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 want to write you such a long letter that I simply can’t begin. Since I last wrote
you, you have lost your dear sister3 and I
have lost so many dear friends. I am sending you a picture of one4 of them - she was one of the loveliest
characters I have ever known, and she was so
full
of
the
old
West. The first letter she ever wrote
me was about the story TWO FRIENDS5 - and
after that we became "two friends", Mrs. Otis Skinner and I. She lived only
a few blocks from me6 and after I came
back this fall, telephoned me several times asking me to come to tea; said gently
that she was "not very well". I promised to go and wanted to go, but I kept putting it off.
and
tThen one morning I waken up and see this in the paper.
But the real purpose of this letter is to ask you to accept a birthday present which came too late. I ordered it in Montreal7 last summer and it was to reach you on your birthday, January first. Instead of that, it was sent to me January first. I was so discouraged that I have let it lie on my big desk for a week or more. Maybe you don’t give teas any more, as you used to when I visited you, but if you don’t have any use for foolish little things like these, I won’t be one bit hurt if you give them to one of your daughters-in-law8. You will never know how much I enjoyed Mary's9 long kind letter. I felt almost as if I were at home10 again.
Mary Virginia11 has had a hard summer and fall because her husband12 was ill. Though his sinus operation was very severe and kept him in the hospital for a long while, he has now completely recovered. They are, both of them, just the pluckiest and most cheerful young people. I wrote you, didn’t I, that when Mary Virginia’s apartment was looted, none of the silver which you and Mary gave her was taken? It is a great comfort to me to have her here in New York2. She does so many nice little things for me and always cheers me up, whenever I see her. She has to work awfully hard, you know, and just never whins or complains. It is hard to believe that she is the child of her parents13. I mailed your Christmas telegram to her, and it gave her almost as much pleasure as it did me. She and Dick dined here on Christmas Eve. I felt very close to you all, Carrie, when that telegram came.
Lovingly to you and Mary, WillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1351.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1351
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- January 7, 1937
- 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.
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.
Gund, Margaret Miner (1875-1936). Cather’s childhood friend; iris
breeder. Born in Iowa, the third surviving daughter of James L.
and Julia Erickson Miner, Margaret grew up in Red Cloud, NE, where she was
one of Cather’s close friends. She played the role of Beauty in the
children’s play Beauty and the Beast in 1888, while
Cather played the merchant, her father; she also sang and played the violin
in various local musical performances. In 1896 she met bank cashier
Frederick Gund at a dance in Blue Hill, NE; they were married in December
1900. The couple lived in Blue Hill, where their four children were born and
she cultivated iris plants. When the bank closed in 1932, the
couple—their children grown—moved to Crawford, NE. Margaret
Miner Gund died in Chicago, IL, and is buried in Lincoln, NE. Cather
portrayed her as Sally Harling, the tomboy, in My
Ántonia (1918).
Skinner, Lucy Maud Durban (1871-1936). American actress. Born
in a small town in Missouri, Maud Durban was the daughter of a train
despatcher and his wife. In the late 1880s she was a member of Modjeska’s
touring company, as was Otis Skinner. When he formed his own company in
1894, she joined it as the leading lady; they married in 1895. She retired
from the stage after their only child, Cornelia Otis Skinner, was born to
devote herself to the child’s education. She returned to the stage ten years
later and acted in a few silent films based on stories she had written.
Cather met Maud Skinner after she wrote Cather an appreciative letter about
Cather’s story “Two Friends” (1932).
Sherwood, Aimee Arnold (1892-?). Red Cloud teacher. Born in Nebraska, Aimee lived in Lincoln, NE, where she attended the University of Nebraska. She moved with her parents to Elm Creek Precinct in Webster County, NE, where she taught in the Red Cloud High School. She married Philip S. Sherwood in 1921, and they had two daughters, Mary and Juliet.
1020Sherwood, Dessie Dean Taylor (1890-1986). Cather's Red Cloud acquaintance. Born in Missouri, Dessie Taylor was the youngest daughter of Isaac Taylor and Arabel Turnure Taylor. Her father died in 1898; by 1910 the family had moved to Red Cloud, NE, where Arabel’s brothers Frederick and Dallas lived. Dessie worked as a store cashier before attending the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1916. In 1917 she married Clement Miner Sherwood; they had three children, Elizabeth (Betty), John, and Janet. According to some sources, Willa Cather suggested to friends that Gladys Farmer in One of Ours (1922) resembled Dessie Taylor Sherwood.
Creighton, Mary S. Miner (1873-1968). Clubwoman; Cather’s
friend from childhood. Born in Iowa, Mary Miner was the second
daughter of James and Julia Miner, neighbors of the Cather family in Red
Cloud, NE. Willa Cather later recalled that when she first moved into town
with her family and enrolled in school in 1885, “Margie Miner was so jolly I
wanted awfully to know her.” They became lifelong friends and
correspondents, and Mary’s sisters Irene and Carrie were equally close to
Cather. Mary Miner wed local physician E. A. Creighton in 1900 and lived the
rest of her life in Red Cloud. She was the prototype for Julia Harling in
My Ántonia (1918).
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.
Mellen, Richard Hager (1909-1957) (“Dick”). American physician; Mary Virginia Auld Mellen’s husband. Born in Vermont to Philip Edwin and Mary Wheaton Hager Mellen, Dick Mellen graduated from Amherst College in 1931, where Cather’s nephew William Thomas Auld was his roommate, and from Harvard Medical School in 1935. The same year he began a residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and married Cather’s niece, Mary Virginia Auld. Cather praised Mary Virginia’s choice of this “Vermont boy” whose family were “just the nicest kind of Vermont people” (#2117). Trained as an orthopedic surgeon, he accepted a position as chief of orthopedic surgery at a hospital in Chattanooga, TN, in 1942, when the previous head left to serve in the military. Almost immediately thereafter, Mellen himself was commissioned as an officer in the Army Medical Corps, serving from 1942 to 1946. In 1946, he and other physicians who had developed expertise during the war founded the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. From 1946 until his death, he was a surgeon at Glockner-Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, CO.
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.
Auld, James William (1876-1962) (“Will”). Red Cloud banker; Cather’s
brother-in-law. Will Auld was born in Marion County, IA, and
attended Simpson College in Indianoloa, IA. He worked at the State Bank of
Red Cloud (NE) from 1898 to 1938, first under his uncle W. T. Auld, who was
president of the bank, and then as president himself. He married Willa
Cather’s sister Jessica in 1904, and they had three children, Mary Virginia,
William Thomas, and Charles. Their marriage ended in divorce in 1933. While
Jessica and Will were still married, Willa Cather liked and trusted him, but
in the wake of the divorce, she blamed him for mismanagement of Cather
family financial assets. In later years, he lived in Lincoln, NE, and
remarried.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Two Friends," Woman's Home Companion (July 1932) by Willa Cather
