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 |
Two West Fifty-eigth
Since your last letter I begin to feel that you are really coming. Don't disappoint me now that you have set me to hoping.
Lovingly WillieTHE CLARIDGE INFORMAL
Our new card that follows the smart London fashion of including your telephone number. Charge to Send to Quantity boxes of Claridge Informal cards. $4 a box of 50 cards and 50 lined envelopes. Make die of the following, like sample, 30c a letter: (print to avoid error) Stamping in 2 colors, like sample, $2.75 a box. Keep die on file Return die TELEPHONE: PLAZA 3-7300BERGDORF
GOODMAN
5TH AVENUE AT 58TH STREET Mr. C. D. Cather1 Villa Rivera Apartment Hotel Long Beach3
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2130.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2130
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only and printed on verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Charles Douglas Cather1
- Date letter was written
- [October 31, 1937]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection (MS316), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Person Annotations
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.
Place Annotations
