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 would gladly waive ceremony and dine with you tomorrow evening, but an old friend from Chicago4 is staying for supper with me that evening, after tea. Perhaps you can come down here for tea next Friday, the 13th. When I am working hard, as I am now, I do not go out much, but I am always at home and free after four oclock on Fridays. I must certainly manage to see you soon.
Cordially Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1790.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1790
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Hamlin Garland 1
- Date letter was written
- [January 5, 1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather suggests that Garland may come to tea "next Friday, the 13th" and specifies her custom of being "at home" from four o'clock on Fridays. Cather and Lewis began holding teas at Five Bank Street in 1915, which is also the year Garland moved to New York. The date range was narrowed to months falling between 1915 and 1927 that included a Friday the 13th. January 1922 seems the most plausible because reports in the New York City papers placed Garland in town and because other letters testify to Friday teas at Five Bank Street in January 1922 (e.g. #2053, #0570, #0576). Also, this letter may be part of a sequence with #1791, dated December 27 [1921].
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- , University of Southern California, Doheny Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
Person Annotations
Garland, Hamlin (1860-1940). American novelist. Hannibal
Hamlin Garland was born in Wisconsin and grew up on farms there and in Iowa;
many of his books were set in these locales. In 1884 Garland moved to
Boston, MA, and began writing. His short story collection Main-Travelled Roads (1890) was his first success, which he
followed with other works in a realistic vein. Garland moved to Chicago, IL,
in 1893, and in lectures and essays collected in Crumbling
Idols (1894) began calling for a new school of realistic American
fiction. In her journalism of the 1890s, Cather criticized Garland’s type of
fiction. Garland married Zulime Taft, sister of sculptor Lorado Taft, in
1899. Cather may have met Garland after he wrote her in 1919 praising O Pioneers!
Place Annotations
