SOURCE: Bohlke, L. Brent. “Beginnings: Willa Cather and ‘The Clemency of the Court.’” Prairie Schooner 48, no. 2 (summer 1974): 134–44.

In the following essay, Bohlke dilates upon Cather's sources for her story “The Clemency of the Court.”

Henry James once wrote in “On the Genesis of ‘The Real Thing’,” that the story had been suggested to him by an incident “related to me by George du Maurier.”¹ It seemed to be a simple tale, but it was one that captured the imagination of James. Later, he was to recount how a simple remark of William Dean Howells, which was related to him by someone else, proved to be the genesis of an entire novel, The Ambassadors.² Sherwood Anderson discusses the same kind of phenomenon. He tells of overhearing chance remarks, unfinished tales, unconnected sentences. “A few such sentences in the midst of a conversation overheard or dropped into a tale someone...