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 |
Nothing that “Claude”3 can do for me will give me more
pleasure than your dear letter—few things can give me as much. I woke very early
this morning and watched the dawn come over the sea, feeling so glad and grateful
that my book had gone home to you like that. Long ago, in my lonely struggling years
when I was learning to write and nobody understood what I was trying to do, and I
didn’t understand myself,—I used to think bitterly, (oh so bitterly!) that [illegible] no matter how well I got
on, I could somehow never write the kind of thing that would seem interesting or
true to my own people, and they would never know how much I loved them. I had to
live among writers and musicians to learn my trade, but I do think my heart never
got across the Missouri river. Grand Manan
and Claude And now you do all know,
after all—at least those of you I love best know. Claude4 and his mother are the best compliment I can pay
Nebraska5.
I am sending your letter to Isabelle6 in Paris7, for she will know how much it means to me to have touched my old friend’s heart like that, and she will share in my thankfulness and will send it back to me—to keep in my writing desk forever, along with the one you wrote me after your mother’s8 death. I am so grateful to have been able to get my story and my boy to you so entirely. Things have turned out very well for me at last, you see.
Lovingly always WillaI go back to New York9 next week.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0614.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0614
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- September 1 [1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is derived from the publication of One of Ours in September 1922.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
The name of the protagonist of One of Ours. Although Cather had been convinced not to title the novel Claude, she still often conflated the novel and its central character.
Person Annotations
Sherwood, Carrie Miner (1869-1971). Sherwood, Carrie Belle
Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader; Cather's friend. Born in Waukon,
IA, to James L. Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest
of their children. The family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the
Miner Brothers store became the largest in town. Cather remembered meeting
Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie, her mother, and siblings were confirmed in
the Catholic church. In 1888, she studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at
Notre Dame, IN. She married bank clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they
had two sons. The Sherwoods travelled often in the West, and visited Europe
in 1930. They built a new house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in
1908; Cather sometimes sent materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious
attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood led local Red Cross work during the two World
Wars, served on the Red Cloud school board and park commission, and was
active in the League of Women Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace
Episcopal Church. Cather corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout
her life and dedicated My Ántonia to Carrie, model
for Frances Harling in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of
Mildred Bennett’s chief sources for The World of Willa
Cather (1951), and was instrumental in setting up what is now the
Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud.
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.
Miner, Julia Erickson (1844-1917). Cather's Norwegian-American
friend. Born in Norway, where her father was a musician and a
leather-worker, Julia came with her family to the U.S. in 1853. They settled
in Iowa, where she met and married James L. Miner in 1868. The family came
to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where J. L. Miner became the leading merchant of
the town. They had eight children, of whom five survived to adulthood; their
four daughters, Carrie, Mary, Margaret, and Irene, were all good friends of
Cather. Julia Miner was widowed in 1905. Cather portrayed her as the strong,
active, musical Mrs. Harling in My Ántonia (1918),
the only time, she said, that she drew a “portrait of an actual person.”
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
