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 |
NORTHEAST HARBOR
MAINE July 25th Dear Doctor Garbat1;
Miss Lewis4 and I arrived here2 on the nineteenth of June5, after a very hard trip6. I have been taking the liver capsules7 you advised (eight capsules each day) they are more easily procured here than the liquid, and I think I feel their good effect. My appetite for food is much keener than it was for some weeks before I left New York8.
As to weather, the old residents insist that it has been the worst in many years;
either rainy and cold or very hot and misty. As for me, I enjoyed the cold days.
They seemed to untwist my nerves as a sea voyage used to do. In I was able to do a great deal of nothing.
I hope you got out of New York before the intense heat came on. Even here the mercury went up to 89 and ninety. I toasted my stiff right hand in the sun and I got some benefit from the heat.
Please remember me warmly to Mrs. Garbat9. I send you both my love.
Faithfully yours Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2480.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2480
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Abraham L. Garbat1
- Date letter was written
- July 25 [1943]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Although Cather says in the body of this letter that she and Edith Lewis had been in Northeast Harbor, Maine, since June 19, she evidently misstated the month. 1943 was the first year that she and Lewis stayed at the Asticou Inn, arriving in mid-July (see #2400 and #2723). Assuming that Cather misstated the month, 1943 is the most likely year in terms of the chronology of all of their visits to the Asticou, which also included 1944, 1945, and 1946.
- Place letter was written
- Northeast Harbor, Maine, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Cather 20), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
Individual Annotations
Asticou Inn (Northeast Harbor, ME): Originally built in 1883 by A. C. Savage, the Asticou Inn was destroyed by a fire in 1899, but rebuilt by 1901. When the war and health considerations made travel to Grand Manan impossible, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis stayed at the Asticou in the 1940s, occupying a small cottage on the grounds of the inn.
Cather seems to have confused months here. See the explanatory note about the date of the letter.
See #2723 on Cather and Lewis's struggles to find a comfortable place to stay in Maine because of wartime conditions.
Cather struggled with anemia since the early summer of 1941 (#2270).
Person Annotations
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.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
Garbat, Rachelle Lubarsky (c. 1890-1969). Patron of the arts; wife of Abraham Garbat. Born in Russia, Rachelle Lubarsky emigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1909. By 1920, she was married to physician Abraham Garbat; they had two children, Julien and Manya. Rachelle was known as a patron of Jewish musicians. She made possible the musical education of pianist Mischa Levitzky and violinist Max Rosen and persuaded Henry Goodman into giving his Stradivarius violin to Yehudi Menuhin. She and Abraham also had George Gershwin play at parties in their Manhattan apartment in the 1920s.
Place Annotations
