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 |
NORTH 6127 38 SAINT VINCENT STREET
TORONTO May Day Dear Laura Hills1:
Such a lovely, pink letter as you wrote me. Isabelle3 and I were sitting at tea on a rainy afternoon when I opened it, and we both uttered cries of delight. I have it pinned on the wall over my work table, in my dear little study up under the eaves. I can’t think of anything else so pretty except the Shakespeare4 Sonnet5 that begins: “From you I have been absent in the Spring.”
I am up here2 working on the French translation6 of “Antonia”7, done so splendidly by a young Frenchman8. It is to appear serially next spring in “La Nouvelle Revue Francaise”9, quite the best of the French literary magazines. I feel rather chesty about that—wouldn’t you?
Goodbye, and our united love Willa S. C.I have here met a Mrs. Fisher10, once of
Boston11, whose cousin married your
cousin—not a close relationship, but I felt it a very sudden interest in her when I heard it. She’s nice in
herself, too.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0543.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0543
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Laura Hills1
- Date letter was written
- [May 1, 1921]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's stay in Toronto in the spring of 1921.
- Place letter was written
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA1330), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Person Annotations
Hills, Laura Coombs (1859-1952). American painter.
Born in the coastal town of Newburyport, MA, Hills began studying
painting as a child. Early in her career she exhibited works in oil,
watercolor, and pastel, illustrated children’s books, and undertook design
work. From the 1890s she became a noted painter of miniatures on ivory; in
the 1920s diminishing eyesight caused her shift to pastels of flowers.
Throughout her life Hills spent her summers in Newburyport. In 1903 she
moved her winter studio to 66 Chestnut Street in Boston; artist Karoline
Bernheimer shared the space while Hills’ sister Lizzie handled domestic
duties. When Cather was on assignment in Boston for McClure’s Magazine in 1907, she took an apartment on Chestnut
Street, leading to a lifelong friendship and correspondence.
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.
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616). English playwright, actor, and poet. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright of the English language. While not much is known definitively about his life, he was a member of Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a company of theatrical players, beginning in 1594 (the group later changed their name to the King’s Men). From 1590 to 1613, he wrote thirty-seven plays that continue to be widely performed. Cather’s lifelong love for Shakespeare’s work began in childhood as the Cather family had several volumes of Shakespeare in their book collection. While at the University of Nebraska, she took four semesters of Shakespeare and in 1891 published a two-part essay, “Shakespeare and Hamlet” in the Nebraska State Journal. Her fiction is filled with allusions to Shakespeare. In her later years, she formed an informal Shakespeare book club with the child prodigies Yehudi, Hepzibah, and Yaltah Menuhin and spent the last winter of her life reading his works.
Llona, Victor Manuel (1886-1953). Peruvian-French writer and translator. Born in Lima, Peru, Victor Llona was raised and educated in Paris, France, where he entered the cosmopolitan café scene as a teenager. In 1906 he moved with his parents to Chicago, IL, returned to Paris in 1913 but left for New York City at the outbreak of World War I. On his return to France he became friends with both French and American expatriate writers and launched a career translating dozens of American novels into French. His translation of Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), Mon Antonia (1924), was one of his earliest translations. Before his return to France he married Florence Nelson of Chicago. They had two children, Doris and Eric, and his wife collaborated with him on some of his translations. The couple later divorced.
Fisher, Mrs. Cather's acquaintance. There is insufficient evidence to identify this person, but Cather met Fisher, who once lived in Boston, in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring," Sonnets, by William Shakespeare
Mon Antonia (1924), by Willa Cather; translated by Victor Llona
My Ántonia (1918), by Willa Cather
La Nouvelle Revue Française
