The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

TO FERRIS GREENSLET

March 13 [1932]

Dear Mr. Greenslet;

If you can get a very high price for the film rights of “The Song of the Lark” I’ll consent to the sale. But I wish you would send me a letter, signed by several members of the firm, assuring me that you will never ask me to consider a film proposition for “Antonia”. I would like to feel entirely safe where that book is concerned. You can do this for me, can’t you?

I don’t for a minute believe that a film production would do more than give the sale of the book a temporary punch. The production of “A Lost Lady” brought in hundreds of letters from illiterate and sloppy people, which gave me a low opinion of “movie” audiences.

I notice that you are advertising the new edition very handsomely, and I hope it will bring you a good return. Please let me know if you are in New York before the end of April, as I expect to be here until then.

Faithfully yours

Willa Cather

TO HELEN MCNENY SPRAGUE

March 20 [1932]

My Dear Helen;

We have had all our winter since I got back! I don’t mind—I like a long, cold spring. I was so glad to get your letter, and to hear that your father [Bernard McNeny] and Louise had been punished for laughing at us. I hope they got good and cold, too!

I’ve been going to lots of concerts and operas since my influenza left me. I do hope we can hear some music together some day. I’d love to take you to some of my favorite operas. I’ve not seen as much of Virginia as usual, though we manage to get together once a week, at least. Tonight she is to dine with me at Sherry’s. Last Saturday we lunched together and went shopping.

Oh Helen I am in dispair about the Lindbergh’s baby! I don’t believe they will ever see it again. The New Jersey & New York police magnates meet and “deplore the situation” and then go out to lunch. If I were the Lindberghs, I’d just go and live in another country where the right to privacy is recognized. Here they steal your baby and ruin your life and trample on all your decent feelings.

Don’t you let anybody kidnap young Sprague when he arrives. I’ll be awfully keen about him, and I know you’ll bring him up in a natural, easy, unsentimental way, without making a martyr of yourself or a victim of him. Oh these pale, wistful looking plants that have grown up under the shadow of the heavy-weight “mother love” pose! You weren’t brought up that way, and that was why you were such a dear child and such a pleasure to us all.

With love to you & your mother

Willa Cather

TO HENRY GODDARD LEACH

May 25, 1932

My dear Dr. Leach:

Both of your letters eventually reached me, and I thank you for bearing my hurt feelings in mind. The review about which I wrote you was the only review that ever gave me a case of hurt feelings; and my grievance was entirely a personal one. I mean by that that I was hurt as a person, not as a writer. I had always looked upon The Forum as personally friendly to me in this City where personal friendships have almost ceased to exist under the rush of business relations. I felt that such a review was not at all in the line of ‘controversy’, since a writer cannot with any shred of dignity defend his own work.

But I am the last person in the world to suffer very long from a case of wounded vanity or to brood upon it. I have long ago forgotten my surprise and indignation, and I beg you to forget that I was for a moment indignant. I am just leaving New York for Canada but if I am in the City next winter, please let us have tea together and drink to Mr. Hicks—if that was his name.

Very cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO ALFRED A. KNOPF

June 20 [1932]

Dear Alfred:

If I had been told that one of my friends was soon to die, your father [Samuel Knopf] would have been almost the last for whom death seemed possible—unless in an accident of some kind. He simply seemed to me one of the strongest people I knew, in body and in purpose. (I am astonished to learn his age.) I didn’t see him very often during a winter, but I always felt he was “there”, in a very positive sense, and even five minutes with him invariably set me up. I had absolute confidence in him. He was my kind—by that I mean that he was one of the persons whom I admire, respect, understand, at once and without reservation, by instinct. There are not many of the younger men in whom I feel that kind of confidence; that in art, or business, or merely in human behavior, they will always see that the straight thing and the crooked thing are not the same, even if they do not shout about it. That mere perception is the thing that counts: without it human life would be too unutterably dull and filthy. If all the great “loyalties” are utter lies—why then, they are simply ever so much better than the truth. And that was what brought ideals out of the dung heap in the first place—because creatures weren’t content with dung, though it is always there and, in a sense, more “real”. I don’t mean to be writing you this way, but you are, thank God, one of those few younger men in whom I do believe. Though in you it takes a different form than in your father, in its essence it’s the same quality. I think it’s the best thing you got from him, and I hope you’ll always cherish it. (If you don’t you’ll be unhappy, I can tell you that!) I don’t expect you to be a reformer, I merely expect you to preserve intact and to make better still that delicate instrument inside one which knows the cheap from the fine. The recognition of the really fine is simply one of the richest pleasures in life.

When I began this letter I did not foresee that it would take this turn (rather sermon-ish) but I usually write as I feel, and the shock of your father’s death brings up the old question:—What do I really admire in people, and what is worth saving in a time when so much is being scrapped. But we needn’t save it: it has an artful dodge of saving itself. It has survived all the “realities” and “discoveries” and has been through times much worse than ours. It can well rest a hundred years or two.

With my love and sympathy and confidence,

Willa Cather

TO CARRIE MINER SHERWOOD

July 4 [1932]

My Dear Carrie;

I don’t know if “Two Friends” is out yet, but I saw proofs of it before I left New York and ever since have wanted to prepare you for the dreadful illustrations. The editor gives a western story to some nut who has never been west of Hoboken, and who thinks that all Western men are rough-necks. I hate publishing stories in magazines, anyway, and only do it because they pay me very well.

Elsie wrote that when she went through Red Cloud the home yard looked lovely; I wish I could see it. Our little place here is so green and fresh this year, and though it is so primative and has no bath room, we find it very comfortable. I have invited Mary Virginia [Auld] to spend her month’s vacation as my guest here. I expect her the middle of July. I shall put her up at the little colony about a quarter of a mile across the pine woods, where I used to stay before I had a house and where we still go for our meals. She will have more freedom there than here, and she can run down here when she wishes. There is not much gaiety here, but I hope she will enjoy the beauty of the place.

Please tell Helen Mac. [McNeny] that I was delighted to get her letter about young Bernard [Sprague]. I have just unpacked and oiled my typewriter, so you must pardon a messy, oily letter. When you think of it, Carrie, please send me the letter from Borneo, and that from the nice priest, I sent you some time ago; I am trying to file some of my papers up here.

I do hope you and Mary liked “Two Friends”, at least that there was nothing in it that struck you as false. It is not meant to be a portrait of the two men, but a picture of something that they suggested to a child.

With love always

Willie

TO WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

August 16 [1932]

Grand Manan Island

Dear Mr. Phelps;

I am everlastingly grateful to you for calling my attention to my astronomical blunder. I knew that in the summer of 1893, sitting on a board sidewalk in a little Nebraska town, I did see the planet Venus go behind the moon and reappear. The neighbors said it was a “transit” of Venus. When I wrote the story last year, I could easily have checked up on this point, but I knew I had seen the planet behave in such a manner, and it did not occur to me that I had better make sure that I was giving the correct name to its behaviour.

Since your letter was forwarded to me I have had the matter looked up by the Knopf office, and we find that there was an occultation of Venus in the summer of 1893. The correction has been made in the second printing; your kindly letter will probably save me from writing many letters to indignant scientists, and has saved me from making the same blunder in the English edition; we cabled Cassells at once to make the change.

Very gratefully yours

Willa Cather

TO ZOË AKINS

September 16 [1932]

Jaffrey, New Hampshire

My Very Dear Zoë;

I am so glad to have a letter from you! Of course, marriage is always a gamble, except with children of eighteen, perhaps, who learn everything together—and therefore never learn much but how to get on with each other. But the worst thing is to be bored to death by a smiling, pale personality—and you have escaped that fate by a wide margin, I gather! What with a new husband and a new house, you ought to find life pretty interesting. The pictures of the house reached me at Grand Manan, Canada, and I got a great thrill out of them. I was able to pick out many of the changes you have made. Most of all I loved the picture of that heavenly room with so little in it, so that one felt the room itself and not an assemblage of things. It surely requires a much finer sense of form to make a room without things than with them—also, I imagine, more money. It’s the proper spaces that are expensive, in any art. I love Green Fountains for a name. It’s so very different from other “place names”.

I’m awfully glad you like Mrs. Harris. Of course that’s much the best of the three. The right things came together in the right relation, I thought. You know the types, but I wonder what it can mean to people who don’t know the charming and untruthful South.—

I’m going back to New York next week, and will be at the Grosvenor while I look for an apartment. I almost hope I won’t find an apartment! Zoë, I’ve just happened to read “Colomba” [by Prosper Mérimée] over, very slowly. What [a] beautiful and splendidly poised thing it is: the most terrific happenings slide easily and noiselessly into the narrative, as they always do in life, when the stage is never set for the moment that uplifts us or destroys us. The un-expectedness of life is what makes it interesting; the events are logical, but we never see the cause and effect until after the events have happened. That quality of unexpected developments which are at the same time logical, has almost disappeared from modern writing. I wish I could get rid of “atmosphere” and be another kind of writer for awhile. I’m tired of being my kind!

My love to you, dear Zoë.

Willa

TO THOMAS MASARYK

September 23 [1932]

Jaffrey, New Hampshire

Dear President Masaryk;

Some weeks ago I wrote my publisher to send you my new book. I could not autograph it, for I was then travelling in a remote part of Canada. The book has probably reached you before this, and if you have had leisure to read it you probably agree with me that one of the stories at least, “Old Mrs. Harris”, strikes a more authentic note than the Quebec story I sent you a year ago. A book which grows out of admiration and study never has the authentic ring of a book that grows out of early experiences. Nevertheless, I do believe in a rotation of crops,—in writing as well as in agriculture.

You asked me, after I sent you the Quebec story, whether I were on the road to becoming a Catholic. By no means! I do, however, admire the work of the Catholic missionary priests on this continent.

I find I have a copy of a letter I wrote Governor Cross of Connecticut, after his review of the book appeared. I am enclosing it, as an explanation of how I happened to write “Shadows on the Rock”. The work of the French Catholic missionaries was unique in that they brought with them a kind of culture and a way of living. These endure to this day—in the Province of Quebec, at least.

Please let me say in closing that your interest in my books is one of the most deeply satisfying things that have come to me as a writer. I don’t believe they would have caught your attention if there were not something genuine and indigenous in them. The longer I live the more I feel that I am willing to be ever so little, if only I can be ever so true.

