Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
I don't often bother you with "fan" letters. Those from homesick soldiers and
sailors keep me busy. This one is singularly appealing. I'll ask you to send
it back to me and I'll put it in one of the two big suitcases which hold
such glorious letters from aged priests and the sons and daughters of our
pioneers—Phil Kearney's4
daughter5, Sir William Van Horn's6
daughter7, (he built the Canadian
Pacific) and all sorts of queer mine owners and prospectors and surveyors
and Jim Hill 8's children—all
mixed up together. My real author's Rol
Royalties are not in bonds or in the bank, but in those suitcases. I save
only the letters from unusual people, whether it's an old cow puncher or
Sir James Jeans9 the
astronomer.
Sometimes a letter touches one's heart, like this one.
I'll write you a business letter 2 at some other time. This is to thank you for your help10 about our vacation. We telegraphed Santa Fe11. La Fonda12 impossible—can give reservations for three (3) days only. Have written both Estes Park13 addresses.
I'm so grateful for you news about the food situation14 in San Francisco15 and about those smart Russians16!
We are very short of food here. But I had the good luck to find a bottle of real Benedictine that you sent me years and years, still two-thirds full!! What a blessing! We sip it from lovely liqueur glasses after a slim dinner.
I will reply to your business letter soon,
Lovingly, Willie Dillard Bedford Garden City 4 R.C. property[?] Mr. R. C. Cather1 First Savings Bank of Colusa, Colusa, California.3 NEW YORK2 MAY 9 1945 1 PM PersonalInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2230.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2230
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roscoe Cather1
- Date letter was written
- [May 9, 1945]
- 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
Cather had solicited Roscoe's advice about where she and Lewis should spend the summer of 1945.
Hotel La Fonda (Santa Fe, NM): Luxury hotel in Santa Fe, NM, which was built in 1922. The hotel was owned by the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railway and managed by Fred Harvey when Cather and Edith Lewis stayed there in the summers of 1925 and 1926.
Cather may be referring to the World Security Conference, which took place on April 25, 1945, in San Francisco. Before the conference the Office of Price Administration announced that it might relax wartime food quotas in the city to accomodate the conference.
At the time of the World Security Conference in San Francisco tensions were running high between the United States and Russia because of the "Polish Problem." Right before the conference Russia and the Soviet-backed Polish regime signed a "friendship treaty." Russia then proceeded to insist upon a seat for the Polish government despite British and American objections.
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).
Kearny, Philip (1815-1862). American general. Kearny began his military career fighting for the French cavalry in Algiers in 1840. He returned to the U.S. to participate in the Mexican-American War, where his left arm was wounded and amputated. Upon entering the Civil War on the side of the Union, he was quickly promoted to a major general and fought in the battles of Willamsburg, Fair Oaks, Second Manassas, and Chantilly. He was killed while on a scouting mission.
Selfridge, Susan Watts Kearny (1857-1940). American writer. Susan Kearny was born in Paris to famed Civil War general, Philip Kearny, and Agnes Maxwell under scandalous circumstances, as Kearny was then still married to his estranged wife, Diana Bullitt Kearny. In Philip Kearny’s will, which was published in newspapers following his death in 1862, he bequeathed $10,000 to his daughter Susan. After her marriage to J. Russell Selfridge, Susan Selfridge wrote a biographical account of her father’s life, “Stories of My Father, General Phil Kearney,” that was published in several papers. Little is known about Susan Selfridge’s life outside of her relationship with her father.
Van Horne, William Cornelius (1843-1915). American railway builder
and official. Van Horne began his career in the railroad
industry as a telegraph operator and gradually worked his way up to the
position of general superintendent of the Milwaukee Road line. In 1882 he
was appointed the general manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and
tasked with constructing its main line between Montréal and Port Moody. Van
Horne was successful in quickly completing the line and promoted to
president of the CPR in 1888. Under his leadership, the CPR expanded its
services to include telegraph communications and express. He also launched
the Empress line of Pacific steamships and was the founder of Canadian
Pacific Hotels. Van Horne was knighted in 1894 in recognition of his
contributions to Canadian infrastructure. He and his wife Lucy Hurd Van
Horne had three children, William Cornelius, Jr., who died in childhood,
Lucy Adeline, and Richard Benedict.
Van Horne, Lucy Adaline (1868-1941) (“Adaline”). Canadian Art collector. Adaline Van Horne was the daughter of Sir William Van Horne, the one-time president of the Canadian Pacific Railroad. She was interested in art and helped to manage her family’s prestigious art collection throughout the 1930s. She was also active in her community through her involvement with charitable organizations. Cather claimed to have received a fan letter from her.
Hill, James Jerome (1838-1916). Canadian-born railroad developer. Hill’s career in freight shipping and railroad enterprises spanned many decades and the U.S.-Canadian border. He is best known for creating the Great Northern Railway, which connected the northern Plains and the Pacific Northwest. Cather’s late-life recollection that as “a child” she saw “Jim Hill” addressing “a group of Burlington operatives” (#1741) may be apocryphal as Hill was not involved with the Burlington in Nebraska. Nevertheless she used “Jim Hill” as shorthand for the highest type of the visionary railroad developer in the American West.
Jeans, James Hopwood (1877-1946). British physicist, mathematician, and astronomer. Sir James Jeans is best known for proposing that matter is continuously created throughout the universe. He taught at both the University of Cambridge and Princeton University until he was appointed a research associate at the Mt. Wilson Observatory. Throughout his career he wrote many popular expositions of science of which Cather was an interested reader. She checked The Universe Around Us (1929) out of the New York Society Library and gave Yehudi Menuhin Jeans’ The Mysterious Universe (1930) for his fifteenth birthday. She evidently heard him lecture, quoting from his lecture in several letters, and they may have corresponded.
Place Annotations
