56 pages • 1 hour read
Willa CatherA Lost Lady
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1923A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 8-9
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary
In May, Mrs. Forrester comes into Judge Pommeroy’s office, smiling and coaxing Niel to notice her new clothes, which she says are the first she has had in many years. Niel tells her that they are very pretty. Trying to charm Niel, Mrs. Forrester asks him to come to dinner on Friday. She teases that he may not like some of the boys she has also invited: “You mustn’t be so stiff, so—so superior! It isn’t becoming, at your age” (91). She mimics his frown and makes him laugh. Niel agrees to come to dinner, though he is angry with himself afterward for letting her persuade him.
Niel is the last to arrive at dinner. Young men from town are sitting in the dining room, and Ivy Peters is mixing cocktails. His sister Annie is helping Mrs. Forrester in the kitchen. Niel notices that the fine china and silver are laid out, though he reflects that the other young men have no clue about the finery. The young men display poor manners, though they defer to Ivy; “no matter what [Ivy] did or said, they laughed—in recognition of his general success” (92). The boys stand awkwardly when Mrs. Forrester enters, and Niel realizes that she must have successfully taught them some manners.
Mrs. Forrester asks Niel if he can carve the ducks she is serving. When he murmurs that he cannot do so as well as his uncle, Mrs. Forrester comments that he could not do so as well as Captain Forrester either, but nobody can carve as well as men used to.
During dinner the young men do not speak, since they cannot eat and converse at the same time. Mrs. Forrester does her best to engage them in conversation and does not eat anything herself. Niel wonders why she has gone to such trouble to serve a sumptuous meal for these people, since they do not appreciate it. He tries to help her carry the conversation with the young men on a variety of topics, but he gets virtually nothing in reply.
After the quickly consumed dinner, the young men go into the parlor to smoke cigars, and Mrs. Forrester, following an old tradition of leaving men alone after dinner, does not join them at first. When she comes in, the men are discussing camping, so she says that when she returns to California, she will invite them to the summer cabin she will buy in the Sierras.
Niel encourages Mrs. Forrester to tell the story of how she and Captain Forrester met. Niel had heard the story from his uncle years before, including the backstory that Mrs. Forrester does not tell now. Marian, before she was Mrs. Forrester, was engaged to a millionaire who was shot and killed by the husband of another woman in a hotel. There was such a scandal that Marian’s family sent her away to the Sierras.
Mrs. Forrester now tells her story. She says that Captain Forrester came to visit her father’s partner, though she was too busy with the young men in the camp to notice him. She had persuaded a young man to take her mountain climbing, but the rope broke and they both fell. The young man was killed instantly, and Marian broke both of her legs. Captain Forrester was in the group who found her, and he carried her back to camp. By the time a surgeon made it to the camp from San Francisco, her legs had to be rebroken and set properly. Captain Forrester stayed in the camp until she could walk again, then asked her to marry him.
The young men are genuinely impressed by her story and ask questions. Niel thinks about the first time he heard this story, when the Forresters were entertaining Mr. Dalzell and some very prominent friends, including Marshall Field and the president of the Union Pacific. Niel thinks to himself that Mrs. Forrester has not changed so much after all, that the right man could still save her, though that kind of man no longer exists in this time and place.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary
Judge Pommeroy is well enough to resume his business, so Niel prepares to return to Boston. Though he is eager to go, he is sad, as he feels that once he goes, he will be leaving behind everything that was important to his childhood. He regrets that “the people, the very country itself, were changing so fast that there would be nothing to come back to” (97). Niel feels nostalgic for the glorious time of the pioneers, of which he witnessed the very tail end. Niel harbors hard feelings in his heart for Mrs. Forrester, who was not willing to fade away with the other pioneers but insists on living a life reborn. He does not say goodbye to her and thinks of her with weary contempt.
Niel did attempt to see Mrs. Forrester prior to leaving. Through her dining room window, he saw Ivy Peters come in and put his arms around Mrs. Forrester. Feeling betrayed and angry, Niel went back down the hill, knowing it would be the last time. He thought about how he had given the Forresters a year of his life, and how Mrs. Forrester proved herself unworthy of his sacrifices. Niel now believes that Captain Forrester was the heart of their home: “All those years he had thought it was Mrs. Forrester who made that house so different from any other” (98). Instead, since her husband’s death, Mrs. Forrester has shown herself to be a common woman who surrounds herself with common men.
While Judge Pommeroy remains alive, Niel hears occasional news of Mrs. Forrester, none of it good. She is in a relationship with Ivy Peters and looks sad and unhealthy. Judge Pommeroy refers to her as “broken.” After his uncle’s death, Niel hears that Ivy married a woman from Wyoming and bought the Forrester house. Mrs. Forrester moved away, presumably to California.
