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 |
Thank you for your check and your kind
letter3 of inquiry. I arrived home2 last week after a rough voyage which I very much
enjoyed. I had two wonderful months in Venice4 and at Cortina
d'Ampezzo5. Afterward I spent six weeks with Isabelle Hambourg6 in Paris7. While her condition will never
materially improve, she was much more comfortable than she was last summer8 and had even gained
a little in general vitality. Three times a week we went out for motor
drives and stopped for tea at some
gay places.
I am very well indeed, thank you, but the rush of things which were avoided all summer does come down on one with a terrible force when one first returns.
Don't you like Anne Lindbergh's9 book10, by the way? I think it is charming.
Faithfully yours, Willa CatherIf you have a copy of J. Cape's11 edition of "The Song of the Lark"12 would you please send it to me?
W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1278.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1278
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- November 30, 1935
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
On 31 October 1935, Greenslet reported that sales of My Ántonia were up from 1933 and 1934, enclosed a check for $161.66 (with a balance due of $883.03 on 1 March 1936), and wished her good health on her return from her trip abroad.
Hambourg, who was suffering from kidney disease, spent the summer of 1934 in New York and Chicago.
Person Annotations
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
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.
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow (1906-2001). American author and
aviator. Born in Englewood, NJ, to Dwight Morrow and Elizabeth
Cutter Morrow, Anne Morrow graduated from Smith College in 1928 with a
degree in English. She married aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1929 and became
his copilot. Cather met the Lindberghs in 1931, when both she and Charles
Lindbergh were given honorary degrees by Princeton University. On March 1,
1932, the Lindberghs first child, Charles Jr., was kidnapped; the crime and
the discovery of the boy’s body ten weeks later were a media sensation.
Cather admired Anne Lindbergh’s first book, North to the
Orient (1935), which recounted her 1931 journey with Charles to
Asia via the great circle route in 1931. Lindbergh’s best-known book is Gift from the Sea (1955), an inspirational meditation
on modern life and particularly the challenges facing women, which has sold
more than three million copies.
Cape, Herbert Jonathan (1879-1960) (“Jonathan”). British publisher. Born in London, England, Cape began his career in his early teens as errand boy at Hatchard’s bookstore. He worked for the London branch of Harper’s as clerk and salesman, and then at publisher Gerald Duckworth’s company, rising to manager by 1911. In 1920, he and George Wren Howard founded the publishing company Jonathan Cape, which was known for the high quality of their design and fine list of authors, including some Americans. Cape bought the rights to Cather’s The Song of the Lark (1915) from the first British publisher John Murray and brought out a pocket edition in 1932. Cather was unhappy at the reduced royalties and transferred the rights to Cassell, which had become her British publisher.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
North to the Orient (1935), by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The Song of the Lark (1915), by Willa Cather
