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 |
A definite suggestion as to money was exactly what I wanted3, and the only reason I've not written to thank you is that I've had a nasty pull with influenza—made much worse by the pollen from flowers sent by kind friends! I send you Mr. D4's letter to show you how far things have got. I've warned him5 that I may have to throw it up and go West instead, so if I do there'll be no breach of promise. I'll be so glad to stop off for a couple of days with you—going or coming. That will be something to look forward to. Just now I'm glum as a bear—I hate to feel sick, and I've missed a whole lot of good music I had got tckets for.
When my page proofs6 come along I'll attack you, though
I know, and you know, its asking 2a good deal. Isn't that just why
I'm asking it? Only don't, please, go over it twice. The outstanding outstanding errors
will strike you at once. Just now this miserable cough has completely knocked out
a
new story7 that I needed a bit of zip for. I feel
as if I'd rolled down a long hill and it were of no use to try to climb up again.
Le
Petit
Pierre8 has been a comfort. Well, writing in
bed is an accomplishment I've never mastered, even more now.
Don't be fooled by rumors about Jeritza9—she is a glorified Viennese Cabaret singer. She can't get much of a rise out of people who remember the great tradition. The young ones like her because she can be, at times, "vivid"—and when she's vivid she's always tough. They like that, too!
Oh, about those "Player Letters"10—just burn them, please, and thank you for telling me. They'd be an awful weapon for blackmail11!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0579.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0579
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- February 18, 1922
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
This letter was written shortly after #0580, dated February 15, 1922. February 18 was the following Saturday.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Collection (mss-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
Individual Annotations
See #0578.
See #0580.
The Player Letters were a proposed book of open letters to well-known actors critiquing their strengths and weaknesses. Portions of the manuscript were published as newspaper columns in 1898-1899.
Person Annotations
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational
and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became
friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's
father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to
Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio
State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed
her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia
University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the
University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On
Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with
Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman.
Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s
friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield
became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the
story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905).
Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence
was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in
war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of
her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922)
led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of
the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels
(most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various
nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Davison, Wilfred Edward (1887-1929). American academic. Born
in South Walden, VT, Wilfred Davison graduated from Middlebury College in
1913 and pursued graduate work at Harvard and Columbia. He taught in the
German department at Middlebury before transferring to the American
Literature department in 1921. As the first dean of the Bread Loaf School of
English, a summer program of Middlebury, Davison recruited nationally-known
faculty and invited visiting writers, including Willa Cather, Robert Frost,
and Dorothy Canfield Fisher to interact with the school’s students.
Jeritza, Maria (1887-1982) ("Marie Jedličková"). Czech singer. Born in Brno, Moravia, then a part of the Austrian Empire, Marie Jeritza made her operatic debut in 1910. She sang with the Vienna State Opera from 1912 to 1935, and made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1921, singing in New York until 1932. She was famous for her beauty and personality as well as for her voice.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922), by Willa Cather
A Lost Lady (1923), by Willa Cather
Litte Pierre (1918), by Anatole France
"Player Letters" (unpublished), by Willa Cather
