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 |
"The History of New Mexico"4 is on my table this minute, and thank you5 for it. I am going to take you at your word though and make heavy demands on you. (You won't mind my saying that I never make demands unless I like people, will you?)
I must get some information about Kit Carson6 - my friend of the Jackson Square library is abroad this year of all years! Would you be so heavenly kind as to make me out a little list of books about Kit Carson and his period. You see, he was a great friend of both my Bishops7.
The Bishops8 really seem to be going pretty well. I feel encouraged about a story when it comes back at me like a living thing - the way a dog gets too rough when you play with it. If you all watch and pray with me, I may be able to show you something interesting one of these days. It is awfully nice to feel that you are giving me a lift out there.
Gratefully and affectionately yours, Willa Cather Miss Louise Gerber1, 1635 Adams Street, Denver, Colo.3 NEW YORK, N. Y. ST O2 DEC 7 1925 1230 PMInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2863.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2863
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, typewritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Louise Guerber1
- Date letter was written
- December 5, 1925
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Burroughs 26), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
Individual Annotations
Cather asked Guerber for a copy of it in #2862.
Person Annotations
Burroughs, Ella Louise Guerber (1900-1985) (“Louise”). American librarian and curator. Ella Louise Guerber was born in Allentown, PA, and graduated from Cedar Crest College in 1919 and then the library school at Columbia University. At the time she met Cather in 1925, she was a reference librarian at the Denver Public Library and assisted Cather with her research on Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). In 1926, Guerber moved to New York City to take a position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she saw Cather frequently in person. She married Bryson Burroughs, Curator of Paintings, in 1928; he died in 1934. In 1950, when she received an honorary degree from Cedar Crest, she was Associate Curator of Paintings at the Met. After her retirement, she moved to Baltimore, MD, and then Princeton, NJ, where she died. Her friendship with Cather is documented by more than seventy letters from Cather to Burroughs from 1925 through Cather’s late life and by a diary documenting her in-person interactions with Cather from 1925 through 1927.
Carson, Christopher Houston (1809-1868) (“Kit”). American frontiersman. Born and raised in Missouri, Kit Carson left for Santa Fe (when it was still part of Mexico) in 1826, and then became a wide-ranging fur-trapper based in Taos. His first two wives were Native American (Cheyenne and Arapaho) and his third Mexican. On a return visit to Missouri in 1842, he met John C. Fremont, who hired him as a guide. Fremont’s published account of his travels throughout the West gave Carson national visibility. Carson served under U.S. General Stephen Kearney in the Mexican-American War. After the war, he took up ranching in the New Mexico Territory ceded to the U.S. and was appointed federal Indian Agent for Northern New Mexico. He then served in the Civil War, most notoriously forcing 8,000 surrendered Navajo on the “Long Walk” from Arizona to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. Cather made Carson a character in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
Lamy, Jean-Baptiste (1814-1888). French Roman Catholic Archbishop and missionary. Born in Lempdes in Auvergne, France, Jean-Baptiste Lamy attended the seminary of Clermont and then the seminary of Mont Ferrand, where he met fellow student Joseph Machebeuf. Lamy was ordained in 1838 and assigned to a parish in the town of Chapdes, France. In 1839, he and Machebeuf traveled to the U.S., where Lamy served at a parish in Danville, OH, for 8 years. In 1849, he was appointed the head of the newly formed Vicariate of New Mexico and appointed Machebeuf as his Vicar-General. Lamy finally arrived in New Mexico in 1851, where he conflicted with priests who had served under a Mexican bishop. The Vatican elevated Lamy to Archbishop of Sante Fe in 1875; he retired in 1884. During their 1925 trip to New Mexico, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis became interested in the lives of Lamy and Machebeuf, and Cather based Jean Marie Latour in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) on Lamy.
1069Machebeuf, Joseph P. (1812-1889). French Roman Catholic Bishop and missionary. Born in Riom, France, Joseph Machebeuf entered the seminary of Mont Ferrand, where he met fellow student Jean-Baptiste Lamy. Machebeuf was ordained in 1836 and served as a curate in Le Cendre. In 1839, Machebeuf and Lamy traveled to the U.S., where Machebeuf served as a curate in Tiffin, OH and then in 1841 as a priest in Sandusky, OH. When Lamy was appointed the head of the newly formed Vicariate of New Mexico in 1849, he appointed Machebeuf as his Vicar-General. He served as priest at Albuquerque (1853–1858) and at Santa Fe (1858–1860) before being transferred to Colorado, where he was elevated Vicar Apostolic of Colorado and Utah in 1868 and then Bishop of Denver in 1887. During their 1925 trip to New Mexico, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis became interested in the lives of Lamy and Machebeuf, and Cather based Joseph Vaillant in Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) on Machebeuf.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Story of New Mexico (1891) by Horatio O. Ladd
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
