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 |
Funny place for me to be? Perhaps. I found myself in New York3 in the first dreadful week of August, my chore5 at the printers' done (250 signatures6 on 100 percent linen-rag paper brought from Italy7) and no place to work. So I telegraphed Mrs. MacDowell8 and asked her if she could take me in and give me a studio. I have a beautiful studio in a fine wood, looking out on Monadnock. At first I didn't like the "colonists", but now I like them nearly all—some of them very much. As people they're mostly nice, if only they wouldn't talk about their damned professions and call them "arts"! Some of them are very nice. I'm enjoying the Bishop9 again, after weeks of separation—its like a ball where you have to dance for hours with other partners and then come back to the real one. When I was in N. Y. I sold the serial rights to the "Forum,"10 to begin in December. That will crowd me just a little. September 8 I go to Jaffrey11, Miss Lewis12 will join me for the month. I'll be there until late in October.
My dear, I found a letter from you in Red Cloud13 which my naughty parents14 had not forwarded—but no offense meant, there were dozens of letters there. My parents are Southern and don't get agitated. Don't miss "Iolanthe"15, if it's still going16. If you hear of anything good to read, tell me. Don't get impatient, but I hope we can do some things together when I do go back to town.
Yours W. S. C. Miss Louise Guerber1 Metropolitan Museum of Art Fifth Ave. & 81st St New York City3 N. Y. PETERBORO, N. H.2 AUG 23 1926 2-PM THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUMOF ART
RECEIVED
AUG 24 1926
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2869.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2869
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Louise Guerber1
- Date letter was written
- [August 22, 1926]
- Place letter was written
- Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Burroughs 26), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
Individual Annotations
The MacDowell Colony was an artists' colony near Peterborough, NH, created by Marian MacDowell in 1907 at her farm after the death of her husband, composer Edward MacDowell. The colony welcomed artists in all mediums and provided private cottages and uninterrupted work time. Cather spent time there in August and September 1926.
Cather was signing the limit pages for the deluxe edition of My Mortal Enemy.
Winthrop Ames produced and staged a revival of the operetta at the Plymouth Theater in New York City, which opened in April 1926.
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.
MacDowell, Marian Griswold Nevins (1857-1956). American musician and philanthropist. Born in New York City, Marian Nevins married composer and concert pianist Edward MacDowell in Connecticut in 1884. She had met him in Europe, where she herself was studying piano, but she gave up her career after marriage. Having inherited money from both of her parents, Marian MacDowell purchased Hillcrest farm in Peterborough, NH. Late in his life, Edward expressed a desire to establish an artists colony. In 1907, shortly before Edward’s 1908 death, Marian created the Edward MacDowell Association and transferred the Peterborough farm to it. In order to support the operation of the MacDowell Colony, Marian MacDowell returned to piano performance and gave public lectures to raise money. Although many artists were repeat residents at the MacDowell Colony, Cather stayed there only once, in 1926.
Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor,
advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in
Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis
attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska,
earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith
College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from
Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa
Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the
Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon
afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work
at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the
city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a
position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's
Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved
into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five
Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become
managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she
stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as
an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis
acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan
Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction
in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in
New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout
their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process,
reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will
appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her
literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and
published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather
Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after
Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism.
She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.
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, 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.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Mortal Enemy (1926) by Willa Cather
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
Forum
Iolanthe: or, The Peer and the Peri (1882) by Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert
