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 so sorry that you went to the trouble of writing me in detail. I should have
written to you through Henry Holt3 as
soon as I received Holt's announcement. But it is always unpleasant to make
refusals, and one instinctively puts
these unpleasant duties aside. I certainly
appreciate your interest and Dorothy
Canfield4's. I realize that you pay me a freiiendly compliment when you
include me in the list for AMERICAN PORTRAITS5. I will
try to tell you briefly why I do
can not accept this friendly invitation. I
honestly think that I do not belong in this list for AMERICAN PORTRAITS. Nearly all
the names that appear in this list are the names of public persons, or of persons who have done very
conspicuous public service, and have effectively interested themselves in activities
for the betterment of our society. You see, I have done nothing of this sort. I
belong to no clubs. I never go to public meetings. I do not even lecture.
I belong to a large family group. My brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and
my
personal friends take all my leisure time. Some twelve or fifteen years ago I was
one of the twelve unfortunate women6,
selected by a distinguished committee7,
who appeared in full page portraits8 in Good Housekeeping9. For me the result was a
correspondence that was very burdensome. Hundreds of letters poured in upon me, and
a great many of them required courteous personal answers. Old schoolmates, distant
relatives, kindly people whom I had known
who knew one in some part of the United States10. These letters can not be answered
by form letters. From this experience I learned a lesson. The better the
advertising, the worse it is for me. It disturbs my life and my work too much. And
this is why I can not give the sittings which you so kindly request.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1667.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1667
- Contents
- Documents is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Enit Zerner Kaufman1
- Date letter was written
- May 15, 1944
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Enit Kaufman, University of Texas, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, TX
Individual Annotations
Henry Holt and Company, a book publishing company based in New York City, founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. Henry Holt and Company were the publishers of American Portraits.
The results of Good Housekeeping's contest to select the "twelve greatest living American women" ran from January to December 1931, with Cather's feature appearing in the September issue. The other honorees were Cecilia Beaux, Jane Addams, Grace Abbot, Martha Berry, Carrie Chapman Catt, Grace Coolidge, Minnie Maddern Fiske, Helen Keller, Dr. Florence Rena Sabin, Ernestine Schumann-Heink, and Dr. Mary E. Woolley.
The panel of judges for the contest included Henry Van Dyke, Newton D. Baker, Otto H. Kahn, Booth Tarkington, and Bruce Barton.
Person Annotations
Kaufman, Enit Zerner (1899-1961). Austrian American painter. Zerner, who was born in Czechoslovakia, became known as a portraitist in Vienna and Paris. She married Edward Kaufman, son of Isidor Kaufman, an Austrian painter of Jewish subjects. She, her husband, and her father fled to New York in 1939, where she continued to paint. Kaufman asked Cather to sit for a portrait to be included in American Portraits (1946), with text by Cather’s friend, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, but Cather declined.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
American Portraits (1946) by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
"Willa Cather: Who Believes There is Nothing in the World Finer to Write about Than Life, Just as It Is, and the People, Just as They Are," Good Housekeeping (September 1930) by Alice Booth
Good Housekeeping
