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’ve just come in from a long horseback trip in the Sangre de Christo mountains, and find your letter in a three weeks accumulation of mail. A nice letter to find, too, and it reminds me that my profession is sometimes a rather nice one, though for the last six weeks I’ve forgotten about it altogether.
I do awfully like the things you say about my books—and La Fondaabout the country and people they are about. That is why I do it, of course, because neither years nor miles can ever lessen the pull or the excitement this country has for me. The effect it has on me hasn’t anything to do with choice or selection—it “gets” me, just as the altitude gets some people. It’s physical.
No, I don’t know the Café des Deux Magots4, but I’ll make a point of going there when I’m in Paris5 next spring, and I’ll drink your health and your La Fondalady’s6. I know the region about St. Germain-des-Pres pretty well, however.
Please excuse this lurid paper—my trunks are waiting for me somewhere further west and I’m forced to advertise the hotel when I write. Your awfully hearty letter makes me wonder, abruptly, whether my stories really are any good or not. I seldom think about that at all (it’s depressing and futile) I just go ahead and play out the play each time. That is good La Fondafun while it lasts. Not quite so much fun as a pack trip through a mixed desert-and-mountain country, perhaps, but awfully absorbing and engrossing while one’s in the story.
Thank you ever and ever so much.
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0791.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0791
- Contents
- Document is four leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Wilton Graff1
- Date letter was written
- July 19 [1925]
- Place letter was written
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
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.
In the 1920s the Cafe des Deux Magots in Paris became a gathering place for avant-garde artists, writers, and intellectuals.
Cather may not have known that Wilton Graff was not married until 1938.
Person Annotations
Graff, Wilton Calvert Ratcliffe (1903-1969). American journalist and actor. Born in St. Louis, MO, Wilton Graff graduated from high school in 1921. After working for newspapers in New England, he joined the Paris (France) Herald. He made his Broadway debut as an actor in 1933, and his film debut in 1940; he later worked in television. Graff married Mary Goodwin in 1938, and they had one daughter. Willa Cather briefly corresponded with Graff in the summer of 1925, when The Professor’s House was being serialized in Collier’s Weekly.
Place Annotations
