The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

TO EARL AND ACHSAH BARLOW BREWSTER

February 21 [1923]

Dear Earl and Achsah:

How often I’ve wanted to answer your dear letters about “One of Ours”. But I went home to my parents’ Golden Wedding, and life caught me up and carried me furiously away. I understood exactly what you meant about Howard Pyle. This book has been a new experience for me. The people who don’t like it detest it, most of the critics find it maudlin sentimentality and rage about it in print. But the ex-service men like it and actually buy it. It has sold over forty thousand now and is still selling. I’ve had to take on a secretary to answer the hundreds of letters I get about it. The truth is, this sort of success does not mean much but bother and fatigue to me—I’m glad I never had it before.

I am so glad the Hambourgs chose the “Blue Nigger” [painting by Earl Brewster] and that I shall soon see him again. The photograph you so kindly sent me has just come and is a great pleasure, but it makes me long for the splendid color of that painting. We have had the greatest happiness from the picture we brought home with us, and do you know, I have come to like the “Three Scallops” [another painting by Brewster] best of all of them!

I will sail for France about the first of April. Ah how lovely it will be if I can meet you in Paris! That seems about too good to happen in this pesky world. I beg you both to write often to Edith while I am gone. I must tell you a secret that is a little difficult to tell: Edith does not like the Hambourgs at all—never has. They irritate her, rub her the wrong way; Isabelle even more than Jan. I think it’s been hard for her to face that they were seeing you this winter when she was not. We are like that about the people we love best sometimes, we have a kind of loving jealousy about them. It has always been difficult about the Hambourgs, because they are old and dear friends of mine, and yet they do darken the scene for Edith whenever they appear—put rancours in the vessel of her peace, as Macbeth said. I think the way that likes and dislikes interweave is the most disheartening thing about life anyway. It’s nothing Edith can help; their personalities simply hurt her. She feels that their attitude toward her is rather patronizing, but there I feel sure she is mistaken.

I hope Edith can see a great deal of you if you are in America this summer. Your being here will make up to her for my absence. As you know, she does not care for a great many people, and for them she cares very much. This has been a hard winter for her—her family has made such heavy demands upon her and she has not been very well. Before a great while I am going to get her away from all these hard and wearing things.

If you come to America this summer you will have an exhibition here in the fall, will you not? There would be time to give one here in the early fall, before you return to Paris. We thought the notices of your exhibit in Paris this fall were splendid.

I do hope you have got Edith’s box by now—she took such pleasure in arranging it. She sent a beautiful one to me in Red Cloud, too. Dear friends, there are so many things I wish to say to you—about painting, about writing, about ourselves and this queer business of living. I can only recall some lovely hours we spent together in the twilight at Naples and hope that they will come again. This has been a hard winter for everyone I know in this part of the world. The Golden Wedding and my Christmas at home was the one thing worth while for me. But since then a thousand stupid interruptions have kept me from work—and when my work is interrupted nothing compensates.

We both send you our dearest love and wish you happy working-days with all the deep satisfactions they bring. I wish Edith and I could be with you next year. I believe we could all help each other.

With love and happy memories

Willa Cather

TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

Sunday [probably April 1, 1923]

Dear Dorothy;

It was heartbreaking to miss you, when if I’d known the day before, or Thursday morning, I could have arranged it so easily. Josephine was ill, so I sent her home and told her to go to bed, and I decided to devote the day to dismal chores. I left the house at ten, had lunch and dinner up town, and didn’t come home until nine at night. At that hour I was too beat out to go over to the pay station to telephone your mother’s apartment,—and by that time you were probably gone, or just getting ready for the train. It was an utterly wasted day, and the afternoon of it might have been so nice! Well, things have been going rather that way lately; the mechanics of life have been grinding hard since I got back from my wonderful time in the West. However, it’s silly to get discouraged; my cold is gradually departing, I’ve been hearing some glorious music, and behind the music a few comfortable ideas are stirring to make me feel that there is something worth—to me—carrying on the routine for. The funny thing is that one can never make publishers and editors and friends see that with a story just forming you have to be alone like a thief hiding from the police,—alone with just the precious, cursed stuff you have stolen and are hiding from everybody. How much I owe to the non-success of those early books! I dropped them into the void and there was no come-back, no fuss, nothing to get in the way of the next one.

No lectures for me till I come back from France, my dear! I’ve had to take on a secretary [Sarah Bloom] to take the people who want lectures off my back. She told me last week that she’d written nearly a hundred letters declining lectures for me in the last four months. People don’t in the least want one to write—perhaps what they really want is a vacation from having to bother about one’s books at all. Well, Dorothy, they are not going to spoil things for me, so there! Be witness to my bold boast. I don’t really mind not being read, (not a whoop, really–––some times a little fussed, but nothing deep.) But if they devil me so I can’t write, they destroy my game, my fun, my reward, the whole splendour and glow of life,—all there is for me. And they shant do it, damn them! You’ll stand by me, won’t you, and understand that I’m not being disobliging?

Yours always

Willa

TO ALFRED AND BLANCHE KNOPF

May 16 [1923]

Ville d’Avray, France

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Knopf:

I nee[d] hardly say I was delighted to get your cable! So many cablegrams arrived that day that Ferruccio, the Italian man-of-all-work, thought another war had broken out. I hope the publicity will stimulate sales and will be good for you as well as for me. Those High-Brows, Heywood Broun & Co., will storm worse than ever and say it’s but one step more to Mary Rinehart.

I have a gratifying statement from Houghton Mifflin; Antonia sold 3,000 in the last six months and The Song of the Lark 600.

The Oliver typewriter which Mr. Samuel Knopf ordered sent to me has not arrived, and after a gay week in Paris I want to get to work and need a machine. Will you please find when it was shipped? If through some mistake it was not sent at all, I may have to buy one here, though they charge twice what Olivers sell for at home. If the machine was sent and is on the way, will you please cable me to that effect as soon as you get this letter?

I had a wonderful week in Paris all alone. I am much better in health and am feeling very jolly over the Pulitzer prize. Please write me who the judges were. I couldn’t have got it if [William Lyon] Phelps was still one of the judges.

With warmest greetings from the Hambourgs and myself

Yours

Willa Cather

TO DUNCAN M. VINSONHALER

May 23 [1923]

Paris

My Dear Judge Vinsonhaler:

I am greatly flattered and deeply pleased by your letter. Sooner or later I will see that my Omaha friends get a portrait if they want one. I ought to be able to get a good one made here in Paris—perhaps I can find some gifted young American artist—if not, a french one. Just now I am so beset by photographers and interviewers, french and American, that I haven’t time for anything. This is apropos of the Pulitzer Prize, of course. Unfortunately the cable announcing the award to the Paris papers said that it was a “war novel”, so the French journals keep sending men to get my opinion on the present political crisis in France.

Please accept my friendliest wishes, and greet the [Harvey] Newbranch family for me. I will go ahead and hunt a painter in the near future, and send you a report of what progress I make with him.

Cordially yours

Willa Cather

TO ALFRED A. KNOPF

June 6 [1923]

Dear Mr. Knopf:

Please give the enclosed to Mr. Oppenheimer for publicity. Isn’t it a joke, with those two numerical titles? “One of Ours and Three Soldiers by two Americans”, as one of the french papers puts it! The dinner was to have been given for me and your Spaniard, [Pío] Baroja, but he characteristically didn’t get here, so the Secretary snatched up [John] Dos Passos.

It has been black winter here for one month, with rain every day. I am daily awaiting the typewriter. Is Claude still selling, by the way?

With best regards from all of us

Yours

Willa Cather

TO IRENE MINER WEISZ

August 11 [1923]

Ville d’Avray, France

My Dearest Irene:

I have wanted to write you ever since I first arrived in France, but this has been a hectic summer. You probably know that the city of Omaha raised a fund and asked me to have a portrait painted for them—your own idea, you see! I was terribly puzzled about choosing a painter, and I at last decided on Léon Bakst, who did all the costumes and settings for the Russian Ballet, you know. He happened to be in Paris just now, and he was the most interesting man in sight. He seldom does portraits, but some french friends of his like my books and told him about them, and he said he’d like to paint me. It’s a long story, how I came to meet him, and someday I’ll tell you all about it.

I will certainly be at home for Christmas this year, and I hope to go out to Red Cloud the first week in December. I hope you can go then, too. I’ll have so much to tell you about this lovely house of Isabelle’s and all the delightful people I’ve met.

Bakst is distinctly “modern” in his painting, you know, and rather fanciful. He won’t do a photographical likeness for anybody. Yet I think this picture will look like me in the end. Of course the Omaha people won’t be satisfied—people never are with a portrait, but they ought to know his name well enough to be glad to have a picture by him.

With my love to you and Mr. [Charles William] Weisz

Yours always

Willie

TO ELSIE CATHER

August 11 [1923]

Dearest Sister:

Yesterday I had my first sitting with Leon Bakst. He pronounces his name just like the past tense of the English verb “to box”; that is just as if it were spelled Boxed [in cursive writing], Boxed [printed]. But if you prefer to give the one and only vowel in his name a middle-West sound, why then you can pronounce his name so that it rhymes with WAXED, as in “the floor was waxed.” You must instruct father and mother and the two Virginias how to call his name, as it will be much mixed up with mine for awhile.

His studio has three enormous rooms, and they are full of beautiful things from all over Europe and Asia. To sit there for two hours in the afternoon is like going to church—a church where all the religions of mankind come together in one great religion. He is just one of the simple people I have always loved—like Annie Sadelik and Joe Pavelik Sr. and all the friends of my childhood. He is reading “One of Ours” with the help of a dictionary, but he speaks little English. He speaks to me in French and I reply in English. He began by telling me Russian fairy tales, and is going to tell me stories every sitting, he says. He is doing only my head and shoulders, and thank Heaven did not want me to “dress up”. He selected a green georgette waist I happened to have, with a little gold in it, loose and plain, like a Russian smock or a middy-blouse.

Not since the days when old Mr. Ducker used to talk to me in the store and spit tobacco juice all round me, have I had such an experience as this, or been so much the pupil sitting at the feet of the teacher. I think the hours will fly by in those great quiet rooms. You wouldn’t believe the neatness and order of them—never a pen crooked on his many desks, all that marble and bronze and porcelain dusted every day. You can touch a hundred objects, even the portfolios of drawings and never have a particle of dust left on your fingers.

Now goodbye, I’ll write you when Bakst and I are further along.

Lovingly

Willa

TO DUNCAN M. VINSONHALER

August 27 [1923]

Ville d’Avray, France

My Dear Judge Vinsonhaler:

(1) First let me acknowledge receiving from you a check for one thousand dollars, which shall be endorsed to Mr. Bakst as soon as the portrait is completed. The work has taken much longer than he thought at first, and both he and I need a rest from it. I had no idea that sitting for a picture was such hard work. I have not been in the best of health this summer, and now I am going down to Aix-les-Bains for three weeks. When I return I will have three more sittings with Bakst for details of the figure—he eventually did a half-figure, seated, with the hands. The face will be practically completed in tomorrow’s sitting, and I think the likeness very unusual.

(2) I know that my parents will want to go up to Omaha to see the picture, but I don’t know about asking them to unveil it. You know old people are sometimes very much fretted and wearied of doing something a little unusual, and both my father and mother are rather nervous people. Won’t you let me put the question to them and then follow their wish in the matter? I know you would not want to put any sort of strain on them. I think it likely that they would much rather sit quietly by, with no responsibility, and let my little niece, Virginia Auld, unveil the picture. (By the way, Judge Vinsonhaler, I wish pictures didn’t have to be unveiled! And won’t you do what must be done just as quietly and simply as possible. I like to feel that you want my picture because of a feeling of friendliness, because I’ve pictured truthfully the life you know. Don’t, please, let people like Mrs. [Margaret Badollet] Shotwell [of the Omaha Daily News] turn all this nice feeling into cheap newspaper copy and make me heartsick about it.)

