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 |
Do I know a Shropshire Lad4? Do I? Isn't the internal evidence of my own verses all against me? Why I've been Housman5's bond slave, mentally, since his volume first appeared some six years ago. As soon as I got to England6 I went straight to Shropshire7, to all the places - Shrewesbury8, Ludlow9, Kneighton10, and the rivers11 "Ouy and Teme and Clun"12. I even went to Shrewesbury jail - it stands just above the railway switch yards and that is why "Trains all night groan on the rail to men that die at morn"13. I saw the "Vanes of Shrewesbury gleam islanded in Severn stream"14 and "football playing along the river shore15, and heard the Ludlow bells play "The Conquering Hero Comes"16 of a Monday17. In short I found everything there except Housman. Of him not a legend, not a button or feather or mark. Nobody had ever heard of him or seen his book. There was a copy in the Shrewesbury public library, but the leaves were uncut. In London18 I battered upon the doors of his publishers19 until they gave me his address. He lives in an awful suburb20 in quite the most horrible boarding-house I ever explored. He is the most gaunt and grey and embittered individual I know. He is an instructor in Latin inscriptions21 in the University of London, but I believe the position pays next to nothing. The poor man's shoes and cuffs and the state of the carpet in his little hole of a study gave me a fit of dark depression. I would like to tell you all about it sometime: I think he is making about the only English verse that will last, the only verse of this decade I mean. It is as remarkable technically as it is unique in the truth of its sentiment. That sounds rather flat, but you will know what I mean. And how intensely it does appeal, where it appeals at all. It's not every one who can care for it. I only know a dozen or so who see anything extraordinary in it.
He does it all so beautifully from the country boy's standpoint that the castle is just "Ludlow Tower22" to him, as it -2-is to the lads who walk there with their girls on Sunday afternoons. The way that man has kept all his Classical philology out of his verse, the way he has kept the meadow-level: I was there in haying season and I used to look for poor Maurice behind the hay-cocks.23 By the way did you know that the poor man's name is Albert Edward24, after H. R. H25? I've gone on at great length about him, but I've tracked the man the length and breadth of England and done much shameless detective work on him, that I'm glad to be able to tell a few of my discoveries to some one who agrees with me about his verse. If you ever want more information just give me an opportunity and I will play on and on like a music box.
Faithfully yours, Willa S. Cather. Sunday, June 14. AboutHousman
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0088.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0088
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only, with handwritten note on verso of second leaf. Includes accompanying typewritten note from Witter Bynner dated November 30, 1960, indicating that this letter is a transcription given to him by Viola Roseboro'.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Viola Roseboro'1
- Date letter was written
- June 14 [1903]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's trip to Europe with Isabelle McClung in the summer of 1902.
- Accompanying this letter
-
Includes one typewritten note from Witter Bynner dated November 30, 1960.
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Bynner, Witter, 1881-1968 (MS AM 1629), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
1180 Murray Hill Avenue (Pittsburgh, PA): Located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA, now part of the Murray Hill Avenue Historic District, 1180 Murray Hill was the home of Judge Samuel A. McClung and his family. Cather lived there at Isabelle McClung’s invitation from 1901 to 1906. She returned there to visit multiple times until 1915, often writing during these visits.
The Teme River flows from Knighton in Wales through Ludlow in Shropshire, and on to join the Severn River. The River Onny is one of the tributaries of the Teme, joining it near Ludlow. The River Clun flows through Shropshire and joins the Teme in north Hertfordshire.
This phrase is part of the second line of A. E. Housman's poem 50, "In valleys of springs of rivers."
Verse 4 of A. E. Housman's poem 9, "On moonlit heath and lonesome bank" begins, "They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail" with the three lines Cather quotes following.
These are part of the first two lines of A. E. Housman's poem 28, "High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam."
These are from lines 9-10 of A. E. Housman's poem 27, "is my team ploughing."
Verse 3 of A. E. Housman's poem 3, "Leave your home behind, lad" ends, "And Ludlow chimes are playing / 'The conquering hero comes.'" The melody is from "See, the conquering hero comes," a famous chorus from George Frideric Handel's oratorio, Judas Maccabaeus (1746).
