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 |
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, NH Sept. 19 Dear Aunt Franc1;
I know you will enjoy this nice cheerful letter from Elsie4.
Lovingly WillaWith a great deal of love to you, dear Aunt Franc,
Yours always WillaI shall be at home on Bank Street5 after October 1st
The Shattuck Inn E. C. SHATTUCK PROPRIETOR JAFFREY2 N. H. Mrs. George Cather1 Bladen6 JAFFREY2 SEP 20 1917 A.M.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0392.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0392
- Contents
- Document is a photocopy of one leaf, handwritten on recto only, and one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Frances Smith Cather 1
- Date letter was written
- September 19 [1917]
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Collection not identified, Unknown Current Location
Individual Annotations
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
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.
Person Annotations
Cather, Frances Amanda Smith (1845-1922) (“Franc”). Cather’s
aunt. Born in Boston, MA, Franc graduated from Mount Holyoke
Female Seminary in South Hadley, MA, in 1870. Franc worked both as a private
tutor and as a teacher at Winchester Female Institute in Winchester, VA. In
1873 she and George Cather married and moved to Webster County in Nebraska,
where they raised their five children—Grosvenor, Blanche, Carrie, and
twins Frank and Oscar. Willa and Franc Cather maintained a warm relationship
and were regular correspondents until Franc’s death, exchanging letters
about family matters and about Willa’s writing. Elements of the life of her
New-England-born aunt inspired the character Aunt Georgiana in Willa
Cather’s story “A Wagner Matinee” (1904), and Franc’s son Grosvenor was the
prototype for Claude Wheeler in One of Ours (1922),
making Frances the prototype for Claude’s mother, Evangeline Wheeler.
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
Place Annotations
