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 |
Thank you so much for telegraphing me at once. Poor3
Mary4! She has been such a devoted and such a
happy wife. I telegraphed at once to her. Do get a
nurse to come down from Hastings5 to care for6
Bessie7 if it will help yu you at
all, Elsie. You know I am only too glad to pay for
all
the
assistance you can hire. It will make me feel a little less guilty about not being there myself. You
can get a nurse and send her to the hotel for all her meals except breakfast.
Wouldn't that be a good idea?
Thank you, my dear, for wiring me.
W.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1928.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1928
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elsie Cather1
- Date letter was written
- August 10 [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
Mary Miner's husband, Dr. Ernest A. Creighton, passed away on August 7, 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.
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, Mary S. Miner (1873-1968). Clubwoman; Cather’s
friend from childhood. Born in Iowa, Mary Miner was the second
daughter of James and Julia Miner, neighbors of the Cather family in Red
Cloud, NE. Willa Cather later recalled that when she first moved into town
with her family and enrolled in school in 1885, “Margie Miner was so jolly I
wanted awfully to know her.” They became lifelong friends and
correspondents, and Mary’s sisters Irene and Carrie were equally close to
Cather. Mary Miner wed local physician E. A. Creighton in 1900 and lived the
rest of her life in Red Cloud. She was the prototype for Julia Harling in
My Ántonia (1918).
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.
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.
