Shotwell, Margaret Badollet (c.1885-after 1944). American poet and socialite. Born in Nebraska, Margaret Badollet married the Republican politician Franklin Shotwell. Margaret Shotwell was active in Omaha literary circles, initiating “Nebraska Writers Week” and writing the weekly column "Bibliophile by Badollet" in the Omaha Daily News. Shotwell’s controversial poem “Will Willa?,” which criticized Léon Bakst’s portrait of Willa Cather commissioned for the Omaha Public Library, was published in the Omaha Daily News and reprinted in Publishers Weekly.

Bakst, Léon (1866-1924). Russian painter and theatrical designer. Born in Russia, Lejb-Khaim Rosenberg decided to become an artist when he was twelve. He studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1889 he took the surname Bakst. In 1893 Bakst went to Paris to study for four years, becoming a part of Sergei Diaghilev’s avant-garde artistic group. He became known as a portraitist in the early twentieth century, then in 1909 turned to stage and costume design for Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, the work for which he is now best known. In 1922 he visited the U.S., where his friend and patron Alice Warder Garrett had organized exhibitions of his work. Willa Cather met Bakst in Paris in 1923. When a women’s federation in Omaha was raising funds to have a portrait painted of her, Bakst suggested he do the portrait. Cather enjoyed talking with Bakst during the sittings, but, like other viewers, she had mixed reactions to the finished portrait.

Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh, finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father, Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in 1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and 1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S. for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work, through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.

Hambourg, Jan (1882-1947). Russian-born violinist; Isabelle McClung’s husband. Hambourg moved with his family to Toronto, Ontario, in 1910, where he was the head of the violin department at the Hambourg Conservatory and performed as part of the Hambourg Trio. He married Isabelle McClung in April 1916. Cather reacted negatively to both Hambourg and the marriage, but she gradually came to accept him. Beginning in the 1920s, Hambourg left the family conservatory and focused on solo violin performance in Europe. Cather enjoying long visits with Isabelle and Jan in Toronto in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. She dedicated The Professor’s House (1925) to him (“For Jan, because he likes narrative”) and asked him to make musical corrections to Lucy Gayheart (1935). When Isabelle died, Jan sent to Cather the three hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them.