Several years after I said good-bye to him, Oswald Henshawe died in Alaska. I have still the string of amethysts, but they are unlucky. If I take them out of their box and wear them, I feel all evening a chill over my heart. Sometimes, when I have watched the bright beginning of a love story, when I have seen a common feeling exalted into beauty by imagination, generosity, and the flaming courage of youth, I have heard again that strange complaint breathed by a dying woman into the stillness of night, like a confession of the soul: “Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy!”

  THE END

  Death Comes for the Archbishop

  Cather began this novel in 1925 and took only six months to complete it. It was reprinted in the Modern Library series in 1931 and was later included in Life magazine’s list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924-1944 and on Time magazine’s 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005 and Modern Library’s list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It was also chosen by the Western Writers of America to be the 7th-best “Western Novel” of the 20th century.

  Cather was inspired to choose the story by her numerous visits to the southwest over a fifteen year period. There, she met a Belgian priest, Father Haltermann, learning about his important work. From there she looked further into the history of the church in the region. The novel is set in New Mexico in the 1850s, shortly after Mexico’s war with the United States. The war was an aggressive expansionist move on the part of the Americans, led by President Polk and resulted in the appropriation of a large swathe of Mexican territory, including what are now California, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. The narrative is based on two historical figures, Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888) and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf . Lamy was a French Roman Catholic priest that became the first Archbishop of Santa Fe, in New Mexico.

  The prologue was inspired by a painting Cather saw in the Louvre. Painted by Jehan Vibert, it depicts a shabbily dressed priest talking animatedly of his missionary work to a group of richly clad cardinals. Cather’s prologue opens with a scene in which three cardinals and Bishop Montferrand, a French missionary who is located in the New World, are dining together. The discussion turns to the lands in New Mexico, which are inaccessible, populated with many native peoples, ripe for conversion to Christianity – ‘ Untaught and unshepherded, they cling to the faith of their fathers.’ Similarly, the Catholic priesthood who have a presence in the state are lax in observance and openly have relationships with women. The elderly Bishop of Durango is retiring and it is suggested that a younger, more vigorous man should take his place – one Jean Marie Latour.

  The story proper opens with Bishop Jean Marie Latour, who is travelling to New Mexico with his friend and vicar Joseph Vaillant from Sandusky, Ohio. Latour, consecrated Vicar Apostolic of New Mexico and Bishop of Agathonica, has spent some time on the road trying to reach his new Bishopric, which no one in the church seems to know anything about. It has been a perilous journey, in which he lost all his possessions apart from his books and suffered an injury to his leg so serious he had to stop travelling for three months. Finally, after a year of striving, his bishopric is in sight. Sharing in his joy is Father Joseph Vaillant, his boyhood friend, who has joined him in this mission. In their names, there is a hint of their characters – Latour (the tower, in French) and Vaillant (valiant and his nickname is Trompe-la-morte, ‘Death-cheater’ as he has overcome ill health). The two rode into Santa Fé together, ‘claiming it for the glory of God.’

  The elation of the two young priests was to be short lived. The clergy who greet him declare they knew nothing of him and that they still came under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Durango. His greeting from ordinary people, those now Christian, was more welcoming. He is enchanted by their kindliness and the simplicity of their lives. By Christmas, the young Bishop and Vaillant have settled in and are well established, beginning to make order out of a disorderly diocese and when the Bishop writes home to his brother in France, he is able to declare that although he and his friend are exiles from their home country, they are happy. Part of this settlement into local culture and expressions of faith comes from learning about local stories, such as the one related by an elderly priest, Padre Escolastico Herrera, about visions of the Virgin Mary in 1531, which led to the building of a shrine (this is Cather’s version of the story of Our Lady of Guadelupe).

