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 |
44-60 East Twenty-Third Street,
NEW YORK2. October 9, 1906 Dear Mr. Dwight1:
We took "The Valley of the Mills"4 because we liked it in spite of the fact that we felt it lacked something; at least Mr. McClure5 and I both liked it very, very much. I always hold out in argument that a feeling can be a story just as much as an incident, or rather that a story can be made out of a feeling as naturally as it can be made out of an incident.
Still, I do think there are certain ways of arrangement which are as necessary in the management of a story made out of a feeling as they are in the management of a story made out of an incident, but this is futile talk, because you know the weak side of your own work better than anyone else knows it. It really seems such a trivial weakness that I cannot believe you will find it very hard to get over.
If you are going back to hallowed and wholesome lands, I feel that you ought to be able to find stories there
for us. As long as I am here your work would
shall always have an ardent advocate. There
is nobody here who would not like the "outlandishness" and pictur— #2esqueness, provided
that you can make the story run a little hotter and swifter through your
atmosphere.
I want to see you before you go away because I have long been thinking about the possibility of a series of descriptive articles which would have to do with Mediterranean6 countries and I want to talk this matter over with you. I am going to Pittsburg7 on Friday night of this week to be gone until the first of November. After I return I shall be at #60 South Washington Square8. Please telephone or drop me a note before you come so that I may be sure to be at home.
In case you are going away before I come back, I hope you will try to drop into the office some day this week. I shall be there every day until Saturday.
Very sincerely yours, Willa Sibert Cather. Mr. H. G. Dwight, c/o The Authors' Club, N.Y.2You do so nearly press the button in the story we took. Of course we all think it's world's better than plenty of stories that "get there" admirably—but if this story arrived with both its feet it would be a really valuable thing—a stem winder!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0116.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0116
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Harrison G. Dwight 1
- Date letter was written
- October 9, 1906
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Harrison Griswold Dwight (AC 1898) Papers, 1890-1959 (MA.00012), Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst, MA
Individual Annotations
60 Washington Square (New York City): The address of Cather's first rented room in New York from 1906 to 1908. Located on the south side of Washington Square Park, Edith Lewis lived in the same building and was there when Cather visited her in 1904 and 1905. The building was in a cluster later called "Genius Row" due to the large number of writers and artists that lived there. Cather briefly returned to the address in the spring of 1912 before moving to 5 Bank Street later that fall.
Person Annotations
Dwight, Harrison Griswold (1875-1959). American writer and diplomat.
Dwight was born in Constantinople, Turkey, to a missionary family.
His early education was abroad, but he graduated from Amherst College in
Amherst, MA, in 1898. He joined the consular service and later worked as a
translator during World War I. Cather apparently met him in 1906 in
connection with editorial work at McClure’s Magazine.
Cather and Dwight occasionally met socially; he apparently also knew
Cather’s Pittsburgh friends, Mary and May Willard. Her letters often report
her reactions to his work, including Stamboul Nights
(1916), which drew on his experience in the Middle East.
McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born
American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine,
living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education
he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox
College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he
edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite
opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet
Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary,
and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s
Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893
with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the
"muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens,
but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who
worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s
attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of
fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the
editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she
later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost
control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his
autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book
publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately
failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine
publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost
went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to
her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the
prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry,
in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled
the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
"The Valley of the Mills," McClure's Magazine (1908) by Harrison Griswold Dwight
