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 |
I did escape, some of me, you see. I wasn’t utterly drunk up by the sand of
the desert. But when you are there you do feel as if you might very easily
be drunk up. I may still go back for Julio4. He would be lovely at Mrs. Fields5’. A mimosa tree is nothing to him. But Mrs. Gardener6 would snap him up and take
him to Fenway Court7 and he
would like that better than my
apartment8. The only cloud on my joyful horizon at present is the
news that you are no better, or not much better. Oh I wish, I wish you were!
Perhaps, after all, Julio would have y done you more good than Tryon9. I wish I could simply say “yes”
about Paris10. But I fear I wont be
able to get away. But as to Provence11. I know you can work at Avignon12, and if the mistral blows there go
to Lavandou13. A tiny fishing down on
the Mediterranean about forty or fifty miles east of Hyères14—it may even be nearer15. Sea, fine woods, a good
hotel, nothing else. No cottages. It is on the coast road to Italy16, and motors may have made a
difference. The hotel may be more expensive now, but eight years ago it was
something less than nothing a day. Trust me, the place is
just
right for work. And I know you could work in
Avignon. The Rhone does put it into one; and the Rhone is your whole life at
Avignon–the Rhone and the sun. The place is at its best in September. Oh I
wish I were to be with you! But perhaps you can go to Madre Mejicana17 with me sometime. Julio has a funny
song about “Oh bright-eyed Mexico18,
Oh golden Mexico!” I went to a Mexican dance19 with Julio the night before I left Winslow20, at that was a dance. They have a curious pantomime waltz which a man
dances with two women. It is certainly the prettiest dance I’ve ever seen. I was the only “white” at the ball;
such wine and such dancing. How can I write you about Julio? He is without
beginning and without end, and there is no place to begin. He really was
like all the things in the Naples21 museum, and having him about was
like living in that civilization. He had a personal elegance of which I’ve
never known the like. You see I use the past tense; I did get away. I made a
sort of translation22 of one
of his songs which may give you some ideas of his music, except that it is
sultry and he is not at all sultry, anymore than lightning is. And aside
from ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ his lightning aspects he is a
very cool and graceful young man who carries his great beauty as lightly as
one could ask. This serenade, he explained carefully, is to be sung only by
a “married lady”, but she may with perfect propriety sing it to either her
husband or lover.
I’m so glad to to hear of Mrs. Peattie23’s daughter24, and that she is happy. Her mother was so kind to
me long ago. Do let me hear more from you soon. I wish I could give you
Julio’s serenade in the Spanish, with the stars and the desert and the dead
Indian cities on the mesa behind it. The English is clumsy. But don’t mind the accent on “but”; they have a trick of
accenting unimportant words with the guitar and voice,—as if, after
all, the words were more to a mere
convention, and the undertow was as apt to break through at the wrong place
as the right.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0236.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0236
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- June 15 [1912]
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Gardner's home in Boston, which doubled as a gallery for her art collection, completed in 1901.
60 Washington Square (New York City): The address of Cather's first rented room in New York from 1906 to 1908. Located on the south side of Washington Square Park, Edith Lewis lived in the same building and was there when Cather visited her in 1904 and 1905. The building was in a cluster later called "Genius Row" due to the large number of writers and artists that lived there. Cather briefly returned to the address in the spring of 1912 before moving to 5 Bank Street later that fall.
Cather visited all of these locations when she toured France in 1902 with Isabelle McClung.
Translation: Mother Mexico (Spanish)
Cather's experience at the dance likely inspired a passage in The Song of the Lark (1915) when Thea Kronborg attends a dance in Mexican Town (Part II, Chapter X).
Cather was not fluent in Spanish, so her "translation," included in the letter, is likely very free.
Translation: Mexican Serenade (Spanish). In The Song of the Lark (1915), a song seemingly inspired by this one is given the title "Rosa de Noche," which translates to "Rose of Night."
