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 have been a long time in replying to your letter. My old friends, (and young ones, too,) east and west, have been leaving this world3 like the autumn leaves in a gale. I have had to dictate letters of condolence (and how one hates to dictate letters of that kind) until I am worn out. I pretty well need the kind words4 of Justice Holmes5 dead, in the review6 of his correspondence in the New York Times7 this morning. I had kind words from him when he was living. Perhaps then I didn't need a 'bracer' quite so much.
The important part of your letter concerned the little house you have built for
yourself in Lincoln8. The moment I began to
read about it I called Edith9, who was in her bedroom, and read it aloud. She kept exclaiming: "How smart of Elsie! to go
and make it all by herself, and to make just what she wanted." I felt the same
enthusiasm and (since I am both very selfish and very tired) I felt a deep gratitude
to you for not consulting me at all, and for not trying to make me in any way
responsible for your final decision. I was not in any position to give advice, since
I know so little of the present conditions both in Red
Cloud10 and Lincoln. Poor Willard
Crowell11 keeps writing me such hopeful letters every year, persuading
me to pay my taxes12 and telling me that
one good year will make up for it all. Last year he even persuaded me to let old
Witwer13 dig a well and put in a windmill
on some property in Jewell County, Kansas14,
where the creek had dried up. As a result we were [illegible] "in the red", as Willard said.
He seems to feel it would be disloyal in me to stop paying out money for taxes. This
is merely an aside, to explain one of the influences that kept me from realizing
quite how bad conditions are in Webster
County15.
P.S. I must apologize16 for having kept you in uncertainty about my going West this winter. I certainly had hoped to spend Christmas in Red Cloud, but unfortunately I had to spend it in a hospital17. The whole question has been, shall I ever be able to use my writing hand18 again? Painful experiments and anxiety have kept me unable to make plans and set dates. When your right hand is in a metal glove19 and has to be bathed and fussed over often during the day, you cannot travel without a personal maid. I cannot set any date, so please do not think of hesitating to dismantle the house20 in Red Cloud on my account. I didn't know this miserable hand was going to get worse instead of better. Had I known I would have let both you and Carrie Sherwood21 know long ago. The orthopedist22 who comes down from Boston23 seems to be the first man who has been able to give me any encouragement at all. He comes to New York2 twice a month. He has a number of patients here.
With my earnest good hopes for your happy life in your new house. Willie
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1981.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1981
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elsie Cather1
- Date letter was written
- March 23, 1941
- 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
In the letters available from the spring of 1941, Cather expresses her sadness over the passing of Josephine Mizer (#2954), Mollie Ferris (#2178), and Walter Sherwood (#1534), all of whom Cather knew from her childhood in Red Cloud.
In his review, Commager notes, "Willa Cather moved [Holmes], 'unexpectedly and deeply.'"
Early in her professional life, Cather invested a portion of her income in farm loans to individuals in Nebraska and Kansas. Over time, she also acquired properties in the area, at least some of which she held until her death.
In a 9 March 1941 letter to Roscoe Cather, Cather relays that "a letter has come from Elsie charging me with inconsiderateness toward her and my friends in Red Cloud for not telling them on what date I will arrive there..." (#2179).
In 1881 the French Hospital, established by the Société Française de Bienfaisance, opened at 131 West 14th Street, New York. In 1929 the hospital opened locations at 324-240 West 30th Street. Willa Cather stayed at the hospital in the spring of 1940 and returned in December that same year. Cather enjoying being surrounded by the French language and felt the hospital was an "escape from the active world" (#1514).
Cather significantly injured a tendon in her right thumb in November 1940 after signing hundreds of copies of her novel Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Her right hand was immobilized for months afterward, and the pain recurred often in later years.
A brace built specifically for her injured right hand by Dr. Frank Ober of Boston in 1941 (#2179).
