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 |
Pittsburg Leader3 July 17 1901 My Dear Mr. Sibel1;
I arrived home2 two weeks ago very much worn out by the years hard work, and am not feeling much rested yet. I am tweny pounds thinner than when you saw me last. I dont object to that but I do object to the good for nothing feeling that comes with it.
I find my mother4 somewhat better than she has been for several years and Jack5 and Elsie6 grown beyond all belief. They ask me to tell them about Erna7 every few days and are never tired of hearing about the Christmas tree and the bunnies in the cellar.
I expect a story8 of mine will be out in the August or
September Scribners9; when I read the proofs it was
scheduled for August but that guarantees nothing. I had a story10 in the June “New England Magazine”11
that I would like you to read if you have time. My mother has basely filched all my
copies and sent them to deaf great-aunts etc, but perhaps you’ll have time to look
it up at the Library some day. I start for the Rockies the first of August to be
gone for several weeks and I hope to hear from you before then. I thought surely EDITORIAL ROOMS
Pittsburgh Leader
_____ 190__ I would get to see you before I
left Pittsburgh12, but the horror of the High School13 closing examinations ought
to be exposed to the public. I simply had to give up everything and in order to get through the work at all. Tell
Erna she must not forget me, and that I hope to help her trim her tree next
Christmas. Is the heat as terrible at World’s End as here I wonder? It is like to
be
world end in truth here. With my heartiest love to you all and prayers for cool
weather
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0070.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0070
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of first leaf and recto only of second leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- George Seibel1
- Date letter was written
- July 17, 1901
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Explanation of conjectured place letter was written
-
Cather was in Red Cloud when she wrote this letter, despite writing it on Pittsburgh Leader stationary.
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather began teaching at Central High School in Pittsburgh, PA, in the spring of 1901. She remained at Central High until taking a position in the fall of 1903 at Allegheny High School in Allegheny, PA (which became part of Pittsburgh in 1907). She taught at Allegheny High until the spring of 1906.
Person Annotations
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.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the 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.
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.
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
Pittsburgh Leader
"A Death In The Desert," Scribner's Magazine (January 1903) by Willa Cather
Scribner's Magazine
"El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional," New England Magazine (June 1901) by Willa Cather
New England Magazine
