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 |
Hotel Terminus et Buffet Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles
Gérés par la COMPAGNIE INTERNATIONALE DES WAGONS-LITS et des GRANDS EXPRESS EUROPÉENS
HOTELS ET BUFFETS DE GARE DE LA COMPAGNIE DES WAGONS-LITS HOTEL TERMINUS - MARSEILLE
HOTEL TERMINUS - LYON - PERRACHE
HOTEL TERMINUS - ORAN - P. L. M. BUFFET OSTENDE, QUAI MARITIME
TERMINUS MARITIME - OSTENDE QUAI
HOTEL BUFFET DE DAMANHOUR (Egypte) Buffets Egyptiens de :
ALEXANDRIE, ASSIOUT, BENHA, LOUXOR, MINIEH, PORT-SAÏD, TANTAH, WASTA, ZAGZIG HOTEL CORRESPONDANT
GRAND HOTEL DES WAGONS-LITS — PÉKIN MARSEILLE Gare Saint-Charles, le October 24 192 My Dearest Mother1:
We3 have reached Marseille2 safely and sail for home Oct 25, will reach New York4 November 12th. I had a fairly comfortable journey down from Paris5, because French people are so kind and courteous, and do all they can to help anyone who is hurt. The only rude persons we met were Americans—they crowd in ahead of anyone who is lame6.
We had a lot of business to attend to here, about passports and steamer tickets,
and I have to go everywhere in a carriage, though I can walk about in the hotel. Of
course travelling with a lame foot costs about as much as paying the way of a third
person. I have been lucky in finding and excellent masseur here, and have my foot rubbed twice a day. I will not
have to walk much on the boat of course, though we stop three days at Naples7 and it will be a bother to be lame
there—indeed, I find it very difficult to be lame anywhere, but I shall never forget
how kind French people have been everywhere. There was a one-armed Major of
Artillery on the train who
COMPAGNIE DES CHEMINS DE FER P. L. M.
Hotel
Terminus et Buffet Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles
Gérés par la COMPAGNIE
INTERNATIONALE DES WAGONS-LITS et des GRANDS EXPRESS EUROPÉENS
HOTELS ET
BUFFETS DE GARE DE LA COMPAGNIE DES WAGONS-LITS
HOTEL TERMINUS - MARSEILLE
HOTEL TERMINUS -
LYON - PERRACHE
HOTEL TERMINUS - ORAN - P. L. M.
BUFFET OSTENDE, QUAI MARITIME
TERMINUS
MARITIME - OSTENDE QUAI
HOTEL BUFFET DE DAMANHOUR (Egypte)
Buffets Egyptiens de :
ALEXANDRIE, ASSIOUT,
BENHA, LOUXOR, MINIEH, PORT-SAÏD, TANTAH, WASTA, ZAGZIG
HOTEL CORRESPONDANT
GRAND HOTEL DES
WAGONS-LITS — PÉKIN
MARSEILLE Gare Saint-Charles, le
_ 192 insisted on doing everything for me. Even the cab-drivers,
the toughest class of men in any country, always jump down from the box and help me
from the carriage. The only people who do not go out of their way to assist one are
the travelling Americans. I always knew the French were courteous, but I never
before knew how much trouble they would take for a stranger. I can never forget
it.
It has been two months since I have heard a word from home, but I hope you are all well, and you in particular, dear mother. Edith's3 mother8 sent me a splendid notice9 about my new book10 from the New York Times11.
Very lovingly WillaInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1957.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1957
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto only of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mary Virginia Boak Cather1
- Date letter was written
- October 24 [1920]
- Place letter was written
- Marseilles, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France2
- Location of original letter
- Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection (MS077), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather sprained her ankle in October 1920. It continued to trouble her well into 1921.
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.
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, Lillie Gould (1858-1928). Edith Lewis's mother. Born to New England Quaker parents who had recently migrated to the Midwest, Lillie Gould was sent east from Davenport, IA, to Elmira, NY, to be educated. In 1879, she and Henry Euclid Lewis, a New Hampshire-born, Dartmouth-educated lawyer from Moline, IL, married in the Davenport Unitarian Church. In 1881, they relocated with their first child, Harold Gould Lewis, to Lincoln, NE, where Lillie soon gave birth to Edith. She had four more children while in Lincoln: Helen, Ruth, and two others who died in childhood there. She was an active clubwoman engaged in social reform issues. In 1909, after the collapse of Henry’s various business enterprises in Nebraska, the family moved to the Boston, MA, area. Around 1923, Lillie moved in with their daughter Ruth in Brooklyn, NY, while Henry went to live with their daughter Helen in California. In the summer of 1927, she suffered a stroke while visiting Harold and his family in Springfield, MA, where she died in May 1928.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Latest Works of Fiction: Miss Cather's Stories," New York Times Book Review (October 3, 1920)
Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) by Willa Cather
New York Times
