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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 |
Saturday Dear Mr. Greenslet1;
I have not written you because for the last three days I have been on the point of
sailing for Bergen4 for the Evening Mal
Mail5. I was to go from Bergen into Germany6 to interview7,
as Mr. Mc–Clure8 grandiosely puts it, "the leaders of German thought and
the makers of Prussian policy." As the trip was to include Poland9 and Servia10 and Austria11, there were clearly difficulties, and as
Mr. McClure was to accompany me there must clearly be a third person. Considering
all the difficulties of the joyjob, and its highly social nature, I decided
that this third person must be Isabelle12 and
no–one else. The paper offered to send with
meeither my brother13 or Eleanor McClure14, but Isabelle was the only person
who could really help me on this kind of job. As they were paying out a great deal
of money, I did not want to risk funking, and with Isabellealong I could be sure of getting through with the sort of
program laid out for me. A skirt chasing an army is not
especially a pleasing sight, a and it has to be the
right kind of skirt. I came out here and put the pressure on hard and she was more
than game for it. We thought it all settled, but last night Judge McClung15 woke up in the middle of the night
and called Isabelle and said he considered it a very chancy trip, and that he did
not feel strong enough to bear the strain of staying here and enumerating all the
things that might happen
, when he could hope to get very little word from her. So this morning I
called it all off by telegraph, and will now proceed to get busy on the page proofs16 I've held up, the Epilogue
etc.
I don't think we would have run much chance except that of the discomforts of
war–time travel, and the financial offer was glittering––– quite drowned the song
of
any lark whatever. But, on the other hand, there were difficulties. I agreed to
write the history of the military idea in Prussia17, and a true report of the statement of the
men I was to interview, but insisted that I would write nothing pro–German. After
the adventure was over, I might have disagreed strongly with the owners of the Mail as to what was truthful reporting, and what was pro–German, don't
you think? Such a disagreement would have been disasterous to S. S., would have meant an ugly funk for me, and the financial strain
of refunding heavy expense accounts would have been considerable. I don't think the Mail people would have wished to crowd me into
anything proG
pro–German18, but in such times as these
people's judgment and reasonableness are a good deal warped by strong feeling. If,
when I came back, I had felt absolutely unable to write the kind of articles
expected of me, think what a lot of wear and tear it would meanhave meant
for me, and what a useless scattering of money for them.! So I shall
try to regard regard the tapping of Judge McClung's cane on the floor last night as
the a fate motif, and I disclaim the
responsibility of decision. I was ready to go under the conditions I which I felt would assure the success of the
enterprise; it is not up to me to go under conditions which I feel render it
doubtful. Isabelle's brother19 would go with
me, but he is no linguist and not an experienced traveller. For this job I need
another woman, and one with exactly Isabelle's qualities. There would be no unknoow unknown quanctity in our
working equipment. After we once entered the German Empire we would not even have
to
consult together; we would each behave automatically and each would know what to
expect of the other. It would have been a tall adventure!. I turn my back on it with
a long sigh. But I wouldd be foolish to undertake it
with anyone else. The work would be hard under the best conditions, and smoothness and tact are not my peculiar graces,
God knows!
under the best conditions, and smoothness and tact are
not my peculiar graces, God knows!
Now I promisce to be good and togive my attention to proofs and things. I won't hold you up any longer.
Excuse this wretched rented machine which happened to be in the house and must do
until I get another. I feel as if I'd been to Germany and back, I've been hustling
so.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0315.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0315
- Contents
- Document is five leaves, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- [July 24, 1915]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Internal evidence suggests that this letter was written around the same time as Cather's July 28, 1915 letter to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant (#0317) which contains similar content. Greenslet responds to this letter on July 26, 1915. As Cather dates it Saturday, this letter was most likely written on July 24, 1915.
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
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.
What became known as the First World War was underway in Europe. The U.S. remained neutral until 1917.
Cather's fear was grounded. The Mail and S.S. McClure in his association with it were accused of pro-German sympathies.
Person Annotations
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.
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.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother.
Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and
fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger
than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small
boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote
several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating
from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University
of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he
enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study
engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to
Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his
decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he
graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a
chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport,
PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children,
Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer
in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936
he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers
Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA.
Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had
little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from
her to him have surfaced.
McClure, Eleanor (1884-1973). American teacher; S. S. McClure’s
daughter. Born in East Orange, NJ, to S. S. McClure and Hattie
Hurd McClure, Eleanor McClure attended Knox College, her parents’ alma
mater, and was for a time instructor of French there. In 1908 her engagement
to Knox College classmate Fred Savage was announced but no marriage ensued.
Thereafter she continued to live and travel with her parents. She died in
Westport, CT.
McClung, Samuel A. (1845-1915) American jurist, Isabelle McClung’s father. Born in Alleghany County, PA, to a Presbyterian minister and his wife, Samuel McClung graduated from Washington College in 1863 and in 1868 was admitted to the bar and moved to Pittsburgh, PA. He was appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1872 and was known for his conservatism. He married Fannie Merritt in 1874 and they had three children, Isabelle, Samuel Jr., and Edith. In 1901 Isabelle McClung invited Willa Cather to reside in the McClung family home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and she lived there until her 1906 move to New York City. Cather often returned there to write until Judge McClung’s death caused the sale of family home in 1916.
McClung, Samuel Alfred, Jr. (1880-1945) (“Alfred”). Pittsburgh lawyer; Isabelle McClung’s brother. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, to Samuel A. McClung and Fannie Merritt McClung, Samuel Alfred McClung, Jr., graduated from Shadyside Academy in 1900 and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1901, when his sister Isabelle invited Cather to move into the family’s home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, he was likely still at MIT, but by 1904 was a clerk at the First National Bank of Pittsburgh. He was admitted to the bar in Pittsburgh in 1911 and practiced law there. In 1917, he married Mary Caldwell Mellon Kampmann, a divorcee with two children and a member of the wealthy and influential Mellon family of Pittsburgh. They had three children together, Samuel III, Cynthia, and Isabelle. In the 1930s he retired from the practice of law, and he and his family lived on their farm in Cherry Valley, NY.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
New York Evening Mail
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
