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.

Sibut, Pierre. Pierre Sibut resided with his family, including his sisters Céline Sibut and Blanche Sibut, at a pension operated by their mother at 11 rue de Cluny in Paris, France. Willa Cather and Isabelle McClung stayed at the Sibut pension in August 1902.

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.

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.

Canfield, James Hulme (1847-1909). Educator, chancellor of the University of Nebraska. James Canfield was born in Ohio but grew up in Vermont and New York City. After graduating from Williams College in 1868, he went west, where he married Flavia Camp in 1873. Their children were James A. Canfield and Dorothy Canfield (Fisher). He was appointed professor of history at the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1877; from there he was called to be chancellor of the University of Nebraska in 1891. Cather’s class made him an honorary member of their class, as they had all entered the university that year. A dynamic man, he was popular with the students and with people throughout Nebraska, a tireless campaigner for the value of the rapidly growing university to the state. Ohio State University called him to its presidency in 1895; from there he went to Columbia University as head librarian from 1899 until his death in 1909.

Pound, Louise (1872-1958). American folklorist and university professor. Pound and Cather met when both were students at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Cather also knew Louise’s brother Roscoe and sister Olivia. Cather was deeply infatuated with Louise, who was both an outstanding student and an accomplished multi-sport athlete. Pound visited Cather in Red Cloud, NE, several times, but she apparently did not reciprocate Cather’s intense affection, and Cather’s lampoon of Roscoe Pound in “Pastels in Prose” (1894) caused a rift between the two women. Pound earned a BA from Nebraska in 1892, an MA in 1895, and a PhD from the University of Heidelberg in 1900. She was a professor in the English department at the University of Nebraska, where she taught Cather's sister Elsie, until 1945. From 1954-55 she served as the first female president of the Modern Language Association.

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894). Scottish writer. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Stevenson refused to allow his always fragile health to suppress his adventurous spirit. After taking a law degree, he lived and traveled in France, where in 1876 he met his future wife, a married American, Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, in 1876. They were married in 1880, and he produced his best-known works—Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)—in the years that followed. In 1888 he set sail for the South Seas, settling on the Samoan island of Upolo in 1890, where he died and is buried. Cather admired Stevenson’s writing, discussing him in her journalism in the 1890s, and cherished her “Thistle Edition” of Stevenson’s collected works, published from 1895-1899 by Scribner’s.

Gere, Mariel E. Clapham (1838-1912). Cather’s friend; mother of her friends, the Gere sisters. Mariel Elizabeth Clapham was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Captain John Clapham and Mariel Goodwin Clapham. She corresponded with Charles Gere for several years before their marriage in 1871, when she came to Lincoln, NE. When Cather became friends with their daughters Mariel, Ellen, and Frances, she welcomed her to their home at 8th and D streets. Mrs. Gere, according to Cather, persuaded her to grow out her close-cropped hair.

Gere, Ellen Bladen (1875-1941) (“Ned” or “Neddums”). Cather's friend. Ellen Gere, the second daughter of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln, NE. She visited Cather in Red Cloud, NE, with her sisters, and Cather included her in her correspondence in the 1890s. Ellen Gere entered the University of Nebraska in Lincoln around 1892, but graduated with the class of 1899. In the 1920s she adopted two children, believing, with her friend Dorothy Canfield, that women who wanted to be mothers did not have to be married.