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 |
LARGEST AND BEST EQUIPPED HOTEL IN DENVER BROADWAY AND SEVENTEENTH STREETS SHIRLEY-SAVOY4
DENVER2 July 4th Dearest Zoë1;
No, of course I didn't mind Jobyna5's
turning up! I was sorry not to see you again, but I fled the very night I
called and found you out. I've had a very fine six weeks—not exactly
restful, but very stimulating and I'm feeling very fit. The Nebraska6 heat may lay me low, however. I'm
on my way to Red Cloud7 just now, as
mother8 is not very well and asked
me to come home. So EUROPEAN PLAN 400 ROOMS 300 WITH PRIVATE BATHS OUR OWN DEEP
ARTESIAN WELL
LARGEST AND BEST EQUIPPED HOTEL IN DENVER
BROADWAY AND SEVENTEENTH STREETS
SHIRLEY-SAVOY
DENVER I've broken
my time in New Mexico9 right in two.
I hated to do it. But I had one wonderful week with my twins10 down there, of which I'll
tell you later.
I do hope everything is going well with you, and that both plays and the actors are coming out as you wish. I don't see how you bear the production end of it.
Zoë, I do like the West!
Yours always W. S. C. BROADWAY AND SEVENTEENTH STREETS SHIRLEY-SAVOY DENVER Miss Zoë Akins1 Hotel Algonquin New York City3 N.Y. DENVER COLO.2 JUL 5 1926 230 PM Please forwardInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0841.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0841
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto only of each. Includes one handwritten envelope
- Person to whom letter was written
- Zoë Akins 1
- Date letter was written
- July 4 [1926]
- Place letter was written
- Denver, Colorado, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Zoë Akins Papers, 1878-1959 (mssAU 1-5456), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
Individual Annotations
A luxury hotel in Denver, CO built in 1903-04 as two separate hotels, which were consolidated into a single-establishment in 1919.
Person Annotations
Akins, Zoë (1886-1958). American poet, playwright, and screenwriter.
Akins’ friendship with Cather started in 1909, when she submitted
verse to McClure’s magazine, which Cather rejected,
advising her to stay with playwriting. Akins subsequently moved from her
hometown of St. Louis, MO, to New York City and achieved success as a
playwright. She moved to California in the 1930s, adding screenwriting to
her accomplishments. Her play The Old Maid (1935), an
adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In
1932, Akins married Captain Hugh Rumbold, a British theatrical designer and
director; he died eight months later. Cather and Akins carried on a lifelong
correspondence, with Cather writing affectionate letters that included both
commentary on her own works and criticism of Akins’.
Howland, Jobyna (1880-1936). American stage and film actress.
Born in Indianapolis, IN, Jobyna Howland (named for her father, Joby
Howland), grew up in Denver, CO. She first became known as an artists’
model, most notably as one of Charles Dana Gibson’s tall stately “Gibson
girls.” She made her stage debut in 1898, becoming a member of producer
Daniel Frohman’s company. Her marriage in 1903 to Arthur Stringer impeded
her career briefly, as he forced her to retire for a few years; they
divorced in 1912. Howland moved to Hollywood, CA, and had minor roles in
silent films; her deep, distinctive voice brought more success after sound
films became practicable. Cather knew Howland through Zoë Akins, whose play
The Texas Nightingale (1922) starred Howland;
Howland also had a part in O Evening Star (1935).
Akins and Howland lived together in Hollywood in the 1930s.
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.
Ickis, Elizabeth Cather (1915-1978) (half of the “twinnies”).
Cather’s niece. Elizabeth and her twin sister Margaret were born
in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to
Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of
Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on
Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters
to them she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time.
Elizabeth moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937 and married Lynn S.
Ickis, an electrical engineer, in April 1938. They lived in Cleveland, OH,
and had two children, Margaret and John.
Shannon, Margaret Cather (1915-1996) (half of the “twinnies”).
Cather’s niece. Margaret and her twin sister Elizabeth were born
in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to
Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of
Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on
Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters
to them, she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time.
Margaret moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937. After she married
Richard Shannon in September 1938, she moved with him to Boston, MA, where
he earned an MBA from Harvard University in Cambridge. In 1940 they moved to
the New York City area, where their first child, Richard, was born in 1943.
The Shannons moved to Washington, DC, in 1944, where their daughter Kathryne
was born. Cather did not see Margaret again after she left New York, and
Margaret’s other three children, Patricia, Margaret, and Elizabeth, were
born after Cather’s death. Kathryne and Patricia became caretakers for a
large family archive of letters preserved by their mother, which they
donated to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as the Roscoe and Meta Cather
Collection.
Place Annotations
