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 |
It will give me great pleasure to receive the medal5 from the International Mark Twain
Society, and I appreciate the honor which the Society confers in this award.
I have always been proud of a story which Albert
Bigelow Paine6 tells in his life
Life of Mark Twain7. It seems that
your father8 once found an
early poem9 of mine re-printed10 in a newspaper11, and he
showed it to Mr. Paine and commended it with some enthusiasm. I think Mr.
Paine quoted several stanzas of the poem in his book—the third volume,
if I remember rightly. I was a very young writer at that time, and a word
from Mark Twain12, spoken to a third
person, meant a great deal to me.
Excuse my tardy reply to your letter; I have just returned from northern Canada13.
From Willa Cather 570 Park Avenue New York City2 Mr. Cyril Clemens1 Webster Groves3 Missouri NEW YORK N. Y. ST.V 19332 DEC 28 1933 430PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1208.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1208
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Cyril Clemens1
- Date letter was written
- December 28 [1933]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
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.
The Mark Twain medal was awarded to Willa Cather in 1934.
Cather incorrectly assumes that Cyril Clemens was a son of Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens).
"The Palatine" was reprinted in the New York Times Saturday Review on 22 May 1909.
Person Annotations
Clemens, Cyril (1902-1999). American biographer. A distant cousin of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), Cyril Clemens was born in St. Louis, MO, to James R. and Kathryn T. Clemens, and received his BA and MA from Washington University (St. Louis). He founded the International Mark Twain Society in 1930 and edited its journal, the Mark Twain Quarterly, from 1936-1982. He wrote biographies and biographical sketches of his famous cousin and other literary figures, including G.K. Chesterton and A.E. Housman. The Mark Twain Society awarded a medal to Cather in 1934; Clemens asked Cather for contributions to the journal and pressed her for information about her 1902 visit to Housman.
Paine, Albert Bigelow (1862-1937). American author and editor.
Born in New Bedford, MA, to Samuel Estabrook Paine and Mercy Coval
Kirby Paine, Albert Paine sold photographic supplies in Fort Scott, KS,
until he sold his business in 1895 to pursue a writing career in New York
City. Paine edited St. Nicholas, established and
directed the Combined Press, edited the children’s page of the New York Herald, and wrote travel and children’s
books. Paine’s friend Samuel Clemens authorized him to write the
three-volume Mark Twain: A Biography (1912), in which
Paine describes Clemens’s favorable reaction to Willa Cather’s poem “The
Palatine.” As Twain’s literary executor, Paine published Mark Twain’s Letters (1917).
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (1835-1910) (“Mark Twain”). American author and lecturer. Born in Florida, MO, to John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens, Samuel Clemens first worked as a typesetter and editorial assistant for the Hannibal Western Union. While working as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in 1863 he started to use the pseudonym “Mark Twain,” drawn from his work as a riverboat pilot. In 1869 his first novel, Innocents Abroad, was published; Clemens went on to write twenty-eight books and many short stories. Willa Cather read Clemens’s work and appreciated The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), but disparaged Joan of Arc (1896) as “thoroughly stupid” (Courier, 5 October 1895). Cather also knew Clemens during her first year in New York, and in 1905 she attended his 70th birthday celebration held at Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City (#1298).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Mark Twain: A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens: A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1912) by Albert Bigelow Paine
"The Palatine/(In the 'Dark Ages')," McClure's Magazine (June 1909) by Willa Cather
New York Times
