Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
Mrs. Kirk5 tells me that she has written you about the pleasant afternoon some half-dozen of us had at her house two weeks ago. She asked us to defer reading your story6 until we met there, and enjoy it with her. We did enjoy it very much indeed, and I wish to tell you how much vitality and charm the woman seemed to me to have. She certainly has real presence and held my interest and sympathy from the moment she came into the story. May I congratulate you upon her vigor and realness?
Sincerely yours Willa Sibert Cather March seventh Mrs. Vermocken1 103 East 29th Street New York3. PITTSBURG, PA.2 MAR 8 1906 6–PM CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0111.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0111
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Moorhead Vermorcken1
- Date letter was written
- March 7 [1906]
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1342 (1)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
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.
Person Annotations
Vermorcken, Elizabeth Moorhead (c.1866-1955). American writer and academic. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Elizabeth Moorhead married Frederick Vermorcken in 1891, although the marriage did not last long, and she soon returned to Pittsburgh. In 1910 she began an eighteen-year teaching career as an Assistant Professor of English at Carnegie Technical Schools in Pittsburgh while also writing short stories and articles that appeared in national magazines. After retiring from teaching in 1928, she wrote three novels. After moving to Florence, Italy, in the 1930s, she began writing The Whirling Spindle (1942), about her family and friends in Pittsburgh, where she returned after Italy’s entry into WWII. Vermorcken likely met Cather in Pittsburgh in 1905, and they remained friends after Cather moved to New York City. Vermorcken wrote the first biographical account of Cather’s Pittsburgh years, These Too Were Here: Louise Homer and Willa Cather (1950).
Kirk, Jean M. Burns (before 1869-1949). American socialite. Jean M. Burns married David M. Kirk, businessman and heir to a successful explosives company, in 1893 in Sharpsburg, PA. The family bought the late W. W. Willock mansion in Sewickley Heights, near Pittsburgh, in 1917. After the family’s finances dwindled, they sold it in 1937. The couple had two daughters, Jean Kirk Kennedy and Robina Kirk Quinby Jenne. In 1906, Willa Cather attended a meeting of the Pittsburgh branch of the Woman’s New England society at Kirk’s home on Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"The Conquered," Harper's Monthly (March 1906), by Elizabeth Moorhead
