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 |
(How solemn that sounds!) I wanted to send you something in remembrance of the day
when you are to be confirmed, having seen you through your baptism, but I couldn’t
think of the right thing. Well one night I dreamed the right thing. I dreamed about you and your
grandmother Cather3 on the upper front
porch of Grandfather’s4 house. So the moment I
was awake, the meaning of that very pleasant dream flashed into my mind. I got up
immediately, went to the box where I keep my little
trinkets and took out a little marquise ring which Douglass5 gave mother long ago. When he came to New York2 six months before his death, he brought
the ring to me. I had it cut down to fit my little
finger and have often worn it. Marquise rings, unless they are very large ones with
many stones, are usually worn on the little finger: Of course on the third finger
when they are engagement rings. (verb understood, please!)
I know your Grandmother would want you to have this ring from her and from me, on this occasion. I want you to have something near you to remind you often of her. She loved you and Mary Virginia6 the best of her granddaughters. She used to tell me that you two did many thoughtful little things for her, and never seemed to think that it was silly for her to like pretty clothes just because she was old. How often I feel sad now because I always found something else to do when she 3 wanted me to go to Mrs. Burden7’s to “look at hats”. People can be very cruel in this world without meaning to be. I know she would want you to have her little ring as well as if she had told me so, and it gives me pleasure to send it to you. Sometime I will tell you some of the loving things she said to me about you.
Goodbye my dear, this is the first letter I have written by hand in many a long day. I think the Nicene Creed8 the most beautiful prose in the world. If I am wakeful in the night and think it through to myself, slowly, I can nearly always go to sleep. There is such authority and majesty in it.
Lovingly, my dear, Your Aunt Willie. 4 ⬩W⬩S⬩C⬩P.S. The ring will be too small for your little finger, perhaps. If so get Mr. Trickey9 (or his successor) to fit it properly and send the bill to me. The ring will reach you later than this letter, since registered packages are always long on the way.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2759.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2759
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Helen Louise Cather 1
- Date letter was written
- March 23, 1940
- 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
A statement of faith widely used in Christian liturgy, which Cather's niece would have recited as part of her confirmation.
Person Annotations
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, 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, Charles Fectigue (1848-1928). Cather’s father.
Charles Fectigue (possibly Fectique) Cather was born in the Back
Creek Valley of Virginia, north of Winchester. His family were sheep raisers
who were largely, but not entirely, Union supporters during the Civil War.
He married Mary Virginia Seibert Boak, daughter of Confederate supporters,
in 1872. In 1883 he and his family followed his parents, William and
Caroline Cather, and brother George to Webster County in Nebraska, where
various cousins and uncles had also settled. Initially he ran a ranch in the
county but soon moved his family into the town of Red Cloud, where he had an
insurance and real estate business. Four of his children, Willa, Roscoe,
Charles, and Jessica, were born in Virginia, while three, James, Elsie, and
John, were born in Nebraska. Cather’s relationship with her father was very
warm: she made regular visits to her parents in Red Cloud and especially
enjoyed her father’s letters expressing appreciation of her novels. A week
after she concluded a visit to her ailing father in Red Cloud, he died of
heart disease. He served as the prototype for Hillary Templeton in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
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.
Mellen, Mary Virginia Auld (1906-1982) (“Virginia,” “M.V.”).
Cather's niece. Born in Red Cloud, NE, to Jessica Cather Auld
and James William Auld, Mary Virginia graduated from Red Cloud High School
in 1924 and then spent a year at Dana Hall in Wellesley, MA, to qualify for
admission to Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 1929 she received an A.B.
in psychology from Smith and then moved to New York City, where she found
work at Lord & Taylor before telling her aunt of her arrival. In 1930,
probably with Willa Cather's help, she secured a position in the Circulation
Department of the New York Public Library. In 1931, she entered the
library's internal training school and in 1932 was assigned to the Tremont
branch library in the Bronx. After Mary Virginia’s parents divorced in 1933
Cather took a quasi-parental role. She paid for vacations and when, in 1935,
Mary Virginia married Richard (Dick) Mellen, a graduate of Harvard Medical
School and roommate of her brother William Thomas Auld at Amherst College,
she supervised wedding arrangements. After Dick was commissioned as a doctor
in the Air Force, Mary Virginia—much to Cather’s
regret—accompanied him to Chattanooga, TN, where he was assigned. In
Cather's will, Mary Virginia was designated a beneficiary of the literary
estate.
Burden, Anna Lockhart (1869-1942). American milliner. In 1877 the extended Lockhart family, including seven-year-old Anna, moved by wagons from Frederick County, VA, to Webster County, NE, where they formed part of the “New Virginia” community. In 1885 she married James L. Burden, who kept a grocery store in Bladen, NE, while she ran a millinery store. They had three children. Around 1893 they moved to Red Cloud, NE, where they continued their businesses. After her husband’s death in 1920, Anna moved to California and married Stephen Redfern in 1931.
Trickey, Mr. American jeweler. There is insufficient evidence for a definitive identification, but this is likely either James B. Trickey (1846-1915) or Edward L. Trickey (1834-1909), two brothers who co-owned a jewelry store on 10th and O Streets in Lincoln, NE. James B. Trickey was born in Illinois and married in 1883; he and his wife Nora had one daughter, born in 1884. Edward Trickey was born in Canada and moved to Illinois with his family by the mid-1840s. He and his wife Julia were married in 1859. The brothers partnered to open the jewelry store in Lincoln by 1886. Cather apparently knew the store while she was at the University of Nebraska; many years later she advised her niece, Helen Cather, to get a ring resized at the store.
Place Annotations
