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 |
There is simply nothing in this little town to buy for Christmas, nothing at
all! It is not so large as Bladen3
and is much less enterprising. I was wondering what to send you and
Isabelle4 said, [illegible] "If your cousin
lives in the country, why don't you send her a sweater like ours?" Ever
since we began to do our own work here, we have found our sweaters tha greatest comfort. We put them on in the morning and wear them all
the time we are about our house
work, and whenu we have to
run out to the woodshed we do not have to stop to put on a coat. Please
wear
this
one
about
your
work
in
the
kitchen, and you will find
that there is a great deal of warmth in it. Ours are brown ones, just like
this, and we think them very pretty.
I am sending you a photograph of myself which I had taken before I left
New York5. It is rather serious
looking, but everyone in thinks it good. I
don't like grinny pictures, anyhow.
With lots of love and many Christmas wishes to you and Auntie Sister6,
Lovingly Willie Miss Bessie Seymour1 c/o William Andrews7 Bladen3 Nebraska CHERRY VALLEY N.Y.2 DEC 18 1911 4 PM BLADEN, NEB. REC'D.3 DEC 20 1911 6 PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2798.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2798
- Contents
- Document is photocopy of one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes photocopy of one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elizabeth Seymour 1
- Date letter was written
- December 18, 1911
- Place letter was written
- Cherry Valley, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- , Unknown Current Location
Person Annotations
Seymour, Elizabeth (c. 1859-1934) (“Bess,” “Bessie”). Cather’s
cousin. Bess Seymour was born in Virginia to Sarah Boak (the
elder sister of Willa Cather’s mother) and her first husband, Joseph D.
Seymour. In 1883, Bess moved with Willa Cather’s family to Webster County,
NE. Seymour lived in the Cather family home from 1883 to 1904, when she
moved to the Webster County farm of her half brother, Will Andrews. Cather
used her cousin’s name as a byline for the story “The Burglar’s Christmas”
(1906), and it has been suggested that she served as a model for Aunt Tillie
in The Song of the Lark (1915). Cather frequently
mentions in letters to other family members that she received long letters
from Seymour full of family news, and she urged her sister Elsie Cather to
care for Seymour during her final illness and sent money to pay medical
expenses.
Hambourg, Isabelle McClung (1877-1938). Cather’s longtime
friend. Cather met Isabelle McClung, the daughter of a socially
prominent, Pittsburgh (PA) family, in 1899 in the dressing room of actress
Lizzie Hudson Collier. McClung seems to have been the first woman to
reciprocate Cather’s romantic affections. In 1901, McClung invited Cather to
live in her family’s large home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of
Pittsburgh. She and Cather traveled together to Europe in 1902, and McClung
accompanied Cather on a visit home to Nebraska in 1905. After Cather moved
to New York City in 1906, she frequently visited McClung in Pittsburgh,
finding the familiar house a congenial place to write, and McClung visited
New York City, staying with Cather and Edith Lewis. Cather and McClung also
rented a vacation cabin in Cherry Valley, NY, in 1911, and traveled together
to Virginia in 1913. In late 1915, shortly after the death of her father,
Judge Samuel McClung, Isabelle announced her intention to marry violinist
Jan Hambourg. Cather reacted negatively to the marriage (which took place in
1916) but eventually reconciled herself to it, enjoying long visits with the
Hambourgs in Toronto, Ontario, in 1921 and France in 1923 and 1935. Cather
and Edith Lewis also spent time with the Hambourgs in Paris is 1930 and
1935. The latter trip occurred after Isabelle sought treatment in the U.S.
for the kidney disease that killed her several years later in Italy. Her
death came only four months after Cather’s brother Douglass died, leaving
her feeling bereft. “No other living person cared as much about my work,
through thirty-eight years,” she wrote her brother Roscoe (#2137). After
Isabelle’s death, Jan sent to Cather the six hundred letters from Cather to
Isabelle in his possession, and Cather destroyed them, although a few
letters from Isabelle and Cather postcards to Isabelle are extant.
Andrews, Sarah Ellen Boak Seymour (1834-1925) (“Auntie”). Cather’s aunt. Sarah Boak, the elder sister of Cather’s mother, was born in Virginia. She married Joseph D. Seymour in 1857, and they were parents of Elizabeth (Bess). After Sarah’s first husband died in 1861, she married Joseph Andrews in 1862 and gave birth to four more children, William, Katie, Nannie, and a daughter who died in infancy. In 1908, after her second husband died, Sarah moved to Webster County, NE, to live with Will (Nannie had also relocated there). References to her appear frequently in Cather family correspondence, especially when she was elderly and in poor health.
Andrews, William (“Will”) Lee (1865-1950). Cather’s cousin; farmer. William Andrews was born in Frederick County, VA, son of Sarah Ellen Boak Seymour Andrews and her second husband, Joseph Andrews, and the brother of Nannie V. Andrews Matheny and half-brother of Elizabeth (“Bess”) Seymour. He came to Webster County “in his early youth,” according to his obituary, and farmed in the Batin and Catherton precincts all his life. He gave a home to his mother and sister for the latter parts of their lives.
Place Annotations
