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'm in storage, alas! No longer at Five Bank street3—that's now a Subway station!
⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ Jaffrey, N.H.2Spetember 16 Dear Mr. Van Vechten1;
Your letter gives me a fine glow of satisfaction. I prefer to consider you a test case. I've more than once wondered if this book4 would seem at all true to people who know the world well and the South West5 only a little. So much depends on the circumstances of one's iniation into that country. It can put on a "false face" and be utterly unlike itself—as when the Galsworthys6 went there. But if the story recalls those places to you, with the writer left out of the picture, then I have done what I greatly wanted to do. In this book I tried to be as self-less as the good missionary7, to make the country my existence as it was his. I suppose one could very properly use that country as a decor, a setting, for a story of human emotions. But it most appeals to me as a thing big enough and beautiful enough to drink up all personal entanglements—almost personality itself.
Very gratefully yours Willa Cather Mr. Carl Van Vechten1 150 West 55th Street New York City8 New York JAFFREY N.H.2 SEP 19 1927 [illegible]AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0894.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0894
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carl Van Vechten 1
- Date letter was written
- September 16 [1927]
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Van Vechten Collection, University of Richmond, Boatwright Memorial Library, Richmond, VA
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
Van Vechten, Carl (1880-1964). American novelist, critic,
and photographer. Born in Cedar Rapids, IA, Carl Van Vechten
graduated from the University of Chicago in 1903. After a stint at a Chicago
newspaper he moved to New York City in 1906 and became assistant music
critic for the New York Times. Immersing himself in
the life of Greenwich Village, he met Willa Cather and attended the famous
salon of Mabel Dodge (later Luhan). Van Vechten left full-time newspaper
work in 1914 but continued championing the modern and avant garde in the
arts. He advocated for the works of Gertrude Stein, who made him her
literary executor, and became an important patron of the Harlem Renaissance.
Van Vechten’s first marriage ended in divorce in 1912 and in 1914 he married
actress Fania Marinoff, but throughout his life he also had affairs with
men. In the 1930s, he began pursuing photography professionally,
specializing in portraiture. After three years of evading him, in 1936
Cather finally sat for a portrait by him. During World War II, Van Vechten
was active in the Stage Door Canteen and the American Theater Wing. He
remained an active photographer and presence in New York’s cultural life
until his death.
Galsworthy, John (1867-1933). British writer. Born to a
prosperous family near London, England, Galsworthy attended Harrow and
Oxford University, then trained for the law. His first works were published
under a pseudonym, but after the success of his first play, The Silver Box (1906), he published his novels under
his own name. His best-known work is the trilogy known as The Forsyte Saga (1906-1921). In his time he was better-known for
his plays, which dealt with many social issues. He was awarded the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1932. Willa Cather read some of Galsworthy’s works
and apparently met him on one of his visits to the U.S. with his wife in the
1920s.
Galsworthy, Ada (1864-1956). Wife of John Galsworthy. Born in
Norwich, England, Ada Nemesis Pearson was informally adopted by Emanuel
Cooper, MD. She married Arthur Galsworthy, a cousin of future novelist John
Galsworthy, in 1891. Ada and John Galsworthy began an affair in 1895. Ten
years later she divorced Arthur and married John. Cather apparently met her
on one of the couple’s visits to the U.S. in the 1920s.
Lamy, Jean-Baptiste (1814-1888). French Roman Catholic Archbishop and missionary. Born in Lempdes in Auvergne, France, Jean-Baptiste Lamy attended the seminary of Clermont and then the seminary of Mont Ferrand, where he met fellow student Joseph Machebeuf. Lamy was ordained in 1838 and assigned to a parish in the town of Chapdes, France. In 1839, he and Machebeuf traveled to the U.S., where Lamy served at a parish in Danville, OH, for 8 years. In 1849, he was appointed the head of the newly formed Vicariate of New Mexico and appointed Machebeuf as his Vicar-General. Lamy finally arrived in New Mexico in 1851, where he conflicted with priests who had served under a Mexican bishop. The Vatican elevated Lamy to Archbishop of Sante Fe in 1875; he retired in 1884. During their 1925 trip to New Mexico, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis became interested in the lives of Lamy and Machebeuf, and Cather based Jean Marie Latour in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) on Lamy.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
