The Song of the Lark

  Published in 1915 by the Houghton Mifflin Company, Cather’s next novel derived its title from the painting Song of the Lark by Jules Breton, which depicts a young , pretty peasant woman standing in a field at sunset, looking hopefully into the distance. It was painted in 1884 and forms part of the collection of the Art Institute in Chicago. The story also grew from Cather’s own passion for opera.

  For those readers that like to follow an author’s creative journey in their manuscripts, this story has treats in store. The original manuscript of the book stood at 200,000 words and Cather edited it down to 163,000 words before submitting it to her American publisher. However, William Heinemann of London still rejected it, complaining that it ‘told everything about everybody’ which did not appeal to him. Cather even admitted to her verbosity in the story in the preface to a reissue in 1932, saying she should with hindsight have ended the story just as the heroine’s career was about to blossom and merely skimmed over the rest of the narrative. She then cut it by ten percent for a 1937 autograph edition of her works and in keeping with her previous reservations, the surplus was largely taken from the latter part of the book. The Song of the Lark is also seen as source material for Cather’s biographers, as many of the details of the main character Thea’s early life are taken directly from Cather’s experiences, the key difference being that Cather was a writer and Thea is a singer.

  Thea’s vocation was perhaps an indulgence on Cather’s part, a chance to write about and immerse herself in the world of opera, about which she was passionate – having been commissioned by McClures to write an article about great American female singers, Cather was delighted to secure some interviews with the great Wagnerian opera singer, Olive Fremstad and she and her partner Edith visited the Metropolitan opera house in New York frequently. Fremstad’s highs and lows and the fact that she too came from a small town in Minnesota, from a family of Swedish immigrants, appealed to Cather; she too had to battle to achieve a career in her chosen medium and it was a pioneering American ‘rags-to-riches’ story. This was familiar territory and Cather used all these experiences to make the character of Thea more authentic.

  The narrative opens in the small town of Moonstone, Colorado, where we meet Thea Kronberg, a girl of eleven years old. She belongs to a close knit and respectable family with eight children, who are self sufficient with a tolerant, kindly and devout mother and father, who is a local pastor. They are relatively poor, but Thea is able to have piano lessons from a local tutor, Professor Wunsch. He has told Mrs Kronberg that her daughter has musical talent and she is keen for Thea to explore this; she herself had the same opportunities, as her father had been a professional musician. Thea is a determined student and the Professor allows himself to have hopes that she can achieve something more with her talent than the average student of his. She is a fortunate child, as she also has the local physician, Dr Archie, as a mentor. He watches out for her wellbeing and gives her special treats, such as strawberries from his garden and expensively imported grapes when she is sick. A thirty-year-old man called Ray Kennedy is already so taken with Thea that he wants to marry her when she is old enough. Clearly, there is something very remarkable about Thea.

  Thea, however, does want to be cosseted and admired; she wants to be applauded for her musical talent; as an example, her Christmas Eve is ruined for her when her young rival, Lily Fisher, who is allowed to sing at the local concert to loud applause, whereas Thea may only play a piano recital that rather bores the audience. Recognition is important to Thea and she feels humiliated that her efforts are overlooked in favour of one with a lesser talent.

  When Thea is fourteen, the Professor’s alcohol dependence has got the better of him and he becomes too ill to work. When he leaves the district, Thea starts to receive enquiries from potential music students and by the time she is fifteen years old, she is established as Moonstone’s leading music teacher, with a decent list of pupils. Thea’s mother is unsure – she thinks her daughter will be married soon enough. Mr Kronberg disagrees – ‘Thea is not the marrying kind… I don’t see Thea bringing up a family… A girl with all that energy has got to do something, same as a boy, to keep her out of mischief.’

  For a while, Thea’s life settles into a routine. She is a good music teacher and is somewhat under duress; she also helps her father with the music at his church, although she seems to be agnostic in her views about faith. Together with her family and neighbours, she witnesses a typhoid outbreak in the community and is bemused when her apparently Christian friends drive a tramp out of town, believing him to have brought the disease. Then, tragedy strikes when her would-be-fiancé, Ray, is killed in an accident. Ironically, his death offers Thea the chance to spread her wings and more vigorously pursue a career, as he has left her $600 from his estate to go to Chicago and have specialised piano tuition. Dr Archie helps Thea move to Chicago for this new adventure in her life and after a difficult journey, they arrive in the city. Thea will study with the eminent pianist, Andor Harsanyi, but he is expensive and she needs church work to help her get by – she is able to get a paid position in the choir of Reverend Larsen and lodgings in the respectable, but modest home of Mrs Lorch.

