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 |
Please read the letter enclosed and send it on to their new address. They5 send me a photograph of the house, but no address whatever. They all (my relatives) move so damned much that I can't keep track of them.
I want you read the letter because it will tell you about Field Marshall Wavell6's grand anthology "Other Men's Flowers"7. Do read his Introduction and his notes! At last a real man, (over) with all his glands, loves poetry! Read the one on page 70 – and his comment8!!
You can get it from Gelber & Lillienthal 336 Sutter, San Francisco9 [A fine book store – always rushed my books]
# Oh, and I beg you read Wavell's comment10 on page 337, what an all-round man he is!
Montgomery11 too is a great lover of English poetry.
FROM CATHER 570 PARK AVE.3, NEW YORK CITY2 Mr. R. C. Cather1 First Savings Bank of Colusa Colusa, California4 NEW YORK2 MAY 28 1945 10 PM 519 HadleyInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2234.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2234
- 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 23, 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
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.
"London Under Bombardment" by Greta Briggs is on page 70 of the anthology. Wavell observes that "I read these verses in an Egyptian newspaper while flying from Cairo to Barce in Cyrenaica at the beginning of April 1941, to try to deal with Rommel's counter-attack...reading this poem and committing it to memory did something to relieve my discomforts of body and mind."
On page 337, Wavell comments on Raymond Asquith's "Praise of Young Girls," writing "I know only a few [of Asquith's poems], this one and a parody of Kipling which began with the striking line: 'The sun like a bishop's bottom, rosy and round and hot.' What a brilliant and attractive person he was."
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).
Cather, Irma Wells (1891-1973). Cather’s sister-in-law. Irma
Wells met John Cather in her hometown of Smethport, PA, where he was working
at the time. After their marriage, his employment took them to Ohio,
Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and Whittier, CA, where they settled in 1936. They
had two children, Catherine and Ella Faye. Willa Cather had little contact
with Irma and there is no known correspondence between the two
women.
Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother.
Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and
fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger
than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small
boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote
several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating
from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University
of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he
enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study
engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to
Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his
decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he
graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a
chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport,
PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children,
Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer
in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936
he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers
Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA.
Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had
little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from
her to him have surfaced.
Wavell, Archibald Percival (1883-1950). British army officer and
Viceroy of India. Wavell made his career in the Boer War and
World War I (where he served in France and lost an eye at Ypres in 1915) and
in Palestine under General Allenby. In World War II he first served as
General Officer Commanding in Chief of the British Middle East Command until
1941, when he became Commander-in-Chief in India, where he had spent his
early childhood. He was made viceroy and governor-general in 1943. One of
his first actions was to use the army to distribute supplies during the
Bengal Famine of 1943, which Cather notes in letter #1757. Until his
resignation in 1947 his main concern was the preparation of India for
self-rule. Cather was a great fan of his popular poetry anthology Other Men’s Flowers (1944), which consisted of poems
he knew by heart.
Montgomery, Bernard Law (1887-1976) (“Monty”). British field marshal.
After serving with distinction in World War I, Bernard Montgomery
went on to become one of the most decorated military leaders of World War
II, including knighthood in 1942. He first played a significant role in the
first major Allied victory in El Alamein, Egypt in 1942 and then pursued the
German armies across North Africa to their final surrender in Tunisia in
1943. As ground commander of Anglo-American forces under Dwight D.
Eisenhower, he also led the successful Allied invasion of Sicily. Following
the war, Montgomery served as Chief of Imperial General Staff and deputy to
Eisenhower at NATO. Montgomery edited Poems from the
Desert by Members of the Eighth Army (1944).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Other Men's Flowers: An Anthology of Poetry (1945) by Archibald Wavell
