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 |
Please let me add a postscript to Edith4's letter to thank you for the continual pleasure it gives us to have Mr. Brewster's beautiful pictures in this apartment. "The Family by the Sea"5 is the most lovely and satisfying thing that I have ever had the good fortune to live with inside four walls.
I hope the new year will be full of splendid working hours for you both.
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1998.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1998
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Earl Brewster and Achsah Barlow Brewster1
- Date letter was written
- January 7, 1917
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Brewster 22), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
Individual Annotations
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.
Person Annotations
Barlow-Brewster, Achsah (1878-1945). Expatriate American painter.
Born in New Haven, CT, Achsah Brewster graduated in 1902 from Smith
College, where Edith Lewis had become her roommate in 1899, inaugurating a
long friendship. After college, Achsah moved to New York City to study
painting at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. After
she returned from a year of study in France, fellow student (and later poet)
Vachel Lindsay introduced her to Earl Brewster. She may have met Willa
Cather as early as 1904, when Cather, visiting New York from Pittsburgh,
stayed with Edith Lewis on Washington Square. In 1910, she and Earl Brewster
married and moved to Europe, returning to the U.S. only once, in 1923. From
1910 through 1935, they lived in various locations in France (where their
daughter Harwood was born in 1912) and in Italy (where they met D. H.
Lawrence and his wife Frieda in 1921), while also traveling widely in Europe
and to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India. Edith Lewis visited Achsah and Earl in
Ravello, Italy, in 1914 and 1920 and in Cyr-sur-Mer, France, in 1930 (with
Cather) and 1935. When Earl, Achsah, and Harwood moved to Paris in the early
1920s, they became friend Isabelle McClung Hambourg and Jan Hambourg. In
1935, Achsah and Earl moved to the Himalayan region of India, where she died
ten years later after a long illness.
Brewster, Earl (1878-1957). Expatriate American painter. Born
in Chagrin Falls, OH, Earl Brewster attended the Cleveland Institute of Art
for a year before moving to New York City in 1899 to study at the Art
Students League and the New York School of Art. He married fellow painter
Achsah Barlow in 1910. They immediately moved to Europe, returning to the
U.S. only once, in 1923. From 1910 through 1935, Earl and Achsah lived in
France (where their daughter Harwood was born in 1912) and Italy (where they
met D. H. Lawrence in 1921), while traveling widely in Europe and to Ceylon
(Sri Lanka) and India. Edith Lewis visited Achsah and Earl in Ravello,
Italy, in 1914 and 1920 and in Cyr-sur-Mer, France, in 1930 (with Cather)
and 1935. When Earl, Achsah, and Harwood moved to Paris in the early 1920s,
they became friend Isabelle McClung Hambourg and Jan Hambourg. Earl had
begun studying eastern religions early in his life, including the Vedanta
school of Hindu religious philosophy, and he incorporated Buddhist
iconography into his paintings. In 1935, the Brewsters moved to the
Himalayan region of India, where he died more than two decades later.
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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Family by the Sea, by Earl Brewster
