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 |
35 Fifth Avenue
New York May 9, 1928. My dear Mrs. Austin1:
I wish the suggestion4 made by Mr. Greenslet5 and Dr. Leech6 had come a year ago, when I had a good deal more time and energy than I have now. Just because I never write biographical or critical studies, editors bother me to death trying to make me do them. They simply want them because I resist their persuasions. Greenslet7 has just been trying to crowd on me a biography of Amy Lowell8 - I would be as likely to undertake a history of the Chinese Empire! I wouldn't do it for the whole amount of the Lowell Estate,- simply because that sort of writing is an agony to me. I need very little money, and my life and liberty are very precious to me.
One of the pleasures of having an absolute rule is that once or twice in a
lifetime one may break it, and if things were at all well with me, I would
be tempted to break it on your account,; but this has been a very bad
winter for me, and I'm not going to do any writing at all for at least six
months. My father9 died in March, and
I have just come back to New York2
after several weeks at the Mayo
Clinic10. This is the first time in my life that I have ever felt
absolutely tired, through and through, and I am simply going to rest for a
while. I don't know where yet, but I
may go on to my mother11, who is in
California12 with my brother13. For this year, my family
concerns, father's death and mother's consequent breakdown have simply wiped
out everything else. I know you will understand that I speak to you with a
frank and open heart. Sometimes the difficulties of life are just too much
for one, and then it is best to keep away from the desk.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0934.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0934
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mary Hunter Austin 1
- Date letter was written
- May 9, 1928
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Mary Hunter Austin papers, 1845-1950 (mssAU 1-5456), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
Individual Annotations
Grosvenor Hotel (New York City): When Cather and Edith Lewis lost their 5 Bank Street apartment in 1927, they moved into the Grosvenor Hotel, where they continued to live until 1932. The hotel was located at 35 Fifth Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
No evidence of a 1928 "suggestion" by Greenslet and Leach has been located. However, considering the context of this letter, it seems likely that as Austin's publisher, Houghton Mifflin was lobbying for Cather to write a biographical piece about Austin for the Forum, which Leach edited.
See #0932 for Cather's refusal of Greenslet's suggestion that she write a biography of Lowell.
Cather went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, in April 1928 to treat arthritis in her right shoulder (see #3073).
Person Annotations
Austin, Mary Hunter (1868-1934). American author and critic.
Born in Carlinville, IL, Mary Hunter received a BS from Blackburn
College in 1888, the same year she moved with her mother and siblings to
California’s San Joaquin Valley. In 1891 she married Stafford Wallace
Austin. In 1903, they separated (they divorced in 1915) and her collection
of California desert stories, The Land of Little
Rain, appeared. Between 1903 and 1924, Austin spent periods of time in
the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City; London, England; and
Carmel, CA; however, most of her literary output continued to focus on the
deserts of California and the Southwest. Cather may have met Austin as early
as 1910, and Austin’s poetry appeared in McClure’s
Magazine in 1911 and 1912. In February 1919 Austin wrote Ferris
Greenslet of Houghton Mifflin, their mutual publisher, praising My Ántonia (1918) and asking for additional
information and materials to write an appreciation of Cather for El Palacio, a magazine published in Santa Fe, NM; her
essay appeared in 1920. When Cather and Edith Lewis travelled to the
Southwest in 1925, they saw Austin in New Mexico, where she had built Casa
Querida in Santa Fe in 1924. When Cather returned in 1926 to continue
research and writing of Death Comes for the
Archbishop (1927), Austin offered her the use of her empty house to
work in. Cather inscribed a copy of Archbishop “For
Mary Austin, in whose lovely study I wrote the last chapters of this book,”
but she began denying that she had written any part of the novel in Casa
Querida after Austin published Earth Horizon (1932),
in which she called Cather’s celebration of French missionary priests a
“calamity” for Southwestern culture. Austin died at home two years later.
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
Leach, Henry Goddard (1880-1970). American author, educator, and editor. Leach (Princeton University BA 1903, Harvard University PhD 1908) was a leading authority on Scandinavian literature. He served as editor of The Forum from 1923 to 1940 and president of the American-Scandinavian Foundation from 1926 to 1947. The Forum serialized Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and published “Double Birthday” (1929) in two parts. When Granville Hicks used a review of Shadows on the Rock (1931) in the Forum to launch what Cather perceived as an attack on her personally, she was aggrieved but accepted Leach’s apparent apology. It is not clear when Cather and Leach first met, and their extant correspondence relates exclusively to his work as editor of the Forum. However, in the 1940s she called him an “old friend” and apparently saw him socially in New York City (#2191).
Lowell, Amy (1874-1925). American poet, critic, and lecturer.
Born into a wealthy and aristocratic family in Brookline, MA, Amy
Lowell was educated at home and in boarding schools. After her debut in
1891, she continued a rigorous course of self study in her father’s enormous
library and became an avid book and manuscript collector, especially of
materials by or relating to British Romantic poet John Keats. Lowell began
writing poetry in 1902; her first book of poetry, A Dome
of Many-Coloured Glass, appeared in 1912, the same year she met
actress Ada Dwyer Russell, who left the stage to share with her the grand
Lowell family estate, Sevenels. On a visit to Annie Fields in Boston, MA,
around 1912 or 1913, Willa Cather accompanied Professor George Woodberry of
Columbia University to Sevenels to view Lowell’s Keatsiana; the details of
the visit are in dispute, but it did not go well. In 1914 Lowell traveled to
England to meet Ezra Pound and to learn about free verse and imagism, the
poetic movement he founded, but they soon came into conflict when she
assumed a leading role. Lowell was a prolific poet and popularizer of modern
verse, traveling widely to lecture and read her poetry. What’s O’Clock (1925), edited by Russell, was published after her
death from a cerebral hemorrhage and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Improbably, in 1928 Ferris Greenslet of Houghton Mifflin asked Cather to
write a short biography of Lowell; she declined.
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).
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in 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.
Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Place Annotations
