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 |
How could I possibly be offended by the sketch3 you wrote for the Book-of-the-Month Bulletin4! It seems to me a very well ordered and skillful bit of writing. Nothing is harder than to condense and yet suggest. My hand5 has been a tormenting problem, and tomorrow I am going into the French Hospital6 to remain for two weeks. Personal letters will be sent down to me, but remember no flowers from anybody. The way that flowers are necassarily treated in a hospital hurts me worse than my hand ever hurts me, and I would certainly make forbidden motions in my desperate effort to shelter them just a little from drafts, steam heat, etc.
Miss Bloom7 will sign this letter for me, as I am absolutely unable to sign even a check - the splints are too large and too tight. A Happy Christmas to you, dear friend, and do not fear that I shall have a very dismal one. The nice French and Irish nurses have my favorite room all fixed for me, and in that austere haven I shall find a peace that a whirlpool of correspondence makes impossible here.
Affectionately and gratefully, WILLA CATHERPer S.J. Bloom Secretary
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1519.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1519
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on only recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- December 21, 1940
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Cather significantly injured a tendon in her right thumb in November 1940 after signing hundreds of copies of her novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Her right hand was immobilized for months afterward, and the pain recurred often in later years.
In 1881 the French Hospital, established by the Société Française de Bienfaisance, opened at 131 West 14th Street, New York. In 1929 the hospital opened locations at 324-240 West 30th Street. Willa Cather stayed at the hospital in the spring of 1940 and returned in December that same year. Cather enjoying being surrounded by the French language and felt the hospital was an "escape from the active world" (#1514).
Person Annotations
Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley (1881-1965). American journalist and
author. Born and raised in Winchester, MA, a suburb of Boston,
Elizabeth Sergeant graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1903. In 1910,
Pauline Goldmark sent her to Cather at McClure’s
Magazine with a proposed article, published as “Toilers of the
Tenements,” and Cather and Sergeant became lifelong friends. In 1914
Sergeant became one of the original contributors to the New Republic. While on assignment in France in 1917 she was
injured by a land mine; her injury and recuperation were the subject of Shadow-Shapes: Journal of a Wounded Woman (1920). She
moved to New Mexico in 1920 and became involved with the Taos artists colony
and advocated for Native American rights, but her work frequently took her
back to New York City. She included Cather in her collection of portraits of
prominent Americans, Fire under the Andes (1927).
Sergeant studied with Carl Jung and Toni Woolf in Zurich, Switzerland, from
1929 to 1931. When she returned to the U.S. she sold her house in New Mexico
and settled in New York City, writing many magazine articles about authors
and psychological topics. She later moved to Rockland County, NY. Cather’s
letters to Sergeant comment frequently on both her own and Sergeant’s
writing and testify to a strong and lively friendship maintained despite
Sergeant's being a committed reformer and far to the left of Cather
politically and culturally. Sergeant’s Willa Cather: A
Memoir (1953) includes extensive paraphrases of Cather’s letters to
her.
Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Willa Cather," Book-of-the-Month Club News (December 1940) by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant
Book-of-the-Month Club News
