Sidney Florance (February 26 [1946])

#1824: Willa Cather to Sidney Florance, February 26 [1946]

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passage written by Cather on separate enclosure.	written text

⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ February 26 Dear Sidney Florance¹,

It was necessary to sign the deed you sent me on the day I got home from the hospital. I asked Miss Bloom⁴, my secretary, to write a brief letter to you and send it with the deed. She usually catches the substance of a hurried dictation, but she is a business woman and uses the "business" Vocabulary— which is often rather abrupt. Please pardon her and me—the circumstances were unusual in this case.

Faithfully yours Willa Cather

I am gaining rapidly and am now strong enough to walk for several blocks on good days.

Mr. S. R. Florance¹ Red Cloud³ Nebraska NEW YORK, N. Y. STA. Y² FEB 20 1946 430 PM

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let1824.xml
Letter identifier: 1824
Contents: Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
Person to whom letter was written: Sidney Florance¹
Date letter was written: February 26 [1946]
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Willa Cather Collection (Caspersen 54), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ

Person Annotations

0024

Florance, Sidney Riddell (1877-1957). Canadian-American banker and amateur poet. Born in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada, a younger son of Edwin Charles Florance and Margaret Riddell Florance, Sidney Florance emigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1881. He was working in Chicago where he met Cather’s friend, musician Beatrix Mizer. They married in 1903, settled in Red Cloud, NE, and had five children. He succeeded his father-in-law, Benjamin Mizer, as head of the Webster County Bank, and handled local business matters for Cather when she no longer had family living in Red Cloud.

0102

Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States