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 |
I was so pleased with everything that Elsie3 and Helen Louise4 have written me about your new house and I know that you will all be happy, especially as Helen Louise is at home again. All the aunts and uncles give me such good reports of your two children5. I hope I can come out before long to see them for myself. When they were little children, I certainly loved them very dearly.
Now, just a word about the question you ask me in your letter. How foolish of you
to
think that I ever expected you to return the small amounts I sent on to you in that year6 when times were so hard. I
certainly never thought of such a thing,
and I would have loved to do more.
bBut the long and expensive visits that I made to Mother7 when she was ill at Las Encinas8 during those three years, made my bank account a little short.
I heartily thank you and Ethel9 for the beautiful pillowcases you sent me at Christmas time. I assure you that I have no others half so nice - indeed, nine are all plain hemstitched ones, except for two that dear old Annie Sadelaak10 embroidered for me. The handkerchiefs, I am sure, came from Helen Louise and Charles Edwin, and I have one of them in my hand at this minute.
I hope the New Year will bring good things to you, my dear boy, and I hope you will never forget the one member of the family11 who did more than anyone else for his family. Indeed, I have never known anyone, anywhere, who took so much thought for his own people and spent his strength and money so generously for them.
It came about that by the time he was on his feet I didn't need a "hand-up", - but if I had needed it, I know he would have given it.
My love to you dear Jim, and my hearty good wishes to you all. WillieInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2758.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2758
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- James D. Cather1
- Date letter was written
- January 11, 1939
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Charles E. Cather Collection (MS350), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
In her ledger, Cather recorded giving James $250 in 1931.
Las Encinas Sanitarium (Pasadena, CA): Established in 1904 by Dr. James H. McBride, the Southern California Sanitarium for Nervous Disorders was renamed Las Encinas Hospital for Nervous Disorders in 1917, and finally to Las Encinas Sanitarium in 1928. Willa Cather’s mother, Mary Virginia Boak Cather, spent the last three years of her life here, where Cather visited her in 1929, 1930, and 1931.
Person Annotations
Cather, James Donald (1886-1966) (“Jim”). Cather’s brother.
James was born in Red Cloud, NE, the fifth child and third son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. James moved to Wyoming in 1907 to work with his
brothers Douglass and Roscoe. In 1913 he married Ethel Garber, and owned and
operated clothing stores first in Red Cloud and then Holyoke, CO, where the
family settled for a time 1920 before returning to Red Cloud in 1922. The
couple had two children, Helen Louise and Charles Edwin. In 1930 the family
moved to California so James could work in the oil business with Douglass
and his partners. Willa’s relationship with James was more distant than that
with her brothers Douglass and Roscoe, who were closer to her own age,
although she was very fond of his children.
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.
Southwick, Helen Louise Cather (1918-2004). Cather’s niece.
Helen was born in Red Cloud, NE, to Willa Cather’s brother James and
his wife Ethel. Willa was a doting aunt on her visits to Red Cloud. In 1931,
Helen moved with her family to Long Beach, CA, where she graduated high
school and attended Long Beach City College. In 1939, Helen returned to Red
Cloud to help care for her maternal grandmother and then enrolled in the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where she met her future husband, Philip
Southwick. After graduating in 1941, she briefly returned to California to
work in the personnel department of Douglas Aircraft company, but married
Southwick in Lincoln in 1942, and then moved with him to Champaign, IL. When
Philip’s employment took them to Plainfield, NJ, she frequently spent time
with her aunt in New York City. In 1946, the Southwicks moved to Pittsburgh,
PA, where their son James was born. In later years Helen worked as a school
librarian and was active in the Cather Foundation in Red Cloud, NE. She was
a beneficiary of Cather’s literary estate, and when Edith Lewis died in 1972
she bequeathed Cather books and manuscripts to Helen and her brother Charles
Cather. Helen donated her share of these materials and Willa Cather’s
letters to her to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Cather, Charles Edwin (1923-2011). Cather’s nephew. Charles’s parents were James D. and Ethel Garber Cather, and he was likely born in Red Cloud, NE, where he spent the early years of his childhood. He was, as Willa Cather wrote to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, “the little nephew I love the best” who inspired her portrayal of the little boy Jacques in Shadows on the Rock (1931) (#1054). He moved with his family to California in the 1930s. Cather continued to be an indulgent aunt as he got older, writing him letters of advice about and lending him money for his education. He attended, but did not complete degrees from, the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY, and the Law School at the University of Colorado in Boulder. After his aunt’s death he completed undergraduate and law degrees at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, CA. He was a beneficiary of his aunt’s estate and was appointed her literary executor after Edith Lewis’s death.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee
Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and
was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872.
Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War
while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the
Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage
she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa,
Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while
three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska
after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather
remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud,
NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928
Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their
families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in
Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times
but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for
her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia
Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932),
which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.
Cather, Ethel Garber (1889-1975). Cather’s sister-in-law.
Ethel was the daughter of Edwin S. Garber and through him was
related to Governor Silas Garber, the model for Captain Forrester in A Lost Lady (1923). Ethel graduated from the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1909 and married James Cather in 1913.
The couple had two children, Helen Louise and Charles Edwin. The family
moved to California in 1930. Ethel and Willa Cather were not close.
Pavelka, Anna Sadilek (1869-1955) (“Annie”). Cather’s Webster County
friend. Anna Sadilek was born in Bohemia, now part of the Czech
Republic, daughter of Francis and Anna Sadilek. Her father, a weaver and
musician, brought the family to Nebraska in 1880, settling in north central
Webster County. After his death, Anna came to Red Cloud, NE, and worked as a
domestic servant for the J.L. Miner and Silas Garber families, among others.
She had a daughter by James William Murphy in 1892, and married John Pavelka
in 1896; they had twelve children together, three of whom died young. The
family farmed in northern Webster County. After Cather reestablished contact
with Anna Pavelka in 1915, they corresponded for many years, and Cather
occasionally sent gifts. Anna (usually referred to as Annie) served as the
prototype for Ántonia Shimerda in My Ántonia (1918).
Cather, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Place Annotations