To return to my little niece, she is a great pal of mine, and I think her grandmother would love to have her for an understudy. She’s a charming young girl, and not a bit cocky.

(3) Bakst is to have an exhibition of his work in Philadelphia, in November, and in Boston in December, and he asks permission to exhibit this portrait among his other pictures. I don’t feel that I can grant him this without the consent of your committee, but it is customary to extend this courtesy to painters and I hope to hear from you that your committee is willing. In that case, he will select the frame—a very important matter—though the frame would probably have to be made in New York.

(4) As to the date of my return: I will probably sail late in October, but I don’t know how early in the winter I can go west. I am afraid unless the importunate Mrs. Shotwell can be subdued I shall never go to Omaha again! She wrote a letter to Bakst which passes description, asking him what he had to say about my eyes and my nose, how he would define my personality, what flower he thought appropriate for me, etc. As if any painter would give an interview on the physical characteristics of his sitter. Why, the woman must be mad! I’m confident that you and your friends didn’t want this picture in Omaha to give an opportunity for columns of cheap, noisy publicity, and I’m sure I did not sit for it for that purpose. Won’t you be a hero, a very heroic hero, and try to tell this lady that I hate such methods, that I don’t want to be “boosted” in any way, and I don’t like being made ridiculous. The less publicity, the better. When Mr. Newbranch and Miss [Eva] Mahoney [both of the Omaha World Herald] do me the honor to write about me, I am always pleased, pleased and proud. But this sort of vulgar horn-blowing really hurts me, and I know that it offends all people of good taste. It offends my own Father very deeply, and I care a great deal about that. If you will be noble and kind enough to use your influence in my behalf, you might prevent what the diplomats call future unpleasantness.

I dine with the Hitchcocks tonight. I am staying in Paris now, but all my letters still go to my permanent address at Ville d’Avray. Senator [Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska] and Mrs. [Jessie Crounse] Hitchcock went out there for tea with me on Sunday afternoon.

Forgive me for my rhetoric regarding Mrs. Shotwell, but do put the soft pedal on her if you can.

Faithfully yours

Willa Cather

TO ELSIE CATHER

August 27 and September 4 [1923]

Aix-les-Bains, France

August 27

Dear Sister:

Don’t let these people worry mother! The portrait won’t reach Omaha before January, or later, as it will be exhibited with other Bakst paintings in Philadelphia and Boston before it goes west.

I know how Mother frets about such things, and I won’t let them put any strain on her. Why, she might worry herself sick over it! She’s no brassy club-woman. So tell her in the beginning, I think it nonsense. If she wants to do it, all right, but there’s no sense in going to any strain about it. If the picture has to be “unveiled”, Mary Virginia can do it, it won’t hurt her nerves one bit! And mother I am afraid would worry about what she should wear, and thus make it a hardship. So, if she begins to look forward to it and worry, just stop her, and tell her M.V. can do this silly business more gracefully than any mature person. It’s so silly, anyway!

Aix-les-Bains

Sept 4

Here I am, my dear, “taking the waters” as the English say. My back had been getting worse all summer, and when Dr. [Lawrence] Litchfield was in Paris for his daughter’s wedding he gave me a going over and urged me to come here and take the baths, which he said are the best in the world for rheumatism. He had been here with rich patients from Pittsburgh. Mr. McClure has been trying for five years to get me to come here, as Mrs. [Hattie] McClure was cured of terrible rheumatism here. Finally Bakst begged me to come and said he would change all his engagements and give me five more sittings when I got back to Paris. (The picture will take 15 sittings instead of 10; they always take more than one expects.)

Well, the doctor to whom Dr. Litchfield directed me here says all my backache is from intercostal rheumatism, and that a course of baths every day for three weeks will cure me. Of course if my friend comes along in the middle of the treatments, then it will delay them and I’ll have to stay longer. It’s hard to be away from Paris, which is so lovely in the fall, but if I can get rid of this continual backache it will be worth a few weeks of exile. The gay, fashionable season at Aix is over now. I tried to come in August but all the hotels were full.

I have a nice room in a very clean and comfortable hotel—no running water in the rooms, but I don’t need it when I’m in a hot sulfur bath for an hour every morning. I get my room and three delicious meals for 35 francs a day, about two dollars! And at Lakewood N.J. last winter I paid $8 a day for a poor room and dreary, messy food! Of course the doctor and the baths will be expensive. All the time one is in the bath, two fine big women gently massage one’s sore back and shoulders under water. Then they play a hot sulfur hose on you for half an hour.

I came down here on the grandest train in France, the Paris-Rome Express, with a private state-room, and it all cost nine dollars, the present fare from N.Y. to Boston! Of course this is all because of exchange; all these things are expensive enough for the poor French. I wonder they don’t hate us, when we can come with our dollars and buy all the nice things they love and have to go without. And there wouldn’t be any nice things if all their sons and brothers hadn’t died to save them.

I just love Helen Louise [Cather] and the baby’s pictures, dear. So does Isabelle, and the Italian cook, who is expecting a baby of her own any day now, looked and looked at it and said she hoped her baby would be like that one. She and her husband have been getting ready for their baby all summer, and a sister came on from Italy to do the cook’s work while she is in bed. Jan is to be godfather and it is to be named after him, if a girl, why then Giovanna.

Goodnight dear, with much, much love. I want to get this off on a fast boat.

Willa

[In the top margin of the last page:] Address me always Ville D’Avray.

TO CHARLES F. AND MARY VIRGINIA BOAK CATHER

[September 1923]

Dear Mother and Father:

If you look Aix-les-Bains up on the map, you will find it around a hundred miles south of Lake Geneva, beside a little lake—Lake Bourget. Long ago, when I used to complain of a sore arm, Mr. McClure used to beg me to come here—I suppose it’s the most famous resort for rheumatic people in the world. The first week of my stay I did not see much improvement, and my writing arm was so badly crippled with neuritis I could hardly write at all. But all through the second week my arms and back have got much better, and I hope the third week will almost cure me. It’s the same old backache I’ve been having for years, and Dr. Litchfield and the doctors here say it is intercostal rheumatism. You tell Carrie Sherwood, and she’ll get Dr. Creighton to explain it to her.

I take a bath every morning at nine oclock—it takes about an hour. Two husky women massage me under a stream of hot water. Then I go back to my hotel, all bundled up, and stay in bed until noon. That’s part of the treatment. But after lunch I am quite gay. I take motor rides or go up the mountains in a little narrow-guage. The French Alps are so beautiful I never tire of them. I love to see the cottonwoods and chestnut trees growing side by side—like Virginia and Nebraska being married! I have found an eager little man with an eager little car who will take me about the country all afternoon for about two dollars. I don’t see how he buys the gasoline for that. I wrote Elsie how comfortably, even luxuriously I live at this hotel for about $2.50 a day.

Splendid news comes from my publisher about the large advance sales of “A Lost Lady”. But I can quite truthfully say that this does not please me half so much as Mother’s liking for the story pleases me. I do love to have my own folks like my stories—I hope the granddaughters will all like them when they are older, too.

I expect to sail the first week of November. Both Dr. Litchfield and my doctor here at Aix advise me not to try a winter in France until my rheumatism is better. The house[s] are all so much colder than ours. Even Isabelle’s house, though she has a furnace, is very draughty and cold in the halls, and there is no heat in the bedrooms. In the spring I felt the cold there very much, and coal is so dreadfully expensive that one hates to keep asking for more heat.

Now I have just got such a nice letter from Elsie that I must say goodbye to you, dear daddy and mother, and reply to her. She has been such a dear good girl to write me so much this summer and tell me everything I want to know. I know how precious vacation hours are, and I do appreciate Bobby’s kindness to me. You will probably see my letter to her, too, so it’s the same as writing another letter to you.

Now I have written on my manuscript paper, because I can write more plainly on a hard paper,—and all the note-paper Isabelle ordered for me is soft, and I can’t write plainly on it even if I try. I hope you will find this easy to read, dear parents!

Your very loving daughter

Willie

TO ELSIE CATHER

September 19 [1923]

Aix-les-Bains

Dear Sister Elsie:

Both “sat” and “mine” are simply typographical errors, both wrong, of course. They got by Edith and me both, evidently. I ought to have read the book after the first printing for errors, but I really haven’t been half-way well since it came out, and I never dreamed it was going to sell so many thousand before I’d have a chance at it again.

I pondered about the telephone—you see there are no dates given, only the story covers a considerable period of time. I meant the last part to be about 1900, but it might be 1903 or 1904, and I’m sure there were through telephones as early as that. The time element in that story was hard to manage—it has to account for about 15 years before it (the story) actually begins, and about 15 years after it actually ends. The episodes in the story extend over about ten years, actually, but you must be made to feel the changes of about 30 years. So you see one can’t be too definite.

I don’t believe anything I have ever written has given you more pleasure than your letters have given me this summer, dear sister.

Have you seen the full-page ad in the Atlantic? And the nice editorials in the Bee and World-Herald? Judge Vinsonhaler writes me that if mother doesn’t want to unveil that portrait Mary Virginia can do it for her. He is a nice kind man, it’s that vulgar Shotwell woman, friend of Nell McNeny’s! who makes all the troubles.

Bakst has had some quite lovely photographs made of me and him in his studio. Would you like one? They’re quite expensive, but if you’d like one I’ll make you a present. I think I ought to get one for Carrie, she’d treasure it so.

I took a chance on pneumonia yesterday, and went up on Mt. Revard, after being kept away from it for ten days by rain. It was chilly up there, but how magnificent! There had been a new fall of snow on Mt. Blanc, and with the purple clouds driving over it, it was simply overwhelming.

Bobbie, the Paris papers have had such stunning articles about me lately. On my way down to Aix I bought two papers to read on the train, and they both had such nice articles about me. I sent them to my publisher. This is a secret: the editor of Figaro came to see me before I left and told me that I very nearly got the Legion of Honor for Claude—all the committee who had read it were eager to give it to me, but the majority can’t read a long English book. It’s to be translated now, and brought out by one of the best French publishers, and this publisher says I’ll be given the Legion of Honor on it eventually, he thinks [she did not]. All this writing in French papers has been by people I’ve never heard of. Whenever a frenchman reads that book something seems to happen inside him—he becomes my press agent. I wish I could send you some of the articles, but I only see them by chance, as I did those on the train. If I could just get really well again, I’d have so much fun out of all this.

No, I never used Margie’s knife for an ice-pick! I broke it cutting the bones of father’s soup meat, so there! I’m glad Sambo’s alligator died. The Mathenys are getting to be too silly!

I’ve just heard from Isabelle that her nice Italian cook gave birth to a dead girl baby, after a terrible delivery—the doctor thought she would die. I’m so sorry. Bagina and her husband had bought it’s clothes, and bed, and cloak and everything, and were looking forward to it with such happiness. I send you a letter of Isabelle’s about Giotto and things.

No, I never saw the interview about Hochstein at all! It was published in the N.Y. Herald while I was in Red Cloud at Christmas and the entire edition was sold out. Now where do you suppose the Hastings paper got it? Even Isabelle never got a copy.

Goodnight dear sister. Remember, we are going to have a trip in the Alps.

Lovingly

Willa

TO ACHSAH BARLOW BREWSTER

November 29 [1923]

Dearest Achsah:

I had a dream-like crossing over a blue sea. There were many nice people on board, the very nicest was Frank Swimmerton, the English novelist, who was my table companion and of whose really charming personality I never tired. He’s so honest and kind.

Since I smoke very little at sea, Edith is getting her share of Earl’s cigarettes, and I saved all your chocolates for her because she likes french candy so much. I’ve told her lots about your exhibition, but I find it impossible to make her understand about your Ceylon pictures, or to tell her what Earl did to the Sailors. Dorothy Canfield dashed in to the boat train to see us off, and I was delighted to see how deeply stirred she had been by that exhibit. She thought your triptych the most beautiful and uplifting of them all.

My love to you both—happy working days to you, and peace of soul.

Lovingly

Willa

A big hug to [daughter] Harwood [Brewster], please, from me.

