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 |
such a splen-did letter as you did write me! I’ve been over it until I’ve deciphered every pencil stroke. Thanks for the tip about Harrison4. I have nothing but work to talk about, as I’m on the home stretch with the new story5. It is running about the same length as “Alexander”6 and is certainly a great deal better than The Bohemian Girl7. It has been rather a pull because it’s knit so much closer than anything I have ever done before. No, I don’t think one can write much when one is getting the material—at least I, for one, can’t. But, do you know, I think getting the material, coming up against the surfaces of things, is the exhausting part of it. The mere working it off one’s pen is on the whole a peaceful chore. I don’t believe you can write over there unless you have a flat of your own and insulate yourself! One has to sleep to work, and one has to be dull to sleep.
Have you read Tchekov8? “The Cherry Orchard”9 etc? Do! I’ve been reading such lots of things that I never have time to read in New York10. I assume the office chains again January 1st, but not for long! There are too many things I want to write. I say, it’s great sport when you get down to it—get down and see! Do you know that rhyme11 “Oh London, London, my Delight!12 The flower that blossoms but by night; Oh bloom and bloom I see them stand, The iron lilies of the Strand!”
I want to write many things to you, but Christmas - - people - - a bloody murder in my story13—(I’ve been three mortal days a-killing them!) all these have reduced me to a state where I can only make a few stratches and wish you well and well and well. Christmas in Paris3 seems good luck enough to wish any mortal—only I should go to Provence14 to meet the Three Holy Kings! Oh I hope I can be there where you are, sometime!
Yours W. S. C. Miss Elizabeth Sergeant1Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0249.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0249
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- December 7 [1912]
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602 (23)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Cather's quotation is a mix of mostly-accurate lines from Richard Le Gallienne's "A Ballad of London" (1895) and passages that do not appear in that poem.
This scene takes place in Book IV, Chapter VII of O Pioneers! (1913).
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.
Harrison. Periodical editor. There is insufficient evidence for a definitive identification, but this may be Austin Harrison (1873–1928), the British editor of the English Review from 1909-1923. The Review, founded by Ford Madox Ford, published fiction by many well-known writers, including Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence. Austin Harrison is credited with opening the English Review to women and non-British writers and may have been contacted by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant about the possible serialization of Cather’s O Pioneers! (1913) in its pages.
Chekhov, Anton (1860-1904). Russian author. Born in
Taganrog, Russia, to a financially unstable family, Chekhov began to support
himself and his family as a young man by writing sketches of Russian life
for humorous journals. In 1884, he graduated from medical school in Moscow
but continued to have greater financial success as a writer. He became best
known for his short stories and plays, including his final play The Cherry Orchard (1904), which Cather read in 1912
while she was writing O Pioneers!.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather
Alexander's Bridge (1912) by Willa Cather
"The Bohemian Girl," McClure's Magazine (August 1912) by Willa Cather
The Cherry Orchard (1904) by Anton Chekhov
"A Ballad of London," Robert Louis Stevenson : An Elegy, and Other Poems Mainly Personal (1895) by Richard Le Gallienne
