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 wonder where the New York2 "Housman3 fan" got his belief. Certainly I cannot remember writing anything about Housman for a Pittsburgh4 newspaper - or for any other newspaper. I had old friends in Pittsburgh and I may have talked to some of them about my very pleasant visit with Housman. Some day I intend to write a careful and accurate account of that visit for persons who are particularly interested. It all happened many years ago, when I was very young and foolish and thought that if one admired a writer very much one had a perfect right to ring his doorbell. On the occasion of that uninvited call - certainly abrupt enough - Housman was not in the least rude, but very courteous and even kind. I judged he was not accustomed to such intrusions, but he certainly made every effort to make one feel at ease.
Very cordially yours, Willa Cather DictatedInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1684.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1684
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carl J. Weber 1
- Date letter was written
- December 12, 1944
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- , Colby College, Miller Library, Waterville, ME
Person Annotations
Weber, Carl Jefferson (1894-1966). American academic. Born in
Baltimore, MD, Carl Weber received a BA (1914) from the Johns Hopkins
University and a BA (1916) and MA (1920) from Oxford University, where he
was a Rhodes Scholar. He joined the English Department of Colby College in
Waterville, ME, in 1919, and remained until his retirement. Weber helped the
Colby Library to develop notable special collections focusing on Thomas
Hardy, Edward Arlington Robinson, Jacob Abbott, and Sarah Orne Jewett, and
he founded the Colby Library Quarterly in 1943. In
1941 he wrote Cather suggesting she might deposit Jewett’s letters at the
Colby Library; although Cather did not reject his proposal outright, she did
not send the letters to Colby and their whereabouts are unknown. Cather also
corresponded with him in 1944 about her 1902 visit to A. E. Housman.
Housman, Alfred Edward (1859-1936) (“A. E.”). British poet and
scholar. Born in Worcestershire, England, the eldest son of a
solicitor and his wife, Housman won a scholarship in 1877 to St. John’s
College, Oxford University, where he studied classics. Although he was a
promising scholar, he failed to obtain his degree and took a job at the
patent office in London. He continued as an independent scholar, and the
brilliance of his work led to his appointment in 1892 as professor of Latin
at University College, London, and in 1911 to Trinity College, Cambridge. He
published A Shropshire Lad (1896), his most famous
collection of poems, at his own expense, but its reputation steadily
increased. Cather discovered Housman’s poems soon after they appeared in the
U.S., and they influenced much of her early poetry. Shropshire was one of
the first destinations on her European trip in 1902, and Housman was one of
the people she most wanted to meet. The meeting was awkward and became the
subject of speculation and stories by others in later years.
Place Annotations
