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 hope you will pardon me for addressing you without knowing your name, but I
feel sure that you could handle this rather blustering boy better than I. I
am sorry that he had the annoyance of writing a thesis on false information,
but many other students have been mislead by Mr. Loggins5' book6 and have made the same mistake. Mr.
Loggins' publisher is at present preparing erratum slips to be sent out to
schools and public libraries whothat have purchased Mr. Loggins'
book, with a request that the librarians insert these slips opposite page
215 in "I Hear America".
John Walsh7, a student, seems to find it incredible that one should admire and reverence the Roman Church as a great organization and a great spiritual power (certainly the greatest spiritual power this world has ever known), and yet this person should not be, herself, a Catholic. The answer is very simple. I am an Episcopalian because my mother8 and father9 were, and that Church is home to me.
Mr. Loggins might have avoided making an absolutely false statement by writing a short note either to my publisher3 or to me. Some of the boys and girls write me and insist that this statement has the "authority of Columbia University behind it". Young people do not understand that a man may teach in a university without being a scholar. Certainly, the first characteristic of the scholar is to reject floating current opinion and get the facts from an absolutely reliable source.
Perhaps I should not trespass upon your time to this extent, but I would be
grateful if you told Jack that he cannot always believe what he
⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩
readsfinds in print, and that I cannot prevent people from writing
books about me, or from making false statements such as there are in
Revneé
Rapin10's book11 — I never met Mr.
Rapin, and refused to answer a long questionnaire which he once sent me.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1471.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1471
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Head of the English Department, Mt. St. Mary's College1
- 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
Person Annotations
Unknown recipient. No further information is available about this person.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Loggins, Vernon (1893-1968). American academic and author. Born in Hempstead, TX, Loggins was educated in Texas and Chicago and taught at multiple insitutions before arriving at Columbia University in 1925, where he worked until his retirement in 1960. He earned a PhD from Columbia in 1931 and that same year published his first book, The Negro Author: His Development in American to 1900. He was the author three other books and many shorter works about a variety of topics. He discussed Cather in his 1938 book I Hear America ...: Literature in the United States Since 1900 and annoyed her by incorrectly asserting that she had converted to Catholicism.
Walsh, John. American college student. In a letter to the head of the English department at Mount Saint Mary’s College, Cather refers to John Walsh as a student insisting that Cather is a Roman Catholic. Walsh was presumably a student at Mount Saint Mary’s, but no further information is known about this person.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Rapin, René (1899-1973). Swiss professor of literature in English. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, René Rapin graduated from the Lausanne Academy in 1921. He began teaching phonetics and English translation at the University of Lausanne in 1924. In 1926 he married Mary Coe Reeves of Connecticut; they had two daughters, Isabelle, born 1927, and Annette, born 1929. In 1930 he published Willa Cather, one of the first European studies of Cather’s works. After World War II he spent a year in Connecticut; returning to Lausanne, he became a professor of English and American literature, becoming chair of the department in 1956. Rapin also published on Joseph Conrad and Emily Dickinson, as well as on Shakespeare and some seventeenth century writers.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
I Hear America: Literature in the United States Since 1900 (1937) by Vernon Loggins
Willa Cather (1930) by René Rapin
