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 |
NORTHEAST HARBOR
MAINE Northeast Harbor, Maine2 August 16, 1945 My dear Mary,
I read the home paper5 pretty faithfully and I want to congratulate you on your election to the chairmanship of the Fifth District. I do think it is admirable and wonderful how you have stood up and held on and made your life useful and happy since the Doctor6 was taken from you. I have watched a good many of these people who try to outrun loss and sorrow by jumping about the country and shaking off responsibilities. It seems to me that by such flightiness people lose their past as well as their present and their future.
Just by holding on to the place that you and Dr. Creighton made together you have held on to something of your old life, and kept continual reminders of him and his way of life with you. The things he cared for and held precious, you have still cared for and kept precious, that is the only way we can hold on to the friends who have been taken from us.
The business of "scrapping the past" is not a real thing -- it is only a temporary anaesthetic, and people who resort to it, generally have very shallow natures. I have long felt proud of you, my dear, that you have kept on a true and loyal course and been mindful of, and faithful to, the past.
I want to ask a little favor of you. It may seem foolish, but I keep on wanting to ask you. It has reached
my ears indirectly that our old
home7 in Red Cloud8 has
been sold. I would be grateful to you if you would lay the ghost and tell me
to whom it was sold. I keep wondering whether it did not fall into the hands
of some boarding ASTICOU INN
NORTHEAST HARBOR
MAINE house keeper
-- or may be it was cut up into a house for two families. The only pleasant
word I have had about the place for years came from Mrs. Frank Frisby9 (Lora McBride that was), about a year ago in
response to a letter from me. (My letter merely told her that I was glad to
see that the Frisbys10 still had a controlling interest in the Amboy
Milling Company.) Lora wrote me that from her house in the town: "From my front windows I can see
your old home as soon as the leaves begin to fall." That, at least, tells me that all the trees have not been cut down. I thought
my curiosity about it was childish and have hesitated for a long time to
write and ask you but I really think it would be quite a satisfaction to me
to know what did happen to the old place, even if it is bad news. It is
strange how old houses become saturated with the people who have lived in
them. You have realized that, and I am sure that you have made a wise choice
by living on in the home where you and the Doctor were so happy
together.
Please give my love to Carrie and tell her that I want to write to her as soon as I recover from the shock of the atomic bomb11 which seems to me to have destroyed a great deal of the best part of our past and to threaten our future.
Affectionately and with happy memories, "Willie" Cather ASTICOU INN NORTHEAST HARBOR MAINE Mrs. E. A. Creighton1 Red Cloud8 Nebraska NORTHEAST HARBOR, MAINE2 AUG 17 1945 6-PM The Two FriendsMarie SandozWilla Cather
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3013.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3013
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, typewritten on recto of each leaf only. Includes one typewritten envelope.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mary Miner Creighton 1
- Date letter was written
- August 16, 1945
- Place letter was written
- Northeast Harbor, Maine, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Not identified (Not identified), National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Individual Annotations
Asticou Inn (Northeast Harbor, ME): Originally built in 1883 by A. C. Savage, the Asticou Inn was destroyed by a fire in 1899, but rebuilt by 1901. When the war and health considerations made travel to Grand Manan impossible, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis stayed at the Asticou in the 1940s, occupying a small cottage on the grounds of the inn.
541 N. Seward Street (Red Cloud, NE): Built circa 1899, Cather’s parents, Charles F. and Mary Virginia Boak Cather, purchased this home in 1903. Cather stayed here when she returned to Red Cloud to visit her parents, returning for the last time in 1931 following her mother’s death. At that time, Cather's sister Elsie inherited the house, returning to Red Cloud for summer vacations for most of the 1930s. Willa Cather contributed to the maintenance of the property until Elsie sold the house in 1945 to W. H. Maynard. By 1946, it was being used as a local hospital. Willa Cather used the house as the prototype for the second Ferguesson house in her short story “The Best Years.”
The United States bombed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 5 and 9 August 1945, respectively
Person Annotations
Creighton, Mary S. Miner (1873-1968). Clubwoman; Cather’s
friend from childhood. Born in Iowa, Mary Miner was the second
daughter of James and Julia Miner, neighbors of the Cather family in Red
Cloud, NE. Willa Cather later recalled that when she first moved into town
with her family and enrolled in school in 1885, “Margie Miner was so jolly I
wanted awfully to know her.” They became lifelong friends and
correspondents, and Mary’s sisters Irene and Carrie were equally close to
Cather. Mary Miner wed local physician E. A. Creighton in 1900 and lived the
rest of her life in Red Cloud. She was the prototype for Julia Harling in
My Ántonia (1918).
