Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
Would you pass this chain letter on to three of your friends or neighbors? I have made the copies for you on my typewriter, to save your eyes. You will only have to mail the copies to friends, and mail my appeal to you, with ten cents, back to Madame Grosjean5—a fine woman, one of the exiles6.
I am well and happy, working hard on my the
proofs of my new book7. It will be out in the fall8. I go west for a
few weeks late in the summer, probably September, and shall dash in for a
look at you and a hug of you.
Jack9 is doing so well!
From W. S. Cather 5 Bank street4 New York2 Mrs. George P. Cather1 Bladen3 Nebraska NEW YORK, N.Y. STA. C.2 JUN 16 1915 5 PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0309.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0309
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Frances Smith Cather1
- Date letter was written
- June 16 [1916]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- George Ray Cather Collection (MS113), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
During World War I, millions of European civilians were displaced from their homes. Germany’s occupation of Belgium and northern France, Poland, and Lithuania caused a mass movement of refugees as indivudals fled violence and poverty. Though the details surrounding Madame Grosjean remain unclear, it is possible that she is a Belgium refugee, as Cather directly mentions the crisis caused by the occupation of Brussels in another letter (#0289).
Song of the Lark was published in October of 1915.
Person Annotations
Cather, Frances Amanda Smith (1845-1922) (“Franc”). Cather’s
aunt. Born in Boston, MA, Franc graduated from Mount Holyoke
Female Seminary in South Hadley, MA, in 1870. Franc worked both as a private
tutor and as a teacher at Winchester Female Institute in Winchester, VA. In
1873 she and George Cather married and moved to Webster County in Nebraska,
where they raised their five children—Grosvenor, Blanche, Carrie, and
twins Frank and Oscar. Willa and Franc Cather maintained a warm relationship
and were regular correspondents until Franc’s death, exchanging letters
about family matters and about Willa’s writing. Elements of the life of her
New-England-born aunt inspired the character Aunt Georgiana in Willa
Cather’s story “A Wagner Matinee” (1904), and Franc’s son Grosvenor was the
prototype for Claude Wheeler in One of Ours (1922),
making Frances the prototype for Claude’s mother, Evangeline Wheeler.
Madame Grosjean. A Belgian refugee. Madame Grosjean gave Cather a chain-letter requesting money for the cause of Belgian relief during World War One. No further information is available about this person.
Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother.
Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and
fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger
than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small
boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote
several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating
from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University
of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he
enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study
engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to
Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his
decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he
graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a
chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport,
PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children,
Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer
in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936
he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers
Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA.
Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had
little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from
her to him have surfaced.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
