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]
Has been working well. Expects to be in Pittsburgh until Christmas. Jack doing well at school; sees him often. War occupies all conversation. A friend from Belgium, Mme Flahant, is in New York and says her family members in Brussels are starving. The Belgian Relief Committee in London says that only the U.S. can sustain Belgium through the winter. Germans allow no food in that comes through England or France. Will donate to the relief fund instead of sending Christmas presents. America will have to answer to history if it fails Belgium. Willie [Stout #289]
Letter came at a good time, when she was in bed partly to avoid social obligations, partly because of a stiff neck. Pleased to report people of Red Cloud crowned her picture with a laurel wreath. Has enjoyed reading The Doctor Looks at Literature [by Joseph Collins, 1923]. Recommends Mme Curie's book about her husband. Mother is still vexed by Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt. Unfortunately for Alfred Knopf, just when readers are prepared to buy books by her about the West she starts writing things where setting doesn't matter. P.S.: Is the yellow cat male or female? Willa [Stout #719]
Likes her book [ The Deepening Stream ] very much, especially Morris and his wife. He is entirely real. Likes Adrian, too. All the Paris part quite wonderful, and Matey very good in that section. Earlier she is too fully specified. A mistake to try to tell all, as she did herself in The Song of the Lark. Proust succeeds in it, of course, but that's in the first person. Writers ought to keep the third person more distanced than most do; it shouldn't resemble first person. Looks forward to telling her about someone she met at Aix-les-Bains this summer [Mme Franklin Grout, niece of Flaubert]. Willa [Stout #1027]
Sorry to be late replying to invitation to tea being held in the Jewett garden in May. Has many happy memories of that garden. Was last there three years before Mary Jewett's illness. Would be too painful to go there again. Sorry the village has not kept up the house where Sarah and Mary Jewett gathered such beautiful things. Similarly, Mme Franklin-Grout's estate in France, which was left as a retreat for women writers, was turned to other purposes by the French government right away and her Flaubert collection sent to a museum in Rouen that no longer exists. Tolstoi's estate has been damaged by the Germans. Sarah Orne Jewett still lives in her work. [Stout #1621]
No, doesn't want book sent to Mlle Burk but to Mme Burls. W. S. C. [Stout #1767]
Sorry that Colum has been snared in the translation negotiations, but thanks her sincerely for her letter. Is returning Mme. Clairomir's [?] note with Knopf's response. Has been traveling, too, and spent much time with ill mother in California. Only recently came back to New York and got belongings out of storage, though is doubting that decision. Will attempt to be content in absurd and difficult city, and will be comforted by friends and music. Sorry that Colum has been ill—probably because of the climate of Paris. She should come to New England to get well. Still fondly recalls meeting her in Peterborough [New Hampshire]. Willa Cather
