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 have just got back from a little motor trip to find your wonderful letter awaiting me. I don't know when anything has pleased me so much as the thought—(the overwhelming proof, indeed!) that you would like me for a neighbor. Oh how I wish I could take the next train for Portage3!
A few weeks after I dined with you in New
York4 last winter, my mother5
had a stroke in California6 where she was
visiting my brother7. Since then I have lived
chiefly on various trans-continental railroads. My mother is completely paralyzed
on
her right side and almost speechless. My sister8 and brother are with her all the time, she has every care and
attention in the world, but when she wants me and begins to fret, I simply have to
go. I last left her in June, to come East and take a degree
from Yale9, since then I have ben
been at my little cottage on Grand Manan island10, off the coast of New Brunswick11, getting rested and even getting a little work done.
But at any time now I may have to start off on the long trail for Pasadena12—certainly before Christmas. I will be
here—it's a lovely place—a few weeks longer, then go to New York to attend to
business matters before I start West. So you see, for all your kindness, a happy
working winter in your father13's home is as
much out of my power as a winter on another planet. But I'll always keep the picture
of it, it looks so spacious and high-minded and really American. (Oh the good
American things are so good!) Perhaps after I get back
to New York I might see some way to drop down in Portage either before or after
California. I'll write you what the outlook is when I get back to town—and you may
be in New York yourself in November.
No, I hadn't heard of your father's death—you were telling me a good deal about him that evening at the Gotham, and he was then very well. Those who get out of the world quickly, as your father and mine14 did, are the favorites of Fate. An illness like my mother's takes the courage out of one.
But, som do you know, I have a feeling that sometime
I'll get to Portage, for a few months, anyway. The thought that you'd like to have
me there, in a home so dear to you, would make me feel a reason for being there, and
I'd try to live up to the house,—which, as I say, looks singularly high-minded.
Someday, when I'm less in disgrace with
Fortune15, I'm going to get there.
I'll write you from New York, and will be, probably, at The Grosvenor16, 35 Fifth Ave., but Knopf is the safest address. Knopf17 hasn't sent me your new book18 yet, confound him,—but he will. I expect I've been jumping about too much.
Dear Lady, at a time when I am low in mind, your letter gives me cheer and hope.
Faithfully yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0982.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0982
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of the first leaf and on recto only of the second leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Zona Gale 1
- Date letter was written
- October 16 [1929]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's reference to her mother's 1928 stroke as having occurred the previous year and her June 1929 honorary degree from Yale.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Zona Gale Papers 1878-1970 Collection (Wis Mss MP), Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Individual Annotations
On 19 June 1929, Yale University awarded Cather an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.
An allusion to Shakespeare's Sonnet 29, which begins, "When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,/ I all alone beweep my outcast state."
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.
Person Annotations
Gale, Zona (1874-1938) American fiction writer and playwright.
Born in Portage, WI, Zona Gale earned a BA (1895) and MA (1899) in
literature from the University of Wisconsin. She worked as an editor and
writer for newspapers in Wisconsin and New York City until resigning to
pursue a literary career. Her first novel, Romance
Island, appeared in 1906, and she became a prolific writer of short
stories and novels, often set in small Midwestern towns. Under pressure from
her mother, she left New York City and returned to Portage in 1909, although
she made extended visits to New York City. Throughout her career, she
support progressive causes, including feminism and pacifism. She adapted her
best-known novel Miss Lulu Bett (1920), featuring the
feminist revolt of its small-town heroine, for the stage; it was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1922. It is not clear when Gale and Cather met.
Gale sent a letter introducing Margery Lattimer in 1925, but the bulk of
their correspondence begins in 1928, when Cather wrote that she was “haunted
by Portage” (#0949), likely after reading Gale’s Portage,
Wisconsin and Other Essays (Knopf 1928). Cather also wrote of her
admiration of Gale’s Borgia (Knopf 1929), and Gale
invited Cather to visit Portage to write. Most of their correspondence
testifies, however, to their failure to see each other when Gale visited New
York City. Gale began an autobiography but died suddenly of pneumonia before
completing it.
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.
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.
Gale, Charles Franklin (1843-1929). Railroad engineer; Zona Gale’s father. Born in Ohio, the seventh son of Franklin Gale and Sallie Ray Gale, Charles Gale was orphaned upon his mother’s death in 1851. He moved to Portage, WI, by 1870, and began working for the railroad. In 1872 he married Eliza J. Beers in Portage; they had one child, writer Zona Gale, in 1874. Charles Gale retired by 1910.
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).
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.
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.
Work Annotations
Borgia (1929) by Zona Gale
