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 |
TO THE
PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1900 CHICAGO
AUDITORIUM BUILDING PARIS
20 AVENUE RAPP Columbian Univ. Washington2 December 19, 1900 My Dear Mrs. Seibel1.
Things3 here have been in such a chaotic and uncertain state that I have been unable to foresee whether I can get away and have deferred answering your kind letter from day to day. I have promised myself to spend Christmas eve with you by fair means or foul, and unless I telegraph you otherwise will be there. Give Erna4 a hug for me, and tell her I am coming to her in Santa Claus’es sleigh.
I heard yesterday from Pittsburgh5 that Mansfield6 had written accepting7 Omar8. I did’nt think he had so much sense! To say that I am wild with curiosity and joy is to put it very mildly. I
Faithfully Willa.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0064.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0064
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Helen Hiller Seibel1
- Date letter was written
- December 19, 1900
- Place letter was written
- Washington, D. C., United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather worked in Washington DC as a translator as part of the United States Commission to the Paris Exposition of 1900 and lived with her cousin Howard Gore from at least December 1900 to March 1901.
George Seibel wrote a dramatization of Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam entitled "Omar Khayyam" that was to be produced by Richard Mansfield, who also would star as Omar. This play does not seem to have been published, and it is unclear whether it was performed, although Cather reports the plans for it in "Observations" published in the Lincoln Courier on 10 August 1901.
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).
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.
Mansfield, Richard (1857-1907). Anglo-American actor-manager.
Born in Germany, son of Russian soprano Erminia Rudersdorff,
Mansfield was educated in England and made his start with character roles in
Gilbert and Sullivan’s in light operas. He came to America in 1882, playing
an aging roué in A Parisian Romance (1883), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1887), along with more
conventional roles. His early success enabled him to form his own company;
he was noted for lavish and meticulous staging. One of the first to produce
George Bernard Shaw’s plays in America, Mansfield played the anti-heroes in
Arms and the Man in 1894 and The Devil’s Disciple in 1897. He married his leading woman,
Beatrice Cameron, in 1892. In her early journalism Cather praised Mansfield
for his dedication to his art.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Omar Khayyam (unpublished) by George Seibel
