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 |
35 FIFTH AVENUE
New York November 18 My Dear Dorothy1:
The enclosed handsome faces will save many words and explain why I had to leave Jaffrey4 and come back to town2. I suppose I’d have had to come soon, for a lot of rather dreary business matters had come up. I thought every week about going up to see you, but after I got to work in that quiet place I was afraid to do anything else—might spoil the play to move, even. You see I had to stop 2soon enough, anyhow. If there is anything I can well do without, it’s medals5. But the people who want to give them to you are often nice and mean it very kindly.
After I got your letter I wrote the Knopf office for the
book6 you had sent me, and they replied they had seventy books that had
come in during the summer, and did I want them all, please? Yesterday I had the lot
sent down and dragged yours to the surface. Thank you, my dear. It’s been a long
while since I’ve seen a new book by you, and it shall
be the first one I read after I get through with doctors. Nothing but a chronic
appendix that crops up now and then and is never quite bad enough to compel compel me to have it taken out7. Otherwise I’ve been awfully well all
summer, but this has been bothering for three weeks,—so I suppose I’d have had
to leave the country soon, medal or no medal. I was having such a jolly time up
in the country4—not being a hermit,
either. I have some nice old friends up there. But I had every single
4 morning all for
myself. Here—well I’ve been here nine days and it’s been a steady grind of perfectly
drea dreary and deadening things, and all
necessary. I keep wondering why I can’t escape them and side-step them as I used to.
So forgive this complaining, rather whiney scrawl. I didn’t start out to tell you my troubles, but only to tell you
where I am and why.
You’ll hear from me soon again, in a more cheerful tone, I hope.
My love to you, dear Dorothy WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1025.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1025
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- November 18 [1930]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather receiving the William Dean Howells Medal for Death Comes for the Archbishop on November 14, 1930.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Collection (mss-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
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.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Cather the William Dean Howells Medal for Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) on 14 November 1930. The Academy awards the medal every five years in recognition of an oustanding novel published during that period.
Cather did not have her appendix removed until 1942.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Deepening Stream (1930), by Dorothy Canfield
