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 |
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0075.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0075
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwrtten on recto and verso of postcard.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield 1
- Date letter was written
- [August 7, 1902]
- Place letter was written
- Paris, Île-de-France, France2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Collection (mss-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
Individual Annotations
Originating in the 17th century as a royal residence, the Luxembourg Palace and, especially, the Luxembourg Garden was a popular attraction in the heart of Paris featuring French and English gardens, trees, fountains, and sculpture. Cather had a series of portrait photographs taken in the garden in 1920.
Probably at the Musée du Luxembourg art museum, which was dedicated to the work of contemporary artists. In August 1902, the museum featured "Exposition du F. Butot et des peintres anglais et americains."
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.
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.
Osborne, Evelyn (1875-1905). American academic. Osborne
graduated from Barnard College in New York City in 1900, received an MA from
Columbia University in 1901, and then enrolled in the Columbia doctoral
program in modern languages. In the summer of 1902, she and her Columbia
classmate Dorothy Canfield were both conducting research at the Sorbonne in
Paris, France, and Canfield introduced Osborne to Cather, who was taking her
first trip to Europe in the company of Isabelle McClung. By the summer of
1904 Osborne had abandoned doctoral study because of a faculty member who
opposed female students. Osborne had a disfiguring burn scar on the left
side of her face, and Cather gave a scar precisely like it to Virginia
Gilbert, the central character “The Profile,” which Cather intended for The Troll Garden (1905). After Canfield intervened in
1904 the story was withdrawn from the book but appeared in McClure’s Magazine in 1907, after Osborne’s sudden death from
appendicitis on July 2, 1905.
Sibut, Mme. Operator of a pension at 11 rue de Cluny in Paris, France, and the mother of Blanche, Céline, and Pierre Sibut. Cather and Isabelle McClung stayed at the Sibut pension in August 1902.
Horne, Miss. A laundress who cared for Cather's clothes during her 1902 trip to Europe. No further information is available about this person.
Place Annotations
