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 |
Since September 1st my mother3 has been seriously ill, and I have been cook and housekeeper. I had a dear willing old servant4 to help me, but she could not cook. There have been eight in the family all the time, and it has kept me hustling. On the whole, I’ve rather enjoyed it. I’ve really got the secret of good pastry at last, and I shall never be intimidated by a kitchen range again. Mother is much better now, and will go to Arizona5 for the winter in two weeks, and I shall eat Thanksgiving dinner in Bank Street6. All’s well that ends well.
I’ve done nothing but ride with Mother when I was out of the kitchen, so I did not even have time to answer your postcards from the West,—though I was so glad to get them and delighted that you went to Walnut Canyon7.
Yesterday, in a wild snowstorm, I took a day in bed, and read
“French Perspectives”8. I think the papers are so much
more effective all together in a volume than they were printed singly. They present
a larger and fuller scene than I had thought, and even the lighter ones like the
Curé's lunch party9, which taken
alone I thought graceful but not, somehow, conclusive as a pice of writing, seem here perfectly to belong. The more analytical es papers give one the requisite saturation, the
preparation to catch the lightest shadings in the more impressionistic ones. It is really necessary, to enjoy all of these studies
to the full, to have your point of view, to get the sort of moral revelation which
seems to be go deeper than anything else you’ve got
out of your French experience. Surely it was wise to put these papers first, as you
have. With them tingling in the back of one’s mind, all the others go beautifully
and one is glad to flower a little in the rich Provençal weather.
I would not have thought that the order of a collection of essays would make so much difference in their effectiveness.
But then, these are not really separate articles, each with its own purpose. They
all flow together under the external divisions. They have varius
various lights and feelings, but the main purpose and the
deepest feeling are the same in all of them,—or so it seems to me.
The first paper10 is still one of my favorites, though it seems less 'related' to the general scheme than any of the others.
Oh Elsie, on page 96 why “cañons of polite usage.”11 Haven’t the Riverside Press the worst proof readers! That reminds me of Tooker12's favorite “moral canyon.”
If you are to be in N.Y.13 after Christmas, I shall see you there. Meanwhile, I am so glad of the book. I have been in this utterly-without-purpose part of the world, that it’s tonic to bite down on something real like the Ravignacs14. I’m so glad to be reminded that there are people who have learned something from the ancient and unchanging necessities, and who have conviction and a point of view. Here there are surely more. With many felicitations to you.
W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0372.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0372
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- November 13 [1916]
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602), 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.
Chapter VII of French Perspectives, "M. le Curé's Lunch-Party."
Chapter I of French Perspectives is "Curious Company."
The passage from the first edition of French Perspectives begins, "That is precisely why, when the cañons of polite usage are observed..." The tilde over the "n" in "cañons" is an error.
The Ravignacs are featured in Chapter II of French Perspectives, "Standards of a Bourgeois Family."
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.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Anderson, Marjorie (1854-1924) (“Margie”). Cather family servant. Born in Back Creek Valley, VA, the daughter of Mary Ann and Asa Anderson, Marjorie accompanied the Charles Cather family to Nebraska, living with them for the rest of her life. She was especially devoted to the Cather children, who loved her in return. In her later years she became shy and reclusive. Cather based several characters on Marjorie: Mahailey in One of Ours (1922), Marty in the poem, “Poor Marty” (1931), and Mandy in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).
Tooker, Harry Leigh (1873-1950). American laborer. Born in Chicago, IL, Tooker married Amanda Hull in Santa Monica, CA, in 1899 and their daughter, Helen, was born in 1900. In 1901, Tooker was believed to have drowned after he disappeared and his bicycle was found floating in the sea, but he faked his own death and was sued for divorce on grounds of desertion in 1908. By 1912, Tooker was working in Winslow, AZ, for the Santa Fe Railroad, rooming with Douglass Cather, Willa Cather's brother. He joined Cather and her brother as they toured Walnut Canyon in 1912. Though Cather was often annoyed by his pretentiousness, she enjoyed camping and exploring with him and reported that he had an interesting history prospecting in South America and Mexico. By 1918, Tooker was working as a prospector in Grand Canyon, AZ; by 1920, he was working in an oil field near DeLeon, TX. In 1925, Tooker moved to Monrovia, CA, and joined the police department. He married Mildred Wardell in 1928, and she died in 1930. Less than a week after her death, Tooker lost his job as a police officer after shooting at a car and trying to strike the chief of police. By 1940, Tooker was listed in the census as "living in car" in a Los Angeles, CA, suburb. He died in Bakersfield, CA, in 1950. Tooker is an inspiration for Cather's character Ray Kennedy in The Song of the Lark (1915), and after the novel was published he sent Cather an appreciative letter about it.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
French Perspectives (1916) by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant
