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 |
4460 EAST TWENTY-THIRD STREET,
NEW YORK2. Monday. My Dear Father1;
I feel so badly about not getting home3 to spend Christmas with my sick daddy5. Until today I have thought that I
might be able to make it, and I have shed a good many bitter tears over
giving it up. For eight years it has been my dream to have a Christmas at
home, and this year I thought I would make it. But if you were here, my
father, you'd tell me to stand by my job and not to desert Mr. McClure6 in this crisis. It would mean
such a serious loss to him in money and influence not to have the March article7 come out--Everyone would think he
was beaten and scared out, for the articles8
are under such a glare of publicity and such a
fire of criticism. I had nothing to do with the January
article9 remember, my work e begins to appear in February10. Mr. McClure is ill from worry and anxiety, and though
he wants to let me go home and knows how homesick I am, he begs me to stay
here until after Xmas.
I am working night and day to buy my freedom and get to you, father, and it
helps me to think that I'm in staying I'm
doing just what you would do in my place and what you always taught me to
do. I feel like a poor excuse of a daughter to be away from you when you are
so ill, but my heart is with you and mother11 now, and the rest of me will be there12 before New Year's day.
NEW YORK
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0120.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0120
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Charles F. Cather1
- Date letter was written
- [December 17, 1906]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
December 17 is the Monday before the postmark date December 19, 1906.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection (MS228), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Charles F. Cather was ill in early December 1906 with what the December 7, 1906, Red Cloud Chief called "an attack of gall stone."
Cather did not return to Red Cloud until September 1907.
Person Annotations
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).
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.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
"The Quimby Controversy," McClure's Magazine (March 1907) by Georgine Milmine
"The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science," McClure's Magazine (1907 to 1908) by Georgine Milmine
"Forty Years of Obscurity," McClure's Magazine (January 1907) by Georgine Milmine
"Mrs. Eddy and Phineas Parkhurst Quimby," McClure's Magazine (February 1907) by Georgine Milmine
