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 |
10 P.M., Jan. 30th,
Rec'd in N.Y.
1/31/45 ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ January 31, 1945. Mr. Carl J. Weber1 100 Morningside Drive New York 27, N. Y.2
Dear Mr. Weber:
Please disregard any suggestion I may have made that you trace3 some of the erroneous statements about my visit to Housman4. The world is full of erroneous statements, and I notice that they seldom do any one serious harm.
"By misdirections find directions out."? That
is a successful method, until it is carried too far. In your first letter
you stated that you had heard that I called upon Housman, and that "probably
he was rude, as always." I replied to your letter only because I thought
silence might mean acquiescence to your supposition that the man was rude.
He wasn't rude at all, but very courteous. I felt that I should say so.
In answer5 to your second letter I went a good deal farther than I should have gone, and told you exactly where I met Housman and how I obtained his address.
Now comes your third letter, which is practically a questionnaire. To these
questions I do not feel that it is incumbent upon me to reply. You even ask
me to expose a second person6 to a
cross-examination. After all, this is not a case for the Federal Bureau of
Information
Investigation. One can dilate upon
one's personal experiences, or one can be reserved about them.
I am leaving for Mexico City7 within a few days8, and this is an opportune time to bring our correspondence to a close.
Very sincerely yours, Willa Cather Mr. Carl J. Weber1, 100 Morningside Drive, New York 27, N. Y.2 NEW YORK, N.Y.2 JAN 30 1945 10-PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1694.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1694
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Carl Jefferson Weber1
- Date letter was written
- January 31, 1945
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection, Colby College, Miller Library, Waterville, ME
Individual Annotations
In #1691 Cather asked Weber to find out from where Neilson Abeel, the author of the Forum article on Housman, had received his information.
See #1691.
By the time she wrote #1706, Cather had given up plans to go to Mexico City in June.
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.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Place Annotations