For many years, Niel cannot think of Mrs. Forrester without regret, but eventually he thinks of her in impersonal terms, glad that he knew her and that she helped shape the man he became. Niel never met another woman who was so captivating: “Her eyes, when they laughed for a moment into one’s own, seemed to promise a wild delight that he has not found in life” (99). He wishes he could know if her unparalleled charm had been real or imaginary.
Many years later, Niel runs into Ed Elliot in Chicago. Ed, a mining engineer, saw Mrs. Forrester in Bueno Aires and promised to convey a message to Niel if he ever saw him again. She married a wealthy man named Collins in California and moved with him to Brazil. She asked Ed, if he ever spoke to Niel again, to send him her love and let him know that things had worked out well for her.
Niel wonders if the former Mrs. Forrester is still alive, saying that he would consider making a trip to see her, but Ed says she died. Every year she sent money for the upkeep of Captain Forrester’s grave, but three years ago her husband sent funds in her memory, calling her his late wife. Niel is glad that she was cared for at the end of her life, and Ed agrees.
Part 2, Chapters 8-9 Analysis
Mrs. Forrester uses Niel’s former devotion to her to talk him into coming to dinner. She also uses his worry about gossip about her to tease him, saying, “Since you mind what people say, Niel, aren’t you afraid they’ll be saying you’re a snob, just because you’ve been to Boston and seen a little of the world?” (91). Niel is angry with himself for letting her manipulate him.
Mrs. Forrester tries to make lively conversation and puts special effort into her appearance, wearing dangling earrings and rouge. Such efforts “improved some women, but not her—at least, not tonight, when her eyes were hollow with fatigue, and she looked pinched and worn as [Niel] had never seen her” (93). These actions are vain attempts to recreate the wonderful dinner parties she hosted when Captain Forrester was alive, when they welcomed influential guests and held high social status.
Niel thinks this sad endeavor is a waste of time, but he tries to save the evening by asking Mrs. Forrester to recount how she and her husband met. Mrs. Forrester begins her story with “once upon a time,” like she is telling a fairytale. She had looked tired and expended all evening, but now her face becomes animated as she relates her own personal fairytale.
People had questioned why Mrs. Forrester had married a man 25 years her senior, when she was such a lively young woman. From her story, it appears that she was attracted to the way he risked his own life to carry her back to camp after she broke her legs, and how he stayed to ensure her comfort as she recovered. She had been engaged to a millionaire who was killed by the husband of a married woman, so she could see that Captain Forrester compared favorably to such a frivolous and immoral man. He was dependable and steadfast, a “mountain” of a man, as she called him at the beginning of the story.
The reader also gets a sense of why Captain Forrester chose Marian as his bride. His first wife had been sickly and died young. Marian’s zest for life and sense of adventure likely appealed to Captain Forrester. He also seemed to love her strength and courage, as evidenced by Mrs. Forrester’s memory: “You remember, Niel, he always boasted that I never screamed when they were carrying me up the trail” (95). Captain Forrester was compelled to save Marian, as Niel and Mr. Ogden later were as well.
As she finishes her tale, Niel sees Mrs. Forrester as he used to, not in the diminished light he’s recently viewed her. He notes that “she had, after all, not changed so much since then. Niel felt tonight that the right man could save her, even now” (96). Yet Niel also recognizes that there are no men who can do so anymore, a further demonstration of how the unscrupulous capitalist era has supplanted the chivalry of the pioneering age.
When Niel returns to Boston, he fully enters the capitalist era, leaving behind both his boyhood and the historical period that Captain Forrester represented. Niel views this with sad nostalgia: “The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed—these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces—and this would always be his” (97). Niel is bitter and angry that Mrs. Forrester did not gracefully fade away with the genteel pioneer era, where he feels she belongs. Instead, she insists on fashioning a new life for herself with the new, crass Westerners like Ivy Peters. Niel feels that she has betrayed both his sacrifices and Captain Forrester’s ideals. She did not allow herself to be saved. Rather, she determined her own future, defying male expectations and recapturing her former status on her own terms, by her own means.
Over time, Niel’s bitterness fades, and he thinks of Mrs. Forrester with gratitude and cheer. He wonders about her and is very gratified that he “was destined to hear once again of his long-lost lady” (99). When Ed Elliot shares that the former Mrs. Forrester “came back up in the world,” Niel is delighted. The fact that she ended her life as a lady again, loved and cared for, is important to Niel. It is significant that Mrs. Forrester specifically asked Ed to relay her greetings to Niel, to let him know that she was well-cared for by a man of substance. This shows that Niel stayed in her heart and was of great importance to her. The fact that she sent money to have Captain Forrester’s grave maintained in perpetuity also reflects how much she truly loved and valued him.
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