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 |
Are you sure it was in the Forum3 that you saw the article4
which you quote? I thought it was published in the Saturday
Review5, and it was written by the
Prince of Prevaricators, Ford Maddox Ford6.—
nNot a word of truth in it.!7 I am sure that no group of ladies from Pittsburgh8 ever went to see Mr. Housman9 - and still more sure that I never
headed such a group. When I met him it was not at his rooms in Cambridge10, or in Cambridge at all. There was no
golden wreath. It was simply an afternoon of conversation - conversation chiefly
about other things than Mr. Housman's verses.
I have been greatly annoyed by this matter, Mr. Clemens, and have been besieged by demands to 'tell what I know about Housman'. In short, I am paying a heavy price for a very brief acquaintance. Alfred Knopf11 (who publishes More Poems12) and I talked the matter over and he has suggested that at some time, probably in the distant future, I should write a very exact account of my afternoon with Housman, in much the same informal manner that I have used in the book of essays recently published under the title Not Under Forty13. These essays14 are scrupulously truthful accounts of accidental meetings with very interesting people. This promise to Mr. Knopf will protect me from the almost threatening demands that have been made by a number of people. One's memories, after all, are one's own, and if one relates them to the public one prefers to do it in one's own way.
When I last wrote15 you about this matter I had determined never to give out any account of my impressions of Mr. Housman. But since so many false stories (like the one you quote on your postcard) have been started, I shall probably some day, when I am not so busy as I am now, write a statement of the very brief and simple facts.
Sincerely yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1355.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1355
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Cyril Clemens 1
- Date letter was written
- January 30, 1937
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949, in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library (#6494-6494-i), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Individual Annotations
Abeel clearly derived details in two sentences concerning Cather's visit to Housman from Ford's memoir Return to Yesterday (1932): "I knew he had once fled when a group of admiring ladies from Pittsburgh headed by Willa Cather called on him in his rooms in Trinity College to present him with a golden laurel wreath. They could only leave the wreath and file quietly out." Cather was mistaken about Ford's reminiscence appearing in the Saturday Review, however, and it was Abeel who placed the location of the meeting in Cambridge.
See #1336.
Person Annotations
Clemens, Cyril (1902-1999). American biographer. A distant cousin of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), Cyril Clemens was born in St. Louis, MO, to James R. and Kathryn T. Clemens, and received his BA and MA from Washington University (St. Louis). He founded the International Mark Twain Society in 1930 and edited its journal, the Mark Twain Quarterly, from 1936-1982. He wrote biographies and biographical sketches of his famous cousin and other literary figures, including G.K. Chesterton and A.E. Housman. The Mark Twain Society awarded a medal to Cather in 1934; Clemens asked Cather for contributions to the journal and pressed her for information about her 1902 visit to Housman.
Ford, Ford Madox (1873-1939) (“Ford Madox Heuffer”). British author, editor, and critic. Born in Surrey, England, Ford Madox Heuffer was brought up in London. In 1894 he eloped with his school friend Elizabeth Martindale, whose father opposed their marriage. The couple had two daughters and lived in Winchelsea, where Ford Hueffer befriended many local authors, including Joseph Conrad, with whom he collaborated on Romance (1903), a novel about pirates. After a 1904 breakdown, he spent time in Germany; on his return to England, he lived mostly in London, apart from his wife and children, and established the English Review. His novel The Good Soldier (1915) established his reputation as a novelist, but his complicated romantic life and his wife’s refusal to grant him a divorce undermined his personal reputation. After serving in the British Army during World War I, in 1919 he changed his name to Ford Madox Ford. He lived in the Provence region of France during the 1920s, and then in the U.S. from 1929 until his death. On a 1909 trip to London for McClure’s Magazine, Cather met Heuffer and was disappointed that he failed to arrange a promised meeting between her and Conrad. Ford’s account of Cather’s time at McClure’s in his memoir Return to Yesterday (1932) contains multiple obvious errors, and Cather disputed the accuracy of his account of her 1902 meeting with A.E. Housman.
Housman, Alfred Edward (1859-1936) (“A. E.”). British poet and
scholar. Born in Worcestershire, England, the eldest son of a
solicitor and his wife, Housman won a scholarship in 1877 to St. John’s
College, Oxford University, where he studied classics. Although he was a
promising scholar, he failed to obtain his degree and took a job at the
patent office in London. He continued as an independent scholar, and the
brilliance of his work led to his appointment in 1892 as professor of Latin
at University College, London, and in 1911 to Trinity College, Cambridge. He
published A Shropshire Lad (1896), his most famous
collection of poems, at his own expense, but its reputation steadily
increased. Cather discovered Housman’s poems soon after they appeared in the
U.S., and they influenced much of her early poetry. Shropshire was one of
the first destinations on her European trip in 1902, and Housman was one of
the people she most wanted to meet. The meeting was awkward and became the
subject of speculation and stories by others in later years.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Forum
"A Letter from A. E. Housman," Forum (October 1936) by Neilson Abeel
Saturday Review of Literature
More Poems (1936) by A. E. Housman
Not Under Forty (1936) by Willa Cather
"Miss Jewett," Not Under Forty (1936) by Willa Cather
"148 Charles Street," Not Under Forty (1936) by Willa Cather
"Katharine Mansfield," Not Under Forty (1936) by Willa Cather
"A Chance Meeting," Not Under Forty (1936) by Willa Cather
