Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 simply been ashamed to write to you, because I had neglected it for so long. Iv'e tried to write mother3 often this winter, and while Jack4 was sick I tried to get a few notes off to him because he seemed blue and hated Detroit5, but I've neglected everyone else. I kept putting off writing to Mrs. Deland6 though I knew Mr. Deland7 was very ill, and yesterday he died, and I do feel more than ashamed. The war has made everything so much more difficult, housekeeping and meeting ones bills,-- and it has taken all the fun of work away, somehow. One can't feel that writing books is very important. I am fairly stuck on the novel8 I wrote you about, and will either have to give it up or try it over again a new way. Two Houghton Mifflin men were here last night and I had to make the sad admission to them that I couldn't get a new book out this fall. They are disappointed, and so am I. There is a great deal that’s good in the new story, but I have not gone at it right, somehow, and I'm going to quit it for awhile and do some short stories9 to build up my bank account.
Did you know that Kipling10's only son, John11, who was the Dan of the Puck stories12, was lost in the war, and they don't even know how or where. They have not heard of him for over a year and have given up hoping. Mr. Greenslet13, of Houghton Mifflin, just back from England14, told me last night that the old man is all broken up and sees nobody. Life has gone pretty hard with him, and he has given so much pleasure in this world.
Edith15 has been pretty well this winter. I
bluez-stone her eyes for her every week, which saves occultists' bills, and time, too. We are going down to
Washington16 tonight for a few days. But
the magazine business is cramped and made harder by the war. High cost of ink and
paper take all the profits and shut down advertising.
I have been to a lot of very gay musical parties with the Hamburgs17, and I had such a joyful dinner party for Framstad18 and her new husband19. Everything went just right and I never saw her enjoy herself so much. I wrote mother all about it, and she probably sent you my letter.
People connected with the British war office tell me that they don't hope to end the war under two years.20 Even at the best London hotels Greenslet could get only two courses for each meal, and a miserable bit of boiled beef three days a week, no other meat at all. he was uncomfortable hungry for the two months he was there, and hotels and public buildings were unheated all winter. The papers give no idea of what the submarines have really done. If America21 had not gone in22, the allies would have been beaten, that is the grim truth. The submarines have cut off all chance of feeding the army. The food situation is much worse in England and northern France23 than it is in Germany24. If we can build boats fast enough to keep the Allied armies going, and if we can reinforce their numbers with men, it may be over in two years. If we don't do this, we will have to be Prussians in the end. Russia25 is helpless26. Unless the allies can keep the whole German army busy on the French front, the Germans will take St. Petersburg27, and enough Russian grain and farm land to enable them to go on forever. The United States has never had such a chance before; no country ever has. We can literally save Democracy--- or lose it--- for the whole world. And by nice guide28 on the Mesa Verde29 writes me that the war is "considered a joke" out there. We are a good deal like Russia; so big and unorganized. Take it from me, Bobbie, the next year is going to be a black one.
Now I must stop for this time, dear girl. I’ll try to do better hereafter, if you forgive me.
With heaps of love to you WillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2079.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2079
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto only of first leaf and on recto and verso of second leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elsie Cather 1
- Date letter was written
- May 4 [1917]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by the death of Lorin Deland in 1917 and of John Kipling over a year earlier on 27 September 1915.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection (MS316), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather published "Ardessa" in May 1918; "Scandal" and "Her Boss" were published in 1919.
World War I ended in the Armistice on 11 November 1918, a year and a half after the U.S. entered the war.
The United States declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917.
After the Tsar was overthrown in February 1917, the Russian Republic continued to fight Germany and its allies on the Eastern Front until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in October 1917. The Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, ending Russia's war with Germany.
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.
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.
Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother.
Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and
fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger
than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small
boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote
several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating
from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University
of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he
enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study
engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to
Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his
decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he
graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a
chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport,
PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children,
Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer
in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936
he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers
Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA.
Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had
little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from
her to him have surfaced.
Deland, Margaret (1857-1955). American novelist, poet, and memoirist.
Born Margaretta Wade Campbell in Alleghany, PA, Deland attended
Cooper Union in New York City. After her marriage to Lorin Deland, she moved
to Boston, MA. In her long and prolific career, she wrote frequently about
the challenges facing women, tackling controversial issues such as divorce
and extramarital sex. The McClure Newspaper Syndicate syndicated some of
Deland’s works, and S. S. McClure may have introduced Cather to Deland as
early as 1905. In 1905, Witter Bynner, then working for McClure, Phillips,
& Co., sent a copy of The Troll Garden (1905) to
Deland, who regretted the “curious lack of a sense of beauty” in Cather’s
stories (#0105). Nevertheless by 1908, when Cather made her second trip to
Boston on assignment for McClure's Magazine, she and
Deland were friends, and Cather subsequently was a guest in Deland’s home on
trips to Boston. Although Cather and Deland corresponded through at least
1917, Cather’s letters to her have not been located.