Faithfully yours

Willa Cather

TO JOHN SEXTON KENNEDY

November 1, 1932

My dear Mr. Kennedy;

I am sorry if I wrote you an unenthusiastic letter a year ago; but sometimes when one has to reply to a great many letters at one sitting, one’s enthusiasm does get pumped rather dry, you know. I surely can thank you very warm heartedly for your appreciation of the stories in “Obscure Destinies”. Those three stories are, every one of them, very near to my heart, for personal reasons. Moreover, I want to do all I can to overcome the provincial American prejudice against stories of that length. This is the only country in which stories of that length are dismissed rather lightly as minor pieces, simply because they are short. It is the custom here to rank a novel like the “Arrow of Gold”, which is distinctly Conrad’s second best, as more important than a masterpiece like “Youth”, which could scarcely be better than it is—and which, of course, would have been quite ruined had he tried to expand it into a long narrative.

The long short story has always held such a dignified and important place in French literature that I wish it might command that same position in our own country.

No, it does not distress me at all to hear that a young man in Baltimore is working on a thesis, but if you know him, I suggest that you warn him to approach his subject in a more rational manner than that employed by young Mr. MacNamara, whose article [“Phases of American Religion in Thornton Wilder and Willa Cather”] in the [May 1932] Catholic World you may have seen. It is absurd to measure “spiritual growth”, or even intellectual growth, chronologically. Our great enlightenments always come in flashes. The spirit of man has its ups and downs like his body, and the Roman Church of all others, it seems to me, has always had the wisdom and the kindliness to realize that instability in us.

Very cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO ZOË AKINS

November 21 [1932]

My Darling Zoë;

I have just come back from the country and find your telegram, and the account of Hugo’s death in the Sunday papers. What a dreadful shock for you, to have a big strong man go out like that! It makes one catch one’s breath to think of it. Wasn’t it fortunate that you had that jolly honeymoon together in Mexico, since this was going to happen? But why did it happen so soon,—less than a year after you were married. It’s a brutal fact, Zoe, that after one is 45, it simply rains death, all about one, and after you’ve passed fifty, the storm grows fiercer. I never open the morning paper without seeing the death of someone I used to know, East or West, staring me in the face.

And in the days when I first knew you, people didn’t use to die at all; the obituary page never had the slightest connection with our personal life. Death just becomes a deep, be-numbing fact in one’s life long before it ends one.

Keep up your routine, dear Zoë, keep your life going as you’ve always done: you’ll be less lonely that way than if you sit and think about things. And, just for the time, cut out alcohol. One’s very apt to over do that when one is hard hit, and no ordinary human being can keep up with Jobyna [Howland] without disasterous results. I’m not knocking Jobyna, but she is rather spacious in capacity, as she is in size. I wish I could run out to see you for a week, but I’ve come back to town with a rather bad eye, (which now has a bandage on it) otherwise very well. I’ve just signed a lease for an apartment at 570 Park Ave. but I won’t be moving for several weeks yet—can’t even think of it until my eye clears up. It’s merely a slight infection, but painful. I’ll soon get the better of it. Do get the most you can out of your house and mind and thoughts. Personal life is rather a failure, always; biologically so. But something rather nice does happen in the mind itself as one grows older. If it hasn’t begun with you yet, keep your courage, it will happen. A kind of golden light comes as a compensation for many losses. You’ll see!! I wish I could have saved you this hard knock, my dear.

Willa

TO JENNIE C. MORSE CARSTENS

November 21, 1932

My dear Mrs. Carstens:

Of course, I have not time to reply to all the letters that come in to me; it is rather an unfair contest in correspondence, one against many.

But your letter has a nice friendly, neighborly ring that makes me wish to answer it, though it lay on my desk a long time unread while I was traveling. On reading it I feel as if I had been to a Sunday evening service in my own town of Red Cloud and heard some one talk about somebody’s books—not mine. You say you wonder why I have never written anything sympathetic about religion, and this rather astonishes me. I have had so many, many letters from clergymen, both Protestant and Catholic, telling me that they find a very strong religious theme in at least two of my books.

Perhaps you think that because “Death Comes for the Archbishop” is about the work of Catholic missionaries, it is not concerned with religion as you know it.

Now, my dear lady, I am not a Roman Catholic. I am an Episcopalian, as were my father and mother. Bishop Beecher of Hastings, Nebraska, confirmed me. I am a Protestant, but not a narrow minded one. If you make a fair minded study of history you cannot be narrow. What organization was it that kept the teachings of Jesus Christ alive between the year 300 A.D. and the days of Martin Luther? I am sure that your minister will admit that nothing but a powerful organization could have brought the beliefs of the early church across to us through the anarchy and brutality that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.

This is a rather solemn and pedantic reply to your pleasant and neighborly letter, but I do think all Christians ought to know a little more history before they decide that there is only one kind of religion. I am sure I need not tell you, dear Mrs. Carstens, that this letter is entirely personal and confidential, and is not for quotation or publication. I have no objection, however, to your showing it to your minister; perhaps he can prove to me that there were “Protestant” churches before Martin Luther, but I have never yet been able to find any convincing evidence that there were.

Very sincerely yours,

Willa Cather

TO MABEL DODGE LUHAN

November 22 [1932]

Grosvenor Hotel, New York City

Dear Mabel;

Great news—we have at last taken an apartment, and are terribly busy fitting it up. I got back from Canada October 10th, but had to dash out to Chicago almost at once. I came back and signed the lease and began shopping for rugs and curtains, then had to go to Chicago again! But now most of the shopping is done, furniture got out of storage and set in place, cabinet-makers at work on bookshelves etc. We are staying right on at the Grosvenor and settling the new place slowly. Edith is desperately busy at the office, and if I shop for more than a few hours at a time I buy the most absurd things. We expect to move in about two weeks from now.

What do you think of Mrs. Austin’s book? It’s amazing how everybody mis-understood her and nobody ever “got the point”. It’s a big job to set out to be a genius in this ruthless age when even kings have to watch their step and pay their tailor bills. As for my base conduct—you know why I went to the house for a few hours every day for about a week—merely to be polite. I had two perfectly good rooms at La Fonda. And how the devil could I help it that the first archbishops of New Mexico were French? As I don’t wear a Spanish comb in my hair I didn’t mind it a bit that Bishop Lamy was a Frenchman.

H. G. Wells threatened H. & M. [Houghton Mifflin, publishers of Earth Horizon] with a libel suit, sent furious cables, and they had to knock out his confession on Hampstead Heath and make new plates, but some thirty thousand had already got out.

Have you read Hemingway’s book [Death in the Afternoon]—of course you have. Don’t you find it quite stunning? I don’t see us getting to Mexico this winter. I simply have to have a dwelling place and my own books and things about me. Then I can travel in comfort and not feel like a tramp. Edith has wanted to write to you for a long while, but holding an important business job in N.Y. these days means working like fury. I hope she’ll resign soon. She had a good long summer in Canada, about four months. At Grand Manan, and at Jaffrey N.H. where I spent two weeks, all my friends were reading “Lorenzo” [Luhan’s Lorenzo in Taos]. I’d have been bothered to death by the curious, so I shut ’em off by saying you had said what you wanted to say, and I had no authority to add an oral appendix.

Please write me again before you go away. I’m awfully excited about getting an apartment.

With love

Willa

New address is 570 Park Avenue

(That’s at the corner of Park & 63rd, just behind the Colony Club)

TO CARRIE MINER SHERWOOD

Sunday [December 11, 1932?]

Grosvenor Hotel, New York City

Dearest Carrie;

Thank you for sending the book of reviews so promptly. Alfred Knopf wanted to use some extracts from them. They got here in plenty of time.

Now I want you to relieve my mind a little. The enclosed letter tells its own sad story.

1st Won’t the Bladen bank come back and pay at least part of what it owes its depositors?

2nd What about the Inavale bank?

Why in thunder don’t these people bank with Walter [Sherwood]—where they have a chance? What’s the matter with the Lambrechts?

Now will you be my Santa Claus? I want them to have a good Christmas dinner. I know they won’t buy prunes or dried apricots, they felt too poor to get them last year.

Please have Mrs. Burden pack a box:

2 dozen of the best oranges,

3 pounds of dates,

5 pounds best prunes

3 cans Texas figs

3 pounds cranberries

3 bunches celery

1 peck red apples

If there is any money left over after you get these things, get some Butternut coffee—I know they will cut the old lady down on her coffee, so put whatever is left into coffee.

I’ve already sent Mrs. Lambrecht a Christmas box, a lovely sweater and a lot of toys, but that was before I got Lydia’s letter.

I’m sitting in the middle of a pile of trunks, dear Carrie. We move today. I think the new apartment will be lovely, but I’d have waited another year if I’d known so many of my old friends were going to be hard hit. I do want to help.

Lovingly

Willie

New address:

570 Park Avenue

(not far from [Mary] Virginia, I’m glad to say!

Roscoe’s Virginia is to spend the Christmas holidays with me.

TO FERRIS GREENSLET

[Around December 29, 1932]

Dear Mr. Greenslet;

Excuse old machine,—only one at hand.

This morning I received from a Miss Hahn, with no sort of letter or apology, a barbarously reconstructed version of “Antonia.” You spoke to me of using a portion of the book, some twenty pages; you did not mention such a horror as a skeletonized version of the whole novel. The lady has tried to make it a story of action; now it was never meant to be a story of action.

I had decided, after your talk with me, to allow your educational department to use the first thirty pages of the book, minus the introduction. If it would be an accommodation to you, personally, I would still be willing to allow that, on condition that there shall be no cuts at all in the text, and that this lady shall not write the introduction.

Can’t we just drop the whole matter, anyway? You tell me they want something of ‘mine’. Then your educators go and make this text as much like Zane Grey as possible. The reconstruction by Miss Hahn has neither Zane Grey’s merits nor mine.

Really, my dear F.G., you’ve never treated “Antonia” very gallantly. You are always trying to do her in and make her cheap. (That’s exaggeration, of course, but I’m really very much annoyed.) And you know how you’ve suggested cheap editions, film possibilities, etc. Antonia has done well enough by her publishers as she is, not in the cut rate drugstores or re-written by Miss Hahn. She made her way by being what she is, not by being the compromise her publishers have several times tried to make her. Even a cut in price would be a compromise in the case of that particular book, I think. And as to a cut in text, reducing the whole book to some few thousand words—! Those horrible boil-downs of “Notre Dame de Paris” and “Adam Bede” which are handed out to children are poison, as you well know.

