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 |
What a dear, dear brother3 you have! I loved him as a little boy (very much) and it all came back, almost at once. It was a very happy evening for me.
I want him to be host at a little theatre party of three, you and Mr. Southwick4 being his guests and mine, and am
enclosing a check. His address is very long, and my hand is pretty good-for-nothing,
as you can see by this scratch. Please give it to him
when you see him, and tell him I don’t so strongly
recommend “Angel Street”5 any longer. I send this
message through you, for my thus I can reach both of
you with one lame hand.
Tomorrow I go to Atlantic City6 for one week.
I made an extra copy of this in case it doesn’t reach you.H.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3108.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3108
- Contents
- Document is photocopy of two leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Helen Louise Cather Southwick 1
- Date letter was written
- [1943 to 1944]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The conjectured date range spans from the year the Southwicks moved to New Jersey to the year "Angel Street" closed on Broadway.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Charles E. Cather Collection (MS350), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Person Annotations
Southwick, Helen Louise Cather (1918-2004). Cather’s niece.
Helen was born in Red Cloud, NE, to Willa Cather’s brother James and
his wife Ethel. Willa was a doting aunt on her visits to Red Cloud. In 1931,
Helen moved with her family to Long Beach, CA, where she graduated high
school and attended Long Beach City College. In 1939, Helen returned to Red
Cloud to help care for her maternal grandmother and then enrolled in the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln, where she met her future husband, Philip
Southwick. After graduating in 1941, she briefly returned to California to
work in the personnel department of Douglas Aircraft company, but married
Southwick in Lincoln in 1942, and then moved with him to Champaign, IL. When
Philip’s employment took them to Plainfield, NJ, she frequently spent time
with her aunt in New York City. In 1946, the Southwicks moved to Pittsburgh,
PA, where their son James was born. In later years Helen worked as a school
librarian and was active in the Cather Foundation in Red Cloud, NE. She was
a beneficiary of Cather’s literary estate, and when Edith Lewis died in 1972
she bequeathed Cather books and manuscripts to Helen and her brother Charles
Cather. Helen donated her share of these materials and Willa Cather’s
letters to her to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Cather, Charles Edwin (1923-2011). Cather’s nephew. Charles’s parents were James D. and Ethel Garber Cather, and he was likely born in Red Cloud, NE, where he spent the early years of his childhood. He was, as Willa Cather wrote to Dorothy Canfield Fisher, “the little nephew I love the best” who inspired her portrayal of the little boy Jacques in Shadows on the Rock (1931) (#1054). He moved with his family to California in the 1930s. Cather continued to be an indulgent aunt as he got older, writing him letters of advice about and lending him money for his education. He attended, but did not complete degrees from, the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY, and the Law School at the University of Colorado in Boulder. After his aunt’s death he completed undergraduate and law degrees at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, CA. He was a beneficiary of his aunt’s estate and was appointed her literary executor after Edith Lewis’s death.
Southwick, Philip Lee (1916-1992) (“Phil”). American
chemist; Helen Cather Southwick's husband. Philip Southwick was
born in Lincoln, NE, to parents who lived in the small town of Friend, NE.
After graduating from Friend High School, he earned three degrees in
chemistry, a BS (1939) and M.S. (1940) from the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln and a PhD (1943) from the University of Illinois. He married Helen
Louise Cather, daughter of Willa Cather’s brother James and his wife Ethel,
in Lincoln in 1942. Southwick worked as a research scientist at Merck in
Rahway, NJ, from 1943 to 1946, and then accepted a faculty position at the
Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, PA, where he worked until he
retired. Phil and Helen’s son James Philip Southwick was born in Pittsburgh
in 1946. Phillip Lee Southwick died in Pittsburgh.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Angel Street (1938) by Patrick Hamilton
