Austermann, George (1899-1982). Hotelkeeper, the Shattuck Inn. George Austermann, born in Missouri, married Eleanor Shattuck in 1927; they had four sons, one of whom died in 1933. That same year, after his wife’s father died, they took over the management of her family’s hotel, the Shattuck Inn, in Jaffrey, NH, where Cather had been a regular summer or fall guest since 1917.

Tennant, Stephen (1906-1987). British aesthete. Born at Wilsford Manor in Wiltshire, England, Stephen Tennant was the fourth son of Edward Priaulx Tennant, Baron Glenconner, a landowner and member of Parliament, and Pamela Adelaide Genevieve Wyndam, a writer. After her first husband’s death, his mother married the Viscount Grey of Fallodon. Educated at home, Tennant attended the Slade School of Fine Art in 1922 and became known for his flamboyance and decadence. He had a long romantic relationship with poet Siegfried Sassoon. After breaking off his relationship with Sassoon in 1932, he began writing Lascar: A Story of the Maritime Boulevards, which was based on his travels in the south of France and which he never completed. In 1927, British novelists Anne Douglas Sedgwick arranged an epistolary introduction of Tennant to Cather, and they corresponded for the rest of Cather’s life. In late 1935, he traveled to the U.S. and met Cather and Edith Lewis in New York City, and Cather recommended to him the Shattuck Inn in Jaffrey, NH. Cather found Lascar fascinating, and she attempted to help him find a U.S. publisher for his Leaves From a Missionary’s Notebook (1937), but she could not interest Knopf or Houghton Mifflin in his decadent, risqué work. Cather made a bequest to Tennant in her will, and he became close to Edith Lewis, who arranged for him to write the foreword to Willa Cather on Writing (1949). He spent his later years as a semi-invalid at Wiltshire Manor, where he died.

Tennant, Edward Priaulx (1st Baron Glenconner) (1859-1920). British peer and politician; Stephen Tennant’s father. Born the eldest surviving son of a baronet in the Scottish Border region, Edward Tennant was educated at Eton College and Trinity College Cambridge. He traveled extensively in Africa, India, and America, and held a variety of political positions over many years. He succeeded to his father’s baronetcy in 1906 and was raised to the peerage as Baron Glenconner, of The Glen in County Peebles, in 1911. He and his wife, Pamela Wyndham Tennant, had six children who lived to adulthood, including Stephen Tennant, who became Willa Cather’s friend. After Baron Glenconner’s death, his wife married Sir William Grey.

Grey, Edward (1862-1933). British statesman. Born in London, England, Sir Edward Grey was created a viscount in 1885, sitting in the House of Commons until 1916. In 1905 Grey was appointed British Foreign Secretary, serving for eleven years. During WWI, he created the secret Treaty of London, and in 1919 he visited the U.S. to advocate for its entry into the League of Nations. In 1922 Grey married Pamela Wyndham, becoming the stepfather of Stephen Tennant, a friend of Cather and Edith Lewis.

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.