TO DUNCAN M. VINSONHALER

Sunday [January 13, 1924]

Dear Judge Vinsonhaler:

I enclose a telegram I received this morning and a copy of my reply. I have been meaning to write you more fully about this matter, but I wanted to wait until after Bakst’s visit to Omaha, as that would give him a chance to explain his picture in his own way.

Of course I am not satisfied with the picture as a portrait of myself; but I think one is not likely to be a good judge in the matter of one’s own likeness. If I didn’t like it, why did I accept it?

Before I accepted it I took two American painters to the studio when Bakst was not there, and they discussed it at length. They assured me that it was a conscientious piece of work—too much so, that he had tried until the result was labored and stiff. They thought all the accessories, even the dress, were beautifully painted, as only a distinguished painter could paint them, but that the face and hands were too labored. They agreed with me that one could not refuse to accept an honest piece of work, even if the likeness was unsatisfactory. When we employ an eminent physician and the patient dies, we pay him, just the same. When we employ an eminent painter, it is just the same. I know several people who have had to take much worse portraits than this one from [John Singer] Sargent, at much higher prices. We know great portrait painters by their successes; we do not take into account the many pictures that almost arrived or utterly failed. A portrait is always a gamble, as we agreed in the beginning. I think this time our luck was bad, but I can at least comfort myself by believing that the result is a little harder on me than on any one of my friends in Omaha who did me the honor to want a painting of me. Surely they won’t accuse me of having accepted the picture out of personal vanity!

I gave Bakst sixteen sittings, and several long afternoons in the country. The sittings were usually three hours long. I never saw anybody work harder, and I never worked harder myself. If he failed to make a good likeness, it was not because he was careless. If I had felt that he slighted the commission in any way, I would certainly have refused to take it, but under the circumstances, I did not feel that I could do so.

Now, on the other hand, had I been Bakst, I would have refused to let a commission go out that fell so far short of being a satisfactory likeness. That he might have done, but he did not. I have resolved never again to have anything to do with a work of art which I can not destroy if it does not suit me. I have a large and commodious grate in my apartment for that purpose. My friends in Omaha ought not to feel about this matter as they might feel if I had painted the picture, or if I had just published a book that had the faults of this likeness. I set out to do a portrait in “A Lost Lady” and I had, I think, better luck than Bakst,—though I am sure I didn’t work much harder. But often an artist does not know when he has failed to get a likeness.

I hope that some time in the near future I can get the time to sit to another painter and get a picture for which you will give me the Bakst picture in exchange. Or if it would seem better, I will so gladly send a check for the price of the picture and cease to worry about it.

May I tell you in confidence, Judge Vinsonhaler, that this unhappy painting has cost me more downright worry and anxiety and distress than any book I ever wrote? I never spent sleepless nights over any work of my own as I did over this. It wasn’t poor enough to refuse, it wasn’t a good likeness and therefore did disappoint. My only hope was that I was really worse looking than I had hereto thought, and that perhaps it looked like me after all.

Now I want you to show this letter to such interested persons as you may see fit; to such as have bowels of compassion and some imagination, and who know how difficult it sometimes is to divine the right line of conduct. Your people meant so well, and I meant so well,—and I insist that Bakst meant so well! Mercy, how hard he and I did work, those grilling-hot summer days! Beg all your committee to sit for portraits, quickly, and then they will judge me mercifully!

Mournfully but faithfully yours

Willa Cather

TO ACHSAH BARLOW BREWSTER

February 16 [1924]

Dearest Achsah;

We are having such an interesting and happy winter—lots of nice people, and music, and flowers, and Montana’s turning out to be a splendid maid. I’m working hard and with great joy, and I’m well and not anguished and perplexed as I was nearly all the time in Paris. Did Edith tell you that her company [the J. Walter Thompson advertising firm] gave her a check for a thousand dollars for a Christmas present, and a month later raised her salary again! You have to deliver goods to make a New York business firm treat you like that, I assure you. Both Claude and a Lost Lady keep right on selling, so we’re indulging ourselves in lots of little luxuries and not splurging. It’s so good to be at home again Achsah, and I know you are saying the same thing in your heart every day. I use your wonderful vaporizor for my nose every day, and bless you for it—it’s as useful in a New York climate as in that of Paris.

Give my love to Earl and Harwood and tell her we love the cards she sent up. How fine life is, when one does not fret about silly things, dear Achsah!

Lovingly

W.S.C.

TO FERRIS GREENSLET

February 17 [1924]

Dear Mr. Greenslet;

Yes, I’d much rather do this than make my fortune at the various lucrative commissions that are constantly pressed upon me.

In the first place I must ask you send me down a complete set of the books, the original edition. The safest way is for me to cut them up myself and bind them up into volumes in the sequence that seems best.

The first volume, of course, would take in all the Pointed Fir sketches, including “The Queen’s Twin”, “A Dunnet Shepherdess”, and “William’s Wedding”. The second volume, if one took only the very best, would be an equally fat one. “Deephaven” is charming, but I don’t think it belongs with Miss Jewett’s best mature work.

The librarian at the branch library round the corner tells me that the young intellectuals of Greenwich Village sometimes ask vaguely for “some of Sarah Jewett’s books”, but when she produces volumes like “The White Heron” they finger them, say they look like children’s books, and leave them on the desk. She thinks their physical appearance is much against them with this generation. I rather love those dumpy little books myself, but if you are going to make an appeal to the reading public of today I think the stories ought to have a fresh envelope and be issued in standard-size volumes with good clear type,—(I would suggest type like that you used in “Antonia”)—some type that does not look like text-book type. I don’t mean that I think the books ought to look loud, naturally, but modern.

If you send me down the books at once I will get to work in any spare moments I have. You can be setting the new volumes while I do the introduction. And, by the way, I do wish you would come to see me sometime when you are in town.

Faithfully yours

Willa Cather

Mrs. Knopf has just sold the movie rights of “A Lost Lady” for me for twelve thousand.

TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

February 27 [1924]

My Dear Dorothy:

Your letter came at the happiest time for enjoying letters—I was, and still am, in bed: partly because of a stiff neck, and partly because I saw that a stiff neck would let me out of three dreaded pleasures; a song recital by an old friend, the first night of an old friend’s play, and a literary dinner. Your letter came just when my splendid darkey maid was bringing in my tea, and it made a tea-party for me. How I have enjoyed these days in bed! You remember when I was a youngster I couldn’t bear solitude at all—and now I can bear about nothing else: Isabelle has written me all about your mother, and I rejoice in her activity. I’ve written my mother all about her. By this boat I’m sending Isabelle an account of how they crowned my photograph with a “laurel wreath” in Red Cloud! I’m just childish enough to be awfully pleased. It means I’ve kept their affection, really.

I’m so glad you remember our walk and our morning in Paris with pleasure—I do, with deep pleasure and gratitude. I wish I could have been with you all in Switzerland. I’d love that.

Oh, I’ve read [Joseph Collins’s] “The Doctor Looks at Literature,” and I delight in it—especially the chapters on [D. H.] Lawrence and [Marcel] Proust. Do read Mme. [Marie] Curie’s life of her husband [Pierre Curie], and the admirable sketch of her own life, Dorothy.

All winter I’ve been getting the nicest love letters from young boys. I’ve begun to save them—they are quite different from other admiring-reader-letters. I suppose actresses get a great many such, but I don’t believe writers often do. In my college days it was the girls, not boys who wrote to authors.

No, Bakst doesn’t spoil my life anymore—though he did cloud a good many months of it. Mother is the one worst hit, poor dear! She goes on moaning as if I’d done something disgraceful myself! Sure, it’s like the Purple Cow—I’d rather see than be one. But she won’t consider it that way.

I’m beginning to select material for a new collection of Miss Jewett, in accordance with a promise made years ago. Houghton Mifflin are so anxious to prevent me from producing copy for Knopf that they are even willing to spend a little money on Miss Jewett, if they can distract me from other activity!

Poor Knopf, anyhow! Just when he has got his booksellers where they can sell most any old book I do about the West, I refuse to have anything to do with the West, but have gone charging off on certain stories of embarrassing length—or shortness—that have nothing to do with locality—or geography whatever! My familiar spirit is like an old wild turkey that forsakes a feeding ground as soon as it sees tracks of people—especially if the people are readers, book-buyers. It’s a crafty bird and it wants to go where there aint no readers. That’s the truth: they go and paw a place all up and spoil it for me. It isn’t my secret any more.

Write me again, dear Dorothy. It gives me so much pleasure. Now my stiff neck—I really have one—rebels at a writing posture, and I must stop. With my love to you and my blessing on you all.

With my love

Willa

Is your yellow cat a Tom or a lady? I took a great fancy to her—or him, and I’d like to know.

TO FERRIS GREENSLET

April 15 [1924]

Dear Mr. Greenslet;

These are rather frantic days for me. An old friend has been very ill. Now my maid is ill, and I swing like a pendulum between my desk and the kitchen, and taxi (what a verb!) about New York for food. None the less, I have begun the Introduction. When it is finished I shall send it to Miss [Mary] Jewett for her approval. If there is anything in it she does not like, I will do all I can to mend it. I do not want her to have any more care or worry; I want to please her in this undertaking if it is within my power.

No, we have not been too hard on Burton Rascoe. He has caused both me and Miss Jewett the kind of heartache that is very hard to bear. It took more out of me than many an illness has. I understand that a garbled version of the same luncheon party was written by him for a small magazine [Arts and Decoration], with many offensive statements about me, supposed to be complimentary. I have not seen it, and do not want to.

Did the Transcript ever publish Thomas Beer’s letter? Or a letter written them by Professor [Herbert] Bates, one of the men who heard my talk at Columbia? If not, it was very dishonest of that paper.

I inclose a list of the stories which I think would be the best ones to use in the second volume,—which I beg you to send Miss Jewett, along with this letter. I would write to her if I were not so driven.

As I told you, I think the last edition of the “Pointed Fir” stories can stand as it is, for the first volume, with a slight change of paging; I would strongly suggest that “The Queen’s Twin” be placed between “A Dunnet Shepherdess” and “William’s Wedding,” both to suggest the passage of time, and to make less obvious the difference in treatment of William and Esther in the two stories,—the latter, of course, is something paler than the former, as it did not have that final clarifying touch by the writer’s hand.

If Miss Jewett will only trust me, I will do my best.

Faithfully yours

Willa Cather

Stories suggested for volume II

1. The White Heron

2. The Flight of Betsey Lane

3. The Dulham Ladies

4. Going to Shrewsbury

5. The Only Rose

6. Miss Tempy’s Watchers

7. Martha’s Lady

8. The Guests of Mrs. Timms

9. The Town Poor

10. The Hiltons’ Holiday

11. Aunt Cynthia Dallet

Mr. Greenslet;

What about a title, a collective title, for the two volumes? How would something like “The Riverside Collection of Sarah Orne Jewett’s Stories” do? Some title like that, but better.

TO FERRIS GREENSLET

May 10 [1924]

Dear Mr. Greenslet;

I do beg you not to use the [Elizabeth] Fairchild sonnet! As the tribute of a friend, even, it is not convincing, because it is so full of artificial, colorless phrases. Many a college undergraduate could do better. The sonnet is distinctly third rate as poetry. I had hoped that this would be an edition of Miss Jewett for writers. If Mme. [Olga Knipper] Tchekova, or [D. H.] Lawrence, or [John] Middleton Murry picked up these volumes and ran them over, the first thing their eye would light upon would be a tiresome piece of “old-lady-poetry.” Why put a piece of feeble, foolish verse into a volume whose avowed excuse for being is its literary excellence?

I wish you would read “Decoration Day.” It’s simply one of the times when Miss Jewett didn’t accomplish what she longed to do. It scarcely belongs in the second grade of her work, much less the first.

