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 want to thank you for the lovely Christmas card. The picture of the Inn6 is an awfully clever piece of photography; and the picture of Kurt7, I should say, represents a mighty clever piece of nature. I do think he is a stunning looking boy, and I hope that I can go up this spring to see him and all the rest of you8. I was more than sorry to miss my usual autumn visit with you, but family complications hurried me back to New York2 as soon as I left Grand Manan9.
I have only dreary news from my friends in England10. Everything seems very grim there now. In Steven11's last short note which came about three months ago, he asked to be remembered to you.
Very soon you will hear from Miss Lewis12 and me, as we hope to go up to the Inn earlier in the spring.
Affectionately, from both of us, Willa Cather Mr. George Austermann3, Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey4, New Hampshire. NEW YORK, N. Y2 FEB 13 1940 2 PM Miss CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1470.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1470
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- George Austermann and Eleanor C. Shattuck Austermann1
- Date letter was written
- February 7, 1940
- 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
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Person Annotations
Austermann, Eleanor C. Shattuck (1903-1994). Hotelkeeper,
the Shattuck Inn. Eleanor Shattuck was born in New Hampshire,
the eldest of Edmund and Helen E. Shattuck’s three children. She married
George Austermann in 1927; they had four sons, one of whom died in 1933.
That same year, her father died and she and her husband took over management
of the Shattuck Inn, her family’s hotel in Jaffrey, NH, where Cather had
been a regular summer or fall guest since 1917.
Austermann, George (1899-1982). Hotelkeeper, the Shattuck
Inn. George Austermann, born in Missouri, married Eleanor
Shattuck in 1927; they had four sons, one of whom died in 1933. That same
year, after his wife’s father died, they took over the management of her
family’s hotel, the Shattuck Inn, in Jaffrey, NH, where Cather had been a
regular summer or fall guest since 1917.
Austermann, George (1899-1982). Hotelkeeper, the Shattuck
Inn. George Austermann, born in Missouri, married Eleanor
Shattuck in 1927; they had four sons, one of whom died in 1933. That same
year, after his wife’s father died, they took over the management of her
family’s hotel, the Shattuck Inn, in Jaffrey, NH, where Cather had been a
regular summer or fall guest since 1917.
Austermann, Eleanor C. Shattuck (1903-1994). Hotelkeeper,
the Shattuck Inn. Eleanor Shattuck was born in New Hampshire,
the eldest of Edmund and Helen E. Shattuck’s three children. She married
George Austermann in 1927; they had four sons, one of whom died in 1933.
That same year, her father died and she and her husband took over management
of the Shattuck Inn, her family’s hotel in Jaffrey, NH, where Cather had
been a regular summer or fall guest since 1917.
Austermann, Kurt (1937- ). George and Eleanor Austermann's son. Born in New Hampshire, Kurt Austermann was the fourth-born and youngest child of George and Eleanor Austermann. He grew up in Jaffrey, NH, and later moved to Oregon and served as a spokesperson for both the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.
Austermann, George S. (1929- ). George and Eleanor Austermann's son. Born in Peterborough, NH, George Austermann and his twin brother Edmund Austermann were the first-born children of George and Eleanor Austermann. He grew up in Jaffrey, NH, and as an adult, he moved to Massachusetts and worked for the Polaroid Corporation.
1812Austermann, Donald Jeremy (1933-2009). George and Eleanor Austermann's son. Born in New Hampshire, Donald Austermann was the third-born child of George and Eleanor Austermann. He grew up in Jaffrey, NH, and later moved to New York and worked in publishing.
1815Shattuck, Helen E. Spofford (1882-1954). Hotelkeeper, the Shattuck Inn. Helen Spofford was born in Dublin, NH, and in 1903, she married Edmund Cutter Shattuck, the proprietor of the Shattuck Inn in Jaffrey, NH. The couple had three children, Eleanor, Daniel, and Richard. Eleanor and her husband George Austermann operated the inn after Edmund Shattuck’s death in 1933, and Helen Shattuck continued to live at the inn until her death. Cather was a regular guest at the inn beginning in 1917 where she became acquainted with Helen Shattuck.
Tennant, Stephen (1906-1987). British aesthete. Born at
Wilsford Manor in Wiltshire, England, Stephen Tennant was the fourth son of
Edward Priaulx Tennant, Baron Glenconner, a landowner and member of
Parliament, and Pamela Adelaide Genevieve Wyndam, a writer. After her first
husband’s death, his mother married the Viscount Grey of Fallodon. Educated
at home, Tennant attended the Slade School of Fine Art in 1922 and became
known for his flamboyance and decadence. He had a long romantic relationship
with poet Siegfried Sassoon. After breaking off his relationship with
Sassoon in 1932, he began writing Lascar: A Story of the
Maritime Boulevards, which was based on his travels in the south of
France and which he never completed. In 1927, British novelists Anne Douglas
Sedgwick arranged an epistolary introduction of Tennant to Cather, and they
corresponded for the rest of Cather’s life. In late 1935, he traveled to the
U.S. and met Cather and Edith Lewis in New York City, and Cather recommended
to him the Shattuck Inn in Jaffrey, NH. Cather found Lascar fascinating, and she attempted to help him find a U.S.
publisher for his Leaves From a Missionary’s Notebook
(1937), but she could not interest Knopf or Houghton Mifflin in his
decadent, risqué work. Cather made a bequest to Tennant in her will, and he
became close to Edith Lewis, who arranged for him to write the foreword to
Willa Cather on Writing (1949). He spent his
later years as a semi-invalid at Wiltshire Manor, where he died.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
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.