I’m in my new house, but not unpacked, hence this untidy machine letter.

You see I don’t want to go into a book that is made up of reconstructions of this kind, where the text is boiled down. It doesn’t give youngsters even a chance to come in contact with the writing personality of a single one of the writers presented to them in this packing-house form. I think it’s the lowest trick ever put over on young people.

Enraged though I am, I’m still your very good friend, and I send you good New Year wishes from my heart. Only let me hear no more of Miss Hahn and her stupid, brutal trade.

Faithfully (and affectionately) yours

Willa Cather

My new apartment will be ever so nice when it’s done.

TO ZOË AKINS

New Year’s Eve [December 31, 1932]

570 Park Avenue, New York City

My Darling Zoë;

On Christmas Eve, when the two little nieces were sitting before the fire and the new apartment was trimmed with greens, Josephine [Bourda] (the same old Josephine) came in bearing a tall tree all blossoming with spring, and announced “Un pommier, mademoiselle. Il faut faire les apple-pies!” [“It’s an apple tree, miss. We can bake apple pies!”] Thorley must have sent the best he had for you, and the sudden advent of such a spring-time thing had something quite magical about it. There was just the right place for it, against my new french damask curtains, of which I am awfully proud. It is just as graciously blooming on New Year’s eve as it was on Xmas eve, and I know you’d be glad for all the pleasure I’ve had from it.

Yes, the same Josephine! You must remember her, the big frenchwoman who was such a good cook. Last winter I heard by chance that her husband was very ill and her two daughters out of work, so I sent her a check to cover hospital expenses. When I took this apartment I sent for her to help me arrange things. She has not been in service since she left me, but she says she’d like to stay on, and God grant she may continue to feel thus. Such food, my dear, as she gives me! It’s very amusing—I find I learned most everything in “Shadows on the Rock” from five years of Josephine! And I, conceited donkey, found that knowledge of pots and pans there in my head when I needed it (french pots and pans, which are very different) and I never gave a thought as to why I found myself able to write about french household economics with ease and conviction.

Well, tomorrow begins a new year. I wish you might have had it with your Hugo, dear Zoe. But really, our measurements of time are foolish—correct for business officers only—In our real, personal lives a week is often longer than ten years. I remember one summer that was longer than the twenty-five years that have followed it. Personal life can’t be measured by the calendar. So I wish you a New Year full of growth and the best things that help one over hard places.

Lovingly

Willa

TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

January 11 [1933]

570 Park Avenue, New York City

[Written in the top margin:] Telephone Regent 4–8354

My dear Dorothy;

It has been so long since I have written a letter because I wanted to that I scarcely know how to go about it. I’ve never even thanked you for your telegram last Christmas, or told you that the two winter months at home in the old house, among the old neighbors were more perfect than things often are—they meant more than years and years of life in other places. This winter I’ve at last found and taken a quiet apartment, got my things out of storage, and I think I’m going to love it when the long grind of “settling” is over. Edith Lewis is with me, and I have the same frenchwoman from the Basque country whom I had all through the war. When you are next in town won’t you please make a date with me and come to see me—for tea if you can.

I want you to look in the February Atlantic for an account of a delightful adventure which will mean more to you than to most people who read it. I couldn’t tell all the story without saying too much about myself—but you already know what I did not include. Wasn’t it funny that it happened to me? I so well remember when I began to read Flaubert in Red Cloud, and when I dug through Salammbô and all the Letters with George Seibel, the German proofreader in Pittsburgh. Do read the Letters to Caroline over again! What a wonderful woman. For those few thrilling days at Aix-les Bains I had the whole group of her time in my two hands—they were more real than anything on earth to me. No work of art can recall and reproduce a period as a living human person can—if it’s the right person.

I’m as well as anybody could be who went through moving in the Christmas shopping storm, with a Wyoming niece [Virginia Cather] on my hands for her college vacation. I parked her at a dear little hotel, and greatly enjoyed the time I could spend with her. I got off all my Christmas boxes to my old women on the farms out west. For three of them, thank God, I have been able to save their farms by paying their interest. About nothing ever gave me such pleasure as being able to help them keep their land—the land they’ve worked on since I was ten years old!

Now I’ve got to go to a business meeting, but I’ve had half an hour with you, anyway. I’m so glad you liked Mrs. Harris. I fussed with it a little, but I got very nearly the tone I was trying for.

With love always, even if I write so seldom.

Willa

TO IRENE MINER WEISZ

Thursday [January 1933?]

Dearest Irene;

The news won’t be out until next week, but Alfred has just telephoned me that the Prix Femina (PRIX FEMINA) has been awarded to me for “Shadows”, and that the French Ambassador will give a luncheon for me in New York, and that I’ll have to go—or take a train for California! What a life!—when I want so much to give my time to the apartment. This will mean interviews, letters, telegrams etc, etc. Just at this time it’s a real calamity. Meanwhile, it’s a secret between you and me and Mr. Wise [Weisz] until you see it in the papers.

Lovingly

TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

[Probably early 1933]

My Dearest Dorothy;

Of course I’d rather have you do such an article than anyone else, and they’ve been after me through several people who knew nothing at all about me. I’m fairly sick of this legend of a pale creature who has sacrificed her life to art. I never in my life made a sacrifice to ‘art’. Even as to teaching, I simply taught because I found it less distasteful than newspaper work. All my life I’ve shoved away the less agreeable for the more agreeable. The things that really attracted me were so much more attractive that I never found it at all hard to push aside the minor attractions, even when they were very pleasant. I’ve lead a life of self-indulgence, if ever anybody did. I wanted to see the world a bit and meet all sorts of people, so I spent five years on McClure’s doing it. When I’d had enough, I stopped. I expect I’ve spent as much time hearing music as most people spend on their profession–––pure self indulgence. This is the truth, you know. So please don’t make me either noble or pathetic. Of course, in youth, when one is poor, one struggles; but what else is youth for? If one were rich and buried under tutors and ‘advantages’, there would be another kind of struggle. And I never shut myself away from the people I cared for, you know that. I shut out the crowd to be ‘all there’ with my friends.

Hastily but lovingly

Willa

TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

[February 16, 1933]

My Dear Dorothy;

You’ve certainly done this operation as gently as it could be done, and you’ve been noble about keeping away from trivial personal stories,—of which you could tell so many! I’ve corrected two dates; I was born December 7, 1876.

Any summing up of one’s books sounds strange to one, because one was never conscious of doing things consistently,—each book seemed a totally new thing, an escape, indeed, from the others. But if there is a common denominator, it is Escape, and you’ve hit on it. When I get on a Santa Fe train now and swing west to the coast, I often waken in my berth with that glorious feeling I had in childhood, the certainty of countless miles of empty country and open sky and wind and night on every side of me. It’s the happiest feeling I ever have. And when I am most enjoying the lovely thing[s] the world is full of, it’s then I am often most homesick for just that emptiness and that untainted air.

I’m rushing this back to you with my deepest th[a]nks for your protecting arm.

Lovingly

Willa

TO ROSCOE CATHER

April 3 [1933]

New York City

My Dear Boy;

Your letter came just in time. When I found I could not get a room at the Northampton Inn, I was seriously thinking of going down to Bermuda and side-stepping the Smith Commencement. (I won’t stay with Professors and help them pay off their social debts, you know.) But since you think Virginia would be disappointed, I will manage to be there. I have written the hotel at Amherst to engage a room, but have had no reply. Of course everything is crowded at that season. I’m going not at all for the degree, which I certainly don’t need, but on your account, and on Mother’s. When I thought it over, I was sure that she would want me to be there. I have not even written Virginia since Christmas. I have not done a stroke of serious work this winter. My correspondence and business affairs have driven me to the limit all the time. I had lost a good deal of money on bonds going bad, so I’ve simply devoted my time to getting rid of the old municipals which used to be so good, and putting the money into Tel. and Tel, and into Government bonds. Of course I’ve had to sell at 60 to 75, but it was the only thing to do. I’ve had Alfred Knopf’s lawyer to help me. But such transactions, together with the awful Income tax I have to pay, have broken up my winter completely.

I’ll do the best I can to represent you at Commencement and keep Virginia from feeling lonely.

With a heartful of love,

Willie

TO ROSCOE CATHER

April 25, 1933

My dear Roscoe:

I ought to have sent you a telegram. I was so glad to hear that your bank stood firm through the storms—what storms they have been! I wonder what you think of all that is going on in the world now, especially in the banking world. As for me, I simply think anything is better than timidity and inactivity. I do not think Roosevelt is any giant of intellect and he may run us into a few snags, but at least we will be moving,—and for the first time since Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House we have a President who can speak French to the French Ambassador! The whole misunderstanding with [Pierre] Laval came about from the fact that when Hoover thought he was paying a compliment, Laval thought he was making a promise. I am simply driven to death with the yearly college torment and haven’t much time to write, but I wish you would keep me posted on how affairs are going with you and the bank in Wyoming.

With special love to Twinnies,

Willie

TO S. S. MCCLURE

May 26 [1933?]

New York City

Dear Mr. McClure;

I have been hoping that I would see you again before the summer scattering, but now that the hot weather has come suddenly I am leaving town to stay with friends in the country. Later I go to Canada. When I come back in the fall we must have another evening together and talk over our old friends, and about those days when we worked so happily together. I was always eager to please you, and you were eager to be pleased. I still think that was the secret of your success with young people. You often thought them a little more able than they really were, but those who had any stuff in them at all tried to be as good as you thought them, to come up to your expectations. You had such a spirit of youth yourself that you knew how to strike a spark in young writers. We must talk over those years of comradeship when we meet again.

Until then, good luck to your book! And please wish me good luck with mine—just now it seems to me rather stupid.

Affectionately always,

Willa Cather

TO ELSIE CATHER

June 21 [1933]

Dear Sister;

Everything went well—Virginia graduated cum laude. I tried to do my whole duty—lunched with her and her dear friend Miss [Charlotte] Wilder (who seems a very nice person, awfully like her brother [Thornton Wilder]) paid a visit to Baldwin House and the house-mistress, etc. We stayed in a suite at Faculty House, Mount Holyoke, as it is quiet there. Virginia had dinner with us at the [George and Harriet] Whichers, who recalled your visit and begged to be remembered to you.

