Cyril Clemens (November 21 [1934]) | Willa Cather Archive

#1240: Willa Cather to Cyril Clemens, November 21 [1934]

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ 570 Park Avenue³ New York² November 21^st Dear Mr Clemens¹;

I am home at last, after a long absence. I regret that I cannot go on to St. Louis⁴ for the Birthday Dinner⁵. Up in the country I have been re-reading Huckleberry Finn⁶, probably for the twentieth time, and I am full of my old enthusiasm for it. Have you seen the very fine article on "Dickens and Mark Twain”⁷ by Stephen Leacock⁸ in the last number of The Yale Review⁹? It is our best literary magazine, I think.

I will be proud and happy to receive the medal¹⁰ at any time. You can safely send it to me at this address.

Cordially yours Willa Cather

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let1240.xml
Letter identifier: 1240
Contents: Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
Person to whom letter was written: Cyril Clemens¹
Date letter was written: November 21 [1934]
Explanation of conjectured date: The year of this letter is derived from Cather's reference to Leacock's article, published in the September 1934 issue of the Yale Review.
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE

Individual Annotations

570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.

Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835, an event celebrated by the Mark Twain Society with a dinner. Cather had attended an actual birthday dinner for Mark Twain when he was still alive, on 5 December 1905.

The Mark Twain medal was awarded to Willa Cather in 1934.

Person Annotations

0266

Clemens, Cyril (1902-1999). American biographer. A distant cousin of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), Cyril Clemens was born in St. Louis, MO, to James R. and Kathryn T. Clemens, and received his BA and MA from Washington University (St. Louis). He founded the International Mark Twain Society in 1930 and edited its journal, the Mark Twain Quarterly, from 1936-1982. He wrote biographies and biographical sketches of his famous cousin and other literary figures, including G.K. Chesterton and A.E. Housman. The Mark Twain Society awarded a medal to Cather in 1934; Clemens asked Cather for contributions to the journal and pressed her for information about her 1902 visit to Housman.

1332

Leacock, Stephen (1869-1944). Canadian author. Born in Hampshire, England, Stephen Leacock immigrated with his family to Canada at age six. He earned his BA from the University of Toronto in 1891 and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1903. Leacock spent most of his career heading the department of economics and political science at McGill University, but he was most famous as a humorist. His sketches and essays were collected in more than thirty volumes, including Literary Lapses (1910) and Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912). Cather called Leacock’s article “Dickens and Mark Twain” in the Yale Review “very fine” (#1240).

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Work Annotations

Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark (Samuel Clemens) Twain

"Two Humorists: Charles Dickens and Mark Twain," Yale Review (September 1934) by Stephen Leacock

Yale Review