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 |
I owe you an apology3 and I hasten to make it. Your very kind and friendly letter makes me feel rather small. I have been taken advantage of so many times that I am afraid I am growing rather shrewish. A few months ago I wrote a letter to a Russian refugee4, who seemed both a gentleman and a scholar, and when I arrived in San Francisco5 I found he had had it6 mimeographed and sent it to all the booksellers on the Pacific coast.
Perhaps I should have recognized in your deep appreciation of the Canadian martyrs
a
writer who was not pursuing gaudy trifles of the gaudy present. I am certainly glad
to have your book7 - glad even to have the extra
copies. I shall see that they go to people who can appreciate them. A strong feeling
for that particular period of Canadian history is, I find, a kind of Free Masonry.
There are a few people scattered over the
country8 who have a very strong feeling for Quebec9 and its people; and I think I have heard
from most of them. I suppose you know the JESUIT
RELATIONS10 well. I never tire of reading them; they seem to bring the
actual lives of the Canadian missionaries more vividly before one than any work of
the imagination could do. If you have not read THE LIFE OF
BISHOP LAVAL11 by Abbeé H. A.
Scott12, I warmly recommend it to you. It is published in a rather
stupid set of books called "The Makers of Canada".
Please accept me as a fellow enthusiast for the Canadian scene, ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ and forgive my abrupt letter.
Very cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1085.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1085
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Thomas Samuel Jones, Jr.1
- Date letter was written
- November 11, 1931
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Rare Book and Manuscript Library General Manuscript Collection, 1789-2013 (MS#0001), Columbia University, Butler Library, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Cather evidently responded rudely to Jones initially, although her first response has not been located.
See #3037, an example of one of these mimeographs
Person Annotations
Jones, Thomas Samuel, Jr. (1882-1932). American poet. Jones graduated from Cornell University in 1904 and was a drama critic for the New York Times from 1904 to 1907. Richard Badger published a novel by him in 1905; thereafter he turned to poetry. The Rose Jar (1906) and The Voice in the Silence (1912) were the most often republished of his poetry volumes. Many of his verses, such as Sonnets of the Cross (1926) and Sonnets of the Saints (1926), were on religious themes. Sonnets of the New World (1930), about which Cather and Jones briefly corresponded, may have contained poems on Canadian themes.
Navall, Deidrich D. (1887-1958). Ukrainian-American professor of
languages. The man who later called himself Deidrich Navall was
born Dietrich Neufeld in Zagradovka, a Mennonite settlement in South Russia
(now Kherson Oblast, Ukraine) and earned his doctorate at the University of
Jena. He and his wife, Lotte M., first emigrated to Canada before entering
the U.S. in 1923. Fluent in at least nine languages, Navall taught at
Bluffton College, Antioch College, the University of New Mexico, and Pomona
College. In 1937 Navall became one of the first faculty members of
Pepperdine College and headed its department of modern languages. Navall
also published at least one book, Russian Dance of
Death (1930), under the pseudonym Dirk Gora.
Scott, Henri-Arthur (1858-1931) (“Abbé H.A. Scott”). Canadian priest and historian. Born in the province of Quebec, Canada, Henri-Arthur Scott studied theology at Laval University in Quebec City, and was ordained in 1882. In 1893 he was assigned to the parish of Notre-Dame-de-Sainte-Foy, whose history he published in 1902. He published other works on Canadian history, including a biography of Bishop Laval (1926), which Cather made use of in writing Shadows on the Rock (1931). He became a member of the Royal Society of Canada in 1917.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Sonnets of the New World (1930) by Thomas Samuel Jones
The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in North America (1610-1791) (1925) by Reuben Gold Thwaites and Edna Kenton
Life of Bishop Laval (1926) by Abbé Henry Arthur Scott
