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 |
No, my dear Elsie1, I honestly don’t think I’m so bad as that! I can miss people even when I am happily and gainfully employed. But there are times when I am very little on an individual and when everything about me is rather pale. In Pittsburgh4 I was working in a house5 over hung with the shadow of a distressing and hopeless illness. Life and the world and the weather were pale, and if one got enough blood to journey into one’s daily stint of work, one did well. There were many days when I didn’t get it, and went out and kept the pale weather company. But when I got back and began to go to the opera twice a week and feel the world go round again, then I began to want things—and people. I never get much satisfaction out of seeing the people I care for under the wrong conditions, and the last time you were in New York2 conditions were bad enough—I hated the place6 where I was staying, and I hated myself for a piece of damaged goods. But if you can stop here in June, we’ll better it. I’ll be here through June, though I may go to the Blue Ridge7 for a few weeks in May. Please stop here in Bank street with me. If its Hellish hot I won’t keep you, I’ll be strong minded and send you away, so you’ll be taking no risk.
The Pioneers8 are on their way to you—must have gone out on yesterday’s boat. For the love of Gawrd tell me the truth about it. I know how hard it is to tell people the truth, but one can do it. And I promise you I can take it. I’m not sentimental about things just because I’ve made them. I’ve a notion there may be some flossy writing in this, too emotional, I mean. And if so, please hit it a swat. I can use the blue-pencil9 with a light heart. Shall I have Mr. Greenslet10 include “The Bohemian Girl”11 in the same volume with this, or do you think it will go better alone? It’s long enough to make a good sized book. I await your verdict—with terror!
W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0252.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0252
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- [February 1913]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured date range is established by this letters's place in sequence between #0251, dated February 2, 1913, and #0257, dated March 22, 1913, by which time Sergeant had had the manuscript of O Pioneers! long enough to read it and send a response from France.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602 (26)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
1180 Murray Hill Avenue (Pittsburgh, PA): Located in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA, now part of the Murray Hill Avenue Historic District, 1180 Murray Hill was the home of Judge Samuel A. McClung and his family. Cather lived there at Isabelle McClung’s invitation from 1901 to 1906. She returned there to visit multiple times until 1915, often writing during these visits.
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.
That is, Cather was comfortable making significant edits to the manuscript.
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.
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Cather
"The Bohemian Girl," McClure's Magazine (August 1912) by Willa Cather
