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 |
35 FIFTH AVENUE
New York2 November 17, 1930. My dear Mr. Taft1:
As I had to leave the platform before the exercises4 were over last Friday, in order to catch a train, I did not have an opportunity for a short conversation with you. Though I was alone with you for a few moments before the program began, you were then occupied with the address you were soon to deliver. I simply wanted to tell you how much pleasure your fountain5 near the Art Institute in Chicago6 has given me for many years. I have to go West two or three times every year and I never go through Chicago, even when the interval between trains is short, without taking a cab and driving over to the Art Institute for another glimpse at that fountain. It always delights me. There is in it everything that I feel about the Great Lakes, and it always puts me in a hopeful, holiday mood. I do not know whether you yourself think it an especially fine thing, but I do. I do not know why I like it so much, because I know very little about sculpture. But it seems to me that the pleasure one feels in a work of art is just one thing that one does not have to explain.
Very cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2477.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2477
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Lorado Taft 1
- Date letter was written
- November 17, 1930
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Taft Papers, 1889-1939, Folder 2, Abakanowicz Research Center, Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
Grosvenor Hotel (New York City): When Cather and Edith Lewis lost their 5 Bank Street apartment in 1927, they moved into the Grosvenor Hotel, where they continued to live until 1932. The hotel was located at 35 Fifth Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Cather the William Dean Howells Medal for Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) on 14 November 1930.
Person Annotations
Taft, Lorado Zadok (1860-1936). American sculptor, teacher, and writer. Born in Illinois, son of Don Carlos Taft and Mary Foster Taft, Lorado Taft received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Illinois Industrial University, where his father taught geology. He studied in Paris from 1880 to 1883. In 1886 he settled in Chicago, IL, where he taught at the Art Institute of Chicago. He married Ada Bartlett around 1896; they had three daughters. His monumental and often allegorical sculptures became widely known. He also lectured and wrote histories of American sculpture. Cather met Taft briefly in 1930 and wrote praising his Fountain of the Great Lakes (1913).
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"Fountain of the Great Lakes" (1913) by Lorado Taft
