Appreciates her help getting through scrapes during years at the university. Now another one. Keeps making a fool of herself! Keeps trying on personas (the scholarly, the bohemian)! Would consider suicide but knows her stupidities spring from liking someone too well. People always watching her, waiting for her to do something unusual. Feels superficial and useless where she is. Little brother Jack is the one consolation. Has been to a dance with Douglass and actually enjoyed it. Miner girls there. Met a Miss [Anna] Gayhardt and talked all night. Can't talk like this to Katharine [Weston], of course. Hopes to get up to Lincoln soon. Professor Bates very happy in his new job. Willa [Stout #24]
Has taken pictures to be developed, shopped with Miss [Evelyn] Osborne for underclothes, and overeaten on Mme Sibut's excellent fish. Please scold the laundress who failed to return a set of underwear. Willa [Stout #75]
Typed note by Witter Bynner indicates that Roseboro' gave him the letters. Yes, certainly knows A Shropshire Lad. Don't her own poems show it? Traced Housman in Shropshire, where he seems unknown. Visited him in a boardinghouse in a dreary London suburb. He looked gaunt, seemed bitter, but is the only English poet now active whose work will endure. Though an instructor in Latin, he writes strictly from the level of a country boy. Willa S. Cather [Stout #88]
Hard to believe he [ Housman ] refused the money. What nobility! Still remembers, from when she paid that call along with two American friends, the holes in his shoes and in the carpet, couch with broken springs, his uneasiness. Manner stern and patrician. They all cried on the way back. [Stout #89]
Thanks for sharing what Miss Roseboro' said about the stories. Roseboro's own are a sentimental muddle. Best wishes for Dorothy's doctoral exam in May. Hopes to get to Vermont this summer. Will mainly be in New York near or with Edith Lewis. Hopes to finish novel there. Might take an English course at Columbia, if there is one in the summer. Isabelle still droopy from bad throat. Parents [Cather's] have just moved into a new, roomier house and want her to come help select furnishings, but she needs to finish the novel for McClure. Willie [Stout #97]
Has received her telegram about "The Profile." Character resembles Miss Osborne only in that she has a scar, not uncommon. Miss Osborne shouldn't take it as a reference to herself. Sorry Dorothy is upset. Willa [Stout #100]
Can't withdraw the story without canceling the entire volume, which is already in type. Doubts Miss Osborne will ever see it, let alone take it to heart. Does not agree it is a portrait of her. Isabelle, who has a strong moral sense, does not see anything wrong. This has spoiled the pleasure in her first book of fiction. Wouldn't ask such a thing of anyone. Is very hurt by Dorothy's attitude. Willa [Stout #101]
Appreciates his writing about her story. A volume is being published. (Miss) Willa Sibert Cather [Stout #102]
Writes about life in the West out of personal experience. Realizes stories are rather grim. Some details in "A Wagner Matinee" remembered from Cather ranch. Recalls how she and her brothers loved the few trees that grew along a nearby creek, the bleakness of the first Christmas, the drought during early college years, when there were suicides among their neighbors. Things are better there now. Willa Sibert Cather [Stout #105]
Agrees the story is rather chilly and impersonal, but it doesn't warrant amplification. Looks forward to visit so they can talk. Will try again on The Golden Bowl [James, 1904]. Didn't manage to penetrate it last year. Wonders what new Kipling story is about. Willa Sibert Cather [Stout #109]
