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 |
The Grosvenor3
35 FIFTH AVENUE
New York2 FG February 15 Dear Mr. Greenslet1;
Please say nothing4 to encourage the rumor that the character of Thea Kronborg was done from Fremstad5. As a matter of fact, not one incident used in the story had any likeness to the incidents of Fremstad's life. My knowing her had some indirect influence on the book6, but mainly in the matter of making me familiar with the routine of an operatic singer.
Please make no statement7 about the matter at all—let the reader draw his own conclusion, as you yourself suggest.
Important: Please have your business office send
me at this address, as soon as possible, a report of the
amount paid me in the year ending Jan December 31st. Ask them to
send me a carbon copy of the statement, as I turn one into over to the Revenue office, and like to keep the copy among my own
papers.
I am just back and am overwhelmed by things, pleasant and unpleasant.
Hastily Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1096.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1096
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- February 15 [1932]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is establised by corresponding letters from Houghton Mifflin staff.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
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.
On 10 February 1932, when Greenslet forwarded Cather a copy of the new issue of The Song of the Lark, he noted that it "seems to be general knowledge" that the central character, Thea Kronborg, was based on Olive Fremstad. He thus queried whether she would "authorize us definitely to say" that Kronborg was based on Fremstad or whether Cather preferred it to be "left to the interpretation of the reader."
On 16 February 1932, Greenslet wrote that he would "warn our publicity department" not to connect The Song of the Lark to Fremstad.
Person Annotations
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
Fremstad, Olive (1871-1951). Swedish-American opera singer.
Born in Sweden, Ann Olivia Rundquist was adopted by a
Scandinavian-American couple, the Fremstads, who raised her first in
Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, and then in Minnesota. She moved to New York
City to study piano in 1890 and then to Germany to study voice with Lilli
Lehmann. After a successful career in Europe as a mezzo-soprano, she made
her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1903, where she specialized in
singing soprano roles in operas by Richard Wagner. Willa Cather first met
Fremstad in 1913 while researching “Three American Singers,” an article for
McClure’s Magazine in which Cather clearly
prefers Fremstad as “the most interesting kind of American” over Geraldine
Farrar and Louise Homer. Through 1916 Cather and Fremstad were in close and
regular contact in person and through letters, although Cather’s letters to
Fremstad have not been located and their friendship evidently cooled.
Fremstad inspired many aspects of the story, personality, and career of Thea
Kronborg, heroine of The Song of the Lark (1915), and
she approved of the novel, although Cather did not want readers to identify
the character too closely with her. Fremstad married and divorced twice.
During the period Cather and Fremstad were in regular contact Fremstad lived
as a couple with Mary Watkins (later Cushing) who, after Fremstad’s death,
published a biography of her, The Rainbow Bridge
(1954).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Song of the Lark (1915), by Willa Cather
