The new pure gold medal is good-looking and quite big: a great paperweight! Will have it appraised at the bank. It's one kind of praise that actually has value! [In the fall of 1930, Cather received the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for Death Comes for the Archbishop.] Is sending a New York Times editorial that correctly explains why Sinclair Lewis received the Nobel Prize ["Mr. Lewis's Nobel Prize," New York Times, 6 November 1930, p. 24]. Americans seem that way to Europeans, and those we've bullied like to read a critical account. They are probably right about us. Wrote Lewis and confessed that though she would have rather received the award herself, she's glad that if she didn't, he did. Many of the paper's readers mistakenly believe she won, and are sending requests for a share of the prize money. Is mailing a copy of the speech made by Judge Grant when she got the [Howells] award. Maybe he could consider sending it and clippings on to Elsie. Is so busy with other letters that she won't have time to write Elsie herself. George Whicher was going to bring Virginia and Tom up to Jaffrey to see her the first weekend in December, but her schedule has been changed by the medal ceremony. Will spend Thanksgiving with friends in Philadelphia, where she expects only a dinner, a room of her own, and privacy. Please send check to Grosvenor address. Willie.
