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 never get such a thrill out of any flowers as out of the ones you send me. Somehow they always seem like flowers of the Imagination. Roman hyacinths bring back the original3 of "A Lost Lady"4 to me as though she stood before me. I loved her dearly.
Now, can you dine with me next Friday, the 21st, at seven oclock? Please!
Yours always Willa (Special Delivery) Mrs. Hugo Rumbold1 Rtiz-Carlton Hotel Madison & 46th St City2 NEW YORK, N.Y.2 DEC 16 1934 12 PM 327Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1244.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1244
- 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
- [December 15, 1934]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Zoë Akins papers 1878-1959 (mssZA 1-7330), Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
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’.
Garber, Lyra Wheeler (1855-1921). Red Cloud resident. Born in
Georgia, Lyra moved with her family to Illinois in 1856 and to California in
1859, where her father kept hotels in Nevada County; she first met Silas
Garber there in 1866 when he was visiting his elder brother Jacob. Lyra
reportedly attended a convent school in Grass Valley, CA, and a finishing
school in San Francisco. In 1875, when Silas Garber was governor of
Nebraska, he returned to Grass Valley and married Lyra Wheeler. After his
term was up in 1878, the couple moved to Red Cloud, NE. Widowed in 1905,
Lyra stayed there until 1912. In 1914 settled in Grangeville, ID, where a
sister lived, and cut her ties to Nebraska. In 1915, she married Swan
Anderson, a considerably-younger bank cashier. They moved to Oregon in 1918,
where she died. Cather observed Silas and Lyra Garber during their Red Cloud
years and made them the prototypes for Daniel and Marian Forrester in A Lost Lady (1923).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
A Lost Lady (1923) by Willa Cather
