Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 got many lovely Christmas gifts and Christmas cards, but yours is the only one that brought tears to my eyes. Of course, I shall keep it and love to have it, and I thank you very much for it. What a wonderful old face! She is older here than when I saw her last. I know that chiefly because her hair is so much thinner, but the eyes have all their old fire. In the time of my first memories of her, she had the most wonderful reddish auburn hair, so wavy that it was almost crinkly. And her skin, too, was brown, or had a brownish shade. I think it is very kind of you to send me this photograph. You must have realized from my letter that I was very fond of dear Mrs. Anderson3.
Your Uncle Snowden4, too, I remember very distinctly. I do not wonder that he was your favorite uncle. There was something very fine about Snowden. I always liked to see him. Once, when I was about five years old and somebody had driven Marjorie5 and me up to your grandmother's house on Timber Ridge, a violent rainstorm came up. Marjorie and I were supposed to walk home6, because the road was downhill all the way. Marjorie had stout shoes, but I wore little slippers. Snowden came up from his house on the Hollow Road, on a gray horse, and took me home in front of him, holding the reins with one hand and keeping his other arm around me to steady me on the old cavalry saddle. He had on an old gray Confederate overcoat, which I suppose had been his father's. I remember how contended and safe I felt. Children know when people are honest and good. They don't reason about it, they just know.
Thank you again, dear Mrs. Ackroyd, for this photograph of that dear old face. I
shall keep it as long as I live, and I only wish such a photograph had come to me
us while my
mother7 was still living. She would have loved to see it.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1569.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1569
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Rose Anderson Ackroyd 1
- Date letter was written
- December 27, 1941
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Papers, 1899-1949 (MSS 6494), University of Virginia, Special Collections, Charlottesville, VA
Individual Annotations
Willow Shade (Back Creek Valley, VA): Home built by Willa Cather’s grandparents, William and Caroline Cather, in 1851. Willa Cather and her parents lived at Willow Shade soon after her birth until 1883, when they relocated to Nebraska.
Willow Shade, mid-1870s. Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection, Archives Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.
Person Annotations
Ackroyd, Rose Anderson Compton (1874-after 1940). Granddaughter of Cather’s Virginia friend. Rose Anderson was born in rural Frederick County, VA, daughter of Gabriel and Catherine Anderson; her father was the fourth son of Mary Ann and Asa Anderson of Back Creek, Frederick County. Rose married George E. Compton in 1896 and moved to Pennsylvania. Widowed, she married a Mr. Ackroyd around 1915; by 1930 she was widowed again and living in New Jersey, where she still lived in 1940. When she wrote Cather about Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), recognizing her paternal grandmother in the character of Mrs. Ringer, Cather responded with her own memories of Mrs. Anderson and her family, two of whom, Enoch and Marjorie, came to Nebraska with the Cathers and are prototypes for characters in My Ántonia (1918).
Anderson, Mary Ann Marpole (1820-1902). Cather family friend.
A distant relative of the Cather family, Mary Ann Marpole married
Asa Anderson in 1838. Widowed in middle age, she raised a large family on a
farm in the Timber Ridge area of Back Creek Valley, VA; her daughter
Marjorie and son Enoch accompanied the Cather family to Nebraska. Mrs.
Anderson’s visits to the Cather family home in Virginia when Willa Cather
was a child inspired Cather to portray Mrs. Anderson as Mandy Ringer, the
cheerful and “born interested” mountain woman in Sapphira
and the Slave Girl (1940).
Anderson, Snowden B. (1842-1899). Virginia farmer; Marjorie Anderson's brother. Born in Back Creek, Frederick County, VA, the second son of Asa Anderson and Mary Ann Marple Anderson, Snowden Anderson joined the Confederate Army in May 1861. He served in the 18th Virginia Cavalry along with his older brother Zebulon and younger brother Eli. Captured in Frederick County in February 1864, he was a prisoner of war until released in June 1865. Snowden Anderson returned to the family farm, living with his mother and younger siblings. He married Virginia Bell Lonas in 1884; they had four children. He is buried, with other members of his family, in Bethel Cemetery in Back Creek. Cather remembered how he gave her a ride home once, steadying her on his cavalry saddle and wrapping her in his Confederate overcoat.
Anderson, Marjorie (1854-1924) (“Margie”). Cather family servant. Born in Back Creek Valley, VA, the daughter of Mary Ann and Asa Anderson, Marjorie accompanied the Charles Cather family to Nebraska, living with them for the rest of her life. She was especially devoted to the Cather children, who loved her in return. In her later years she became shy and reclusive. Cather based several characters on Marjorie: Mahailey in One of Ours (1922), Marty in the poem, “Poor Marty” (1931), and Mandy in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in 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.
Place Annotations
