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 |
Mr. McClure3 came to Boston on Sunday and brought me word of your bereavement. I want to tell you how sorry I am to know that you have lost your mother4, and to ask you at this hard time to believe in my sympathy and friendship. Please let me extend to Mrs. Hendrick5 and yourself my sincerest regret and sympathy.
Faithfully Willa Cather Friday.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3116.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3116
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Burton Hendrick 1
- Date letter was written
- [July 12 to 26, 1907]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Burton Hendrick's mother died on July 6, 1907, a Saturday, and Cather mentions S. S. McClure having been in Boston on a Sunday. The conjectured date range begins with the Friday after the earliest possible date McClure could have reported Hendrick's bereavement through the last Friday of the month.
- 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
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.
McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born
American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine,
living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education
he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox
College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he
edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite
opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet
Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary,
and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s
Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893
with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the
"muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens,
but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who
worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s
attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of
fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the
editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she
later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost
control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his
autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book
publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately
failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine
publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost
went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to
her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the
prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry,
in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled
the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.
Hendrick, Mary Elizabeth Johnston (1836-1907). Mother of Burton J. Hendrick. Born in New Haven, CT, daughter of John Knox Johnston and Elizabeth (Betsey) L. Johnston, Mary Johnston married Charles B. Hendrick in 1856. They had two daughters and four sons. She died at home in New Haven on Saturday, July 6, 1907; Cather sent her condolences to her son, writer Burton Jesse Hendrick, whom Cather knew at McClure’s Magazine.
Hendrick, Bertha Jane Ives (1870-1965). Wife of Burton Jesse Hendrick. Born in Adams, MA, eldest daughter of Hobart B. Ives and Caroline Bennett Ives, Bertha Ives graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1890 and travelled abroad in 1891. She married journalist Burton J. Hendrick in 1897; they had two son, Ives Hendrick, born in 1897, and Hobart Hendrick, born in 1903. Bertha Hendrick was widowed in 1949 and died in Boston, MA.
Place Annotations