Virginia left with us as far as Springfield; from there she went on to Detroit. She seems a rather sad little figure to me—I wish I could do something to cheer her up. But these days most young people seem sad to me.

Your good letter reached me via Virginia—she came over to Mt. Holyoke to dine with us the night we got there, came over in Mary Lewis’ car.

With love,

TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

June 22 [1933]

My Dearest Dorothy:

At last the Herald Tribune article did reach me, and I sent it straight to Isabelle. A reply has just reached me. Both she and Jan are delighted with it. Isabelle says she wishes to see you to tell you how much she likes it. She would certainly be the hardest person in the world to please in such a matter, so I think we may say “a good job” without reservation. As for me, there is nothing in it that I don’t like, and much that I do, and I’m very grateful to have so good a front presented to the public. To me, myself, articles about myself never give me much delight, no matter how sympathetic and generous they are, simply because they make me for the moment self-conscious. My chief happiness (probably yours, too) is in forgetting the past as if it had never been. No, I don’t mean ‘the past’, but myself in the past. As soon as I think of myself as a human figure in that past, in those scenes (Red Cloud, Colorado, New Mexico) the scenes grow rather dim and are spoiled for me. When I remember those places I am not there at all, as a person. I seem to have been a bundle of enthusiasms and physical sensations, but not a person. Maybe everyone is like that. How can anyone really see himself? He can see a kind of shadow he throws, but not the real creature. I have been running away from myself all my life (have you?) and have been happiest when I was running fastest. Those last three winters of my mother’s life held me close to myself and to the beginnings of things, and it was like being held against things too sad to live with.

So Sally [Dorothy and John Fisher’s daughter] is getting married, and my oldest nephew is getting engaged! My goodness, where have all the years gone to? It’s all terribly perplexing, my dear. But I enjoy life immensely—when I forget it.

I’m off for Canada next week (Whale Cove, Grand Manan, New Brunswick) Please let me know where you are going this summer. Not Germany now, I think. Thank you dear for your kind judgments, and your loyalty to early memories—memories of early youth, when such little things could produce wonders of excitement and joy.

Lovingly

Willa

TO ALFRED A. “PAT” KNOPF JR.

August 15 [1933]

My dear Pat;

What original ideas you have for a vacation pastime, to be sure! I like a retreat from the world, but not just in the way you have selected. Well, when you do go to New Mexico to ride, you’ll be happier with your appendix out, I can tell you that. I am doing lots of walking up here, on rather rough trails that run along the edge of the sea-cliffs. There are few beaches, and anyhow it’s too cold to bathe. We have had only one day when the thermometer went above eighty-two. The Italian air fleet on their return trip went right over this island, right over my little house at 2:15 in the afternoon and wrecked my afternoon nap. I thought them ugly beasts, with their ribs all showing, and shook my fist at them.

I hope you are over the uncomfortable part of an operation by this time. You must come to see me whenever you are in town next winter, and let’s plan a theatre party on our own, without letting anyone chaperone us! I’d love that.

Have a good time while you are getting well, and make them give you good things to eat. I wish I could send you one of the lobsters we pull out here.

With much love, my dear boy,

Your special friend

Willa Cather

TO ZOË AKINS

[August 26, 1933]

Whale Cove, Grand Manan Island

Darling Zoë;

The book-ends did not reach me in time—I left town July 8th—but my secretary is holding them for me. Nothing can come into Canada now without the bill of sale. But the white and the green knitted jackets, which were presents from you, are here and are my constant companions on this breezy coast. They comfort my sore shoulder in the most friendly way.

I’ve had all kinds of a summer—some good, some bad. Mary Virginia spent her vacation with me here, and that I did enjoy.

I’m working on a book about a very silly young girl [Lucy Gayheart], and I lose patience with her. Perhaps I am too old for that sort of thing. At any rate, it does not put me in a holiday mood as some books have done. My little hut here looks very pretty, buried in roses and hollyhocks, and sitting on the cliffs at the very edge of the sea. I’m fond of the place. I’m fond of Zoë, too, and I wish you could drop down in this wild spot sometime. Newspapers always three days late, maid three times a week, no radio on this island. World-affairs never touch us.—Except that the damned Italian air fleet, on its return trip, did go over this island, over this house at 2:30, and wrecked my afternoon nap!

Lovingly, dear Zoë

Willa

TO ALFRED AND BLANCHE KNOPF

October 26 [1933]

My Dear Blanche and Alfred;

I am certainly a pig, or I would have thanked you before this for the splendid package of books you sent me. I haven’t looked into the Bullett, but all the others are good. Work and the fine weather have kept me from writing letters. My excuse for not thanking you for the books is–––industry! This morning I finished the first draft of Lucy Gayheart. I’m by no means out of the jungle, but now I know there’s a trail through, and a reason for going through—at least, there is to me. It will take a hard winter’s work, and you, my good friends, will help to keep the dogs off me, I know. I know, because you’ve done it more than once. I haven’t learned to work in that apartment awfully well; maybe I can arrange things better this winter. If I can’t I’ll come back to Jaffrey!

I had a cunning note from Pat last week.

The weather is glorious—my ankle does splendidly on a four mile walk, I’ve not tried it further. Wild clouds and very low ones, as in France; the mountain dark purple all day yesterday, the top of it powdered with snow, and the sky rolling masses of silver and purple and black from morning until night. (This sounds as if I were trying to work off some “writing” on you, but since you know the mountain, there’s some point in mentioning it’s present complexion.)

With love to the both of you

Willa Cather

TO CYRIL CLEMENS

December 28 [1933]

570 Park Avenue, New York City

Dear Mr. Clemens;

It will give me great pleasure to receive the medal from the International Mark Twain Society, and I appreciate the honor which the Society confers in this award. I have always been proud of a story which Albert Bigelow Paine tells in his Life of Mark Twain. It seems that your father once found an early poem of mine [“The Palatine”] re-printed in a newspaper, and he showed it to Mr. Paine and commended it with some enthusiasm. I think Mr. Paine quoted several stanzas of the poem in his book—the third volume, if I remember rightly. I was a very young writer at that time, and a word from Mark Twain, spoken to a third person, meant a great deal to me.

Very sincerely yours

Willa Cather

Excuse my tardy reply to your letter; I have just returned from northern Canada.

TO CARRIE MINER SHERWOOD

January 27, 1934

My dear Carrie:

Mr. Cyril Clemens, son of Mark Twain, is President of the International Mark Twain Society, to which men of letters in all countries belong. The Society recently held a contest to decide what is the most memorable and representative American novel in the last thirty-five years, the writer of this novel to be awarded a silver medal by the Mark Twain Society. The majority votes were for Antonia, and the medal is waiting for me in St. Louis whenever I have time to go and get it.

Out of a number of reports on Antonia which were sent to the Society, there is one which I think you might like to have (chiefly because it is so well written) to keep in your copy of Antonia. Now, don’t show it to the town cats or put it in the paper, or do anything to make [blacked out] and [blacked out] want to scratch my eyes out any worse than they do. Of course, I want you to show it to Mary, and you might show it to Helen Mac. [McNeny] some time, because I know neither of them wants to murder me. I want you to have it because it particularly takes notice of the fact that, though there have been many imitations of Antonia and some of them good, I really was the one who first broke the ground.

Oh yes, there is another reason why I don’t want you to show this article about; a lot of our fellow townsmen would go chasing out to look poor Annie [Pavelka] over and would agree as to what a liar I am. You never can get it through peoples heads that a story is made out of an emotion or an excitement, and is not made out of the legs and arms and faces of one’s friends or acquaintances. Two Friends, for instance, was not really made out of your father [James L. Miner] and Mr. [William Newman] Richardson; it was made out of an effect they produced on a little girl who used to hang about them. The story, as I told you, is a picture; but it is not the picture of two men, but of a memory. Many things about both men are left out of this sketch because they made no impression on me as a child; other things are exaggerated because they seemed just like that to me then.

As for Antonia, she is really just a figure upon which other things hang. She is the embodiment of all my feeling about those early emigrants in the prairie country. The first thing I heard of when I got to Nebraska at the age of eight was old Mr. Sadalaak’s [Francis Sadilek] suicide, which had happened some years before. It made a great impression on me. People never stopped telling the details. I suppose from that time I was destined to write Antonia if I ever wrote anything at all.

Now I don’t often write, even to my dearest friends, about my own work, but you just tuck this away where you can read it and when people puzzle you, or come at you and say that I idealize everything and exaggerate everything, you can turn to this letter and comfort yourself. The one and sole reason that my “exaggerations” get across, get across a long way (Antonia has now been translated into eight languages), is that these things were not exaggerations to me. I felt just like that about all those early people. If I had exaggerated my real feeling or stretched it one inch, the whole book would have fallen as flat as a pancake, and would have been a little ridiculous. There is just one thing you cannot fake or counterfeit in this world, my dear Carrie, and that is real feeling, feeling in people who try to govern their hearts with their heads.

I did not start out to write you a long lecture, but some day I might get bumped off by an automobile, and then you’d be glad to have a statement which is just as true as I have the power to make it.

My heart to you always,

Willie

P.S. I had a wonderful afternoon with Irene when she was here, and I am so happy that she and Mr. Weisz are going to escape from this troubled part of the world. Isn’t he a good sport?

TO VILHJALMUR STEFANSSON

March 22, 1934

My dear Mr. Stefansson:

I am t[h]rilled to think you cast a ballot for me, but why in the world for membership in the Philosophical Society? Don’t you know that I am the least philosophical person in the world? I cannot read five pages of Hegel, no not five paragraphs, without tying my head up in cold water. Santayana and Bergson are the only philosophers I can read with pleasure—and perhaps that is only because they both write well. However, I thank you warmly for your vote, and if I am actually made a member of this dignified body, I shall try to cultivate my mind a little. At any rate, I shall have had the pleasure of hearing from you.

Always cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO ELSIE CATHER

May 7, 1934

My dear Sister:

I am so awfully sorry to hear that you have been sick and low spirited—any one who is sick is low spirited. Now you must not take all those rumors from Red Cloud too seriously. Will Auld’s behavior may affect our fortunes, but it cannot affect our honor [Auld, a banker in Red Cloud, and Cather’s sister Jessica divorced in 1933]. The more he shows himself up there, the more people will understand that we got a very bad deal—no, nobody wrote me what has been going on. Mrs. Rickerson’s little card to Molly, which you yourself sent me, told me the whole story.

