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
CHARLES W. THOMPSON, 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.
W. JARVIS BARLOW, M.D.
F.C.E. MATTISON, M.D.
STEPHEN SMITH, M.D.
F.H. MACPHERSON March 10 My Dear Dorothy1;
Mother3 had a little chuckle over the Mark Twain4 dinner picture5 you sent me. She is a little stronger than last spring but just as helpless,—and her state is just as hopeless. Sometimes I wonder why they build up a little more strength for people to suffer with. My sister6 is off for a few days rest and I am kept pretty busy trying to divert mother a little. We have a charming English nurse7 who has been with her a year now and never fails us. I have a nice little cottage of my own near mother’s cottage, the food here8 is excellent and I am very comfortable in body. The trouble is one can’t think of much but the general futility of existence.
My love to you and your mother9. I envy you a New England10 spring.
Yours always WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1008.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1008
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- March 10 [1930]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather's mother suffered a stroke in December of 1928. Cather writes that her mother's condition has improved since the spring of 1929, indicating that a year has passed, indicating this letter was written in 1930.
- Place letter was written
- Pasadena, California, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher (mss-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
Individual Annotations
On 5 December 1905 Cather attended a party at Delmonico's in New York City organized by George Harvey in honor of Mark Twain's 70th birthday.
Cather is the second on the right, in the back. Also at the table are, from left to right, Charles Major, Arthur Colton, Elinor McCartney Lane, Frederick A. Duneka, Edward S. Martin, and Anne O'Hagan. Lilian Bell Bogue is in front.
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.
Person Annotations
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational
and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became
friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's
father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to
Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio
State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed
her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia
University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the
University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On
Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with
Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman.
Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s
friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield
became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the
story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905).
Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence
was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in
war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of
her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922)
led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of
the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels
(most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various
nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the 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, Jessica Virginia, 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.
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (1835-1910) (“Mark Twain”). American author and lecturer. Born in Florida, MO, to John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens, Samuel Clemens first worked as a typesetter and editorial assistant for the Hannibal Western Union. While working as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in 1863 he started to use the pseudonym “Mark Twain,” drawn from his work as a riverboat pilot. In 1869 his first novel, Innocents Abroad, was published; Clemens went on to write twenty-eight books and many short stories. Willa Cather read Clemens’s work and appreciated The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), but disparaged Joan of Arc (1896) as “thoroughly stupid” (Courier, 5 October 1895). Cather also knew Clemens during her first year in New York, and in 1905 she attended his 70th birthday celebration held at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City (#1298).
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.
Mrs. Bates. Mary Virginia Cather's nurse. There is insufficient evidence for a definitive identification, but this may be Mary H. Bates (1865-after 1938). Born in England, Mary Bates, a nurse, was living in Southern California with her husband Charles Bates by 1920. By 1930 Mary Bates was widowed and attending an older man in his home. By late 1928, Mrs. Bates--possibly Mary H. Bates--was nursing Mary Virginia Cather, Willa Cather’s mother, at Las Encinas Sanitarium in Pasadena, CA. Willa Cather sent messages and presents to her.
Canfield, Flavia Camp (1844-1930). Clubwoman; painter; mother of Dorothy Canfield. Flavia Camp was born in Wisconsin, although her family came from Vermont. She was an early graduate of the University of Wisconsin and taught school and art before marrying James H. Canfield in 1873. Their son James A. Canfield was born in 1874, and their daughter Dorothy in 1879. A painter, Flavia studied in Europe, taking her daughter with her on several occasions. She was an activist and social reformer as well, believing in the power of women to effect change by organizing. She was one of the founders of the University of Nebraska Women’s Club, as well as the Ohio State Women’s Club and many others, and was president of the Ohio Federation of Women’s Clubs. Late in her life she wrote Around the World at Eighty (1926), an account of a world tour she took at that age.
Place Annotations
