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 |
The only ugly things we3 saw in Taos4, the Meyers family5, followed us straight to Santa Fé2 and the Fonda6—faced us at dinner the first night! I was pleased to see Mr. Dasburg7 at breakfast this morning. I strove to get his attention for one half-hour, and then had to go up to him and hit him to get so much as a "Good-morning" out of him.
I'm sending you some bum cigarettes because the tobacconist was just opening fresh case and I thought they might La Fonda be fresh. NO Sainsburys in tins here, but I'll send you some from Denver8. My lovely bracelet is with Mr. Yantz9, and he took the turquoise out in my presence. I love it, and I think your giving it to me was a good omen for the book, for I find quite an astonishing collection of letters here awaiting me. Letters from old hard-boiled publishers and solemn professors, telling me that Tom Outland10, in Collier's11, gave them a pulse. It seems to have struck "other publishers" La Fonda hard. I'm still hard on the trail12 of my old priests13. I found a lot of interesting things this morning which I'll tell you some day.
On Wednesday we go to Laguna14—though of course we'd like to start right back to Taos! Please give my warm regards to Miss Foote15 and Tony16. I'm afraid I'll always be one of your "hangers-on" hereafter!
Admiringly yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0790.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0790
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto only of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mabel Dodge Luhan 1
- Date letter was written
- [July 20, 1925]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
According the Edith Lewis's travel journal, she and Cather were at Mabel Luhan's compound from Wednesday July 1, 1925, through Saturday July 18, 1925. July 20 was the Monday after they left.
- Place letter was written
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Mabel Dodge Luhan Papers (YCAL MSS 196), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Individual Annotations
Hotel La Fonda (Santa Fe, NM): Luxury hotel in Santa Fe, NM, which was built in 1922. The hotel was owned by the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railway and managed by Fred Harvey when Cather and Edith Lewis stayed there in the summers of 1925 and 1926.
According to notes that Willa Cather and Edith Lewis recorded in a notebook purchased by Lewis in Santa Fe in July 1925, they were conducting research on Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, and Antonio José Martínez, all priests in mid-19th-century New Mexico.
Person Annotations
Luhan, Mabel Dodge (1879-1962). American patron of the arts and
memoirist. Born Mabel Ganson into a wealthy Buffalo, NY, family,
Mabel Evans traveled to Paris, France, in 1904 after the death of her first
husband. She met and married Edwin Dodge there and moved with him to a villa
in Florence, Italy, where they collected art and Mabel conducted a salon.
She moved to New York City in 1912 and separated from her husband soon after
(they divorced in 1916). In her Fifth Avenue apartment near Washington
Square, she reestablished her salon and supported modern art and radical
political causes. Cather may have known Mabel Dodge slightly during her New
York year but came to know her better in New Mexico, where she moved in 1917
with her third husband, Maurice Sterne, from whom she divorced in 1922.
Mabel married Antonio Lujan, a Taos Pueblo Indian, in 1923. Thereafter she
called herself Mabel Dodge Luhan. When Cather and Edith Lewis traveled to
New Mexico in June 1925, Luhan invited Cather to visit her in Taos, seeking
advice on her manuscript memoirs of her life. Lewis and Cather’s long stay
in Taos inspired Death Comes for the Archbishop
(1927). Cather briefly returned to Luhan's Taos compound in 1926, when Luhan
was absent, and although Luhan invited Cather and Lewis back, they did not
return to New Mexico. In 1928, Cather encouraged Alfred Knopf to consider
publishing the early volumes of Luhan’s memoirs, praising them as “intensely
interesting and alive” (#2589). However, Harcourt Brace published all four
volumes of Luhan’s memoirs, Background (1933), European Experiences (1935), Movers
and Shakers (1936), and Edge of Taos Desert
(1937). Cather also read the later portions in manuscript. Cather praised
Luhan’s memoir of D.H. Lawrence during his New Mexico years, Lorenzo in Taos (Knopf 1932), as “the best portrait
there ever will be of Lawrence” (#1036). Luhan lived in Taos until her
death.
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.
