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 |
Will you please send my royalty check to me here, where I shall be working4 for several weeks. I have just returned from France5 by way of Quebec6, and I have not been in New York7 at all. After many forwardings the copy of Chief Justice Holmes'8 letter9 about "Antonia"10 reached me, and I am deeply grateful to you for sending to me, and for bringing the book to his attention. Certainly there are very few of my countrymen whom I would be so pleased to please.
I had a delightful summer in France—I expected to stay on into the winter, but in the autumn I always get homesick for New England11—this particular part of it.
Faithfully yours Willa Cather ACCOMMODATIONS FOR200 GUESTS The Shattuck Inn
and Annex ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H. AMERICAN PLAN OPEN ALL THE YEAR BS. 10/21/30 Note:
Please have a copy of "Laughing Boy"12 sent to M. Jan Hambourg13 24 rue de Verneuil Paris14, VII France.
I think you owe me this copy for having used my name15 in an advertisement!
W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1021.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1021
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- October 20 [1930]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by letters from Houghton Mifflin staff.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Cather was writing Shadows on the Rock (1931), which is set in 17th-century Quebec and Paris.
In a 25 July 1930 letter to Greenslet, which Greenslet had transcribed for Cather, Holmes wrote that My Ántonia "lifts me to all superlatives." He praised Cather's choice of "her own environment" over Paris or London and her "beautiful tenderndess" and "vivifying imagination" that "transforms but does not distort or exaggerate." Her "genius" applied to nature made the novel "true" and made "the reader love his country more."
See #1003.
Person Annotations
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (1841-1935). U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Born in Boston, MA, to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., a physician and
man of letters, and Amelia Lee Jackson Holmes, Holmes, Jr., attended Harvard
College from 1857 to 1861, served in the Union Army from 1861 to 1864, and
studied at Harvard Law School from 1864 to 1866. He combined influential
legal scholarship with the practice of law until his appointment to the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He served from 1882 to 1902, as Chief
Justice starting in 1899. In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt nominated him to the
U.S. Supreme Court, on which he served until 1931, authoring many important
opinions. Willa Cather evidently never met Holmes but admired him greatly.
Her friend Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant wrote “Oliver Wendell Holmes: Justice
Touched with Fire” in Fire Under the Andes (1927),
and Cather was delighted to receive a 1931 letter from him praising My Ántonia (1918) after Ferris Greenslet gave him a
copy. She then asked the offices of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., to send him Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Laughing Boy (1930) by Oliver LaFarge
