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 |
This afternoon while I was having my tea, the maid brought in your nice letter, written from Del Monte4, and put it on my tray. Since your letter was so much about food, good and bad, it was a pleasant accompaniment to my four o'clock tea. I never thanked you for your thorough and patient study of the Union Trust Company papers I sent you. I gather you agree with my lawyer, that the amount is so split up that the best I can do is to meekly accept the small income they send me. The Savings Bank blotters please me very much. They remind me of pictures by some of Howard Pyle's5 students6 – especially the March one. I have been having influenza off and on for the last six weeks. The last three weeks have been the worst. I had to stay in bed and keep out of the running altogether. In fact, we had rain here almost every day of those three weeks. Now that the weather is cleared, I am up and dressed and hoping for better times.
Lovingly Willie Mr. R. C. Cather,1 First Savings Bank of Colusa, Colusa,3 California. NEW YORK, N. Y. STA Y2 MAR 23 1939 1 – PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2144.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2144
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- March 21, 1939
- 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
Illustrators in the style known as the Brandywine School, named for Pyle's school in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, near the Brandywine River.
Person Annotations
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).
Pyle, Howard (1853-1911). American artist and illustrator.
Born in Delaware, Howard Pyle studied art in Philadelphia, PA, and
New York City, where at first he struggled professionally. By 1880 he was
established as an illustrator for magazines; with the publication of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883), Pyle
became famous. In 1900 he established a school of art at his home in
Wilmington, DE, where many well-known artists and illustrators studied.
Cather and her siblings read the early books illustrated by Pyle in Red
Cloud in the 1880s and 1890s. In April 1906, when Cather began working for
McClure’s Magazine, Pyle was the magazine’s art
editor, and she inscribed a copy of her The Troll
Garden (1905) to him, asking him to “accept through me the love of
seven big and little children to whom he taught the beauty of language and
of line, and to whom, in a desert place, he sent the precious message of
Romance.”
Place Annotations
