SOURCE: "The Friendship of Willa Cather and Dorothy Canfield," in Vermont History: The Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society, Vol. 48, No. 3, Summer, 1980, pp. 144-54.

In the following essay, Lovering details the friendship as well as the personal and literary affinities of Fisher and Willa Cather.

Most readers know of the many friends that Willa Cather had and treasured and who in turn seemed to appreciate her great gifts—the Menuhins, Edith Lewis, the McClungs, and the Hambourgs, Elizabeth Sergeant, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mrs. Fields, the D. H. Lawrences and many more. Yet the students of Willa Cather's life know that she remained an essentially private person, an artist who valued her privacy intensely and guarded it with great care. In this respect she resembled Henry James whom she early admired. Both knew the nature of their artistic gifts; the sacred flame had to be tended. But even the...