Carrie Miner Sherwood (July 25 [1929])

#0975: Willa Cather to Carrie Miner Sherwood, July 25 [1929]

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ WHALE COVE
GRAND MANAN
NEW BRUNSWICK
CANADA²
July 25th My Dear Carrie¹;

Will you please send me your rule for making cottage cheese, and a a box or can of that excellent furniture wax that Kitty Hansen³ uses?

Oh, but this is a bowery, flowery isle⁴ this year! Every bit of it that is not pine woods is one soft, fluffy hayfield, full of daisies and bluebells. Our little house seems so pretty this year, and there is such peace and silence about it. The front yard is just a daisy field that drops 200 feet into the sea. The sea is really a part of our front yard. I so hope and pray for a few weeks to rest and write here. But I've grown superstitious. Probably before your furniture wax can reach me something dreadful will have happened and I will be throwing my clothes in a trunk and hurrying to some other part of the world. The dear friend⁵ who helped Miss Lewis⁶ and me build this little house and who did so much for our comfort here, was killed in an automobile accident in Florida⁷ last winter. Father's⁸ death was like the falling of a prop; every knid of disaster has come since.

Goodbye, dear friend. Willie

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let0975.xml
Letter identifier: 0975
Contents: Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Carrie Miner Sherwood¹
Date letter was written: July 25 [1929]
Place letter was written: Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada²
Location of original letter: WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE

Individual Annotations

Photograph of the coast of Grand Manan, which may have been taken by Cather or Lewis circa 1920s or 1930s. Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Person Annotations

0041

Sherwood, Carrie Miner (1869-1971). 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.

0766

Hansen, Catherine Murphy (1880-1977) ("Kitty"). Red Cloud resident. Born in Ireland, Catherine "Kitty" Murphy immigrated to New York as a teenager, staying with relatives. While visiting a cousin in Red Cloud, NE, she met Henry Gene Hansen, whom she married in 1912. The couple had four children: Clayton, Charles, Russell, and Francis. Henry Hansen died shortly before his daughter was born, and Francis died when she was nine months old. Kitty Hansen stayed on in Red Cloud to raise her three sons, working a variety of jobs, including doing domestic work for the Cather family. She later moved to Lincoln, NE, where she worked as a nurse's aide, and Denver, CO. She died in Gunnison, CO.

1327

Coney, Alice Butler (1872-1929) (“Peter”). American educator. Born in Cincinnati, OH, to Martin and Martha Coney, Alice Coney graduated from the Boston Normal School for Gymnastics in 1897. She returned to Cincinnati to work in a private gymnasium, but in the summers, she traveled to Whale Cove on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick, Canada, where her BNSG classmate, Sarah Jacobus, had bought property. In 1909, Coney (called “Peter” by her friends) bought out a share in the property from another BNSG classmate. As Whale Cove became a small summer resort, she shared quarters at the inn building with Jacobus, and by 1920 she was also living in New York City with Jacobus. When Edith Lewis and Willa Cather bought property at Whale Cove in 1926, Coney helped manage the work of the carpenters who built their cottage. On 17 February 1929, she was killed in a car crash in central Florida. Her sister Grace Coney was injured but survived the crash. Grace had also spent time at Whale Cove and inherited her sister’s share of the property.

0033

Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor, advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska, earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process, reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism. She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.

0010

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

Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until 1940.

Florida, United States