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 |
I meant to answer your letter many weeks ago. But so much has happened since then, and our gay winter had a sad ending. On February 24th I left home for New York3, leaving father4 and mother5 both fairly well. In ten days I was back home again. My father died on March 3d, of an attack of angina pectoris, without illness, with less than two hours of suffering. He never grew old, he kept his slender, active figure, his pink skin and clear blue eyes. When I got here about dawn of a spring morning and all the house was asleep, I went to his room and he seemed asleep like the others, lying on a couch in his big bay-window. Not a particle of his personality had faded from his face an easy, graceful death—just the kind he would have liked. He so hated anything violent.
A week after his funeral I got mother off to California6 with my bachelor brother, Douglass7, who lives in Los Angeles8. I stayed on here to have a lot of repairs made in the house9, so that it would be more comfortable for mother to come back to. My sister Jessica, Mrs. J. W. Auld,10 lives here, but just now she is at Northampton11, where she has a very charming daughter12 at Smith, and a son13 at Amherst.
Dear Mrs. Stowell, I would love to see you again, and when I am next in Boston14 I will certainly let you know. I am so glad that Georgia15 put us all in touch with each other once more. Father and Mother both begged me to send their love to you before I left home.
Always your old friend Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0929.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0929
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Helen Louise Stevens Stowell1
- Date letter was written
- April 11 [1928]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Charles F. Cather passed away on March 3, 1928.
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
541 N. Seward Street (Red Cloud, NE): Built circa 1899, Cather’s parents, Charles F. and Mary Virginia Boak Cather, purchased this home in 1903. Cather stayed here when she returned to Red Cloud to visit her parents, returning for the last time in 1931 following her mother’s death. At that time, Cather's sister Elsie inherited the house, returning to Red Cloud for summer vacations for most of the 1930s. Willa Cather contributed to the maintenance of the property until Elsie sold the house in 1945 to W. H. Maynard. By 1946, it was being used as a local hospital. Willa Cather used the house as the prototype for the second Ferguesson house in her short story “The Best Years.”
Person Annotations
Stowell, Helen Louise Stevens (1856-?). Cather’s Red Cloud friend. Helen Stevens was born in Massachusetts. After her marriage to Eugene A. Stowell in 1880, they moved to Webster County, NE, where they had a sheep ranch. Their only child, Alice, was born in 1882. They visited frequently in Red Cloud, where they were part of the Charles Cather family's social circle, and wintered in the town for several years. In late 1887 they moved to California, then eventually back to Middlesex County, MA, near Boston. Helen Stowell, widowed in the 1920s, still lived there with her daughter in 1940. Cather’s earliest surviving letters are to Mrs. Stowell, and she wrote again when Charles Cather died in 1928.
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, 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.
Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Auld, Jessica Virginia Cather (1881-1964) (“Jessie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jessica
was the fourth child and second daughter of Charles and Virginia Cather.
After graduating from Red Cloud High School in 1899, she taught at a country
school and the South Side Grade School until her marriage to James William
Auld, a Red Cloud banker, in 1904. They had three children (Charles, William
Thomas, and Mary Virginia). After their divorce in 1933, she moved to Palo
Alto, CA, where she died thirty-one years later. Few letters from Willa
Cather to her sister Jessica survive, and particularly after Jessica’s
divorce their relationship was strained.
Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”).
Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld
and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School
in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for
admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B.
in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found
work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930,
probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation
Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the
library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont
branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933
Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935,
Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical
School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College,
she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor
in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s
regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In
Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary
estate.
Auld, William Thomas (1908-2000) (“Tom,” “Will”). Cather's nephew.
Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld and James William
Auld, William Thomas Auld graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1927 and
Amherst College in Amherst, MA, in 1931. His roommate at Amherst, Richard
Hager Mellen, would later marry his sister, Mary Virginia Auld. He graduated
from Stanford University Medical School in 1936, the same year he married
Helen Jane Wall. From 1938 until his retirement, Auld practiced pediatrics
in Stockton, CA, except for the four years (1942-1946) he served in the Army
Air Force Medical Corps. He and his wife had no children. Willa Cather seems
to have had minimal contact with her nephew as an adult, and there are no
known letters from her to him.
Stevens, Georgianna (1857-after 1928) (“Georgie”). Cather’s friend. Born in Massachusetts, Georgianna was the younger sister of Helen Stevens Stowell. She lived in Boston, MA, and visited the Stowells several times in the mid-1880s when they lived in Nebraska and Red Cloud. Cather asked after Georgie in several of her early letters, and Georgianna put the Stowells in touch with Cather in the late 1920s.
Place Annotations
