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 |
VILLE-D'AVRAY 19, RUE DE SÈVRES
VILLE D'AVRAY
SEINE ET OISE August 27 My Dear Judge Vinsonhaler1:
(1) First let me acknowledge receiving from you a check for one thousand dollars, which shall be endorsed to Mr. Bakst3 as soon as the portrait4 is completed. The work has taken much longer than he thought at first, and both he and I need a rest from it. I had no idea that sitting for a picture was such hard work. I have not been in the best of health this summer, and now I am going down to Aix-les-Bains5 for three weeks. When I return I will have three more sittings with Bakst for details of the figure—he eventually did a half-figure, seated, with the hands. The face will be practically completed in tomorrow's sitting, and I think the likeness very unusual.
(2) I know that my parents6
will want to go up to Omaha7 to see
the picture, but I don't know about asking them to unveil it. You know old
people are sometimes very much fretted and wearied of doing something a little unusual, and both my father and mother
are rather nervous people. Won't you let me put the question to them and
then follow their wish in the matter? I know you would not want to put any
sort of strain on them. I think it likely that they would much rather sit
quietly by, with no responsibility, and let my little niece, Virginia Auld8, unveil the picture9. (By the way, Judge
Vinsonhaler, I wish pictures didn't have to be unveiled! And won't you do
what must be done just as quietly and simply as possible. I like to feel
that you want my picture because of a feeling of friendliness, because I've
pictured truthfully the life you know. Don't, please, let people like
Mrs. Shotwell10 turn all this nice
feeling into cheap newspaper copy and make me f heartsick about it.)
To return to my little niece, she is a great pal of mine, and I think ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩her grandmother would love to have her for an understudy. She's a charming young girl, and not a bit cocky.
(3) Bakst is to have an exhibition of his work in Philadelphia11, in D November, and in Boston12 in December, and he ask permission to exhibit this
portrait among his other pictures. I don't feel that I can grant him this
without the consent of your committee, but it is customary to extend this
courtesy courtesy to painters and I hope
to hear from you that your committee is willing. In that case, he will
select the frame—a very important matter—though the frame would probably
have to be made in New York13.
(4) As to the date of my return: I will probably sail late in October, but I don't know how early in the winter I can go west. I am afraid unless the importunate Mrs. Shotwell can be subdued I shall never go to Omaha again! She wrote a letter to Bakst which passes description, asking him what he had to say about my eyes and my nose, how he would define my personality, what flower he thought appropriate for me, etc. As if any painter would give an interview on the physical characteristics of his sitter. Why, the woman must be mad! I'm confident that you and your friends didn't want this picture in order to give and opportunity for columns of cheap, noisy publicity, and I'm sure I did not sit for it for that purpose. Won't you be a hero, a very heroic hero, and try to tell this lady that I hate such methods, that I don't want to be "boosted" in any way, and I don't like being made ridiculous. The less publicity, the better. When Mr. Newbranch14 and Miss Mahoney15 do me the honor to write about me, I am always pleased, pleased and proud. But this sort of vulgar horn-blowing really hurts me, and I know that it offends all people of good taste. It offends my own Father very deeply, and I care a great deal about that. If you will be noble and kind enough to use your influence in my behalf, ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ you might prevent what the diplomats call future unpleasantness.
I dine with the Hitchcocks16 tonight. I am staying in Paris2 now, but all my letters still go to my permanent address at Ville D'Avray17. Senator and Mrs. Hitchcock went out there for tea with me on Sunday afternoon.
Forgive me for my rhetoric regarding Mrs. Shotwell, but do put the soft pedal on her if you can.
Faithfully yours Willa Cather Mr. Duncan M. Vinsonhaler1 First National Bank Building Omaha7 Nebraska U.S.A. PARIS-XIV AV. D'ORLEANS2 28 AOUT 23 2030 Via S.S. OlympicWilla Cather#1340Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0693.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0693
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of first and second leaves and on recto only of third leaf. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Duncan M. Vinsonhaler 1
- Date letter was written
- August 27 [1923]
- Place letter was written
- Paris, Île-de-France, France2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (6494), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Individual Annotations
On 30 December 1923 the Bakst portrait of Cather was unveiled by Mary Virginia Auld at an event at the Omaha Public Library. Cather's sisters, Elsie Cather and Jessica Cather Auld, were also present.
