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 |
You3 have not heard from me for a long
while. In the middle of the summer my brother Roscoe4 died at his home in Colusa,
California5. He died in his sleep, and—his death was the result of a heart lesion which occurred in 1941,
when I went to California6 to see him - with
my right hand7 tied up in Doctor Ober8's brace. We had a long, happy visit
together at that time. Since then he had been fairly well and able to carry on his
business as president of the First Savings Bank of Colusa.
Since the shock and sorrow of my brother’s death, I have been ill and I seem to be only half of myself. This was the brother with whom I was going all over the West and Southwest when you first knew me. For many years I spent all my summer vacations9 with him and his wife10 on his ranch in Wyoming11, and making camping trips into the mountains. I was working in New York2. But the most real and interesting part of my life through all those years, I spent in the West with my brother12. He made many short trips to New York in the winter, so that we could be together for a few days. I think, in all the time we lived apart, a fortnight seldom went by without an exchange of letters. Two letters from him, jolly and gay, reached me after the telegram, telling me of his death, came from his wife.
I am writing all this simply because I feel that this has made a great change not only in my life but in me, and I want a few, a very few, of my old friends to know it.
I came home from Maine13 as soon as I could manage it, but I have been kept busy in answering letters from old friends in the Northwest and Southwest who knew me and my brother together.
Please do not reply to this letter. I don’t want you to write to me (such letters are hard to write and hard to read. I only want you to understand.
Affectionately WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1722.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1722
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant1
- Date letter was written
- November 21, 1945
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Literary and Historical Manuscripts (MA 1602 (72)), Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Cather sent the same identical typed letter, with some manuscript variations, to several recipients (see #1725, #1726, #1727, and #2932).
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.
Willa Cather visited Roscoe Cather and his family in Wyoming in 1916 and 1927.
In addition to two visits to Wyoming, Willa Cather spent time with Roscoe Cather and members of his family in Denver (1925), New Mexico (1926), and San Francisco (1941), and their visits to Red Cloud sometimes overlapped.
Person Annotations
Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley (1881-1965). American journalist and
author. Born and raised in Winchester, MA, a suburb of Boston,
Elizabeth Sergeant graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1903. In 1910,
Pauline Goldmark sent her to Cather at McClure’s
Magazine with a proposed article, published as “Toilers of the
Tenements,” and Cather and Sergeant became lifelong friends. In 1914
Sergeant became one of the original contributors to the New Republic. While on assignment in France in 1917 she was
injured by a land mine; her injury and recuperation were the subject of Shadow-Shapes: Journal of a Wounded Woman (1920). She
moved to New Mexico in 1920 and became involved with the Taos artists colony
and advocated for Native American rights, but her work frequently took her
back to New York City. She included Cather in her collection of portraits of
prominent Americans, Fire under the Andes (1927).
Sergeant studied with Carl Jung and Toni Woolf in Zurich, Switzerland, from
1929 to 1931. When she returned to the U.S. she sold her house in New Mexico
and settled in New York City, writing many magazine articles about authors
and psychological topics. She later moved to Rockland County, NY. Cather’s
letters to Sergeant comment frequently on both her own and Sergeant’s
writing and testify to a strong and lively friendship maintained despite
Sergeant's being a committed reformer and far to the left of Cather
politically and culturally. Sergeant’s Willa Cather: A
Memoir (1953) includes extensive paraphrases of Cather’s letters to
her.
Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother.
Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High
School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high
school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of
schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he
married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an
abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret
and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe
became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA,
where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in
the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank
until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several
times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926
trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San
Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle
family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was
one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a
prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
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.
Cather, Meta Schaper (1884-1973). Cather’s sister-in-law.
Meta Schaper was born in Plattsmouth, NE, the second daughter of
Robert and Julia Ramke Schaper. After graduating from the University of
Nebraska in Lincoln 1903, Meta Schaper taught at Havelock High School in her
hometown of Havelock, NE (now part of Lincoln). She met Roscoe Cather when
teaching in Fullerton, NE, and they married in 1907. They moved to Lander,
WY, in 1909, where she gave birth to three daughters, Virginia and twins
Margaret and Elizabeth. The family moved to Casper, WY, in 1921 and Colusa,
CA, in 1937. Willa visited Meta and Roscoe’s family in Wyoming several times
and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926 trip to
New Mexico with Meta, Roscoe, and their children and a 1941 San Francisco
vacation with Roscoe and Meta. Meta and Willa remained friends until Willa’s
death.
Place Annotations