However, if Miss Mary is set upon it, and you feel that you must concede to her, put it in; and I will, in that part of the preface where I say that the stories in Volume II are of unequal merit, simply say that I do not consider that one among her best, but include it at the request of friends. I’ll try to word it nicely. But do not take out “The Hiltons’ Holiday”! I don’t greatly love it, but one of the longest talks I ever had with Miss Jewett was about that story, and she felt strongly about it. I wonder what was the date of her letter to Mrs. Richards? To me she spoke differently. When I told her that “Decoration Day” to me seemed more like other people’s stories, she said with a sigh that it was one of the ones that had grown old-fashioned.

You see, in the preface I’ve made a very high claim for these stories, and I can defend it with any really first rate writer of any country; but no critic, no writer, could make such a claim for a conventional magazine story like “Decoration Day.” If you have to include it, I must say that it is done by request (which sounds foolish); otherwise that one story would quite invalidate the preface.

About this story you must do as you think best. I wish you could omit it. But about the Fairchild sonnet I can’t compromise–––what has an “occasional” sonnet to do with a literary work, even if it were a good sonnet? If you use the sonnet, I must withdraw the Preface altogether. I won’t be one bit disagreeable about it, you understand,—but I shall be firm.

Faithfully yours

Willa Cather

Won’t you take this up with Miss Mary? As an editor, with a publishing interest, you will have more influence than I.

TO ZOË AKINS

September 7 [probably 1924]

Whale Cove Cottage, Grand Manan Island

Dear Zoë

I started to write you a birch bark letter, kid-fashion, but my pen is too stiff for it. We’ve had every kind of weather but heat; sun and and wind and splendid stunning fogs, and the tempest that beat the “Arabic” up so heavy carried our whole island out to sea. I’ve enjoyed every day of it and have been working hard and with great zest. Also walking lots, and cruising round among lighthouse and bell-buoys. Miss Lewis and I have a lovely little cottage all to ourselves—the house at which we eat not far away. I have literally lived in the tan-colored hunters suit you gave me two years ago, as it sheds the water from grass and trunk better than anything else I have. For really bad weather I wear knickerbockers. There are no roads—or very few—mostly trails through the woods and along the cliffs.

Love and greetings to you, dear Zoë, and I’ll have a few interesting things to show you when I get back about October 15.

Devotedly

W.S.C.

Willa Cather with her brother Roscoe’s daughters: Virginia and twins Margaret and Elizabeth, July 1924 (photo credit 7.3)

[Enclosed, written on birch bark:]

Dear Zoe:

Here I am in wild woods and wild weather. I’ve been working awfully hard on a quite new novel [The Professor’s House], and have got nearly half way through the first writing of it. It’s not very sweet or “appealing”—any diabetic patient could take it with safety! But it is, to me, fascinating in form—not intensely satisfying, but I can’t get away from it, and so I’ll have to see it through.

I’ve often thought with delight of the romantic costume with which you honored me that day you came to see me on Bank Street. It is really lovely for you.

TO FRANK ARTHUR SWINNERTON

September 18 [1924]

Grand Manan Island

Dear Mr. Swinnerton:

First let me set your mind at rest about the Proust book: I got the American edition of “Within a Budding Grove” [translation of Proust’s À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs] some weeks before I received your letter. You were most kind to remember my impatience to get it, and far from having been neglectful, you’ve been over-punctilious in remembering your promise.

I am so glad you had a pleasant stay in Rome, and found the region of the Pincian gardens especially attractive. I always feel as if that were more all the many Romes of many ages heaped up together than any other part of the city. I’m sure it’s a Roman habit to pick up trifles: I once saw a lean priest appropriate a loaf of bread from a cart [and] tuck it into his gown.

You know something about American geography: June 10th I went out to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to receive a doctorate degree from the University. Then I went home to Red Cloud Nebraska (named for an Indian chief) and stayed six weeks with my father and mother. Early in August raced back three days and three nights on trains and then a day by boat, out to this Island in the Bay of Fundy, off the coast of New Brunswick, where I had rented a cottage for the summer months. My little house is in an apple orchard that drops off into the sea about thirty yards from my study window. I have been working very hard, and happily, after six months of idleness. I hope you are happily at work by now. Working periods come and go like the tides in this treacherous Bay of Fundy—there’s no controlling them or prognosticating them. The Autumn fogs have come on now, and in three days I am leaving by our one and only twice-a-week-boat, for the mainland. I go for a week in Boston and then return to 5 Bank Street. You may be sure that when I go to England I shall call upon you and Mrs. Swinnerton, and shall hope to see a lot of you, in American idiom. With heartiest good wishes to you both,

Willa Cather

TO MR. MILLER

October 24, 1924

My dear Mr. Miller:

I am so sorry my writing vexes you, and it will continue to vex you! I do not in the least agree with your assumption that one kind of writing is right and another kind is wrong. I write at all because it pleases and amuses me—and I write in the way that pleases and amuses me. I had a perfectly good reason for writing “Antonia” in the first person, masculine—and I did not for one minute try to “talk like a man”. Such a thing as humbugging any one never occurred to me. It does not matter who tells a story. It is merely a point of view, a position which the writer takes in regard to his material; just as a painter must first decide what his position is to be in regard to whatever he is going to sketch.

Again, there is one kind of story that ought to tell itself—the story of action. There is another kind of story that ought to be told—I mean the emotional story, which tries to be much more like music than it tries to be like drama—the story that tries to evoke and leave merely a picture—a mood. That was what [Joseph] Conrad tried to do, and he did it well. I wholly disagree with you regarding Jean Christophe [multivolume novel by Romain Rolland] and Pelle the Conqueror [multivolume novel by Martin Andersen Nexø]. Do either of these books tell themselves? Not for a minute! I should say that Jean is one of the most subjective books written in the last twenty-five years. Where do you find any steady flow of action in that, my good man? Do you mean to say that Rolland is not Christophe, and that he is not explaining and diagraming his emotions every minute? What is that kind of “description” but explaining—explaining under a very thin disguise. I think I shall begin every story hereafter with; “We will begin our story on a winter evening in the late seventies” or something of that sort. That is a frank, honest way to begin. It is a story, and “we” are doing it, and we might as well admit it. I think the two greatest writers of fiction in modern times were Count Tolstoi and Ivan Turgenev, and I think they were equally magnificent in their achievement. Their methods were absolutely opposite, and I think both methods are entirely admirable.

You see, I pay you the compliment of coming back at you with some spirit. I should like to have a chance to argue it out with you. I admire Nexö just as much as you do, but that is only one of the dozen fine ways of writing.

Cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO MARY VIRGINIA BOAK CATHER

Sunday [probably November 1924]

My Dearest Mother;

I hope you will be charitable with me for not having written you for so long. The first few weeks in town after a long absence are terribly wearing. Edith came down two weeks ahead of me, and with the help of the faithful Mrs. Winn got the apartment beautifully clean. We have never been so clean before. This summer the landlord painted and papered the apartment throughout for us, and we sent all our window curtains to the cleaners, and had every rug we own dry-cleaned by a most reliable old carpet-cleaning house that dear Mr. Wiener first told me about years ago. They cleaned our rugs like new, and kept them in moth-proof storage for us all summer while we were away. So I came back to clean, bright, pleasant rooms. The first thing was to get a good maid, Montana having gone south.

We have now a pretty little Baltimore mulatto girl, named Mattie. Have had her one week and are greatly pleased with her. She is a splendid cook, is pretty, and has sweet manners. The only trouble about these nice little darkies is that they get tired of working and “go South.” This one is nice; I spent a good deal of last week working with her and showing her how we like things done, and I got to like her ever so much. On Friday she and I put up five quarts of quince preserves, and I think I never tasted such delicious preserves. They are the color of old amber, only redder, and I wish I could send you a jar of them. So I feel that I am fairly started at housekeeping once again.

I am troubled about you and father, for this winter. It is a hard loss to lose a faithful servant [Marjorie Anderson], even if she cannot cook much. Even if Elsie were to come home she ought to have a woman to help her, and they are hard to get. I wrote her about a delightful place in Winchester where friends of mine spent last winter. I almost wish you and Father felt like going there for the winter.

I am trying to work on my new book every day, but it is hard to get the house to running and to write at the same time. I have great hopes of Mattie. I will write you again soon, dear Mother, and I hope you are getting rested at Mrs. Wolfe’s. Mary Virginia’s school has invited me to spend Thanksgiving there with her, but I do not know if I can leave my desk.

Very lovingly to you both,

Willie

TO MISS TELLER

January 21, 1925

My dear Miss Teller:

Whenever I get time to write it, I am going to make Miss Feld print an interview on her interview. She did not misquote me exactly, but she placed all the accents wrongly, and the words she attributes to me are, of course, hers, not mine. The only kind of social workers I object to are those who shamelessly say that they are “going into social work for a time, to get material for fiction”. This whole silly attitude of regarding immigrants, or any other of God’s creatures, as merely subject matter for “fiction” is so false,—it certainly never produces any good writing, and I do not think it can produce any social service worth the name.

As I say, when I have time, I hope I can get Miss Feld to revise her interview, and explain that my remarks applied to a very limited and feeble kind of social worker.

Very sincerely yours,

Willa Cather

TO “HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK REPUBLIC,” THOMAS MASARYK

February 2, 1925

New York City

Honored Sir;

Your letter, transmitted to me through your Legation at Washington, confers upon me great honor and gives me great pleasure. I am glad to have carried a message from the Bohemian neighbors, whom I loved as a child, to their home country.

I have just returned to New York from Red Cloud, Nebraska, where my father and mother still live. I spent the Christmas holidays with them, and while there I had the pleasure of taking the living “Antonia” and six of her many fine children to the first moving picture production of “A Lost Lady.” I have the good fortune to preserve friendly relations with most of my characters, even after I have put them in books. “Antonia” and her twelve splendid children are flesh and blood realities. Every time I go back to them I feel how much more interesting and lovable they are than my picture of them. I wish I could present them to you in person.

The life of our Middle West is so big and various, so ugly and so beautiful, that one cannot generalize about it. All one can do is to write of what came against one’s own door-step, so to speak.

I regret that I cannot satisfactorily comply with your kind request for biographical material. I avoid biographers, asking them to wait until I get my work further along. My first novel was published in 1912, and a period of twelve years is scarcely long enough for a writer to find the form best suited to what he has to say. I was not young when I began to write, and though living is a good preparation for writing, it takes some time to acquire a simple and unobtrusive manner of presentation, however well one may know what one wishes to present.

I am able to send you a very good photograph, taken recently. I enclose a short biographical account which my publisher uses for publicity purposes, and some casual reviews. Biographies usually begin to come along just about the time a writer has no more to say, and I do not feel that that time has yet come to me.

I beg you, President Masaryk, to believe in my grateful appreciation of your letter.

Respectfully yours

Willa Cather

TO IRENE MINER WEISZ

Tuesday [February 17, 1925]

My Darling Irene:

If you knew how much joy those glorious roses gave me! They came like a climax to a debauch of work and music—red enough, and big enough. On Sunday I sent Edith and Mattie both away for the day, and I stayed alone with my ever-becoming-more-beautiful roses and drank koumiss and rested my mind and my heart. I don’t know anyone who is quite as hard hit by flowers as I am. Even the most every-day young rose gives me pleasure, but superb ones like these delight me like splendid personalities. I say “these” because at least half of them are still red and full, in a big Spanish pitcher on the mantle, and they have already given the place three days of splendour. Edith has loved them too and begs me to tell you so. Mattie admired them so much that I gave her one to wear to a colored ball Saturday night!

It was such a satisfaction to me to have you read the story [The Professor’s House], dear Irene, and to see that you got at once the really fierce feeling that lies behind the rather dry and impersonal manner of the telling. You shall see more of it before a great while.

With a heartful of love to you

Willie

TO MARY VIRGINIA BOAK CATHER

March 2 [1925?]

My Dearest Mother;

Now what can I possibly have done to upset you so? I have not written to Bess or Auntie since I came back to New York, nor sent them anything, but a book,—and a very poor one it was. I told you when I was at home that I had sent Auntie my old wadded dressing gown, it was in rags and I thought they could patch it up for her. Oh, yes, I sent Auntie some paper flowers for a valentine,—you always told me to send her such little things, and I haven’t sent her anything for years. Why, Elsie scolded me, and sent her something at Thanksgiving for me and paid for it, she was so ashamed of me.

