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 |
If Mr. Topham4 and Joe Pavelik5 have paid their interest6, will you please send it to me as soon as possible? If they have not yet paid it, could you without inconvenience advance me that amount? If not I shall have to borrow from the bank to run my house7 until my next royalties are due, March 1st. I am going into the Roosevelt Hospital in February for an operation8 and do not want to be too short of money at that time.
I have a vague impression that perhaps you did advance me the Joe Pavelik interest before I left home3, thought it was not due until December. Did you?
Please tell Mother9 I will write her soon, but I have been far from well and have had an unusual number of worries and perplexities.
With love to you both Willie Mr. C. F. Cather1 Red Cloud3 Nebraska NEW YORK, N. Y.2 JAN 30 1922 12—M [missing]Catheralso letter of J. H. Gore
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1958.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1958
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Charles F. Cather1
- Date letter was written
- January 29 [1922]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection (MS077), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
During her early professional life, Willa Cather's father often invested money for her through modest farm loans to individuals in Nebraska and Kansas.
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.
Cather had her tonsils removed.
Person Annotations
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).
Topham, Joseph (1848-1923). Webster County farmer. Born in England, Joseph Topham married Elizabeth Emery in 1870 in St. Neot’s, Huntingdonshire, England; they had nine children. The family came to the U.S. in 1880, settling in the Guide Rock area of Webster County, NE. In 1910 Joseph Topham bought the Garber place just outside Red Cloud, NE, for $10,100, from Silas Garber’s widow, Lyra Garber. The Garber place and Silas and Lyra Garber served as prototypes for the Forrester place and Daniel and Marian Forrester in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady (1923). Through her father Charles F. Cather, Willa Cather loaned money to Joseph Topham and his heirs, a business relationship lasting for at least fourteen years.
Pavlicek, Joseph A. (1846-1923) (“Joe”). Bohemian-American farmer. Born in Bohemia, Joseph Pavlicek (sometimes spelled Pavlick) married in 1870; he and his wife, Antony Pavlicek, had nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. The family came to the U.S. in 1880, settling in Webster County, NE, where their youngest son was born. By 1900 Joseph Pavlicek had a 320 acre farm in Batin Precinct; he had purchased some of the land in the 1890s from Willa Cather’s father, Charles F. Cather. Two of Joseph’s sons, Frank Pavlicek and Joseph Pavlicek, Jr., had farms nearby.
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.
Place Annotations
