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 |
What is the use? Hitler3 entered Prague4 last night. President Masaryk5 was an old friend of mine. He was a scholar and a lover of letters. In my childhood I had many Czech friends. I love their way of life. And what about "British honor", which I have always believed in? However much we may try to live in a nobler past, this thing has come upon us and lowers our vitality and our wish to live.
Thank you for your kind and friendly letter. Those books were written in better times than this.
Sincerely yours. Willa Cather Mr. Dayton M. Kohler1 Virginia Polytechnic Institute Blacksburg6 Virginia NEW YORK, N.Y.STA Y2 MAR 16 1939 10-PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1442.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1442
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dayton M. Kohler 1
- Date letter was written
- March 16, 1939
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- , Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Carol M. Newman Library, Blacksburg, VA
Person Annotations
Kohler, Dayton McCue (1906-1972). American literature professor. Born in Pennsylvania, son of Edwin Kohler and Bertha Kohler, Dayton Kohler graduated from Gettysburg College in 1928, then took his MA at the University of Virginia in 1929. He went to the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, VA, as an instructor in English in 1929, remaining there for the rest his career until he retired as a professor in 1970; his field was modern American literature, and he corresponded with many writers, including Cather. Kohler married Jean S. Ogden in 1937. They moved to Fredericksburg, VA, after his retirement.
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945). Nazi leader of Germany,
1934-1945.
Masaryk, Tomáš (1850-1937). Founder and first president of Czechoslovakia. Born in Moravia, which was then part of the Austrian Empire, Tomáš Masaryk received a doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1876. Studying in Leipzig, he met and then married American music student Charlotte Garrigue in 1878. Appointed professor of philosophy at the Czech University of Prague in 1882, he used his academic writings to promote the value of Czech culture. When he entered politics in the 1890s, he took up the cause of the Slovaks in northern Hungary. A key figure in the Czech-Slovak Union, he was elected Czechoslovakia’s first president in 1918. He resigned the presidency in 1935. Cather began corresponding with Masaryk in 1925 after he sent her a letter. She professed she was “glad” that her novel My Ántonia (1918) had “carried a message from [her] Bohemian neighbors” that she “loved as a child, to their home country” (#0768).
Place Annotations
