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 am so sad to hear of your illness. I would have sent out inquiries, but all the time you were sick with the flu, I was in a particularly low and discouraged state about my hand4. I am not writing any of this to Elsie5 because she is generally so communicative, and there are some people in Lincoln6 (people like the Pounds7) who would be delighted to hear that my right hand was permanently out of commission. For the weeks while you were ill, it did seem as though I were not to have any right hand at all in the future, and the number of things you can do with your left hand are trivial and base. My surgeon here earnestly tried to persuade me to learn to compose by dictation - a thing absolutely impossible to me and against all my taste and habits. The Knopf office became as much alarmed about the situation as I. They entered into correspondence with Dr. Frank Ober8 of Boston9, who mended up so many of the English officers disabled in the World War. His New York2 patients generally fly to Boston for treatment, but he comes to New York once a month to see those who are not well enough to make the trip. He saw me just three weeks ago today. In his Boston shop he had constructed for me a metal glove reaching to the elbow, shaped metal underneath held on by leather straps across the top of my hand, wrist and arm. My own physician here thinks it a wonderful contrivance. I have worn it only one week, and while I cannot see any great improvement, I am not suffering from jars and little hurts all the time, as I was when I wore a wooden splint. Also, my wrist is absolutely immobile in metal, whereas in a wooden splint it would move about a little.
I have not written you very seriously about this before, because I am afraid that I have a rather bad reputation in my family – a reputation for howling about my ills. But somebody in the family ought to know the facts. Of course when a hand gets in this shape, a painful arthritis sets in, and the question is whether I can ever use it again to write books or even letters. The surgeons in the New York Orthopedic Hospital thought my only way out was dictation. Dr. Ober thinks I have a chance to write again, if I am very careful and never use my hand for anything but work on a manuscript – never write letters, or even sign them when I can avoid it.
You are perfectly right. I want to give the bank stock to Charles Edwin10, but you can see that just now, with no preparation yet made for the income tax, I haven’t the time to attend to it. I cannot describe this situation to you, but if you will tie your hand up in a handkerchief when you get out of bed and keep it tied until you get ready to go to the office, you will understand something of the laboriousness of caring for your body with one hand. Even then, you won’t have to put up your hair! You know, with my metal glove, I feel just like Otto of the Silver Hand11!
With love, Willie over Mar. 9, 1941 P.S. Dear Roscoe:Since I dictated this letter, a letter has come from Elsie charging me with inconsiderateness toward her and my friends in Red Cloud12 for not telling them on what date I will arrive there. I thought it best to let Miss Bloom13 write her how impossible it would be for me to travel under the circumstances. Miss Bloom wrote her on Friday.
Dictated by Miss Cather
S. J. BloomThe garden of spi spring
flowers came last night! You are too good to me, dear boy1.
Flower Shop
of
Irene Hayes
NEW YORK Mr. R. C. Cather,1 First Savings Bank of Colusa, Colusa,3 California. NEW YORK, N. Y.2 MAR 9 1941 2:30 PM
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2179.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2179
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf, with handwritten note from Sarah Bloom on verso of second leaf. Includes one enclosed handwritten note from Willa Cather, written on the front of an envelope which has "The Flower Shop of Irene Hayes, New York" printed on the verso. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- March 2, 1941
- Accompanying this letter
-
Includes one enclosed small envelope with a short note handwritten by Willa Cather
- 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
Individual Annotations
Cather significantly injured a tendon in her right thumb in November 1940 after signing hundreds of copies of her novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Her right hand was immobilized for months afterward, and the pain recurred often in later years.
Person Annotations
Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother.
Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High
School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high
school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of
schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he
married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an
abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret
and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe
became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA,
where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in
the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank
until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several
times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926
trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San
Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle
family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was
one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a
prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
Pound, Louise (1872-1958). American folklorist and university
professor. Pound and Cather met when both were students at the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Cather also knew Louise’s brother
Roscoe and sister Olivia. Cather was deeply infatuated with Louise, who was
both an outstanding student and an accomplished multi-sport athlete. Pound
visited Cather in Red Cloud, NE, several times, but she apparently did not
reciprocate Cather’s intense affection, and Cather’s lampoon of Roscoe Pound
in “Pastels in Prose” (1894) caused a rift between the two women. Pound
earned a BA from Nebraska in 1892, an MA in 1895, and a PhD from the
University of Heidelberg in 1900. She was a professor in the English
department at the University of Nebraska, where she taught Cather's sister
Elsie, until 1945. From 1954-55 she served as the first female president of
the Modern Language Association.
Pound, Olivia (1874-1961) (“Tude”). Nebraska teacher; Cather’s
university classmate. Born in Lincoln, NE, the younger sister of
Roscoe and Louise Pound, Olivia Pound was educated at home before entering
the preparatory school of the University of Nebraska in 1890. She graduated
from the university with Cather in 1895 and taught at Lincoln High School
from 1897 until her retirement in 1943, serving as assistant principal from
1918 on. Active in community and educational affairs, Olivia wrote textbooks
and twice served as president of the American Association of University
Women. Cather was acquainted with Olivia Pound, but they were not close
friends.
Ober, Frank (1881-1960). Boston Orthopedic surgeon. Born in Mt. Desert, ME, Ober graduated from Tufts Medical School in Boston, MA, in 1905. He volunteered for service overseas in 1917 and spent two years as head of the orthopedic section of the U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 5 in France. On his return he rose from junior member of the visiting staff to chief orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital in Boston and served as a clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School. About once a month he traveled to Philadelphia, PA, and New York City to see patients in consultation. In 1941, Cather was referred to Ober for her troubles with her right hand, and he prescribed and had constructed for her a metal and leather splint for her forearm and hand.
Cather, Charles Edwin (1923-2011). Cather’s nephew. Charles’s parents were James D. and Ethel Garber Cather, and he was likely born in Red Cloud, NE, where he spent the early years of his childhood. He was, as Willa Cather wrote to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, “the little nephew I love the best” who inspired her portrayal of the little boy Jacques in Shadows on the Rock (1931) (#1054). He moved with his family to California in the 1930s. Cather continued to be an indulgent aunt as he got older, writing him letters of advice about and lending him money for his education. He attended, but did not complete degrees from, the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY, and the Law School at the University of Colorado in Boulder. After his aunt’s death he completed undergraduate and law degrees at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, CA. He was a beneficiary of his aunt’s estate and was appointed her literary executor after Edith Lewis’s death.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Otto of the Silver Hand (1888) by Howard Pyle