I haven’t written you since I got back because I knew Douglass was with you and you would not be lonely, and I have been so terribly busy. I wrote Elsie once and thought she would send you the letter.

As for making trouble between you and father, I’ve certainly not tried to do that. Really, it’s very unjust to accuse me of it. You must know, Mother, without my telling you, that all that newspaper publicity about Margie was harder on me than on any of the rest of you, and it was needless. If you hadn’t been so foolish about never letting anyone see her, there would have been no “mystery.” But that is past and gone. I wasn’t angry about it. I thought you had been unwise, and the result of your mistaken judgement made a good deal of ugly talk about me. But I never felt in the least angry toward you, and I took my medicine and kept quiet about it. I wouldn’t speak of it now, if you didn’t come at me so. How foolish, Mother, for us to quarrel! I can’t quarrel, because I have not a particle of hard feeling. I couldn’t be angry with you now if I tried. I think one of the consolations of growing older is that one comes to understand one’s parents better. I am too much like you in many ways to criticise you; I sometimes get impatient, just as I lose patience with myself, but I have never felt cross toward you, even for a moment, for years and years. I think the last time was about poor Mrs. Garber; and you see now, don’t you, that I understood her better than you thought I did, and that though I admired certain things, I was never taken in by her.

Now you and I have been growing closer together for many years, don’t let us spoil it. If I have done anything amiss, I am eager to make it right. But if I have done anything, it was through stupidity. I certainly did not go home to make trouble, but because I love you very tenderly and am happy in your company. Surely, you can’t be seriously annoyed at my sending a few old things to the Andrews’. Elsie is always telling me that I am not very nice to Auntie.

I had meant to write you today to ask you if you want me to send you a small check for your birthday so that you can send it on to Jack, as Roscoe did. It is my hope that father will let me buy the house as I proposed, and use the money to pay Elsie a salary and let her come home to make the place a bright and happy home for both of you. I believe she would put her whole heart into it, and that you would take more comfort in being there than you ever have before. I know that Retta [Ayres Miner] has been kind, but you can hardly go on living that way.

With my dearest love to you, dear mother

Willa

TO IRENE MINER WEISZ

[March 16, 1925]

Dearest Irene;

I think I ought to send this letter to you before I send it to Isabelle, because you saw my Professor in his early stages and took such a tender interest in him. Now you will know where and when to look for it. I could not sell it to a monthly, as they could not use it fast enough to eat it all up before the book date, Sept. 1st. The first editor my agent sent it to bought it within a few hours after it was sent to him, as you see. He paid ten thousand dollars for the serial rights, of which one thousand goes to my agent as commission, and nine to me. The price is confidential between you and Mr. Wise [Weisz] and me. If ones family knows about one’s prices, they expect one to do such absurd things. You know how it is,—they think it’s such “easy money”! But I want you to know, because I know you like to hear of any good luck I have.

Dear Irene, do you think you could send me some of those tablets to wash ecru curtains by next Monday? I’m cleaning house for Virginia’s coming for Easter vacation.

A world of love to you, dear.

Willie

TO CARRIE MINER SHERWOOD

[April 22, 1925]

New York City

Dear Carrie;

[Thomas Masaryk] sent me a lot of lovely views of Bohemia. I am sending you some for you and Irene, and a bunch fastened together for Annie Pavelka. Will you please have the ones marked for Annie framed in narrow, inexpensive black frames, allowing about as much margin as I have indicated with lead pencil, and sent out to her? Please send the bill to me, as I don’t want her to have the expense of framing them.

And, dear Carrie, will you also please give this check to Mrs. Diedrich and ask her to send Mother some tulips? It will save me one letter, and this time of year my mail box is like a task-master.

We had such a gay time for the two weeks Virginia was here! My friends were so nice to her, and I cut work altogether. I don’t regret that one bit, though I’m having to make up for it now.

With love to you and yours

Willie

TO F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

April 28, 1925

My dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

I had read and hugely enjoyed your book before I got your letter, and I honestly had not thought of “A Lost Lady” when I read that passage to which you now call my attention. So many people have tried to say that same thing before either you or I tried it, and nobody has said it yet. I suppose everybody who has ever been swept away by personal charm tries in some way to express his wonder that the effect is so much greater than the cause,—and in the end we all fall back upon an old device and write about the effect and not the lovely creature who produced it. After all, the only thing one can tell about beauty, is just how hard one was hit by it. Isn’t that so?

Very cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT

June 23 [1925]

Hotel La Fonda, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Dear Elsie:

I want to tell you again that I think you got through a hard job mighty well. I’d hate to attack such a chore myself. You surely gave me all I deserve—maybe more, but I suppose we always think ourselves deserving!

I’ve been loafing here in this comfortable hotel, and have met a really nice Mrs. Barker (she knows you) and a nice Mrs. Hughey. Mrs. [Mary] Austin is here, and settles all questions of human conduct and natural history with a word.

Miss Lewis an[d] I go down to San Gabriel tomorrow. It’s been awfully hot down there lately.

Thank you for a painless operation!

Yours

W. S. C.

TO ROBERT JOSEPHY, ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

June 26 [1925]

Alcalde, New Mexico

I am sending you the first half of the page proofs [of The Professor’s House] today, the rest will follow in a few days.

Please send me the proof of the dedication page as soon as possible. You remember this text is:

For Jan, because he likes narrative.

I’ve never seen a proof of it yet.

I like this jacket design fairly well, but I agree with you that it’s too fussy—too much like an illustration. I had hoped for something simple in design and brilliant in color. The blue behind the lettering seems to me rather dark and heavy for a jacket. I enclose a little sketch which might give a suggestion—I have no crayons here to indicate the colors.

If you’ve no time to experiment further, I will be satisfied with this sketch of Mr. Fall’s, however. Don’t hold anything up in order to send me proofs of the jacket. If you are satisfied I think I will be.

Faithfully

Willa Cather

TO MABEL DODGE LUHAN

Monday [July 6, 1925?]

Hotel La Fonda, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Dear Mrs. Luhon:

The only ugly things we saw in Taos, the Meyers family, followed us straight to Santa Fé and the Fonda—faced us at dinner the first night! I was pleased to see Mr. [Andrew] Dasburg at breakfast this morning. I strove to get his attention for one half-hour, and then had to go up to him and hit him to get so much as a “Good-morning” out of him.

I’m sending you some bum cigarettes because the tobacconist was just opening a fresh case and I thought they might be fresh. No Salisburys in tins here, but I’ll send you some from Denver. My lovely bracelet is with Mr. Yantz, and he took the turquoise out in my presence. I love it, and I think your giving it to me was a good omen for the book, for I find quite an astonishing collection of letters here awaiting me. Letters from old hard-boiled publishers and solemn professors, telling me that Tom Outland [the middle section of The Professor’s House], in Collier’s, gave them a pulse. It seems to have struck “other publishers” hard. I’m still hard on the trail of my old priests. I found a lot of interesting things this morning which I’ll tell you some day.

On Wednesday we go to Laguna—though of course we’d like to start right back to Taos! Please give my warm regards to Miss [Mary] Foote and Tony. I’m afraid I’ll always be one of your “hangers-on” hereafter!

Admiringly yours

Willa Cather

TO MABEL DODGE LUHAN

August 7 [1925]

Hotel Olin, Denver

Dear Mabel:

How obliging of Clarence to make a natural climax to the article! We were held up three days at Lamy because of the washout at Trinidad—nothing running except over the Belen cut-off. At New Laguna we had to wait three days before the bold Indian boy, Sarissino, would even try to get us through eighteen miles of lake and mud to Acoma. There was a cloud-burst every afternoon: But we met very interesting people and didn’t mind the delay a bit.

We joined my mother and sister here July 31st. We have a very comfortable apartment in this new and very good hotel. Mother is well enough to go to the theatre and take walks and motor rides. We will go home to Red Cloud about August 12th. Then I will hurry on to my island in the Bay of Fundy to get to work.

August 8th

Your letter sent to Bank Street, on to La Fonda, and finally here, has just arrived. The quotation from Plotinus is superb—who on earth is he?—and Background is exactly the right title for the first volume [of Luhan’s autobiography, Intimate Memories]. Don’t be discouraged if the latter part is harder to do, it’s bound to be harder. Very early memories are always the richest to work with. But that first part is glorious—it’s full of life and vigor and reality.

My weeks with you in Taos stand out as the fine reality of the summer. I keep telling my little nieces about them. Yesterday my brother [Roscoe Cather] motored down from northern Wyoming and brought his three adorable little girls to us; the twins [Margaret and Elizabeth Cather], aged 10, and their sister [Virginia Cather] who is 13.

With my warmest greetings

Willa Cather

Miss Lewis went on to New York last Monday.

TO ALFRED A. KNOPF

Tuesday [October 6, 1925]

The Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear Mr. Knopf:

Isn’t the “Professor” behaving splendidly? Neither you nor I foresaw anything like this last spring—though I had a certain hope in Tom Outland. “The Bishop”, too, is behaving well up in this part of the woods.

Please ask one of your office people to go down to Ditson’s (or any other music store) and get a copy of the piano score of “Patience” and send it up to me. There’s a nice boy who will drum it for me in the evenings.

And please send me a copy of the book with its new jacket, I’ve not seen one yet, and I did hate the text of the first jacket enormously.

On the whole, it seems to me we can so far congratulate each other on the “Professor’s” account.

Faithfully yours

Willa Cather

TO HARRIET FOX WHICHER

October 16 [1925]

Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear Mrs. Whicher:

I have a little niece, aged 18, in the freshman class in Smith this year. Will you look her up at sometime when it’s convenient to you? Her name is Mary Virginia Auld—she pleases me, both as an Aunt and as Author. I believe you’ll think she’s rather charming. She’d love your boys—awfully handy with brothers.

I’m hard at work here, after a glorious summer riding horseback in New Mexico—sage brush plains and aspen woods in high mountains. I wanted to go to Paris awfully in the spring, but somehow I wanted the sagebrush more. I have a regular Zane Gray mind; roughneck and low-brow is [the] name for me.

I wished you could have been at the [Robert] Frost birthday dinner.

Faithfully always

Willa Cather

TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

October 22 [1925]

Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

My Dearest Dorothy:

Since June first I’ve only been in New York 3 days, in September, on my way here. I was in New Mexico horse-back riding and doing camping trips until August 6th, then my mother and sister joined me in Denver and spent several weeks at a hotel there to escape Nebraska heat. Then home to Red Cloud for two weeks, then here, by way of New York.

I’ve often spent the fall here, and love it. I’m having such a happy solitude,—after so many many people all summer. I walk in the morning and walk in the afternoon—and sleep at night, you can believe! I have to go back to Bank Street Oct. 30—but not for long, I am going to leave that hideous town for good very soon.

Now why do you suppose “The Professor” is going better than any other book of mine? Knopf didn’t expect it, and I surely didn’t. I thought it a nasty, grim little tale, but the reviewers seem to think it’s a cross-word puzzle. It’s certainly not my “favorite” of my own books.

Oh Dorothy, I love the story of your mother’s class-mate going to Italy. I wish I could see the Frosts again. But life does take me by the throat—no time for anything. I come up here to play with a nice little story, and a dozen things turn up to prevent me. But I’m not “prevented”, and I love this country so much.

As to that “middle-aged” novel doesn’t everyone have it sometimes? I think one feels “age” more in seeing one’s friends grow older than in growing older oneself. And it’s [a] sad business. But the new story is “sunny” and so I’ve forgotten all that.

Thank you for the French notice of “Antonia”, I liked it. I wish you could motor down here [from Vermont] for a day—is it very far, I wonder? I do want to live in the country all the year around!

