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 |
Won't you be pleased to have your name in the front4 of what all my friends seem to think the best American novel5? I'm like Mary Virginia6 when she said, "Everybody tells me I have lovely hair, and I'm beginning to think so myself!" Weren't you amused by Hetty Skeen7's high-brow letter? I think she must be almost as intellectual as Dora8.
I feel guilty about keeping you bead bag. I took it to the "Diamond Bead Bag Hospital" and had a strong new fringe and a new strong hinge put on for nine dollars, and now it is much more practical than it ever was, and it's certainly the prettiest one I have seen anywhere.
I am leaving for Vermont9 tomorrow and give
my address below. I Will probably be there for three weeks, longer if I like it10. I am so glad I did not let
them bully me into a hospital this hot weather. I know I can face an operation more
cheerfully in the fall. My surgeon had the room and operation room at the Roosevelt11 engaged for July 5th, but I
called it off and I am glad I did. I won't try to make any plans about coming
home12 until I get into the country and
begin to feel better. I could not, at any rate, come before September. The
Omaha13 people are bothering me a lot to speak there14
for October 10th. I wrote them that I could not
speak for less that $300 thinking that would shut them off. Now they write me that
they will pay me that, and they've engaged the Brandeis Opera House15. I've told them I won't do it unless
I am feeling much better than I am now.
Goodbye, darling Mother, I must write Elsie16 a line about my quilt, and I will write Father17 soon.
Lovingly WillieAddress:
Bread Loaf10
Inn
Bread Loaf, Vermont
But telegrams and express must be sent to
Bread Loaf, Middlebury,
Vermont18
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1909.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1909
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mary Virginia Boak Cather1
- Date letter was written
- July 11 [1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Internal evidence suggests that Cather wrote this letter in 1922, because she provides her mother the address for the Bread Loaf Inn, where she taught for three weeks in July 1922.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection (MS228), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
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.
The dedication page in One of Ours reads, "For my mother / VIRGINIA CATHER".
The Bread Loaf summer school of English was started in 1920 on the model of Middlebury College’s already active summer schools in foreign languages. It offered master’s-level graduate courses in English and American literature, pedagogy, public speaking and debate, modern drama, and composition. As a faculty member and writer-in-residence in 1922, Cather agreed to give five lectures: three on writing, one on the writer’s relationship to the magazine editor, and the final a question-and-answer session with students.
The Roosevelt Hospital in New York City.
The Omaha Press Club invited Cather to speak in 1922. She planned to lecture on November 27, 1922, but cancelled after falling ill in early November.
The Brandeis Theater opened in Omaha, NE, at Douglass and 17th streets in 1910.
Person Annotations
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”).
Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld
and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School
in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for
admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B.
in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found
work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930,
probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation
Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the
library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont
branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933
Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935,
Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical
School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College,
she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor
in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s
regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In
Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary
estate.
Yeiser, Hettie Skeen (1871-1961). Cather’s Red Cloud acquaintance. Hettie Skeen was born in Nebraska, elder daughter of Kenyon and Candace Skeen. Her family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in the early 1880s, where her father ran a grist mill and was involved in other enterprises. She married attorney John O. Yeiser, second son of the Rev. George and Almira Yeiser, in 1889: they had one son, John O. Yeiser, Jr., in 1895. The family moved to Omaha, NE, where John was active politically. She was widowed in 1928, and went to live with her younger brother in Gary, IN, by 1930, and died in Los Angeles, CA, where her son was living.
Kaley, Dora Henderson (1876-1958). Red Cloud resident. Born in Nebraska, Dora Henderson and her family lived and farmed in Nemaha County, NE, before moving to Red Cloud, NE, c. 1890. She married David H. Kaley in 1896; the couple, who lived in Red Cloud until their deaths, had no children. Cather appears to have corresponded occasionally with Dora Kaley.
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.
Cather, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
