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 |
Unless there is some very important reason why you must see me before you sail, I would like to stay up here about three weeks longer. This poor book3 has been jumped about so much—all it needs is sitting still. It's going along smoothly now, and I don't want to interrupt it just at this point. The working conditions are good, the country lovely, I am out of doors a great deal and feel awfully well—sprint up the mountain with a crowd of boys and don't get used up. When I go back to New York4 I shall probably have bronchitis at once! Besides I can't get my old quiet room at the Grosvenor5 for several weeks. So I really think I better stay on here for the present. When you come back I hope to be pretty well ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ on my way with this book. It's no world-beater, but I want it to be good of its kind—very quaint and dry, as I told you; mostly Quebec6 weather and Quebec legends. But of course the subject matter is a secret between us.
I hope you will have a splendid trip, and that you'll see the Hambourgs7. They've both been ill, and I'm very much worried about Isabelle, and I'd like to hear from you how she seems.
Of course as soon as I do get to New York I'll report at the office.
With love and good wishes for a good journey
Yours Willa CatherPlease send8 me Zona Gale9's new book10, and a book11 on Greek Domestic Life, or Greek Family Life in the time of the early church, that you published long ago. I remember an excellent sketch of the Empress Theodora12 in it, but have forgotten the title.
W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0983.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0983
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Blanche Wolf Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- October 17 [1929]
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., Records (MS-00062), University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
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.
On 21 October 1929 Knopf reported that she had sent Borgia and The Byzantine Achievement.
Person Annotations
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Hambourg, Jan (1882-1947). Russian-born violinist; Isabelle
McClung’s husband. Hambourg moved with his family to Toronto,
Ontario, in 1910, where he was the head of the violin department at the
Hambourg Conservatory and performed as part of the Hambourg Trio. He married
Isabelle McClung in April 1916. Cather reacted negatively to both Hambourg
and the marriage, but she gradually came to accept him. Beginning in the
1920s, Hambourg left the family conservatory and focused on solo violin
performance in Europe. Cather enjoying long visits with Isabelle and Jan in
Toronto in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. She dedicated The Professor’s House (1925) to him (“For Jan, because he likes
narrative”) and asked him to make musical corrections to Lucy Gayheart (1935). When Isabelle died, Jan sent to Cather the
three hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather
destroyed them.
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.
Empress Theodora (497-548). Byzantine empress. Born to a bear-keeper father and actress mother who were performers for the Hippodrome of Constantinople, Theodora made her living, like her mother, performing as an acrobat and dancer. In 525, Theodora married Justinian, nephew of Emperor Justin and heir to the Byzantine throne. During her time as empress, Theodora passed laws to prohibit the trafficking of young women and altered divorce laws to better support women.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Shadows on the Rock (1931) by Willa Cather
Borgia (1929) by Zona Gale
The Byzantine Achievement: An Historical Perspective, A.D. 330-1453 (1929) by Robert Byron