Lovingly, my dear

Willa

TO IRENE MINER WEISZ

Monday [January 11, 1926]

Dearest Irene;

Professor St. Peter [character in The Professor’s House] has just gone and bought me a grand mink coat! Isn’t he extravagant? I want you please to telegraph Mr. Weisz’s office here to send a man up to the house to insure it for me, on Friday or Saturday of this week at noon (12 oclock) if possible. I’m afraid I’ll lose it just because it’s the first “valuable” I’ve ever had.

I’m working like a beaver, Dear, and I love my Bishop!

Yours always

Willa

TO FERRIS GREENSLET

February 15, 1926

My dear Mr. Greenslet:

Mr. Knopf told me of your decision with regard to the question of transferring my books to him. If the company is not willing to sell the books to him, then I think it ought to be willing to make some effort to sell them as if they were live property—not merely “creditable” books on the list, by Charles Egbert Craddock or Celia Thaxter, or somebody long deceased.

Now, I come to the question of “Antonia.” Of course, I do not think that in pushing “Antonia” or “O Pioneers,” it is quite fair for you to disparage a book I published last year or the book I will publish next year. As I told you, I do not like the attitude that “A Lost Lady” was in any sense a repetition of “Antonia,” though Mrs. Forrester was one of the women who employed the “hired girls” to whom Antonia belonged. (Confidentially, let me tell you that the real Antonia [Anna Pavelka] actually did work for the real Mrs. Forrester [Lyra Garber].) The stories are studies of the same society, but they are studies of two very different elements in it, and they are written in a very, very different way.

Now, as to the preface. The preface is not very good; I had a kind of complex about it. I wrote and rewrote it, and it was the only thing about the story that was laborious. But I still think that a preface is necessary, even if it is not good in itself. Let me take a trial at shortening the preface. The later part of the book, I am sure, would be vague if the reader did not know something about the rather unsuccessful personal life of the narrator.

I am terribly busy just now and shrink from breaking in at all on the story I have in hand. When do you want to bring out this new edition and when would you need the copy of the revised preface?

Regarding the Benda illustrations: you would, of course, retain those. It is one of the few cases where I think the pictures really help the story, and I would not be willing to leave them out.

Cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO CARROLL ATWOOD WILSON

March 18, 1926

My dear Mr. Wilson:

Since my return your letter of inquiry has been brought to my attention. I do not wish to be ungracious, but the subject is really one upon which I do not care to make a statement. The idea that Georgine Milmine is a myth amuses me very much. She is a very lively and husky person who lives in the western part of this State, and who collected the great mass of material from which the McClure history was written. She did not write much of it herself. That was done mostly in the office by McClures editorial staff. I took my turn at it, as did several other persons. It was not a subject I would have chosen to work upon, or a subject in which I had any particular interest. My interest was a purely editorial one; to arrange the mass of notes and documents in a form that would be clear and effective for serial publication. You can readily understand why I do not wish to have my name connected in any way with a piece of work which was not of my own choosing, and in which I had only a partial responsibility—a responsibility shared with four or five other persons.

If I remember rightly, Mr. Smith’s connection with the magazine did not begin until some time after the publication of this series of articles. His information, therefore, must have been second-hand.

I beg you, dear Mr. Wilson, to consider this confidential. I have been asked this question many times and have always before refused to make any reply whatsoever, but your profession seems to me a guarantee of discretion, and I feel sure you will keep this statement for your personal information and let it go no further. A shaping hand over the form, arrangement, and presentation of the facts in that series of articles, I did have.

Very sincerely yours,

Willa Cather

TO PAUL REVERE REYNOLDS

[Probably April 25, 1926]

Dear Mr. Reynolds:

This story is not a love story, any more than “Robinson Crusoe” is; it is simply not that sort of story at all. It is concerned with the picturesque conditions of life in the Southwest, just at the time that New Mexico was taken over from Old Mexico, and with the experiences of two Catholic missionaries who were sent there to bring order out of the mixture of Indian and Spanish and Mexican superstitions. The real hero of the story is Father Latour (his real name was Lamy) the young Frenchman who was made Bishop of New Mexico at the age of 37, a man of an old and noble family in Puy de Dom, a man of wide culture, an idealist, and from his youth hungry for the world’s frontiers. He was finally made an archbishop, and died in Santa Fe in 1886. In other words, he went there in the days of the buffalo and Indian massacres, and he lived to see the Santa Fe railroad cross New Mexico.

As I told you, I had the good fortune to come upon a great many letters written by the Bishop and his Vicar to their families in France, so that I have not had to depend upon my own invention for the reactions of these two French priests to the conditions they met there. Many of the incidents are invention, some of them are used almost literally as they happened, such as the chapter called “The White Mules.”

There will be five more chapters in Part I,—they are written but not typed. Part II will be much shorter than Part I, but in a much deeper tone and with a deeper, graver color.

Willa Cather

TO MABEL DODGE LUHAN

May 26 [1926]

El Navajo, Gallup, New Mexico

Dear Mabel:

I don’t know whether you are East or West—but I have a feeling you are west, or on the way.

We left N.Y. on the 15th, stopped a few days with my mother and father in Nebraska, and after a day’s pause at Lamy came out here. Isn’t Gallup the Hell of a place? I never saw so many low types in one town. We were both awfully tired and have not been doing much. Edith got a nasty cold coming out of Nebraska in a prairie heat wave, and we’ve been curing that. Tomorrow we go to Zuni, and we hope to make Canyon de Chelly later. We can’t do it unless Edith gets over her cough, for the drivers tell me it’s a harder trip than it’s advertised to be. We have very comfortable rooms here, and Edith has been very happy and relaxed in bed for two days, while I’ve made several strange and terrible acquaintances.

My brother and his peerless twins (also his wife and another daughter aged 13) meet me at Santa Fé June 14. They will have only a week, so I expect to lead a busy life until they’re gone.

July 1st I get to work again, but I’ve not made up my mind as to just where. Miss Lewis starts for N.Y. June 28th. She will take another vacation of a month in August and will probably join me in New Hampshire or New Brunswick.

If you’re still in New York I may see you as you go through Santa Fe. Oh Mabel, we rode from Lamy to Gallup on the same train with Rin-Tin-Tin, and had the pleasure of meeting him during the half-hour at Albuquerque. I never was so excited about any celebrity before!

Yours

W.S.C.

Address LaFonda, Santa Fe after June 1st.

TO MABEL DODGE LUHAN

Saturday [probably June 5, 1926]

Hotel La Fonda, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Dear Mabel:

Here we are, after a thrilling trip to Canyon de Chelly. I am wondering if you could rent us the pink house (the one we were in last summer) for two weeks. Edith has to start for New York on the 23rd of June, but if I found I could work in the pink house I would stay on through July, coming back to Santa Fe for the last week of June to join my brother. He would be here for five or six days only.

Of course I don’t know whether you are settled yet, or whether you are in the mood for wanting people about. I wish I could talk to you by telephone but this line is out of order and they won’t give me a connection.

Since I can’t talk to you I see no way but to thus abruptly enquire whether you would take us for boarders—whether you could make us a flat rate of twenty-five or thirty dollars each per week, as our friends at Grand Manan do. If this wouldn’t suit you, simply drop me a line to that effect. I know that renting your guest houses is one thing, and feeding people quite another and much more inconvenient. On the other hand there would hardly be time for us to rig up a kitchen in the pink house if I’m going to be working.

All this is a suggestion which needn’t bother you if it’s impractical—merely dismiss it with a word.

We are most comfortable here, but the Indian Detourists [participants in tours offered by the Fred Harvey Company] abound and the motor horn is the worm that dieth not. The de Vargas might be quieter, but they are building, as you doubtless know. We got in only yesterday and have seen nobody as yet. I won’t make any further plans until I hear from you. Somehow, I’m awful glad to be back in this country.

Devotedly

W.S.C

TO ROSCOE CATHER

Saturday [June 26, 1926]

Hotel La Fonda, Santa Fe, New Mexico

My Dear Roscoe:

Last night I went to sleep thinking cheerfully of the twins and surely should have had pleasant dreams. But not so at all—I dreamed that Margaret was eaten by a lion! We all saw her sitting in a lion’s cage in a circus parade, and felt very proud of her, and after the cage passed word travelled back through the crowd that the lion had eaten her! And her grandmother & grandfather Cather both fainted and had to be carried out of the crowd, and then I wakened up.

Tell them I went right up to Mrs. Austin’s house to work that morning as soon as you left, and found my Bishop there waiting for me. I have worked every day since then. Tony [Luhan] is still in the hospital with a high temperature, and his wife is terrified. I talked to her by long distance yesterday. I shall go back to my little house in Taos about July 4 or 5, as Mabel has a housekeeper there in her absence and a friend I like from New York is coming there at that date. I am so glad you did go home by way of Taos. Maybe I’ll have a little house there some day, where the children can visit me. I hope you and Meta and Elsie enjoyed your stay here one half as much as I did, and I do wish I could see you all and the children soon again. I love your little girls very dearly, all three of them.

With much love

Willie

No sign of Douglass!

Ask the twins and Virginia to write me, and tell me what they liked best down here.

TO MARY AUSTIN

June 26 [1926]

Hotel La Fonda, Sante Fe, New Mexico

Dear Mrs. Austin;

A week ago today I first went up to your lovely house to see whether I could settle down to work there—and I have not missed a morning since then! It is the most restful, quiet, sympathetic place to work in. I do not use your little study, but sit in your dear little blue plush chair in that corner of the library—I hope I won’t wear that chair out—open the screened portion of your big window, and there I sit and write on my knee. I like being in that fine big room, with so much space about me, and the breeze comes in comfortingly at that window.

The girl who waters your flowers is as punctual as a clock, and so far the house has not got at all dusty. What a satisfying, real sort of house it is,—and what a generous friend you were to give me permission to work there. If you hadn’t had that kind thought for me, I would be up in the air now. I meant to go back to Taos soon after my brother and his family left Santa Fe, but long before that Tony, who had been ailing all the time we were there, got suddenly worse, and Mabel eloped with him to this hospital at Albuquerque. They will be there for ten days or two weeks longer, for Tony still has a temperature. For some days it was 104, and Mabel was terribly frightened. She said she’d never seen him sick before, and she didn’t take it cooly at all. She has a new housekeeper in Taos, and begged me to go and stay, but I thought that would be dismal. Mary Foote arrives in Taos July 3d, and I will go down (or is it up?) soon afterward. Miss Foote is good company and I’m very fond of her.

When Mabel fled from Taos and the pink house there suddenly assumed a deserted and forbidding look, [here] appears Mrs. Huey with the key to your house, like a coincidence on the stage!

I hope your surgeon will hurry the time of your operation along. I’ve had several, and I always hate waiting for them much more than having them.

My love and good wishes to you, dear Mrs. Austin, and my gratitude for the happy peaceful hours I have spent in your library.

Faithfully yours

Willa Cather

TO LOUISE GUERBER BURROUGHS

Sunday [August 22, 1926]

The MacDowell Colony, Peterboro, New Hampshire

My Dear Louise;

Funny place for me to be? Perhaps. I found myself in New York in the first dreadful week of August, my chore at the printers’ done (250 signatures [of My Mortal Enemy] on 100 percent linen-rag paper brought from Italy) and no place to work. So I telegraphed Mrs. [Marian] MacDowell and asked her if she could take me in and give me a studio. I have a beautiful studio in a fine wood, looking out on Monadnock. At first I didn’t like the “colonists”, but now I like them nearly all—some of them very much. As people they’re mostly nice, if only they wouldn’t talk about their damned professions and call them “arts”! Some of them are very nice. I’m enjoying the Bishop again, after weeks of separation—its like a ball where you have to dance for hours with other partners and then come back to the real one. When I was in N.Y. I sold the serial rights to the “Forum”, to begin in December. That will crowd me just a little. September 8 I go to Jaffrey, Miss Lewis will join me for the month. I’ll be there until late in October.

My dear, I found a letter from you in Red Cloud which my naughty parents had not forwarded—but no offense meant, there were dozens of letters there. My parents are Southern and don’t get agitated. Don’t miss “Iolanthe”, if it’s still going. If you hear of anything good to read, tell me. Don’t get impatient, but I hope we can do some things together when I do go back to town.