Sherwood, Carrie Miner (1869-1971). Sherwood, Carrie Belle
Miner (1869-1972) Civic leader; Cather's friend. Born in Waukon,
IA, to James L. Miner and Julia Erickson Miner, Carrie Miner was the eldest
of their children. The family moved to Red Cloud, NE, in 1878, where the
Miner Brothers store became the largest in town. Cather remembered meeting
Carrie there. In 1884, Carrie, her mother, and siblings were confirmed in
the Catholic church. In 1888, she studied music at St. Mary’s Academy at
Notre Dame, IN. She married bank clerk Walter Sherwood in late 1889; they
had two sons. The Sherwoods travelled often in the West, and visited Europe
in 1930. They built a new house at 3rd and Seward streets in Red Cloud in
1908; Cather sometimes sent materials for Carrie to keep in its spacious
attics. Carrie Miner Sherwood led local Red Cross work during the two World
Wars, served on the Red Cloud school board and park commission, and was
active in the League of Women Voters and in the Ladies Guild of Grace
Episcopal Church. Cather corresponded with Carrie Miner Sherwood throughout
her life and dedicated My Ántonia to Carrie, model
for Frances Harling in the novel, and her sister Irene. Carrie was one of
Mildred Bennett’s chief sources for The World of Willa
Cather (1951), and was instrumental in setting up what is now the
Willa Cather Foundation in Red Cloud.
Creighton, Ernest A. (1871-1934). Cather family physician. Born in Ontario, Canada, E. A. Creighton graduated from the medical school of Western University in 1899, and came to Red Cloud, NE, soon after, boarding with the Cathers' family friend Mollie Ferris and her brother. He married Mary S. Miner on July 28, 1900, and they built a house close by her parents’ house. Cather wrote that she felt her parents were in good hands with him.
Frisbie, Lora McBride (1868-after 1944). Cather’s Red Cloud acquaintance. Born in Iowa, Lora came to Webster County, NE, in 1870 with her family, who were early settlers. Her father, William T. McBride, died in 1885, and her mother, Sarah Kiser McBride, supported her large family by running a millinery shop. Lora married Frank Frisbie in June 1895, moving from Red Cloud to nearby Amboy, NE, where he worked in his family’s flour milling business. They had one daughter, Josephine, born in 1904, with whom Cather corresponded about the family mill; Cather recalled that Lora had been a favorite of Cather’s mother.
Frisbie, Josephine (1903-1996). Teacher; Cather’s Red Cloud acquaintance. Josephine Frisbie was born in Red Cloud, NE, the daughter of Frank and Lora McBride Frisbie; her family ran a flour mill in Amboy, a nearby village. A graduate of the Red Cloud High School and the University of Nebraska (class of 1927), she taught English at Central High School in Omaha, NE, for many years. Her account of her first encounter with Cather at a tea party in Red Cloud in 1927 appeared in the journal Present Day American Literature. The two corresponded occasionally, especially about the Amboy mill. Frisbie was a founding member of the Willa Cather foundation.
0456Frisbie, Sylvester (1873-1944). Webster County miller. Born in Iowa, a son of Ichabod and Hannah Frisbie, he came with his family to Webster County, NE, in the late 1870s. His father was a miller, first in Red Cloud; he bought the Polley Bros. mill in Amboy, a few miles from Red Cloud, in 1890. Sylvester and his brothers went into the milling business with their father, running it until the last surviving brother, Frank, sold it in 1948. Sylvester married Mary Beal in 1903; they had two children, Howard (born 1905), and Patricia, (born 1914). Cather went to school in Red Cloud with both Sylvester and his brother, Frank.
0458Frisbie, Frank (1871-after1948). Webster County miller. Born in Iowa, a son of Ichabod and Hannah Frisbie, Frank Frisbie came with his family to Webster County, NE, in the late 1870s. His father was a miller, first in Red Cloud, where Cather went to school with Frank and his brothers. His father bought the Polley Bros. mill in Amboy, a few miles from Red Cloud, in 1890, running it with the help of his sons. Frank married Lora McBride in June 1895. They had one daughter, Josephine, born in 1904, with whom Cather corresponded about the family mill. Frank became the business manager in 1940; he sold the mill in 1948 after his brothers died.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Red Cloud Commercial Advertiser
