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 have been very much worried about Irene3 ever since she went home. If she is not ill, please scold her for me and urge her to write to me. If she is ill, please write me a line yourself and tell me how she is.
Isn't the Republican Valley undergoing all the Plagues of Egypt4?
With my heart's loyalty to you both Willa Cather Mr. C. W. Weisz1 3270 Lake Shore Drive Chicago5 Ill. NEW YORK,N.Y.STA Y2 JUN 5 1935 11-AM Is the Hotel Sissons in Hyde Park still in existence? I want to send a friend there. W.S.C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1262.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1262
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Charles W. Weisz 1
- Date letter was written
- June 5 [1935]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Irene Miner Weisz Papers, 1912-1958 (Midwest MS Cather-Weisz), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
After Webster County was hit by one of the massive dust storms that swept through the Great Plains in April 1935, severe rains falling on bone dry soil on 30 May 1935 caused the Republican River to flood on 31 May 1935, killing more than 100 people and causing massive damage to farmland. Cather is drawing on a Biblical reference to the Plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus in her characterization of these events here.
Person Annotations
Weisz, Charles W. (1874-after 1940). Insurance executive in Chicago; Irene Miner Weisz’s husband. Charles W. Weisz was born in Illinois, the son of German-born parents. After graduating from the Springfield, IL, high school, he went to work in Chicago, IL. He met Irene Miner when they lived at the same rooming house when she came to Chicago to study. They were married in 1915 and lived in Chicago, where he rose to become president of an insurance company by 1930. Willa Cather frequently stopped to see them as she traveled to and from the West.
Weisz, Irene Miner (1881-1971). Musician; Cather’s lifelong
friend. Born in Red Cloud, NE, the youngest child of James L.
Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Irene Miner was educated in Red Cloud,
graduating in 1898 and played with the Cather children as part of the play
town of Sandy Point and in amateur theatricals. She studied piano with local
teachers, such as Mrs. P.E.B. Sill, then went to the Chicago College of
Music from 1899 to 1901. She met clerk Charles Weisz, later president of the
A.F. Shaw insurance company, there; they married in late 1915, settling in
Chicago. She visited Red Cloud frequently, but also travelled in the
American West and then to Europe in 1921 and around the world in 1934.
Cather corresponded with Irene Miner Weisz for many years and sometimes
stayed with her in Chicago when travelling to and from the West. My Ántonia is dedicated to Irene, model for Nina
Harling in the novel, and to her sister Carrie Miner Sherwood.
Place Annotations