  Once Thea starts her lessons with Harsanyi, he is impressed by her ‘richly gifted nature’. However, there was much work to do – she had woefully poor knowledge of music in general and a dated method of playing the piano. Such was her ambition and drive, that he was confident she would soon catch up, but he finds her enigmatic, even secretive and is amazed to find out by accident that she sings in a church choir. He asks to hear her sing and is intrigued by her beautiful voice. He then splits her lessons between piano and singing, but he is no voice coach and he goes in search of a singing tutor who can guide her unique talent. Thea is now at a crossroads in her life. Which way shall she go, to achieve the greatest success – piano, or singing? The final decision will dictate her future career and happiness, but there will be many trials to endure before she achieves her heart’s desire…

  Whilst one can certainly agree with Cather that the book lacks a ‘tightness’ of structure and has her usual quota of biographical and factual digressions, nevertheless, it is a compelling tale. Thea is a strong character – not necessarily appealing and certainly not a heroine in the idealistically feminine sense of the word, but charismatic, strong and complex. Although there are numerous men that orbit around her, to help her, teach her and fall in love with her, Thea remains largely solitary, with some part of herself always held back. In the first edition, Thea is depicted as having more masculine traits than in later editions – she is originally described as ‘virile’, ‘heroic’ – and her relationship with her lover, Fred, is more like two tomboys than a man and woman in a relationship. However, the nuances of Thea’s character are described, she is a remarkable and strong person and all the other characters somewhat pale into two dimensions in her presence. If Cather was truly the template for Thea’s personality, she must indeed have been a fascinating person to know.

  “Song of the Lark” by Jules Breton, the painting that inspired the title of the book

  CONTENTS

  PART I. FRIENDS OF CHILDHOOD

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  PART II. THE SONG OF THE LARK

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  PART III. STUPID FACES

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  PART IV. THE ANCIENT PEOPLE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  PART V. DR. ARCHIE’S VENTURE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  PART VI. KRONBORG

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  EPILOGUE

  The first edition

  The first edition’s title page

  PART I. FRIENDS OF CHILDHOOD

  I

  DR. HOWARD ARCHIE had just come up from a game of pool with the Jewish clothier and two traveling men who happened to be staying overnight in Moonstone. His offices were in the Duke Block, over the drug store. Larry, the doctor’s man, had lit the overhead light in the waiting-room and the double student’s lamp on the desk in the study. The isinglass sides of the hard-coal burner were aglow, and the air in the study was so hot that as he came in the doctor opened the door into his little operating-room, where there was no stove. The waiting room was carpeted and stiffly furnished, something like a country parlor. The study had worn, unpainted floors, but there was a look of winter comfort about it. The doctor’s flat-top desk was large and well made; the papers were in orderly piles, under glass weights. Behind the stove a wide bookcase, with double glass doors, reached from the floor to the ceiling. It was filled with medical books of every thickness and color. On the top shelf stood a long row of thirty or forty volumes, bound all alike in dark mottled board covers, with imitation leather backs.

  As the doctor in New England villages is proverbially old, so the doctor in small Colorado towns twenty-five years ago was generally young. Dr. Archie was barely thirty. He was tall, with massive shoulders which he held stiffly, and a large, well-shaped head. He was a distinguished-looking man, for that part of the world, at least.

  There was something individual in the way in which his reddish-brown hair, parted cleanly at the side, bushed over his high forehead. His nose was straight and thick, and his eyes were intelligent. He wore a curly, reddish mustache and an imperial, cut trimly, which made him look a little like the pictures of Napoleon III. His hands were large and well kept, but ruggedly formed, and the backs were shaded with crinkly reddish hair. He wore a blue suit of woolly, wide-waled serge; the traveling men had known at a glance that it was made by a Denver tailor. The doctor was always well dressed.

  Dr. Archie turned up the student’s lamp and sat down in the swivel chair before his desk. He sat uneasily, beating a tattoo on his knees with his fingers, and looked about him as if he were bored. He glanced at his watch, then absently took from his pocket a bunch of small keys, selected one and looked at it. A contemptuous smile, barely perceptible, played on his lips, but his eyes remained meditative. Behind the door that led into the hall, under his buffalo-skin driving-coat, was a locked cupboard. This the doctor opened mechanically, kicking aside a pile of muddy overshoes. Inside, on the shelves, were whiskey glasses and decanters, lemons, sugar, and bitters. Hearing a step in the empty, echoing hall without, the doctor closed the cupboard again, snapping the Yale lock. The door of the waiting-room opened, a man entered and came on into the consulting-room.

  “Good-evening, Mr. Kronborg,” said the doctor carelessly. “Sit down.”

  His visitor was a tall, loosely built man, with a thin brown beard, streaked with gray. He wore a frock coat, a broad-brimmed black hat, a white lawn necktie, and steel rimmed spectacles. Altogether there was a pretentious and important air about him, as he lifted the skirts of his coat and sat down.

  “Good-evening, doctor. Can you step around to the house with me? I think Mrs. Kronborg will need you this evening.” This was said with profound gravity and, curiously enough, with a slight embarrassment.

  “Any hurry?” the doctor asked over his shoulder as he went into his operating-room.

  Mr. Kronborg coughed behind his hand, and contracted his brows. His face threatened at every moment to break into a smile of foolish excitement. He controlled it only by calling upon his habitual pulpit manner. “Well, I think it would be as well to go immediately. Mrs. Kronborg will be more comfortable if you are there. She has been suffering for some time.”

