Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 was delighted to hear from you at Christmas time. I am such a poor correspondent that I deeply appreciate the old friends who remember me. I do like to know where you and your sons4 are, on this globe which has become so small. Of course, I approve of your quitting your job. Everybody’s job is either wiped out or interfered with these days. My principal correspondence is with homesick boys, formerly from the West and Southwest, but now in foxholes somewhere. When the Government put several books of mine in the Armed Forces edition5, it let me in for a lot of trouble. But that is what Governments are for, isn’t it?
I had a cool summer, working pleasantly and not too hard, at Northeast Harbor, Maine6. My right hand, which was hurt so badly7 four years ago, gives down on me occasionally, and then I have to quit work and tie it up in Doctor Ober8's brace for five or six weeks. This is one of the tied-up periods, and that is why I am not writing to you by hand.
My warmest greetings to you and Mr. Whicher9. Willa Cather Mrs. George Whicher1 Amity Street Amherst3 Massachusetts NEW YORK, N.Y.2 JAN 30 1945 10-PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1696.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1696
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Harriet Fox Whicher1
- Date letter was written
- January 31, 1945
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 2419 (27)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
The Council on Books in Wartime sponsored the Armed Services Editions to boost morale among the troops during World War II. The volumes were small paperback volumes, 5 by 3 inches, printed on lightweight paper. Only three of Cather's novels were published in Armed Services Editions.
Cather significantly injured a tendon in her right thumb in November 1940 after signing hundreds of copies of her novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Her right hand was immobilized for months afterward, and the pain recurred often in later years. Dr. Frank Ober built a brace specifically for her hand in 1941.
Person Annotations
Whicher, Harriet Fox (1890-1966). Mount Holyoke College English
Professor. Harriet Fox earned a BA from Barnard College at
Columbia University in New York City in 1910 and an MA from Columbia in
1911. She was an instructor in the Barnard College and Smith College English
Departments before she began a long career teaching English at Mount Holyoke
College in South Hadley, MA, from 1918 to 1944. Her long friendship with
Cather began in 1922 when she and her husband, George Frisbie Whicher, met
Cather at the Bread Loaf School of English, a summer program of Middlebury
College in Vermont. Cather enjoyed the company of their two sons, John Fox
Whicher and Stephen Emerson Whicher, and she corresponded with Harriet and
George until late in life. After Harriet Whicher’s retirement from teaching
she worked as a freelance copy editor at McGraw Hill and edited a collection
of her deceased husband’s essays and speeches.
Whicher, John Fox (1919-1972) (“Jack”). American attorney. Born in New York City, younger son of George and Harriet Fox Whicher, John Whicher grew up in Amherst, MA, where his father taught at Amherst College. After graduating from college, John became an actor briefly before enlisting in the U.S. Army in April 1942; he rose to the rank of captain. After the war he became an attorney. Later he and his wife, Susan Whicher, settled in Dallas, TX, where he died. Cather knew John Whicher through her friendship with his parents.
1608Whicher, Stephen Emerson (1915-1961). American professor of literature. Born in New York City, eldest son of George and Harriet Fox Whicher, Stephen Whicher graduated in 1936 with honors from Amherst College, where his father taught. He received his MA from Columbia University in 1937, and his PhD from Harvard in 1942. He married Elizabeth Trickey in 1940, and they had four children. He served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, resuming his academic career after the war. Whicher taught at Swarthmore College and Cornell University. Cather knew Stephen Whicher through her friendship with his parents.
Ober, Frank (1881-1960). Boston Orthopedic surgeon. Born in Mt. Desert, ME, Ober graduated from Tufts Medical School in Boston, MA, in 1905. He volunteered for service overseas in 1917 and spent two years as head of the orthopedic section of the U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 5 in France. On his return he rose from junior member of the visiting staff to chief orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital in Boston and served as a clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School. About once a month he traveled to Philadelphia, PA, and New York City to see patients in consultation. In 1941, Cather was referred to Ober for her troubles with her right hand, and he prescribed and had constructed for her a metal and leather splint for her forearm and hand.
Whicher, George Frisbie (1889-1954). Amherst College English
professor. After receiving a PhD from Columbia University in
1913, Whicher taught at Amherst College, his alma mater, from 1915 to 1954.
The most notable of his many books and translations was a critical biography
of Emily Dickinson, This Was a Poet (1938). Whicher
sometimes taught at the Bread Loaf School of English, a summer program of
Middlebury College in Vermont. He and his wife, Harriet Fox Whicher, met
Cather there in 1922 when she came to give four lectures about writing.
Cather enjoyed the company of their two sons, John Fox Whicher and Stephen
Emerson Whicher, and she corresponded with Harriet and George until late in
life.
Place Annotations
