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 |
This must be a hurly-burly letter. The unanswered letters have piled up on my desk until I am nearly distracted.
Please tell Carrie3 I cannot answer her dear letter until I have worked off a reply to some that have lain here for three weeks. I merely write this to explain some books I am sending you.
When I was weeding out my bookcase for about a hundred books to send to the soldier
camps I came across this book on Prague4,
sent me long ago when Bohemia5 had a consul
generalship here. Many of the books I sent the soldiers were books presented to me
with inscriptions, and I went through the lot tearing out the personal dedications.
Just as I had torn the inscription from this one, I bethought me that either you or
Carrie had been in Prague. I, alas, have never been there. I do not suppose the text
of this book is very interesting, but on glancing through it I think some of the
drawings are very interesting, and I
am sure that whichever one of the Miner sisters has been in Prague will find the
book entertaining.
Several days ago I ordered from the Channel Book Shop one of the first copies of
Sigrid Undset's6
book7 about her escape from Norway8. I think the title most unfortunate (Why
wouldn't she call it simply, "My Escape From Norway"?). But Fru Undset is one of the most absolutely truthful women I have
ever known, so she is equally one of the most unpersuadable.! But once you
get past the title, I find the book absolutely thrilling. A good deal of her journey
across Russia9 she told me last winter with
many interesting details which she omits here, but they were all of the same kind.
I
don't know whether a whole people is willing to live in such degrading filth and
poverty for an idea or whether, against their will, they ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ are forced to live like pigs because the Government took everything for the
army and munitions. Fru Undset doesn't know, either. She doesn't pretend to explain
it in conversation. She simply tells what she saw. She really had a jolly time in
spite of all the dirt, and was so amused by two nice Princeton boys who had the
compartment next hers on the "luxury" train to Vladivostok10. They had got on the train believing all the fairy
tales that American Communists tell them about "efficiency" in Russia. She always shared with them
her sticks of chocolate, and every morning gave them a little mug of her precious
store of bottled water to brush their teeth with.! You see, she
had started from Sweden11 well provisioned
with bottled water, chocolate, dried fish, etc. All the food on the train was either
spoiled or full of dirt.
One thing you may be sure of, Undset never exaggerates anything. As I say, there are some details of the disgusting conditions she encountered in Russia which simply could not be printed in this country. I am afraid for her, that there will be an awful row because she tells how much she admired12 Japan13 and such natives as she saw. I am telling her that I fear the women's clubs of the U. S. A.14 will come back at her. But they could not make her take back a line of her story if they put the thumb screws on her. Alfred Knopf15 and I would have liked to make some suggestions and to persuade her about the title, but neither of us was bold enough to do so. When I urged him to make suggestions about the title, he chuckled and said: "Fine! You try first."
Affectionately WillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1572.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1572
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mary Miner Creighton1
- Date letter was written
- February 19, 1942
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
In 1940, Undset escaped Norway through Russia and Japan, which was not then at war with the United States.
Person Annotations
Creighton, Mary S. Miner (1873-1968). Clubwoman; Cather’s
friend from childhood. Born in Iowa, Mary Miner was the second
daughter of James and Julia Miner, neighbors of the Cather family in Red
Cloud, NE. Willa Cather later recalled that when she first moved into town
with her family and enrolled in school in 1885, “Margie Miner was so jolly I
wanted awfully to know her.” They became lifelong friends and
correspondents, and Mary’s sisters Irene and Carrie were equally close to
Cather. Mary Miner wed local physician E. A. Creighton in 1900 and lived the
rest of her life in Red Cloud. She was the prototype for Julia Harling in
My Ántonia (1918).
Sherwood, Carrie Miner (1869-1971). Sherwood, Carrie Belle
Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader; Cather's friend. Born in Waukon,
IA, to James L. Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest
of their children. The family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the
Miner Brothers store became the largest in town. Cather remembered meeting
Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie, her mother, and siblings were confirmed in
the Catholic church. In 1888, she studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at
Notre Dame, IN. She married bank clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they
had two sons. The Sherwoods travelled often in the West, and visited Europe
in 1930. They built a new house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in
1908; Cather sometimes sent materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious
attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood led local Red Cross work during the two World
Wars, served on the Red Cloud school board and park commission, and was
active in the League of Women Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace
Episcopal Church. Cather corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout
her life and dedicated My Ántonia to Carrie, model
for Frances Harling in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of
Mildred Bennett’s chief sources for The World of Willa
Cather (1951), and was instrumental in setting up what is now the
Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud.
Undset, Sigrid (1882-1949). Norwegian novelist. Undset is
best known for her historical novels set in medieval Norway, the Kristin Lavrandsdatter trilogy (1920-22), set in the
fourteenth-century, The Master of Hestvikin tetralogy
(1925-27), set in the thirteenth century. Early in her career she wrote
realistic novels set in contemporary Norway, including Jenny (1911) about a woman painter. She was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1928 and continued to publish novels, set both in
contemporary and historical Norway, that reflected her conversion to
Catholicism. Undset persuaded her Norwegian publisher to issue her sister
Signe Undset Thomas’s translation of Lucy Gayheart
(1935) (the only Norwegian translation of Cather’s work to appear before her
death). A strong critic of the German Reich, Undset made a dramatic escape
from Norway over the arduous land route when the Nazis invaded Norway in
April 1940, events she later described in Return to the
Future (1942). When Undset reached New York City in the fall of
1940, Alfred Knopf, Cather and Undset’s mutual publisher, arranged their
first meeting. They had long been enthusiastic readers of each other’s
novels and were evidently established correspondents, although their extant
correspondence begins in 1940. During her exile Undset settled in a
residential hotel in Brooklyn Heights, and she and Cather saw each other
socially. Cather praised her as “just all a great woman should be - and on a
giant scale” (#1541). Undset was an active public critic of the Nazis during
her exile. She returned to Norway at the close of the war in 1945 and died
there.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Return to the Future (1942) by Sigrid Undset