  The doctor came back and threw a black bag upon his desk. He wrote some instructions for his man on a prescription pad and then drew on his overcoat. “All ready,” he announced, putting out his lamp. Mr. Kronborg rose and they tramped through the empty hall and down the stairway to the street. The drug store below was dark, and the saloon next door was just closing. Every other light on Main Street was out.

  On either side of the road and at the outer edge of the board sidewalk, the snow had been shoveled into breastworks. The town looked small and black, flattened down in the snow, muffled and all but extinguished. Overhead the stars shone gloriously. It was impossible not to notice them. The air was so clear that the white sand hills to the east of Moonstone gleamed softly. Following the Reverend Mr. Kronborg along the narrow walk, past the little dark, sleeping houses, the doctor looked up at the flashing night and whistled softly. It did seem that people were stupider than they need be; as if on a night like this there ought to be something better to do than to sleep nine hours, or to assist Mrs. Kronborg in functions which she could have performed so admirably unaided. He wished he had gone down to Denver to hear Fay Templeton sing “See-Saw.” Then he remembered that he had a personal interest in this family, after all. They turned into another street and saw before them lighted windows; a low story-and-a-half house, with a wing built on at the right and a kitchen addition at the back, everything a little on the slant — roofs, windows, and doors. As they approached the gate, Peter Kronborg’s pace grew brisker. His nervous, ministerial cough annoyed the doctor. “Exactly as if he were going to give out a text,” he thought. He drew off his glove and felt in his vest pocket. “Have a troche, Kronborg,” he said, producing some. “Sent me for samples. Very good for a rough throat.”

  “Ah, thank you, thank you. I was in something of a hurry. I neglected to put on my overshoes. Here we are, doctor.” Kronborg opened his front door — seemed delighted to be at home again.

  The front hall was dark and cold; the hatrack was hung with an astonishing number of children’s hats and caps and cloaks. They were even piled on the table beneath the hatrack. Under the table was a heap of rubbers and overshoes. While the doctor hung up his coat and hat, Peter Kronborg opened the door into the living-room. A glare of light greeted them, and a rush of hot, stale air, smelling of warming flannels.

  At three o’clock in the morning Dr. Archie was in the parlor putting on his cuffs and coat — there was no spare bedroom in that house. Peter Kronborg’s seventh child, a boy, was being soothed and cosseted by his aunt, Mrs. Kronborg was asleep, and the doctor was going home. But he wanted first to speak to Kronborg, who, coatless and fluttery, was pouring coal into the kitchen stove. As the doctor crossed the dining-room he paused and listened. From one of the wing rooms, off to the left, he heard rapid, distressed breathing. He went to the kitchen door.

  “One of the children sick in there?” he asked, nodding toward the partition.

  Kronborg hung up the stove-lifter and dusted his fingers. “It must be Thea. I meant to ask you to look at her. She has a croupy cold. But in my excitement — Mrs. Kronborg is doing finely, eh, doctor? Not many of your patients with such a constitution, I expect.”

  “Oh, yes. She’s a fine mother.” The doctor took up the lamp from the kitchen table and unceremoniously went into the wing room. Two chubby little boys were asleep in a double bed, with the coverlids over their noses and their feet drawn up. In a single bed, next to theirs, lay a little girl of eleven, wide awake, two yellow braids sticking up on the pillow behind her. Her face was scarlet and her eyes were blazing.

  The doctor shut the door behind him. “Feel pretty sick, Thea?” he asked as he took out his thermometer. “Why didn’t you call somebody?”

  She looked at him with greedy affection. “I thought you were here,” she spoke between quick breaths. “There is a new baby, isn’t there? Which?”

  “Which?” repeated the doctor.

  “Brother or sister?”

  He smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Brother,” he said, taking her hand. “Open.”

  “Good. Brothers are better,” she murmured as he put the glass tube under her tongue.

  “Now, be still, I want to count.” Dr. Archie reached for her hand and took out his watch. When he put her hand back under the quilt he went over to one of the windows — they were both tight shut — and lifted it a little way. He reached up and ran his hand along the cold, unpapered wall. “Keep under the covers; I’ll come back to you in a moment,” he said, bending over the glass lamp with his thermometer. He winked at her from the door before he shut it.

  Peter Kronborg was sitting in his wife’s room, holding the bundle which contained his son. His air of cheerful importance, his beard and glasses, even his shirt-sleeves, annoyed the doctor. He beckoned Kronborg into the living-room and said sternly: —

  “You’ve got a very sick child in there. Why didn’t you call me before? It’s pneumonia, and she must have been sick for several days. Put the baby down somewhere, please, and help me make up the bed-lounge here in the parlor. She’s got to be in a warm room, and she’s got to be quiet. You must keep the other children out. Here, this thing opens up, I see,” swinging back the top of the carpet lounge. “We can lift her mattress and carry her in just as she is. I don’t want to disturb her more than is necessary.”

  Kronborg was all concern immediately. The two men took up the mattress and carried the sick child into the parlor. “I’ll have to go down to my office to get some medicine, Kronborg. The drug store won’t be open. Keep the covers on her. I won’t be gone long. Shake down the stove and put on a little coal, but not too much; so it’ll catch quickly, I mean. Find an old sheet for me, and put it there to warm.”