Verse 3 of A. E. Housman's poem 3, "Leave your home behind, lad," begins, "Come you home of Monday."
According to #1691, publisher Grant Richards, who brought out a new edition of A Shropshire Lad in 1898, provided Cather the address.
A. E. Housman lived at 17 North Road, Highgate, London, from about 1886 to 1905.
A. E. Housman specialized in epigraphy, the study of inscriptions, while at University College, London.
The high bell tower of St. Laurence church in Ludlow was visible for some distance into the countryside. A. E. Housman's ashes are buried there.
Lines 7-8 of A. E. Housman's poem 8, "'Farewell to barn and stack and tree,'" say, "And Maurice amongst the hay lies still / And my knife is in his side.'"
A. E. Housman's first names were Alfred Edward.
Person Annotations
Roseboro’, Viola (1857-1945). American editor and author.
Born in Pulaski, TN, to parents whose abolitionist sympathies caused
them to flee the state shortly before the Civil War, Viola Roseboro’
graduated from Fairmount College in Monteagle, TN. Before moving to New York
City around 1882, she was an actress with a traveling stock company. In New
York she worked as a journalist and began publishing short stories in
magazines while continuing to tour occasionally until she left the stage
permanently in 1887. Roseboro’ actively published fiction for the rest of
her life, including The Joyous Heart (1903), a Civil
War novel critical of Southern slavery, and Players and
Vagabonds (1904), a collection of stories about the theater. Having
sold short stories to the McClure fiction syndicate in the 1880s, in the
early 1890s she began evaluating manuscripts for the syndicate and soon did
the same for McClure’s Magazine and book publisher
McClure, Phillips & Co. Cather evidently first met Roseboro’ in 1903,
when S.S. McClure called her to New York to discuss her fiction; the two
women began corresponding, and Roseboro’ may have influenced McClure’s
decision to hire Cather as an editor for his magazine in 1906. When most of
the magazine editorial staff walked out on McClure that year, Roseboro’
stayed, but when S.S. McClure lost control of the magazine in 1911, she left
for Collier’s Weekly. When her position there ended,
she moved to Staten Island and struggled to support herself as an author’s
consultant. When S.S. McClure regained control of his magazine in 1921, she
rejoined the staff and took an apartment at 13 Bank Street, but the position
did not last long and she was soon struggling to support herself again; a
1928 bequest from a friend alleviated her financial distress and allowed her
to live comfortably abroad and in New Dorp on Staten Island. Cather’s
letters to Roseboro’ suggest that, long after she became an established
author, Cather valued Roseboro’s friendship and her judgment in literary
matters. She particularly valued Roseboro’s response as a Southerner to Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), an advance copy
of which she sent to her.
Housman, Alfred Edward (1859-1936) (“A. E.”). British poet and
scholar. Born in Worcestershire, England, the eldest son of a
solicitor and his wife, Housman won a scholarship in 1877 to St. John’s
College, Oxford University, where he studied classics. Although he was a
promising scholar, he failed to obtain his degree and took a job at the
patent office in London. He continued as an independent scholar, and the
brilliance of his work led to his appointment in 1892 as professor of Latin
at University College, London, and in 1911 to Trinity College, Cambridge. He
published A Shropshire Lad (1896), his most famous
collection of poems, at his own expense, but its reputation steadily
increased. Cather discovered Housman’s poems soon after they appeared in the
U.S., and they influenced much of her early poetry. Shropshire was one of
the first destinations on her European trip in 1902, and Housman was one of
the people she most wanted to meet. The meeting was awkward and became the
subject of speculation and stories by others in later years.
Edward VII (1841-1910). King of the United Kingdom, Emperor of India. The eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was named Albert after his father and Edward after his maternal grandfather. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge universities before his marriage in 1863 to Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Queen Victoria excluded him from direct roles in government; he was successful in informal diplomacy. As Prince of Wales, he developed a reputation as a playboy. He did not become king until his mother’s death in 1902. His second son, George Frederick, succeeded him; his eldest son, Prince Albert Victor, died in 1892.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
A Shropshire Lad (1896) by A. E. Housman
