"Midsummer" - A Short Story by Nancy Hale - first published in 1934 - 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. It is my hope to post upon each one.

Today's story, "Midsummer" centers on the romance of an affluent 16 year old  girl with the man who takes care of the family horses and gives riding lessons.  It is about class conflicts, loneliness, Irish immigrants, parenting lacks presented in Hale's exquisite prose. It is set in New England.

"Victoria Jesse was sixteen that sultry summer. She lived on White Hill in her parents’ Italian villa with the blue tile roof, so gruesomely out of place in the New England landscape. Her parents were in France, but the servants and old Nana were in the house and the garden was kept up by the disagreeable gardener, always on his knees by the rose bushes, which dropped thick petals on the turf. The water in the cement swimming pool was soup-warm and dappled with tiny leaves from the privet bushes around. The tennis court was as hard and white as marble, and the white iron benches drawn up around its edge were so hot all day that they could not be sat upon. The Venetian blinds in the house were kept drawn, and the rooms were dim and still, with faint sweat upon the silver candlesticks and the pale marble of the hall floor."

I will leave the plot for first time readers to discover.

"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 

“The Most Elegant Drawing Room in Europe,” The New Yorker, September 17, 1966. Plus A Start on my Short Story Plans for 2021.

 “The Most Elegant Drawing Room in Europe,” The New Yorker, September 17, 1966.   Plus A Start on my Short Story Plans for 2021.

Plus A Start on my Short Story Plans for 2021.

 Today’s story is Included in Selected  Short Stories of Nancy Hale - with an introduction by Lauren Groff - 2019

  If you can isten to something by Vivaldi from The Venice Baroaue Orchester while you read this set in Venice story

Nancy Hale 

 Born: May 6, 1908 - Boston, Massachusetts 

Died:  Sept 24,1988 Charlottesville, Virginia 

I am starting to contemplate my Reading Life plans and hopes for 2021.  

I have set aside seven collections of Short Stories, all my women, to read in full.  Perhaps I tend to read a lot of Short Stories by women as my life revolves around my three adult daughters  and my wife.  

The writers I  picked, open to change or addition, are four American writers, Nancy Hale, Alice Adams, Lorrie Moore, and Carmen Maria Macado.  They are joined by Shirley Hazzard born in Australia, very much a citizen of the World.  I love the sheer Beauty of the work of England’s Elizabeth Taylor and have a full read through of her oevere 

planned for next year.  I have read about half of the stories in All The Beloved Ghosts by Alison MacLeod and plan to read the rest.  Some of The stories I Will post upon, some not.

Like Shirley Hazzard and Elizabeth Taylor, Hale writers about Family relationships.  Her characters are affluent and  suffer no food anxiety.

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!”

I wondered is Emily just an American rube in Venice, who is the mysterious Contessa?  We go with Emily and her mother to a Vivaldi concert which was so much fun to read.  We wonder what the Countessa thinks of them.  In  the close Emily and I are thrown into confusion when we do see how the Contessa regards the Americans.

I look Forward to Reading on in The Selected Short Stories of Nancy Hale

Mel u