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 |
Yes, I enjoyed writing Mr. McClure5's biography6; mainly because he was so honest about it and was not for dressing up the truth any. If he had wanted it ornamented or softened, or had wished to put all the emphasis on tha pleasant side of farm life in Indiana7, the story would have been dull to write and dull to read. He told me the facts exactly as he remembered them, and wanted them put down that way.
Yes, the newspapers have gone down a lot in the last few years---and so have the magazines. The news-stand public prefers yellow fiction to anyyhing else. All the flashy young business men in this part of the world want to be gay dogs and to be thought worse than they have time to be. It,s a curious phase; probably comes from too much prosperity.
No, I don’t hold any grudges about those early stories8. They were warped, but they were so frankly so that I wonder that anyone should have misunderstood them. If a young man- or young woman-- sits down in the cornfield and howls because he can’t hear any music-dramas, it does not mean that he has fallen out with the corn-fields. Give him all the music he wants and take him about the world a little until his mind finds what it’s hunting for, and he will come out all right with the corn. His was a case of mental dietetics; he hadn,t found the right food and went about half-nourished.
When I was working on the Journal9 you were
always more than kind to me, and I cannot think without amazement of the
amount of rhetorical wid wild oats you stood
for. I don,t believe anybody ever made such hideous sounds in trying to learn
to play an instrument as I did. When I’ve had to wrestle with young writers
on McClure’s10, I’ve often remembered your patience.
I am away on a long piece11 of work now and shall not return to New York12 until the late fall. I am going to Wyoming13 this summer and may see you in Lincoln3, as I shall of course go to Red Cloud14.
Faithfully always Willa Cather Mr. Will Owen Jones1 Nebraska State Journal Lincoln3 Nebraska PITTSBURGH, PA.2 MAY 30 1914 1—PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0283.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0283
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Will Owen Jones 1
- Date letter was written
- May 29 [1914]
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (#6494-6494-i), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Individual Annotations
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.
Although Cather references multiple "early stories," her langage in this paragraph suggests Jones may have asked in particular about "A Wagner Matinée" (1904), about which he and Cather corresponded (see #0095).
Person Annotations
Jones, Will Owen (1862-1928). Newspaper editor. Will Owen Jones was born in Wisconsin and came to Nebraska by 1880. He worked for the Nebraska State Journal while attending the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, graduating in 1886. That year he became city editor of the paper, then associate editor in 1889 (the year he married pianist Edith M. Doolittle), and then managing editor in 1892. He was close to Charles and Mariel Gere, the owners of the Nebraska State Journal, and the Jones’s only child, Mariel Jones, was named for Mrs. Gere. Cather took his journalism course at the university in 1893 and wrote to him often early in her career, although he could be severe in his criticism of some of her work.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Autobiography (1914) by S. S. McClure and Willa Cather
Nebraska State Journal
McClure's Magazine
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