Deland, Lorin Fuller (1855-1917). Boston businessman; Margaret Deland's husband. Born in Boston, MA, to a well-do-do family, Lorin Deland worked in his father’s publishing business. In 1880 he married Margaret Campbell, who became a well-known novelist. After selling the publishing house in 1886, he started an advertising agency and engaged in a wide variety of activities, including football: he was an advisor to and then coach of the Harvard football team, inventing the “flying wedge” formation and strategy. He co-authored Football (1896) with Yale coach Walter Camp, laying the groundwork for the modern game. Cather, who may have met Margaret Deland through Annie Fields, stayed with the Delands several times when she was in Boston.
Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936). English fiction writer and poet.
Born in Bombay, India, to English parents, Kipling was sent to
England for his education but returned to India to work as a journalist. His
poems and short stories about India won him an audience in England, and he
settled in London in 1889. When he married Caroline Balestier in 1892, the
couple moved to her home state of Vermont. In 1896 Willa Cather claimed to
have met Kipling and she described the “46 minutes” of conversation with him
as “alone worth” her move to Pittsburgh to work for the Home Monthly (#0028). In 1899, Cather wrote a column about his
career for the Lincoln Courier, in which she noted
the irony of Kipling trying to “live a respectable Puritan life in Vermont
and be a full-fledged family man,” urging him to “Go back east.” In 1899, he
did leave the U.S., but for London, not India, where he remained the rest of
his life. McClure’s Magazine published Kipling’s poem
“The White Man’s Burden” (1899) and the novel Kim
(1900-1901), paying him $25,000 for serialization of the latter. When Cather
traveled to London on McClure’s business in 1909, she
carried a letter of introduction to him, but it is not clear whether she met
him again there. Throughout her life Cather expressed enthusiasm for
Kipling’s works, which she associated with a spirit of adventure, and her
letters make clear that she followed his life and career closely.
Kipling, John (1897-1915). Soldier; Rudyard Kipling's son. Born in Sussex, England, John Kipling was the youngest child and only son of Rudyard Kipling and Caroline Balestier Kipling. He was educated at Wellington College in Berkshire. When World War I began in 1914, John Kipling was rejected for service by both the army and navy on account of short-sightedness, but his father exerted influence to get John Kipling, then sixteen, a commission in the Irish Guards. He was reported injured and missing in action in the battle of Loos in September 1915. His body and grave were not identified until 1992.
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as
partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet
negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
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.
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.
Fremstad, Olive (1871-1951). Swedish-American opera singer.
Born in Sweden, Ann Olivia Rundquist was adopted by a
Scandinavian-American couple, the Fremstads, who raised her first in
Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, and then in Minnesota. She moved to New York
City to study piano in 1890 and then to Germany to study voice with Lilli
Lehmann. After a successful career in Europe as a mezzo-soprano, she made
her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1903, where she specialized in
singing soprano roles in operas by Richard Wagner. Willa Cather first met
Fremstad in 1913 while researching “Three American Singers,” an article for
McClure’s Magazine in which Cather clearly
prefers Fremstad as “the most interesting kind of American” over Geraldine
Farrar and Louise Homer. Through 1916 Cather and Fremstad were in close and
regular contact in person and through letters, although Cather’s letters to
Fremstad have not been located and their friendship evidently cooled.
Fremstad inspired many aspects of the story, personality, and career of Thea
Kronborg, heroine of The Song of the Lark (1915), and
she approved of the novel, although Cather did not want readers to identify
the character too closely with her. Fremstad married and divorced twice.
During the period Cather and Fremstad were in regular contact Fremstad lived
as a couple with Mary Watkins (later Cushing) who, after Fremstad’s death,
published a biography of her, The Rainbow Bridge
(1954).
Brainard, Harry Lewis (1874-?). American musician; Olive Fremstad’s second husband. Born in Connecticut, son of Lewis and Lydia N. Brainard, Harry Brainard taught music at his mother’s home. He became Olive Fremstad’s accompanist, and they were married November 4, 1916, at Fremstad’s summer home in Bridgton, Maine. Cather gave a dinner party for the couple a few months later. The marriage did not last: when Fremstad sued for divorce in 1925 it was on grounds of his desertion since 1918, when Brainard took a trip to California and did not return. Fremstad said she did not know where he was. Brainard was living in Santa Barbara, CA, in 1920.
Kelly, Charles B. (1857-1927). American park ranger, guide, and liveryman. Born in Ohio, Charles B. Kelly came to Mancos, Colorado around 1886. He worked as a guide to the nearby Mesa Verde area, providing horses and pack animals; later he became a liveryman, hiring out horses, wagons and buggies, and still later, automobiles. He married M. Jennie Miller in 1892; they had twin children, a boy and a girl, born in 1896. In 1907 Kelly was appointed as the park ranger at Mesa Verde National Park. He left this position in 1911, but continued as a guide and liveryman for the tourists coming to the park, including Willa Cather and Edith Lewis in 1915. Cather mentions Kelly favorably in her article, “Mesa Verde Wonderland is Easy to Reach” in the Denver Times (31 January 1916).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) by Rudyard Kipling
