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 |
730 FIFTH AVENUE
New York3 WHALE COVE GRAND MANAN2 NEW BRUNSWICK CANADA Dearest Irene1;
Please look for the sketch and Review4 in August "Atlantic Monthly"5—in the Atlantic Bookshelf in the front advertising pages. I want you to keep this clipping6 because it is by one of the "younger generation" the man7 who wrote "What Price Glory"8 and "The Big Parade"9. I can't please all the younger generation, but I do please some10.
I'm having such a peaceful time up here, and I hope your arm has forgot it was ever hurt.
With love Willie WHALE COVE GRAND MANAN2 NEW BRUNSWICK CANADA Mr. C. W. Weisz11 3270 Sheridan Road Chicago12 Illinois U. S. A. NORTHHEAD 13 AU 6 31 AM ClippingInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1065.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1065
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irene Miner Weisz 1
- Date letter was written
- [August 6, 1931]
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Irene Miner Weisz Papers, 1912-1958 (Midwest MS Cather-Weisz), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
While recognizing that as a critic he risked "bad taste" by "showering Miss Cather with superlatives," Stallings nevertheless "brashly" said "that not since Hawthorne has American writing known such frugality and such clarity in simple delineation" as Cather demonstrated in Shadows on the Rock.
Person Annotations
Weisz, Irene Miner (1881-1971). Musician; Cather’s lifelong
friend. Born in Red Cloud, NE, the youngest child of James L.
Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Irene Miner was educated in Red Cloud,
graduating in 1898 and played with the Cather children as part of the play
town of Sandy Point and in amateur theatricals. She studied piano with local
teachers, such as Mrs. P.E.B. Sill, then went to the Chicago College of
Music from 1899 to 1901. She met clerk Charles Weisz, later president of the
A.F. Shaw insurance company, there; they married in late 1915, settling in
Chicago. She visited Red Cloud frequently, but also travelled in the
American West and then to Europe in 1921 and around the world in 1934.
Cather corresponded with Irene Miner Weisz for many years and sometimes
stayed with her in Chicago when travelling to and from the West. My Ántonia is dedicated to Irene, model for Nina
Harling in the novel, and to her sister Carrie Miner Sherwood.
Stallings, Laurence (1894-1968). American writer, critic, and photographer. Born in Macon, GA, Laurence Stallings graduated from Wake Forest College and joined the United States Marines Reserve in 1917. Called to active duty in World War I, he was badly injured at the Battle of Belleau Wood in 1918 and as a result his leg was amputated in 1922. He is best known as the author of the novel Plumes (1924), based on his combat service, and What Price Glory? (1924), a play co-written with Maxwell Anderson. Stallings also worked as a Hollywood screenwriter, notably on John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949). As a reporter and critic, he wrote for the New York World and New York Sun. Willa Cather asked that an excerpt from his laudatory review of Shadows on the Rock (1931) for the New York Sun be excerpted on the novel’s dust jacket (#2635). Stallings died of a heart attack in Pacific Palisades, CA.
Weisz, Charles W. (1874-after 1940). Insurance executive in Chicago; Irene Miner Weisz’s husband. Charles W. Weisz was born in Illinois, the son of German-born parents. After graduating from the Springfield, IL, high school, he went to work in Chicago, IL. He met Irene Miner when they lived at the same rooming house when she came to Chicago to study. They were married in 1915 and lived in Chicago, where he rose to become president of an insurance company by 1930. Willa Cather frequently stopped to see them as she traveled to and from the West.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
"The Atlantic Bookshelf," Atlantic Monthly (August 1931), by Ethel Wallace Hawkins
Atlantic Monthly
"The Hunter's Moon of Miss Cather's Style Rising Above the Walls of Old Quebec," New York Sun (July 31, 1931), by Laurence Stallings
What Price Glory (1924), by Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson
The Big Parade (1925), by Laurence Stallings
