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 meant to write to you as soon as I received3 my semi-annual statement, but this spring and summer has been a good deal like a nightmare. After various short stays at the Presbyterian Hospital, I finally let Dr. Allen Whipple4 take out my gall bladder and appendix on the 24th of July. The operation was a grand success, but the recovery from it is a long hard road to travel. The intense heat and humidity has been very much against me. I went into the hospital weighing one hundred and twenty-two pounds and I now weigh one hundred and ten pounds. This is an uncomfortable weight, chiefly because one's whole wardrobe is wrecked. Gowns for the four seasons, and for morning, noon and night, are perfectly useless. One is so destitute of apparel that one doesn't know where to begin the reconstruction. I hope to go up to the Red Lion Inn, at Stockbridge5, for all of October, but so far I have not been able to do any more than walk around the block.
Before this summer, I had not been in a hospital since I had my tonsils taken out sixteen years ago. If I had realized what a long and listless thing recovering from an abdominal operation is, I think I should have taken my chances without one.
I am wondering whether you will be in New York2 in the late autumn. If you are, will you try to give me an hour or two? There are a lot of things I would like to talk to you about. I ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ haven't energy enough for work just now and I see very, very few people, but I would always be at home6 to you. My telephone number is Regent 4-8354.
Please remember me warmly to Mrs. Greenslet7. I wish I could arrange a meeting with her when she comes to New York.
Faithfully yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1587.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1587
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- September 7, 1942
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MS AM 1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
On 30 April 1942, Greenslet sent Cather her royalty statement as of 30 April, with a check for $4.32 and a promise of a second check for the blance due ($1,043.94) on 1 September.
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
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
Whipple, Allen Oldfather (1881-1963). American surgeon. Dr. Whipple was the surgeon-in-chief at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital from 1921 to 1946. He is famous for inventing the pancreatoduodenectomy (the Whipple procedure), an innovative surgical procedure for treating patients with pancreatic cancer.
Greenslet, Ella Stoothoff Hulst (1873-1964). American author. Born in Brooklyn, NY, to the Rev. George W. Hulst, a Dutch Reformed minister, and Magdalene Stoothoff Hulst, Ella Hulst graduated from Vassar College in 1896. She married Ferris Greenslet in 1903, and they had two children, Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). In 1914 Houghton Mifflin published The Nightingale: A Lark under the name Ellenor Stoothoff, Ella Greenslet’s humorous novel about a woman who escapes her responsibilities as a wife by taking a motor trip through Italy. She also published work under the pseudonym Nancy Moore.
Place Annotations
