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 just about half through a nasty job of packing, and the idea has suddenly occured to me that after going going up to your
place tonight to see your new "Worth
Costume3," I did not give voice to my admiration. I dont know just why I did not, but it rather overcame me, the general effect
struck me so hard that I lost track of the incidentals. I find that I have four very
distinct impressions left with me; the neck, the train, the color, and what the
whole affair set off. I suppose you would object to my saying that you looked very
handsome last night; well it is true at any rate, and
the man in the dress coat had the greenest envy that I was able to generate,—I am
not sure that it is the first time he has had it.
Just a word about that Persian poem4 with a name which I have forgotten how to spell. I wanted to get some thing that I liked awfully myself, something that I liked in its self, then it would not seem so formal, and so like carting merchandise up to your house. I thought of sets and sets, Ruskin5 etc. but, well, sets are sets. Then I thought of that Rubyat, I have liked it thing ever since I was a kid, and they are not so beastly common as every thing else, and I got awfully 2 smitten with the illustrations6, they are so queer, unlike any one else, and that swirl he7 brings in so often is a great idea if you take the note's explanation of it. I dont know of any thing that has the horror and mystery of the whole thing so strongly as those whirling curves. I got that instead of any other or others because I just loved the book through and through as much as it is possible to love another persons work, and because of that I felt more of a right to inflict it apon you, see?
I was rather a bore tonight, or rather last night now, wasn't I? Well, I could not
help thinking that it was the last time I should see you for some time, and it affected me rather strangely. If I had known how
queer it would make me feel I would not have gone up to your house. I suppose you
did not feel just as I did because I was only one out of a great many who were was going away while Miss DePue8 and the Deputy
Governor9 and all the rest will be on deck so that one gone wont make much difference f with you. I did
feel queer, I did'nt know it had gotten such a hold on me, I shook myself after I got away, but
it did'nt alter the facts of the case any. I wanted very much to ask you to go
through the customary goodbye formality, but it I
thought it might disgust you a 3 little so I did'nt. It was so queer that I should want to, when
three years ago I had never seen you, and I suppose in three years more—but I dont
had like to think of that, three years have'nt any right to make any difference and of course they will, and I suppose we
will laugh at it all some day as other women do, it make me feel horribly to think
of that, it will be worse than if we should hate each other. It is manifestly unfair
that "feminine friendships" should be unnatural, I agree with Miss De Pue that far.
I did'nt congratulate10 you today because I did not know what to say, I care more for what you will do than for what you have done. 4 I want for you in every channel just about the best that life has to give, thats all.
This epistle is infinitly sillier than one I tore up last March and did not send you, but I am tired
and just have'nt physical energy enough to t tear it, so
you will have to pardon my fam "frame of mind," and
lay it all to the weather.
I suppose you will get this in bed, for goodness sake dont let Tude11 look over your shoulder.
Save that Union photo, please
Miss Louise Pound1 1623 L. St Lincoln2 Neb. LINCOLN,NEBR, REC'D.2 Jul 1 230PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0010.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0010
- Contents
- Document is five leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Louise Pound 1
- Date letter was written
- [June 16, 1892]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
This letter arrived at Duke University accompanied by a note from Olivia Pound dating the letter June 15, 1892. This date corresponds with Louise Pound's graduation from University of Nebraska on June 15, 1892. However, Cather seems to have written this letter in some confusion in the early morning hours of the next day, i.e. 1:30 a.m. rather than 1:30 p.m., after her encounter with Pound "tonight." The envelope is stamped as received in Lincoln on July 1, 1892, but bears no postmark. This does not contradict the June 16 date but merely suggests that Cather did not mail the letter before she left Lincoln for Red Cloud.
- Place letter was written
- Lincoln, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Louise Pound Papers (RL.00039), Duke University, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Durham, NC
Individual Annotations
The House of Worth in Paris, France, offered both haute couture and ready-made women's clothing.
The cover of the 1885 Houghton Mifflin edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayamm illustrated by Elihu Vedder that Willa Cather inscribed as a gift to Louise Pound
in June 1892.
The University of Nebraska awarded Pound her Bachelor of Letters degree on 15 June 1892.
Person Annotations
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.
Ruskin, John (1819-1900). English writer, critic, and lecturer. Ruskin was born in London, England, to John James and Margaret Ruskin. He began his work as a writer and critic early in his life, publishing short prose and verse in magazines in the mid-1830s and writing an unpublished defense of J. M. W. Turner’s late paintings, which he would take up again publicly in 1842. Ruskin enjoyed an increasingly successful career as a writer and lecturer in the following decades. His works, such as The Stones of Venice (1851), Modern Painters (1843), and The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), dramatically impacted art criticism as well as social and political thinking throughout the Victorian period. In an 1896 essay titled “Passing Show,” Cather refers to Ruskin as “the greatest living master of pure English prose.”
Vedder, Elihu (1836-1923). American painter and illustrator. Born in New York City, son of Dr. Elihu and Elizabeth Vedder, Elihu Vedder studied painting in New York, Paris, and Italy. He married Caroline Rosekrans in 1869; two of their four children survived to adulthood. After the Civil War, Vedder lived primarily in Italy, with frequent visits to England, where he was influenced by the work of William Blake and by the Pre-Raphaelites, and to the United States. His visionary style was exemplified in his illustrations for a deluxe edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam (1884), which made him famous. Cather gave Louise Pound a copy of this book as a graduation present in 1892.
Meissner, Minerva Harvey DePue (1871-1921) (“Minnie”). Cather’s
fellow university student. Born in Ohio, the daughter of Scott
and Nellie Webster DePue, Minnie DePue came to Lincoln, NE, in the late
1880s with her widowed mother. In 1888 she entered the University of
Nebraska, where she was active in the Palladian Literary Society, and
graduated in 1892, the same year Louise Pound graduated. She married bank
cashier George L. Meissner on September 12, 1893. They had two daughters and
lived for a time in Crete, NE, before moving to Lodi, CA, where Minnie died.
McDonald, James Boyd (1869-1967). Nebraska banker. Born in Omaha, NE, James moved with his parents, Charles and Orra McDonald, and siblings to North Platte, NE, where his father, an early settler in the county, owned a store and founded the McDonald Bank. James entered the University of Nebraska preparatory school in 1886 and matriculated with the class of 1892. Active in school affairs, he founded and edited two short-lived school papers, the Sophomorian and the Lasso; Cather and classmate Louise Pound both wrote for the Lasso at its outset, and Cather seems to have thought that McDonald was interested in Pound. After graduation, McDonald returned to North Platte, working in his father’s store and later entering in the banking business with his brother William. He married Emily Houska after 1914; he retired in 1934 and the couple moved to Omaha; both are buried in North Platte.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) by Edward FitzGerald
