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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 |
LAMY, N.M.2 June 9th 1912 Dear Mr. McClure1;
I have just come back from a long trip in the
desert3 and find your letter waiting for me here in the mountains, where
all my letters were forwarded. I am alarmed and pained to hear of the state of
Mrs. McClure's4 health and I do not wonder that her condition makes
you very anxious. She always looks so well and self-reliant that one never thinks
of
her as ill, even though she has been ill so much, from
what you tell me of your financial affairs, worry about money must aggravate the
situation considerably for you. It seems as if this squeeze must be temporary only,
and must come to an end pretty soon. Are you planning to bring Mrs. McClure home in the Autumn? It will be hard for you to be
doing magazine work over here when she is ill abroad, will it not? Who is the man
in
the company who is actually doing the pinching, I wonder? And why did they make a
contract with you that they either did not intend to keep or were unable to keep?
Unless Mr. Walker5 can make better terms for
you, things will certainly be difficult for you during the EL ORTIZ
LAMY,
N.M.
191the next few years. And,
as you say, it is in the next five or six years that you ought to have comfort and
peace of mind, and that Mrs. McClure ought to have
everything she wishes. Certainly some of us will be able to plan something that will
help out. I infer that things did not look promising in London6; though it is likely that you have been so worried about
Mrs. McClure's condition that you have not taken time to
loo look about much there. I still feel there is
a chance in a fiction magazine, if you can use your name
with it.
I cannot make myself believe that at your age, with such a career behind you and such
a specialized ability for a capital, things can be going to pieces. You are just as
much of a force,—in someways I think more—as you were ten years ago, and you are much stronger in
health than you were then. So I can't believe they can keep you down long. When you
get back to New York7 let me know, and I
will go on from wherever I may happen to be then and talk things over with you. I
am
sure there is a way out. Count on me to do anything I can. You've always been so
generous with other people; it makes me not only sad but very mad, fighting Irish
mad, to have you tormented and devilled about
EL ORTIZ
LAMY, N.M.
191 money like
this. You never tormented anyone else like this.
I am just back from one of the most delightful horseback trips I've ever had in my life. I shall be in this part of the country for about six months longer—Colorado8 and Wyoming9—but my address will be Red Cloud, Nebraska10.
Please give my love and heartiest greetings to Mrs. McClure and for yourself accept my loyalty, as always.
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0233.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0233
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of first two leaves and recto only of third leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- S. S. McClure1
- Date letter was written
- June 9, 1912
- Place letter was written
- Lamy, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- McClure mss., 1865-1949 (LMC 1687), Indiana University, Lilly Library, Bloomington, IN
Individual Annotations
See #0222.
Person Annotations
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.
McClure, Harriet Sophia Hurd (1855-1929) (“Hattie”). Wife of S.S.
McClure. Born in Galesburg, IL, to Albert Hurd, a professor at
Knox College, and Eleanor Amelia Pennock, Harriet Hurd met fellow Knox
student S.S. McClure in 1876. Her parents opposed the romance between the
two and made her break off her engagement to him when she graduated in 1880.
In 1882, when she was teaching at Abbot Academy in Andover, MA, and McClure
was working in Boston, they rekindled their relationship and married in
Galesburg in 1883. They had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary,
and Robert), and one adopted child (Enrico). Cather first met Hattie McClure
in 1903, when S.S. called her to New York to discuss her fiction and she was
a guest in their home in Westchester County, NY. S.S. was notorious for both
financial irresponsibility and marital infidelity, but Cather maintained
cordial relations with both Hattie and S.S. even as others criticized both
of them. Nevertheless it has been suggested Cather modeled the relationship
between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy
(1926) on that of the McClures.
Walker, Roberts (1874-1926). American attorney. Born and raised in Rutland, VT, Roberts Walker graduated from Amherst College in 1896 and Columbia Law School in 1899. Until 1911, he was a lawyer for the Rock Island Railway, but in 1912 he joined the New York law firm of White & Case. Cather corresponded with him in 1911 about legal matters concerning William Archer’s work on assignment in Mexico for McClure’s Magazine.
Place Annotations
