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 |
Is it green? Heaven help me, I thought it was a pale blue! I walked all about the shop to find loose front and fitted back. I knew it was too large, but thought that could be easily remedied.
Please send the enclosed speech4 to the Bishop5. Lehman6 is one of the few real idealists I know. Has been all his life.
Hastily W. Miss Elsie Cather1, 1030 S. 52nd Street, Lincoln3, Nebraska. NEW YORK, N.Y. STA. Y2 JAN 5 1939 1030 AMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2456.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2456
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one enclosed newspaper clipping and one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elsie Cather1
- Date letter was written
- [January 4, 1939]
- Accompanying this letter
-
Includes enclosed newspaper clipping from the January 3, 1939, New York Herald Tribune entitled "Text of Lehman's Inaugural Address Assailing Dictators and Intolerance."
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Berg Collection Cather m.b., New York Public Library, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York, NY
Person Annotations
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
Beecher, George Allen (1868-1951). Western Nebraska Episcopal Bishop.
Born in Illinois, Beecher moved with his family to Kearney, NE, at
age 14. He studied for the Episcopal priesthood at the Philadelphia (PA)
Divinity School, graduating in 1892, and then spent fifty-one years in
Nebraska as a deacon, priest, and finally Bishop of the Missionary District
of Western Nebraska. Willa Cather met him in Red Cloud, NE, in December 1922
when he presided at her and her parents’ confirmation as members of Grace
Episcopal Church. She and Bishop Beecher corresponded frequently
thereafter.
Lehman, Herbet H. (1878-1963). American politician. Herbert H. Lehman was born in New York City, the youngest child of Maher and Babetta Lehman. Lehman graduated from Williams College in 1899, after which he briefly worked for a textile manufacturer before joining his family’s investment banking firm in 1908. Lehman became increasingly involved in the Democratic Party during the 1920s, and in 1928 he successfully ran for Lieutenant Governor in New York on the same ticket as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1933 Lehman became the first Jewish Governor of New York, a position which he resigned from in 1942 to serve as the first Director-General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1949, where he represented New York until 1957. Lehman died of heart failure in New York City.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Text of Lehman's Inaugural Address Assailing Dictators and Intolerance," New York Herald Tribune (January 3, 1939) by Herbert H. Lehman
