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 |
I hope you have not been here of a Friday, for I have not.! I've had a
long hard attack of Influenza,; went to a hospital, afterward to Lakewood3 and Lakehurst4,
but it still hangs on. I've decided to make a quick get-away, and will sail the 24th. This note is to warn you, so that
you won't make a tr trip to Bank street5 in vain, and to say goodbye, and to wish you a
happy summer. I'm sorry not to have seen you this winter, but I've seen almost no
one since I got back from the West. Better luck for us all next winter!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0681.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0681
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Lorna Birtwell1
- Date letter was written
- March 12 [1923]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's reference to stays at Lakehurst and Lakewood to recuperate from influenza, which she also references in #0671.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Rare Book and Manuscript Library General Manuscript Collection, 1789-2013 (MS#0001), Columbia University, Butler Library, New York, NY
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.
Person Annotations
Birtwell, Lorna (1888-after 1948). American writer and teacher.
Born in Massachusetts, Lorna R. F. Birtwell attended Radcliffe
College, where she wrote for the student magazine, graduating in 1911. Willa
Cather relished two of Birtwell’s letters to Heywood Broun of the New York Tribune, published in the paper in 1919,
which championed Cather’s works. As an aspiring writer, Birtwell attended
several summer sessions of the Bread Loaf School of English. At the 1922
session she met Cather, who invited her to attend her Friday teas at 5 Bank
Street. By 1930 Birtwell taught short story writing in the Columbia
University Extension Division, co-editing a volume of student work. She
published an essay, “Remembering Willa Cather,” about the Bread Loaf time,
in Women’s Press (1948).
Place Annotations