I had that pleasant evening with Bishop Beecher just about a week before I got my hand hurt. Of course I realize, my dear, that you had plenty of troubles of your own—and if I had only known that you had them, I might have sent you a few books or a few flowers or something to amuse you; but like you, I was pretty much concentrated on my own troubles. An absolutely smashed hand is such a serious thing for a writer,—and just now it proves to be a very serious thing for Alfred Knopf to have a writer with a smashed hand. I really cannot get the book done for fall publication, as I see things now. For two months I have simply put in the whole of every day with doctors, massage, electric treatments and hot water treatments. I have at last got out of splints, but my wrist and thumb are now very stiff as the result of being tied to a board for two months, and it will take a lot of massage to give them back any elasticity. However, I am working again now every morning by hand (of course, I cannot type), and as a result am feeling much more cheerful. Alfred Knopf read the first third of the new book last night, and telephoned me this morning that he would wait any number of months or years for the rest, and that he had “scarcely believed he had it in him any more to be so enchanted by the sheer grace of a character in a story”. The book is about a very young girl and the title will be simply “Lucy Gayheart”. It is modern, western, very romantic, non-Catholic. So there we are!

I have been sending a lot of books to the Red Cloud library—some very good ones—and if only I had known you were sick, I would have sent them to you. Don’t hesitate for a minute to go back to Red Cloud this summer; it is full of our friends and there are very few friends of J. W. Auld there.

Lovingly,

Willie

P.S. Here is a little check I want you to spend on keeping up your yard. I always feel that if the yard is nice, people think pleasantly of father and mother when they pass by.

TO LOUISE GUERBER BURROUGHS

Sunday [June 10, 1934]

My Dear Louise:

Your lovely roses have been such delightful companions to me all this day while I was mending the roads in “Lucy Gayheart”. In these days one has to squeeze one’s memory hard to remember just what it was like to walk over frozen country roads in certain weathers. Not very important, and I had side-stepped it. But this morning I sat down and made myself remember.

With love

W.S.C.

TO EARL AND ACHSAH BARLOW BREWSTER

July 1, 1934

My dear Brewsters:

I suppose Edith wrote you that I had a hurt hand for most of the winter, and that is why I have not written to tell you how much I enjoyed your book on Lawrence [D. H. Lawrence: Reminiscences and Correspondence]. I think the letters themselves show a much nicer side of him than most of those in the big collection, and oh, I very much like Earl’s and Achsah’s own words about their friend! It seems to me that they are almost the only honest words that have been written about Lawrence, except [Dorothy] Brett’s funny little book [Lawrence and Brett: A Friendship] which was honest in its way, and I thought quite charming. But, as you know, most of his friends wrote about Lawrence to exhibit themselves and not at all to enlighten one about D. H. L. I had a letter yesterday from Isabel[le] Hambourg, telling me that your book gives her a better idea of Lawrence than anything she has ever read—but probably she herself has written you to that effect.

Edith and I hope to get away to Grand Manan in the second week of July. I have been kept in town through the heat by rather complicated business affairs. Moreover, I insisted upon finishing, before I left, the book which was interrupted for more than three months during the winter. I have got it done, but I expect it would have been a better “do” if I could have written it without interruption. For three months I really did nothing but take care of my hand—I made a career of it, and was a trained nurse with one patient.

How often we think and talk of you, dear friends, and wish we were on our way to see you. We had hoped to go abroad this spring, you know, but my hand changed our plans. One of these days we will be on our way to you, however, and God speed the time.

With all good wishes to you both,

Affectionately,

Willa Cather

TO ROSCOE CATHER

July 2 [1934]

New York City

My Dear Roscoe;

So nice a letter as yours deserved a speedy answer. I never thought of not paying the cost of that trip, my dear boy; I was asking enough of you in asking you to give the matter your attention. But since you want to do all that for me as a gift, I will take it in the high spirit in which you offer it. I don’t know when a letter has pleased me so much as yours—it sounded a lot like your father. I think he left to all of his sons some of his fine courtesy. Even poor Jim has some of it. It makes you all just a little more chivalrous than the men around you. I am sure Virginia and the twins feel it.

The heat is very bad here, and I won’t get away before the middle of July. I stayed on in the heat to finish the interrupted book, and did it. More than that, I sold the serial rights for a good price. It will come out in the Woman’s Home Companion from April 1935 to Sept 1935 [actually March–July 1935]. This, of course, delays the book publication—it will be out Sept 1st, 1935.

Scribners’ wanted to serialize it, but their bid was only about half that of the Crowell people. They never pay much, as they have a very small circulation. There is nothing in serial publication now-a-days but money, so get all you can. Once there was “class” about appearing in good magazines, but now there are no good ones, so why bother?

Lovingly to you all

Willie

TO ELSIE CATHER

July 14 [1934]

Dearest Sister;

I am writing in bed after packing all day. Thank you for your letter from Hastings. I am so glad Bess [Seymour] is there and that she has no cancer. Oh that heat! Every morning for weeks I open the Tribune before breakfast and look at the temperatures reported from Omaha, Kansas City, and Denver, always hoping it will say “rain & cooler” and it never does. Minnesota and Wisconsin are just as bad. My heart is heavy for you all, and especially for the old people. If I were a Catholic I’d be sure this world is being punished for its new ways of thinking and behaving.

The heat was 100 to 110 here right along for the two weeks when I was finishing my book, but I did not mind it much. This apartment was usually cool in the mornings, and Josephine was always so jolly and resourceful. My poor typist could not keep my manuscript clean—the purple ink ran and smeared on the pages, and for the first time I sent in dirty manuscripts to both the magazine and to Alfred Knopf.

Both Alfred and the W. H. Companion are very much excited about the story. Three weeks ago I sent a rough draft to Jan Hambourg for musical corrections. Yesterday I got a cable which reads:

“Lucy unquestionably your finest work. Beautiful, rich, inevitable complete. Like Brahms B major trio

Isabelle Jan”

It’s by no means my finest book; but the design is good, I think. The first part is written for the last. It would all be much better if I had not had to drop it entirely for nearly four months, just when I was going strong. I never got back the same enthusiasm.

Now I am sending you another check, for it takes days to get to Grand Manan, and some days to get settled after we arrive. You might need something for Doctor or hospital before I can write you again.

Virginia cried bitterly when I told her Bess was so ill. She said some of the best memories she had were connected with her Aunt Bessie.

I see by the paper that Charles [Auld] is at home! Pleasant, I should think. What do the townspeople think of Will Auld? Do you ever see any of them, of the Aulds, I mean? So it turns out that Bess has helped to pay for [Will and Jessica Cather Auld’s son] Tom’s schooling! I can never have much respect for that young man, I’m afraid.

Elsie, I wish you would use some of this check to get one of those new oscillating electric fans for your bedroom—they are almost noiseless and they saved my life in the hot stuffy rooms of the Grosvenor hotel. Changing the air does refresh the body.

I feel guilty to be going off to a cool place, dear Bobbie, but after two weeks I’ll have my proofs to read, and I could never do that in Red Cloud in the heat. I expect you think I’m pretty selfish, but if you could read the hundreds of letters that come in to me all the time (to the office, too) you would have to believe that my books do give pleasure to the intelligent and the sick and the unfortunate, as well as giving fools and tonguey women something to talk about. They do more for more people than I could personally do if I were as strong as iron and devoted my whole life to good works. I don’t write ’em with that purpose, but they have that result. Any kind of integrity helps in this world, and I have my own kind.

With love, dear sister, and thinking of you and what you are up against, every hour in the day,

Willie

TO ALFRED A. KNOPF

July 27 [1934]

My Dear Alfred:

I must seem very inconsistent to you—wanting big plain type for the “Archbishop,” and not wanting it for “Lucy”. But you see I wanted the “Archbishop” to look as if it were printed on a country press, for old people to read. I don’t, of course, want “Lucy” to look like that. I do wish you could repeat the “Lost Lady” type, with it’s sharp “W”s and “M”s. Perhaps a smaller size of this Caslon would do, but I honestly think this page you send me looks like a child’s First Reading Book—It stares at me with open eyes and open mouth until it’s actually hard to read. I can’t see any text, I see only lette rs that look unnaturally large and commonplace on a page of this size.

If you will repeat the page of “A Lost Lady” exactly for me, I’ll write you another romantic story, and a better one than Lucy! Now that’s a fair offer, isn’t it?

So far, glorious weather on the island, and I’ve never before enjoyed getting back to it so much. Today is the first rain and heavy fog. I love being on this mere pin-point in the North Atlantic, drowned in oceans of fog with the rain beating down, and no sound but the water and the bell-buoy. The Brittish Government sends out buoys with a lovely tone; this one is the G below middle C, I think, and the fog makes it deep and full and very soft—it seems to call from a great distance.

With love to you both,

W. S. C.

TO MARY MINER CREIGHTON

[Around August 15, 1934]

Grand Manan Island

My Darling Mary:

A week ago today I and my family lost the kindest of friends [Dr. E. A. Creighton], and you lost what very few people ever have at all, a life-long companion who cherished you and admired you and found complete happiness in his life with you.

You will tell me that this makes it only the harder to bear now. It will make your loneliness greater, I know. But you and I have lived long enough to know that it is possible for human beings to have only a very limited amount of real happiness in this world, and so many people miss it altogether. You had more than most of the people I know. I have known very few marriages as happy as yours. Your devoted care prolonged the Doctor’s life for many years, and you made his home so pleasant for him that, as he often told me, he could be happier there than anywhere else in the world. I always loved to meet Doctor on the street because he always looked so happy. His kind, intelligent face glowed with an inner content. I liked to listen to his nice voice when he came to look mother over. When I was far away I always felt easy in mind about father and mother because Dr. Creighton was there. I knew if anything went wrong he would get there, and get there quick. You remember I kept his telephone number plastered in both bedrooms on sticky labels, so that they could see it without glasses. I wish you and he could have been in New York another winter; but I shall always feel grateful to fate that you were both there that one winter.