  Cather digresses frequently in the story, offering fictionalised versions of well known tales, including historical figures such as Kit Carson (an American frontiersman) and Manuel Antonio Chaves (a Mexican soldier and later, rancher). There follow numerous tales of the missionary work of the two priests, their meetings with local peasants and an unsettling encounter with a hostile American, Buck Scales, from whom they are saved by his abused Mexican wife. The wife, Magdalena, is subsequently ‘liberated’ from her marriage when Scales is hanged and she goes to work for the church in Santa Fe. The two men have very different approaches to their missionary work. Vaillant is more assertive and somewhat disciplinarian, whilst Latour is gentler and willing to be patient in achieving his aims, such as the removal of priests that do not obey the rules. So the stories continue, as the two reforming priests build their reputations with the church and people locally, whilst all the time learning about the beautiful land and culture they now call home.

  For those who enjoy Cather’s descriptive work, detailing the natural world and indigenous cultures (which she portrays with admirable empathy here), this novel will certainly appeal. It is also an interesting story of missionary work and an insight into the operation of the Catholic church in a country where they still had ground to gain. When bringing the two together – the ‘old’ and ‘new’ religions – Cather is at pains to point out the difficulties in trying to replace ancient native culture with an alien religion and criticises the removal of the Navajos, comparing it to the outrage of black slavery. This is not a novel with a strong or action filled plot, but more leisurely in pace and may be a pleasant digression from some of her other themes.

  The first edition

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE — AT ROME

  BOOK ONE. THE VICAR APOSTOLIC

  1 — THE CRUCIFORM TREE

  2 — HIDDEN WATER

  3 — THE BISHOP CHEZ LUI

  4 — A BELL AND A MIRACLE

  BOOK TWO. MISSIONARY JOURNEYS

  1 — THE WHITE MULES

  2 — THE LONELY ROAD TO MORA

  BOOK THREE. THE MASS AT ÁCOMA

  1 — THE WOODEN PARROT

  2 — JACINTO

  3 — THE ROCK

  4 — THE LEGEND OF FRAY BALTAZAR

  BOOK FOUR. SNAKE ROOT

  1 — THE NIGHT AT PECOS

  2 — STONE LIPS

  BOOK FIVE. PADRE MARTÍNEZ

  1 — THE OLD ORDER

  2 — THE MISER

  BOOK SIX. DOÑA ISABELLA

  1 — DON ANTONIO

  2 — THE LADY

  BOOK SEVEN. THE GREAT DIOCESE

  1 — THE MONTH OF MARY

  2 — DECEMBER NIGHT

  3 — SPRING IN THE NAVAJO COUNTRY

  4 — EUSABIO

  BOOK EIGHT. GOLD UNDER PIKE’S PEAK

  1 — CATHEDRAL

  2 — A LETTER FROM LEAVENWORTH

  3 — AUSPICE MARIA!

  BOOK NINE. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP

  Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888), was a French Roman Catholic prelate who served as the first Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  ‘The Missionary’s Adventures’ by Jehan Georges Vibert, c. 1883 — the painting that inspired Cather’s Prologue

  “Auspice Maria!” (Under the protection of Mary!)

  FATHER VAILLANT’S SIGNET-RING

  PROLOGUE — AT ROME

  ONE SUMMER EVENING in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome. The villa was famous for the fine view from its terrace. The hidden garden in which the four men sat at table lay some twenty feet below the south end of this terrace, and was a mere shelf of rock, overhanging a steep declivity planted with vineyards. A flight of stone steps connected it with the promenade above. The table stood in a sanded square, among potted orange and oleander trees, shaded by spreading ilex oaks that grew out of the rocks overhead. Beyond the balustrade was the drop into the air, and far below the landscape stretched soft and undulating; there was nothing to arrest the eye until it reached Rome itself.

