Margaret Livingston Lee Crofts (February 12, 1941)

#1526: Willa Cather to Margaret Livingston Lee Crofts, February 12, 1941

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⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ February 12, 1941. My dear Mrs. Crofts¹:

I want to thank you for the two most interesting Christmas cards. The one you sent me last year was horrible, but I have kept in with Michelet³'s volume on the "Dark Ages,"⁴ and I shall never forget it. I am so glad that you, a bred-in-the-bone Southerner, like my new book⁵. Since the middle of November, I have been shut away from human life by a dreary injury to my right hand⁶ - which refuses to improve. For the Christmas month I went to the French Hospital⁷, and was beautifully taken care of by the loveliest of nurses and jolliest of Sisters. The superintendent⁸ is an old friend of mine.

Cordially yours, Willa Cather

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let1526.xml
Letter identifier: 1526
Contents: Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Margaret Livingston Lee Crofts¹
Date letter was written: February 12, 1941
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Margaret Lee Crofts Papers (2017570073), Library of Congress, Washington, DC

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

0326

Crofts, Margaret Livingston Lee (1893-after 1952). Writer and hostess. Margaret Livingston Lee was born in North Carolina; she married textbook publisher Frederick S. Crofts in the early 1920s, about the time she became acquainted with Cather. They corresponded mainly about social events. In 1937, Margaret Crofts published a novel, Armed with Light. She and her husband had a country home in Stamfield, CT, to which they relocated when Frederick Crofts retired and sold his business to Appleton-Century.

1571

Michelet, Jules (1798-1874). French historian.

Born in Paris, France, the son of a printer, Jules Michelet’s brilliant student career led to his appointment as a professor of history at age 23. In 1831 his appointment as head of the historical section of the French Record Office gave him deep access to documents on which he built his masterpiece, the Histoire de France, published in nineteen volumes between 1833 and 1867. Michelet was interested in social, artistic, and religious matters, as well as political, and his vigorous and personal style made his history a literary masterpiece also. Cather read Michelet at several times in her life, and took from him the saying she renders as “The end is nothing, the road is all.”

2167

Sister Mary of St. Odile. Superintendent of the French Hospital in New York City. Born in Brittany, France, Sister Mary of St. Odile belonged to the Marianite Sisters of the Holy Cross, who administered the French Hospital in New York City from about 1885 to 1963. Sister Mary spent twenty-six years at the French Hospital. She also served as the hospital’s Mother Superior or superintendent for ten years, during which time Cather stayed as a patient.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

Work Annotations

Histoire de France: Le Moyen Âge (1855), by Jules Michelet

Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), by Willa Cather