Sometime, Mary, I want to tell you about a kind thing he did for a young woman of this town. I promised him never to mention it, and I never did. He came to our home one morning and said he wanted to see me alone. A patient of his was going to have her second baby just after she had lost her first, and would I please be nice to her! He asked it just like that! Said she was nervous and felt every little thing, and when I met her would I please be cordial and jolly her up a little. He said he knew I didn’t mean it, but that sometimes I was rather brusque with people. I promised, and I certainly never admired the Doctor so much as when I walked out to his car with him after that interview. Think of the delicacy of the man, to realize the importance of such little things, and to come directly to me and ask me to be a little more agreeable! I was complimented that he felt he could frankly ask me to “mend my manners”! Almost any doctor will try to help a hurt foot or hand, but how many will try to help hurt feelings? Not many.

I expect you can guess who the young woman was, but since he asked me not to mention his unusual professional call that morning, I never shall to anyone but you, and I had rather only you and Carrie and Irene knew about it. Of all my memories of the Doctor, that is the one I like most. It took so many qualities in a man to make him do that simple thing! Very few women have as much delicacy as that.

My heart bleeds for you, dear Mary, but how many proud and happy memories you have to comfort you. If I could have tried to plan a happy life for you when we were little girls, I could not have planned anything better than you have had. I never saw a dis-contented look on the Doctor’s face. You made him perfectly happy. Only think, he might never have gone to Red Cloud at all! His going there meant so much good for my own family and countless others, as well as for you and for him. I shall just try to be thankful to God that he did go there.

So lovingly, dear,

Willie

TO LOUISE GUERBER BURROUGHS

August 29 [1934]

Grand Manan Island

Dear Louise;

I’ve thought of you often since I arrived here July 20th. My conscience was uneasy because I had never told you how much I enjoyed reading the diary of your ancestress about her terrible crossing of the Atlantic. The last weeks in town were hectic; I was arranging the serial publication of “Lucy” and doing what I could to help old friends in Nebraska who were actually in want.

Even here the summer has been unusually dry. Most of the time this island has been a shining gold spot in a blue sea. I have just finished reading the galley proofs of “Lucy” and I think better of it than I did when it was a messy corrected manuscript. The lines of a thing come out in type.

Last night came your letter with distressing news. However did Mr. [Bryson] Burroughs pick up that bug? I suspect it was by loafing too little and painting too much. But if you have your own bungalow, and he is writing, then he is living and not merely being sick. And he’s doing the Pre-Raphaelites! They always seemed so beautiful and legendary to me when I knew their works in re-production only. But when I went to England first and saw their works! Such awful color, I’ve never got over the shock of it. I mean [Edward] Burne-Jones and [Dante Gabriel] Rossetti—seems as if they mixed a little mud in their paint. I remember awful greens, and ladies,—pure Virgins with mouldy complexions. These painters should be engraved, always, and their canvases kept in a locked gallery for students only.

I’m doing nothing, and thinking about nothing but the weather. I’ve been reading a lot of Anatole France over because I happen to have a lot of his books up here. Speaking of cycles of taste, he’s despised in France now, you know. They shrug and say, “Oh yes, a virtuoso.”

Oh you, I’ve only a few Shakespeares up here—not the “Merchant”. A lost line torments me; what is the second line of Morocco’s speech which begins,

Mislike me not for my complexion,

The – – livery of the – – sun

To whom I am a neighbour and (near bred (?)

I try supplying various adjectives, but with him it’s dangerous to substitute.

With love and good wishes to you both, and recommending toddy for the invalid,

Yours

W.S.C.

TO EDWARD WAGENKNECHT

November 22, 1934

My unknown Friend:

Your first name I can read, but your last name begins with a swastika and ends with a king, so the Postmaster must use his discretion. I got back to New York some weeks ago, and working through an enormous accumulation of letters, I finally came upon yours and stopped for a breathing space, partly because of your difficult handwriting and partly because you began your letter with the name of someone I loved. What an inadequate book [Sarah Orne Jewett] that young man [Francis O. Matthiessen] did write about Miss Jewett! He misinterprets so many of the facts that he dug up, and she herself never for a moment graces his pages. It seems to me that even if I had never known her, I could have reconstructed her from her letters to Mrs. Fields and her published works. This young man is modern and abrupt. Before he wrote his book he sent me a letter which said simply: “At what date can I call upon you for information regarding Sarah Orne Jewett?” I think I told him January 1, 1990.

Thank you for the incident you tell me about Mary Jewett after she was paralyzed. I grew to know her very well after Sarah Jewett’s death, and often visited her in the beautiful old house at South Berwick. It is a lasting regret to me that I was unable to go to see her during her long illness. My mother had a stroke in Pasadena, California, shortly before Miss Jewett’s illness came upon her, and from that time on I had to be on the West coast. Her nephew, Dr. [Theodore] Eastman, kept me posted as to her condition. He, you know, was snuffed out only a few months after Mary Jewett’s death, and now that whole family, and all the beautiful things which graced their lives, have vanished as if they had never been. (The one good thing about that young man’s book is that it contains some very charming drawings and photographs of that beautiful New England interior.) It is a disgrace to New England that any of Miss Jewett’s books should be out of print. It will be a long while before New England produces such another writer.

My friendliest greetings to your mother and yourself. It is a pleasure to hear from any true lover of Sarah Orne Jewett.

Very cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO EGBERT SAMUEL OLIVER

December 13, 1934

My dear Mr. Oliver:

Twenty-eight professors are writing books on “Creative Writing in College Courses.” I know that, because I have written answers to twenty-eight men, and with the twenty-eighth, I made a resolution that I would answer no more letters on that subject. You are twenty-nine, and you come too late.

I think it is sheer nonsense to attempt to teach “Creative Writing” in colleges. If the college students were taught to write good, sound English sentences (sentences with unmistakable articulation) and to avoid hackneyed platitudinous, woman’s-club expressions, such as: “colorful”, “the desire to create”, “worth while books”, “a writer universally acclaimed”—all those smug expressions which really mean nothing at all—then creative writing would take care of itself. Nothing whatever should be done to stimulate literary activity in America! [I]ts quality will never be improved by stimulation. I do wish the colleges taught people to write passably clear and correct English, however. More than half of the twenty-eight professors who have written to me within the last few months were quite unable to use “which” and “that” and “would” and “should” correctly—at least, they did not honor me by using them correctly in their letters of request. They made many other errors of the same sort, which a well-trained high school student avoids.

Very sincerely yours,

Willa Cather

(Dictated)

TO IDA KLEBER TODD

December 28 [1934]

Dear Mrs. Todd;

Happy New Year! People are always writing me (people I don’t know) that I have “influenced” their lives. I wonder if you know that you have influenced mine? Once, long ago, in some discussion, you said, half under your breath, “Oh yes, of course, art simplifies.” I had never thought of that before; I have been trying to live that remark ever since. It was the way you spoke, carelessly and yet as if there could be no doubt about the matter; and because I felt a kind of authority in you—didn’t try to explain it, just felt it.

I have read thousands of pages that did not say as much to me as that sentence rather lightly dropped by a living voice—a very individual voice with a tempo and timbre distinctly its own. The sentence went home like an arrow—because of something in you and something in me. As I said, I’ve been trying to live it ever since.

With all my heart, Happy New Year!

Affectionately,

Willa Cather

TO THOMAS MASARYK

February 14 [1935]

New York City

My Dear President Masaryk;

As the date of your birthday approaches please allow me to send my heart-felt good wishes, and my congratulations on the quality of the years you have left behind you. And may I take this occasion to tell you that your friendly interest has been and is one of the most cherished rewards of my professional life? We live in a strange world, at a strange time. Public opinion just now means less than ever before, because it is re-actionary, without roots or background. It represents the spasm of a multitude of minds, not their natural judgement. We could almost say with Macbeth that “nothing is but what is not.” We behave as though we could create a new scale of values by the mere act of besmirching the old. In such a time, the only satisfaction any reflective person can have is in the sympathetic consideration of a few individuals in the world; those whom one respects and admires. Your friendly interest in my books has grown the more precious to me as the times have grown stranger. Of the half-dozen so called “public men” from whom I used to hear by letter occasionally, you are the only one who is not now living in exile. They were not sentenced by any court, I believe; they simply are not allowed to live at home. Switzerland and America are rich in scholars just now, because they have nowhere else to go.

Greetings and salutations to you from my heart.

Willa Cather

TO ROSCOE CATHER

April 23 [1935]

My Dear Roscoe;

Don’t think that I did not appreciate your long, understanding, letter about the English reviews. I hope I can sometime have a long talk with you about the peculiar satisfaction I get out of working occasionally in legendary themes. Rotation of crops is a good thing for gardens and writers.

Things have been pretty thick for me. When I was up in Montreal trying to get some work done in a quiet place I had an appendix attack and had to come home. Here I have had a second attack, and will have to go up for an operation before long. Isabelle McClung Hambourg, who has been very ill in Paris all winter, landed on March 26th with her husband who came over to tour Canada with his two brothers [Mark and Boris Hambourg]. They form the Hambourg Trio, playing chamber music. I called my doctor for Isabelle, who found her condition very serious; both kidneys much enlarged and incysted. Nothing malignant, but a condition which keeps them from performing more than half of their proper function, necessitates the strictest possible diet and an invalid life from now on. Three surgeons agree that the kidneys were mal-formed at her birth and, for the last eight years, have been growing rapidly worse with the natural changes of body tissue. I am not writing this to any other member of my family, as there are, alas, so many people who rather rejoice in the overthrow of the strong and the generous. Jan was with her for three weeks, while I got some work done in Montreal. Then he had to go off on his tour. I removed her to the Lennox Hill Hospital, about half a mile from me, and will have the whole responsibility until his return, June 1st. She is just as sweet and dignified and uncomplaining as an invalid as she was as a girl, but of course you will understand how sad all this makes me and how much it takes out of me. The doctors are devoted to her. With the strictest care she may live for some years. I have given up my trip to Italy this summer and am not trying to work now. I shut up my portefolio in Montreal. After Jan’s return I shall have my appendix taken out. Worst of all my perplexities, my dear French woman [Josephine Bourda], who has been my prop and stay ever since I moved into this apartment (she used to be with me all during the war years, from 1914 to 1918) is going back to her native Pyrenees with her husband and daughter to stay for good. I’m glad she is to be again among her native mountains which she loves, but it will wreck my life, rather. No one else will ever so respect me and my calling. She sails on May 25th.

I am trying to live day by day, and not to worry; but when I’m very tired my philosophy fails me! Your love and interest is a help to me.

I will write you later about Virginia’s letter. She seems to be finding her own way.

