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 |
Your confidential letter in handwrite was carefully destroyed, after having been carefully read. Its contents did not surprise me, since the situation outlined was in character. I have watched the actual game at Monte Carlo4 too often to under estimate that side of human nature. Logically, it is almost impossible to beat the bank: but it has been done. The excitement of trying keeps some fellows young until they pass seventy.
We5 leave town2 a week from today, heading for northern Maine6. I will send you my address later.
For my sins Tom Auld7 & wife8 have arrived in town. I would think they would refrain from bothering me. But not so. However, they won't get more than a few hours and a restaurant dinner out of me. The cleaners and packers are here stripping the apartment9 for summer.
Affectionately Willie Mr. R. C. Cather1, First Savings Bank of Colusa, Colusa,3 California. NEW YORK N.Y.2 June 18 12.30 PM By Air MailInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2206.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2206
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- [June 18, 1943]
- 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.
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).
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.
Auld, William Thomas (1908-2000) (“Tom,” “Will”). Cather's nephew.
Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld and James William
Auld, William Thomas Auld graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1927 and
Amherst College in Amherst, MA, in 1931. His roommate at Amherst, Richard
Hager Mellen, would later marry his sister, Mary Virginia Auld. He graduated
from Stanford University Medical School in 1936, the same year he married
Helen Jane Wall. From 1938 until his retirement, Auld practiced pediatrics
in Stockton, CA, except for the four years (1942-1946) he served in the Army
Air Force Medical Corps. He and his wife had no children. Willa Cather seems
to have had minimal contact with her nephew as an adult, and there are no
known letters from her to him.
Auld, Helen Jane Wall (c. 1911-after 1970). American educator; wife of W.T. Auld. Born in Oregon to Elva and Otto Wall and raised in Oakland, CA, Helen Wall graduated from Fremont High School in 1927 and from the College of the Pacific in 1932 and taught elementary school in Yolo County, CA. She married William Thomas Auld, Cather’s nephew, in 1936. They later divorced.
Place Annotations
