Bynner, Witter (1881-1968). American poet and playwright. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Bynner spent most of his childhood in Brookline, MA, and graduated from Harvard University in 1902. The same year he joined the editorial staff of McClure’s Magazine in New York City, first as an office boy and then as assistant to literary editor Viola Roseboro’. He also worked on matters pertaining to the associated book publishing firm McClure, Phillips, and Co. Bynner sent copies of Cather’s The Troll Garden (1905), published by McClure, Phillips, and Co., to Henry James, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Margaret Deland; he conveyed back to Cather James’ dismissive response about American women authors. Bynner left McClure’s in 1906 to concentrate on his poetry and sent Cather a copy of his first book of poems, An Ode to Harvard and Other Poems (1907), to which she responded graciously, but by 1915 she used his name as a shorthand for the worst of modern poetry. In 1916 with his fellow poet Arthur Davison Ficke, Bynner undertook to satirize the Imagist school of poetry by concocting a fake school of poetry, the Spectrics. Bynner assumed the persona Emanual Morgan while Ficke became Anne Knish; they maintained the façade until the 1920s. As a result of a trip to Asia in 1917 with Ficke, Bynner became interested in Chinese T’Ang Dynasty poetry and collaboratively produced a volume of translations with Kiang Kan-hum, The Jade Mountain (1929). He also continued to be a prolific author of original verse. He and Spud Johnson, his secretary and lover, traveled in the American Southwest and Mexico with D. H. and Frieda Lawrence in 1923. Bynner subsequently visited Santa Fe, NM, frequently and bought a house there in 1940. Bynner published a memoir of D.H. Lawrence, Journeys with Genius (1951). After Cather’s death, he was critical of Cather in print, and in letters he spread misinformation about her early career. From 1930, admirer Robert Hunt was his lover and personal assistant. He died in Santa Fe soon after the sudden death of Hunt.

Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father. Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War. He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters, in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe, Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).

Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO, and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers. Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this important sibling relationship have survived.

Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother. Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA, where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926 trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).