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 afraid at the very end I gave you a second check on which I forgot to write the name
of my bank.! Everything that happened that morning is rather
a muddle in my mind, so I am sending you a really good, sound check at last.
You will be happy to know that there were two drawing-rooms on the train, one
of them at the end of the car in which we3 were placed. The three men who occupied it looked like
gentlemen - in fact looked very much so, so when they were settling their
golf clubs, I plucked up my courage and spoke to one of them as he was
standing in the door. I simply told him what the agent had told you (to the
effect that the Wolverine did not ordinarily carry cars with drawing-rooms),
and told him I merely wanted to ask if he had had his engaged a long time,
because I thought the agent had not given correct information. Because of
some question of his, I told him that my friend was a very sick woman and
that was why I had been solicitous. He somewhat bashfully, and very kindly
told me that he was an official of the Pullman Company, that his companions
were two Englishmen, and that if they were willing, he
would be only too glad to place the drawing-room at the disposal of my
friend. Within half an hour all their golf clubs and tennis rackets had been
carried out and Isabelle and I were having our lunch in the drawing-room.
The Pullman man came to the door both last night and this morning to ask how
she was standing the journey. Wasn't that remarkable good fortune? When we
arrived ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ this morning, I sent my red cap running that long distance
up the station platform to get a wheel-chair, while Isabelle sat down on my small trunk. She
was wheeled to a cab and taken immediately to the Hotel Lowell, which was
only too glad to have her back again. She has her old rooms4, and her red scarf is tied to the
her window, waving as a signal right opposite my bedroom
window, though several stories higher up.
I hope you will not try to send her any flowers to the boat, Irene, as it is very uncertain just when they5 will sail - everything is crowded - they are waiting for the first reservations that are returned by anybody on any one of several boats.
As long as I remember anything , dear Irene, I shall remember this visit to Chicago6 and how good you were to Isabelle, and how it warmed my heart to see her feel immediate friendship for you. As we were steaming through the wheat fields in the late afternoon, she made me tell her again all about you when you were a little girl, and all about Sandy Point7. It is very sweet for me to have my oldest affections and deepest memories brought together in this way. You and Isabelle and I would just naturally be friends wherever we met in this world, even without the long past behind us.
Lovingly yours, my dear Willie W. S. Cather 570 Park Ave.8 New York City2 Mrs. C. W. Weisz1, 3270 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago6, Illinois. NEW YORK,N.[missing]. STA.Y2 JUL14 1935 10 PM IsabelleFriendship
Sandy Point
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1267.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1267
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irene Miner Weisz 1
- Date letter was written
- July 13, 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
The Hotel Lowell is on the south side of East 63rd Street, between Madison and Park. Rooms at the rear of the hotel face towards the rear of 570 Park Avenue.
Make-believe town constructed of packing boxes that Cather invented with her siblings and friends when she was a child in Red Cloud, NE.
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
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.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Hambourg, Jan (1882-1947). Russian-born violinist; Isabelle
McClung’s husband. Hambourg moved with his family to Toronto,
Ontario, in 1910, where he was the head of the violin department at the
Hambourg Conservatory and performed as part of the Hambourg Trio. He married
Isabelle McClung in April 1916. Cather reacted negatively to both Hambourg
and the marriage, but she gradually came to accept him. Beginning in the
1920s, Hambourg left the family conservatory and focused on solo violin
performance in Europe. Cather enjoying long visits with Isabelle and Jan in
Toronto in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. She dedicated The Professor’s House (1925) to him (“For Jan, because he likes
narrative”) and asked him to make musical corrections to Lucy Gayheart (1935). When Isabelle died, Jan sent to Cather the
three hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather
destroyed them.
Place Annotations
