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 |
Mrs. Goudy3 wrote me that you called the
afternoon I left. I am more than sorry that I did not get up to see you again, but
you dont know how trying it is to go for a few days to a town where you know lots
of
people and try to sandwitch in a lot of business and pleasure together. I only saw Kitty4 once and then for but a few minutes. I owed a dozen or more calls and I just
buckled down and [illegible] made
them. After that tiresome operation was over I had no more than time to see
Sherman5 and the Chancellor6 and all that. This last business7 was not especially conducive to
hilarity and I really did not feel that I had much right to inflict my company on
any one. My interview with Sherman was amusing. I told your papa8 about it down at the office
and will relate it to you when I see you next. I wanted to see you about a lot of
things, but really Mariel I was rather down in the mouth and did not see any one
except people I just knew formally, then I called you and discussed the weather.
Then I was up on 17th St when that awful accident happened to the little Townley girl9 and that shook my nerve so that
the only thing I wanted was to get out of Lincoln10, which I did the next morning.
So you see I wanted to see you enough but I wasn't presentable. I have inflicted my
blues on you so often that its
sort of a must be sort of a chestnut to you now. I
didn't get in to see Frances11 at all, not even for a minute, and I was awfully sorry. Say,
dont Nedins12 look stunning in that black
dress?
I wrote to Belden13 in Missouri14 and got a nice long letter from him
telling me that he knew of no vacancy in his university or any other, begging me not
to teach, telling me that I was too good for it, had too
much "talent" etc, saying that he "used often to prognosticate to himself about my
future to and that in his meditations I my path had led to a very different and much
stronger sphere than a professor's chair." O Lord! Im tired of hearing about my
"talent," no body, not even Sherman, has less faith in it than I have. Its awkward
to be thought too good for one thing and too poor for another, its like Mahomet's coffin,15 and I'd rather drop
down to a hum drum Hades and be comfortable, for meantime one must live.
Since I have been home we have had a time of it. Roscoe16 has been been seriously ill
with inflammatory rheumatism for about three weeks. He could not move hand or foot
and had to give up his school. He is much better now, though it will be some time
before he can walk. O Himmel17: the Woes
of the Cathers: They would fill a volume, I never heard of any other family that was
at all "in it" with us unless perhaps the Manatts.18
Are the Westons19 back from Chicago20 yet, and do
you know how and where Kitty is? I have'nt heard a word from her for three weeks and
I really have-not the heart to write to her. If she wants to drop so dismal a
correspondent I cant blame her. She was a little cut [illegible] up because I did'nt tell her anything about my
pedagogical aspirations, she first heard of it from Mrs.
Imhoff21. Heaven, it was no lack of confidence in her, it was only
because I hated to bother her with my sordid worries when she has enough care of her
own. When you are crossed in love, Mariel, then I'll
have mercy on you too and cease to bother you with my successive failures.
Farewell, the first time anything cheerful occurs I will write you. For Heaven's sake drop me a line occasionally.
Yours as Ever Willa.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2993.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2993
- Contents
- Document is four leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of each leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mariel C. Gere1
- Date letter was written
- April 17, 1896
- Place letter was written
- Red Cloud, Nebraska, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collection (RG2639.AM), Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather was trying to obtain a teaching position in the English department of the University of Nebraska.
Medieval legends held that Mohammed's coffin in Medina was magically suspended in mid-air; this was sometimes interpreted as being suspended between heaven and hell.
Translation: Oh Heaven (German)
Possibly a reference to the family of James Irving Manatt (1845-1915), Chancellor of the University of Nebraska from 1884 to 1888.
Person Annotations
Gere, Mariel Clapham (1874-1960). Cather’s university friend; a teacher. Mariel Gere, eldest daughter of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, born in Lincoln, NE, entered the University of Nebraska's prep school in the same year Cather did. She and her sisters visited Cather several times in Red Cloud, NE. Both were members of the Union Literary Society until Gere joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in 1892. Gere graduated in the science course and taught chemistry at Lincoln High until 1941. She also served on the Lincoln City Library board for many years. Cather and Gere remained friends and correspondents; Gere defended Cather from accusations that she had been arrogant and friendless during her university years.
