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 |
I save your address, hoping I may see you there3 sometime. I am drawing toward the end of a new book4.
570 Park Avenue5 November 9th My Dear Julian Street1;I have felt for a long time that we were friends, for we both like good wines and the fine and unique civilization which produces them. I love everything about the scheme of life the French have worked out for themselves; they slur over the less important things and accent the most important. I studied cookery under a french woman6 from Pau7, who was my cook for fifteen years. I learned it more thoroughly than I ever learned anything else. The only disadvantage of proficiency in this case is, that when I want something really good, I have to go into the kitchen and make it myself. Discrimination in wines and food are the basis of all civilized friendships, so I say that we have long been friends. When Bellows8 sold at retail to deserving patrons I often asked the elder Mr. Brown9 about your health and whereabouts.
Of course I shall be delighted to autograph your books for you. Just the fact that I autograph books for personal friends only, and never for dealers, makes autographing a pleasure instead of the dreary chore it would be otherwise. People say one loses a lot by not “running with the pack.” But I feel I have gained a lot; time to enjoy the things I really care for, (even to cook when I feel like it) and to drink good wines appreciatively with a friend or two, instead of swallowing awful stuff in a roomful of shouting and log-rolling.
Very cordially yours, Willa Cather Mr. Julian Street1 Lakeville3 Connecticut NEW YORK, N.Y. STA Y2 NOV 9 1939 2-PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1460.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1460
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Julian Street1
- Date letter was written
- November 9 [1939]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (C1030), Princeton University, Firestone Library, Princeton, NJ
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.
Long-established New York City wine merchant, Bellows Co.
Person Annotations
Street, Julian Leonard (1879-1947). American writer.
Born in Chicago, IL, Street graduated from Ridley College, a boys’
preparatory school located in St. Catharines, ON, Canada, in 1896. In 1899,
Street began reporting for the New York Mail and
Express and took charge of the dramatic department in 1900. The
same year, he married Ada Hilt, with whom he had two children and coauthored
Tide (1926), a novel published shortly after her
death. Street later married Marguerite Skibeness in 1930. Among his other
works are The Most Interesting American (1915), an
assessment of Theodore Roosevelt, The Country Cousin
(1917), a comedy coauthored with Booth Tarkington, and “Mr. Bisbee’s
Princess” (1925), a short story which won the O. Henry Award. Street was
also a well-known authority on food and wine. For New York City wine
merchant Bellows Co., he wrote an irregularly-published four-page pamphlet
on wine, which Cather read and which disposed her to strike up a
correspondence with him when he wrote asking her to autograph copies of her
books.
Bourda, Joséphine Marie Bernardine Brun (1892-1959). Cather’s maid. Raised in Lourdes in the Pyrénées region of France, Joséphine’s father Jean-Marie Brun ran a restaurant. In 1909 she married Alphonse Bourda, and they had two children, Marie, born 1910, and Clémentine, born 1912. In 1913 Joséphine, Alphonse, and Joséphine’s father immigrated to the U.S., leaving Marie and Clémentine behind with relatives. Alphonse and Joséphine’s third child, Jeanette, was born in New York City in late 1913. Soon after, Joséphine found work cooking and keeping house for Willa Cather and Edith Lewis in their Five Bank Street apartment. In 1919 the Bourda family was reunited in New York and Joséphine stopped working, but by late 1921, she was back working half days until sometime after 1925. She resumed working for Cather and Lewis in 1932 when they moved to a new apartment at 570 Park Avenue, but in 1935, she and her husband decided to return to France because of his failing health. Cather considered Joséphine a personal friend and praised her as “an artist in her way” (#0563). Cather and Bourda evidently corresponded after her return to France but their letters have not surfaced. She died in the village of Saint Pé de Bigorre.
Brown, Mr. There is insufficient evidence for a definitive identification, but this may be Charles S. Brown (1876-1960), an English-born wine importer who worked at Bellows & Company. In the 1930s, Brown was well-known for his collection of antique corkscrews.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) by Willa Cather
