Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh, finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father, Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in 1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and 1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S. for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work, through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.

Brutus, Marcus Junius (c. 85 BCE-42 BCE). Roman politician and Stoic philosopher. With C. Cassius Longinus, Marcus Junius Brutus was one of the principal assassins of Julius Caesar.

Julius Caesar (c. 102 BCE-44 BCE). Roman statesman and general. In the 58-49 Gallic Wars (58 BCE-49 BCE) Caesar brought all of Gaul under Roman control, establishing his reputation as a military leader. At the time of his assassination by C. Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, he was dictator for life of Rome. In a number of Willa Cather’s works, most notably The Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925), characters read Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War.

Tranquillus, Caius Suetonious (c. 59-c. 140) (“Suetonious”). Roman biographer. Suetonious’s De Vitae Caesurum, a collection of biographies of the twelve Caesars (emperors of Rome), beginning with Julius Caesar and ending with Domitian, survived in a nearly complete form. Before visiting Rome in 1908, Willa Cather read Suetonious in Latin.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). French military and political leader. Napoleon first rose to prominence as a military leader during the French Revolution and reigned as Emperor of France from 1804-1814 and in 1815. As emperor he set out to dominate Europe and through military action built an empire across Europe that finally collapsed in 1815. He died in exile on the island of Saint Helena. In Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House, although the title character goes by the name Godfrey St. Peter, he was given the first name Napoleon at birth, a name passed down in his family from an ancestor who served in Napoleon’s army and migrated to French Canada.