Goudy, Alice Estelle Dailey (1853-1937). Cather’s high school teacher
and friend. Alice Dailey grew up in Nemaha County, NE, where she
attended the Nebraska State Normal School at Peru, NE, which her father had
helped found. She married fellow teacher Alexander K. Goudy in 1882; both
taught at the Normal School. When they moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1888, he
was superintendent of schools and she was the high school principal. She
encouraged Cather to attend the University of Nebraska. The Goudys moved to
Lincoln, NE, in 1891, when he was elected state superintendent of schools;
Alice Goudy was assistant, then deputy, state superintendent. After A.K.
Goudy suffered a stroke around 1900, the couple retired to Nemaha County.
Cather wrote to Mrs. Goudy for many years, although few letters have
survived.
Wing, Katherine Weston (1871-1903) (“Kit”). Cather’s friend. Born in Nebraska, Katherine was the third of four children born to J.B. and Helen Weston, who became well-to-do residents of Beatrice, NE, thirty miles south of Lincoln, NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in 1887, but withdrew for several years due to poor health. When she returned in 1891, she met Cather. She visited Cather in Red Cloud in the summers of 1891, 1894, and 1895, and Cather visited Weston in Beatrice in June, July, and December 1895, where Cather also enjoyed the company of Katherine’s younger brother Herbert (Bert). Katherine attended the library school of the University of Illinois as a member of the class of 1898 but withdrew in 1897. She then remained at home until her June 1902 marriage to Thomas E. Wing, a fellow 1894 University of Nebraska graduate. She moved with him to Scarsdale, NY, where she died of pneumonia in 1903.
Sherman, Lucius A. (1847-1933). American university professor.
Born in Massachusetts, Sherman earned his PhD at Yale University. He
came to the University of Nebraska as professor of English language and
literature in the early 1880s. His aim, as discussed in his Analytics of Literature (1893), was to make literary
criticism an objective study by quantifying such features as sentence length
and strong or weak words in various authors. Cather studied William
Shakespeare under Sherman her freshman year at the university.
McLean, George Edwin (1850-1938). American academic and university administrator. Born in Rockville, CT, George Edwin McLean received his Bachelor of Divinity from Yale Divinity School (1874), his PhD from Leipzig University (1883), and his Doctor of Laws from Williams College (1895). In 1895, when James Canfield recommended him for the position of chancellor at the University of Nebraska, he was an English professor at the University of Minnesota. He was chancellor when Willa Cather applied for a teaching position at the University of Nebraska in 1896. In 1899 he left to become president of the State University of Iowa.
Gere, Charles Henry (1838-1904). Newspaper publisher; Cather's
employer during college. Charles H. Gere, born in New York,
graduated from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, in 1861 and joined the
Union army. In 1865 he moved to Nebraska, where his family had moved.
Politically active in the Republican Party, he moved to Lincoln, NE, and
founded the city’s first newspaper, the Nebraska State
Journal. He married Mariel E. Clapham of Washington, D.C., in 1871.
While serving as a representative in the first state legislature, he helped
found the University of Nebraska, for which he served as regent from 1882 to
1892. Cather wrote for his newspaper when she was a university student, and
became a friend of Charles and Mariel Gere’s three daughters, Mariel, Ellen,
and Frances. She remembered Charles Gere’s “kindness, his easy wit, the ease
and charm of his personality.”
Townley, Leisa (1888-1896). Lincoln resident. Born in Nebraska, the younger daughter of Lt. Richard Townley and his wife, Leisa Townley lived with her family at 1740 C Street in Lincoln, NE. About nine o’clock on the morning of March 31, 1896, she tried to cross the street in front of a stopped street car and was struck by another street car, which crushed her and dragged her twenty-five feet. Her mother, watching from the front porch, witnessed the accident. No blame was attached to the street car motorman, who could not see her and who tried to stop his vehicle. Willa Cather was on 17th Street at the time and was greatly shaken by the incident.
Gere, Frances C. (1877-1965). Cather's friend. Frances Gere,
the youngest child of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln,
NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in 1894 and graduated in 1898.
Like her sisters, Mariel and Ellen, she joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma
sorority and lived in Lincoln the remainder of her life.
Gere, Ellen Bladen (1875-1941) (“Ned” or “Neddums”). Cather's friend. Ellen Gere, the second daughter of Charles H. and Mariel C. Gere, was born in Lincoln, NE. She visited Cather in Red Cloud, NE, with her sisters, and Cather included her in her correspondence in the 1890s. Ellen Gere entered the University of Nebraska in Lincoln around 1892, but graduated with the class of 1899. In the 1920s she adopted two children, believing, with her friend Dorothy Canfield, that women who wanted to be mothers did not have to be married.
