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 |
Wasn't Mountbatten6 in command of the
Illustrious7 when she was so
long under repairs at Norfolk8?
I don't usually read weddings9, but I read
read this account with great pleasure. It tells me that not only Saint Pauls
and the Abbey still stand, but that the English way of life still
survives,—just as before, as always! It is the best way of life I have
found in this world. If every building in London10 is blitzed there will still be the same people—God
bless 'em!
I expect you miss little Margaret11. She is a dear and I love her dearly. You won't miss her husband12 much I imagine. I wouldn't.
Lovingly Your Aunt WillieJust as they stood to watch Kitchener4 ride up to Buckingham Palace (and I with them) in 1915!!
FROM CATHER 570 PARK AVE., NEW YORK CITY2 Mrs. J. C. Brockway1 5486 Glen Hill Roadway S.E. Washington (20)3 D.C. NEW YORK N.Y.2 NOV 3 1946 2-PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2395.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2395
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one newspaper clipping with handwritten note by Willa Cather across the top. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Virginia Cather Brockway1
- Date letter was written
- November 3 [1946]
- Accompanying this letter
-
Includes one newspaper clipping with handwritten note by Willa Cather across the top. The picture is of English housewives who have turned out to watch a "society wedding," and the headline is "Changing—Yet Unchanged—England."
- 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.
HMS Illustrious was a Royal Navy aircraft carrier.
The Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia.
Mountbatten’s daughter, Patricia Mountbatten, married Lord Brabourne on 26 October 1946.
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.
Kitchener, Horatio Herbert (1850-1916). British field marshal.
Born in Ireland and educated at the Royal Military Academy,
Kitchener was appointed governor of the British Red Sea territories in 1886
and spent most of his career in imperial political and military positions in
Africa and India. Kitchener is infamous for his brutal tactics as commander
in chief during the South African War. At the outbreak of WWI, he was made
the secretary of state for war and served from 1914 to 1918. He died at sea
when his ship struck a German mine.
Mountbatten, Louis (1900-1979). British admiral. Born Prince Louis of Battenberg in Windsor, England, he was the younger son of Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse (a granddaughter of Queen Victoria); the family anglicized their name to Mountbatten during World War I. The younger Louis was educated at the Royal Naval College. As Lord Louis Mountbatten he rose steadily in rank, becoming captain of the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious in 1941. Later, as Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asia Command, he oversaw the recapture of Burma and Singapore. After the war he served as the last British Viceroy of India, where he facilitated the country’s independence from Britain. He became Earl Mountbatten of Burma in 1947. Mountbatten married Edwina Ashley in 1922; the elder of their two daughters succeeded him as Countess Mountbatten after he was assassinated by an IRA bomb in 1979.
Shannon, Margaret Cather (1915-1996) (half of the “twinnies”).
Cather’s niece. Margaret and her twin sister Elizabeth were born
in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to
Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of
Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on
Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters
to them, she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time.
Margaret moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937. After she married
Richard Shannon in September 1938, she moved with him to Boston, MA, where
he earned an MBA from Harvard University in Cambridge. In 1940 they moved to
the New York City area, where their first child, Richard, was born in 1943.
The Shannons moved to Washington, DC, in 1944, where their daughter Kathryne
was born. Cather did not see Margaret again after she left New York, and
Margaret’s other three children, Patricia, Margaret, and Elizabeth, were
born after Cather’s death. Kathryne and Patricia became caretakers for a
large family archive of letters preserved by their mother, which they
donated to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as the Roscoe and Meta Cather
Collection.
Shannon, Richard S., Jr. (c. 1918-?) (“Dick”). Husband of Cather’s niece. Richard Shannon, born and raised in Denver, CO, and a 1938 engineering graduate of Stanford University, married Margaret Cather, daughter of Roscoe and Meta Cather, in September 1938. Shortly after their marriage the couple moved to Boston, MA, so that Richard could earn his MBA from Harvard. In 1940 his work took them to the New York City area, where their first child, Richard, was born in 1943. The Shannons moved to Washington, DC, in 1944, where daughter Kathryne was born. Their last child, Patricia, was born after Willa Cather’s death. The family settled in Denver, CO.
Place Annotations