  It was early when the Spanish Cardinal and his guests sat down to dinner. The sun was still good for an hour of supreme splendour, and across the shining folds of country the low profile of the city barely fretted the skyline — indistinct except for the dome of St. Peter’s, bluish grey like the flattened top of a great balloon, just a flash of copper light on its soft metallic surface. The Cardinal had an eccentric preference for beginning his dinner at this time in the late afternoon, when the vehemence of the sun suggested motion. The light was full of action and had a peculiar quality of climax — of splendid finish. It was both intense and soft, with a ruddiness as of much-multiplied candlelight, an aura of red in its flames. It bored into the ilex trees, illuminating their mahogany trunks and blurring their dark foliage; it warmed the bright green of the orange trees and the rose of the oleander blooms to gold; sent congested spiral patterns quivering over the damask and plate and crystal. The churchmen kept their rectangular clerical caps on their heads to protect them from the sun. The three Cardinals wore black cassocks with crimson pipings and crimson buttons, the Bishop a long black coat over his violet vest.

  They were talking business; had met, indeed, to discuss an anticipated appeal from the Provincial Council at Baltimore for the founding of an Apostolic Vicarate in New Mexico — a part of North America recently annexed to the United States. This new territory was vague to all of them, even to the missionary Bishop. The Italian and French Cardinals spoke of it as Le Mexique, and the Spanish host referred to it as “New Spain.” Their interest in the projected Vicarate was tepid, and had to be continually revived by the missionary, Father Ferrand; Irish by birth, French by ancestry — a man of wide wanderings and notable achievement in the New World, an Odysseus of the Church. The language spoken was French — the time had already gone by when Cardinals could conveniently discuss contemporary matters in Latin.

  The French and Italian Cardinals were men in vigorous middle life — the Norman full-belted and ruddy, the Venetian spare and sallow and hook-nosed. Their host, García María de Allande, was still a young man. He was dark in colouring, but the long Spanish face, that looked out from so many canvases in his ancestral portrait gallery, was in the young Cardinal much modified through his English mother. With his caffè oscuro eyes, he had a fresh, pleasant English mouth, and an open manner.

  During the latter years of the reign of Gregory XVI, de Allande had been the most influential man at the Vatican; but since the death of Gregory, two years ago, he had retired to his country estate. He believed the reforms of the new Pontiff impractical and dangerous, and had withdrawn from politics, confining his activities to work for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith — that organization which had been so fostered by Gregory. In his leisure the Cardinal played tennis. As a boy, in England, he had been passionately fond of this sport. Lawn tennis had not yet come into fashion; it was a formidable game of indoor tennis the Cardinal played. Amateurs of that violent sport came from Spain and France to try their skill against him.

  The missionary, Bishop Ferrand, looked much older than any of them, old and rough — except for his clear, intensely blue eyes. His diocese lay within the icy arms of the Great Lakes, and on his long, lonely horseback rides among his missions the sharp winds had bitten him well. The missionary was here for a purpose, and he pressed his point. He ate more rapidly than the others and had plenty of time to plead his cause, — finished each course with such dispatch that the Frenchman remarked he would have been an ideal dinner companion for Napoleon.

  The Bishop laughed and threw out his brown hands in apology. “Likely enough I have forgot my manners. I am preoccupied. Here you can scarcely understand what it means that the United States has annexed that enormous territory which was the cradle of the Faith in the New World. The Vicarate of New Mexico will be in a few years raised to an Episcopal See, with jurisdiction over a country larger than Central and Western Europe, barring Russia. The Bishop of that See will direct the beginning of momentous things.”

  “Beginnings,” murmured the Venetian, “there have been so many. But nothing ever comes from over there but trouble and appeals for money.”

  The missionary turned to him patiently. “Your Eminence, I beg you to follow me. This country was evangelized in fifteen hundred, by the Franciscan Fathers. It has been allowed to drift for nearly three hundred years and is not yet dead. It still pitifully calls itself a Catholic country, and tries to keep the forms of religion without instruction. The old mission churches are in ruins. The few priests are without guidance or discipline. They are lax in religious observance, and some of them live in open concubinage. If this Augean stable is not cleansed, now that the territory has been taken over by a progressive government, it will prejudice the interests of the Church in the whole of North America.”

  “But these missions are still under the jurisdiction of Mexico, are they not?” inquired the Frenchman.

  “In the See of the Bishop of Durango?” added María de Allande.

