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 |
New York (GARFIELD BRANCH
FIFTH AVENUE AT 23RD STREET)MILNE
*attention Mr. Milne Bank
June 19, 1839 My Dear Roscoe1;
Will you please help me out? I really must get away from business letters for a little while—I have to run away to escape college degrees5, anyhow.
Please write to each of the six business concerns here listed asking them,
after July first, to send all checks, statements, notices of deficits etc.
to me addressedas follows:
Willa S. Cather
Chase National Bank
Fifth avenue at 23d Street
New York
City2
aAttention Mr. MILNE6
Milne
All business mail (except letters from you) should be sent to me at my bank address, not to 570 Park Avenue3, until further notice.
I have a custodian account here, and Mr. Milne, one of the bank officers, attends to it. Stock dividends are always sent to me in this way, addressed to me as if I lived at the bank.
At 570 Park Avenue there are 55 apartments in the one building. Many letters get lost in the summer. The hall porters cannot take care of it all. My secretary7 herself is away for a month in the summer and cannot call there for my mail.
The Chase Safe Deposit CompanyNew York (GARFIELD BRANCH
FIFTH AVENUE AT 23RD STREET)attention Mr. Milne
I am working very hard now trying to get to a natural halting place in my book8 before I go away. I have not yet made up my mind as to where I shall go, and I shall not tell anyone until after I have gone.
Hadn't I better give Crowell9 a
power-of-attorney covering all my interests in Nebraska10? I will, when I get back in the fall. Just now I
must get away from Nebraska
land11 and California12 oil
for a little while and get to work on the one thing I care for and the only
thing I'm fit for. My own work too has a very considerable side to it, and that takes a great deal of my
time. That "Autograph Edition"13
allo alone, with revisions and proof-reading
took ten working months. There is always time to do everything—except to
write a new book.
I must hurry this scrawl off, or I'll never write you at all. It's hardly possible to make anyone understand. Forgive me for whining. I won't again. But it's a good deal like being sucked under by a quicksand—slow and sure.
Your Affectionate WilliePlease inform of change of address
- (1) TransAmerican Corporation
- (2) Bank of America
- (3) Ocean Front Oil Co
- (4) McVicar–Rood, Montebello Ltd.
- (5) Barnsdall Oil Co
- (6) Standard oil of California
All
THE CHASE SAFE DEPOSIT COMPANY
GARFIELD BRANCH
FIFTH AVENUE AT 23RD STREET,
NEW YORK, N. Y.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2149.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2149
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of each leaf. Includes one envelope, handwritten. Includes one enclosed handwritten note.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- June 19 [1939]
- Accompanying this letter
-
Includes one enclosed note, handwritten by Cather, which lists the companies Cather wishes to have notified of her change of address.
- 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 received honorary degrees from the University of Nebraska (1917), the University of Michigan (1924), Columbia University (1928), Creighton University (1928), Yale University (1929), the University of California Berkley (1931), Princeton University (1931), Smith College (1933), and the University of Pennsylvania (1940)
Cather owned and held mortgages on several Nebraska properties. Cather sent earnings from her book sales back to her father in Red Cloud, who invested the money in land for her.
The Autograph Edition of Cather's novels, a complete limited edition of thirteen volumes, which were published between 1937 and 1941 by Houghton Mifflin. The edition was limited to 970 copies, of which 20 copies were not for sale.
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).
Milne, Mr. American banker. Employed by Chase National Bank in New York City in the late 1930s, Milne assisted Cather with her financial affairs.
Bloom, Sarah J. (1889-1961). Cather's personal secretary. Born in New York in 1889 to Russian immigrants Solomon and Bertha Bloom, Sarah J. Bloom worked for Cather from some time in the 1920s until Cather's death and continued to work for Edith Lewis on matters pertaining to Cather's literary estate thereafter. Bloom typed Cather's literary manuscripts and managed Cather's correspondence, typing dictated letters and sometimes responding for Cather when she was traveling. Bloom’s work for Cather supplemented full-time office employment in New York City (for many years she worked for the New York State Public Service Commission). She thus came to Cather and Lewis's apartment on weekends to take dictation, pick up and deliver typescripts, and deliver typed letters for signature. She died in New York city in 1961.
Crowell, Willard (1885-1963). Webster County farmer. Born in Indiana, Willard Crowell came to Webster County after 1900, probably to join his elder brothers Henry and Omer; he lived and farmed in the Batin area from 1910 into the 1930s. He and his wife, Adelma (known as Lulu), had four children, Clarence, Robert, Howard, and Geraldine. Crowell was elected sheriff in the 1930s. He also helped Cather manage Webster County properties she owned or had mortgages on; they sometimes had differences of opinion on these business matters, but she was concerned when he had suffered a disabling fall in August 1943.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) by Willa Cather
