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 |
Your note was forwarded to me in the
country3 where I have been staying with friends. I came into
town2 this morning to attend to
some business and with the pleasant hope of seeing you, dear Lady, if you
are still in town. But the heat has been too much for me! I have retired to
my apartment4 to go to bed
until tomorrow, when I fear I must flee the
city again. It has been a great loss to me not to have seen you at all this
winter, and to have had only a glimpse of Mrs.
Boas5. But I’ve been more
more or less ill ever since
Christmas. For several weeks I hovered on the edge of a mastoid process.
Then, because half a dozen doctors thought my tonsils might be the source of
infection, I went into a hospital and had them taken out. I lost a great
deal of blood and the operation went hard with me. As soon as I was out of
the hospital I went to the sanitarium at
Wernersville, Pa6. for a time, and
had a very pleasant spring outing there. As soon as I got back to New York,
however, I felt much less well, and I was in great anxiety about my
mother7 who was very ill. All this
while I was reading the proofs of my novel8
which will be out early in September, and doctors and publishers9 have been my sole
companions. This is the history of my winter, and in I relate these woes woes only to let you know why my friends
have seen little of me, and why you, a very dear
friend, have not seen me at all. Like most strong people, I am very much
ashamed of having been ill, but those seasons of good-for-nothingness come
to all of us, and I think they are more desolating to strong folks than to
those who often dally with illness.
I thought today I would surely see you, but the heat is too great. May I send you my love and tell you how much I would love to be with you this afternoon?
Yours Willa Cather FromMiss Cather
rec'=June 12th
1922 Mrs. Stanfield1 The Wyoming Seventh Ave. & 55th St New York2 NEW YORK,N.Y.STA.C2 JUN 10 1922 12 PM
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0600.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0600
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Charlotte Stanfield 1
- Date letter was written
- [June 9, 1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
June 9 was the Friday before the postmark date of June 10, 1922.
- 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
Individual Annotations
Cather was at a Sanitarium in Wernersville, PA, from about 17 April to 21 April 1922 (see #0585 and #0587). All of her letters in April, May, and early June were written in New York City.
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
Stanfield, Charlotte L. (1847-1932). Mother of Harriet Boas. Born in Germany and married to the German-born Theodore Stanfield, Charlotte Stanfield was a naturalized American citizen. After her husband’s death, she and her daughter Harriet Boas, also widowed, shared a home in New York City, where Cather knew both the mother and daughter. It is not clear when and where they met, but Cather’s surviving letters to her suggest a warm friendship with social visits.
Boas, Harriet Betty Stanfield (1868-1953). Literary translator. Born in Boston, MA, to German immigrant parents, Harriet Betty Stanfield married Emil Boas, a German immigrant, who died in 1912. In the 1920s she shared a home in New York City with her widowed mother, Charlotte Stanfield, and translated plays and poetry from German to English. Cather knew both Boas and her mother, although it is not clear when and where they met.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, Jessica Virginia, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were
born in Nebraska after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional
differences, Cather remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who
remained in Red Cloud, NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her
husband’s death in 1928 Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her
children and their families in California. She spent nearly three years in a
sanitarium in Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there
several times but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to
Red Cloud for her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931.
Virginia Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932), which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s
death.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
