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 asked Miss Bloom3 to write you some account
of my rather unfortunate summer and of the final results4 at the Presbyterian Hospital. I now have the most
fashionable type of figure, but am quite comically feeble in body. I think my
headpiece is quite clear, however, and I hope you do
not regret having sent me the manuscript. In my languid state it was bracing to have
a friend's manuscript to read.
I read your chapter on Jerry Macauley5 carefully twice. My adventure in the second reading was
quite different from my adventure in my first reading. All through the first reading
I kept expecting a more detailed description of the man Jerry himself; of the
mission he ran, what
and of what sort of services were held
there. I suppose I wanted to walk into that mission with you on some afternoon in
1882, sit down beside you on the bench, look about at the people, and get the picture in which you sat and which moved you
so strongly. I must be a very literal minded person, for I always recall things in
pictures.
When I got to the end of the article I had not got a picture of Miss Roseboro sitting
in a certain room along with other people who were enveloped in the same atmosphere.
I pondered on this for a while and then I realized that
I had expected what you never in the least intended to give me; your purpose was
evidently not
to
make
a
picture, but to impart to me the feelings and thoughts which Jerry
Macauley stirred up in you yourself. Your impulse had ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ been entirely to impart
something subjective, and that was where I had missed out.
¶ The next morning, with a clear head, I read the manuscript for the things you did intend to give me, and I forgot all about the things you had not intended to give me. That simplified everything, and I got great pleasure out of the second reading. And this time I even got something of the man, Jerry Macauley, and that the feeling he inspired was the most important and mysterious thing about him. After all, we have no personal description of Christ6, and none of the people who heard the Sermon on the Mount7 left any record of their personal impressions.
I wish I could explain myself better, dear Miss Roseboro', but this is the first dictation that I have attempted for many weeks. Though I had those two definite experiences in reading the manuscript, I find it hard to put them clearly into words. But on my second reading I was convinced that the storm of feeling which the man stirred up in you was the real story, and more important than any presentation of him or his mission could have been. What treasures of emotion young people have to spend, haven't they?
Dear Miss Roseboro', I hope your eyes are better than they were when you mailed this manuscript to me, and that the terrible heat and humidity of this month of August did not bear as heavily upon you as it did upon me.
Affectionately and gratefully, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1586.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1586
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Viola Roseboro' 1
- Date letter was written
- August 29, 1942
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949 (MSS 6494), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Individual Annotations
On 31 July 1942 at Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Allan Whipple surgically removed both Cather's appendix and gall bladder (see #2375).
Person Annotations
Roseboro’, Viola (1857-1945). American editor and author.
Born in Pulaski, TN, to parents whose abolitionist sympathies caused
them to flee the state shortly before the Civil War, Viola Roseboro’
graduated from Fairmount College in Monteagle, TN. Before moving to New York
City around 1882, she was an actress with a traveling stock company. In New
York she worked as a journalist and began publishing short stories in
magazines while continuing to tour occasionally until she left the stage
permanently in 1887. Roseboro’ actively published fiction for the rest of
her life, including The Joyous Heart (1903), a Civil
War novel critical of Southern slavery, and Players and
Vagabonds (1904), a collection of stories about the theater. Having
sold short stories to the McClure fiction syndicate in the 1880s, in the
early 1890s she began evaluating manuscripts for the syndicate and soon did
the same for McClure’s Magazine and book publisher
McClure, Phillips & Co. Cather evidently first met Roseboro’ in 1903,
when S.S. McClure called her to New York to discuss her fiction; the two
women began corresponding, and Roseboro’ may have influenced McClure’s
decision to hire Cather as an editor for his magazine in 1906. When most of
the magazine editorial staff walked out on McClure that year, Roseboro’
stayed, but when S.S. McClure lost control of the magazine in 1911, she left
for Collier’s Weekly. When her position there ended,
she moved to Staten Island and struggled to support herself as an author’s
consultant. When S.S. McClure regained control of his magazine in 1921, she
rejoined the staff and took an apartment at 13 Bank Street, but the position
did not last long and she was soon struggling to support herself again; a
1928 bequest from a friend alleviated her financial distress and allowed her
to live comfortably abroad and in New Dorp on Staten Island. Cather’s
letters to Roseboro’ suggest that, long after she became an established
author, Cather valued Roseboro’s friendship and her judgment in literary
matters. She particularly valued Roseboro’s response as a Southerner to Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), an advance copy
of which she sent to her.
Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.
McAuley, Jerry (?-1884). Irish-American evangelist. Born in Ireland, Jerry McAuley became a famous New York city missionary after a career as a river thief and time served in Sing Sing prison, where he experienced a religious conversion. In 1877, he and his wife established the Water Street Mission, and in early 1882 they established a second mission on 32nd Street. Journalist Viola Roseboro’ attended services at this mission in late 1882 and wrote about the experience for the Daily American in early 1883. She was so impressed by McAuley that she continued to attend services there until his death from tuberculosis. Roseboro’ also wrote about McAuley in the early 1940s, sending a manuscript to Cather, but it is not clear whether this manuscript was published.
Jesus Christ (c. 4 BCE-c. 30). Religious figure. Christ was a Jewish religious leader who became the central figure of Christianity, a major world religion.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Bible
