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 |
Your long kind letter is worth hundreds of dollars to me, to my soul and my peace of mind. How kind you were to tell me all the things I so wanted to know; about3 Dr. Creighton4 and the house and the trees as well as about Bess5. The news about Bess is so good6 that it is almost a shock! Now when she goes home, please take out to their place a good supply of canned fruits and vegetables from Mrs. Burden7, coffee, sugar etc. so that Mrs Kourtner8 will have something to cook with. If they need new bedding and blankets or furniture, buy them out of the money you have ahead for Bess and let me know when you need more. I enclose a check for forty dollars to help you out with your own taxes on the home place. Give Kitty9 all the work you can, she needs the money and the more you save yourself the better pleased we will all be.
I am almost as glad as the Bishop10 that you saved the church11 trees. He is one grand old man. I wish I had seen him at the funeral. I am always proud of him.
If West Virginia12 is going to be at the
University of Chicago, why don't you plan to go one there for you Christmas vacation
and go to a lot of shows and hear some music? I always stop over a day there at the
[illegible]
La Salle hotel13, which is central and
where you can get a room with ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩running water for almost nothing a day.
I don't see how you ever found time to have the house14 painted, with everything else you have had to do. But certainly this was a good summer, as workmen and materials must be cheap. Now that it is done I know you will take great pride in it. The Nebraska15 climate has always been a little doubtful, but the drouth in Michigan16 and Wisconsin17 seems to be almost as bad, and it's very bad in England18! This tiny island2 seems to be the only cool green spot left on earth. How many hundreds of times I have wished that I could transport all of Red Cloud19 here for a week.
An old friend of J.M.Barrie20 has written me asking me to inscribe a book for Sir James, as that would please the old gentleman very much, since he has read the Archbishop21 and Antonia22 through so often. Now how to write an inscription to Barrie? He's too clever and too witty and too wise to want compliments. I'd rather write a new book than this inscription, but I suppose it has to be done.
Now be lazy, Sister. Don't write to me or to anybody else. Sit on the porch and read. It will take you sometime to get over the effects of the strain of that long heat--it simply burns up one's vitality. I wish you thought you could take a winter off. You ought to go on a Norway23-Sweden24 cruise after such a summer. I will write to Walter25 about Barta26, and I will write to Bess when she gets back on the farm.
DevotedlyWillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1856.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1856
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elsie Cather1
- Date letter was written
- September 5 [1934]
- Place letter was written
- Grand Manan, New Brunswick, Canada2
- Location of original letter
- Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection (MS228), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Ernest Creighton died in August 1934.
Bess Seymour struggled with serious illness, probably cancer, throughout the summer of 1934 and spent time in the Mary Lanning Hospital in Hastings, NE.
Grace Episcopal Church (Red Cloud, NE): Built in 1883, the Cather family joined Grace Episcopal Church in 1922. Cather and her siblings commissioned the installment of two stained glass windows in honor of each of their parents, as well as the altar rail in honor of their brother Douglass.
The La Salle Hotel, located on the northwest corner of La Salle Street and Madison
Street in Chicago, IL, was built between 1908 and 1909.
541 N. Seward Street (Red Cloud, NE): Built circa 1899, Cather’s parents, Charles F. and Mary Virginia Boak Cather, purchased this home in 1903. Cather stayed here when she returned to Red Cloud to visit her parents, returning for the last time in 1931 following her mother’s death. At that time, Cather's sister Elsie inherited the house, returning to Red Cloud for summer vacations for most of the 1930s. Willa Cather contributed to the maintenance of the property until Elsie sold the house in 1945 to W. H. Maynard. By 1946, it was being used as a local hospital. Willa Cather used the house as the prototype for the second Ferguesson house in her short story “The Best Years.”
Person Annotations
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
Creighton, Ernest A. (1871-1934). Cather family physician. Born in Ontario, Canada, E. A. Creighton graduated from the medical school of Western University in 1899, and came to Red Cloud, NE, soon after, boarding with the Cathers' family friend Mollie Ferris and her brother. He married Mary S. Miner on July 28, 1900, and they built a house close by her parents’ house. Cather wrote that she felt her parents were in good hands with him.
Seymour, Elizabeth (c. 1859-1934) (“Bess,” “Bessie”). Cather’s
cousin. Bess Seymour was born in Virginia to Sarah Boak (the
elder sister of Willa Cather’s mother) and her first husband, Joseph D.
Seymour. In 1883, Bess moved with Willa Cather’s family to Webster County,
NE. Seymour lived in the Cather family home from 1883 to 1904, when she
moved to the Webster County farm of her half brother, Will Andrews. Cather
used her cousin’s name as a byline for the story “The Burglar’s Christmas”
(1906), and it has been suggested that she served as a model for Aunt Tillie
in The Song of the Lark (1915). Cather frequently
mentions in letters to other family members that she received long letters
from Seymour full of family news, and she urged her sister Elsie Cather to
care for Seymour during her final illness and sent money to pay medical
expenses.