Yours

W.S.C.

TO ALFRED A. KNOPF

September 8 [1926]

Peterboro, New Hampshire

Dear Mr. Knopf;

I’d like to oblige the Joseph Horne people, but if I once began that kind of thing, there’d be no end to it. One has to do that sort of thing thoroughly, as Edna Ferber does it, or not do it at all. In these days, NOT doing it is a kind of publicity in itself,—though that’s not the reason I refrain.

Please tell them that I will be in Canada then, finishing my new novel, and that as the serialization of that novel begins in December, I can’t interrupt my work so near to publication date; The Forum has to have the copy for the first two installments November 1st.

That is all true, except, possibly Canada, and [that] is certainly a plausible escape. Please tell them I’d love to make an exception in their case, as I have old friends in Pittsburgh.

Please ask your secretary to have one copy of “A Lost Lady” mailed to me at Jaffrey, whither I go in a few days, and to send me two copies of the new book as soon as it’s out. But ask your mailing department to hold the ten complimentary copies that come to me in the office until my return.

My warmest welcome to Blanche and Alfred.

Yours

Willa Cather

TO MISS CHAPIN, THE FORUM

September 24 [1926]

Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear Miss Chapin;

I think it’s rather a mistake to emphasize the landscape—to me that suggests ornamental descriptive writing, which I hate. There really is a good deal of movement in this narrative. In future announcements won’t you, with Dr. [Henry Goddard] Leach’s approval, use something like the enclosed, putting the stress more on the people than the scene?

Sincerely

Willa Cather

Miss Cather’s new narrative, Death Comes etc, recounts the adventures of two missionary priests in the old Southwest. Two hardy French priests find themselves set down in the strange world at the end of the Santa Fé trail, among scouts and trappers and cut-throats, old Mexican settlements and ancient Indian pueblos. The period is that immediately following the Mexican War, and the story is a rich, moving panorama of life on that wild frontier.

TO BLANCHE KNOPF

Wednesday [October 6, 1926]

Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

My Dear Blanche;

Why do these nuts keep trying to separate us from our Mortal Enemy? Please write this lady telling her it can’t be done. I have sent her a line to that effect also.

The copies of the books have arrived—I think Mr. Adler has done himself and me proud. It’s a lovely book. I only hope the public will be as eager to get away with it as these short story cranks seem to be.

You’ll have the rest of the Archbishop about October twenty-ninth, when I’ll return to Bank street.

Please, kind friend, have somebody send me Virginia Wolfe’s “The Voyage Out”—I’m in an awful plight for something to read and don’t know what to order, but I want to try that.

Hastily

W.S.C.

TO LOUISE GUERBER BURROUGHS

October 15 [1926]

The Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

My Dear Louise;

I won’t be back in town before November 4th or 5th, probably. I’m flirting a little with a story that’s been knocking round in my head for sometime. Title “Blue Eyes on the Platte”—PLATTE, not plate. Rather frivolous and decidedly sentimental, love’s-young-dream sort of thing. The natural result of a year of celibacy with the Archbishop. Yes, he’s done and gone—at his head a copyreader’s smirch, at his feet a stone.

Now how did I prejudice you against Rebecca West? Am I that sort of [person] who manages to give someone a black eye while pretending to praise them?

Oh tell me this name, the Chinese or Japanese name of that wonderful candy Bauer makes, which is butterscotch, chocolate and almond flakes, all in little squares. Almond what? I want to order some. It’s lovely here now—everyone gone, weather wild and tragic with brilliant intervals. I have the hotel and the mountain to myself.

Yours

W.S.C.

TO BLANCHE KNOPF

Sunday [October 24, 1926]

My Dear Blanche;

I haven’t seen the Times notice, and I shall avoid seeing it—just as well, as it’s by someone whose opinion one needn’t regard. Don’t you think it is perhaps a mistake to advertise that book as a “novel,” Blanche? It’s not really that. Couldn’t the ad writer call it a “Story,” merely? That would arouse less antagonism.

I’ll be leaving Jaffrey in a few days now, as I’ll stop to make some short visits on the way home. So after this send all mail to 5 Bank Street.

Please thank Alfred for the Chorleys [Thirty Years’ Musical Recollections, by Henry F. Chorley]. They are beautifully printed, and I hope they will do well. Very soon I’ll be seeing you both, until then, Good Luck.

Yours

W.S.C.

TO HARRIET MONROE

October 27 [1926]

Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear Miss Monroe;

Thank you so much for Miss Butcher’s review. It’s so agreeable to have someone see what the story was about! Not one of the other reviews I’ve seen but said “Ah yes, we are all our own worst Enemy!” Sad and true—but in this instance not the point!

My eyes are all right again, thanks.

Cordially yours

Willa Cather

TO FANNY BUTCHER

October 27 [1926]

Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear Fanny Butcher;

It’s worth writing a book to have somebody get the point of it absolutely. I’m willing to bet you’re the only one who does—no other review that I’ve seen comes anywhere near getting it. Of course the thing I was writing about was just that fundamental attraction and antagonism—that the more complete and intense the pleasure of being two is, the more fiercely the individual self in one resents it, sooner or later. Not a question of pale loves at all, this; but of the fierce and brilliant ones—which are rare.

Harriet Munro[e] was kind enough to send me your review. Will you please send me two more copies? I want to send them to dear friends in France.

I’ve had a glorious autumn up here, and have done some mountain climbing I’m very shirty about—for I have short legs, and a good many pounds to carry up to the summit! I go back to N.Y. tomorrow. Please let me know if you come to town. I do hope you’ll like my Archbishop, Fanny. Begins in the Forum in January, but I’m omitting about one-fourth for the serial. It’s an altogether new kind for me, but how I loved doing it! It was as if one had always played modern composers, and at last had the time and control to practice Bach awhile. Modest comparison!

Thank you, dear Fanny, for taking the trouble to get the point of a story so devilish hard to tell as my “Mortal Enemy.”

Yours

Willa Cather

TO MARY VIRGINIA AULD

Saturday [February 19, 1927]

Dearest M.V.

How nice of you to send me an edible valentine! I’d been rather low in mind for a few days, and a bunch of Valentines, mostly flowers, quite cheered me up. Nothing in particular to make me feel blue, except that I don’t see my way to beginning a new story as exciting as the Archbishop right now, and reading proofs is dull work after writing,—it’s like trying to have a gorgeous party over again–––can’t be done. You can have a new adventure, but you can never have the same one over.

[Albert] Donovan was here for dinner last night and we went to see my crush, Rin-tin-tin. [Edward] Steichen, the photographer of the Rich and Great, is coming to dinner tonight. I have a new dinner dress, and a rather gorgeous new afternoon dress,—that’s about all the news. When the proofs get further along, I want you to come down some week-end; you see Edith reads them with me, and we can only work at them on week-ends. By the way, how did you come out in the examinations?

With heaps of love

W.S.C.

TO META SCHAPER CATHER

March 19 [probably 1927]

My Dearest Meta:

If you want to get Virginia in at Smith in a few years, you must write an application to the Registrar at once and send the ten dollar registration fee. Mary Virginia spent last weekend with us and we were talking it over. She said a letter of introduction from me would help,—everything there is booked up for years to come.

I have time for a word only. Edith has been in the hospital two weeks, following a rush operation for a very nasty appendix. She was brought home today and will be in bed for two weeks more at least. Then I must try to get her away somewhere. The city is building a new subway down our poor little street and under our very house, so it’s like living in a bombarded city–––bad place for a recovery! We have the same nice colored maid we had when Roscoe was here, and she has been a tower of strength and kindness in these troublesome times.

I am so glad you all like my Archbishop. I had a lovely time working on him, and I think pretty well of him myself. But this has been a dreary, wasted winter; all broken up by trivial things.

My dearest love to you all

Willa Cather

TO WILL OWEN JONES

March 22 [1927]

My Dear Mr. Jones;

Certainly I wish to send my congratulations to the Journal on it’s sixtieth birthday. I have many pleasant memories connected with it,—with the Journal, I mean, not with its birthday. You see I still write as badly as ever.

The first time I was ever confronted by myself in print was one Sunday morning (please don’t append an editorial note here, stating just how many years ago it was) when I opened the Sunday Journal and saw, stretching out through a column or two, an essay on “Some Personal Characteristics of Thomas Carlyle” which Professor [Ebenezer] Hunt had given you to publish, quite without my knowledge. That was the beginning of many troubles for me. Up to that time I had planned to specialize in science; I thought I would like to study medicine. But what youthful vanity can be unaffected by the sight of itself in print! It has a kind of hypnotic effect. I still vaguely remember that essay, and it was a splendid example of the kind of writing I most dislike; very florid and full of high-flown figures of speech,—and, if I recall aright, not a single ‘Personal Characteristic’ of the gentleman was mentioned! I wrote that title at the top of the page, because it was the assigned subject, and then poured out, as best I could, the feelings that a fervid reading of “The French Revolution” and “Sartor Resartus” had stirred up in me. Come to think of it, that flowery effusion had one merit,—it was honest. Florid as it was, it didn’t over color the pleasure and delightful bitterness that Carlyle can arouse in a very young person. It makes one feel so grown up to be bitter!

A few years after this, I began to write regularly for the Sunday Journal, you remember, and I was paid one dollar a column,—which was certainly quite all my high-stepping rhetoric was worth. Those out-pourings were pretty dreadful, but I feel indebted to the Managing Editor of that time [Jones] that he let me step as high as I wished. It was rather hard on his readers, perhaps, but it was good for me, because it enabled me to riot in fine writing until I got to hate it, and began slowly to recover. I remember that sometimes a bright twinkle in Mr. [Charles] Gere’s fine eyes used to make me feel a little distrustful of my rhetorical magnificence. He never corrected me, he was much too wise for that; he knew that you can’t hurry nature. But I think his kindness, his easy wit, the ease and charm of his personality, helped me all the time. When he was listening, with such lively sympathy and understanding, to one’s youthful troubles, he would sometimes sit stroking his dark beard with his hand. No one who ever saw Mr. Gere’s hands could ever forget them, surely. Even in those days, when I was sitting in his library, it more than once came over me, that if one could ever write anything that was like Mr. Gere’s hands in character, it would be the greatest happiness that could befall one. They were dark and sinewy and so much alive; in a whole world-full of hands I’ve not seen any others that seemed to me to have such a singular elegance. None in the least like them, indeed. You see, even very stupid young people addicted to cheap rhetoric, are yet capable of perceiving fineness, of feeling it very poignantly. I was very fortunate in my first editor. He let me alone, knowing that I must work out my own salvation; and he was himself all that I was not and that I most admired. Isn’t it too bad that after we are much older, and a little wiser, we cannot go back to those few vivid persons of our early youth and tell them how they have always remained with us, how much pleasure their fine personalities gave us, and give us to this very day. But, after all, it’s a good fortune to have Mr. Gere alive in one’s memory,—not one but a thousand characteristic pictures of him, and I congratulate the Nebraska State Journal and myself that we both had such an editor in our early activities.

You told me in your letter, dear Mr. Jones, that you did not wish me to make yourself the subject of my letter, but I am sure you will have no objection to my recalling Mr. Gere to the many friends who felt his quality as much or more than I.

