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 |
FRED B. DUNN, PRESIDENT
EDWIN H. LEE, GENERAL MANAGER
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA2 March 25 Dear Louise1;
I can only write a word of greeting and send you my warm wishes for a
heavenly sea-trip. My mother4 is too
dreadfully ill—we've two nurses, but I can be away from her only long enough
to sleep a kind of drugged sleep in this hotel, a short walk from her
apartment. I can't write about it—it's too NEUNER CORPORATION LITHO L.A.
The Breakers
FRED B. DUNN, PRESIDENT
EDWIN H. LEE, GENERAL MANAGER
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA
heart-breaking. I carried off your French Dictionary in the rush of packing.
I know you won't mind.
I had half-a-day in Chicago5 and spent it in the art museum. I saw a lovely picture6 of a grim, cold northern sea with fishermen, and rushed across to see it, and it was by Mr. Burroughs7! Oh I did like it so! It was the nicest kind of message. Things like that are The Messages, anyhow—in sickness and health into the grave, for that matter. They're the things I can hold fast to, even in this dark time. Goodbye—may the South be very lovely for you both! Remember me in the Naples8 Museum. I love it.
Willa Cather The Breakers LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA2 Mrs. Bryson Burroughs1 Metropolitan Museum of Art 81st St & Fifth Ave. New York3 N. Y. LONG BEACH CALIF.2 MAR 26 1929 2 PM [illegible] 1929Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2885.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2885
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto only of first leaf and on recto and verso of second leaf. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Louise Guerber Burroughs1
- Date letter was written
- March 25 [1929]
- Place letter was written
- Long Beach, California, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Burroughs 26), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
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.
Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or
“Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in 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.
Burroughs, Bryson (1869-1934). American painter and curator. Born in Massachusetts and raised in Ohio, Bryson Burroughs studied painting at the Art Students League in New York City and then in Paris under Luc-Olivier Merson and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. He became Curator of Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1909 but also continued to paint and exhibit his own works. He is known for increasing American holdings at the museum. Burroughs married sculptor Edith Woodman in 1893; the couple had two children before she died in 1916. In 1928, he married Louise Guerber. He died of tuberculosis.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Fisherman (1915) by Bryson Burroughs
