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 Friday Dear Mr. Whicher1:
Ten days ago I had to tear myself away away from Jaffrey4 and come down to the city2 to wear a medal5 and make one of this handsome group6! Now that I am caught up in the whirlpool, I’ll never get back to Jaffrey this winter.
What a nice note you wrote me after your short call on me at the Shattuck Inn7! Perhaps you will be in New York a few days before you sail, and we can have another talk--this time about your innovations in departmental English.
Cordially always Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1026.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1026
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- George F. Whicher1
- Date letter was written
- [November 21, 1930]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
November 21, 1930, was the Friday after the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Cather the William Dean Howells Medal on November 14, 1930.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 2419 (13)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
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.
The other recipients of medals were Anna Hyatt Huntington (sculpture), George Arliss (diction on the stage), and Alwyn Bach (diction on the radio).
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).
Person Annotations
Whicher, George Frisbie (1889-1954). Amherst College English
professor. After receiving a PhD from Columbia University in
1913, Whicher taught at Amherst College, his alma mater, from 1915 to 1954.
The most notable of his many books and translations was a critical biography
of Emily Dickinson, This Was a Poet (1938). Whicher
sometimes taught at the Bread Loaf School of English, a summer program of
Middlebury College in Vermont. He and his wife, Harriet Fox Whicher, met
Cather there in 1922 when she came to give four lectures about writing.
Cather enjoyed the company of their two sons, John Fox Whicher and Stephen
Emerson Whicher, and she corresponded with Harriet and George until late in
life.
Place Annotations
