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 am delighted with Margaret Kennedy3's book4, and am very grateful to you for sending it to me.
No, I have had a perfectly dreary summer. I forget whether I wrote you in May that
I
was leaving hurriedly for San Francisco5,
because my brother6 was seriously ill in the
hospital from a heart lesion. I reached him about the end of June (as soon as his
physicians would allow me to see him) and spent July and a part of August there. I
had such wonderful long visits with
him, and saw him gain a good deal in strength before I left. I came home through
British Columbia7 and the Canadian
Rockies, but had a rather rough time of it. Transportation is difficult even on the
fringes of war. I had four weeks at the Empress Hotel in Victoria8 which were delightful, however.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1550.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1550
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Julian Street 1
- Date letter was written
- October 3, 1941
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Julian Street Papers (C0036), Princeton University, Firestone Library, Princeton, NJ
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.
Kennedy, Margaret (1896-1967). English novelist and
playwright. Born in London, England, Kennedy studied at
Cheltenham Ladies’ College in Cheltenham, England, where she won writing
honors in both drama and poetry. She later attended Somerville College, in
Oxford, England, where she received honors in history. In 1922, she
published A Century Revolution, a study of social and
political revolutions from 1789 to 1920. She subsequently published two
novels, The Ladies of Lyndon (1923) and The Constant Nymph (1924), the latter of which became
a best-seller. In 1940, Kennedy began corresponding with Julian Street about
her reactions to World War II from her home in London. In February 1941, Life published one of her letters to Street, and
later that year Kennedy published more of her war reactions from her diary
in Where Stands A Winged Sentry, edited by
Street.
Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother.
Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High
School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high
school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of
schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he
married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an
abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret
and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe
became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA,
where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in
the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank
until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several
times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926
trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San
Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle
family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was
one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a
prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Street, Ane Ingeborg Marguerite Skibeness (1899-1997) (“Margot Andre”). American theater worker; wife of Julian Street. Born in Tacoma, WA, daughter of Norwegian immigrants Knute B. Skibeness and Caroline Reed Skibeness, Marguerite Skibeness attended the State College of Washington, the National University of Mexico, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Around 1923 she moved to New York City, working on the technical side of the theater business, using the name Margot Andre. She also directed the Lighthouse Players of the New York Association for the Blind for several years before her marriage, in May 1930, to writer Julian Street. Marguerite Street appears to have known Cather through her husband. They lived in Princeton, NJ, for many years; she later donated her husband’s papers to Princeton University.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Where Stands a Winged Sentry (1941) by Margaret Kennedy
