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 |
I am so glad to have a letter from you! Of course, marriage is always a gamble, except with children of eighteen, perhaps, who learn everything together—and therefore never learn much but how to get on with each other. But the worst thing is to be bored to death by a smiling, pale personality—and you have escaped that fate by a wide margin, I gather! What with a new husband3 and a new house, you ought to find life pretty interesting. The pictures of the house reached me at Grand Manan, Canada4, and I got a great thrill out of them. I was able to pick out many of the changes you have made. Most of all I loved the picture of that heavenly room with so little in it, so that one felt the room itself and not an assemblage of things. It surely requires a much finer sense of form to make a room without things than with them—also, I imagine, more money. It's the proper spaces that are expensive, in any art. I love Green Fountains for a name. It's so very different from other "place names".
I'm awfully glad you like Mrs.
Harris5. Of course that's much the
best of the three6. The right things came
together in the right relation, I thought. Of You know the types, but I wonder what it can mean to people
who don't know the charming and untruthful South.—
I'm going back to New York7 next
week, and will be at the Grosvenor8 while I look for an apartment. I almost hope I won't
find an apartment! Zoë, I've just happened to read "Colomba"9 over, very slowly. What beautiful and splendidly
poised thing it is: the most terrific happenings slide easily and
noiselessly into the narrative, as
they
always
do
in
life, when the stage is never set for the
moment that uplifts us or destroys us. The un-expectedness of life is what
makes it interesting; and
that the events are logical, but we never
see the cause and effect until after the events have happened. That quality
of unexpected developments which are at the same time logical, has almost
disappeared from modern writing. I wish I could get rid of "atmosphere" and
be another kind of writer for awhile. I'm tired of being my kind!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1122.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1122
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Zoë Akins 1
- Date letter was written
- September 16 [1932]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's references to Akins' recent marriage and to the publication of "Old Mrs. Harris" in Obscure Destinies (1932).
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Zoë Akins papers, 1878-1959 (mssZA 1-7330), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
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.
Person Annotations
Akins, Zoë (1886-1958). American poet, playwright, and screenwriter.
Akins’ friendship with Cather started in 1909, when she submitted
verse to McClure’s magazine, which Cather rejected,
advising her to stay with playwriting. Akins subsequently moved from her
hometown of St. Louis, MO, to New York City and achieved success as a
playwright. She moved to California in the 1930s, adding screenwriting to
her accomplishments. Her play The Old Maid (1935), an
adaptation of an Edith Wharton novel, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. In
1932, Akins married Captain Hugh Rumbold, a British theatrical designer and
director; he died eight months later. Cather and Akins carried on a lifelong
correspondence, with Cather writing affectionate letters that included both
commentary on her own works and criticism of Akins’.
Rumbold, Hugo Cecil Levinge (1884-1932) (“Captain Rumbold”). British soldier and theatrical designer. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, son of a British diplomat, Hugo Rumbold was educated at Eton College, then entered the British Army in 1901, serving in South Africa in the second Boer war. He began his career in costume and set design before re-entering service during World War I, during which he was wounded and promoted to captain. Resuming his career, Rumbold worked with many distinguished managers and actors, and was part of a social set including Noel Coward and the Sitwell family; he was known as a wit, a dandy, and an occasional cross-dresser. In the late 1920s he became interested in film and went to California, where he met Zoë Akins, who was a Hollywood screenwriter; they collaborated on a play. In March 1932 Rumbold and Akins were married; he died eight months later.
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
"Old Mrs. Harris," Obscure Destinies (1932), by Willa Cather
Obscure Destinies (1932), by Willa Cather
Colomba (1841), by Prosper Mérimée
