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 | |
| 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 Wednesday Dear Mr. Hendrick1;
Since I can never get up the courage to say such things well, please let me write you how badly I feel about Mr. McClure4's having talked as he did to Mr. Peabody5. Ordinarily I can take Mr. McClure’s bouquets in the far-from-serious spirit in which they are thrown. But he has humiliated me more than once about the Xtian Science6. He certainly puts me in a foolish position about it—but I shall console myself by reflecting that you and Turner7 and Irwin8 have each a sense of humor and are probably getting a good deal of fun out of my Miss Tarbell9-ship on the side10. There is a sort of grim humor about it, even to me. Of course I know that I am not an article writer—I haven’t a single qualification of one. And I know that you are. And there we be both are. Since I’m in for a sort of masquerade I’ll do the best I can, and I’ll thank Heaven when it’s over. You have surely been patient and fair to a degree I shall not forget. You could have made me uncomfortable and unhappy every minute, and instead you have done whatever you could to help me and make my part in the work less trying and awkward. I thank you again and again.
I hope to get to New York11 early next week, about Wednesday, I think.
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let3121.xml
- Letter identifier
- 3121
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Burton Hendrick 1
- Date letter was written
- [January 30, 1907]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
According to Will Irwin's letters to Inez Haynes Gilmore, he learned of Cather's taking over the Christian Science exposé around the first full week of February 1907, when Cather was back in New York City and talking to S. S. McClure. This letter, in which she is apologizing to Burton Hendrick for McClure's praising her work on the series and denigrating his, is dated "Wednesday" from Boston and mentions her return to New York City next week. The last Wednesday of January 1907 was January 30.
- 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.
That is, McClure is trying to make her into an investigative journalist, like Ida Tarbell, by giving her responsibility for the series on Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science.
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.
Peabody, Frederick W. (1862-1932). Lawyer. Born in Brooklyn, NY, son of Enoch Wood Peabody and Cornelia Marshall Peabody, Frederick Peabody graduated from Columbia University, obtaining his law degree in 1888. He moved to Boston, MA, where he married heiress Anna Greenough May in 1894; they had two daughters, and in 1908 they divorced. In 1899 Josephine C. Woodbury retained him in a libel suit against Mary Baker Eddy. Peabody became a prominent anti-Christian Science figure, lecturing and publishing exposés; he joined in suits to declare Eddy incompetent in 1907 and to contest her will in 1911. Peabody corresponded with Georgine Milmine and may have corresponded with Cather in 1906-07, although those letters are not known. Cather refers to him in various letters about the Mary Baker Eddy articles for McClure’s Magazine.
Turner, George Kibbe (1869-1952) American journalist and author. Born in Quincy, IL, George Kibbe Turner graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, MA, in 1890 and was hired as a reporter for the Springfield Republican. While working as a reporter, he began publishing short stories in national magazines, including McClure’s Magazine. In the wake of the 1906 departure of Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida Tarbell from McClure’s, S. S. McClure hired Turner as a staff writer; Cather was hired as a member of the editorial staff at about the same time. Turner wrote a number of muckraking exposés typical of McClure’s, including on gambling and prostitution in Chicago, IL, and on Tammany’s control of criminal organizations in New York City. He left McClure’s in 1913 to focus on writing fiction and film scripts.
Irwin, William Henry (1873-1948) (“Will”). American journalist. Born in Oneida, New York, Will Irwin grew up in Colorado, and after a year as a cowboy, he attended Stanford University, graduating in 1899. He became a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1901, then moved to New York in 1904 to work for the New York Sun. His book, The Picaroons co-authored with humorist Gelett Burgess, was published by McClure, Phillips in 1904. S. S. McClure hired Irwin as managing editor of McClure’s Magazine in 1906; he wrote some muckraking articles and also helped assemble materials for the articles on Christian Science which Cather would later write up. He left McClure’s to write for Collier’s and other magazines, and went to Europe as a correspondent on the outbreak of World War I. In 1916 he married writer and suffragist Inez Haynes Gilmore. Irwin wrote a variety of books after the war, including fiction (a few made into movies), biographies, and history.
Tarbell, Ida (1875-1944). American “muckraking” journalist.
Tarbell is best known for The History of the
Standard Oil Company (1904), which was serialized in McClure’s Magazine (1902-1904), where she preceded
Cather as an editor. Despite the conflicts with S.S. McClure that led her to
depart McClure’s with fellow writers Lincoln Steffens
and Ray Stannard Baker to found the competing American
Magazine, Tarbell and Cather maintained cordial relations.
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
