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 |
Sunday I had a headache and stiff neck. Also a little scratch on the back of the neck, up under the hair. It got infected—Heaven only knows how. Tuesday two specialists; now bandages and poultices—filthy black ones—and forty tooth-aches in the back of my head. Hope to get out in three weeks, that’s the best time I can make, it seems. The Hoyts4 came this afternoon, and I think it was so nice of them. But I was bandages without and morphia within and couldn’t see them. The thing’s so abominably painful! Write sometime, but don’t hurry. I’m too stupid to read letters or remember what they contain. Such a silly ailment I can’t take it very seriously. My one real interest in life is to work the doctors for all the narcotics I can get out of them. I haven’t lied to get white tablets so far, but I may. In three weeks you’ll hear from me.
Yours W. S. C. Miss Elizabeth Sergeant1 4 Hawthorn Road Brookline3 Mass. NEW YORK, N.Y. STA. D2 FEB 13, 1914 9 PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0276.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0276
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- [February 13, 1914]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
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.
Hoyt, Henry Martyn (1887-1920). American painter. Born in Rosemont, PA, Henry Hoyt, a brother of poet Elinor Hoyt Wylie, studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and attended Yale University with the class of 1907. He married fellow painter Alice Parker in 1912; they had one daughter and one son, born in 1913 and 1914 respectively. Cather knew them in New York City, attended one of their joint exhibitions in 1914, and expressed her liking for them several times. However, Alice Hoyt left Henry Hoyt a few years later, and he committed suicide.
1512Shurtleff, Alice Parker Hoyt (1885-1951). American painter. Born in New Jersey, daughter of Eleanor Gordon Parker and Wayne Parker, Alice Parker became a painter and married fellow painter Henry Hoyt in 1912; they had one daughter and one son, born in 1913 and 1914 respectively. Cather knew them in New York City, attended one of their joint exhibitions in 1914, and expressed her liking for Henry and Alice Hoyt several times. However, the Hoyts separated a few years later. After Hoyt’s suicide, Alice Hoyt married architectural historian Harold R. Shurtleff and continued with her painting.
Place Annotations
