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 |
4336 PUEBLO OF ISLETA NEW MEXICO
SHOWING CUHURCH IN DISTANCE
COPR. FRED HARVEY.
POST CARD
"PHOSTINT" CARDTRADE MARK - REG. U.S.PAT.OFF MADE ONLY BE DETROIT PUBLISHING CO. PLACE STAMP
HERE.
UNITED STATES
AND CANADA
ONE CENT.
FOREIGN. TWO
CENTS Isleta is the largest of the Rio Grande pueblos, numbering over one thousand inhabitants. It is pleasantly located on the west bank of the Rio Grande, about thirteen mils south of Albuquerque. The houses and streets of the village are well-kept and clean; the houses are a single story high, and as a consequence the pueblo covers a large area. THIS SPACE MAY BE USED FOR MESSAGE. THIS SPACE FOR THE ADDRESS.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0232.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0232
- Contents
- Document is one leaf with an image of the Pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico on recto. Handwritten message on verso of postcard.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- June 2 [1912]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this postcard is established by Cather's travel in the spring of 1912.
- Place letter was written
- Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602-(25)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
In Book 3, Section 1 of Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), Cather's character Padre Jesús de Baca keeps parrots in his walled garden behind the church at Isleta.
A number of copies of April Twilights (1903) have survived, including several Cather gave as gifts well after she wrote this letter.
Cather and her brother Douglass visited Walnut Canyon near Flagstaff, AZ, on 23-25 May 1912. The exploration of the ruins left in the canyon by the ancient Sinagua people inspired a section of The Song of the Lark (1915).
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.
Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Docher, Anton (1853–1928). French-American Catholic priest. Born in La Crest, France, Docher was drafted into military service while a seminary student and served as part of colonial forces in North Africa and Vietnam. After leaving the military he migrated to the United States in 1887 to serve as a missionary and was ordained a priest soon after. In 1891, he was appointed priest to the Pueblo of Isleta, where he remained for 34 years. A well-known man in the area and friend of the Tiwa people he served, Docher served as an inspiration for Cather's character Fr. Jesus de Baca in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
Burne-Jones, Edward Coley (1833-1898). British artist and designer. Edward Burne-Jones was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he first met his future artistic collaborator William Morris. After meeting Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who would also become a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, he left Oxford and trained as a painter under Rossetti. Burne-Jones featured medieval themes in his painting and also worked in the decorative arts, such as stained glass, and book illustration. On Cather’s first trip to Europe in 1902, she visited the late artist’s studio in London. She wrote about her visit for a Nebraska State Journal column, and it inspired her short story “The Marriage of Phaedra” (1905).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
April Twilights (1903) by Willa Cather
"White Birch in Wyoming," April Twilights (1903) by Willa Cather
