Luhan, Mabel Dodge (1879-1962). American patron of the arts and memoirist. Born Mabel Ganson into a wealthy Buffalo, NY, family, Mabel Evans traveled to Paris, France, in 1904 after the death of her first husband. She met and married Edwin Dodge there and moved with him to a villa in Florence, Italy, where they collected art and Mabel conducted a salon. She moved to New York City in 1912 and separated from her husband soon after (they divorced in 1916). In her Fifth Avenue apartment near Washington Square, she reestablished her salon and supported modern art and radical political causes. Cather may have known Mabel Dodge slightly during her New York year but came to know her better in New Mexico, where she moved in 1917 with her third husband, Maurice Sterne, from whom she divorced in 1922. Mabel married Antonio Lujan, a Taos Pueblo Indian, in 1923. Thereafter she called herself Mabel Dodge Luhan. When Cather and Edith Lewis traveled to New Mexico in June 1925, Luhan invited Cather to visit her in Taos, seeking advice on her manuscript memoirs of her life. Lewis and Cather’s long stay in Taos inspired Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Cather briefly returned to Luhan's Taos compound in 1926, when Luhan was absent, and although Luhan invited Cather and Lewis back, they did not return to New Mexico. In 1928, Cather encouraged Alfred Knopf to consider publishing the early volumes of Luhan’s memoirs, praising them as “intensely interesting and alive” (#2589). However, Harcourt Brace published all four volumes of Luhan’s memoirs, Background (1933), European Experiences (1935), Movers and Shakers (1936), and Edge of Taos Desert (1937). Cather also read the later portions in manuscript. Cather praised Luhan’s memoir of D.H. Lawrence during his New Mexico years, Lorenzo in Taos (Knopf 1932), as “the best portrait there ever will be of Lawrence” (#1036). Luhan lived in Taos until her death.

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.

Barlow-Brewster, Achsah (1878-1945). Expatriate American painter. Born in New Haven, CT, Achsah Brewster graduated in 1902 from Smith College, where Edith Lewis had become her roommate in 1899, inaugurating a long friendship. After college, Achsah moved to New York City to study painting at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. After she returned from a year of study in France, fellow student (and later poet) Vachel Lindsay introduced her to Earl Brewster. She may have met Willa Cather as early as 1904, when Cather, visiting New York from Pittsburgh, stayed with Edith Lewis on Washington Square. In 1910, she and Earl Brewster married and moved to Europe, returning to the U.S. only once, in 1923. From 1910 through 1935, they lived in various locations in France (where their daughter Harwood was born in 1912) and in Italy (where they met D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda in 1921), while also traveling widely in Europe and to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India. Edith Lewis visited Achsah and Earl in Ravello, Italy, in 1914 and 1920 and in Cyr-sur-Mer, France, in 1930 (with Cather) and 1935. When Earl, Achsah, and Harwood moved to Paris in the early 1920s, they became friend Isabelle McClung Hambourg and Jan Hambourg. In 1935, Achsah and Earl moved to the Himalayan region of India, where she died ten years later after a long illness.

Brewster, Earl (1878-1957). Expatriate American painter. Born in Chagrin Falls, OH, Earl Brewster attended the Cleveland Institute of Art for a year before moving to New York City in 1899 to study at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. He married fellow painter Achsah Barlow in 1910. They immediately moved to Europe, returning to the U.S. only once, in 1923. From 1910 through 1935, Earl and Achsah lived in France (where their daughter Harwood was born in 1912) and Italy (where they met D. H. Lawrence in 1921), while traveling widely in Europe and to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India. Edith Lewis visited Achsah and Earl in Ravello, Italy, in 1914 and 1920 and in Cyr-sur-Mer, France, in 1930 (with Cather) and 1935. When Earl, Achsah, and Harwood moved to Paris in the early 1920s, they became friend Isabelle McClung Hambourg and Jan Hambourg. Earl had begun studying eastern religions early in his life, including the Vedanta school of Hindu religious philosophy, and he incorporated Buddhist iconography into his paintings. In 1935, the Brewsters moved to the Himalayan region of India, where he died more than two decades later.

Lindbergh, Charles Augustus (1902-1974). American aviator. Born in Detroit, MI, to parents of Swedish descent and raised in Minnesota, Charles Lindbergh wanted to become a flyer in World War I but was too young. After three semesters studying engineering at the University of Wisconsin, he left to become a barnstorming pilot and later enlisted in the Army Air Service and became a captain in the Missouri National Guard. Lindbergh’s 1927 nonstop flight from New York to Paris piloting the Spirit of St. Louis made him an international celebrity. In 1929 he married Anne Cutter Morrow, who 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. In 1939 Charles Lindbergh advocated against American involvement in World War II, and although he eventually supported the war, his non-interventionist stance tarnished his reputation. His bestselling book about his pioneering flight, The Spirit of St. Louis (1953), was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.