed.
KIM: Yep. So, it’s great that we’re talking about this, and there’s a reason.
So our next “lost lady,” had a similarly contentious friendship with another famous author. Constance Fenimore Woolson’s relationship with Henry James was so fraught with drama it may even have potentially driven her to her death!
AMY: When we were first discussing her, I could not believe the story involved here, and I can’t wait to get to the bottom of it. And, actually, in order to try to figure out this mystery (and Woolson’s beautiful novel, Anne) we’re going to be joined by a special guest (our very first guest expert, in fact) — Dr. Anne Boyd Rioux.
KIM: Okay, she literally wrote the book on Constance Fenimore Woolson. We are so, so excited to talk with her about this unbelievably talented, but forgotten author!
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AMY: Until then, check out our website, LostLadiesofLit.com for more information as well as further reading material. And if you’re loving this podcast, be sure to leave us a review. It really helps new listeners find us! Bye, everybody !
AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. “Lost Ladies of Lit” is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes