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 |
Forty West Forty-Fifth Street
JUST WEST OF FIFTH AVENUE
New York2
JOHN P. TOLSON Thursday Dear Fanny Butcher1;
Five Bank street3 is now a thing of the past. Everything that used to be there is in storage—including myself! You see all last winter the new sub-way was building right under the house, and it will go on for two years more. The noise is maddening, the neighborhood become a sham. I hate being in storage, but I want to be free of responsibility for awhile.
Hotel WebsterForty West Forty-Fifth Street
JUST WEST OF FIFTH AVENUE
New York
JOHN P. TOLSON
I know how busy you are—but will you send me a line telling me if you goat got any pleasure out of the "Archbishop"4? And please send me your review5. (Send both in care of Knopf6, as I have no address of my own at present.)
The morning World7 tells
me that judged as a novel, it's a very poor performance. Just what is a novel, I
wonder? I've always wanted to try something in the style of legend, with a sort of
New Testament8 calm, and I think I succeeded
fairly
Hotel Webster
Forty West Forty-Fifth
Street
JUST WEST OF FIFTH AVENUE
New
York2
JOHN P. TOLSON well. A story with no woman in it
but the Virgin Mary has very definite limitations; it's a very special kind of
thing, and you like it, or you don't. I had a glorious year doing it, and working
in
that new form with no social drama. I found in it a lovely kind of poverty——and
richness; a deep content.
You and Grant Overton9 were the only two
reviewers in America10 who liked "Antonia"11 when it first came out. The "Archbishop"
Hotel Webster
Forty West Forty-Fifth
Street
JUST WEST OF FIFTH AVENUE
New York
JOHN P. TOLSON is
even farther from the conventional novel. It's a narrative, like Robinson Crusoe12, and it's a kind of writing that is
colored by a kind of country, like a folk-song.
Let me hear from you, if you have a spare moment. I was to have sailed on the "Berengaria"13 yesterday, but had to give
up my passage. Was detained in Nebraska14 by
the serious illness of my father15. He suddenly
came down with Angina—the Hotel Webster
Forty West Forty-Fifth Street
JUST WEST OF
FIFTH AVENUE
New York
JOHN P. TOLSON first serious illness he has
ever had. I shall probably go to the White
Mountains16 for a few weeks, then either to France17 or Arizona18.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0892.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0892
- Contents
- Document is five leaves, handwritten on recto only of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Fanny Butcher1
- Date letter was written
- [September 8, 1927]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured date is based on the publication of Butcher's review and Cather's presence at the Hotel Webster in early September. September 8 is the first Thursday following the publication of the review and is consistent with Cather's next letter in their exchange (#0896), dated September 17.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Fanny Butcher Papers, 1830-1984 (Midwest MS Butcher), 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.
Cather sailed aboard the R.M.S. Berengaria multiple times and mentioned the ship in The Professor's House (1925). The novel's final line references the return of Godfrey St. Peter's family aboard the ship: "He thought he knew where he was, and that he could face with fortitude the Berengaria and the future."
Person Annotations
Bokum, Frances Amanda Butcher (1888-1987) (“Fanny”).
American newspaper critic and bookstore owner. Born in Fredonia,
KS, Butcher moved to Chicago, IL, as a child. She received an A.A. from
Lewis Institute in 1908 and a BA from the University of Chicago in 1910. In
1911, Floyd Dell of the Chicago Evening Post assigned
her to review Alexander’s Bridge (1912). Cather wrote
the anonymous reviewer care of the Post, beginning
their correspondence and friendship. From 1913 until her retirement in 1963,
Butcher wrote for the Chicago Tribune, becoming
literary editor in 1922. She ran Fanny Butcher Books in Chicago from 1919
until 1927, when she sold it to Doubleday. Cather frequently saw Butcher
when she changed trains in Chicago and closely followed Butcher’s reviews of
her works, often writing to her about them. She also relied on Butcher’s
knowledge of the book business and particularly book distribution in the
Midwest. Their extant correspondence begins in 1920, although in her memoir
Many Lives—One Love (1972), Butcher
paraphrases earlier letters. Butcher married Richard Drummond Bokum in 1935.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Overton, Grant (1887-1930). American writer and editor. Born in New York, Overton worked for the New York Sun from 1906, serving as literary editor 1918-1919; Cather attributed the anonymous highly favorable review of My Ántonia in the Sun to Overton. He was an editor for the publisher George Doran, and from 1924 to 1927 he edited Collier’s Magazine, which serialized The Professor’s House in 1925. In addition to editing short story anthologies, Overton wrote biographical sketches of contemporary writers, including one of Cather in The Women Who Make Our Novels (1918). His 1928 substantially revised edition of this book reflects his conversations with Cather in 1925 about My Ántonia and The Professor’s House.
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
"Willa Cather's New Novel is Simply, Beautifully Told," Chicago Tribune (September 3, 1927), by Fanny Butcher
New York World
The Bible
My Ántonia (1918), by Willa Cather
Robinson Crusoe (1719), by Daniel Defoe
