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 |
Dec 27/95 Dear Mariel1;
I have been so busy enjoying the society of Katharine3 and Katharine's blond brother4 that I really have not had not time to write to you. I am going home5 tomorrow. Say Mariel, I forgot my bunch of keys, I think I left them up stairs someplace, wont you please send them to me at Red Cloud6 as soon as you can, or I cant get that nice neat trunk open at all.
Did you meet Tom Wing7 the other night? I hope you did'nt think I was hurrying you folks off, but he got there just as you left.
In spite of all your promises to write to me I have received no letter and no proofs, false, cruel, fickle push8 that
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0020.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0020
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. This letter is an unsigned fragment.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mariel C. Gere1
- Date letter was written
- December 27, 1895
- Place letter was written
- Beatrice, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (RG2639.AM), Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
241 N. Cedar Street (Red Cloud, NE): Built circa 1879, the Charles F. Cather family rented this home beginning in 1884. Willa Cather’s room was in the attic and her original wallpaper remains to this day. Charles and Mary Virginia Cather lived in this house until they purchased the 541 N. Seward Street house in 1903, although Willa Cather moved out in 1896. Cather used this home as a prototype most clearly in "Old Mrs. Harris," although she memorably describes her attic bedroom and wallpaper in The Song of the Lark (1915).
Cather's nickname for her college friends, including the Gere sisters, Allie Roberts, and Maysie Ames.
Person Annotations
Gere, Mariel Clapham (1874-1960). Cather’s university
friend; a teacher. Mariel Gere, eldest daughter of Charles H.
and Mariel C. Gere, born in Lincoln, NE, entered the University of
Nebraska's prep school in the same year Cather did. She and her sisters
visited Cather several times in Red Cloud, NE. Both were members of the
Union Literary Society until Gere joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in
1892. Gere graduated in the science course and taught chemistry at Lincoln
High until 1941. She also served on the Lincoln City Library board for many
years. Cather and Gere remained friends and correspondents; Gere defended
Cather from accusations that she had been arrogant and friendless during her
university years.
Wing, Katherine Weston (1871-1903) (“Kit”). Cather’s friend. Born in Nebraska, Katherine was the third of four children born to J.B. and Helen Weston, who became well-to-do residents of Beatrice, NE, thirty miles south of Lincoln, NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in 1887, but withdrew for several years due to poor health. When she returned in 1891, she met Cather. She visited Cather in Red Cloud in the summers of 1891, 1894, and 1895, and Cather visited Weston in Beatrice in June, July, and December 1895, where Cather also enjoyed the company of Katherine’s younger brother Herbert (Bert). Katherine attended the library school of the University of Illinois as a member of the class of 1898 but withdrew in 1897. She then remained at home until her June 1902 marriage to Thomas E. Wing, a fellow 1894 University of Nebraska graduate. She moved with him to Scarsdale, NY, where she died of pneumonia in 1903.
Weston, Herbert Towle (1876-1951) (“Bert”). Cather’s Nebraska acquaintance. Born in Lincoln, NE, Bert Weston was raised in Beatrice, NE, by his father, J.B. Weston, one of the town’s founding settlers and most prominent citizens, and mother Helen Towle Weston. His sister Katherine was Cather’s University of Nebraska classmate, and Cather met Bert when she visited her friend in Beatrice. After graduating from Beatrice High School, Bert Weston’s parents sent him to the Michigan Military Academy in Orchard Lake, MI, in 1893. After graduating from MMA in 1895, Weston was admitted to the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. In 1898 he joined the First Connecticut Light Infantry in hopes of fighting in the Spanish-American War but never saw action. He returned to Beatrice at the war’s end and married Margaret Collins of Brooklyn, NY, in 1903. They raised three sons in Beatrice, where Bert worked for the family business, the Beatrice National Bank, established his own business, Nebraska Corn Mills, and managed the Western business interests of his wife’s family.
Wing, Thomas Ellwood (1872-1951) (“Tom”). Willa Cather’s university friend, Edith Lewis’s cousin. Born in Davenport, IA, to George and Mary Gould Wing, both transplanted New England Quakers, Tom Wing moved with his family c. 1886 to Lincoln, NE, where his mother’s sister, Lillie Gould Lewis, and her family had settled. Lillie’s daughter Edith Lewis was thus his cousin. Tom Wing earned a BA from the University of Nebraska in 1893 and a law degree in 1896. The precise nature of Cather’s relationship with Wing when they were contemporaries at the university is not clear, but she evidently corresponded with him after she moved to Pittsburgh, PA, in 1896, the same year he moved to New York City to practice law on Wall Street. In 1902, Wing married Cather’s classmate and friend Katherine Weston, who died the next year. In 1909, Wing married Helen Stanton Bouve, and they had two children. Wing retired to Bennington County, VT, where Dorothy Canfield Fisher was a neighbor. He died in Shaftsbury, VT.
Place Annotations