541 N. Seward Street (Red Cloud, NE): Built circa 1899, Cather’s parents, Charles F. and Mary Virginia Boak Cather, purchased this home in 1903. Cather stayed here when she returned to Red Cloud to visit her parents, returning for the last time in 1931 following her mother’s death. At that time, Cather's sister Elsie inherited the house, returning to Red Cloud for summer vacations for most of the 1930s. Willa Cather contributed to the maintenance of the property until Elsie sold the house in 1945 to W. H. Maynard. By 1946, it was being used as a local hospital. Willa Cather used the house as the prototype for the second Ferguesson house in her short story “The Best Years.”
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.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (1841-1935). U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Born in Boston, MA, to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., a physician and
man of letters, and Amelia Lee Jackson Holmes, Holmes, Jr., attended Harvard
College from 1857 to 1861, served in the Union Army from 1861 to 1864, and
studied at Harvard Law School from 1864 to 1866. He combined influential
legal scholarship with the practice of law until his appointment to the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He served from 1882 to 1902, as Chief
Justice starting in 1899. In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt nominated him to the
U.S. Supreme Court, on which he served until 1931, authoring many important
opinions. Willa Cather evidently never met Holmes but admired him greatly.
Her friend Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant wrote “Oliver Wendell Holmes: Justice
Touched with Fire” in Fire Under the Andes (1927),
and Cather was delighted to receive a 1931 letter from him praising My Ántonia (1918) after Ferris Greenslet gave him a
copy. She then asked the offices of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., to send him Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
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.
Crowell, Willard (1885-1963). Webster County farmer. Born in Indiana, Willard Crowell came to Webster County after 1900, probably to join his elder brothers Henry and Omer; he lived and farmed in the Batin area from 1910 into the 1930s. He and his wife, Adelma (known as Lulu), had four children, Clarence, Robert, Howard, and Geraldine. Crowell was elected sheriff in the 1930s. He also helped Cather manage Webster County properties she owned or had mortgages on; they sometimes had differences of opinion on these business matters, but she was concerned when he had suffered a disabling fall in August 1943.
Wittwer, Frank A. (1879- 1947). Kansas farmer. Born in Kansas, Frank Wittwer lived in Smith County, KS, adjacent to Jewell County on the east and Webster County, NE, on the north. In 1915 he married Agnes Johnson of Black Hawk, IA. They had two sons, one of whom, Frank, married a Webster County girl and farmed near his parents. Frank Wittwer died in Red Cloud, NE, where he is buried.
Sherwood, Carrie Miner (1869-1971). Sherwood, Carrie Belle
Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader; Cather's friend. Born in Waukon,
IA, to James L. Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest
of their children. The family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the
Miner Brothers store became the largest in town. Cather remembered meeting
Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie, her mother, and siblings were confirmed in
the Catholic church. In 1888, she studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at
Notre Dame, IN. She married bank clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they
had two sons. The Sherwoods travelled often in the West, and visited Europe
in 1930. They built a new house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in
1908; Cather sometimes sent materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious
attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood led local Red Cross work during the two World
Wars, served on the Red Cloud school board and park commission, and was
active in the League of Women Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace
Episcopal Church. Cather corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout
her life and dedicated My Ántonia to Carrie, model
for Frances Harling in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of
Mildred Bennett’s chief sources for The World of Willa
Cather (1951), and was instrumental in setting up what is now the
Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud.
Ober, Frank (1881-1960). Boston Orthopedic surgeon. Born in Mt. Desert, ME, Ober graduated from Tufts Medical School in Boston, MA, in 1905. He volunteered for service overseas in 1917 and spent two years as head of the orthopedic section of the U.S. Army Base Hospital No. 5 in France. On his return he rose from junior member of the visiting staff to chief orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital in Boston and served as a clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at Harvard Medical School. About once a month he traveled to Philadelphia, PA, and New York City to see patients in consultation. In 1941, Cather was referred to Ober for her troubles with her right hand, and he prescribed and had constructed for her a metal and leather splint for her forearm and hand.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Justice Holmes in His Letters: A Half-Century of Correspondence Reveals His Wide-Ranging Mind," New York Times (March 23, 1941) by Henry Steele Commager
New York Times
