Roscoe Cather ([September to December, 1938])

#2142: Willa Cather to Roscoe Cather, [September to December, 1938]

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My Dear Roscoe¹;

Until I began to get letters from Standard and Barnsdall oil asking where to send dividends, I never knew anything about the residuary estate clause—I had never read it! I had a copy of the will? Certainly. I glanced over the first part of it, thought the special bequests good, never read the last clause. You told me he³ had cut me in on the Montibello field with the others. I appreciated that as a nice recognition of kinship and had no curiosity about the residuary estate, or anything that reminded me that he had no estate for himself at all any more. None of the property that meant so much to him. Funny, how when the mind has had a great shock it just hides itself in the sand, like the ostrich—makes itself blind to anything that recalls what hurt it. I had a good deal of nausea & vomiting from the 14^th of June until I got away to Grand Manan⁴ where Douglass had never been. I feared I could never come back here² to this apartment⁵. I could see the way he sat in each chair, standing on the very spot of rug where he told me goodbye. I tried to get away from the "will" and the word "estate". You must have thought me very casual.

At some later time when you are out from under, I will ask your advice and help about the stone⁶ to Father⁷ and Mother⁸. You know Douglass had that much on his mind, and you and I must do it for him. I think we might use the dividends from these oil stocks in that way. We want it got from Overing⁹, but according to father's taste, which he developed to me at some length that last winter I was at home.

Very Lovingly Willie

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let2142.xml
Letter identifier: 2142
Contents: Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of first leaf and recto only of second leaf.
Person to whom letter was written: Roscoe Cather¹
Date letter was written: [September to December, 1938]
Explanation of conjectured date: Internal evidence suggests that this letter was written not long after Douglass Cather's death in June of 1938. Further, Cather mentions her recent trip to Grand Manan. In a letter to Yaltah Menuhin, Cather indicates that she returns to New York in September of 1938, dating this letter in the second half of 1938.
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

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.

Cather's parents grave in the Red Cloud Cemetery.

Person Annotations

0018

Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother. Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA, where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926 trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932).

0011

Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO, and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers. Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this important sibling relationship have survived.

0010

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).

0016

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.

0156

Overing, E. J. (1874-1952). Red Cloud businessman. Edwin James Overing was born in Massachusetts. In 1896 he and his elder brother George opened a marble and monument business in Red Cloud, NE. He married Johanna Van Pilsum about 1902; they had three children. As president of Red Cloud’s board of education, he invited Willa Cather to speak at the high school graduation ceremonies in May 1909.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until 1940.