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 |
My heart stopped for a moment when I opened the morning paper yesterday. I had no idea Mr. Burroughs3 was dangerously ill. I got back to town2 only last week and had heard no news of you.
Whenever you feel like seeing people again let me know, please, and I will come to see you. Write or telephone me—Regent 4, 8354 is my number. I shall be in town until after Christmas. My dear girl, I am so sorry, so sorry. And I'm sad that a man who got so much out of life (and put so much into it) had to leave it.
Very lovingly Willa Cather Mrs. Bryson Burroughs1Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2905.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2905
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one handwritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Louise Guerber Burroughs1
- Date letter was written
- [November 18, 1934]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, 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.
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
