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 |
About the middle of last June a beautiful letter from you4 must have come to me. Perhaps I tried to reply to it
then: I do not remember. On my return to New York last week I found it in a packing
case with several hundredd unanswered letters.
On the thirteenth of June a telephone call from California5 told me that my nearest and dearest brother6 died that morning from a heart attack, having had no previous illness. Only a few months before he flew on from Los Angeles7 to keep my birthday with me.
For Some weeks after his death I managed to get up to
my cottage8 in Canada9, but I remember very little 3 that happened in those weeks. Perhaps I tried to reply to
your letter. If I did, excuse the repetition
repition.
This was the brother with whom I had ridden on horseback many times over all the trails the “Archbishop”10 followed. That was many years before I ever thought of writing a book about Archbishop Lamy11. To write well about a country, I think one must know it very, very well—and must love it very much.
Very Sincerely Yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1417.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1417
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy MacKinder1
- Date letter was written
- [September 12 to 19, 1938]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year 1928 is established by Cather's reference to the death of her brother Douglass Cather, and the date range reflects her return from Grand Manan Island that year (see #2923).
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather, Little Alphabet Letters, University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
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.
On 4 June 1947, MacKinder wrote Cather praising her beautiful style and her representation of Catholicism in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and Shadows on the Rock (1931) as surpassing that of any Catholic writer.
Person Annotations
MacKinder, Dorothy (1902-1975). English writer. Born in Selsey, England, to a family of actors, Dorothy Mackinder went to art school and attempted acting before dedicating herself to writing. She wrote novels with Catholic themes including The Violent Take It By Storm (1939), Captain Cerise (1940), and The Wooden Statue (1951). She considered Cather to be her greatest influence and greatly admired both Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock.
Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Lamy, Jean-Baptiste (1814-1888). French Roman Catholic Archbishop and missionary. Born in Lempdes in Auvergne, France, Jean-Baptiste Lamy attended the seminary of Clermont and then the seminary of Mont Ferrand, where he met fellow student Joseph Machebeuf. Lamy was ordained in 1838 and assigned to a parish in the town of Chapdes, France. In 1839, he and Machebeuf traveled to the U.S., where Lamy served at a parish in Danville, OH, for 8 years. In 1849, he was appointed the head of the newly formed Vicariate of New Mexico and appointed Machebeuf as his Vicar-General. Lamy finally arrived in New Mexico in 1851, where he conflicted with priests who had served under a Mexican bishop. The Vatican elevated Lamy to Archbishop of Sante Fe in 1875; he retired in 1884. During their 1925 trip to New Mexico, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis became interested in the lives of Lamy and Machebeuf, and Cather based Jean Marie Latour in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) on Lamy.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
