Katherine S. Dreier (December 27 [1913])

#3115: Willa Cather to Katherine S. Dreier, December 27 [1913]

Plain view:

Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions

Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.

Textual Feature	Appearance
passage deleted with a strikethrough mark	~~deleted passage~~
passage deleted by overwritten added letters	~~overwritten passage~~
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

NUMBER FIVE BANK STREET³ December 27 Dear Miss Dreier¹:

I am so sorry I was not in town² when your pictures were here. McClures⁴, you know, ~~art~~ are at Fourth avenue & 20^th St, you sent your card to the address⁵ of several years ago. I go to Boston⁶ on New Years, for a week or so. Please let me know when you are in town again. I would love to see your place in the country, but I shan't get out of town much this winter. Miss Gapen⁷[?] explained your sudden disappearance last spring—last summer, I should say. I am counting on seeing you this winter.

Faithfully yours Willa Sibert Cather Telephone 2036 Chelsea

Information about this letter:

Source File:: cat.let3115.xml
Letter identifier: 3115
Contents: Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
Person to whom letter was written: Katherine S. Dreier ¹
Date letter was written: December 27 [1913]
Explanation of conjectured date: The conjectured year is based on other letters from late 1913 (like #1896), in which Cather indicates she is going to Boston on January 1, 1914.
Place letter was written: New York, New York, United States²
Location of original letter: Katherine S. Dreier Papers/Societe Anonyme Archive (YCAL MSS 101), Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT

Individual Annotations

5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.

The offices of McClure's Magazine were originally located in the Lexington Building at 141 E. 25th Street in New York City. In 1903, the offices were relocated to the new McClure Building on Fourth Avenue and 20th Street.

Person Annotations

2051

Dreier, Katherine Sophie (1877-1952). American artist and collector. Born in Brooklyn, NY, to prosperous German immigrants Theodor and Dorothea Dreier, Katherine Dreier studied painting in Brooklyn, London, and Munich, where she came under the influence of Kandinsky. Her style gradually became more abstract, and she was one of the women exhibiting at the 1913 Armory Show, which introduced Americans to modern art. In 1920, she organized the Société Anonyme, along with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The group collected and promoted modern art; Katherine Dreier lectured and wrote such books as Western Art in the New Era (1923). Cather apparently knew Dreier early in her career but did not see her work at the Armory Show.

2222

Gapen[?], Miss. Associate of Katherine Dreier. Cather mentions a Miss Gapen[?] in a letter to Katherine Sophie Dreier (#3115). This may be a reference to Flora Gapen (later Charter) (1879-1916), whom Dreier may have known from the women’s suffrage movement, but there is insufficient information for a definitive identification.

Place Annotations

New York, New York, United States

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Work Annotations

McClure's Magazine