Devotedly

Willie

TO MARIE MATTINGLY MELONEY

May 29, 1935

Dear Mrs. Meloney;

I have just returned to town for a few days and find your letter awaiting me. I have been wanting to write you for a long while, to thank you for your kindness in delivering to me Mr. [James M.] Barrie’s gracious message about My Antonia. Please accept my belated thanks for your friendly office in sending me an extract from his letter to you.

Regarding the suggestion you make to me, I am afraid I can only shake my head. I never have written, and I very much doubt if I could write, a story at the suggestion of another person. I have never tried to write a story that was not the outcome of some rather sharp personal experience; and, of course, you know as well as I, one cannot go out and hunt for personal experiences. Everything that one goes out and hunts for is second-hand—and second-rate. I have been very much interested in looking over the copies of This Week, and when I return to New York next November, I shall follow its career with every good wish in the world.

Very sincerely yours,

Willa Cather

TO MARY MINER CREIGHTON

August 8 [1935]

aboard the Rex

My Dear Mary;

Here we are, beyond the Azores, and the splendid autumn flowers you and Irene sent me still make our dinner table lovely day after day and turn my thoughts to my dear friends at home. So far we have had a rather rough passage, heavy seas with intense heat—a rather unusual combination. I was terribly tired when we left New York, but Mary Virginia came down to the boat with us and unpacked my steamer trunk and all my toilet things so deftly that I set off with a neat cabin. Before we were out of the narrows I went to bed and stayed there for 24 hours. For the first time in my life I had dinner and breakfast in bed on shipboard! Yesterday I began to feel like myself again, and today I am enjoying everything. I am never a sick [traveler], but to be terribly tired is about as bad.

This letter is for Irene as well as Mary, and it will be put off at Gibraltar and sent back on La Savoie, sister ship of the Rex. I want to tell Irene that the remedy against sea-sickness my doctor gave Edith has worked perfectly, and she has not been miserable, even in the very rough weather. It is a new German preparation, very effective, but one has to have blood tests and heart tests made before a physician will give it to one.

Irene kept urging me to make this trip, after I had rather lost heart about it, and if any spring comes back into me (as I begin to believe it will) I shall feel that I largely owe it to her. She was with me in the darkest hours of my discouragement about Isabelle, when I was too tired to decide anything for myself. The slippers she sent for Isabelle are in my big trunk, just as she did them up. My love to you both and to Carrie goes with this. I get so much comfort in thinking of our long friendship, and how it has grown so much stronger through the years, binding us all together. If I didn’t have those things at the bottom of my heart I wouldn’t get much out of blue seas or sunny lands.

Devotedly

Willie

TO ROSCOE CATHER

September 8 [1935]

Hotel Royal Danieli, Venice

Dear Brother;

Edith and I have been in Italy not quite a month—and it seems six months! We have both been well, and have had a most successful trip so far. After ten days in the high, cool Dolomites, we dropped down to Venice by motor. Of course foreign travel is never all roses, as people at home seem to think. In Venice the mosquitos always devour one, as they did when you drove us near Gray Bull [Greybull, Wyoming]; one sleeps under nets, and if a mosquito gets in there’s an all-night struggle. If I go out on the Grand Canal to see the moonlight, I pay for it by such a horribly swollen face as is keeping me indoors today.

Sept 25th I go on to Paris to be with Isabelle, who is slowly losing ground.

“Lucy” is doing well, but not brilliantly—nothing like the “Archbishop” or “Shadows”.

Lovingly

Willie

TO YALTAH MENUHIN

October 23 [1935]

Paris

My Darling Yaltah;

Your letter from South Africa got to Paris in record time and caught me just a few days before Miss Lewis and I sail for home. It seemed miraculous that a letter could come so far and get here on October 21st! I want to leave this little word, so that you will know that it did reach me and it was such a happy surprise for both Edith and me. I wish I had been one of your jolly mining party, although my experience of caves in the Southwest, and the underground prisons of Paris has made me dread all sub-terranean explorations. I like to be on top of the earth.

How in the name of all queer chances did you ever come upon Lucy Gayheart on the other side of the world! I meant to send it to you when you got back, but it never occured to me that book-post could catch up with you in Australia or New Zealand.

Edith and I are busy getting some warm clothes for the boat, and preparing to slip away without saying goodbye to Isabelle, as she has requested us to do. It’s very hard to go when I know how ill she is, and yet I feel that I can not stay longer. I must get home and begin to pull my life together again. Marutha [Menuhin] will understand that. Living without work and without any particular purpose for so long has made me feel, not like the boy who lost his shadow, but like the shadow which lost the boy! That is more serious you know.

This short note is to greet you one and all when you reach Paris. If I were here then, I would give all five of you a hug as strong as a Russian bear’s. I expect you have all grown very much, even Marutha has grown in pounds, I hope. (Excuse hotel pen.) I wish I could be here to hear Yehudi’s first European recital after all the changes of thought and feeling that such a great experience must bring.

Lovingly to every one of you,

Willa Cather

TO CARLTON F. WELLS

January 7, 1936

New York City

My dear Mr. Wells:

I have just come back from a long stay in France and Italy, and the punishment of a holiday is that I have now to face a really terrifying mountain of letters which have been held for me here in my absence. I am working through this accumulation gradually and have just come upon your letter, to which I reply with real pleasure.

You are one in about seventy-five thousand, apparently, for you are the only person who has noticed that I changed the text of the famous aria in the Elijah; changed it for exactly the purpose you divine. The whole story verges dangerously upon the sentimental (since youthful hero worship is really the theme of the first two parts of the book), and if I had used the text of that aria as it actually stands, it would have been quite unbearable. Among the letters I have so far read, there are at least a dozen from concert musicians to whom this story seems to have appealed; but not one of them has noticed my variation of the text, although several are baritones who have sung the Elijah many times. I am delighted to have found one reader who did notice it because, of course, to a writer all those slight changes in language have great importance—perhaps an exaggerated importance. Please let me thank you for your friendly letter and wish you all good things for the New Year.

Very cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO MRS. SIDNEY MATTISON

January 21, 1936

Dear Mrs. Mattison:

I don’t usually welcome namesakes very cordially, for the simple reason that I never liked my own first name. I never like feminine forms of masculine names, in fact. If I had known, when I first began to write, that my name would be printed about a good deal, I would certainly have changed it to Mary or Jane, or Janet. I could not have changed my real name, out of respect to my parents: but I could have changed my writing name, and I often wish I had.

When I saw your little girl’s pictures however, she seemed like such a real little person that I wanted to write to her and give her my good wishes. Perhaps she won’t dislike the name as much as I do.

Cordially yours,

Willa Cather

[This accompanied the preceding cover letter:]

My dear Namesake:

Your mother has sent me several pictures of you, which makes me feel that you are a real little girl, and not just a name. She tells me that you are seven years old. That is a very nice age. I remember having enjoyed things very much when I was seven. Four years ago one of my dearest friends was seven years old—but, alas, that was four years ago, and now she is eleven. I hope your next four years will be as jolly as hers have been. The best thing I can wish for you is, that you will be absolutely sincere in your likes and dislikes—I don’t mean violent, but sincere. If, when you grow older, my books bore you terribly, be honest about it and don’t try to pretend to like them because some aunt or uncle tells you ought to like them, or that a great many people do like them. I would be ashamed of a namesake who did not know when she really liked a thing, and who did not stand up for her own tastes. I wish you lots of friends and happy vacations.

Cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO CARLTON F. WELLS

January 23, 1936

Dear Mr. Wells:

I am sorry not to be able to oblige you, but I never allow quotations from personal letters to be printed. When, among a great number of the rather flat and dreary letters I receive, I come upon one that is alive and intelligent, I am rather prone to answer it in a somewhat intimate and unembarrassed tone. I take for granted that a person who writes a discriminating and intelligent letter is the sort of person who would not use any portion of my letter for publicity of any kind.

Very sincerely yours,

Willa Cather

I should like to oblige Mr. Phelps, but I shall do that at some other time, and in some other way. I did not even know that I was writing to your English class, Mr. Wells. English professors have many wiles, but I honestly thought you were interested in the question you asked me. O tempora, O mores! (The second “O” looks like a zero, certainly!) Enough: I become more cautious every day.

W.S.C.

TO WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

February 17, 1936

My dear Mr. Phelps:

I got home from Europe just before Christmas and have not yet got through the mountain of letters which accumulated in my long absence, but I want to skip a few hundred unanswered letters and drop a line to you, because last night I picked up the Yale Review and read your article on Mark Twain [published December 1935].

I knew Mark Twain during my first year in New York, when he was living on lower Fifth Avenue and spent most of his time in bed. Because I knew the man himself, Mr. [Van Wyck] Brooks’ book [The Ordeal of Mark Twain] has always seemed to me one of the most glaring pieces of misapprehension that ever happened in a world full of mistakes. Mr. Brooks simply has no idea of what the real man was like; and I am afraid the imaginary Mark Twain, Mr. Brooks creates, would never have written “Huckleberry Finn”. I don’t know Mr. Brooks personally, but I have always heard good things about his scholarship and integrity. When he wrote about Mark Twain, he simply made a bad choice of subject, and I suspect from the general tone of his book that he could never have understood old Mr. Clemens at all: and if he had chanced to know him, I am afraid the intercourse would have been a series of mild, but painful, shocks!

This letter, you will understand, is confidential. It is not for me to contradict Mr. Brooks. But it is a great relief to me that some one has boldly refused to swallow this sentimental view of Mr. Clemens as a blighted genius, and you were certainly the man to do it. You could do it in the course of your usual activities; while I would have had to step so far out of mine, that it would have looked almost as if I had some personal grudge. I really feel very grateful to you. If Mr. Brooks could have seen that old lion in his bed telling stories to three or four young people, if he could have seen this for five minutes, he could never have written his book.

Cordially yours,

Willa Cather

TO FERRIS GREENSLET

March 8, 1936

My dear Mr. Greenslet:

No, I have not so far had anything to do with influenza, and I am sorry to hear that you have had such a visitation. I have had plenty of sick friends however, and their many operations have kept me racing about among the hospitals until I sometimes think the only possible escape is to retire to a hospital myself.

I want to consult you about three things.

I. Are you still anxious to do a subscription edition in 1937 or 1938? Publishers sometimes change their minds as the times change. I hope to have time to run over some of the books and make corrections this summer, and that is why I ask you if you still adhere to the plan as we discussed it. If your proposition still holds, it was awfully considerate of you not to bother me about it at all in this past year when so many perplexing and unexpected things have come up. You remember the mild poet’s remark “Only the sorrows of others cast”, etc. Well, sometimes they can quite snow one under.

