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 |
PITTSBURGH LEADER
_____ 189__ Dear Mrs. Seibel1;
Just as I was about to leave the office3
for your place last night, we head that our music man was sick and I had to do the orchestra concert on the
Carnegie4. I've had shuc such a perverse streak of luck about getting
over to see you that I'm getting superstitious about it. I wont make any more dates and then not keep them, but you'll see me in a little while. There is a faint chance of my going to Paris5 next month, very faint, but in a week or two
I'll know for sure and can settle down to a peaceful existence again. I've been a
good deal worked up about it.
My poem6 is in the March "Critic."7
My love to you all8 Willa Cather. Saturday.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0061.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0061
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Helen Hiller Seibel1
- Date letter was written
- [March 1900]
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 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.
Located at 4400 Forbes Avenue in Pittsburgh, PA, the Carnegie Music Hall was built in 1895 in the same building as the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.
Person Annotations
Seibel, Helen Hiller (1873-1971). Cather’s Pittsburgh friend.
Born in Pennsylvania to German immigrant parents, Helen Hiller
married George Seibel on 6 September 1894. Their one child, Erna, was born
in 1897. Cather met the couple through George Seibel’s work for the Home Monthly, which Cather was editing. Soon the
three were meeting frequently at the Seibel home, studying and translating
French and German literature. Cather read her own poetry and short stories
to them as well. The Seibel house at 114 S. 17th Street on Pittsburgh’s
South Side served as the model for the home of Alfred Engelhardt and his
uncle in “Double Birthday” (1925).
Seibel, George (1873-1958). American literary and drama critic.
Cather met Seibel and his wife Helen while working as editor of the
Home Monthly in Pittsburgh in 1896 and 1897. They
regularly studied French and German together, Cather read her work in
progress to him, and George reviewed April Twilights
(1903) in the Pittsburgh Gazette.
Yorke, Erna Seibel (1897-after 1971). Daughter of Cather’s friends, George and Helen Seibel. Erna Seibel was born in Pittsburgh, PA; Willa Cather was a frequent visitor at her family’s home in her early childhood. She attended Carnegie Tech, studying art. Around 1927 she married Cecil B. Yorke, a writer. They had a son, Duane, and lived in New York in the 1930s, later moving to Santa Cruz, CA. She donated the letters Cather had written to her parents to the Cather Foundation.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Grandmither, Think Not I Forget," Critic (April 1900) by Willa Cather
Critic
