Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
This foreword3 seems4 to me quite all right.
I've been hanging on5 here because I had no energy to make a change. Next week I'll be leaving for either Jaffrey6 or New York7, and I hope to start West in November. My brother Douglass8, sister Elsie9 and I will all be in Red Cloud10 for Christmas, with a bunch of the grandchildren, I hope.
What you say about Ruth Suckow11 interests me. I didn't like her early things at all, and I've not read anything of hers for five or six. To be frank, my dear, about her early things there was a creepy, cold, determined nastiness that made my gorge rise. I don't mind the coarseness that comes from over-heat, young energy. But I do hate this other kind like the devil. I saw her once at the Knopf office, and I thought she looked like that! A kind of in-growing face? However, I'm often prejudiced. I'll read her new book12 at your suggestion.
Goodbye, my dear. Your letter of three weeks ago was such a comfort. These have been strange weeks of soft fogs without and memories within. I've never felt so purposeless and un-anchored before. The many kind letters from kind and scholarly priests have really been a solace–they bring an air of noble fortitude with them. They would call it faith, but even so it is fortitude all the same. (And sometimes poetry, of a restrained kind.)
Lovingly WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1074.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1074
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto only of first leaf and on recto and verso of second leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- October 2 [1931]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's mother's death in August 1931.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Collection (MSS-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
Individual Annotations
Cather presumably reviewed the text of the foreword, signed by Ralph Allan, to the limited edition of "The Fear That Walks by Noonday," co-authored by Canfield Fisher and herself and published by the Phoenix Book Shop in New York in October 1931.
Cather had intended to leave by the end of September (see #1072).
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.
Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
Suckow, Ruth (1892-1960). American writer. Born in Hawarden, IA, and raised in multiple Iowa communities, Suckow was the daughter of Congregationalist minister William S. Suckow and Anna Kluckhohn Suckow. She attended Grinnell College, the Curry School of Expression in Boston, MA, and the University of Denver, receiving both her BA and MA degrees in Denver. She moved back to Iowa, started a beekeeping business, and, in the 1920s, began publishing fiction. Her first novel, Country People, was published by Knopf in 1924, and a string of novels followed, largely drawing on her experience in small Iowa towns and often featuring independent women. She married Ferner Nuhn in 1929, and died in Claremont, CA. Cather was familiar with Suckow's writing, but it is unclear if the two women ever met.
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 Fear That Walks by Noonday (1931) by Willa Cather and Dorothy Canfield
Children and Older People (1931) by Ruth Suckow
