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 |
I have been up in New Hampshire3 all fall, and did not know of your dear mother4's death until a few days ago, when I was looking over a file of Red Cloud5 papers that had accumulated in my absence. Father6 does not write to me very often, and he always hates to write bad news.
You said last summer that your mother was so changed by her illness that you felt that she got very little satisfaction out of life, and for that reason I feel that her going may have been a release for her. But I know you must all feel heavy without her. Even after her memory failed and her mind wandered a good deal, there was still something fine and forceful in her, and last fall she seemed to me as much “Mama Miner” as ever she was.
While I was in New Hampshire I was working on a part of my new
novel7 in which a character very much like your mother
appears, and all during September I was thinking about her almost every day, trying
to recall certain tricks of voice and gesture. I have had a little of Mrs. Miner in
eve almost every mother I have ever done, but
this character in the new story is quite a clear little snap-shot of her as I first
remember her, and I hope you will like it. I want, by the way, to dedicate this next
book to you and Irene8, and I hope you won’t
appearing in print along with me. It will give me a
great deal of pleasure to have your names in a book of mine that will in some places
recall to you places and people that have interested you as well as me. The older
one grows, the dearer, and the clearer, one’s early impressions somehow become.
Please give my love and sympathy to Mary9 and Margie10, and to Irene when you write to her.
Always affectionately yours Willie CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0396.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0396
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- October 29, 1917
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (#6494-6494-i), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Person Annotations
Sherwood, Carrie Miner (1869-1971). Sherwood, Carrie Belle
Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader; Cather's friend. Born in Waukon,
IA, to James L. Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest
of their children. The family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the
Miner Brothers store became the largest in town. Cather remembered meeting
Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie, her mother, and siblings were confirmed in
the Catholic church. In 1888, she studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at
Notre Dame, IN. She married bank clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they
had two sons. The Sherwoods travelled often in the West, and visited Europe
in 1930. They built a new house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in
1908; Cather sometimes sent materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious
attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood led local Red Cross work during the two World
Wars, served on the Red Cloud school board and park commission, and was
active in the League of Women Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace
Episcopal Church. Cather corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout
her life and dedicated My Ántonia to Carrie, model
for Frances Harling in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of
Mildred Bennett’s chief sources for The World of Willa
Cather (1951), and was instrumental in setting up what is now the
Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud.
Miner, Julia Erickson (1844-1917). Cather's Norwegian-American
friend. Born in Norway, where her father was a musician and a
leather-worker, Julia came with her family to the U.S. in 1853. They settled
in Iowa, where she met and married James L. Miner in 1868. The family came
to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where J. L. Miner became the leading merchant of
the town. They had eight children, of whom five survived to adulthood; their
four daughters, Carrie, Mary, Margaret, and Irene, were all good friends of
Cather. Julia Miner was widowed in 1905. Cather portrayed her as the strong,
active, musical Mrs. Harling in My Ántonia (1918),
the only time, she said, that she drew a “portrait of an actual person.”
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Weisz, Irene Miner (1881-1971). Musician; Cather’s lifelong
friend. Born in Red Cloud, NE, the youngest child of James L.
Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Irene Miner was educated in Red Cloud,
graduating in 1898 and played with the Cather children as part of the play
town of Sandy Point and in amateur theatricals. She studied piano with local
teachers, such as Mrs. P.E.B. Sill, then went to the Chicago College of
Music from 1899 to 1901. She met clerk Charles Weisz, later president of the
A.F. Shaw insurance company, there; they married in late 1915, settling in
Chicago. She visited Red Cloud frequently, but also travelled in the
American West and then to Europe in 1921 and around the world in 1934.
Cather corresponded with Irene Miner Weisz for many years and sometimes
stayed with her in Chicago when travelling to and from the West. My Ántonia is dedicated to Irene, model for Nina
Harling in the novel, and to her sister Carrie Miner Sherwood.
Creighton, Mary S. Miner (1873-1968). Clubwoman; Cather’s
friend from childhood. Born in Iowa, Mary Miner was the second
daughter of James and Julia Miner, neighbors of the Cather family in Red
Cloud, NE. Willa Cather later recalled that when she first moved into town
with her family and enrolled in school in 1885, “Margie Miner was so jolly I
wanted awfully to know her.” They became lifelong friends and
correspondents, and Mary’s sisters Irene and Carrie were equally close to
Cather. Mary Miner wed local physician E. A. Creighton in 1900 and lived the
rest of her life in Red Cloud. She was the prototype for Julia Harling in
My Ántonia (1918).
Gund, Margaret Miner (1875-1936). Cather’s childhood friend; iris
breeder. Born in Iowa, the third surviving daughter of James L.
and Julia Erickson Miner, Margaret grew up in Red Cloud, NE, where she was
one of Cather’s close friends. She played the role of Beauty in the
children’s play Beauty and the Beast in 1888, while
Cather played the merchant, her father; she also sang and played the violin
in various local musical performances. In 1896 she met bank cashier
Frederick Gund at a dance in Blue Hill, NE; they were married in December
1900. The couple lived in Blue Hill, where their four children were born and
she cultivated iris plants. When the bank closed in 1932, the
couple—their children grown—moved to Crawford, NE. Margaret
Miner Gund died in Chicago, IL, and is buried in Lincoln, NE. Cather
portrayed her as Sally Harling, the tomboy, in My
Ántonia (1918).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
