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 |
NORTHEAST HARBOR2
MAINE August 4, 1945 My dear Charles1,
I do sympathize with you, my dear boy, in your present state of uncertainty5. It must be hard to go ahead grinding fiercely at mathematics when you may be drafted6 at any time. I have always found uncertainty the most un-nerving experience in life and I have always preferred a poor certainty to anything attractive that hung in the uncertain future.
When I sent a check to you through Helen
Louise7 I thought you were in Washington8 and I did not know your address. Any suggestions
that I made a bout coaching at Princeton were not meant as advisce, but
they were the only remedies which came immediately to my mind. I knew two
boys who coached at Princeton in the summer after having been flunked in
their entrance examinations for Princeton.
This is just a dreary uncertain time for you and I share that uncertainty with you. It is only reasonable to suppose that mathematics must be the most important study at West Point9 since they are so important in all military operations. If you are cramming in your mathematics now, don't take any time off to write to me -- send me word through Helen Louise when she is not too busy. I think the only thing you can do is to keep the goal you chose ahead of you. Get plenty of sleep and plenty of nourishing food to eat, and drive right ahead at the thing you wanted to do. That will give you more satisfaction in the end than any other course of action. Then, if you should be drafted, -- well, that is an intervention of fate. You will never have yourself to blame for it. Blaming one's self is the only thing that really takes the courage out of one.
Good luck, my dear boy. Call on me when you need anything -- for I love you very truly.
Your Aunt Willa W. S. Cather ASTICOU INN NORTHEAST HARBOR2 MAINE Mr. Charles E. Cather1 503 Carleton Road Westfield3 New Jersey NORTHEAST HARBOR MAINE2 AUG 7 1945 6 PM Air MailInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2769.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2769
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Charles E. Cather1
- Date letter was written
- August 4, 1945
- Place letter was written
- Northeast Harbor, Maine, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Charles E. Cather Collection (MS350), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Asticou Inn (Northeast Harbor, ME): Originally built in 1883 by A. C. Savage, the Asticou Inn was destroyed by a fire in 1899, but rebuilt by 1901. When the war and health considerations made travel to Grand Manan impossible, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis stayed at the Asticou in the 1940s, occupying a small cottage on the grounds of the inn.
Willa Cather seems to be advising her nephew about his future plans because he had failed mathematics at the U.S. Military Academy and could not re-enroll until he passed a mathematics exam.
The United States instituted a peacetime draft on 16 September 1940. Japan surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on 14 August 1945, ending World War II, but this event occurred a week after Willa Cather wrote this letter.
Person Annotations
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.
Southwick, Helen Louise Cather (1918-2004). Cather’s niece.
Helen was born in Red Cloud, NE, to Willa Cather’s brother James and
his wife Ethel. Willa was a doting aunt on her visits to Red Cloud. In 1931,
Helen moved with her family to Long Beach, CA, where she graduated high
school and attended Long Beach City College. In 1939, Helen returned to Red
Cloud to help care for her maternal grandmother and then enrolled in the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where she met her future husband, Philip
Southwick. After graduating in 1941, she briefly returned to California to
work in the personnel department of Douglas Aircraft company, but married
Southwick in Lincoln in 1942, and then moved with him to Champaign, IL. When
Philip’s employment took them to Plainfield, NJ, she frequently spent time
with her aunt in New York City. In 1946, the Southwicks moved to Pittsburgh,
PA, where their son James was born. In later years Helen worked as a school
librarian and was active in the Cather Foundation in Red Cloud, NE. She was
a beneficiary of Cather’s literary estate, and when Edith Lewis died in 1972
she bequeathed Cather books and manuscripts to Helen and her brother Charles
Cather. Helen donated her share of these materials and Willa Cather’s
letters to her to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Place Annotations
