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 |
You were awfully kind to tell me you like my new book4. It’s getting a rousing lot of knocks. Some of my own friends5 utterly detest it—are furious, as if they’d ordered a highball and I’d brought them chicken broth. Didn’t I call the book “Shadows”, not roast beef? They might give me credit for knowing what I was about. They’re quite sure that I’m going to confine myself to mild apothecarys for the future. Of course, there are people who like it very much, and I’m glad you are one.
I’ve had a glorious summer up here on this cool and quiet island. I expect to leave in September, late in the month, and go direct to my mother6 by way of Boston7 instead of by New York8. Her condition remains about the same. I’ve just had a long letter from Isabelle9. They10 are in Tourraine11, after a visit to Ethel Carver Von Boetzelaer12 in Brussels13. Isabelle is well. I don’t know where Ethel Litchfield14 is—I lose touch with everyone since I am always racing off to Pasadena15. Please remember me warmly to Bianca16.
Affectionately yours Willa Cather From Willa Cather WHALE COVE GRAND MANAN2 NEW BRUNSWICK CANADA Elizabeth Moorhead Vermorcken1 The Beachmere Ogunquit3 Maine U. S. A. New Brunswick2 AUG 24 1931 Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1070.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1070
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Moorhead Vermorcken1
- Date letter was written
- August 24 [1931]
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1342 (9)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Shadows on the Rock was widely reviewed, and those reviews were decidedly mixed. Cather may be thinking, at least in part, of her old acquaintance Carl Van Doren and his critical review in the 2 August 1931 New York Herald Tribune.
Person Annotations
Vermorcken, Elizabeth Moorhead (c.1866-1955). American writer and academic. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Elizabeth Moorhead married Frederick Vermorcken in 1891, although the marriage did not last long, and she soon returned to Pittsburgh. In 1910 she began an eighteen-year teaching career as an Assistant Professor of English at Carnegie Technical Schools in Pittsburgh while also writing short stories and articles that appeared in national magazines. After retiring from teaching in 1928, she wrote three novels. After moving to Florence, Italy, in the 1930s, she began writing The Whirling Spindle (1942), about her family and friends in Pittsburgh, where she returned after Italy’s entry into WWII. Vermorcken likely met Cather in Pittsburgh in 1905, and they remained friends after Cather moved to New York City. Vermorcken wrote the first biographical account of Cather’s Pittsburgh years, These Too Were Here: Louise Homer and Willa Cather (1950).
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, 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.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
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.
Van Boetzelaer, Ethel Carver Litchfield (1899-after 1967). Daughter of Ethel Herr Jones and Lawrence Litchfield. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Ethel Carver Litchfield married Willem Baron Van Boetzelaer in Paris, France, in 1923. Willa Cather, who met the Litchfields in their home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1902, attended the wedding. After marrying, the couple lived in Copenhagen, where Willem Van Boetzelaer was employed in the diplomatic service. Ethel Van Boetzelaer was appointed Queen Wilhelmina’s lady in waiting in 1942.
Litchfield, Ethel Herr Jones (1876-after 1967). Pianist; Cather’s Pittsburgh friend. Born in New Brighton, PA, near Pittsburgh, to the Reverend David and Sarah Jones, Ethel traveled to Vienna, Austria, at age twenty to study with Theodor Leschetizky with the aim of becoming a concert pianist. However, Dr. Lawrence Litchfield followed her there to court her. They married in Vienna in 1898 and returned to Pittsburgh. They had three children, Ethel Carver (1899), Lawrence, Jr. (1900), and Margaret (1903). While her children were young, she largely gave up performing but entertained visiting musicians in their home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, where Cather met them in 1902. Cather, May Willard, Ethel Litchfield, and Isabelle McClung formed, as Cather would later recall, a “little group” that “melted together” (#1540). It has been suggested that Litchfield’s decision to give up her musical career for marriage informed Cather’s story “The Garden Lodge” (1905). As Litchfield’s children grew older, however, she returned to the concert stage. After the 1930 death of her husband, she moved to New York City, where she dined frequently with Cather and Edith Lewis and enjoyed listening with them to recordings of Yehudi and Hepzibah Menuhin.
Bianca. Cather’s Pittsburgh acquaintance. Called an “old friend” by Cather, Bianca was apparently in the social circle of Elizabeth Moorhead Vermorcken in Pittsburgh. No further information is available about this person.
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
Shadows on the Rock (1931) by Willa Cather
