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 do call it hard luck that you should get caught in the fringes of my dreary translation complications, and that when you are not very well and away for a rest! Anyhow, I'm awfully obliged to you for your letter. I return Mme. Clairouin3's letter to you with Alfred Knopf4's reply.
I knew you were abroad, and I, too, have been far enough away from New York2 for the past three years. For the three years before her death my mother5 was an invalid in a sanitarium in Pasadena, California6, and I spent most of the time there with her. This winter I have come back to New York, got my things out of storage and taken an apartment7—though I don't know just why I've done it! However, I'm going to try to like living in this unreal and tormenting city again. I have a few old friends here, and there's lots of music.
I'm so sorry to hear you've been ill—it's probably all the fault of the Paris8 climate. I think one has to be born in that climate to be able to endure it at all. If you can get back to New England9 next summer, I believe that would be good for you, Peterboro'10 or Jaffrey11. I send you many good wishes. I always remember our meeting at Peterboro' with such pleasure.
Faithfully yours Willa Cather 570 Park AvenueInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2046.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2046
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mary Maguire Colum 1
- Date letter was written
- January 11 [1933]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's move to 570 Park Avenue in December 1932.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Podraic and Mary Colum Collection (B-M id37892), Binghamton University, State University of New York, University Libraries, Binghamton, NY
Individual Annotations
570 Park Avenue (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis from December 11, 1932, until her death, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, near Central Park. They had apartment 7D. Lewis continued to live there until her own death.
Person Annotations
Colum, Mary Maguire (1884-1957). Irish-American writer. Born in Ireland, Mary Maguire graduated from the Royal (now the National) University of Ireland in Dublin in 1909, where she had become deeply interested in the revival of Irish literature and culture. She taught literature before her marriage to poet Padraic Colum in 1912; they moved to the U.S. in 1914, where she became well-known as a translator, critic and reviewer; she was a friend of many in the avant-garde literary world, including James Joyce. She later taught poetry at Columbia University. Cather met Colum at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, NH, in August 1926, and wrote to her after Knopf consulted Colum about a possible French translation of one of Cather’s works, but no other meeting or correspondence is known.
Clairouin, Denyse (1900-1945). French translator and resistance fighter. Denyse Clairouin was born in Paris, France. She worked for many years as a translator, producing French editions of novels by Kay Boyle, D. H. Lawrence, and Sinclair Lewis. During WWII Clairouin joined the French Resistance, using her own wealth and social connections to create a secret information network. Throughout the war she used this network to distribute pamphlets, pass crucial information to French intelligence officers, and communicate with British aviators moving through France. In October 1943 she and many of her fellow resistance fighters were arrested by Nazi forces. She died in March 1945.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
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.
Place Annotations
