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 |
Boston2 Dear Mr. Hendrick1;
Have patience with me. I know I have not kept you properly informed, but if you knew the number of miles we have to cover and the number of people we have to see and the number of times we have to see them, you would have charity for my deficiencies.
The Walcott4 affadavit was not actually in hand until yesterday—weather dreadful, old lady ill, cant drag people out to pneumonia.
I have made a rough draft of the first part of the article5—Lynn6, Amesbury7, Stoughton8, not touching at all the manuscript and the evidence concerning it. I have made this narrative of the first part simply because my notes became so lengthy and full that it was easier and less confusing to write the thing out in full. I felt we would gain something by having that narrative and very personal portion of the chapter done here where I could ask about and verify every statement and implication. I understood that you had not done much with that first part. If you have done something with it, we can take what is best from each account. This, I know is an awkward method, but I believe that it will give us more telling detail than mere notes would have done.
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3114.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3114
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Burton Hendrick 1
- Date letter was written
- [January 21 to February 8, 1907]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Cather appears to be discussing her work on what became the April 1907 McClure's installment of the Christian Science exposé. This letter also appears to be part of a sequence with her January 18, 1907, letter to Hendrick (#3119), which is typed and in which she promises to write him the "next week" in her own hand reporting on the progress of her research. The date range reflects the suggestion that she may not have managed to write the next week but may have written the week after.
- Place letter was written
- Boston, Massachusetts, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Burton Jesse Hendrick Papers (MS 1980), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT
Individual Annotations
Parker House Hotel (Boston, MA): Built in 1855 and founded by Harvey D. Parker, the Parker House (now Omni Parker House) is the longest continuously operating hotel in the US. Cather stayed here a number of times in the early 20th century, before the Parker House was largely rebuilt in 1927. Located in downtown Boston, the Parker House was an important gathering place for writers, performers, and politicians.
Person Annotations
Hendrick, Burton Jesse (1870-1949). American magazine writer, editor, and biographer. Hendrick graduated from Yale in 1895 and worked as a newspaper journalist until 1905, when he became a staff writer at McClure’s Magazine. Cather blamed him for errors in the first serialized installment in McClure’s of a biographical exposé of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. In 1913 Hendrick became associate editor of the World’s Work, a public affairs magazine founded by Walter Hines Page. Having won the Pulitzer Prize in biography as co-author of Victory at Sea (1921) and author of The Life and Letters of Walter Hines Page (1922), he left the magazine in 1927 to pursue writing biographies and histories, winning a third Pulitzer for a follow-up Page biography. Doubleday, Page, and Company, of which Walter Page was a partner, published all of Hendrick’s books.
Walcott, Julia Elizabeth Russell (1832-1915). American dressmaker. Born in Massachusetts, daughter of the Rev. Philemon Robbins Russell and his first wife, Martha C. Robinson, Julia Russell became a dressmaker in Lynn, MA, where she knew future Christian Science founder Mary Baker Patterson (later Eddy). In 1876 Julia Russell married Andrew P. Walcott, who died in 1899. Cather took an affidavit from Julia Walcott about her knowledge of Eddy while working on the Christian Science series for McClure’s.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science," McClure's Magazine (1907 to 1908) by Georgine Milmine