Burden, Theo (1885-1959). Red Cloud storekeeper. Born in Missouri, Theo married Darrell Burden in 1916. She worked with her mother-in-law, Anna Lockhart Burden, in Anna’s millinery store, taking it over when Anna retired to California in the 1920s. She also helped her husband run the grocery store his father, Jim Burden, had started. Cather would ask Carrie Miner Sherwood to have Theo Burden pack groceries to send to elderly friends in Webster County. Theo Burden also wrote occasionally to Cather about local matters, and Cather valued her thoughts.
Koertner, Pauline (1895-1986). Domestic worker. Born in Illinois to Carrie and Henry Koertner, Pauline Koertner moved to Nebraska with her family around 1902 and settled on a farm near Bladen, NE. After her father's death in 1920, she lived with her mother in Bladen and worked as housekeeper for families in the area, including Cather's cousin Bess Seymour.
Hansen, Catherine Murphy (1880-1977) ("Kitty"). Red Cloud
resident. Born in Ireland, Catherine "Kitty" Murphy immigrated
to New York as a teenager, staying with relatives. While visiting a cousin
in Red Cloud, NE, she met Henry Gene Hansen, whom she married in 1912. The
couple had four children: Clayton, Charles, Russell, and Francis. Henry
Hansen died shortly before his daughter was born, and Francis died when she
was nine months old. Kitty Hansen stayed on in Red Cloud to raise her three
sons, working a variety of jobs, including doing domestic work for the
Cather family. She later moved to Lincoln, NE, where she worked as a nurse's
aide, and Denver, CO. She died in Gunnison, CO.
Beecher, George Allen (1868-1951). Western Nebraska Episcopal Bishop.
Born in Illinois, Beecher moved with his family to Kearney, NE, at
age 14. He studied for the Episcopal priesthood at the Philadelphia (PA)
Divinity School, graduating in 1892, and then spent fifty-one years in
Nebraska as a deacon, priest, and finally Bishop of the Missionary District
of Western Nebraska. Willa Cather met him in Red Cloud, NE, in December 1922
when he presided at her and her parents’ confirmation as members of Grace
Episcopal Church. She and Bishop Beecher corresponded frequently
thereafter.
Brockway, Virginia Cather (1912-1984) (“West Virginia”). Cather's
niece. Born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe Cather and Meta Schaper
Cather, Virginia graduated from Natrona County High School in Casper, WY, in
1929. She received an A.B. in English from Smith College in Northampton, MA,
in 1933, the same year Willa Cather received an honorary doctorate there. In
1934, she enrolled in the University of Chicago School of Social Services
and was, for a time, a social worker. She married John Hadley Brockway, a
Navy officer, in 1936. They moved frequently until his retirement from the
Navy. She had one child, son George. In letters, Willa Cather sometimes
calls her "West Virginia" to distinguish her from her cousin Mary Virginia
Auld because Virginia Cather's birthplace in Wyoming was farther west than
Mary Virginia's in Nebraska.
Barrie, James Matthew (1860-1937). British journalist, novelist, and
playwright. Barrie is best known for his character Peter Pan,
first created in the play Peter Pan (1904) and later
the subject of the novels Peter Pan in Kensington
Gardens (1906) and Peter Pan and Wendy
(1911). His earliest success as an author was in regional sketches based on
his childhood memories of Kirriemuir, Forfarshire, Scotland. His novel Sentimental Tommy (1896), about a boy who clings to
childhood, seems to have inspired the title of Cather's early story "Tommy
the Unsentimental" (1896). After establishing contact with Cather indirectly
in the early 1930s through Stephen Tennant, Barrie began corresponding with
her directly, and Barrie expressed particular admiration for Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and My Ántonia (1918). Of the latter, Barrie wrote to
her, "Your Antonia? No, she is my Antonia, and though I have just found her
I have always known her" (#1870). After his death Cather stated that she had
several letters from Barrie in her possession, but no such letters have been
found.
Sherwood, Walter Allen (1867-1941). Red Cloud banker; Carrie Miner Sherwood's husband. Walter Sherwood, born in Wisconsin, came with his family to Webster County in 1879. He worked in Silas Garber’s Farmers and Merchants bank in Red Cloud after his marriage to Carrie Miner in 1889; they had two sons, Clement Miner and Philip. After the failure of the Garber bank, Sherwood became cashier of the new People’s Bank, organized by his father-in-law, J.L. Miner, and eventually president of the bank.
Barta, Joseph (1867-1941). Webster County farmer and carpenter. Born in Bohemia, Joseph Barta was the son of Frank Barta and Anna Barta, who in 1876 settled in southern Batin precinct in Webster County, NE, among other Bohemian immigrants. Joseph farmed with his father until around 1900, when he moved to Red Cloud to work as a carpenter and handyman. He and his wife Bessie had five children.
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
