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 wish you were going abroad this summer - that is, to England3, because England is just now the most comfortable and inexpensive foreign country for American travellers.
But since you are not going abroad, your motor trip through New England4 sounds to me like a good plan. If you are going into Maine5, you must certainly come on and visit me6 at Grand Manan7. It is ever so much more different from the West than New England is, simply because it is an island. Real islands that set far off from shore have a character all their own. I do think you would enjoy it if you came.
You would take the boat (and put your car on the boat) at Eastport, Maine8. The drive from Boston9 up to Eastport is said to be beautiful - I have never taken it. The boat touches at Eastport only three times a week. If you write me that you are coming, I will let you know on what dates the boat touches there - the schedule seems to change from year to year. But even if you should have to stay over in Eastport a day and night, it is a rather pleasant town on the sea and you would be comfortable at a plain but clean country hotel, the Hotel East.
As you know, we have no guest room in our little house, but I would gladly put you and your friend up at Miss Jacobus10' little colony where we go for our meals. That is where Mary Virginia11 stayed when she spent her vacation12 with me and where Edith13 and I always stayed until we built our little house. The place is apt to be full in July and August, so it will be better if you could let me know a couple weeks ahead. The island is twenty-five miles long, so you would have plenty of use for your car. I shall be busy finishing up my book14, but we could have some nice walks together and you would probably want to take some boat trips.
The people who come there are not a very dressy crowd - most of them are librarians and teachers. They wear fresh, simple, comfortable summer clothes. You would need comfortable shoes for rock climbing - elk-skins are the best, but almost any rubber-soled, low-heeled shoe will do. You would, of course, need a heavy coat, sweaters, and very especially a rain-coat. I had to struggle to make Virginia buy a rain-coat, but she was awfully glad she had it. And you must bring an umbrella! You see, island weather is -2- ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩ queer - often wild rain and brilliant sunshine within a few hours. Being out in the rain is one of the pleasures of the place.
It takes so long to get to Grand Manan (though the boat trip from Eastport takes only about four hours) that you ought to be able to stay for two weeks anyway. Otherwise it would hardly be worth the trouble for you, but it's really a lovely place, with water and wild woods everywhere. Though everything is on a rather small scale, the cliffs are wild enough, like those on the coast of Cornwall15. I would be just awfully glad to have you come, if you can take that long trip without tiring yourself or feeling worried. And Edith and I would love to have you there.
You ask about camps. I don't know of any and Virginia never went to one. She came to Grand Manan instead. She will not be there this summer, as she has other plans.
I wanted to write you the very day I got your letter, but I have been rushing terribly hard to get on with my book and there have been so many business interruptions. I will get the book done all right, but it will not be published this fall, as it is to come out first serially16 in the Woman's Home Companion17. The serialization is a pure question of money18 and I rather hope my friends won't read the story until it appears as a book in September 1935.19
There are lots of things I want to write to you about in answer to your letter, dear Elsie, but I must rush this off, as you will be making your summer plans now.
With a gerat deal of love to you, WillieThe boat boat charge for bringing an automobile
over to Grand Manan is, I think, ten dollars. Edith's sister20 brought her car last year.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1920.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1920
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only with a handwritten note on recto of second leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elsie Cather1
- Date letter was written
- June 25, 1934
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection (MS228), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather and Lewis left New York for Grand Manan on 16 July 1934 and remained there until mid-September.
Lucy Gayheart was serially published in the March-July 1935 issues of the Woman's Home Companion.
According to Cather's ledger, on 26 June 1934 she received $10,000 from Woman's Home Companion for the "serial rights of 'Lucy Gayheart'." On 8 March 1935, she received $15,000 from Woman's Home Companion for the "2nd serial payment for 'Lucy Gayheart'."
Lucy Gayheart was published by Knopf in August 1935.
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.
Jacobus, Sarah Hayes (1875-1948). Proprietor of the Whale Cove Inn, Grand Manan Island. An 1897 graduate of the Boston Normal School for Gymnastics, Sarah Jacobus "discovered" Grand Manan Island with two classmates in 1900, and in 1901 they purchased property at Whale Cove. By the time Willa Cather and Edith Lewis first visited Whale Cove in 1922, the summer colony had become an inn, with guests renting rooms in the main building or in adjacent cottages and taking meals in the inn's dining room. Jacobus was co-owner of the inn, and during the summer season she was in residence as the on-site manager. When summer visitors, including Cather and Lewis, built their own cottages, they continued to take meals in the dining room. In the off seasons from 1920 through 1932 Jacobus lived in Manhattan and worked in the Circulation Department of the New York Public Library. Later in her life, she lived year round on Grand Manan and died there.
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.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
Lewis, Ruth Putnam (1893-1954). Edith Lewis's sister. Born in Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Ruth moved east to the Boston, MA, area with her family in 1909 and enrolled in the Sergeant School for Physical Education in 1914, graduating in 1919. Her first job as a physical education teacher was in Buffalo, NY. In the 1920s she moved to Brooklyn, NY, to teach at a private girls' school. She also worked summers at girls' camps in New England. Living in Brooklyn, she had regular contact with her sister Edith and with Willa Cather. From 1941 to 1946, she was U.S.O. Women's Activities Secretary at the Brooklyn Navy Y.M.C.A., and then worked in leadership development for the Girl Scouts. She helped her sister Edith make arrangements for Cather’s funeral and burial. She was hospitalized with cancer in Brooklyn in 1953, and died in a hospital in Braintree, MA, where her brother Harold lived.
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
Lucy Gayheart (1935) by Willa Cather
Woman's Home Companion
