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 |
Mother5 writes that perhaps you may be
able o to go home to Red Cloud6 at about the same time I do. I
have written the Omaha Press Club that I will speak for them November 27th7. I wonder whether it
would be possible for you to join me in Chicago3 and go on to Omaha8 with me and stay over a few days there to see me through? If it's in the least
inconvenient for you, you must tell me without any hesitation. You promised
me that you would tell me, when I said I might ask you to go lecturing with
me sometime again.
My plan is to get into Chicago Friday morning, leave Fr Friday night, reach Omaha Saturday
morning, have two quiet days at the Fontenelle, speak Monday afternoon,
address Press Club dinner in the evening, recover on Tuesday, and go down to
Red Cloud Monday morning.
For those two days before the lecture, you would probably have to hold a club
and keep the crows off me, but you and I could have a good visit, as the
telephone wouldn't b be ringing all the
time.!
aAnd Mrs.
Holland9 could come in, I wouldn't mind her one bit.
I hope to be at home until after Christmas, if I keep fairly well. It's awfully hard to leave New York2 at this time of year,- everything pulls at me to stay. Claude10 is having such splendid success that the temptations of the world glitter more than usual,- though I haven't really been well enough to be very gay. Two bad attacks of appendicitis wore me out. Let me hear, dear Irene, whether these dates would permit your going with me.
Very lovingly Willa Mrs. Chas. Williams Weisz1 818 Lafayette Parkway Chicago3 Ill. NEW YORK, N.Y. STA.2 OCT 25 1922 730 PM ClaudëOmaha
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0637.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0637
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irene Miner Weisz 1
- Date letter was written
- [October 25, 1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The envelope that corresponds with this letter is postmarked October 25, 1922, suggesting Cather dated this letter October 26 in error.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Irene Miner Weisz Papers, 1912-1958 (Midwest MS Cather-Weisz), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
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.
Cather "had a relapse" and canceled this trip (see #0637).
Person Annotations
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.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in 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, 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.
Holland, Elizabeth Carnegie (1849-1927) (“Libbie”). Red Cloud hotelkeeper. Born in Ireland in 1849 to Scots-Irish parents, Elizabeth Carnegie came to the U.S. in 1870. She married George B. Holland in 1875; their only child, Lee Holland, died in 1885, aged three. They moved west, settling in Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, opening a restaurant—Libbie Holland was an excellent cook—and then bought a hotel, naming it the Holland House. Both Hollands became important people in Red Cloud; Cather later used them, and their hotel, as prototypes for the Gardiners and their hotel in My Ántonia (1918). The Hollands left Red Cloud in 1891, living in several nearby states. Widowed in 1900, Libbie Holland went to live in Atlantic City, IA; she visited friends in Red Cloud occasionally. She moved to Omaha, NE, by 1917, where she died; she and George Holland were buried by their son in Red Cloud. Cather said that although her friends (probably the Miner sisters) were “favorites” of the “very interesting and unusual woman” who owned the hotel, she herself “alas, had no such useful connection.”
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
