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 |
The Yale Review3 is the one magazine I do get
regularly; because, as your old Vermonter said, it doesn't come "too reg'elar." I
had read your article4 (excuse new pen) before the
copy you sent me arrived, and I wanted to write you you about it. But what is there to say? What is there to say about
anything that is happening now? There is no spot on the earth's surface that one can
rest one's mind against any more. I knew you had many ties in France5 and I have often wanted to write to you.
But again, what is there to say? Besides, I got a little behind with life. I allowed
the celebrated Doctor Whipple6 to "remove",
no, to take
out, my appendix and gall bladder7 last July. August and September were nasty
months to recover in: horrible heat, and the humidity of Singapore8. Bad news from every quarter of the
world always pouring in. I got so behind in my correspondence, in normal vitality,
in weight (16 pounds) that I thought I could never
catch up again. Slowly one comes to life again—but one wonders why, when most of the
world one loved is being destroyed and so many of the friends one loved have been
destroyed. We wont live to see the beautiful new world they talk about emerge. We see only a
thousand years of glorious endeavour wrecked and wiped
out. Anyhow, I don't want to live in the new world they promise us—it's not to my
taste.
Isn't Churchill9 a great old boy? Isn't England10 a great old land?
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1624.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1624
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher1
- Date letter was written
- March 31 [1943]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by the publication of Canfield Fisher's "The Knot Hole" in spring 1943 and Cather's gall bladder surgery in July 1942.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Dorothy Canfield Collection (MSS-975), University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Burlington, VT
Individual Annotations
Cather struggled with illness throughout the spring of 1942, and her gall-bladder and appendix were removed on 24 July 1942 by Dr. Allen Whipple at the Presbyterian Hospital (#2375).
Person Annotations
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield (1879-1958). American novelist; educational
and social reformer. Dorothy Canfield and Willa Cather became
friends in 1891 at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where Canfield's
father, James Canfield, had come to serve as Chancellor. The family moved to
Columbus, OH, in 1895 when James Canfield assumed the presidency of Ohio
State University, from which Dorothy graduated in 1899. She then followed
her father to New York City, where he became Librarian of Columbia
University, and she pursued graduate study in Romance Languages at the
University of Paris and Columbia, from which she earned a PhD in 1904. On
Cather’s first trip to Europe, she spent time in France and England with
Canfield, including an awkward visit to the home of poet A.E. Housman.
Cather derived the central character of “The Profile” (1907) from Canfield’s
friend Evelyn Osborne, whom Cather had met in Europe. Cather and Canfield
became estranged for more than a decade because Canfield objected to the
story’s planned inclusion in The Troll Garden (1905).
Canfield married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and their primary residence
was Arlington, VT. Canfield Fisher had spent 1916-1918 in France engaging in
war relief work, and Cather’s consultation with her about the accuracy of
her depiction of wartime France in One of Ours (1922)
led them to reconcile. In 1925 Canfield Fisher became a founding member of
the Book of the Month Club selection committee. She published her novels
(most of them very popular) under the name Dorothy Canfield but her various
nonfiction works as Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
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.
Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-1965). British
politician and writer. Son of Lord Henry Randolph Spencer
Churchill and Jeannette Jerome Churchill, daughter of a New York financier,
Churchill had a long career in British diplomacy and politics, culminating
in his service as Prime Minister during World War II. Cather was
enthusiastic about Churchill's leadership during the war, following his
speeches, reading biographies of him, and attributing his shrewdness to his
American mother.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Yale Review
"The Knot Hole," Yale Review (Spring 1943) by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
