Rediscovering Serena’s Album
In 1888, a teenager signing herself “Wm. Cather M.D.” made a memorable entry in a friendship album owned by her schoolmate Serena White. And Willa Cather’s radiantly confident entry in Mental Portraits is only one of the jewels in its pages. Thanks to the generosity of Serena’s family, you can discover for yourself the treasures in it pages, in this first-ever presentation of Serena’s album in its entirety.
This “Mental Portrait” autograph book asks those making entries to respond to questions ranging from, “My idea of perfect happiness” to “My idea of real misery” and much more in between those two emotional poles.Not only can you read Willa Cather’s responses (often humorous and outrageous), there’s Addie Carson stating, “. . . the single place or locality I would prefer to visit above all others” was a lunatic asylum and Julietta Augusta Merriam declaring the bycycle to be “The greatest folly of the 19th century.”
But Cather, always the overachiever, lists under “Amusements” the response “vivesection.” And “amputating limbs” was listed as her “Idea of perfect happiness.” Before you give her responses a hard Freudian twist, remember Cather’s dark humor and the fact she was responding at a point in her life when she thought she was on track to becoming a doctor.
Post your ideas on something interesting, surprising or even shocking from the album.
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