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 |
MEDICAL DIRECTOR
E. D. KREMERS, M. D.
ASSOCIATE MEDICAL DIRECTOR
J. A. COLLIE, M. D.
RESIDENT PHYSICIAN
ETHEL FANSON, M. D.
PATHOLOGIST LAS ENCINAS
SANITARIUM4
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA2 BOARD OF DIRECTORS
GEORGE DOCK, M. D., PRES.
H. G. BRAINERD, M. D.,
VICE PRESIDENT
W. JARVIS BARLOW, M. D.
F. C. E. MATTISON, M. D.
STEPHEN SMITH, M. D. May 27 Dear Louise1;
Oh I remember what a first ocean crossing is like—and by the southern route,
too! I am so happy for you about it. Thinking of you makes me want to go
again. The flowers at Easter really did please
me, when I came home dead weary after an unusually hard day. They deserved a
speedier "thank you" to the thoughtful giver.
STEPHEN SMITH, M. D.
MEDICAL DIRECTOR
E. D. KREMERS, M. D.
ASSOCIATE MEDICAL DIRECTOR
J. A.
COLLIE, M. D.
RESIDENT PHYSICIAN
ETHEL FANSON, M. D.
PATHOLOGIST
LAS ENCINAS
SANITARIUM
PASADENA,
CALIFORNIA
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
GEORGE DOCK, M.
D., PRES.
H. G. BRAINERD, M. D.,
VICE PRESIDENT
W. JARVIS
BARLOW, M. D.
F. C. E. MATTISON, M. D.
STEPHEN SMITH, M.
D.
We5 moved my mother6 here three weeks ago—lovely place,
better for all of us7. I had two
really thrilling weeks in San
Francisco8. I can't see any change in mother—certainly none
for the better.
I go East next week to take my degree9 from Yale—after that I don't know where. I do love to think of you, doing all those things for the first time. Be happy, drink my health!
Yours W. S. C. RETURN IN 5 DAYS TO LAS ENCINAS PASADENA, CAL.2 C/o Mr. August Jaccaci Mrs. Bryson Burroughs1Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2886.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2886
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Louise Guerber Burroughs1
- Date letter was written
- May 27 [1929]
- Place letter was written
- Pasadena, California, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Burroughs 26), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
Individual Annotations
Las Encinas Sanitarium (Pasadena, CA): Established in 1904 by Dr. James H. McBride, the Southern California Sanitarium for Nervous Disorders was renamed Las Encinas Hospital for Nervous Disorders in 1917, and finally to Las Encinas Sanitarium in 1928. Willa Cather’s mother, Mary Virginia Boak Cather, spent the last three years of her life here, where Cather visited her in 1929, 1930, and 1931.
Willa Cather's brother Douglass lived in Long Beach, and Elsie Cather took a leave of absence from teaching in 1929 to go to California to help care for her mother.
On 19 June 1929, Yale University awarded Cather an honorary Doctor of Letters.
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, Charles Douglas (1880-1938) (“Douglass”). Cather’s
brother. Born in Virginia and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Charles
was third child and second son of Charles and Virginia Cather. As an
adolescent, Douglass Cather helped his father supervise rented farm
properties and worked as a messenger for the local Burlington & Missouri
Railroad office. In 1897 he left Red Cloud for a position in Sterling, CO,
and then took a position with at the Cheyenne, WY, office of the Burlington
Railroad. In 1908 he traveled to Mexico, an experience that his sister gave
to Emil Bergson in O Pioneers! (1913). By 1910 he was
working for the Santa Fe railroad and living in Winslow, AZ, where Willa
Cather visited him in 1912. He later achieved success in the oil business in
California. Although he never married, Cather notes that during the last six
or seven years of his life he had a relationship with Dorothy Rogers.
Douglass visited Cather in New York City in December of 1937. His death in
June 1938 left her devastated. Douglass served as a prototype for one of the
twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932) and Hector
the messenger boy brother in “The Best Years” (1948). His years working for
the Burlington also inspired Cather’s many railroad worker characters in her
novels, including Song of the Lark (1915) and The Professor’s House (1925). Few letters from this
important sibling relationship have survived.
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
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.
Place Annotations
