We have arrived at our last story for the Willa Cather Short Story Project, “Double Birthday,” published in February 1929.

As discussed in the reminder post for this story, “Double Birthday” was included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison (Houghton Mifflin 1999). I also discovered that it was included in Best Short Stories of 1929, edited by Edward J. O’Brien (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1929), and Fifty Best American Short Stories, 1915–1939, also edited by O’Brien (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1939). And if that’s not enough, it was included in A Modern Galaxy: Short Stories, edited by Dale Warren (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1930). For a story many Cather fans haven’t heard of today, it certainly got around in its younger days.

Galaxy?

Doesn’t A Modern Galaxy sound like a sci-fi collection? In a 1940 letter to editor Ferris Greenslet, Cather refers to A Modern Galaxy as “a Christmas volume of short stories.” That makes the title even odder! I look forward to seeing the table of contents. (The closest library with a copy is 111 miles away, so I’ve requested a scan of the ToC.)

I don’t think “Double Birthday” is among Cather’s best stories. She didn’t either. In a 1930 letter to Greenslet also regarding A Modern Galaxy, she wrote,

“If you decide to use DOUBLE BIRTHDAY in your book of short stories, please don’t, for goodness sake, make any remarks to the effect that I have selected it because I think it a particularly good story, for I don’t think so. I simply suggested it to you because it is rather recent and there is no string of any kind on it.”

“Double Birthday” captures a bygone era and some cultural trends during the period in which it was published, so I can see why it would resonate with readers back then. The main characters, Albert Engelhardt and his Uncle Albert, a retired doctor, live in a shabby but wonderful home full of books, classical music, and quality furniture. It is reminiscent of pre-World War I days. But it is now the late 1920s. Flappers bob their hair and dance to jazz. Prohibition is the law of the land from 1920 to 1933. Cather liked to drink, and her dislike of the 18th Amendment is apparent in this story.

Artistic Types

The excesses and wealth of the “Roaring Twenties” were not kind to the Alberts. The family lost their wealth, and young Albert, who is 55, works in a low-level job. He wants to give his Uncle Albert a hearty celebration for his eightieth birthday. Young Albert was born on his uncle’s birthday, which is why they share a name. Both men are artistic types driven not by money but by beauty, music, art, women, and quality “things.” They are out of step with their time, as the opening paragraph makes clear,

“Even in American cities, which seem so much alike, where people seem all to be living the same lives, striving for the same things, thinking the same thoughts, there are still individuals a little out of tune with the times–there are still survivals of a past more loosely woven, there are disconcerting beginnings of a future yet unforeseen.”

Old wealthy friends have dropped out of the Alberts’ lives and would be embarrassed to run into them, as is Judge Hammersley. I can appreciate all of the above.

But what is less palatable is young Albert walking through his old neighborhood where the wealthy live, thinking that “he had had the best of it; he had gone a-Maying while it was May.” The “solid comfort” and “iron-bound security” he thinks people experience in these homes do not appeal to him. Much. He’s living his life focusing on what he loves, and that’s great. May we all have such a life.

To be middle-aged and just hanging on

What makes me uncomfortable with this story is that it was written by someone who was financially well-off (and 55 or 56), speculating on what someone who is not well-off (and 55) might be feeling. Albert’s life does sound nice — he has a job, plays piano for his uncle, and loves to read in the evenings. But his thoughts ring a little hollow to me.

Eight months after this story was published, Wall Street crashed and plunged the country into the Great Depression. I know it’s not fair to the story (and pointless) to think about what’s in the future, but what will happen to the two Alberts then when they’re just getting by now? Will they lose their home? Will the Judge be one of those wealthy men who loses it all in the Crash and dies by suicide?

Nostalgia

I used to be more patient with nostalgia (and have reveled in it), but when it is coupled with glorifying economic hardship, alarms go off in my head. I understand that Cather was trying to show how full and rich the life of the Alberts is, even without the money and real estate deemed markers of success by the larger society. It’s an age-old story. The poor, struggling artist incapable of making money is glorified. On the other hand, rich people don’t create art; they buy it. This theme goes back to Cather’s earliest stories like “Flavia and Her Artists.”

As with many of Cather’s stories, the characters in “Double Birthday” are based on people she knew. I understand she was writing about how money is not the most important thing and that art and friends feed the soul. To that, I heartily agree! There was also the harsh reality that Cather deeply felt, that the world broke in two after World War I. Nothing would ever be the same, and recapturing some of the best of how life was before that world-changing catastrophe may have been a balm for Cather to write and for readers to read.

Gender

On a different topic, I am still thinking about gender issues in this story, which are pretty grim. It’s natural for women to flock to “money and success and big houses and fast boats and French cars.” Young men of a certain set “were scornful of girls until they wanted one; then they grabbed her rather brutally, and it was over.” Both Albert and his uncle are single. But older Albert has had success with the ladies in the past, and now Judge Hammersley’s widowed daughter, Mrs. Parmenter, has returned to her old friends for a night of remembrance and celebration. But will she show up for that promised drive tomorrow? Or will she gravitate back to “money and success”?

One of the surprises in this story is the mention of Oscar Wilde. He is used as an example of how much things have changed in the world by way of considering the books in young Albert’s library. It is filled with works that were once cutting-edge, rebellious, seductive, and stimulating. Now, in the short span of Albert’s adult life, their power is gone, “recaptured only in memory.”

“Oscar Wilde, whose wickedness was now so outdone that he looked like the poor old hat of some Victorian belle, wired and feathered and garlanded and faded.”

Phew. That’s harsh. I’m glad Oscar wasn’t alive to read that.

But I am glad to have read these 64 short stories by Willa Cather and appreciate those who have joined me for some of them and others who have been reading these blog posts over the last five years. Thank you!