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 |
AND ANNEX ACCOMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS ALL MODERN
CONVENIENVES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N. H. AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR October 6th My Dear Louise1;
You can always see me in October—if you come to Jaffrey2 which is the home and birthplace of October. I've been here only four days but I've been thinking of you very often because you once blew in here5. I wondered if you'd blow in again,—and last night comes a letter from you!
THE SHATTUCK INNAND ANNEX ACCOMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS ALL MODERN
CONVENIENVES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N. H. AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR
Why don't you come up some Friday and return on Sunday?? or on a Saturday and
go back on Tuesday. You wouldn't see much of me, (for I'm working like the
devil after a lazy summer) but we could take a drive in the afternoon, if
the afternoon were not Sunday. I'm not afraid
on Sunday roads, I simply get no pleasure out THE SHATTUCK INN
AND ANNEX
ACCOMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS
ALL MODERN
CONVENIENVES
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N. H.
AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE
YEAR of driving on them. This hotel is nearly empty now, heavenly
quiet. So perhaps you will turn your country wanderings this way; you did
once, and "what was again may be,"6
as7
Flush Among the Ruins8 would say.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2900.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2900
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Louise Guerber Burroughs1
- Date letter was written
- October 6 [1933]
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (Burroughs 26), Drew University Library, Special Collections and Archives, Madison, NJ
Individual Annotations
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
In 1930 (see #2893).
Cather is playfully referring to Robert Browning by combining "Flush," the name of the spaniel dog of his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the title of his poem "Love among the Ruins."
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.
Browning, Robert (1812-1889). British poet. Born in London
and educated at home, Browning’s early poetry won praise from critics, but
his Sordello (1840) was condemned for its
obscurantism. Widespread fame and popularity did not come to him until the
publication of The Ring and the Book (1868-69), and
earlier poems such as “My Last Duchess” gained new appreciation. In 1845
Browning sought an introduction to Elizabeth Barrett, a better-known poet
than he was at the time; she and Browning married in 1846 and went to Italy
to live. Cather studied Browning’s work while at the University of Nebraska,
and referred to it often in her early journalism, but she disliked the
Browning Societies, which were formed to study his works. One of her early
stories, “‘A Death in the Desert,’” borrowed the title of one of Browning’s
poems.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Ring and the Book (1868 to 1869) by Robert Browning
