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 hope you will like the book4 I sent you. Of course the the technical details will mean more to you than to me5. I thought the poet6 the only weak part—pretty soppy. Anyhow, Mr. Forrester7 doesn't really care much about poets. A clever man can't fake—not even so well as a man who is all fake. And novelists do turn out poets with such ease—overnight, so to speak, while it seems to take God a century or two.
I won't wish you a "Merry Christmas": nobody can have one. But I'm glad you are with Roscoe8—you'll be such a help to him.
Affectionately Your Aunt Willie Mrs. John Brockway1 First Savings Bank of Colusa Colusa3 California NEW YORK N.Y.2 1943 530PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2386.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2386
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Virginia Cather Brockway1
- Date letter was written
- December 21 [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
Forester's novel concerns a British naval vessel during World War II, and Virginia Cather Brockway's husband was an officer in the U. S. Navy.
The character Able Seaman A. B. Presteign, from C. S. Forester's The Ship.
Person Annotations
Brockway, Virginia Cather (1912-1984) (“West Virginia”). Cather's
niece. Born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe Cather and Meta Schaper
Cather, Virginia graduated from Natrona County High School in Casper, WY, in
1929. She received an A.B. in English from Smith College in Northampton, MA,
in 1933, the same year Willa Cather received an honorary doctorate there. In
1934, she enrolled in the University of Chicago School of Social Services
and was, for a time, a social worker. She married John Hadley Brockway, a
Navy officer, in 1936. They moved frequently until his retirement from the
Navy. She had one child, son George. In letters, Willa Cather sometimes
calls her "West Virginia" to distinguish her from her cousin Mary Virginia
Auld because Virginia Cather's birthplace in Wyoming was farther west than
Mary Virginia's in Nebraska.
Forester, Cecil Scott (1899-1966) (“C. S.”). British novelist and
journalist. An author of historical fiction and a journalist,
twelve of Forester’s novels feature the character of Horatio Hornblower, a
fictional British naval officer during the French Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars. Several of his novels were adapted into films, including
The African Queen (1935). Forester also served as
a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and the German occupation
of Czechoslovakia.
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).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Ship (1943) by C. S. Forester
