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 can eat anything now and am beginning to enjoy food after four months of hating it.
December 26th Irene1, you darling!There are some presents one admires, some one is doubtful about, and very few that one runs to meet with open arms. Why, yours is simply a mercy to me! We3 have been buying the most miserable substitutes4 for jam. Orange marmalade full of ginger, grape jelly made of grape juice and gelatine. You have saved my afternoon tea from distruction.
2You see, we made no provision of any kind this summer. Although I paid something over fifty dollars a day at the hospital for my room and two nurses and food, I could not eat their food at all. They soon stopped trying to make me eat it, for it came right up again and spoiled all their lovely blankets. So Edith had all my food, except my breakfast, cooked here5 at 3 home and carried it out to me at 145th street in a taxi. So she had no time to do anything in preparation for the Winter.
December 27This note was interrupted by the grim necessity to wash a lot of dishes. Our
excellent housekeeper6 has been ill at
home and unable to work since October 11th. We both went away to
Williamstown Mass.7 for a month,
but when we returned she was still unable to work. Our faithful cleaning
woman of many years and a very good house man come for two two days a
week and keep us very clean, but we taxi about town2 for the our food most
of the time. Quite often we get a grand dinner here at home. This way of
life is not helpful toward putting on weight, which is what I most want to
do. I have come up to one hundred and fifteen, however.
Your precious box will at least give me a good tea every afternoon.—And it is lovely to look at. Like an old Russian Jewel box. I opened the orange marmalade this afternoon. Oh how good it tasted, after all the substitute stuff I've been having! Thank you darling, from a loving heart.
Willie Mrs. C. W. Weisz1 3270 Lakes Shore Drive Chicago8 Ill. NEW YORK N.Y. STA Y2 DEC 28 1942 8 PM JamInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1605.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1605
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Irene Miner Weisz 1
- Date letter was written
- December 26 and 27 [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
Sugar was rationed during World War II.
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.
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.
Rabouin, Edith Dunbar Talbot (1884-after 1942). Domestic worker for Cather and Lewis. Born in Springfield, MA, one of a pair of twin girls, to Zebedee Talbot and Nellie Plummer Talbot, Edith Dunbar Talbot married Leonce Rabouin in 1906 in Cambridge, MA. The couple had five children and were living in New York by 1920. Rabouin was working for Willa Cather and Edith Lewis as a housekeeper and cook as early as 1941; they particularly appreciated her skill as a cook. After her husband’s death in the fall of 1942, Rabouin fell ill, and it is not clear whether she subsequently returned to work for Cather and Lewis.
Place Annotations
