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 am sending you two letters from Mary Virginia3 which will explain why I cannot go out to see you in October.
While I was in cool, clean, Maine4 I made a lovely plan, and I felt well enough to carry it out. I even wrote Mary Virginia about it and asked her to tell no one. But after I got back to hot, dirty New York2 and found my apartment5 shrouded under a whole summer’s dust, I had to fall to work in earnest. We6 have no regular maid and hire such poor help as is possible nowadays. I don’t think I have done so much physical work since my early days on Bank Street7. My courage about travel ebbed with my vitality. When we returned to town, just before Labor Day, we were held up in Boston8 for one week waiting for railway accommodations from Boston to New York - a journey of five hours. In the Boston station there was a large poster which read: REMEMBER! TRAVEL USED TO BE A PLEASURE, NOW IT IS A HARDSHIP. I certainly found that true this summer.
Mary Virginia has been wanting to come back to New York for some time, and I want
very much to see her. Through all the many years she lived in New York she was a
great help to me in countless little ways, and I have missed her dreadfully. When
I
was in the hospital9 for amy gall bladder operation, and for weeks afterward when I was in bed at
home, she was the one member of my family who wrote me constantly - and always such
gay little letters. She repeatedly offered to come then, at twenty-four hours notice,.
bBut I was really too weak and ill to enjoy her. When you are as sick as
that, pleasant excitement is almost as
bad for you as disaster,.
sSo I had Miss Lewis6 telegraph her
not to come. Roscoe10 is not very strong, you
know, and I didn’t let him know that I had had an operation until I was very much
on
the mend.
I want you to know that I did count on having a little visit with you this fall, and I felt strong enough to undertake the travel when I wrote Mary Virginia from Maine. But the difficulties of getting an apartment cleaned and of getting enough to eat have taken a good deal of the energy out of me.
I wonder, my dear Carrie, whether you ever received a long letter11 I sent you before I went away for the summer -
a letter telling you about a new English edition of “My
Antonia”12, etc. Perhaps I may have sounded a little boastful about it, but I felt you would be interested in the
fortunes of a book founded on happy memories which we both cherish.
and I share would interest you.
Perhaps you sent that envelope and its contents on to Irene13. But Irene, you know, almost never answers letters. She sent
me a casket of jewels last Christmas, but she never writes to me.
The news of Willard Crowell’s14 accident has been a great shock to me. I learned of it through the Red Cloud15 paper16. Why should so careful and prudent a man trust his weight to a cleat on the roof! Those cleats are always carelessly nailed on. It seems so out of character for him to meet with such a misfortune. And the recovery from such injuries is so tedious and painful.
Well, Carrie, I have written Mary Virginia that I will be here in October, which
means that I can’t spend that month with you. But I will get to you sometime, if
only you don’t wear yourself out with Red Cross work. Let some of the young people
take over. It’s their turn. Life is pretty
difficult for all of us just now. I spend most of
the morning haggling at markets, trying to get enough to eat. My weight has gone
down five pounds again. Since I have been home I have done more cleaning and
housework with my own back and hands that than I have ever done in my life—except in the early days on
Bank street when I painted the furniture and oiled the floors! Just now I’m
pretty tired.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1638.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1638
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto only of first leaf and handwritten and typewritten on recto and verso of second leaf. The second leaf has a section cut out of the middle, but a piece of paper has been pasted to it to take the place of the removed section, on which Cather has continued the letter.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carrie Miner Sherwood1
- Date letter was written
- September 18, 1943
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
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.
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
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).
See #1633.
Person Annotations
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.
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.
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.
Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother.
Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High
School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high
school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of
schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he
married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an
abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret
and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe
became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA,
where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in
the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank
until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several
times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926
trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San
Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle
family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was
one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a
prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
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.
Crowell, Willard (1885-1963). Webster County farmer. Born in Indiana, Willard Crowell came to Webster County after 1900, probably to join his elder brothers Henry and Omer; he lived and farmed in the Batin area from 1910 into the 1930s. He and his wife, Adelma (known as Lulu), had four children, Clarence, Robert, Howard, and Geraldine. Crowell was elected sheriff in the 1930s. He also helped Cather manage Webster County properties she owned or had mortgages on; they sometimes had differences of opinion on these business matters, but she was concerned when he had suffered a disabling fall in August 1943.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser
