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 |
It is late to be answering your letter of December 27th, but I have kept it in a portfolio of letters that “must be answered”. That means letters which I do not have to answer, but which I wish to answer.
The notice of Charlie Platt’s3 death in the Red Cloud4 paper5 made me turn to your December letter again. I am glad you had those pleasant days with him and his flowers last summer, and I am sure that you will often remember that visit with him. My old friends in Red Cloud are thinning out so fast that I almost dread to open the home paper. Your Uncle Sylvester6's death was a shock to me. He was a classmate of mine down in the South Ward school7 a thousand years ago.
Is the Amboy mill8 still running; I wonder? The splendid pictures9 published10 in the Omaha World-Herald11, which you sent me four years ago, I keep safely pasted in a crazy sort of scrapbook full of pictures from all over the world. I had hoped to go out to Red Cloud this autumn just past, but I wasn’t very well and I dreaded the emotional shock of so many changes there. It is great fun to “feel things hard” and get big thrills out of everything that comes along. But when you are older, those same things cut too deep- - - one hasn’t the old vitality to meet them with.
Please give your father12 and mother13 my warmest regards when next you see them. I always remember how very fond of your mother my mother14 was.
I wonder whether you have happened to read young John
Hersey’s15 book, “A Bell for Adano”16. It
seems to me the best thing that a young writer has put out in a long while. Young
writers nearly always fall down on the Italians - it is the most dangerous ground
they can ever tread! Hersey’s Italians are just like ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩the kind I have lived among in little
towns. Furthermore, he doesn’t find it necessary to have a hectic love story. The
inconclusive relation between the lonely "Mr.“Mister Major”17 and the shady Italian girl18 seems to me just right - and rather
sweet. I don’t often go to ‘sell’ a new book, but the recognition of integrity
(literary morality) in a young writer does make the hair on the back of my neck
stand up a little.
Thank you for your good friendly letter, dear Josephine, and I hope all is well with you and yours.
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1664.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1664
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Josephine Frisbie1
- Date letter was written
- April 6, 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
Red Cloud's South Ward School, at Walnut and Division streets, opened in late 1885, with Eva King as the principal. Willa Cather attended this school in its first year.
The Frisbie family ran a flour mill in Amboy, NE, a few miles north of Red Cloud, from the 1890s until 1948.
The 25 August 1940 Omaha World-Herald piece on the Amboy Mill featured photos by World-Herald State Editor Robert Lasch, which included photos of the mill, of Elm Creek, and of one of the owners, Josephine's father Frank Frisbie.
The protagonist of John Hersey's A Bell for Adano (1944) is the American army administer of a town in occupied Italy, Major Victor Joppolo, referred to by the local people as "Mister Major."
One of the characters in John Hersey's A Bell for Adano (1944) is Tina, daughter of one of the fishermen of the town. She is attracted to the American, Major Joppolo, but also wants to know if her boyfriend in the Italian army is still alive.
Person Annotations
Frisbie, Josephine (1903-1996). Teacher; Cather’s Red Cloud acquaintance. Josephine Frisbie was born in Red Cloud, NE, the daughter of Frank and Lora McBride Frisbie; her family ran a flour mill in Amboy, a nearby village. A graduate of the Red Cloud High School and the University of Nebraska (class of 1927), she taught English at Central High School in Omaha, NE, for many years. Her account of her first encounter with Cather at a tea party in Red Cloud in 1927 appeared in the journal Present Day American Literature. The two corresponded occasionally, especially about the Amboy mill. Frisbie was a founding member of the Willa Cather foundation.
Platt, Charles J. (1862-1944) (“Charlie”). Red Cloud lumber dealer. Born in Wisconsin, the eldest son of David M. and Margaret Allen Platt, Charles came to Red Cloud, NE, with his family in 1878. He married May Lindley in 1884; they had no children. Charles took over his father’s lumber yard in 1889, remaining in the business for the rest of his life. He also developed the Platt Addition to Red Cloud in 1909. Cather, who subscribed to the Red Cloud newspapers throughout her life, took note of his death.
Frisbie, Sylvester (1873-1944). Webster County miller. Born in Iowa, a son of Ichabod and Hannah Frisbie, he came with his family to Webster County, NE, in the late 1870s. His father was a miller, first in Red Cloud; he bought the Polley Bros. mill in Amboy, a few miles from Red Cloud, in 1890. Sylvester and his brothers went into the milling business with their father, running it until the last surviving brother, Frank, sold it in 1948. Sylvester married Mary Beal in 1903; they had two children, Howard (born 1905), and Patricia, (born 1914). Cather went to school in Red Cloud with both Sylvester and his brother, Frank.
Frisbie, Frank (1871-after1948). Webster County miller. Born in Iowa, a son of Ichabod and Hannah Frisbie, Frank Frisbie came with his family to Webster County, NE, in the late 1870s. His father was a miller, first in Red Cloud, where Cather went to school with Frank and his brothers. His father bought the Polley Bros. mill in Amboy, a few miles from Red Cloud, in 1890, running it with the help of his sons. Frank married Lora McBride in June 1895. They had one daughter, Josephine, born in 1904, with whom Cather corresponded about the family mill. Frank became the business manager in 1940; he sold the mill in 1948 after his brothers died.
Frisbie, Lora McBride (1868-after 1944). Cather’s Red Cloud acquaintance. Born in Iowa, Lora came to Webster County, NE, in 1870 with her family, who were early settlers. Her father, William T. McBride, died in 1885, and her mother, Sarah Kiser McBride, supported her large family by running a millinery shop. Lora married Frank Frisbie in June 1895, moving from Red Cloud to nearby Amboy, NE, where he worked in his family’s flour milling business. They had one daughter, Josephine, born in 1904, with whom Cather corresponded about the family mill; Cather recalled that Lora had been a favorite of Cather’s mother.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Hersey, John (1914-1993). American author. Born in Tientsin,
China, to American parents, John Hersey moved to the U.S. with his family in
1924 and graduated from Yale University in 1936. From 1937 to 1946, Hersey
worked for Time and Life as a
foreign correspondent in East Asia, Italy, and the Soviet Union. Cather read
and was deeply impressed by Hersey’s first novel, A Bell
for Adano (1944), which won the Pulitzer Prize. Hersey also wrote:
The Wall (1950), Hiroshima
(1946), The Call (1985), and Blues (1987).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser
"Down by the Old Mill Stream," Omaha World-Herald (August 25, 1940)
Omaha World-Herald
A Bell for Adano (1944) by John Hersey
