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 July 6, 1910. Dear Miss Sergeant1:
I am sending you a clipping from the New York Evening Post4, which I am sure will interest you. The Post's first notice5 of the article6 in their magazine column rather insinuates that your sources of information may be doubtful. Miss Goldmark7 and I have taken this up with the Child Labor Commission, and there was to be an answer to this published in the Post last evening. At any rate, I do not believe many people get a column editorial in the Post on their first article, and I am delighted for you.
I have not heard from you as to what you think8 about that workmen's museum in Berlin9. Mr. Mackenzie10 and I have been talking it over and I told him I thought perhaps you had been deterred from taking the matter up by the expense of the trip to Berlin. If such is the case, Mr. Mackenzie has authorized me to offer you $50. toward your expenses in going to Berlin, besides the $200. which we will pay you for the article. This, of course, would include photographs; for we would, I think, have to ask you to furnish photographs yourself. I do feel that there may be a very interesting article there. Personally, I am afraid I am much more interested in the story of ingenious devices made to protect the workers in dangerour trades, than I am in the usual sort of article on that subject; I mean the articles that tell how many people are killed in this and that trade every year. Please let me know as soon as you can whether you decide to undertake this.
Do not forget to give me a first look at the article11 on French working girls, if you can, please.
I hope that when you come back we can think up several good assignments for you, and that you can do a couple of articles for us that will make these fastidious Post people sit up and take notice. On the whole, Miss Goldmark and I are delighted at the attention the article has received.
Very cordially yours,Willa Sibert Cather Miss Elizabeth S. Sergeant, c/o Holtinguer & Co., 38 rue de Provence, Paris, France12.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0181.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0181
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- July 6, 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
See #1079.
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.
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.
Goldmark, Pauline Dorothea (1874-1962). American social reformer.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, to Polish and Czech Jewish parents whose
families fled Austria after the Revolution of 1848, Goldmark earned a BA in
biology from Bryn Mawr College in 1896. While studying two additional years
at Barnard College she volunteered with the New York State chapter of the
National Consumers League (NCL), and sociological research and reform became
her life’s work, in which she also enlisted her sister Josephine. Cather met
Pauline Goldmark and her sisters Josephine and Alice (who married Louis D.
Brandeis and lived in Boston) when she was on assignment in Boston for McClure’s Magazine in 1907-1908. Pauline Goldmark and
Cather became lifelong friends, although extant correspondence is sparse. In
1910, Pauline sent Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant to Cather with a proposed
article based on NCL research, and she was also instrumental in placing a
series of widely-noticed McClure’s articles by Susan
Ainslie Clark on working girls and women based in New York City similarly
based on NCL research. In later years she and her sister Josephine lived
together in Hartsdale, NY, where Pauline died.
Mackenzie, Cameron (1882 -1921). American magazine editor and journalist. Born in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Cameron Mackenzie graduated from the Lawrenceville School, which his father founded, and studied at Yale University for a year before enrolling in the New York University Law School, from which he graduated in 1907. In 1907 he also married Elizabeth McClure, daughter of S. S. McClure. His father-in-law put him on the editorial staff of McClure’s Magazine, where he worked with Cather. In 1912 he and Frederick Collins wrested control of the magazine from S. S. McClure. Mackenzie resigned from McClure’s in 1915, subsequently writing two novels and serving as a correspondent for the London Morning Post during World War I. He died unexpectedly of pneumonia on board the Cunard liner Aquitania shortly after the ship departed London for New York City.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
McClure's Magazine
New York Evening Post
"East Side Industries," New York Evening Post (June 30, 1910)
"Toilers of the Tenements," McClure's Magazine (July 1910) by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant
