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 |
Each time I try to write to you I feel helpless to do so, but a line must go to you today to tell you that you and your loss are in my thoughts always. Everything seemed strange and unreal to me on the day I saw G. P.'s5 name in the New York paper6, under that glorious title7 "killed in action" which sets men off from their fellows. I feel proud and humble to be one of those bearing the name that your son put in a place of such honor.2 After watching the casualty lists closely for weeks, I had not opened the paper that morning when Isabelle8 came to me and said "Who is Myrtle Cather9?" I told her, and then she said "What is G. P.'s full name?" Then I turned around and asked, "Has anything happened to G. P.?" She nodded and took the morning paper out from under her jacket. I had thought that, out of so many thousand, harm would not come to G.P.
I know how terrible it must be for you that it all happened so far away. But I feel sure that you are glad G. P. lived through his illness the time he was burned10, lived to find the work he loved and seemed 3 to be made for, and to give his life to the greatest cause men ever fought for.
You remember, I was staying at your house the week in August, 1914, when this
terrible war began. I drove over to Campbell11 one day, and G. P. took a load of wheat over. I
was coming back and met him just on the edge of town3, and we stopped
to chat12 about the war news. I believe he always wanted to be a
soldier. I can see him sitting on his wagon as plainly as if it were
yesterday, in the middle of a peaceful country, with thousands of miles of
land and sea between him and those far-away armies we were4 talking about. What
would have seemed more improbable improbable
than that he should fall, an officer, in France13, in one of the greatest battles14 the world has ever seen. He was
restless on a farm; and perhaps he was born
to throw all his energy into this crisis, and to die among the first and
bravest of his country.
I know your heart will ache none the less, but you have always looked up to
high things through faith, and it seems to me that now you must feel that
your son is among those high things. Some people rise by faith, and some
people by prayer. But there come critical times in this world when men
a man can rise in action to all 5 that he could ever be. I believe G.
P. was one of the men who can do that, and he found his opportunity.
Goodbye, dear Aunt Franc. I keep thinking how lonely you and Uncle George15 must be feeling; yet, surely, you have cause to be proud and thankful, too, to have been able to help this country16 at a time of such need. There were so few men ready to take hold and help as G. P. did. Most of the willing ones were only a burden.
My heart is full of love and sympathy for you. Willie Mrs. George P. Cather1 Bladen3 Nebraska NEW YORK, N.Y. STA.C2 JUN 13 1918 7 PM WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0419.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0419
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of first leaf and recto only of second leaf. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Frances Smith Cather1
- Date letter was written
- June 12 [1918]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- George Cather Ray Collection (MS113), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
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.
On 6 May 1911, G. P. Cather was severely burned in an explosion. The Webster County Argus reported that he was pumping gasoline in a garage and holding a lighted lantern when it happened.
Cather later wrote about this encounter in more detail to Dorothy Canfield Fisher (#0589). She told Fisher, "We spent the first week hauling wheat to town...Timidly, angrily, he used to ask me about the geography of France on the wheat wagon."
Fought on 28 May 1918, the Battle of Cantigny was the first sustained American offensive and first major U.S. victory in World War I.
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, Grosvenor Perry (1883-1918) (“G.P.”). Cather’s cousin.
G.P. Cather was born in Catherton, NE, the oldest son of Frances and
George Cather. He attended Grand Island Baptist College and the University
of Nebraska in Lincoln but was a poor student and did not earn a degree. He
married his childhood friend Myrtle Bartlett in 1910. Restless and
unsuccessful both before and after his marriage, he joined the Nebraska
National Guard in 1914 and served under General John J. Pershing on the
Mexican border in 1916. He became a member of the Allied Expeditionary Force
in 1917 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He died in action in
Cantigny, France, on May 28 and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished
Service Cross and the Croix de Guerre. Willa Cather read his letters home to
his mother about his experiences in the army, and she modeled Claude
Wheeler, the protagonist of One of Ours (1922), on
G.P. His body was first buried in a military cemetery in France, where
Cather visited his grave in 1920. In 1921, a large military funeral marked
the reinterment of his remains in Bladen, NE.
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, Myrtle Bartlett (1884-1960). Wife of G.P. Cather Born
in Webster County, NE to a successful farmer and his wife, Myrtle Bartlett
was a childhood friend of G.P. Cather (Willa Cather’s cousin). After an
awkward courtship (Myrtle turned down G.P.’s first proposal because of ill
health), the two married in June 1910. The marriage quickly became strained
because of Myrtle’s extensive health-related travels to the Southwest and
G.P.’s frequent hunting trips and financial irresponsibility. Myrtle
belonged to the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the
Methodist-Episcopal Church in Bladen, NE. Her husband was killed in action
in France in World War I and was buried in a military cemetery there. In
1921, over the objections of G.P.’s parents and to Willa Cather’s dismay,
she had his remains repatriated and reinterred in Bladen after a grand
military funeral. Myrtle served as the prototype for Enid Wheeler in One of Ours (1922).
Cather, George P. (1847-1938). Farmer; Cather’s uncle. Born
in Back Creek Valley, VA, George was the eldest child of William and Emily
Caroline Smith Cather. He married Frances (Franc) Smith in 1873, and they
moved west to become two of the early settlers of northwestern Webster
County, NE, followed by many family members and neighbors from Back Creek,
including George’s parents, his sisters, and his brother Charles and family.
After early struggles, George and Franc Cather prospered, rearing five
children: Carrie, Blanche, Grosvenor P., and twins Oscar and Frank. George
was a partial prototype for Nat Wheeler in Cather’s One of
Ours (1922), and his son Grosvenor was the main prototype for
Claude Wheeler, the novel’s protagonist.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
New York Times
"48 Casualties Reported by Gen. Pershing; 3 Aviation Officers Killed in Accidents," New York Times (June 8, 1918)
