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.

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).

Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or “Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in 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.

Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh, finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father, Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in 1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and 1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S. for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work, through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.

Hambourg, Jan (1882-1947). Russian-born violinist; Isabelle McClung’s husband. Hambourg moved with his family to Toronto, Ontario, in 1910, where he was the head of the violin department at the Hambourg Conservatory and performed as part of the Hambourg Trio. He married Isabelle McClung in April 1916. Cather reacted negatively to both Hambourg and the marriage, but she gradually came to accept him. Beginning in the 1920s, Hambourg left the family conservatory and focused on solo violin performance in Europe. Cather enjoying long visits with Isabelle and Jan in Toronto in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. She dedicated The Professor’s House (1925) to him (“For Jan, because he likes narrative”) and asked him to make musical corrections to Lucy Gayheart (1935). When Isabelle died, Jan sent to Cather the three hundred letters from Cather to Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them.

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.

Lewis, Ruth Putnam (1893-1954). Edith Lewis's sister. Born in Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Ruth moved east to the Boston, MA, area with her family in 1909 and enrolled in the Sergeant School for Physical Education in 1914, graduating in 1919. Her first job as a physical education teacher was in Buffalo, NY. In the 1920s she moved to Brooklyn, NY, to teach at a private girls' school. She also worked summers at girls' camps in New England. Living in Brooklyn, she had regular contact with her sister Edith and with Willa Cather. From 1941 to 1946, she was U.S.O. Women's Activities Secretary at the Brooklyn Navy Y.M.C.A., and then worked in leadership development for the Girl Scouts. She helped her sister Edith make arrangements for Cather’s funeral and burial. She was hospitalized with cancer in Brooklyn in 1953, and died in a hospital in Braintree, MA, where her brother Harold lived.

Lewis, Harold Gould (1880-1962). American electrical engineer; Edith Lewis’s brother. The first child of Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Harold Lewis was raised in Lincoln, NE, and Kearney, NE. He studied engineering at the University of Nebraska and Columbia University and worked for most of his career for Westinghouse Electric. After his parents moved from Lincoln to the Boston, MA, area in 1909, he lived with them until his 1921 marriage to Alice Griffin, with whom he had two daughters.

Lewis, Henry Euclid (1949-1926). American lawyer and businessman; Edith Lewis’s father. Born to parents of Puritan and Huguenot ancestry, Henry Lewis was raised on a farm outside Claremont, NH. He worked his way through Dartmouth College, graduating in 1872. After teaching in New Jersey and Vermont, he moved to Moline, IL, to read law under his brother Eugene, and there met and married Lillie Gould of Davenport, IA. After the birth of their son Harold, they moved to Lincoln, NE, in 1881, where their daughter Edith was born. They had four more children in Lincoln: Helen, Ruth, and two who died in childhood. Over the course of twenty-five years, Henry Lewis worked as a lawyer, land broker, and banker in Lincoln and started irrigation and farming concerns in central Nebraska. In 1909, after the collapse of his various business enterprises, the family moved to the Boston, MA, area, where he sold real estate. At the time of his death, he was living with his daughter Helen and her family near Fresno, CA.

Morgan, Helen Chace Lewis (1894-1984). Edith Lewis’s sister. The youngest child of Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Helen Lewis was born and raised in Lincoln, NE, until 1909, when her family relocated to the Boston, MA, area. In 1917 she graduated from the Sargent School for Physical Training and taught physical education in private schools in Pennsylvania and Brooklyn, NY. In 1920, she married Harold Philip Morgan; the couple had two daughters, and they lived in Lincoln, NE, the Fresno, CA, area (where her father was residing with them at the time of his 1926 death), and Seattle, WA. After her husband’s 1956 death, Helen Morgan moved to Long Island, NY; she visited her sister Edith Lewis regularly in New York City and arranged for her funeral and her burial in Jaffrey, NH, at Willa Cather’s side.