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 |
Professor St. Peter3 has just gone and bought me a grand mink coat! Isn't he extravagant? I want you please to telegraph Mr. Weisz4's office here to send a man up to the house5 to insure it for me, on Friday or Saturday of this week at noon (12 oclock) if possible. I'm afraid I'll lose it just because it's the first "valuable" I've ever had.
I'm working like a beaver[?], Dear, and I love my Bishop6!
Yours always Willa Mrs. C. W. Weisz1 818 Lafayette Parkway Chicago7 Ill. NEW YORK, N.Y.2 JAN 11 1926 930 PM "THE PROFESSOR"THE BISHOP
MINK COAT
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0819.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0819
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irene Miner Weisz 1
- Date letter was written
- [January 11, 1926]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Irene Miner Weisz Papers, 1912-1958 (Midwest MS Cather-Weisz), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
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
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.
Weisz, Charles W. (1874-after 1940). Insurance executive in Chicago; Irene Miner Weisz’s husband. Charles W. Weisz was born in Illinois, the son of German-born parents. After graduating from the Springfield, IL, high school, he went to work in Chicago, IL. He met Irene Miner when they lived at the same rooming house when she came to Chicago to study. They were married in 1915 and lived in Chicago, where he rose to become president of an insurance company by 1930. Willa Cather frequently stopped to see them as she traveled to and from the West.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Professor's House (1925) by Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
