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 am glad to say that I haven't any New York2 address at present. I go to New York several times each year, but I stop at a different hotel every time. Just at present I am on my way to visit my brother3 in Wyoming4. Anything you may wish to send me will eventually reach me if you will address it in care of - Mr. R. C. Cather, 1225 N. Center Street, Casper, Wyoming5. I am sorry to say that I have heard nothing of Francis Hill6 for many years.
I am delighted to hear that you and Mrs. Seibel7 are both well. As for me, I am well - whenever I am not in New York. The air there is so filled up with gasoline that a country bred person cannot get enough oxygen to breathe.
With best wishes always, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0877.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0877
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- George Seibel1
- Date letter was written
- February 22 [1927]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Although Cather typed 1937 on this letter, it seems to have been an error as the letter was most likely written in 1927. By 1937 Willa Cather had been in her Park Avenue apartment for several years and Roscoe Cather had moved to Colusa. Further, in #0891 she speaks in similar terms about not having a permanent address, as she had to move out of her Bank Street apartment later in 1927. While Cather does not go to Wyoming in February 1927, she does visit Roscoe in June 1927, so she may have been misleading George Seibel in this letter, as she has done elsewhere.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Person Annotations
Seibel, George (1873-1958). American literary and drama critic.
Cather met Seibel and his wife Helen while working as editor of the
Home Monthly in Pittsburgh in 1896 and 1897. They
regularly studied French and German together, Cather read her work in
progress to him, and George reviewed April Twilights
(1903) in the Pittsburgh Gazette.
Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother.
Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High
School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high
school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of
schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he
married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an
abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret
and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe
became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA,
where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in
the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank
until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several
times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926
trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San
Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle
family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was
one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a
prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Hill, Charles Francis (1874-1953). American journalist and writer. Born in Philadelphia, PA, eldest son of Will and Fannie Hill, Francis Hill grew up in Pittsburgh, PA. In the early 1890s he spent several years on an uncle’s ranch in Montana, then returned to Pittsburgh to work as a journalist. Hill wrote The Outlaws of Horseshoe Hole (1901), a boys’ book about rustling in Montana, and Once on the Summer Range (1918). He planned another book about life in a Pennsylvania village, which Cather, in a 1902 article, “Pittsburgh Authors Known to Fame,” predicted would become a permanent part of American literature. Hill later aspired to be a playwright, copyrighting a one-act play, Pittsburgh, in 1914. In the 1920s and 1930s he worked for the Philadelphia Record. He died in Cleveland, OH. In the late 1890s he became a friend of Willa Cather, who brought him to visit George and Helen Seibel; he also visited Cather at the McClung house. Cather told Dorothy Canfield that both Hill and Isabelle McClung were deeply involved with her work on The Troll Garden (1905) stories. By 1910, when Cather made her last known reference to Hill, they seldom saw each other.
Seibel, Helen Hiller (1873-1971). Cather’s Pittsburgh friend.
Born in Pennsylvania to German immigrant parents, Helen Hiller
married George Seibel on 6 September 1894. Their one child, Erna, was born
in 1897. Cather met the couple through George Seibel’s work for the Home Monthly, which Cather was editing. Soon the
three were meeting frequently at the Seibel home, studying and translating
French and German literature. Cather read her own poetry and short stories
to them as well. The Seibel house at 114 S. 17th Street on Pittsburgh’s
South Side served as the model for the home of Alfred Engelhardt and his
uncle in “Double Birthday” (1925).
Place Annotations
