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 called to Portland, Maine, so will have to miss seeing her. Willa Sibert Cather [Stout #198]
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]
So much to catch up on. Has taken an apartment with Edith. Hopes Dorothy will come to tea. Please see February Atlantic [ "A Chance Meeting" ]. Still remembers when she first read Flaubert in Red Cloud, and later with George Seibel in Pittsburgh. Has been able to save three farms in Nebraska by catching up their interest payments. So glad Dorothy likes "Old Mrs. Harris," a story that almost does what she set out to do in it. Willa [Stout #1148]
Doesn't like pictures like this, in the Grant Wood style, on Christmas cards, but bought them to help someone. Might think of the cowboy-looking shepherds as C.C.C. fellows [Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal initiative] and one of the angels above as President Roosevelt. W. S. C. [Stout #1346]
Doesn't really care for Christmas cards in the Grant Wood style. Maybe they are C.C.C. boys with Roosevelt trumpeting in the sky. Such bad times! Willa Cather [Stout #1347]
Would Houghton Mifflin be willing to pay the $1,091.63 shown on her last statement now instead of in March, as is the usual practice? Income will be considerably higher next year, and would like to keep her income tax down. Is pleased with the national election because Roosevelt will support England better than Willkie would have. Willa Cather [Stout #1504]
Appreciates his kind words in his Second Reader, three years ago now, and appreciates his reprinting of Kenneth Grahame's Golden Age, as well as his bringing to her attention the paper on Boswell by Pottle. Recommends Johnson without Boswell, recently published by Knopf. Is it really he who is acting in The Man Who Came to Dinner? Such a surprise! Recommends French Hospital, where nurses speak French and even cooks are French. Had very good care and good food. A Catholic hospital, but nurses not nuns, so no black habits about. One accompanied the wife of ex-president of Chile on airplane when President Roosevelt provided her transportation back to Santiago. American airmen so fine—keep up her faith in America in spite of Communists having gotten hold of much of the country. Willa Cather [Stout #1533]
