Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
200 GUESTS The Shattuck Inn
and Annex5 ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H.2 AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR Sunday 4:30 p.m. My Darling Edith1;
I am sitting in your room5, looking out on the woods you know so well. So far everything delights me. I am ashamed of my appetite for food, and as for sleep—I had forgotten that sleeping can be an active and very strong physical pleasure. It can! It has been for all of three nights. I wake up now and then, saturated with the pleasure of breathing clear mountain air (not cold, just chill air) of being up high6 with all the woods below me sleeping, too; in still white moonlight. It’s a grand feeling.
One hour from now, out of your window, I shall see a sight
unparalleled—Jupiter and Venus both shining in the golden-rosy sky and
both in the West; she not very far above the horizon, and he about mid-way
between the zenith and the silvery lady planet. From 5:30 to 6:30
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS
The Shattuck Inn
and Annex
ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H.
AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE
YEAR they are of a superb splendor—deepening in color every
second, in a still-daylight-sky guiltless of other stars, and the moon not up and the sun gone down
behind gap-Gap-mountain; those two alone in the whole vault of heaven. It lasts
so about an hour (did last night). Then the Lady, so silvery still, slips
down into the clear rose colored glow to be near the departed sun, and imperial Jupiter hangs there alone. He goes
down about 8:30. Surely it reminds one of Dante's7
"eternal wheels”8. I can’t but
believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and unfailing
appearances and exits, are something more than mathematics and horrible
temperatures. If they are not, then we are the
only wonderful things—because we can wonder.
I have worn my white silk suit almost constantly with no white hat, which
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS
The Shattuck Inn
and Annex
ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H.
AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE
YEAR is very awkward. By next week it will probably be colder.
Everything you packed carried wonderfully—not a wrinkle.
And now I must dress to receive the Planets, dear, as I won’t wish to take the time after they appear—and they will not wait for anybody.
Lovingly W.I don’t know when I have enjoyed Jupiter so much as this summer.
W. S. Cather THE SHATTUCK INN AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN JAFFREY, NH2 Miss Edith Lewis1 570 Park Avenue3 New York City4 N.Y. Jaffrey N.H2 OCT. 5 1936 6.30 AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1328.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1328
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of first and second leaf, and recto only of third leaf. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Edith Lewis1
- Date letter was written
- [October 4, 1936]
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
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.
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
At the Shattuck Inn, Cather and Lewis always stayed in "the same two rooms and bath up under the roof" (#1198).
In Canto 1, line 62 of Dante's Paradise, Dante describes Beatrice with her eyes fixed on the "eternal wheels" of the universe.
Person Annotations
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
Alighieri, Dante (1265-1321). Italian poet and philosopher. Born in Florence, Italy, Dante Alighieri was a poet, philosopher and political thinker who is best known for his epic poem The Divine Comedy. Willa Cather frequently referenced Dante’s work in both her letters and fiction, particularly in My Ántonia (1918) and short fiction including “A Death in the Desert,” “El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional,” and “On the Divide.”
Place Annotations
