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 |
June 25 Dear Mr. Greenslet1;
I came West rather suddenly to receive an honorary degree from the University of Nebraska at its Semi-Centennial Commencement. Roosevelt3, Dean Pound4 of Harvard Law School, and Gen. Pershing5 were given Doctor of Civil Laws—the latter in absentia, of course. John S. Neihardt6, Edith Abbott7, who is Jane Addams'8 assistant at Hull House, and I were given Doctor of Letters. It was a rather joyful occasion because so many old friends from this town and other friendly little towns were there.
I am now at home2 and will let you know when I flit away to Wyoming9. I may join Isabelle10 at Dublin N.H.11 instead of going further west. Nebraska12 is bubbling hot for war!
Yours Willa S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0388.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0388
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- June 25 [1917]
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
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.
Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919). 26th President of the United States.
Roosevelt’s domestic program, called the Square Deal, made him the
first president to advocate for environmental conservation. He received an
honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1917,
the same year Cather received an honorary doctor of letters.
Pound, Roscoe (1870-1964). American law professor. Born and
raised in Lincoln, NE, Roscoe Pound received bachelor’s and master’s degrees
in botany from the University of Nebraska 1888 and 1889, respectively. He
studied a single year at Harvard Law School (1889-1890), returning to
Lincoln in 1890, where he simultaneously practiced law and studied botany
under Charles Bessey, receiving a PhD in 1897. In 1894 Cather published a
lampoon of Pound as the sycophantic “University Graduate” in the Hesperian
student newspaper; this lampoon has been credited with rupturing her
relationship with the entire Pound family, including her friends, Roscoe’s
sisters, Louise and Olivia Pound, who also studied at the university. Roscoe
became, successively, instructor (1895), assistant professor (1899), and
dean of the law school at the University of Nebraska (1903). As dean he
instituted sweeping reforms, including the case study method of teaching he
had learned at Harvard. He then served as professor at the law schools of
Northwestern University (1907-1909), the University of Chicago (1909-1910),
and Harvard University (1910-1920) and dean at Harvard (1920-1936). He was
awarded an honorary degree by Nebraska in 1917, the same year that Cather
was similarly honored, but there is no evidence of any other contact between
them after 1894.
Pershing, John J. (1860-1948). American general. Born in
Laclede, MO, Pershing attended the Missouri State Normal School and taught
school before entering the U.S. Military Academy in 1882. After serving as a
cavalry officer of the Sixth Regiment in New Mexico, he was appointed
Professor of Military Science at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in
1891. Because the university was established under the Morrill Act, all male
students participated in required military drill under him, but the extent
to which he served as a classroom teacher of mathematics is in dispute.
Pershing also studied law at the university. He rejoined the cavalry in 1895
and saw action in the Spanish-American War and served as the military
governor and commander of the Moro Province in the Philippines. Pershing led
the Punitive Expedition in Mexico in 1916-1917 (Willa Cather’s cousin G.P.
Cather, who died in battle in World War I, served under Pershing’s command
in this conflict). On the entry of the U.S. into World War I in April 1917,
Pershing was appointed commander of the American Expeditionary Force. When
Willa Cather received an honorary degree from the University of Nebraska in
June 1917, Pershing was honored in absentia. In his later life, Pershing was
plagued by heart trouble and played no substantive role in World War
II.
Neihardt, John G. (1881-1973). American writer; Nebraska Poet
Laureate. Neihardt is best known for Black Elk
Speaks (1932), an “as told to” autobiography of Nicholas Black Elk,
an Oglalla Sioux medicine man. Neihardt received an honorary Doctor of
Letters from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1917, the same year
Willa Cather was similarly honored. He was named Nebraska Poet Laureate in
1921.
Abbott, Edith (1876-1957). Social reformer and educator.
Edith Abbott was born in Grand Island, NE. After graduating from the
University of Nebraska in 1901, she earned a PhD in economics from the
University of Chicago in 1905. She lived at Hull House from 1908 to 1920,
and became dean of the College of Social Service Administration at the
University of Chicago from 1924 to 1942. Like her sister Grace Abbott, Edith
Abbott worked for legislation to improve the lot of immigrants, women, and
children. Abbott and Cather were both awarded honorary doctorates from the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1917.
Addams, Jane (1860-1935). American social reformer. Born and
raised in rural Illinois, Jane Addams received a BA from Rockford Female
Seminar in 1881. Inspired by Toynbee Hall, a settlement house she saw in
London, England, Addams opened Hull House in Chicago, which provided social
services to immigrants living in poverty and used social science methodology
to document the conditions in immigrant neighborhoods. Cather’s friend Edith
Abbott lived at Hull House. Addams played an active role in founding the
School of Social Work at the University of Chicago. Her autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), was a bestseller.
She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.
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.
Place Annotations
