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 |
For the very insufficient reason that I am a pencil-pusher by profession3 my family see fit to commission me with all their correspondence. My mother4 never writes letters at all you know and urges me to convey her best love to you and to thank you for the photograph which we all think excellent. Jess5 has been playing the new waltzes you sent her while Doug6 and I dance. O, in this connection you will be astonished to learn that we have a new carpet! Father7 went up to Lincoln8 and selected it and it causes me to have nightmares continually, but I don't dare say so for it would hurt the dear old chap's feelings, as he got it in honor of my arrival. He is home9 now, you know, knocked out with a hurt knee10 and will be with us for some weeks. Poor man he never gets home to his babies unless he is sick. I will be home until the first of October. Goodness but we all do have jolly times together! Roscoe11 and I leave for a ten day's shooting trip out in the sagebrush country and the Big Horn region12 this week. He has hay fever and the high altitude will be good for him. Douglass is in Omaha13 seeing the Exposition14. He is bigger and handsomer than ever. I wish heartily that you were here and I could tell you all about my trips to New York15 and Washington16 and the interesting people I met. Incidentally I would like to show you what I can do in the line of making gin cocktails. I spent the first two weeks of May in Washington, and Washington in the tender green of the young summer is something to cherish in one's memory a lifetime. I hope to get out a little volume17 of theatrical essays next winter, that is if I can desist from playing with Jack18 and Elsie19 long enough to finish them up this summer. But the essays can wait and the children won't be children always.
Roscoe and I met Mr. McNiney20 at Mr. Cases21 last night and I asked him to call. I am
thinking of working at my book in one of his offices this summer and I suppose
the Miners22 won't speak to me
after that. We gave up our old office this
last winter.
Roscoe and I are counting on all kinds of adventures on our trip out in the sand
hills. You remember how we enjoyed our week23 among the Norwegians last year.
Ross will be principal of the South Ward
school24
next this winter. I will go back to Pittsburgh25. I have too good a thing there to let
go. I had a good thing offered me on the New York Sun26 and went down27 to look it up, but it was all night work and I
sleep little enough as it is. Then there are people in Pittsburgh whom I can't bear
to leave. They make the game worth while. In the end other things don't count
much, you know.
I do wish you were here, we would have some great old drives together and I have a great deal to tell you. It has been a very happy year for me, just to be alive and "in it" all has seemed a fine thing. Let me hear from you before I go back please, and through all the ups and downs of life believe me
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0050.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0050
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Winifred Richardson Garber1
- Date letter was written
- August 15, 1898
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather worked as a day telegraph editor and drama critic for the Pittsburgh Leader, which had offices on Pittsburgh's Fifth Avenue, from September 1897 to the spring of 1900.
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).
The Webster County Argus reported on May 27, 1898, that Charles Cather had injured his knee in a runaway buggy accident.
The Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition was held in Omaha from June to November, 1898.
Willa Cather planned a collection of essays, called The Player Letters, consisting of letters addressed to well known actors assessing their careers and their strengths and weaknesses. No such volume was published.
Willa Cather and Roscoe Cather spent a week in August 1897 in what she terms the "wild west" (#0041).
Red Cloud's South Ward School, at Walnut and Division streets, opened in late 1885, with Eva King as the principal. Willa Cather attended this school in its first year.
Cather traveled to New York City in February 1898 to be a guest reviewer for the New York Sun to fill in for the drama critic, Franklin Fyles, who was ill.
Person Annotations
Garber, Winifred Richardson (1869-after 1930) (“Fred,” “Freddie”). Cather's Red Cloud acquaintance. Winifred Richardson, born in Nebraska, was the eldest daughter of stockman William N. Richardson, a prototype for Mr. Trueman in Cather’s “Two Friends” (1932). She attended a boarding school in St. Joseph, MO, from 1883-1886. In 1888 she married William Seward Garber, son of Silas Garber, a prototype for Captain Forrester in Cather’s A Lost Lady (1923). They had three daughters. The family moved to Lincoln, NE, then to Buffalo, NY; Winifred and her daughters moved to Los Angeles, CA, around 1920; she subsequently divorced her husband.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in Virginia to William Lee Boak
and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and was a
schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872. Her
husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War while
her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Auld, Jessica Virginia Cather (1881-1964) (“Jessie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jessica
was the fourth child and second daughter of Charles and Virginia Cather.
After graduating from Red Cloud High School in 1899, she taught at a country
school and the South Side Grade School until her marriage to James William
Auld, a Red Cloud banker, in 1904. They had three children (Charles, William
Thomas, and Mary Virginia). After their divorce in 1933, she moved to Palo
Alto, CA, where she died thirty-one years later. Few letters from Willa
Cather to her sister Jessica survive, and particularly after Jessica’s
divorce their relationship was strained.
Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
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).
Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother.
Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and
fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger
than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small
boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote
several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating
from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University
of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he
enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study
engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to
Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his
decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he
graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a
chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport,
PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children,
Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer
in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936
he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers
Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA.
Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had
little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from
her to him have surfaced.
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
McNeny, Bernard (1871-1939). Red Cloud lawyer. Bernard McNeny was born in Ft. McHenry, NY. He came to Red Cloud, NE, in 1889 to visit his elder brother James McNeny, a lawyer, and was himself admitted to the bar in 1891, becoming very successful. He was part of the young social set of Red Cloud when Cather was growing up there. He married Helen Sherman in 1907, and they had one daughter, Helen, in 1908. In 1914 the McNenys moved into a house across the street from the second Charles Cather home. Bernard McNeny handled some business and legal matters for Willa Cather.
Case, Oliver C. (1852-1904). American attorney. Born near
Rochester, NY, Case studied at the Iowa Law College before coming to Red
Cloud, NE, in 1878. His successful practice led to election to the state
legislature in 1882, and to appointment as the city attorney. In 1890 he
married then-county superintendent of schools, Eva King. Because of ill
health he stopped practicing law and his wife returned to teaching. He
remained, however, a popular and influential citizen, and Cather valued his
advice and encouragement.
Miner, Julia Erickson (1844-1917). Cather's Norwegian-American
friend. Born in Norway, where her father was a musician and a
leather-worker, Julia came with her family to the U.S. in 1853. They settled
in Iowa, where she met and married James L. Miner in 1868. The family came
to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where J. L. Miner became the leading merchant of
the town. They had eight children, of whom five survived to adulthood; their
four daughters, Carrie, Mary, Margaret, and Irene, were all good friends of
Cather. Julia Miner was widowed in 1905. Cather portrayed her as the strong,
active, musical Mrs. Harling in My Ántonia (1918),
the only time, she said, that she drew a “portrait of an actual person.”
Miner, James L. (1847-1905) (“J.L.”). Red Cloud merchant. Born in Ohio, James Miner came with his family to Iowa, where he married Julia Erickson in 1868. They had eight children, five of whom survived to adulthood, Carrie, Mary, Margaret, Irene, and Hugh, who were Cather’s childhood friends in Red Cloud, NE, where the family moved in 1878. James and his brother Hugh Miner started the Miner Bros. store, which became one of the largest in the region. They also bought a large cattle ranch on the Republican River west of Red Cloud and started the People’s Bank of Red Cloud in 1893, when other town banks had failed. Miner was a Catholic and a Democrat in a predominantly Protestant and Republican area; Cather drew on this in her portrayal of R.E. Dillon in “Two Friends” (1932). Miner also appears as Christian Harling in My Ántonia (1918), the distant father of the Harling children.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
New York Sun
