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 |
RAVELLO
GOLFO DI SALERNO May 7th 1908 Dear Miss Nichols1:
I think I have to thank you for word of this delightful place. We3 have been here for a week now and I think we shall be here for several more. The season is unusually late, so that we are quite in time for the carnelias and cherry blossoms, and the roses are just coming on well.
There is, as you told me, a new hotel—the Belvedere—but it is not nearly so well placed as this one and the food is by no means as good. The Palumbo is so small and so clean and the cook is really not to be despised. The place combines almost incompatible advantages.
Today is the seven hundreth anniversary of the arrival of the skull of
St. Andrew4 at Amalfi5. The skull was taken from the crypt
and sent down the coast yesterday. This morning it was brought back to
Amalfi by jolly a fleet of forty-seven
vessels, and four cardinals and a choir from Rome6 were at the harbor to receive it, besides all the
clergy for many miles around. I was going down the mountain with a priest
and a lot of his parishioners, all in their very best raiment, when some old
friends of mine who were coming up the carriage road spied me fleeing down
the path with this gay company and
inconsiderately stopped me and made me face about and miss the festa.
I have not thanked you yet, dear Miss Nichols, for the fine lot of addresses you sent me just before I left New York7. You were most awfully good about telling me of places. I think you are mighty unselfish to tell anyone about Ravello2. I should not blame you if you had tried to keep it as much of a secret as possible. Not many people seem to be coming here this year.
When we go down to Naples8 next week or the week after, we shall write to Mrs. Harrison9 and I hope that she will not have left for the country then.
Miss McClung begs me to remember her to you most cordially. She shares with me your benefactions.
Faithfully Willa Sibert Cather HOTEL & PENSION PALUMBO RAVELLO2 GOLFO DI SALERNO Miss Rose Standish Nichols1 55 Mount Vernon St Boston10 Massachusetts Stati Uniti RAVELLO (SALERNO)2 8 5 08Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2851.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2851
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Rose Standish Nichols 1
- Date letter was written
- May 7, 1908
- Place letter was written
- Ravello, Campania, Italy2
- Location of original letter
- Nichols Family Papers, Nichols House Museum, Boston, MA
Person Annotations
Nichols, Rose Standish (1872-1960). American garden designer, writer, and activist. Born in Boston, MA, daughter of Arthur Howard Nichols and Elizabeth Homer Nichols, Rose Nichols became interested in garden design; her first project was at her family’s country house at the artists’ colony of Cornish, NH. She was encouraged by her uncle, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. She travelled extensively in Europe, writing books on English, Italian, and Spanish pleasure gardens, as well as writing many articles for magazines. Nichols was also active in the women’s suffrage and peace movements. Cather met Nichols in Boston, and corresponded with her about a two-part article on the letters of Saint-Gaudens, which appeared in McClure’s in 1908; later Cather had to decline an article on gardens from Nichols.
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.
Saint Andrew (d. 60/70 CE). Roman Catholic saint. Saint Andrew and his brother Saint Peter appear in the Synoptic Gospels as the first two of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. According to tradition, St. Andrew was crucified at Patras, Achaia (modern day Greece) on an X-shaped cross. The patron saint of Scotland, Russia, and Amalfi, Italy, in 1208 St. Andrew’s body was stolen and transported from Constantinople to Amalfi and in 1463 the skull was taken to Rome, Italy. During her 1908 visit to Italy, Willa Cather participated in the seventh centenary celebration of the arrival of St. Andrew’s relics in Amalfi. In 1964 Pope Paul VI returned the skull to Patras as a gesture of goodwill to the Greek Orthodox Church.
Harrison, Mrs. Acquaintance of Rose Standish Nichols. Mrs. Harrison was an acquaintance of Rose Standish Nichols who was in Naples in 1908. No further information is available about this person.
Place Annotations
