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 can't give any definite plans as to where I will be in the early summer, but I am now quite sure that I will not be going West3 in the middle June. I expect, indeed, to go straight North to a cottage4 in Northeast Harbor, Maine5, where I have often been very comfortable and where I can work a little.
I warmly agree with you about the benefits of our young people going abroad, especially to France6. But I am sure you will agree with me that one has to choose the kind of young people. Once when I was in France for a year7, I had an opportunity to observe some of the young Americans who flocked about Gertrude Stein8. One couldn't very well tell whether they were youths of promise or not; they certainly thought they were, and fearlessly stated that opinion. But not one of them in the years that have gone by has done anything that took hold of one very hard. One of them, Steinbeck9 I think, wrote a play set in Norway10, called "The Moon is Down"11. I read that with great interest and felt a real throb of life in it. I was a little disappointed when the last act and the climax of the play was a long quotation from Plato12. The quotation was very fine . . . belonged where the American put it and was effectively introduced. But to me it threw a backward shadow on the earlier part of the play. Perhaps, if I were to read it again, I would feel differently.
What I mean is, that it takes the right kind of young American to go to France. He must have character and depth, and a passion for the things that lie deep behind French history and French art. I wish I ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ could have had a comfortable boardinghouse near Chartres13 when Henry Adams14 used to prowl about the cathedral. Young people who flocked about Gertrude Stein were a rather soft lot. Some of them wore bracelets!! I hope you have had better luck with your students who have gone over.
As soon as I have arranged my dates for Northeast Harbor, Maine, and Nova Scotia15, I will certainly let you know, Mr. Brown.
Faithfully yours, Willa Cather Professor E. K. Brown1 5432 East View Park Chicago 1516 Illinois NEW YORK, N.Y.2 APR 14 1947 630 PM FROM CATHER 570 PARK AVE.17, NEW YORK CITY2Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1758.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1758
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto only of both. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- E. K. Brown 1
- Date letter was written
- April 12, 1947
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Edward Killoran Brown Collection of Willa Cather (YCAL MSS 490), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Individual Annotations
Cather described a plan to travel to California in #1749.
Asticou Inn (Northeast Harbor, ME): Originally built in 1883 by A. C. Savage, the Asticou Inn was destroyed by a fire in 1899, but rebuilt by 1901. When the war and health considerations made travel to Grand Manan impossible, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis stayed at the Asticou in the 1940s, occupying a small cottage on the grounds of the inn.
Cather was in France from April through November 1923.
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
Person Annotations
Brown, E. K. (1905-1951). Canadian scholar and literary critic.
Educated at the University of Toronto and the University of Paris,
Brown was an English professor at the University of Toronto, Cornell
University, and the University of Chicago. Among his many articles and
books, Brown is probably best known for his influential On
Canadian Poetry (1943). He and Cather began corresponding in 1937
after Brown sent her his essay “Willa Cather and the West.” Edith Lewis
subsequently commissioned him to write an authorized biography of Cather,
completed by Leon Edel after Brown’s early death and published by Knopf in
1953.
Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946). American writer and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, daughter of Daniel Stein and Amelia Keyser Stein, Gertrude Stein grew up in Oakland, CA. In 1898 she graduated from Radcliffe College, where she had studied under psychologist William James, who encouraged her to go to medical school. However, she dropped out after four years and went to live abroad with her brother Leo, settling in Paris in 1903, where they collected modern art. In 1907 Gertrude Stein met her life partner, Alice B. Toklas; they lived together from 1910, hosting a famous artistic and literary salon, until Stein’s death. Although much of Stein’s writing was considered avant-garde and inaccessible, her Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) became popular, leading to a speaking tour of the U.S. in 1934-1935. It is unclear if Cather and Stein ever met, either in Paris or the U.S., although they had friends in common, such as Mabel Dodge Luhan and Carl Van Vechten.
Steinbeck, John Ernst (1902-1968). American writer. Born in Salinas, CA, son of John Ernst Steinbeck and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, John Steinbeck worked on farms during school vacations. He attended Stanford University, leaving without a degree in 1925, and went to New York to write. He returned to California in 1928, where he married the first of his three wives, Carol Henning, in 1930. His first novel was published in 1929; subsequent novels, many about working people in California and the Monterey area, achieved critical and popular success, and several have been filmed. His greatest success was with The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Cather read his novel The Moon is Down (1942) which was made into a film the same year. Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
Plato (c. 429-347 BCE). Athenian philosopher. Born into a wealthy family of Athens, Greece, Plato served in the military and was, for a short time, active in Athenian politics. As a young man, he probably knew Socrates, a friend of his uncle, and Socrates is a major character in many of the dialogues which Plato wrote, which explore philosophical, ethical, and political ideas. Central to Plato’s thought was the idea of eternal and immutable Forms, of which the things of this world are reflections. Cather mentions John Steinbeck’s use of a passage from Plato’s Phaon in which Socrates presents arguments for the immortality of the soul.
Adams, Henry (1838-1918). American historian. Born in Boston,
MA, into the Brahmin class, Henry Adams graduated from Harvard University in
1859 and worked for his father as a private secretary, Charles Francis
Adams, who served as minister to England during the Civil War. Adams was a
correspondent for several American periodicals, including The Nation. Appointed to teach medieval history at Harvard, Adams
became editor of the North American Review in 1870.
Adams wrote: Chapters of Erie and Other Essays
(1871), Democracy, an American Novel (1880), The Life of Albert Gallatin (1879), John Randolph (1882), and a nine-volume History
of the United States of America (1889-91). He privately published
and distributed his memoir The Education of Henry
Adams in 1907; published for general distribution posthumously in
1918, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1919. Cather read
and enjoyed Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartes (1904)
(#273).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Moon Is Down (1942) by John Steinbeck
