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 |
MEDICAL DIRECTOR
E. D. KREMERS, M. D.
ASSOCIATE MEDICAL DIRECTOR
J. A. COLLIE, M. D.
RESIDENT PHYSICIAN
ETHEL FANSON, M. D.
PATHOLOGIST LAS ENCINAS
SANITARIUM
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA2 BOARD OF DIRECTORS
GEORGE DOCK, M. D., PRES.
H. G. BRAINERD, M. D.
VICE PRESIDENT
W. JARVIS BARLOW, M. D.
F. C. E. MATTISON, M. D.
STEPHEN SMITH, M. D.
May 14th Dearest Carrie1;
Would you please forward this letter to Lizzie3? The kind girl remembered mother4 on Mother's Day, and I don't know her address.
I have a room here at the Sanitarium5, and will be here until I start East. Mother has a
lovely cottage in this beautiful place, and the best of care, but I think
she fails a little all the time. It's very
STEPHEN SMITH, M. D.
MEDICAL
DIRECTOR
E. D. KREMERS, M. D.
ASSOCIATE MEDICAL DIRECTOR
J. A. COLLIE, M. D.
RESIDENT PHYSICIAN
ETHEL FANSON,
M. D.
PATHOLOGIST
LAS ENCINAS
SANITARIUM
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA2
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
GEORGE DOCK, M.
D., PRES.
H. G. BRAINERD, M. D.
VICE PRESIDENT
W.
JARVIS BARLOW, M. D.
F. C. E. MATTISON, M. D.
STEPHEN SMITH,
M. D.
heartbreaking to watch it. I will stay as long as I can. I have to be
in New York6 by the middle of June
to take a Doctor's degree from Yale7. And that is the last
degree8, dear Carrie, I'm tired out. Yale has given only one a degree to only one woman writer9 before this, Mrs. Wharton10. This degree of course, is not to be mentioned outside the family until
it is announced by the university in June. That's a tangled sentence—it
means "keep this dark for the present, Carrie."
MEDICAL DIRECTOR
E. D. KREMERS, M. D.
ASSOCIATE MEDICAL DIRECTOR
J. A. COLLIE, M. D.
RESIDENT PHYSICIAN
ETHEL FANSON, M. D.
PATHOLOGIST LAS ENCINAS
SANITARIUM
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA2 BOARD OF DIRECTORS
GEORGE DOCK, M. D., PRES.
H. G. BRAINERD, M. D.
VICE PRESIDENT
W. JARVIS BARLOW, M. D.
F. C. E. MATTISON, M. D.
STEPHEN SMITH, M. D.
Elsie11 and I will both write you in a few days about the window12 for father13.
Mrs. Homer Sherwood14 called yesterday—she seemed much nicer and more sensible than I remembered her as being.
Lovingly WillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0969.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0969
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- May 14 [1929]
- Place letter was written
- Pasadena, California, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
Las Encinas Sanitarium (Pasadena, CA): Established in 1904 by Dr. James H. McBride, the Southern California Sanitarium for Nervous Disorders was renamed Las Encinas Hospital for Nervous Disorders in 1917, and finally to Las Encinas Sanitarium in 1928. Willa Cather’s mother, Mary Virginia Boak Cather, spent the last three years of her life here, where Cather visited her in 1929, 1930, and 1931.
On 19 June 1929, Yale University awarded Cather an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.
Cather received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska (1917), the University of Michigan (1924), Columbia University (1928), Creighton University (1928), Yale University (1929), the University of California Berkley (1931), Princeton University (1931), Smith College (1933), and the University of Pennsylvania (1940)
Cather's was the third honorary Doctor of Letters given by Yale University to a woman. The first was to Edith Wharton in 1923 and the second was to American essayist Agnes Repplier in 1925.
Cather was planning to purchase a stained glass window in honor of her father to be installed in Grace Episcopal Church in Red Cloud, NE, but did not end up doing so until 1937.
Person Annotations
Sherwood, Carrie Belle Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader;
Cather's friend. Born in Waukon, IA, to James L. Miner and Julia
Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest of their children. The family
moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the Miner Brothers store became the
largest in town. Cather remembered meeting Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie,
her mother, and siblings were confirmed in the Catholic church. In 1888, she
studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at Notre Dame, IN. She married bank
clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they had two sons. The Sherwoods
travelled often in the West, and visited Europe in 1930. They built a new
house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in 1908; Cather sometimes sent
materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood
led local Red Cross work during the two World Wars, served on the Red Cloud
school board and park commission, and was active in the League of Women
Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace Episcopal Church. Cather
corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout her life and dedicated
My Ántonia to Carrie, model for Frances Harling
in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of Mildred Bennett’s
chief sources for The World of Willa Cather (1951),
and was instrumental in setting up what is now the Willa Cather Foundation
in Red Cloud.
Huffman, Elizabeth M. Wolfe (1901-?) (“Lizzie”). Worker for the Cather family. Elizabeth and Raymond K. Huffman married in 1921. She worked in the households of the Charles F. Cather and Bernard McNeny families before moving to Stratton, in Hitchcock County, NE, by 1930; her family included a son, Richard, born in 1922, and a daughter, Emma Arlene, born in 1924. By 1940 the family was living in Haxton, CO.
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.
Wharton, Edith (1862-1937). American author. Born Edith
Newbold Jones to well-to-do fashionable parents from old New York City
families and educated at home, she married Edward Robbins Wharton in 1885.
Unhappy in her marriage (she divorced her husband in 1913), she pursued
authorship, first writing about interior decoration and travel and then
short stories. The publication of The House of Mirth
(1905), her second novel, marked her emergence as a major novelist and
solidified an important friendship with Henry James. She was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence (1920).
Wharton completed construction of “The Mount” in Lenox, MA, in 1902 but
primarily lived in France. Critics often classed Cather and Wharton together
as the best American women novelists of their time—a comparison that
also appeared in promotional copy for Cather’s novels—but there is no
evidence that they ever met. Cather’s occasional public statements about
Wharton suggest ambivalence, as when in “My First Novels (There Were Two)”
(1932) she classes Wharton with James as novelists she imitated in Alexander’s Bridge (1912).
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
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).
Sherwood, Edna Meeks (1876-after 1940). Red Cloud resident. Born in Nebraska, Edna married Red Cloud, NE, grocer Homer W. Sherwood, brother of Walter A. Sherwood, in 1897; they had one son, Lynn. The family moved to Salt Lake City, UT, in 1903, where Homer owned a furniture store. Widowed, Edna moved to San Marino, CA, by 1930. In late 1931 she married World War I hero Col. Charles A. McCoy. While living in California she visited Jennie Boak Cather in a sanatorium in nearby Pasadena.
Place Annotations
