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.
EDITORIAL ROOMS May thirty-first 1910.Dear Miss Sergeant1:
The proofs of the article4 went to Brookline5 merely in the course of routine, they are always sent by the proof reader to the last address, etc., etc. But I read the proofs of the article myself and hope you will not find much amiss in it.
About the Labor Congress articles6, I do not believe we could use more than one. Of course, what we want is not so much a report of what is generally done by the Congress, but a sort of summing up of the interesting things that have been done abroad for the protection of the laborer. We would pay $150. for the article and such photographs as you could send to accompany it.
I forget whether you intend to go to Germany7 at all. Do you know the Permanent Exposition for the Welfare of Workingmen8 at Charlottenburg, Berlin9? I understand it is a museum where one finds practically everything that has been invented to protect the lives of workingmen, builders, firemen, divers, factory workers, miners, etc. It seems to me that an article10 on this museum, illustrated by many photographs of the apparatus would be tremendously effective. In short, it would be a new way of writing on the old and fascinating subject of "dangerous trades." It might even be that under such a concrete guise you could best present your information about what is doneat the Congresses.
Would it, do you think, be feasible to write an article professedly on the interesting exhibits in this museum (describing the most interesting apparatus and the dangers it is made to circumvent and overcome) and incidentally, to pack in the best of what you get at the Labor Congress?
Of course, I do not know how much you will get at the Labor Congress, or what ground
it will cover, or in what shape it could be best presented. But, I can see an article on that museum
as a very good magazine feature, with a lot of very useful information and
suggestions about labor conditions in other countries behind it.
If you think this sort of an article feasible will you write me at once. I wrote
Mr. McClure11 about
MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE.
44-60 EAST TWENTY-THIRD
STREET
NEW YORK.
EDITORIAL ROOMS
Miss Sergeant - 2. the idea the other day, and I
am afraid he may put some one in Berlin12 on
it. If you see the thing as a practical undertaking, I would much rather have you
do
it. For such an article, we would be willing to pay $200.
Miss Wyatt13 is here at work on the Working Girl14 material. Whether we would be able to use an article15 on the French working girl depends a little, I think, on how long Miss Wyatt's series16 runs. I wish you would give me a chance at the article, anyway.
No, I shouldn't think you would mind being in Paris17 in the spring. I am afraid I am not able to read your letter with the properly unselfish spirit. So far as mere weather is concerned, I have nothing to complain of. I am wearing winter clothes to-day with great comfort. We have scarcely had a hot day. But weather does not go very far. Most of the buildings which were standing when you were last here are in the process of demoli- tion. You cannot go a block in any direction without encountering steam hammer and an iron drill. All the pavements are being repaired and all the sewer pipes are being changed The place couldn't be more smelly and noisy so we shall be in a pitiable state when it does get hot.
Very sincerely yours,Willa Sibert Cather Miss Elizabeth S. Sergeant, Hottinguer & Co. 38 rue Le Provence, Paris, France.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0179.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0179
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- May 31, 1910
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
No such articles ever appeared in McClure's Magazine.
Founded in 1900 by the German government, the institution's main purpose was, as Cather describes, to exhibit safety devices used by working people.
No such article ever appeared in McClure's Magazine.
Though McClure's did not publish such an article, Sergeant did publish "Out of the Workshops of Fashion: Some Types of Paris Working-Girls" in the October 1912 issue of Outlook magazine.
The "Working-Girls' Budgets" series ran in McClure's Magazine in four parts: "Working-Girls' Budgets" (October 1910), "The Shirtwaist-Makers and their Strike" (November 1910), "Unskilled and Seasonal Factory Workers" (December 1910), and "Women Laundry Workers in New York" (February 1911), all co-authored by Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt. The last installment was included under the series title on the index page, but that series title was not, like the others, printed on the opening page of the article.
Person Annotations
Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley (1881-1965). American journalist and
author. Born and raised in Winchester, MA, a suburb of Boston,
Elizabeth Sergeant graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1903. In 1910,
Pauline Goldmark sent her to Cather at McClure’s
Magazine with a proposed article, published as “Toilers of the
Tenements,” and Cather and Sergeant became lifelong friends. In 1914
Sergeant became one of the original contributors to the New Republic. While on assignment in France in 1917 she was
injured by a land mine; her injury and recuperation were the subject of Shadow-Shapes: Journal of a Wounded Woman (1920). She
moved to New Mexico in 1920 and became involved with the Taos artists colony
and advocated for Native American rights, but her work frequently took her
back to New York City. She included Cather in her collection of portraits of
prominent Americans, Fire under the Andes (1927).
Sergeant studied with Carl Jung and Toni Woolf in Zurich, Switzerland, from
1929 to 1931. When she returned to the U.S. she sold her house in New Mexico
and settled in New York City, writing many magazine articles about authors
and psychological topics. She later moved to Rockland County, NY. Cather’s
letters to Sergeant comment frequently on both her own and Sergeant’s
writing and testify to a strong and lively friendship maintained despite
Sergeant's being a committed reformer and far to the left of Cather
politically and culturally. Sergeant’s Willa Cather: A
Memoir (1953) includes extensive paraphrases of Cather’s letters to
her.
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.
Wyatt, Edith Franklin (1873-1958). American author, critic, and social reformer. Born in Tomah, WI, Edith Wyatt attended Bryn Mawr College from 1892-1894 and taught for several years before devoting herself to writing about Chicago, IL, where she lived most of her life. William Dean Howells championed her Three Stories of Contemporary Chicago (1900), and she was one of the founders of Poetry magazine. However, when she moved into Hull House in Chicago, she turned her focus primarily to writing investigative pieces for magazines and newspapers to promote progressive social reform. In 1910 as managing editor of McClure’s Magazine Cather commissioned her to write articles about the Cherry Mine disaster in Illinois and with Susan Ainslie Clark an article about the economic circumstances of women working in New York shirtwaist factories. By 1911, however, Cather had become tired of Wyatt’s obsession with the “the cause of the White Slave” (prostitutes) and found “no possible point of contact” with her (#0195). Wyatt died in Chicago.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
"Toilers of the Tenements," McClure's Magazine (July 1910) by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant
"Working-Girls' Budgets," McClure's Magazine (October 1910-February 1911) by Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
