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 letter and Dr. Kimmel's5 arrived today. This is Sunday and I cannot see Dr. Hart6 - queer name for a heart specialist, but that is his name. He was abroad when Douglass7 was here8, or I would have chosen him before Dr. Patterson9. I have already talked to Dr. Garbat10. I will get Dr. Hart to write a letter of advice either to you or Dr. Kimmel. In the meantime, I want you to thank Dr. Kimmel for his very clear and definite statement of Roscoe's11 original condition12 and present improvement. I am sure that you yourself have worked out in your own mind what my general physician has already told me; namely, that those trips to Los Angeles13 and Long Beach14 must be absolutely cut out. And that Roscoe, with as little excitement as possible, must turn over his executorship to a legal firm in which he has absolute confidence. The lawyers who attend to my little business are trustees for hundreds of estates, many of them very large ones; indeed, that is their principal business. Of course, I realize that a legal firm without Roscoe behind it would not be so careful as it would with Roscoe behind it. But it is just a question of whether Roscoe wishes to go on living or not. Dr. Garbat thinks it very doubtful whether he should ever drive a car again. But that would not matter, since you are a splendid driver. For Heaven's sake, my dear sister, don't let him use himself up so that the "heirs" to Douglass' estate will get a few more dollars out of it!
I am writing this hastily to get it off on the quickest possible mail. My thoughts for the last few days have been scarcely anywhere but with you and Roscoe. The situation simply makes me short of breath. For instance, yesterday I poured a very strong ammonia tonic into my eyecup and washed my eye with it, with the result that I have had to keep wet cloths on it today.
Give Ross a gentle hug for me. WILLA CATHERP.S. Meta, dear, I have ordered a delightful adventure book15 for Roscoe, by Neville Shute16. That is not his real name. He is a very important officer in the English air service, and he wrote this book when he was laid up a short time from injuries in the service. I read it when I was in the hospital at Christmas time, with great pleasure. It's very modern, the way the kids talk (the air kids, I mean). But it's splendidly worked out, and the little pictures of the English public men which come into it are so much like those I have myself known. Maybe he will like you to read it to him. I know you will both love the Dutch sea captain who comes in at the latter part of the story, and the diver who does down to examine the lost submarine. Think of me when you chuckle.
W. S. Cather 570 Park Ave.3 New York City2 Mrs. R. C. Cather1, Colusa4, California. NEW YORK N.Y. STA. N2 APR 20 1941 7 PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2267.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2267
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes an enclosed typed letter to Cather from Joseph E. Tillotson MD and a newspaper clipping. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Meta Shaper Cather1
- Date letter was written
- April 20, 1941
- Accompanying this letter
-
Includes one enclosed typed letter to Cather from Joseph E. Tillotson MD which details Roscoe's medical condition.Includes a newspaper clipping about the death of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Cather had made a mark around the section where it quotes something he had said about Cather.
- 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.
Douglass Cather visited New York and saw Dr. Patterson in December 1937.
Roscoe had been experiencing heart-related health problems, including high blood pressure and an episode which Cather refers to as an "attack" (#2268).
Person Annotations
Cather, Meta Schaper (1884-1973). Cather’s sister-in-law.
Meta Schaper was born in Plattsmouth, NE, the second daughter of
Robert and Julia Ramke Schaper. After graduating from the University of
Nebraska in Lincoln 1903, Meta Schaper taught at Havelock High School in her
hometown of Havelock, NE (now part of Lincoln). She met Roscoe Cather when
teaching in Fullerton, NE, and they married in 1907. They moved to Lander,
WY, in 1909, where she gave birth to three daughters, Virginia and twins
Margaret and Elizabeth. The family moved to Casper, WY, in 1921 and Colusa,
CA, in 1937. Willa visited Meta and Roscoe’s family in Wyoming several times
and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926 trip to
New Mexico with Meta, Roscoe, and their children and a 1941 San Francisco
vacation with Roscoe and Meta. Meta and Willa remained friends until Willa’s
death.
Kimmel, Charles B. (1906-1961). American physician. Born in Ohio, Charles Kimmel moved to Marysville, CA, in 1939 after completing his medical residency in Boston and worked at the Marysville Medical Clinic. Charles Kimmel provided care for Roscoe Cather in the early 1940s.
Hart, Theodore Stuart (1869-1951). American cardiologist. Born in Illinois, Theodore Hart was a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University's medical school. He taught at Columbia from 1903-1922 and was a staff member or consulting physician at a number of New York area hospitals. A leading heart specialist, Cather sought Hart's advice about her brother Roscoe Cather's health in 1941.
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.
Patterson, Henry S. (1875-?). American physician. Son of Edward Patterson, the presiding justice of the appellate division of the New York Supreme Court, and Isabel L. Patterson, Henry Patterson graduated from Williams College in 1896 and the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1900. Early in his career he was deputy attending physician at Hudson Street Hospital, a public charity hospital in lower Manhattan, and was chief of clinic and instructor in applied therapeutics at Physician and Surgeons. Later he was director of St. Luke’s Hospital on the Upper West Side and was personal physician to many prominent New Yorkers, including members of J. P. Morgan’s family. Patterson and his wife Charlotte W. Patterson had one child, daughter Charlotte.
Garbat, Abraham L. (1885-1968). American physician. Born in Warsaw, Poland, Garbat immigrated to the U.S. in 1892 and was awarded an MD by Cornell University in 1906. He was awarded the Cartwright Prize of the School of Medicine of Columbia University in 1919 for his work on typhoid carriers and immunity. He was Cather’s personal physician in New York City from as early as 1934, and she consulted him about her brother Roscoe Cather’s heart ailment.
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).
Norway, Nevil Shute (1899-1960). British writer and aeronautical engineer. Nevil Norway spent the early part of his career as an aeronautical engineer and in 1931 formed his own aircraft construction company, Airspeed Ltd., which became a major aircraft supplier for Britain at the outbreak of World War II. While working as an engineer, Norway began writing in his spare time, but did not fully commit to professional writing until 1938, when he resigned from his company. Over the course of his writing career he published twenty-three novels, mostly with Heinemann Ltd., and enjoyed commercial success both in Britain and America. Four of his best known works are: Pied Piper (1942), A Town Like Alice (1950), Requiem for a Wren (1955) and On the Beach (1957). His later novels were especially critical of the British government and in 1950 he emigrated to Australia.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Landfall: A Channel Story (1940) by Nevil Shute
