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 |
Remember me warmly to your aunt Helen3 and my very best to your mother4.
My Dearest Dorothy1;I am mightily sorry to hear that your aunt Helen is so much worse, but glad you are
out of the rush and riot in a cool and quiet place. The rush of examinations5 is about to begin and for
the next two weeks I shall be dead to the world. We6 sail on the fourteenth on the Noordland, American Line, from
Philadelphia7. We will be in England8 until the middle or last of July,
according to the date at on which you can meet us in
Paris9. Let me know about that as soon
as you can. I am unable to believe in it at all. It's too good. I am none to joyful these days, and need to see you sorely, sorely. To think of your
reading Hesperians10! What do you mean by telling me
there was anything good11 in it? As I
remember it, it was really grand-eloquent stuff enough, of the heart-on-the-sleeve order. Ipsa glorior infama12, as I remember, when there was little
to glory in, God wot, and enough to be ashamed of. Well, we go on making fools of
ourselves just so. I grow older and tireder but very little wiser. No, I surely was
not very happy then. People cut me deeper than they do now.
Please let me hear from you before we start and dont forget a steamer letter13. Do
you like these Marsyas14 verses at all? I think the
Hawthorn Tree15 rather prettily illustrated. I've
goth to got to the point where letter writing
will not awnser answer, I must talk to you to let my
heart out at all or to feel you with me. But I will do that soon, wont I? Heaven speed the day.
Shall I send your French books to you in Vermont16 or express them to New
York17? Heaven! I wish I could see you before I sail. The distance
seems long and the chances of missing you many. I wonder if whether, if we do meet in
Paris18, I can shake off this fog that has gone clear into my bones and be
made anew? I almost believe I can.
Greet warmly for me your cousins Hermie19 and Nat20 and think a thought for me at Equinox21 and pray him to send me a little of his repose. Did I tell you that from Liverpool22 we are going right down to—Shropshire23!? Someway I always rather link Equinox24 with Shropshire25.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0072.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0072
- Contents
- The document is three leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield1
- Date letter was written
- [May 1902]
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Collection (mss-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
Individual Annotations
Cather was giving examinations as a teacher at Central High School in Pittsburgh.
The Hesperian was the student literary magazine at the University of Nebraska. Cather served as a Literary Editor in 1892-93, then as Managing Editor in 1893-94. She published several poems, plays, short stories, and editorial comments in the magazine between 1891-94, sometimes unsigned.
Cather likely meant "ipsa glorior infamia." Translation: "I glory in the shame."
A letter or gift mailed to the steamship for passengers to open on board.
Canfield actually met Cather and McClung in London in the second week of July before the pair made it to Paris, likely because Canfield was in London to study manuscripts at the British Museum.
The Canfield family home in Arlington, VT, is near Equinox Mountain.
Shropshire, a county in England, is an important destination for Cather because of her enthusiasm for A. E. Housman's book, A Shropshire Lad (1896).
Person Annotations
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational
and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became
friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's
father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to
Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio
State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed
her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia
University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the
University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On
Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with
Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman.
Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s
friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield
became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the
story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905).
Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence
was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in
war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of
her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922)
led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of
the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels
(most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various
nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Camp, Helen May (1839-after 1902). Dorothy Canfield’s maternal aunt. Born in Ohio, Helen Camp was the eldest daughter of Albert A. Camp and Martha Barney Camp, and the sister of Dorothy Canfield’s mother, Flavia Camp Canfield. In 1900 Helen Camp was living or staying with another sister, Delia Camp Fletcher, in Minneapolis, MN. Cather probably met Helen Camp in Vermont when Cather visited Dorothy Canfield in 1900 or 1901; she enquires after Dorothy’s aunt Helen in a 1902 letter.
Canfield, Flavia Camp (1844-1930). Clubwoman; painter; mother of Dorothy Canfield. Flavia Camp was born in Wisconsin, although her family came from Vermont. She was an early graduate of the University of Wisconsin and taught school and art before marrying James H. Canfield in 1873. Their son James A. Canfield was born in 1874, and their daughter Dorothy in 1879. A painter, Flavia studied in Europe, taking her daughter with her on several occasions. She was an activist and social reformer as well, believing in the power of women to effect change by organizing. She was one of the founders of the University of Nebraska Women’s Club, as well as the Ohio State Women’s Club and many others, and was president of the Ohio Federation of Women’s Clubs. Late in her life she wrote Around the World at Eighty (1926), an account of a world tour she took at that age.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Canfield, Hermione H. (1863-1945) (“Hermie”). Dorothy Canfield’s cousin. Born in Vermont, daughter of Malcolm Canfield and Harriet Augusta Graves Canfield, Hermione Canfield grew up in Manchester, VT. Active in her community, Canfield was one of the founders of the Monday Club in 1895 and of the Manchester Historical Society in 1897. Cather probably met Hermione Canfield while on a visit to Dorothy Canfield in 1900-1901; she sent greetings to her through Dorothy in letters in 1902 and 1903 (#0072, #0090).
Canfield, Nathaniel Malcolm (1867-1942) (“Nat”). Farmer; Dorothy Canfield’s cousin. Born in Vermont, the younger son of Malcolm Canfield and Harriet Augusta Graves Canfield, Nathaniel Canfield lived in Manchester, VT. Cather apparently met Nathaniel Canfield, Dorothy Canfield’s first cousin, once removed, on a visit to Dorothy in Arlington, VT, in 1900 or 1901. In a 1902 letter to Dorothy Canfield (#0072) Cather sent greetings to “Nat” and his sister “Hermie.” In a later letter (#0635), Cather said he had seemed “mysterious” to her.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Hesperian
"Lament For Marsyas," April Twilights (1903) by Willa Cather
"The Hawthorn Tree," April Twilights (1903) by Willa Cather
