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 |
If the weather is good I wish you would go out and tell Aunt Franc3 that I have at last succeeded in finding where G. P.4 is buried. I have talked to a woman who has seen the cross on his grave with his name upon it, and his grave is properly and clearly registered here in Paris2 in the books of "The Society for the Care of the American Dead."
He is registered:
2nd Lieut Grosvenor P. Cather
(Inf.) I.R.C. Att. Co. A.
26th
Inf.
Location of Grave
Villiers Tournelle5
Grave No. 2. Plot B.
I copy the above exactly. He is therefore buried in the American Military Cemetary of VILLERS TOURNELLE, which is about ten miles from Cantigny6, and is in plot B, among the very first who fell. The bodies of the men who fell at Cantigny were taken up within a few weeks after they were first buried, placed in coffins and taken to Villiers Tournelle while that section was still under fire. The bodies had been wrapped in tarpaulin and blankets, each marked with his name and company, and the coffins were marked from that data, and each was carefully registered,—so there can be no mistake. G. P. is unquestionably buried in grave 2, plot B.
I shall go to the cemetary7 next week and take a
photograph of the grave8 for Aunt Franc. I had made all arrangements to go yesterday, but the heavy rains in that part of
the country have made the roads impassable. Isabelle9 is going with me, as it is a hard trip. I leave Paris at 6
oclock in the morning and go to Montdidier10
(MONTDIDIER) It is not far, but there are two changes of cars and
long waits, before one gets there and only one train a day. A At Montdidier I will have to hire an automobile to
take me to Cantigny and from there on to the Cemetary at Villier Tournelle. There are no hotels in that devestated region, but a French woman belonging to the Society of French Homes11 will keep us over night. This
beautiful Society tries tries to help Americans
hunting for dead soldiers in every possible way. I enclose their letter which you
will please give to Aunt Franc. After I have been to the cemetary and photographed the grave I will write to her. I know she will be glad to
know that G. P. is lying in a cemetary , with a cross on his grave and his name on the cross. When I last saw her
she thought he must be ly lying somewhere out in
No Man's Land12. In the registry here
in Paris, under the number of his grave and his name and rank, there is added
"Killed in action at Cantigny." His name on his cross is painted "CAChER", but it
is
correct in the registry, and I will have the spelling corrected on the cross when
I
go up there. "The Society for American Dead" have given me authorization to do so,
[illegible]in
order to make the name on the grave as it is in the Register. I want to do
this because I feel it would be some satisfaction to
Aunt Franc, and because it is all one can do to show one's appreciation of a kinsman
who was a brave soldier. If I were buried in France, I would want my relatives to
to
come to see me if they were in this part of the world.
Goodbye now, dearest Father. I am well and am very happy to have Isabelle and Jan13 here. I am beginning to be a little homesick from time to time, and I shall not be sorry to turn away from all this beauty and from this wonderful people and face the West, toward the people and the country that are my own.
With a great deal of love to you and Mother14 and to Aunt Franc, WillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0511.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0511
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of first leaf only and recto and verso of second leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Charles F. Cather1
- Date letter was written
- July 7 [1920]
- Place letter was written
- Paris, Île-de-France, France2
- Location of original letter
- George Cather Ray Collection (MS113), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Photograph of Willa Cather at the graves of fallen soldiers from World War I in Villers Tournelle, France.
Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, Archives Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
G. P. Cather's grave in Villers Tournelle, France, in a photograph taken during Cather's visit there in the summer of 1920.
Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, Archives Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
In May 1920, many U.S. newspapers published a Memorial Day message from the French women in the Society of French Homes offering help to American women seeking the graves of dead soliders: "Our Society of French Homes longs to aid you in every way across the tedious stages of the sad journey which leads you to the last resting place of your dead."
The unoccupied land between the trenches of opposing armies in World War I.
Person Annotations
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
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.
Cather, Grosvenor Perry (1883-1918) (“G.P.”). Cather’s cousin.
G.P. Cather was born in Catherton, NE, the oldest son of Frances and
George Cather. He attended Grand Island Baptist College and the University
of Nebraska in Lincoln but was a poor student and did not earn a degree. He
married his childhood friend Myrtle Bartlett in 1910. Restless and
unsuccessful both before and after his marriage, he joined the Nebraska
National Guard in 1914 and served under General John J. Pershing on the
Mexican border in 1916. He became a member of the Allied Expeditionary Force
in 1917 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He died in action in
Cantigny, France, on May 28 and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished
Service Cross and the Croix de Guerre. Willa Cather read his letters home to
his mother about his experiences in the army, and she modeled Claude
Wheeler, the protagonist of One of Ours (1922), on
G.P. His body was first buried in a military cemetery in France, where
Cather visited his grave in 1920. In 1921, a large military funeral marked
the reinterment of his remains in Bladen, NE.
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.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Place Annotations
