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 delighted to find your name in a bushel of mail just arrived to meet me here. I do want to see you. If you are going to be in Bronxville3 this winter it will be easy, for I shall be in New York4 for at least part of the winter. I have at last got my things out of storage and have crept into a very quiet little apartment at 570 Park avenue5 and nobody knows where I am. For the last four years I have been in Pasadena6 with my mother7 who was ill there, and I made only short business trips to New York. After her death I spent a winter among my old friends in Nebraska8. I have always known where you were in the world, and have many kind words to thank you for. We have always managed to hang together, though there are a good many people who would like to see us claw each other. Moreover, we bear a common reproach: the gentlemen who know how books should be written are always cursing you because you do not write like a woman, and me because I do not write like a man. I think we have a ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ great deal to talk over.
I shall be here only a few days before I got up into the Gaspeé9 country, but I expect to be in New York
in November, and then if you will bring Mrs.
Lewis10 to see me, we will try to find out what is happening to this
country11.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1192.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1192
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Sinclair Lewis 1
- Date letter was written
- September 2 [1933]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's reference to her and Edith Lewis recently moving into 570 Park Avenue, which happened in December 1932.
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Sinclair Lewis Papers (YCAL MSS 268), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Individual Annotations
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
Person Annotations
Lewis, Sinclair (1885-1951). American novelist. Born
in Sauke Centre, MN, Sinclair Lewis graduated from Yale University in 1908.
Although he published short stories and several novels in the teens, he
achieved critical and popular success with Main
Street (1920), which satirized Midwestern provincialism. On a 1921
lecture tour, he regularly praised Cather’s work. He continued with a string
of popular and critical successes, including Babbitt
(1922), Arrowsmith (1925) (for which he declined the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction), Mantrap (1926), and Elmer Gantry (1927). Even though he depicted One of Ours (1922) as a failure in his New York Evening Post review, Cather invited him to
tea and said she was not “a particle sore at him” (#0624). Although they
infrequently saw each other in person, they remained on good terms, and when
Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature,
he praised Cather in his acceptance speech. Lewis was married and divorced
twice, first to Grace Livingston Hegger and then to Dorothy Thompson. Later,
he lived with Rosemary Marcella Powers, whom Cather met. Lewis’s later
career was marred by his alcoholism, which led to his death in Rome,
Italy.
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.
Thompson, Dorothy (1893-1961). American journalist. Born in Lancaster, NY, daughter of the Rev. Peter Thompson and Margaret Grierson Thompson, Dorothy Thompson graduated from Syracuse University in 1914. She worked for women’s suffrage before moving to Europe as a journalist in 1920, becoming head of the Berlin Bureau for the New York Evening Post in 1927; she covered the rise of Nazism until she was expelled in 1934. Thompson then became a popular syndicated newspaper columnist and radio broadcaster. In 1928 she married Sinclair Lewis, her second husband; they had a son, Michael Lewis, in 1930. The couple divorced in 1942.
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.
