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 |
Sounds all right. But I wish I didn't know that a cheap tabloid columnist, "Wallie Boren"4, wrote nearly all his5 campaign speeches x and I wish his sister6 were not an intolerably vulgar beauty parlor product. And I wish his own hair were not so wavy7. Does he want to look like a poet, or a very winning salesman? I cant see Churchill8 and this oily boy doing any business together.
Miss Bloom 9 is sick and this confounded hand10 won't do anything for me—except tell you once more that I love you very dearly.
W. Mr. R. C. Cather1, First Savings Bank of Colusa, Colusa3, California. NEW YORK, N. Y.2 FEB 19 1944 2-PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2215.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2215
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- February 15 [1944]
- 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
Willkie prided himself on wearing his hair "country style," which often included a large curl on his forehead.
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).
Boren, Wallace Raymond (1900-1963) (“Wally”). American advertising
executive and writer. Boren started his career in 1923 as an
assistant advertising manager of the Sun-Main Raisin Growers of Fresno. He
went on to work as an advertising executive for the J. Waiter Thompson Co.,
working in their offices first in San Francisco, CA, then Chicago, IL, and
finally New York City, where Edith Lewis was his colleague. When William
Nichols of This Week, a syndicated magazine, saw
Boren’s enormously successful series of advertisements for Shell Oil, he
approached Boren about creating a character for a “home-spun” humor column.
Boren adopted the persona of Wally, the humble proprietor and counterman of
the fictional burger-joint, “Wally’s Wagon,” after which the successful
column, which ran from 1939 to 1952, was named. Wally provided readers with
“human philosophy” delivered in a folksy and conversational tone.
Willkie, Wendell L. (1892-1944). American politician. In the
1940 presidential election Willkie was the unsuccessful Republican
challenger to incumbent Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Willkie’s
platform criticized Roosevelt’s New Deal administration and accused the
president of warmongering. After the election, Willkie became Roosevelt’s
ally by encouraging cooperation between nations at the conclusion of WWII.
His book One World (1943) made a case for
international peacekeeping and opposed isolationism.
Wilkie Pihl, Charlotte (1899-1979). American military wife; sister of Wendell Willkie. Born on the family farm in Indiana, Charlotte Willkie graduated from Indiana University in 1918 and in 1920 married Paul Edward Pihl on his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy. In 1940, when her brother Wendell Wilkie was nominated for the U.S. presidency by the Republican Party, she was in Berlin, Germany, where her husband was assistant attaché for air at the American Embassy.
Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-1965). British
politician and writer. Son of Lord Henry Randolph Spencer
Churchill and Jeannette Jerome Churchill, daughter of a New York financier,
Churchill had a long career in British diplomacy and politics, culminating
in his service as Prime Minister during World War II. Cather was
enthusiastic about Churchill's leadership during the war, following his
speeches, reading biographies of him, and attributing his shrewdness to his
American mother.
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
