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 |
If you knew how much joy those glorious roses gave me! They came like a climax to a debauch of work and music—red enough, and big enough. On Sunday I sent Edith3 and Mattie4 both away for the day, and I stayed alone with my ever-becoming-more-beautiful roses and drank koumiss and rested my mind and my heart. I don't know anyone who is quite as hard hit by flowers as I am. Even the most every-day young rose gives me pleasure, but superb ones like these delight me like splendid personalities. I say "these" because at least half of them are still red and full, in a big Spanish pitcher on the mantle, and they have already given the place three days of splendour. Edith has loved them too and begs me to tell you so Mattie admired them so much that I gave her one to wear to a colored ball Saturday night!
It was such a satisfaction to me to have you read5 the story6, dear Irene, and to see that you got at once the really fierce feeling that lies behind the rather dry and impersonal manner of the telling. You shall see more of it before a great while.
With a heartful of love to you Willie Mrs. C. W. Wiesz1 818 Lafayette Parkway Chicago7 Ill. NEW YORK, N.Y. STA. C2 FEB 17 1925 730 PM Claudes Roses—&
Professor
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0770.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0770
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irene Miner Wiesz 1
- Date letter was written
- [February 17, 1925]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Irene Miner Wiesz Papers, 1912-1958 (Midwest MS Cather-Weisz), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
Cather evidently took a draft of the novel with her on her trip to Nebraska for the 1925-1926 holidays and allowed Weisz to read it when they met up in Chicago as she was passing through.
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.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
Mattie. American cook. In late 1924, a woman Willa Cather refers to as Mattie and describes as a “mulatto girl” from Baltimore, MD, began cooking for Cather and Edith Lewis at their Five Bank Street apartment (#1961). Mattie continued to work for Cather and Lewis through at least early 1925. No further information is available about this person.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
