"How Would You Like to be Born" - A Short Story by Nancy Hale - first published 1955 - Included with WHERE THE LIGHT FALLS: SELECTED STORIES OF NANCY HALE Introduction and volume compilation copyright 2019 introduction by Lauren Groff

Born: May 6, 1908 - Boston, Massachusetts 

Died: Sept 24,1988 Charlottesville, Virginia 

My first encounter with the work of Nancy Hale was over three years ago.

There are 25 stories in The Selected Short Stories of Nancy Hale. I was at once so intrigued by today’s story’s title “The Most Elegant Drawing Room in Europe” that I decided to start there. I loved this story. I liked How Hale played with our perceptions of the American mother and daughter making their first visit to Venice and their relationship with The Italian Countesa in whose Mansion on The Grand Canal they find what they see as the most elegant drawing room in Europe.

From opening lines we see How in awe of the Countess and Venice is

““THE CONTESSA doesn’t seem entirely real, she’s so exquisite,” wrote Emily Knapp to her friend and fellow-librarian Ruth Patterson, at home in Worcester, Massachusetts. “I wish you too might have seen her in her tiny jewel box of a palazzo yesterday, as “THE CONTESSA doesn’t seem entirely real, she’s so exquisite, we did! She’d lent us her gondola for the afternoon. (I can’t tell you how super-elegant we felt, or how much attention we attracted on the Grand Canal.) Persis Woodson, the artist I wrote you about meeting on the Cristoforo Colombo coming over, remarked that all over America next winter people will be showing home movies with us prominent in them, pointing us out as aristocratic Venetians lolling in our private gondola!”

Today's story, "How Would You Like to be Born" centers  a 30 year old unmarried woman New England woman.  Her older sister, who ran everything, has recently passed away.  We do not learn of her parents.

 "Yankee sisters in “How Would You Like to Be Born . . . ,” who restrict their meals to cheap organ meat they don’t even enjoy so that they can give money to their progressive causes. As a child, she felt that she was destined to admire but never own the beautiful things of life," From the introduction 

She has been left comfortable but not rich.  She was raised to be charitable.

I do not want to say much at all about the plot.

Here is a sample of  the exquisite prose of Hale:

"Then downstairs some one began to play the piano, and you listened to the muted music. What was it that you did not know about, what was it that the music had known and wept for, something that was over and could never be forgotten, but for you it had never been begun. You felt so sad, so happy and so sad, because something that was all the beauty and the tears in the world was over, because something lovely was lost and could only be remembered, and still you knew that for you the thing had not yet started. Perhaps you were sad for the regret you knew you would feel some day for this sadness."

I hope in 2024 to read all 25 stories in the collection