Person Annotations
Vinsonhaler, Duncan MacArthur (1867-1954). American judge. Born in Missouri, Duncan MacArthur Vinsonhaler married Isabelle Ellison in Kirksville, MO, in 1889, and received a law degree from Michigan University in 1891. Vinsonhaler served as judge of Douglas County, Nebraska (1900-1906) and as a senior member of the firm Vinsonhaler, McGuckin & Caldwell in Omaha, NE. In 1922 Vinsonhaler wrote Willa Cather a letter praising One of Ours (1922), and in 1923 Vinsonhaler and Cather corresponded about Léon Bakst’s portrait of Cather commissioned by a group of women in in Omaha, NE.
Bakst, Léon (1866-1924). Russian painter and theatrical
designer. Born in Russia, Lejb-Khaim Rosenberg decided to become
an artist when he was twelve. He studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of
Arts. In 1889 he took the surname Bakst. In 1893 Bakst went to Paris to
study for four years, becoming a part of Sergei Diaghilev’s avant-garde
artistic group. He became known as a portraitist in the early twentieth
century, then in 1909 turned to stage and costume design for Diaghilev and
the Ballets Russes, the work for which he is now best known. In 1922 he
visited the U.S., where his friend and patron Alice Warder Garrett had
organized exhibitions of his work. Willa Cather met Bakst in Paris in 1923.
When a women’s federation in Omaha was raising funds to have a portrait
painted of her, Bakst suggested he do the portrait. Cather enjoyed talking
with Bakst during the sittings, but, like other viewers, she had mixed
reactions to the finished portrait.
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).
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.
Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”).
Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld
and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School
in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for
admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B.
in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found
work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930,
probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation
Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the
library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont
branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933
Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935,
Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical
School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College,
she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor
in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s
regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In
Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary
estate.
Shotwell, Margaret Badollet (c.1885-after 1944). American poet and socialite. Born in Nebraska, Margaret Badollet married the Republican politician Franklin Shotwell. Margaret Shotwell was active in Omaha literary circles, initiating “Nebraska Writers Week” and writing the weekly column "Bibliophile by Badollet" in the Omaha Daily News. Shotwell’s controversial poem “Will Willa?,” which criticized Léon Bakst’s portrait of Willa Cather commissioned for the Omaha Public Library, was published in the Omaha Daily News and reprinted in Publishers Weekly.
Newbranch, Harvey E. (1875-1959). Newspaper editor; Cather’s university classmate. Harvey Newbranch was born in Iowa; his family moved to Nebraska and in 1892 he entered the University of Nebraska, following Cather as editor of the Hesperian student newspaper and graduating in 1896. That same year he married classmate Evalena Rolofson; they had four daughters. In 1898 Newbranch began working for the Omaha, NE, World-Herald as its Lincoln correspondent. Subsequently he worked in Omaha as reporter, editorial writer, and finally editor beginning in 1910. In 1920 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial condemning the mob that lynched an African American man. Cather kept in occasional touch with the Newbranches, and in 1929 her letter to Newbranch as editor about the demise of small town opera houses was published in the World-Herald’s diamond jubilee edition.
Mahoney, Eva (c. 1884-1968). American journalist. Born and raised in Omaha, NE, Eva Mahoney joined the staff of the Omaha World Herald in 1917. There she edited the “Mary Lane” advice to the lovelorn column, going on to handle women’s news, general news, and featuring writing. Mahoney’s long feature interview of Cather appeared on 27 November 1921. Mahoney died in Tuscon, AZ, where she had retired in 1954.
Hitchcock, Gilbert Monell (1859-1934). Nebraska senator and newspaper publisher. Born in Omaha, NE, elder son of Senator Phineas W. Hitchcock and Annie Monell Hitchcock, Gilbert Hitchcock graduated from the University of Michigan law department in 1881, and began law practice in Omaha. In 1885 he founded the Omaha Evening World, combining it with the Nebraska Morning Herald in 1889. He married Jessie Crounse in 1883; they had two daughters. Hitchcock was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1902 and 1906; he was elected to the Senate in 1910, serving until 1923. It is unclear how Cather knew the Hitchcocks, but she met with them in Paris in 1923.
1567Hitchcock, Jessie Crounse (1861-1927). American political wife. Born in Fort Plain, NY, daughter of Lorenzo Crounse and Mary Griffiths Crounse, Jessie Crounse grew up in Fort Calhoun, NE; her father served on the Nebraska Supreme Court, in Congress, and as the eighth governor of Nebraska. She married Gilbert M. Hitchcock of Omaha in 1883; they had two daughters. Hitchcock served in Congress and the Senate in the early twentieth century. It is unclear how Cather knew the Hitchcocks, but she met with them in Paris in 1923.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Portrait of Willa Cather by Léon Bakst (1923).
