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 |
How lovely of you, dearest Marie1, to keep up May3's old greeting to me with the Christmas wreath! It not only brings me memories of her, but news of you. It tells me that you are well and about, and that you cherish the circle of the friends4 on Murray Hill5—those of us who are left. I am ashamed to be so tardy in thanking you, when 2the fragrance of that wreath has perfumed my sitting room6 for so many days. I tried to telegraph you the day after Christmas, but the operator refused to send any message that had not to do with "War or Business". Our lives have come to that!
Last night I took Ethel7 to the Russian restaurant for dinner. She had just returned from Washington8 and looked very tired. She has been with 3her daughter Ethel9 for four or five weeks.
On July 24th
Dr. Whipple10 took out my gall bladder
and appendix at the Presbyterian Hospital. The operation was highly
successful (no drainage tubes or any of those horrid things) but afterward I had four pretty uncomfortable
months. I lost sixteen pounds, and I for
hated every form of nourishment. All that is behind me now. About a month
ago I began to enjoy food and, as it were, to meet up with my own
personality again. It had lain in some storage
house somewhere during all that time. I never had an hour in which I felt
like myself in mind or body. Then, presto! I wakened up.
This is a poor letter, dear, (and a devilish pen) but it takes to you loving thoughts and happy, happy memories.
Devotedly Willa Miss Mary Willard1 864 Francisco Street San Francisco11 California NEW YORK N.Y.2 JAN 10 1943 430 PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1610.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1610
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mary Willard 1
- Date letter was written
- January 10 [1943]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's reference to her gall bladder surgery, which took place in July 1942.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Harrison Griswold Dwight Papers, 1890-1959 (MA.00012), Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, Amherst, MA
Individual Annotations
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
Willard, Mary (1857-1944) (“Marie”). Elisa May Willard’s sister. Born in Vermont, Mary Willard lived, for a time, in Pittsburgh, PA, with her sister Elisa May Willard, Willa Cather’s close friend during her years in the city; however, it is not clear whether Mary lived in Pittsburgh before Cather’s move to New York City in 1906. The sisters later moved to California. Mary died in San Francisco, CA.
Willard, Elisa May (1868-1941) (“May”). Librarian; Cather’s Pittsburgh friend. Born in Vermont, Willard graduated from Smith College in 1894, attended the New York State Library School from 1894-1895, and then moved to Pittsburgh to work at the Carnegie Library, where she served as Reference Librarian for twenty-two years. May Willard, Ethel Litchfield, Isabelle McClung, and Cather formed, as she wrote in a condolence letter to May’s sister Mary, a “little group” that “melted together” (#1540). Willard retired in 1917 and moved to California. Although only one letter from Cather to Willard is extant, they remained friends, and Willard visited Cather in New York City. She died in San Francisco, CA.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Litchfield, Ethel Herr Jones (1876-after 1967). Pianist; Cather’s Pittsburgh friend. Born in New Brighton, PA, near Pittsburgh, to the Reverend David and Sarah Jones, Ethel traveled to Vienna, Austria, at age twenty to study with Theodor Leschetizky with the aim of becoming a concert pianist. However, Dr. Lawrence Litchfield followed her there to court her. They married in Vienna in 1898 and returned to Pittsburgh. They had three children, Ethel Carver (1899), Lawrence, Jr. (1900), and Margaret (1903). While her children were young, she largely gave up performing but entertained visiting musicians in their home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, where Cather met them in 1902. Cather, May Willard, Ethel Litchfield, and Isabelle McClung formed, as Cather would later recall, a “little group” that “melted together” (#1540). It has been suggested that Litchfield’s decision to give up her musical career for marriage informed Cather’s story “The Garden Lodge” (1905). As Litchfield’s children grew older, however, she returned to the concert stage. After the 1930 death of her husband, she moved to New York City, where she dined frequently with Cather and Edith Lewis and enjoyed listening with them to recordings of Yehudi and Hepzibah Menuhin.
Van Boetzelaer, Ethel Carver Litchfield (1899-after 1967). Daughter of Ethel Herr Jones and Lawrence Litchfield. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Ethel Carver Litchfield married Willem Baron Van Boetzelaer in Paris, France, in 1923. Willa Cather, who met the Litchfields in their home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh in 1902, attended the wedding. After marrying, the couple lived in Copenhagen, where Willem Van Boetzelaer was employed in the diplomatic service. Ethel Van Boetzelaer was appointed Queen Wilhelmina’s lady in waiting in 1942.
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.
Place Annotations