Translation: contralto voice (Spanish). A contralto voice is the lowest singing voice for a higher-register, traditionally female singer.
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.
Julio. Mexican-American musician and laborer. According to Cather's letters to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Julio was a young man from the state of Veracruz, Mexico, who was working in Winslow, AZ, when Cather visited her brother Douglass there in the spring of 1912. Cather described Julio as a talented, physically beautiful musician who delighted her with many stories and songs. Cather said she spent time with him exploring the desert and that she attended a "Mexican dance" with him. The dance is believed to have inspired scenes in The Song of the Lark (1915), and Julio its character Johnny Tellamantez. A story Cather reported Julio told her, "The Forty Lovers of the Queen," is retold in her story "Coming, Aphrodite!" (1920). The details Cather shares in her letters to Sergeant are the only available information about this person.
Fields, Annie Adams (1835-1915). Literary hostess, author, and social
reformer. At age 20, Annie Adams married James T. Fields,
partner in the Boston publishing house of Ticknor & Fields. Both before
and after her husband’s death in 1881, Fields often entertained important
American, British, and European authors at her home at 148 Charles Street in
Boston, MA. After James’ death, Sarah Orne Jewett, whose books were
published by Ticknor & Fields, began sharing Annie’s homes at 148
Charles Street and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA. Cather met Fields in Boston in
1908, a meeting Cather described in "The House on Charles Street," an essay
reviewing Memories of a Hostess (a volume of
selections from Fields' journals, 1922). A revised version of this essay,
retitled "148 Charles Street," appeared in Not Under
Forty (1936). After Jewett’s death in 1909, Fields edited The Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), which
included several letters to Cather. Fearing that 148 Charles Street would
become a museum after her death, Fields requested that it be torn down.
Gardner, Isabella Stewart (1840-1924). American art collector. Born in New York City, Isabella Stewart attended a finishing school in Paris, where she met her classmate's brother John (Jack) Lowell Gardner II, whom she married in 1860 and settled with in Boston. After the early death of their son, Isabella and John Gardner began the first of many visits abroad, where they began to collect art and antiques. In 1898, after her husband’s death, Isabella pursued their plans to build a museum in Boston to house their collections; she had living quarters on the fourth floor. The museum opened to the public in 1903. Cather visited it in March 1908, but it is unclear whether she ever met Gardner.
Peattie, Elia Wilkinson (1862-1935). American writer. Born in
Michigan, Elia Wilkinson moved to Chicago with her family as a child. She
married journalist Robert Peattie in 1883, and they had four children. She
became a reporter for Chicago newspapers in 1886, and she and Robert Peattie
both took reporting jobs in Omaha, NE, in 1888. As a columnist and editorial
writer for the Omaha World-Herald, she was one of the
most prominent newspaperwomen in the state, and recognized Cather’s talent.
After the Peatties moved back to Chicago in 1896, Elia became the Chicago
Tribune’s literary critic until 1917, and was
active in the city’s intellectual and progressive circles. She also wrote
many novels and short stories. She praised Cather’s work and hosted her on
her early trips through Chicago.
Erskine, Barbara Peattie (1885-1915). Elia Peattie's daughter; poet. The daughter of writer Elia Wilkinson Peattie and newpaperman Robert Burns Peattie, Barbara Peattie was born in Chicago, IL, and spent much of her early childhood in Omaha, NE, before moving with her family back to Chicago. She married Ralph Erskine in 1905 and the couple had three sons. Her third son was born in Tryon, NC, in 1912 where Elia and Robert Peattie had a home and where she likely met Cather's fried Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant. Barbara died in Stamford, CT, from a streptococcus infection. Shortly after her death, a book of her poems, The Little Poems of Barbara Erskine (1916) was published. Cather likely encountered Barbara Peattie when she stopped at the Peattie family home in Chicago during her travels to and from Pittsburgh, PA.
Place Annotations
