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 |
Your first name I can read, but your last name begins with a swastika and ends with a king[?], so the Postmaster must use his discretion. I got back to New York2 some weeks ago, and working through an enormous accumulation of letters, I finally came upon yours and stopped for a breathing space, partly because of your difficult handwriting and partly because you began your letter with the name of someone I loved. What an inadequate book3 that young man4 did write about Miss Jewett5! He misinterprets so many of the facts that he dug up, and she herself never for a moment graces his pages. It seems to me that even if I had never known her, I could have reconstructed her from her letters to Mrs. Fields6 and her published works. This young man is modern and abrupt. Before he wrote his book he sent me a letter which said simply: “At what date can I call upon you for information regarding Sarah Orne Jewett?” I think I told him January 1, 1990.
Thank you for the incident you tell me about Mary Jewett7 after she was paralyzed. I grew to know her very well after Sarah Jewett’s death, and often visited her in the beautiful old house at South Berwick8. It is a lasting regret to me that I was unable to go to see her during her long illness. My mother9 had a stroke in Pasadena, California10, shortly before Miss Jewett’s illness came upon her, and from that time on I had to be on the West coast. Her nephew, Dr. Eastman11, kept me posted as to her condition. He, you know, was snuffed out only a few months after Mary Jewett’s death, and now that whole family, and all the beautiful things which graced their lives, have vanished as if they had never been. (The one good thing about that young man’s book is that it contains some very charming drawings and photographs of that beautiful New England12 interior.) It is a disgrace to New England that any of Miss Jewett’s books should be out of print. It will be a long while before New England produces such another writer.
My friendliest greetings to your mother and yourself. It is a pleasure to hear from any true lover of Sarah Orne Jewett.
Very cordially yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1241.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1241
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Edward Wagenknecht1
- Date letter was written
- November 22, 1934
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 2492 (12)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Person Annotations
Wagenknecht, Edward (1900-2004). American writer, teacher, and critic. Born and raised in the Chicago, IL, area, Edward Wagenknecht received an MA (1924) and PhD (1932) from the University of Chicago. He spent most of his career as a university professor at Boston University, from which he retired in 1965. Both before and after his retirement, he was a prolific author with a focus on cultural history, literary criticism, and biography. Before corresponding with Cather about her early uncollected short fiction, he had published biographies of Geraldine Farrar (1929) (who was a personal friend), Charles Dickens (1929), Jenny Lind (1931), and Mark Twain (1935). He included a chapter on Cather in his Cavalcade of the American Novel (1952), and his last published book was the critical monograph Willa Cather (1994).
Matthiessen, Francis Otto (1902-1950). American educator, literary
critic, and scholar. Born in Pasadena, CA, Matthiessen received
an A.B. from Yale University (1919), a B. Litt. from Oxford University
(1925), where he was a Rhodes scholar, and an MA and PhD from Harvard
University (1926). During his years as an English instructor at Yale
University from 1927 to 1929 he researched and wrote Sarah
Orne Jewett (1929), published by Houghton Mifflin and featuring
illustrations by his partner, painter Russell Cheney. Matthiessen and Cather
briefly corresponded about his research for this book. From 1929 he rose
quickly through the ranks at Harvard University and became one of the most
influential scholars of American literature of his generation. He is best
known for his book American Renaissance: Art and
Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (1941).
Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909). American short story writer and
novelist. Born in South Berwick, ME, Jewett began sharing homes
in Boston (at 148 Charles Street) and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA, with Annie
Adams Fields in 1881, while continuing to live in her family home in South
Berwick with her mother and sister part of the year. She was associated
throughout her career with the Atlantic Monthly, and
her best-known work, The Country of the Pointed Firs,
was serialized there in 1896. Like much of her fiction, it focused on rural
and small town New England life. By the time Cather met Jewett at 148
Charles Street in 1908, Jewett had largely ceased writing because of a
spinal concussion she suffered in a 1902 carriage accident. She wrote
important letters of advice to Cather in 1908, criticizing her decision to
write "The Gull's Road" (1908) from the perspective of a male character,
which she called "something of a masquerade" (27 Nov. 1908), and urging her
to give up her editorial work at McClure's Magazine
so she could focus full-time on fiction writing (13 Dec. 1908). After
Jewett's death in South Berwick in 1909, Cather often referred to her and
her advice about writing. Cather edited The Best Stories
of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) for publisher Houghton Mifflin, and in
her preface classed The Country of the Pointed Firs
with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as one of "three
American books which have the possibility of a long, long life."
Fields, Annie Adams (1835-1915). Literary hostess, author, and social
reformer. At age 20, Annie Adams married James T. Fields,
partner in the Boston publishing house of Ticknor & Fields. Both before
and after her husband’s death in 1881, Fields often entertained important
American, British, and European authors at her home at 148 Charles Street in
Boston, MA. After James’ death, Sarah Orne Jewett, whose books were
published by Ticknor & Fields, began sharing Annie’s homes at 148
Charles Street and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA. Cather met Fields in Boston in
1908, a meeting Cather described in "The House on Charles Street," an essay
reviewing Memories of a Hostess (a volume of
selections from Fields' journals, 1922). A revised version of this essay,
retitled "148 Charles Street," appeared in Not Under
Forty (1936). After Jewett’s death in 1909, Fields edited The Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), which
included several letters to Cather. Fearing that 148 Charles Street would
become a museum after her death, Fields requested that it be torn down.
Jewett, Mary Rice (1847-1930). Sarah Orne Jewett’s sister. Born in Exeter, NH, to Dr. Theodore Herman Jewett and Caroline Frances Perry Jewett, Mary was the older sister of Sarah Orne Jewett. They both attended Berwick Academy in Berwick, ME, and as adults they continued to live together in the family home in South Berwick, where Mary was active in a local women’s club and charitable work. On Sarah’s death, Mary and Annie Adams Fields became co-executors of Sarah’s literary estate. Cather’s friendship with Mary seems to date primarily from this period after Sarah’s death, and Cather made several visits to Mary at the Jewett family home in Maine. In 1924, with Mary Jewett’s approval, Ferris Greenslet of Houghton Mifflin asked Cather to select and write an introduction to Sarah Jewett’s stories. Shortly thereafter, Burton Rascoe reported critical remarks by Cather about Sarah Jewett’s works and the Jewett family in his “Bookman’s Day Book” column in the New York Tribune. Mary read these remarks as reprinted in the Boston Transcript, was offended, and sought to have Cather removed as editor of her sister’s works. However, Cather and Greenslet persuaded her to reverse this decision (Cather’s letters pleading her case have not been located). Mary Jewett died in South Berwick, and her nephew Theodore Jewett Eastman succeeded to the executorship of Sarah Jewett’s literary estate.
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.
Eastman, Theodore Jewett (1879-1931). American physician, Sarah Orne Jewett’s nephew. Born in South Berwick, ME, to Edwin Calvin Eastman and Caroline Jewett Eastman, who was the sister of Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Rice Jewett, Theodore Eastman graduated from Harvard College (1901) and Harvard Medical School (1907) and practiced medicine in Boston, MA. When Mary Rice Jewett died in 1930, he became executor of Sarah Orne Jewett’s literary estate but died not long afterward. He bequeathed his aunt’s papers to the Widener Library at Harvard.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Sarah Orne Jewett (1929) by Francis O. Matthiessen