Myers, Alice Clark (1882-1971). American architect and artist. Born in Fort Lewis, CO, Alice Clark received a BS in architecture from the University of Illinois in 1905 and a diploma in drawing, painting, and sculpture from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1910. While at the Art Institute, she met artist Datus Ensign Myers, whom she married on May 26, 1910. The Myers, including their children Richard and Evaline, spent the summers of 1923 and 1924 in and around Taos, NM. In 1925, the Myers moved to the Camino in Santa Fe, NM. Alice remodeled their first adobe home on the Camino and later designed a new house nearby. In 1932, the Myers divorced but both remained in Santa Fe many years where Alice established herself as a ceramicist.
2117Myers, Datus Ensign (1879-1960). American artist. Born in Jefferson, OR, Datus Ensign Myers studied under John Vanderpoel at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1910. While at the Art Institute, he met architect and artist Alice Clark, whom he married on May 26, 1910. The Myers, including their children Richard and Evaline, spent the summers of 1923 and 1924 in and around Taos, NM. In 1925, the Myers moved to the Camino in Santa Fe, NM. In 1932, the Myers divorced, but both remained in Santa Fe many years where Datus established himself as a landscape and portrait painter. He later taught at the Arsuna School of Fine Arts, which was located in Casa Querida, the former house of Mary Hunter Austin where Cather wrote parts of Death Comes for the Archbishop in 1926.
Dasburg, Andrew (1887-1979). American artist. Born in Paris, France, Andrew Dasburg immigrated to New York, NY, with his mother in 1892. In 1902, he began his formal studies at the Art Students League, and in 1909 he visited Paris and was influenced by avant-garde modernists such as Paul Cézanne. Afterward, he exhibited three oil paintings and a Cubist bust at the Armory Show in 1913. In 1918, he visited Taos, NM, on the encouragement of art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan who had moved to Taos in 1917. He eventually settled in Taos where he continued to produce modernist paintings. Dodge Luhan likely introduced Cather to Dasburg during Cather’s visit to New Mexico in 1925.
Yontz, Harry C. (1866-1936). American jewelry store owner. Born in Columbus, OH, son of Henry C. Yontz and Sidney Monk, Harry Yontz began his career as a jeweler in 1891. He came to Cerillos, NM, by 1894, then moved to Santa Fe, NM, in 1901, opening a jewelry store there on the west side of the Plaza, specializing in Mexican-style filigree work. He married Mae Sullivan; they had no children, so he brought his nephew, Harry Bryson Yontz, a watchmaker, into the business by 1920. In 1925, Harry Yontz did some work on a turquoise bracelet for Cather.
Foote, Mary Hubbard (1872-1968). American painter. Born in Guilford, CT, to Charles Spencer Foote and Hannah Hubbard Foote, Mary Hubbard Foote was orphaned at age 13 and taken in by an aunt in Hartford, CT; through a cousin who was governess to Mark Twain’s children, Foote herself lived for a time in the Twain household. She began studying at the Yale School of Art in 1890, and a prize awarded in 1897 allowed her to study in Europe for two years. In 1901, she set on a studio on Washington Square in Greenwich Village and earned her living as a portrait painter; during this time she painted a portrait of Mabel Dodge, whom she had met in Europe. Cather and Edith Lewis met Foote in Taos in 1925, where she was also a guest of the woman by then known as Mabel Dodge Luhan. In 1927, she traveled to Switzerland to seek analysis by Carl Gustav Jung, and she put her painting career aside to be his patient, student, and amanuensis for thirty years. She returned to Connecticut in 1958 and died there.
Lujan, Antonio (1879-1963) (“Tony Luhan”). Mabel Dodge Luhan’s husband. Mabel Dodge Sterne met Lujan, a Taos Pueblo Indian, in 1918 when he began supervising a crew from his pueblo that renovated and expanded a small adobe house she had bought in Taos, NM. They carried on an affair for several years before divorcing their respective spouses and marrying each other in 1923. Mabel took her fourth husband’s surname but spelled it “Luhan.” Willa Cather and Edith Lewis met Tony Lujan on their 1925 trip to Taos. He drove them to surrounding sites while Mabel stayed at the house, a pattern repeated on their 1926 return visit. Lujan inspired the character Eusabio in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
Collier's Magazine
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
