Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
In the first place, let me tell you how delighted I am that you get a thrill out of
the story4, and in the second, let me tell you how
I lament the costom of publishing photographs o of authorines.
I meant to read "Men of Iron."5 The publishers sent me
a photograph of the author6; fat woman with no
neckneck,, big stupid
face set on her shoulders. I'll never read it. Now, if I have a prejudice against
her type of face, mayn't hundreds of people perfectly well have a prejudice against
mine? I can see it, for actresses and singers; but authorines, for the most par part, possess countenances that do but discourage
one with thei their wares.
If I had some good pictures taken down in the Cliff
Dweller cities7, I could see that they might suggest a breeze to the
onlooker. But I have only those you saw. The one you have reprodu–duced fairly
well. I'm going to the big cliff ruins8 down
at Durango, Colorado9, late this summer, and
could have some taken, but that would be rather late for you, wouldn't it?
Now, in the meantime, do you want me to go to Dupont10 and strive for as good a conventional picture as possible, or
do [illegible]you
want NUMBER
FIVE BANK STREETyou wish me to have Underwood and Underwood11 sleuth me to the Park and take me feeding
squirrels or dongdoing folk–dances? How can an informal picture be
interesting, unless it is taken in an in interesting
place? I have some rather good ones take that
weretof me and
Fremstad12, that were taken up in
the woods13
with last summer,; but those, of
course, I couldn't let you have, unless I
died; then you could come and ta
take them.
Tell me what you want me to do, and I'll be as compliant as possible. Myself, I think the public prefers to think that auth–orines are tall, slender, and nineteen years of age.
Cordially yours Willa S. CatherI hope you will put something like the enclosed slip on the jacket of the book. I think a jacket ought to announce interesting subject matter, where there is any to be announced. I thought the jacket of "Sinister Street"14 interesting—it promised a long sight more than the book delivered, but it made me buy the volume.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0307.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0307
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten and handwritten on recto of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alverda Van Tuyll1
- Date letter was written
- May 24 [1915]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by corresponding letters from Houghon Mifflin staff.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
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.
The firm was known for news bureau photography, thus Cather's witticism about their sleuthing her in the park.
Person Annotations
Van Tuyll, Alverda. Houghton Mifflin staff member. Van Tuyll read the manuscript of The Song of the Lark (1915) and worked on promotional materials related to the novel. She also worked on the production of My Ántonia (1918).
Graves, Clotilde (1863-1932) (“Richard Dehan”). Anglo-Irish dramatist and novelist. Born in County Cork, Ireland, Clotilde Graves moved to England with her family at age nine. Educated at a convent in Lourdes, France, she converted to Catholicism and then studied art in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London, England. After working as an illustrator, she became a playwright, successful in both London and New York City, with her plays sometimes tackling feminist themes. Having published many short stories, in 1911 she adopted the pseudonym Richard Dehan to publish the novel The Drop Doctor, the first of a string of popular novels set in the nineteenth century and featuring male protagonists. By the time she published The Man of Iron (1915), set before and during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, her identity behind the pseudonym was widely acknowledged.
Dupont, Etta Greer (c. 1870-?). American photographer. Married to photographer Aime Dupont, Etta Greer Dupont continued a portrait photo studio under her husband’s name after his 1900 death, leading many to mistakenly believe that her name was Aimé Dupont. When the Metropolitan Opera, her primary client, stopped patronizing her studio in 1906, her business began to decline. She declared bankruptcy in 1920, and the investor who bought out her business continued to operate under the name Aimé Dupont Studio until the 1950s. Cather was photographed in the Dupont Studio during her first decade in New York City.
Fremstad, Olive (1871-1951). Swedish-American opera singer.
Born in Sweden, Ann Olivia Rundquist was adopted by a
Scandinavian-American couple, the Fremstads, who raised her first in
Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, and then in Minnesota. She moved to New York
City to study piano in 1890 and then to Germany to study voice with Lilli
Lehmann. After a successful career in Europe as a mezzo-soprano, she made
her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1903, where she specialized in
singing soprano roles in operas by Richard Wagner. Willa Cather first met
Fremstad in 1913 while researching “Three American Singers,” an article for
McClure’s Magazine in which Cather clearly
prefers Fremstad as “the most interesting kind of American” over Geraldine
Farrar and Louise Homer. Through 1916 Cather and Fremstad were in close and
regular contact in person and through letters, although Cather’s letters to
Fremstad have not been located and their friendship evidently cooled.
Fremstad inspired many aspects of the story, personality, and career of Thea
Kronborg, heroine of The Song of the Lark (1915), and
she approved of the novel, although Cather did not want readers to identify
the character too closely with her. Fremstad married and divorced twice.
During the period Cather and Fremstad were in regular contact Fremstad lived
as a couple with Mary Watkins (later Cushing) who, after Fremstad’s death,
published a biography of her, The Rainbow Bridge
(1954).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
The Man of Iron (1915) by Clotilde Graves
Sinister Street (1914) by Compton Mackenzie
