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 |
Before I left Grand Manan5 I wrote
you a rather hysterical letter6,
and I am ashamed of it. Please forget it and forgive me. Sometimes, at the
end of a long pull of work, people get shaky and wonder what it is all
about. Unfortunately, I had a severe toothache nearly all the while I was
up there, and with our queer
boat service I would have lost a whole week getting to a dentist on the
mainland and returning. I had only six weeks to finish the book7, and could not lose a week. The local doctor gave me codeine
when my sleep was too badly broken up, but codeine leaves a mean hang-over
,.. and
oOn the whole it was a fairly nerve-racking
experience. I got the book done, however, and apparently with considerable
success.
In these days any kind of success brings its own problems. I am enclosing a letter8 from Alfred Knopf9 which will explain some of them to you.
The Book of the Month Club10 (their selection of the book for January has not been publicly announced and is a secret) will make their payment to both Alfred and me at the end of January. I always make up my income tax from January 1 to January 1. Mr. Lesser11, in Alfred's office, does it for me. I have been four years writing the book and most of the financial returns will come in during the year 1941, when the tax on what is called "unearned income" is to be greatly increased. You see, Alfred has taken the trouble to worry about that , and is willing to advance me half of what the Book of the Month Club pays, in order to get that amount into my 1940 tax return. I had been thinking rather mournfully of the income tax problem that would confront me next year, but I had not spoken to him about it.
I have in my safe deposit box a letter received from you some time before I
went away for the summer. In this letter you said that you had a check for
me from the
-2- Ocean Front Oil property, but that
you were holding all such checks to use in some litigation with the State of
California. If, without any injustice to the other participants to whom
checks are due, you could send me my check before the first of December, it
would certainly help me out very much in my tax report, by increasing my
income for this year (this year it (my
income) happens to be lower than it has been for many years) and
reducing it for 1941, when it will be larger than it has ever been before in
any one year. Knopf never made as big a first printing12 as he is making for SAPPHIRA7. The next largest first printing13 was
of SHADOWS ON THE ROCK14, which the
Book of the Month Club had also accepted. As you probably know, the Book of
the Month Club makes its own books. It simply buys from the author and
publisher the right to print the book in their own cheap way, and send it to their subscribers. They cut into Alfred Knopf's
sale somewhat, but he feels that the largewide advertisement they give the book fully compensates.
Moreover, the Book of the Month Club members are made up of people who
practically never buy books—they want something to read but don't know how
to go about getting it. As Alfred says, very few of the members are in my
"natural audience" at all.
God knows, my dear brother, why such a quiet book, dealing with old fashioned
people and the long ago, should set a bunch of young men like the office
staff on fire, but it seems to have done so. The form (structure) of the
book is prettyfairly good, but the eEpilogue and the approach to it are pretty daring, and I was very much afraid
it would give the reader a jolt. Fortunately, I wrote the eEpilogue before I wrote beyond the first few chapters of the book—I like to see my end from my beginning
:.
tThat was before Douglass15 died and before Isabelle16 died, and I was full of enthusiasm for my idea.
Every word in the scene of NANCY'S RETURN is true, my boy, even the weather.
The excitement of that actual occurrence seemed to change me from a baby
into a thinking being. For years I had wanted to write
-3- that actual scene, but I could never
see a way to use it except in a personal autobiography, and I hate
autobiographies.
P.S. I am sending you a copy of a letter to Elsie17, which will explain some of the problems which puzzle me at present, quite as much as the income tax! I'm only half way through the page proofs.
FROM CATHER 570 PARK AVE3., NEW YORK CITY2 Mr. R. C. Cather,1 First Savings Bank of Colusa, Colusa,4 California. NEW YORK N.Y. STA.Y2 OCTOBER 5 4.30 PM PersonalSapphiraInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2172.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2172
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, typewritten and handwritten on recto. Includes one envelope, typewritten and handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- October 5, 1940
- 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.
Possibly #2171, the last known letter she wrote to Roscoe Cather while on Grand Manan in 1940.
Knopf's October 1, 1940, letter to Cather suggests some strategies for avoiding the income tax problem she would have if she received most of her royalties for Sapphira and the Slave Girl in 1941, following usual practices.
The Book-of-the-Month Club mailed subscribing customers a new book, chosen by a panel of literary figures, each month. Started in 1926, by the end of the 1930s the Club had over 360,000 subscribers. Both Shadows on the Rock (1931) and Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) were main selections, and six other Cather titles were offered as alternative selections.
The first printing for Sapphira and the Slave Girl was 50,000 copies, with an additional 219,806 copies printed for the Book-of-the-Month Club.
The first printing of Shadows on the Rock (1931) was 25,000 copies, with an additional 51,800 copies printed for the Book-of-the-Month Club and Catholic Book Club.
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).
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.
Lesser, Joseph (1901-1989). Treasurer of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Born in Poland, Joseph Lesser immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1906, and he became a naturalized American citizen. He and his wife, Eva, and their children lived in Brooklyn, NY. He served for many years as treasurer of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. His office prepared Cather’s tax returns for her, and in her will Cather named him as a potential successor to Edith Lewis as her literary executor. Lesser died in Hallandale, FL.
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.
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.
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.
Place Annotations
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.
Work Annotations
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) by Willa Cather
Shadows on the Rock (1931) by Willa Cather