Belden, Henry Marvin (1865-1954). American professor and folklorist. Born in Connecticut, Henry Belden received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. After studying for a year at the University of Strassburg, Germany, he joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska in 1894. In 1895 he left to teach English at the University of Missouri. He served as president of the American Folk-Lore Society from 1910 to 1911 and published a collection of Missouri folk songs in 1940. After Willa Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska, she asked Belden for help securing a teaching position at Missouri, but he discouraged her from pursuing teaching as a career (#2993).
Cather, Roscoe (1877-1945) (“Ross”). Cather’s brother.
Roscoe was born in Virginia, the second child and oldest son of
Charles and Virginia Cather. After graduating from Red Cloud (NE) High
School in 1895, he taught country school for two years, attended the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln for one year (1897-1898), taught high
school in Carlton, NE, and Oxford, NE, and finally became superintendent of
schools in Fullerton, NE. There he met fellow teacher Meta Schaper, whom he
married in 1907. They relocated to Lander, WY, in 1909, where he opened an
abstract office and where their three children, Virginia and twins Margaret
and Elizabeth, were born. In 1921, they moved to Casper, WY, where Roscoe
became president of the Wyoming Trust Company, and in 1937 to Colusa, CA,
where Roscoe and his brother Douglass had acquired a controlling interest in
the First Savings Bank of Colusa. Roscoe served as president of the bank
until his death. Willa visited Roscoe and his family in Wyoming several
times and shared important travel experiences with them, including a 1926
trip to New Mexico with Roscoe, Meta, and their children and a 1941 San
Francisco vacation with Roscoe and Meta. She also relied on him to handle
family-related business as well as personal financial matters, and he was
one of her chief correspondents throughout her life. Roscoe served as a
prototype for one of the twin brothers in the Templeton family in “Old Mrs.
Harris” (1932).
Weston, Herbert Towle (1876-1951) (“Bert”). Cather’s Nebraska acquaintance. Born in Lincoln, NE, Bert Weston was raised in Beatrice, NE, by his father, J.B. Weston, one of the town’s founding settlers and most prominent citizens, and mother Helen Towle Weston. His sister Katherine was Cather’s University of Nebraska classmate, and Cather met Bert when she visited her friend in Beatrice. After graduating from Beatrice High School, Bert Weston’s parents sent him to the Michigan Military Academy in Orchard Lake, MI, in 1893. After graduating from MMA in 1895, Weston was admitted to the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. In 1898 he joined the First Connecticut Light Infantry in hopes of fighting in the Spanish-American War but never saw action. He returned to Beatrice at the war’s end and married Margaret Collins of Brooklyn, NY, in 1903. They raised three sons in Beatrice, where Bert worked for the family business, the Beatrice National Bank, established his own business, Nebraska Corn Mills, and managed the Western business interests of his wife’s family.
0628Wing, Katherine Weston (1871-1903) (“Kit”). Cather’s friend. Born in Nebraska, Katherine was the third of four children born to J.B. and Helen Weston, who became well-to-do residents of Beatrice, NE, thirty miles south of Lincoln, NE. She entered the University of Nebraska in 1887, but withdrew for several years due to poor health. When she returned in 1891, she met Cather. She visited Cather in Red Cloud in the summers of 1891, 1894, and 1895, and Cather visited Weston in Beatrice in June, July, and December 1895, where Cather also enjoyed the company of Katherine’s younger brother Herbert (Bert). Katherine attended the library school of the University of Illinois as a member of the class of 1898 but withdrew in 1897. She then remained at home until her June 1902 marriage to Thomas E. Wing, a fellow 1894 University of Nebraska graduate. She moved with him to Scarsdale, NY, where she died of pneumonia in 1903.
Imhoff, Grace Douglas (1860-1945). Cather’s Lincoln acquaintance. Born in New York, Grace and her family moved to Iowa in the late 1860s; in the 1870s, she moved to Lincoln, NE, living with her sister Elizabeth Douglas Raymond. She attended Lincoln High School, where she met her future husband, Charles Hudson Imhoff. They married in 1887 and had three children. After her husband’s bank closed in the 1890s, the family moved to New Jersey in 1899. She was widowed in 1929, and moved to Long Beach, CA, where she died. According to Grace’s sister-in-law, Mary Baird Raymond, the two women took fiction-writing lessons from Cather in the 1890s.
Place Annotations
