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 |
NORTHEAST HARBOR2
MAINE June 30 Written in the yard of our cottage here. Dear Roscoe1;
I do want you to read both these
articles5. They are very truthful and exactly like Mr. McClure6! After all he was the best
friend I ever had, and I've neglected him shamefully for ten years. He has
no home, but lives quietly at the Union Leage Club7. The week before I left town8 I spent such a happy afternoon with
him there. He is 86 years and has grown so gentle. Courteous and kind he he always was. He is no longer a
whirlwind, but a summer breeze. He took me into the Library of his Club, sat
down beside me and held my hand and began:
2 "Miss
Cather, do you happen to remember the economic reforms of Edward the First9 when he got home from
Palestine10?"
Just like him! he always expected me to "remember" whatever was in his mind.
Ten years ago we nearly quarreled
quarrelled when he came to dinner. He was just back
from Italy11 and insisted that
Moussolini12 had developed "a perfect government."13 He now
generously recalled that I had called it a "perfect abscess" and said "Why,
Mr. McClure, you couldn't run an office that way, much a government!" Nice
of him, wasn't it? I mean to see him from time to time this winter. I have
had to cut out so many people since I have not been well, but I ought not to
cut out the man who gave me my first chance.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2221.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2221
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- June 30 [1944]
- Place letter was written
- Northeast Harbor, Maine, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection (MS316), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Asticou Inn (Northeast Harbor, ME): Originally built in 1883 by A. C. Savage, the Asticou Inn was destroyed by a fire in 1899, but rebuilt by 1901. When the war and health considerations made travel to Grand Manan impossible, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis stayed at the Asticou in the 1940s, occupying a small cottage on the grounds of the inn.
Though the specific articles are unknown, they may have been related to the awards given to both Cather and McClure by the National Institute of Arts and Letters in the spring of 1944.
In the last years of his life, McClure lived at the Murray Hill Hotel, in New York City, but spent long hours everyday at the Union League Club, in which he had a life membership.
McClure went to Italy in July 1926 and remained there eighteen months in order to prepare a series of signed articles by Mussolini, whom he met personally in late 1926. McClure eventually sold the series to The Saturday Evening Post. The series appeared in 1928 and was later published as a book. A strong supporter and enthusiast of Mussolini's regime in its early phase, McClure participated in a public debate on the merits of fascism at the Selwyn Theatre in New York in March 1928.
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).
McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born
American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine,
living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education
he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox
College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he
edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite
opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet
Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary,
and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s
Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893
with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the
"muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens,
but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who
worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s
attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of
fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the
editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she
later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost
control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his
autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book
publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately
failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine
publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost
went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to
her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the
prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry,
in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled
the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.
Edward I (1239-1307). King of England. Born in Westminster, Middlesex, England to King Henry III, Edward I participated in a Crusade in Acre before returning to England to be crowned King in 1274. During his reign, Edward I subjected Wales to English rule and unsuccessfully attempted to conquer Scotland. His reign is noted for administrative efficiency and legal reform.
Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945). Italian dictator. Mussolini
declared himself dictator of Italy in 1925, gaining favor with the people of
Italy through extensive public works projects. By 1938, when Cather mentions
him in letters, he had begun expelling Jews from Italy and working towards
an alliance with Adolf Hitler’s Germany, formalized in May 1939.
Place Annotations
