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 |
You have always felt so much affection for Mary Virginia3, that I am sending you the letter which tells of her arrival in Chattanooga4.
The circumstances are briefly: Richard5 and Virginia were in the South this summer on their vacation. They stopped for some time in Chattanooga and liked the country about it very much. Early this winter the only orthopaedic surgeon in Chattanooga was called for Army service. The Chattanooga hospital wrote to the New York2 Orthopaedic Hospital to recommend a man to take his place. Richard Mellen was very highly recommended, both by the Trustees of the New York Orthopaedic Hospital and by several of his fellow surgeons.
"Going South" has, to me, a slight connotation of "going backward". But I went to see two very brilliant New York surgeons, one from Georgia6 and one from Tennessee7, and they assured me that at this particular time when there is so much Government work going on in Chattanooga, it was a fine opportunity for a young man. Then my last doubt disappeared. The enclosed letter will explain to you that Richard and Virginia went down in their own car, and all the contents of their pretty little apartment are following them (or have followed them already) by motor truck.
As the situation stands, I am the only loser. As you know, Irene, when Mary Virginia first came to New York she came without my knowledge, and did not let me know that she was here until she had held her job at Lord & Taylor's for a month and had been regularly engaged there. She did not want me "to have her on my hands". Ever since then she has been in many ways a great help and comfort to me. Edith8 and I have often remarked upon the fact that when we were blue and overtired we were apt to ask Virginia to come in for tea or dinner, ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ because she always left us much more cheerful than she found us. She never brought her troubles to us, and she made us forget ours. In these ten years or so, she has never caused me the slightest anxiety except when, two years ago, she was so ill in the French Hospital9 and I stayed on in town until the end of July, when she was well enough to go into the country. Even then she did me a real favour, for she introduded to me that delightful French Hospital which has since been such a refuge to me, and which has given me such care and kindness.¶ I don't know how I shall get along without that cheerful little person to do my bits of shopping. She used to go to dress sales and telephone me to "hurry down", if she thought there was anything there that I would like. I almost never went away in the summer that she did not come in and help to do my packing for me. But there is no use in trying to enumerate all these things. I shall miss her gay little voice and her jolly little ways of being kind. Her "saleswoman" experience at Lord & Taylor's made her such an easy, comfortable person to shop with. She always had just the right manner with the sales people and her transactions with them never tired her a bit, whereas I usually get very tired if I go shopping alone.
I will ask you, Irene, to send this letter and the enclosure on to Carrie10 and Mary11, for I know they will be interested to know that things look so cheerful for Mary Virginia and her doctor husband.
Lovingly Willie FROM CATHER 570 PARK AVE.12, NEW YORK CITY2 Mrs. C. W. Weisz1, 3270 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago13, Illinois. NEW YORK,N.Y.2 MAR 1 1942 230 PM Mary VirginiaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1575.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1575
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one typewritten envelope and an enclosed letter from Mary Virginia Auld Mellen to Cather.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irene Miner Weisz 1
- Date letter was written
- February 27, 1942
- Accompanying this letter
-
Includes enclosed letter from Mary Virginia Auld Mellen to Cather dated February 6, 1942.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Irene Miner Weisz Papers, 1912-1958 (Midwest MS Cather-Weisz), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
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).
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
Person Annotations
Weisz, Irene Miner (1881-1971). Musician; Cather’s lifelong
friend. Born in Red Cloud, NE, the youngest child of James L.
Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Irene Miner was educated in Red Cloud,
graduating in 1898 and played with the Cather children as part of the play
town of Sandy Point and in amateur theatricals. She studied piano with local
teachers, such as Mrs. P.E.B. Sill, then went to the Chicago College of
Music from 1899 to 1901. She met clerk Charles Weisz, later president of the
A.F. Shaw insurance company, there; they married in late 1915, settling in
Chicago. She visited Red Cloud frequently, but also travelled in the
American West and then to Europe in 1921 and around the world in 1934.
Cather corresponded with Irene Miner Weisz for many years and sometimes
stayed with her in Chicago when travelling to and from the West. My Ántonia is dedicated to Irene, model for Nina
Harling in the novel, and to her sister Carrie Miner Sherwood.
Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”).
Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld
and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School
in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for
admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B.
in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found
work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930,
probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation
Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the
library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont
branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933
Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935,
Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical
School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College,
she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor
in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s
regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In
Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary
estate.
Mellen, Richard Hager (1909-1957) (“Dick”). American physician; Mary Virginia Auld Mellen’s husband. Born in Vermont to Philip Edwin and Mary Wheaton Hager Mellen, Dick Mellen graduated from Amherst College in 1931, where Cather’s nephew William Thomas Auld was his roommate, and from Harvard Medical School in 1935. The same year he began a residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and married Cather’s niece, Mary Virginia Auld. Cather praised Mary Virginia’s choice of this “Vermont boy” whose family were “just the nicest kind of Vermont people” (#2117). Trained as an orthopedic surgeon, he accepted a position as chief of orthopedic surgery at a hospital in Chattanooga, TN, in 1942, when the previous head left to serve in the military. Almost immediately thereafter, Mellen himself was commissioned as an officer in the Army Medical Corps, serving from 1942 to 1946. In 1946, he and other physicians who had developed expertise during the war founded the American Society for Surgery of the Hand. From 1946 until his death, he was a surgeon at Glockner-Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, CO.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
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.
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).
Place Annotations
