Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. (1841-1935). U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Born in Boston, MA, to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., a physician and man of letters, and Amelia Lee Jackson Holmes, Holmes, Jr., attended Harvard College from 1857 to 1861, served in the Union Army from 1861 to 1864, and studied at Harvard Law School from 1864 to 1866. He combined influential legal scholarship with the practice of law until his appointment to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. He served from 1882 to 1902, as Chief Justice starting in 1899. In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court, on which he served until 1931, authoring many important opinions. Willa Cather evidently never met Holmes but admired him greatly. Her friend Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant wrote “Oliver Wendell Holmes: Justice Touched with Fire” in Fire Under the Andes (1927), and Cather was delighted to receive a 1931 letter from him praising My Ántonia (1918) after Ferris Greenslet gave him a copy. She then asked the offices of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., to send him Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

Menuhin, Yehudi (1916-1999). Violinist and conductor. Born in New York City to Moshe Mnuchin and Marutha Sher Mnuchin, immigrant Russian Jews by way of Palestine who changed the spelling of their surname and moved the family to San Francisco in 1918, Yehudi started violin lessons at age four and made his first public appearance in 1922. His two younger siblings, Hepzibah and Yaltah, studied piano, although his parents prioritized the musical career of their son over their daughters. With the support of patron Sidney Ehrman, the Menuhin family followed Yehudi’s teacher Louis Persinger to New York City. Ehrman also sponsored Yehudi for a year of study in Paris, France, with Georges Enesco. Yehudi began attracting national attention in 1927 and recorded and toured the U.S. in 1929. That year at Carnegie Hall, his performance of concertos by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms with Bruno Walter and the Berlin Philharmonic inspired Albert Einstein to proclaim “now I know there is a God in Heaven”; Cather was also in the audience for this concert. In 1930, the Menuhin family took up residence in Paris, where Cather first met them in the home of Jan Hambourg and Isabelle McClung Hambourg and became a family friend; the children called her “Aunt Willa.” In the 1930s, the Menuhin family made the Ansonia Hotel its home base during their frequent stays in New York City. Cather took the Menuhin children on walks around Central Park, read Shakespeare with them, and gave them books as gifts. Yehudi’s sister Hepzibah accompanied her brother on piano; they made their first recording together in 1933 and often performed together. The family purchased a ranch in Los Gatos, CA, in 1935, and after a world tour that year, Yehudi withdrew from performing for 18 months and stayed at the ranch with his family. He returned to the concert stage in 1937 and met and married Nola Nicholas in 1938 (Hepzibah married Nola’s brother Lindsay). Yehudi and Nola had two children, Krov and Zamira. Cather enjoyed a late life visit from Hepzibah and Yehudi and their families in 1947. Cather corresponded regularly with the adult Yehudi, giving him personal advice, although only one original letter has surfaced. In 1947, Yehudi and Nola divorced and he married British ballerina Diana Gould, with whom he had two more children. Living in Europe, he continued his career as a performer and also became a conductor, established a school in England, and became a British citizen. He died in Berlin, Germany, while on tour.