With pleasant memories of the past and good wishes for the future of the Nebraska State Journal, I am

Most Cordially yours

Willa Cather

TO STEPHEN TENNANT

March 28, 1927

New York City

Dear M. Tennant;

Anne Douglas Sedgwick has been kind enough to send me, through a mutual friend, a note you wrote her about “My Mortal Enemy.” It gives me a great deal of pleasure, and I wish to tell you so. In form that story is faulty enough, certainly, but one has to choose the thing one wants most, and try for it at the cost of everything else. Nearly all my books are made out of old experiences that have had time to season. Memory keeps what is essential and lets the rest go. I am always afraid of writing too much—of making stories that are like rooms full of things and people, with not enough air in them. If writing is easy for you, it’s very hard not to over-write. I am now reading the proofs of a book which I’ve had great joy in writing, and in which I’ve succeeded better than ever before in holding the tone—in making detail do what I wished it to do. I’ve been turning it over in my mind in my long journeys in the South West for fifteen years, so that when I came to write it, it took only about six months—no work at all, like a sail on a fine summer morning. I didn’t have to use any of the old machinery, had things all my own way. I’m becoming extremely confidential, am I not? But I think you’ll like “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” It will be out next fall, and if you’d be good enough to write me how it strikes you, I’d be so pleased! Send me a line in care of my publishers, for I shall probably be somewhere in Old Mexico by then.

I see I’ve written a long letter, mostly in praise of my own new book,—how like an author!

Most cordially yours

Willa Cather

TO VIRGINIA CATHER

Palm Sunday [April 10, 1927]

Haddon Hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey

Dearest Virginia;

There are many opinions about what was in the cave—but I think it was a rattlesnake den. Jacinto [character in Death Comes for the Archbishop] thought there might be some around loose under the faggots. He was afraid the heat would warm the dry fellows up and bring them out. An Indian always knows the rattlesnake smell, but this Bishop hadn’t enough experience.

We enjoyed M.V.’s [Mary Virginia Auld] visit (Easter vacation), though we saw little of her. But we enjoyed that little, and I think she did. I took her to one very grand party. Miss Lewis is down here getting well by the sea. She joins me in love to you.

Willa Cather

TO MARY VIRGINIA AULD

Wednesday [June 8, 1927]

Dearest M.V.

Aren’t we a funny family! I have got my ticket for Casper, Wyo., starting this Sunday! The subway has become very intense, and goes on every night until midnight. We have put some things into storage, and I will come back in August to help Edith empty the apartment and go into storage. The noise and confusion here is beyond words—that is why I flee. I wrote Aunt Elsie at Lincoln the day before I got your letter.

In Washington I advise you to stay at the New Willard, and to eat in the coffee shop in the basement of the hotel. The food is excellent and not expensive.

I did not go to Winchester—told the club women I would be in Wyoming May 31st, to avoid being a guest at a banquet.

I’ll probably drop down in Red Cloud about four weeks from now, and Douglass will be there before that, he writes me. Tell Aunt Elsie that we will all meet up eventually to Charleston on the new carpet!

With my dearest love to you both

Willa

How wonderful for Tom [Auld, Mary Virginia’s brother]!

I do not know if Howard Gore has gone away for the summer yet. His address is 2210 R. St. If he is there [rest of line cut off]

TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

August 17 [1927]

Dear Dorothy;

After much wandering your letter did reach me up in the Big Horn mountains. I took it back to Red Cloud to answer it, but there, just when we were all so happy, Father had a terrible attack of angina, the first serious illness of his life. For the present he is better, and I hurried back to New York to give up this apartment, where I have been for fifteen years, and to put all my books and goods into storage. I am in the midst of that doleful process now, having got back only the day before yesterday. I had taken passage for France on the 30th, but I can’t go when Father has an illness which can only terminate in one way. Probably I shall trail West again as soon as this packing ordeal is over. You can always reach me through the Knopf office, however. I honestly don’t know where I am going to be. My unmarried brother, Douglass, will take Father and Mother to California for the winter if Father is well enough to go.

I can’t properly answer your letter, dear Dorothy, because I’ve almost forgotten I ever wrote the Archbishop,—so much has happened since then. I suppose some of the pleasure I had in following those two noble churchmen will go on to others,—though I can’t see many people in a moving-picture-world caring much about a book with no woman in it but the Virgin Mary. I wanted to save something of those remote places before they are gone for ever. Tomorrow, the movie cameras will be at Acoma. Forgive me that I have no spirit to thank you. Deep in my heart I am happy that I was able to make you see a little of what has bewitched me down there for so long.

With my love, dear Dorothy

Willa

TO FANNY BUTCHER

Thursday [probably early September 1927]

Hotel Webster, New York City

Dear Fanny Butcher;

Five Bank street is now a thing of the past. Everything that used to be there is in storage—including myself! You see all last winter the new sub-way was building right under the house, and it will go on for two years more. The noise is maddening, the neighborhood become a sham. I hate being in storage, but I want to be free of responsibility for awhile.

I know how busy you are—but will you send me a line telling me if you got any pleasure out of the “Archbishop”? And please send me your review. (Send notes in care of Knopf, as I have no address of my own at present.) The morning World tells me that judged as a novel, it’s a very poor performance. Just what is a novel, I wonder? I’ve always wanted to try something in the style of legend, with a sort of New Testament calm, and I think I succeeded fairly well. A story with no woman in it but the Virgin Mary has very definite limitations; it’s a very special kind of thing, and you like it, or you don’t. I had a glorious year doing it, and working in that new form with no solid drama. I found in it a lovely kind of poverty—and richness; a deep content.

You and Grant Overton were the only two reviewers in America who liked “Antonia” when it first came out. The “Archbishop” is even farther from the conventional novel. It’s a narrative, like Robinson Crusoe, and it’s a kind of writing that is colored by a kind of country, like a folk-song.

Let me hear from you, if you have a spare moment. I was to have sailed on the “Barengaria” yesterday, but had to give up my passage. Was detained in Nebraska by the serious illness of my father. He suddenly came down with angina—the first serious illness he has ever had. I shall probably go to the White Mountains for a few weeks, then either to France or Arizona.

With my love, always

Willa Cather

TO FANNY BUTCHER

September 17 [1927]

Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear Fanny Butcher;

I said legend, didn’t I, not folk-lore? There’s such a difference. Folk-lore is unarticulated—detached. But legend is a sort of interpretation of life by Faith. It was that background of order and discipline that gave the lives of those missionaries proportion and measure and accent, like a work of art.

Yes, of course you may use anything I said, provided that it doesn’t sound as if I were defending the book.

I’m so sorry you[’re] tired and used up—I’m a wreck myself, trying to get rested enough to start for Arizona. Of course I’ll let you know when I go through Chicago. Rush your Archbishop for autograph along to me here—you can have it bound afterward. I’m not likely to have an address for some months. Awful way to live!

You did nobly by me in your review—but sometimes in the country, you must run over that book just the way you read “Swiss Family Robinson” when you were little, not as writing at all, but sort of living along with the priests and their mules in a world where miracles really come into the day’s work, or into one’s experience of it, which is the same thing.

With my love

Willa Cather

TO LOUISE GUERBER BURROUGHS

[September 21, 1927]

Dear Louise

I’m really desperate. I have nothing on earth to read. Won’t you please see if you can get me Jane Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility” in a fairly good type—not the European edition, that’s to[o] small type—and rush it to me “special handling”? Then I’ll get it about Monday, maybe. Knopf keeps wanting to send me new books—but there is not one in his fall list that I want.

I’m walking a good deal, and it’s glorious weather. Yes, I’ve just glanced at Miss [Rebecca] West’s review again. I think the question she brings up really interesting, and she says a lot about it that’s interesting to me. [D. H.] Lawrence is the Puritan reformer, for all he’s habitually indecent, and I am the Pagan, for all I’m stupidly decent!

Hastily

W.S.C.

TO LOUISE GUERBER BURROUGHS

Monday [September 26, 1927]

Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear Louise, you must have got Jane Austen here by air mail! No, I’ve not bobbed, but Miss Lewis has, with great success—very becoming. The weather is wonderful—one sun-soaked day after another. I’m not working, though, so I’m a little restless. I enclose Miss [Frances] Newman’s review—but you must send it back to me—I wouldn’t lose it. There is a review in the highbrow Catholic weekly, “The Commonweal” Sept. 28, which gives me great satisfaction. I feared nothing so much as seeming a sort of stage Catholic. I’m living in the woods every day, but I’m always a little bored when I’m not working. That’s a grave deficit of character, and I’m sorry to admit it.

With my love

W.S.C.

TO IDA TARBELL

Friday [probably October 1927]

Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear Miss Tarbell;

How happy your letter made me! The writing of that book was the most unalloyed pleasure of my life—and it keeps on bringing pleasures,—letters from priests in remote deserts and mountains that melt my heart. The rector of the Cathedral in Denver writes me that he still uses father Joseph’s chalice and the vestments made by Philomène and her nuns! He knows every inch of the ground and he really loves the book. He is an old man, and he wrote me a letter like a school boy’s.

These letters do help me to bear the trials of this hour. Of course I miss my “Archbishop” awfully, working on him was almost like working with him, it was so happy and serene a mood. Then I’m homeless for the present—all my goods in storage. I had to leave Bank street because a sub-way station is being built almost under the very house in which I lived. I now expect to spend the winter in Arizona and with my parents, and go abroad in the early spring.

If I am in New York at all, I do so want to see you. Nothing makes me quite so happy as pleasing my old friends, and I do like to feel that you are one of those.

Affectionately always

Willa Cather

TO MARY AUSTIN

November 9 [1927]

New York City

My Dear Mrs. Austin:

I did not mean to put the burden of a letter upon you, but I can’t help being glad that you wrote me. I am staying at the Grosvenor, 35 Fifth Avenue for a few weeks, as just now I am utterly homeless! I had to give up the apartment on Bank street, which I loved and where I had been for fifteen years, because the new subway was (and is!) building a station almost under the very house I lived in. Last winter was wrecked by the noise, for both Miss Lewis and me, and the construction will go on for years. Nothing for it but to get out,—and all our goods are now in storage. We have not taken a new place because we want to go abroad for a few months early in the spring, while we are not paying rent. I am going out to Nebraska to spend Thanksgiving with my father and mother, but I shall be here when you come on in January. I hate these wasted, broken‑up interludes in life. I never manage to have much fun in them. You’re awfully mistaken if you think life doesn’t get all messed up for me, too! There are just occasional intervals when I can make things run smoothly and snatch a piece of work out of the temporary calm.

I shall look forward eagerly to your article in The World Tomorrow. This book is just one too many for the poor reviewers. They complain about it, and say “it is almost impossible to classify this book”, as if I had put over something unfair on them. They feel so bitterly because Knopf calls it a novel; I, myself, wanted merely to call it a narrative. I’m not sure that I know just what a novel is, and I’m not sure that the reviewers do. However, none of these things really matter. Enthusiastic reviewers may help a book along at the start; but after the first year or so, a book, like an individual, has nothing but its own vitality to carry it.

Dear Mrs. Austin, I do believe that a few months in New York will benefit you more than all the doctors in the world. You are the sort of person who needs solitude, but for that very reason you need to be lost among people and crowds for a part of every year. If only because you’ll be so glad to find yourself again!

If ardent good wishes could help you over this trying time, mine would do so. But I’ve a feeling that hideous, resounding New York will help you.

Devotedly always

Willa Cather

TO BLANCHE KNOPF

December 31 [1927]

Red Cloud, Nebraska

My Dear Blanche;

What an amazing and magnificent Christmas Box you sent me. The children of the family were all so excited about the box and so thrilled by its contents—so many kinds of food they had never seen before. They all vociferously join me in thanks to you. It has been a fine country Christmas; zero weather, snow, the house full of nieces and nephews, my brothers from Wyoming and California dashing in for a few days. Mother and father are both very well, and all the townspeople have been unusually jolly. I really am a farmer, and this kind of life suits me better than any other. I’ve got loose from Bank street, and I think the next step will be to get away from New York altogether.

I shall be here for two or three weeks yet, and then start for Arizona. I’ll telegraph you when I leave Red Cloud, so until you hear from me please have my letters sent on here[.]

The river is frozen over, and I’m going skating with a lot of youngsters this afternoon—they still do such things here. Altogether, it’s like stepping back about twenty years. It’s refreshing to find that one can still get so much excitement out of weather and wind and ice and snow.

A Happy New Year to you, dear Blanche, and to Alfred and his father, and my deepest thanks for all the many nice personal things you have done for me in this year of confusion and up-rooting.

Yours

W. S. C.