My Ántonia

My Ántonia

Willa Cather

Last summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season of

intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a traveling

companion James Quayle Burden—Jim Burden, as we still call him in the

West. He and I are old friends—we grew up together in the same Nebraska

town—and we had much to say to each other. While the train flashed

through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and

bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in

the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red

dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind,

reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to

spend one’s childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and

corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the

world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is

fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds

and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole

country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one

who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about

it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said.

Although Jim Burden and I both live in New York, and are old friends, I

do not see much of him there. He is legal counsel for one of the great

Western railways, and is sometimes away from his New York office for

weeks together. That is one reason why we do not often meet. Another is

that I do not like his wife.

When Jim was still an obscure young lawyer, struggling to make his way

in New York, his career was suddenly advanced by a brilliant marriage.

Genevieve Whitney was the only daughter of a distinguished man. Her

marriage with young Burden was the subject of sharp comment at the

time. It was said she had been brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland

Whitney, and that she married this unknown man from the West out of

bravado. She was a restless, headstrong girl, even then, who liked to

astonish her friends. Later, when I knew her, she was always doing

something unexpected. She gave one of her town houses for a Suffrage

headquarters, produced one of her own plays at the Princess Theater,

was arrested for picketing during a garment-makers’ strike, etc. I am

never able to believe that she has much feeling for the causes to which

she lends her name and her fleeting interest. She is handsome,

energetic, executive, but to me she seems unimpressionable and

temperamentally incapable of enthusiasm. Her husband’s quiet tastes

irritate her, I think, and she finds it worth while to play the

patroness to a group of young poets and painters of advanced ideas and

mediocre ability. She has her own fortune and lives her own life. For

some reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. James Burden.

As for Jim, no disappointments have been severe enough to chill his

naturally romantic and ardent disposition. This disposition, though it

often made him seem very funny when he was a boy, has been one of the

strongest elements in his success. He loves with a personal passion the

great country through which his railway runs and branches. His faith in

it and his knowledge of it have played an important part in its

development. He is always able to raise capital for new enterprises in

Wyoming or Montana, and has helped young men out there to do remarkable

things in mines and timber and oil. If a young man with an idea can

once get Jim Burden’s attention, can manage to accompany him when he

goes off into the wilds hunting for lost parks or exploring new

BOOK I. The Shimerdas