Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 blind chiropractor, who clearly suffers from some mental infirmity, has been all day tapping up and down before the house4, bothering us for news about my mother5 and father6 and their golden wedding7. In order to prevent what he threatens, I have told him that I will send you the facts myself. Please give the enclosed statement8 to your news department as a telegram from your correspondent here. Tell them to cut it as much as they wish, but ask them please not to add to it. If this account9 is too long, please cut the reference to my professional connection with Red Cloud10 at the end.
Very sincerely yours Willa Cather Mr. Will Owen Jones1 Nebraska State Journal11Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0654.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0654
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Will Owen Jones 1
- Date letter was written
- December 6 [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, etc.), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
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.
541 N. Seward Street (Red Cloud, NE): Built circa 1899, Cather’s parents, Charles F. and Mary Virginia Boak Cather, purchased this home in 1903. Cather stayed here when she returned to Red Cloud to visit her parents, returning for the last time in 1931 following her mother’s death. At that time, Cather's sister Elsie inherited the house, returning to Red Cloud for summer vacations for most of the 1930s. Willa Cather contributed to the maintenance of the property until Elsie sold the house in 1945 to W. H. Maynard. By 1946, it was being used as a local hospital. Willa Cather used the house as the prototype for the second Ferguesson house in her short story “The Best Years.”
Charles and Mary Virginia Boak Cather's 50th wedding anniversary was on 5 December 1922.
The Nebraska State Journal published Cather's long announcement about her parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, and the paper did not cut the final sentence about her: "The country about Red Cloud, our Republican river, our beautiful autumn and sunny winters and fertile fields, even some of our amusing 'local' characters have been made known to the world through the novels in which Willa Cather lovingly describes the country of her childhood."
Person Annotations
Jones, Will Owen (1862-1928). Newspaper editor. Will Owen Jones was born in Wisconsin and came to Nebraska by 1880. He worked for the Nebraska State Journal while attending the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, graduating in 1886. That year he became city editor of the paper, then associate editor in 1889 (the year he married pianist Edith M. Doolittle), and then managing editor in 1892. He was close to Charles and Mariel Gere, the owners of the Nebraska State Journal, and the Jones’s only child, Mariel Jones, was named for Mrs. Gere. Cather took his journalism course at the university in 1893 and wrote to him often early in her career, although he could be severe in his criticism of some of her work.
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, 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.
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Cathers Celebate [sic] Fiftieth Anniversary with Reunion," Nebraska State Journal (December 10, 1922) by Willa] [Cather
Nebraska State Journal
