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 feel ashamed to confess that I haven’t a pen scratch that would be of any use to
Mr. Troxell’s3 collection! I always do
first draft in long hand, and then I copy it myself on the machine, mainly because
typescriptthat shows up my awful weaknesses. Then I have a professional typist4 type my own typed copy in a
different colored ink, because just the different ink and the new spacing on the
page shows up more stupidities. The original handwritten drafts usually got lost or
messed up in some way. Three handwritten manuscripts I did keep complete - two of
them I sold to a collector in England5 and
one to a collector in France6. Whether they
are still in existence, I doubt. I have not heard from the professor7 in Toulouse8 since the war began, and Toulouse has been terribly
bombed. I usually ask the Knopf people to destroy the final typed manuscript, from
which the printers worked, and I suppose they did so. I have travelled about this
blooming continent so much that I simply haven’t had the room to spare for old
manuscripts - and usually I was glad to get rid of them, anyway. I did my darndest
on the proofs, and then forgot.
Lewis, I did so enjoy that evening I spent at your apartment, and I liked Marcella9 right off. I love young people when they are genuine and unaffected - and charming. Why one feels pleased with them? One quite forgets how old one is oneself. The friends10 I see most often are all well under thirty. That seems rather foolish, but if they can stand it, I can!
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1661.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1661
- Contents
- Document is photocopy of one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Sinclair Lewis1
- Date letter was written
- March 22, 1944
- 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
In a 1939 letter (#1455) to Carrie Miner Sherwood, Cather mentioned a scholar at the University of Toulouse who had done a lengthy study of her work which she wished to have translated.
Cather may be alluding to Yehudi, Yaltah, and Hephzibah Menuhin and their spouses, who visited her when they were in New York City.
Person Annotations
Lewis, Sinclair (1885-1951). American novelist. Born
in Sauke Centre, MN, Sinclair Lewis graduated from Yale University in 1908.
Although he published short stories and several novels in the teens, he
achieved critical and popular success with Main
Street (1920), which satirized Midwestern provincialism. On a 1921
lecture tour, he regularly praised Cather’s work. He continued with a string
of popular and critical successes, including Babbitt
(1922), Arrowsmith (1925) (for which he declined the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction), Mantrap (1926), and Elmer Gantry (1927). Even though he depicted One of Ours (1922) as a failure in his New York Evening Post review, Cather invited him to
tea and said she was not “a particle sore at him” (#0624). Although they
infrequently saw each other in person, they remained on good terms, and when
Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for literature,
he praised Cather in his acceptance speech. Lewis was married and divorced
twice, first to Grace Livingston Hegger and then to Dorothy Thompson. Later,
he lived with Rosemary Marcella Powers, whom Cather met. Lewis’s later
career was marred by his alcoholism, which led to his death in Rome,
Italy.
Troxell, Gilbert McCoy (1893-1967). American librarian. Born in Pennsylvania, Gilbert Troxell graduated from Yale University in 1916 and joined the Yale University library by 1920 as an assistant in the purchasing section. He became curator of the American literature collection at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library around 1939. He acquired many manuscripts, letters, and other papers from Sinclair Lewis, who apparently suggested that Willa Cather contact Troxell about her papers. Troxell married Janet Camp, daughter of Walter Camp and niece of William Graham Sumner, who assisted in giving the papers of both men to the Yale libraries.
Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.
Powers, Rosemary Marcella (1921-1985). American actress and agent. Born in Newark, NJ, Marcella Powers graduated from the University of Wisconsin. In 1939 she met Sinclair Lewis, a friend of Willa Cather, and they began a romantic relationship that lasted until 1947. Powers acted in several Broadway plays, edited Good Housekeeping, and worked for the Leland Hayward Literary Agency before owning her own successful literary agency. Willa Cather met Powers in 1944 at Lewis’s apartment and liked her “right off” (#1661).
Place Annotations