  The missionary sighed. “Your Eminence, the Bishop of Durango is an old man; and from his seat to Santa Fé is a distance of fifteen hundred English miles. There are no wagon roads, no canals, no navigable rivers. Trade is carried on by means of pack-mules, over treacherous trails. The desert down there has a peculiar horror; I do not mean thirst, nor Indian massacres, which are frequent. The very floor of the world is cracked open into countless canyons and arroyos, fissures in the earth which are sometimes ten feet deep, sometimes a thousand. Up and down these stony chasms the traveller and his mules clamber as best they can. It is impossible to go far in any direction without crossing them. If the Bishop of Durango should summon a disobedient priest by letter, who shall bring the Padre to him? Who can prove that he ever received the summons? The post is carried by hunters, fur trappers, gold seekers, whoever happens to be moving on the trails.”

  The Norman Cardinal emptied his glass and wiped his lips.

  “And the inhabitants, Father Ferrand? If these are the travellers, who stays at home?”

  “Some thirty Indian nations, Monsignor, each with its own customs and language, many of them fiercely hostile to each other. And the Mexicans, a naturally devout people. Untaught and unshepherded, they cling to the faith of their fathers.”

  “I have a letter from the Bishop of Durango, recommending his Vicar for this new post,” remarked María de Allande.

  “Your Eminence, it would be a great misfortune if a native priest were appointed; they have never done well in that field. Besides, this Vicar is old. The new Vicar must be a young man, of strong constitution, full of zeal, and above all, intelligent. He will have to deal with savagery and ignorance, with dissolute priests and political intrigue. He must be a man to whom order is necessary — as dear as life.”

  The Spaniard’s coffee-coloured eyes showed a glint of yellow as he glanced sidewise at his guest. “I suspect, from your exordium, that you have a candidate — and that he is a French priest, perhaps?”

  “You guess rightly, Monsignor. I am glad to see that we have the same opinion of French missionaries.”

  “Yes,” said the Cardinal lightly, “they are the best missionaries. Our Spanish fathers made good martyrs, but the French Jesuits accomplish more. They are the great organizers.”

  “Better than the Germans?” asked the Venetian, who had Austrian sympathies.

  “Oh, the Germans classify, but the French arrange! The French missionaries have a sense of proportion and rational adjustment. They are always trying to discover the logical relation of things. It is a passion with them.” Here the host turned to the old Bishop again. “But your Grace, why do you neglect this Burgundy? I had this wine brought up from my cellar especially to warm away the chill of your twenty Canadian winters. Surely, you do not gather vintages like this on the shores of the Great Lake Huron?”

  The missionary smiled as he took up his untouched glass. “It is superb, your Eminence, but I fear I have lost my palate for vintages. Out there, a little whisky, or Hudson Bay Company rum, does better for us. I must confess I enjoyed the champagne in Paris. We had been forty days at sea, and I am a poor sailor.”

  “Then we must have some for you.” He made a sign to his major-domo. “You like it very cold? And your new Vicar Apostolic, what will he drink in the country of bison and serpents à sonnettes? And what will he eat?”

  “He will eat dried buffalo meat and frijoles with chili, and he will be glad to drink water when he can get it. He will have no easy life, your Eminence. That country will drink up his youth and strength as it does the rain. He will be called upon for every sacrifice, quite possibly for martyrdom. Only last year the Indian pueblo of San Fernandez de Taos murdered and scalped the American Governor and some dozen other whites. The reason they did not scalp their Padre, was that their Padre was one of the leaders of the rebellion and himself planned the massacre. That is how things stand in New Mexico!”

  “Where is your candidate at present, Father?”

  “He is a parish priest, on the shores of Lake Ontario, in my diocese. I have watched his work for nine years. He is but thirty-five now. He came to us directly from the Seminary.”

  “And his name is?”

  “Jean Marie Latour.”

  María de Allande, leaning back in his chair, put the tips of his long fingers together and regarded them thoughtfully.