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 |
You must be thinking me a very callous person, but I have read your letter over a
good many times, and I sympathize with you with all my heart. The nearest that I
ever came to such an experience was a pernicious carbuncle3 on the back of my head. I put off the operation
because I was red hot into the Chicago4 part
of The
Song
of
the
Lark5 and simply would not go into a
hospital. All the best part of that book (about the singing lessions, etc.) was written when I was taking codeine all day and all night, and
was so stimulated by pain that I kept telling myself I could surely climb up the
side of the Flatiron Building. Finally, after I became more delirious, I was put into a hospital and had a close
shave coming through at all,.
sSo I know all about the stimulating effect of intense pain and how much
perfectly sane work one can do under it.
I have not written you, my dear, simply because I had to go to see an old uncle6 who is very ill in Chevy Chase, Maryland7. And because my dear little niece8 (the redheaded one, whom I love - I think you met her once) has been in such distress and anxiety. Her young husband9, such a splendid fellow, had pneumonia, was sent home from the hospital for a little while after Christmas, and then had another pneumonia all over again, three nurses on the case and every anxiety and woe. He is in their little apartment again now, but we are all just holding our breath. With all this such a rush of work has come upon me, to get all my books ready for a subscription edition (to be published by Houghton Mifflin and designed by Bruce Rogers10), With Alfred's consent—he has no subscription department. that I feel sometimes absolutely bewildered. I have had to cut out concerts for the time being, and my hour a day in the Park has had to go. But I have, thank Heaven, kept well. Sometimes my sleep gets knocked out, and then I find pleasure in thinking about Fanny Butcher and my other friends, even though I cannot write to them.
With love, my dear Fanny, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1379.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1379
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Fanny Butcher1
- Date letter was written
- February 4, 1937
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Fanny Butcher Papers, 1830-1984 (Midwest MS Butcher), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
In an era before antibiotics, Cather developed a serious infection after scratching her scalp with a hatpin.
Person Annotations
Bokum, Frances Amanda Butcher (1888-1987) (“Fanny”).
American newspaper critic and bookstore owner. Born in Fredonia,
KS, Butcher moved to Chicago, IL, as a child. She received an A.A. from
Lewis Institute in 1908 and a BA from the University of Chicago in 1910. In
1911, Floyd Dell of the Chicago Evening Post assigned
her to review Alexander’s Bridge (1912). Cather wrote
the anonymous reviewer care of the Post, beginning
their correspondence and friendship. From 1913 until her retirement in 1963,
Butcher wrote for the Chicago Tribune, becoming
literary editor in 1922. She ran Fanny Butcher Books in Chicago from 1919
until 1927, when she sold it to Doubleday. Cather frequently saw Butcher
when she changed trains in Chicago and closely followed Butcher’s reviews of
her works, often writing to her about them. She also relied on Butcher’s
knowledge of the book business and particularly book distribution in the
Midwest. Their extant correspondence begins in 1920, although in her memoir
Many Lives—One Love (1972), Butcher
paraphrases earlier letters. Butcher married Richard Drummond Bokum in 1935.
Gore, James Howard (1856-1939). American mathematics professor; Cather’s cousin. Born in Back Creek, VA, youngest son of Mahlon and Sidney Cather Gore (Willa Cather’s great-aunt), James showed early interest in the sciences. He graduated from Columbian University (now George Washington University) in 1877 and did post-graduate work abroad, returning to teach mathematics and geodesy at Columbian and at the Corcoran Scientific School; he received a PhD in 1888. In 1889 he married Swedish-born Lillian Sparrendahl, whom Cather admired. They had one daughter, Sidney, who died at age fifteen. Gore was a founder of the National Geographic Society and was associated with various scientific expeditions, but he was not part of actual polar expeditions, as Cather’s letters seem to imply. He was a member of several foreign orders from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Cather stayed with the Gores for part of her 1901 visit to Washington, DC. In The Professor’s House (1925), Tom Outland finds that the people he has to deal with in Washington, D.C., are obsessed with receiving orders and decorations.
Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”).
Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld
and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School
in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for
admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B.
in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found
work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930,
probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation
Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the
library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont
branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933
Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935,
Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical
School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College,
she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor
in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s
regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In
Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary
estate.
Mellen, Richard Hager (1909-1957) (“Dick”). American physician; Mary Virginia Auld Mellen’s husband. Born in Vermont to Philip Edwin and Mary Wheaton Hager Mellen, Dick Mellen graduated from Amherst College in 1931, where Cather’s nephew William Thomas Auld was his roommate, and from Harvard Medical School in 1935. The same year he began a residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and married Cather’s niece, Mary Virginia Auld. Cather praised Mary Virginia’s choice of this “Vermont boy” whose family were “just the nicest kind of Vermont people” (#2117). Trained as an orthopedic surgeon, he accepted a position as chief of orthopedic surgery at a hospital in Chattanooga, TN, in 1942, when the previous head left to serve in the military. Almost immediately thereafter, Mellen himself was commissioned as an officer in the Army Medical Corps, serving from 1942 to 1946. In 1946, he and other physicians who had developed expertise during the war founded the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. From 1946 until his death, he was a surgeon at Glockner-Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, CO.
Rogers, Bruce (1870-1957). American book designer and typographer.
Born in Lafayette, IN, Bruce Rogers received a BS from Purdue
University in 1890. In 1896 George H. Mifflin of Houghton Mifflin asked him
to join the Riverside Press on the basis of his experience as a newspaper
illustrator. In 1900 he took charge of the limited editions division at
Riverside and began designing type fonts. He left in 1912 to work
independently as a designer, with his crowning achievement being the Oxford
Lectern Bible, commissioned in 1929 and completed in 1935, set in his
Centaur typeface. In 1937, Houghton Mifflin hired Rogers to design the
Autograph Edition of Cather’s works. When Sapphira and the
Slave Girl (1940) was added to the set in 1941, Cather and Rogers
corresponded about design issues. Yale, Harvard, and Purdue awarded Rogers
honorary degrees, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him
the gold medal for graphic arts. He died at his home in New Fairfield, CT.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Song of the Lark (1915) by Willa Cather