II. Tell me please, is there now a garage on the site of Mrs. Fields’s old house at 148 Charles Street? Perhaps this is only a legend?

III. I am getting up a short book of essays for Alfred Knopf because we have been bothered with a good many requests to reproduce certain stray pieces of writing, which I think Mrs. Fields would have called “papers”. I want to include a little sketch of Mrs. Fields which I did as a review of Mark Howe’s “Memories of a Hostess”, and following that a short article on Miss Jewett. The latter I haven’t yet clearly planned, because I wanted first to know from you whether you would be quite willing that I should use a considerable portion of the preface I wrote for the Mayflower edition. I would, of course, state either in the article or in a note at the bottom of the page, that this was written as a preface, naming the book and publishers. You will remember that by my own wish there was no question of compensation when I did the preface for you, and I would not like to appear an “Indian giver” in asking your permission to use it again. I am asking you, really, because I said some things there about the quality of her work which I think I could not say quite so well again.

The times have changed so much that it might be wiser not to call forth Miss Jewett’s shade into this present world, which would be so objectionable to her. The language in which she was such an artist has almost ceased to be. The brassy young Jews and Greeks from New York University have made the only language that is much heard in New York today. I may get discouraged and drop the notion altogether. It might be better if we could hide her away for awhile.

I suppose the thing that has made me rather want to do a little sketch of Miss Jewett, twenty years after, is that I get a good many letters from young people, both in this country and in England, asking me about her in a very reverent tone.

Faithfully yours,

Willa Cather

TO ALFRED A. KNOPF

May 1, 1936

New York City

Dear Alfred,

I was saving my projected title [Not Under Forty] as a surprise for you—possibly a shock. You see I think that to call a book of essays by any of the conventional titles such as Personalities and Opinions is foolish. Essays are dull enough anyhow. I have the hope that these papers are less dull than most, because they are mostly accounts of personal adventures with very individual literary personalities. However such a title would not be very satisfactory, as the best paper among them is certainly the one called The Novel Demeuble.

You would be much more reconciled to this title if you had gone through the text of the various essays. But you want a description of the book immediately and the paper on Thomas Mann [“ ‘Joseph and His Brothers’ ” ] will not be finished and properly typed before the week after next. There will be, I fear, only five essays in all, and of these you have read only the one on Mme. Groux [“A Chance Meeting”]. It will have to be a small book and I suppose you would want to sell it at a dollar. I haven’t the least idea to just how many words it will run, because this request for information for the catalogue has come suddenly. I had expected to give you an estimate of the length of the text, i.e., number of words, about the middle of May. I don’t suppose you will need to know about details of that kind for the catalogue. I hope that Mrs. Kenyon may be able to convert you to this title for the essays. But if you think it really too outrageous I will, of course, listen to reason. Please think it over when you get back and call me up.

Yours,

[No signature]

TO ANNIE PAVELKA

May 19, 1936

My dear Annie:

I have not written you because I have not been very well for the last five months and have been pretty badly overworked, trying to keep my business affairs afloat. But when I am not well, I especially enjoy letters from my old friends and your last one gave me great satisfaction, although not all the news was good. I am so happy that you got an electric washing machine with the $55 I sent you at Christmas. But the full price of the washer was $65, and I want to pay for it all. Therefore, I am enclosing a check for $10 to make up to you what you paid out, and now you can call it “Willie’s Washer”. You know, I am not very fond of my real name, Willa, and I always am pleased when Carrie and Mary Miner, and the people who knew me when I was little, call me “Willie,” as my mother and father did. Nowhere else in the world do people call me by that name—just a few of the older people about Red Cloud.

In a few days, you will receive from me a box of winter clothing, which I do not need any more. One dress (the one with the plaid waist), I wore only twice, as I was ill then and not going out much. The striped silk dress (which looks like seersucker but is really silk), I think you may be able to wear yourself for Sunday best. However, I want you to dispose of these dresses just as you wish, and to give suitable ones to the daughters who have been the nicest to you. I have a good many little nieces to send clothes to, or I would send more to your nice girls. I always pray for your good health, just as I pray the Lord to send rain to Nebraska.

Your faithful friend,

Willa Cather

TO ALFRED A. KNOPF

July 18 [1936]

Dear Alfred;

I am more than pleased that Herr [Thomas] Mann liked my remarks about his wonderful book, and am grateful to you for sending me the excerpt from his letter. The weather has been so fine here that I have been out of doors most of the time with my dear little Wyoming nieces [Margaret and Elizabeth Cather, who were visiting Grand Manan]. (Nineteen is a grand age: I enjoy being in its company.) They leave the island on Monday, and I shall miss them terribly. I wish I could keep them all summer, but they have to go home for the wedding of an older sister.

Here are the contracts, in a queer envelope. Please ask Miss Rubin to send me half-a-dozen legal-size envelopes—none procurable on this island.

Mrs. [Sigrid] Undset’s book has not come yet—but packages are always slow.

Please embrace Blanche for me, and tell her I shall write her as soon as I am nieceless.

Yours always

Willa Cather

TO ALFRED A. KNOPF

August 12 [1936]

Dear Alfred;

Thank you very much for the books you sent me some time ago. Mrs. Undset’s book [Gunnar’s Daughter] is surely one of her best—there is something awfully fine and fateful about it. It reads like a translation of a fine narrative poem—grandly Norse.

Conrad Richter is surely a man worth watching. When he writes of things that really interest him his sentences have a thrill, they flash into pictures, have a certain tone color. All this means of course that he has some real imagination,—and some red blood.

But I don’t think you will ever get anything very interesting from Miss [Dorothy] Thomas. She has none of Richter’s qualities. She never gets a thrill out of anything, never has any unusual perception or feeling. Dull, plodding, lifeless prose, as if she were packing a trunk for someone else, and trying conscientiously to put everything in. There is no fire in her, and no imagination. She says everything in the flattest possible way. Take a single sentence like that at top of this page of Richter’s book [Early Americana and Other Stories]; Miss Thomas could never write a sentence like that, though its only merit is that the man saw something with interest and told it vividly. He is alive and writes with some vitality. You can’t find one paragraph in her book [The Home Place] like that one—which, after all, merely communicates information about a dry autumn. She is of the [Ruth] Suckow breed, but much more limited.

If you have Mrs. Undset’s “The Ax” and “The Snake Pit” in the old edition, not the one volume edition, will you please send them up to me?

I’ll rush the page proofs back to you if they are sent properly by mail and reach me promptly.

I hope you and Pat had a splendid vacation.

Yours

W.S.C.

The sentences at the top of this page in Richter’s Early Americana and Other Stories (Knopf, 1936) read, “Before September the summer springs on the plain had dried up. The clear, running stream in Red Draw stopped flowing and turned up to the sun its light-colored sand like a dead snake’s belly.”

TO ZOË AKINS

August 30 [1936]

Dear Zoë—

Thank you with all my heart for writing me about Jobyna [Howland]. I hadn’t heard of her death and might not have heard for months. O Zoe, don’t you sometimes wish we had been born in a kinder and less “progressive” age than this, when people lived closer together and stayed at home more and had a deeper and less scattered life? So many sad and bitter things are happening to my old friends in Nebraska that I can’t feel very happy. I can send them canned fruit and vegetables and checks to buy clothes and fuel, but I can’t bring their dead trees and ruined pasture land back to life. These five terrible years of utter drouth and frightful heat have ruined their farms and their health. In my own town [there were] two months when the heat did not drop below 100 for a single day, and went as high as 117, usually about 110! I feel wicked to be up here in this green flowery island in the north and to be wearing sweaters almost every day. Since I wrote you I’ve not been awfully well, but I think it’s worry about my old friends that takes the enjoyment out of me. Keep well, my dear, and enjoy life—as you have a blessed gift for doing. One’s life is all one has, and I want yours to be long and happy. You’ll miss Jobyna, but I’m so glad she died on an up-grade and never went all to pieces as I had a fear she might do. And to think of her business affairs being in good order! Jobyna was always wiser than she let on to be—except about alcohol. Why do people guzzle, when a little wine is so good?

This is not a letter, dear, but a note to thank you for writing me at once. These days I dread a pen like a red hot poker.

Lovingly

Willa

TO MARGARET AND ELIZABETH CATHER

August 12 [1936]

My Darling Twinnies;

My rose is a curtain of bloom, from root to tip, and the hollyhocks are going strong. Now the golden rod on the edge of the cliffs waves against a purple sea, all the way up to the High Place. Last week the moon rose further and further north every night, first over the tip of fishhead, and finally right in front of our door—came up out of the water like a battered old copper kettle as it grew more and more lop-sided. It made such a bright, narrow path right to the foot of our cliff that one was tempted to walk across it. The weather here has been wonderful—blue and gold every day, with good rains at night.

Our lawn is very green now, and the monkshood makes a violet hedge against the gray house. It is so mild now, the weather, that we can sit out in our steamer chairs after dinner. The fire places have not been lit for a week. Mrs. Beal & Ralph [Beal] are here cleaning house today, and I am now writing in the attic. We read the proofs of the new book last week.

On Saturday we walked to Bright Angels, but no sweet twin did follow. We both miss you very much and often wish you were here. On Friday Miss [Winifred] Bromhall came for tea. She and Miss Jordan and Miss Glenning[?] and many others wish to be remembered to you—they also miss you. You must both come here again, my dears, before you do any desperate thing like getting married. If we all three wish it, we can make it come true. Next time it must be in August, when all the flowers are out, and the water warm enough to bathe in, and the whales due to arrive. The morning you left we got up early and waited on the shore, but we couldn’t even see the boat. I wish your father and mother could have come on by airplane and dropped down on us while you were here. Perhaps they can, next time, and we can go to the Wolves and out to Gannet Light. Tomorrow we go to Southern Head if it is fine, and I shall remember the happy day we had there with you.

A world of love to you, my dears, from your

Aunt Willie

TO EDITH LEWIS

Sunday 4:30 P.M. [October 5, 1936]

Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

My Darling Edith;

I am sitting in your room, looking out on the woods you know so well. So far everything delights me. I am ashamed of my appetite for food, and as for sleep—I had forgotten that sleeping can be an active and very strong physical pleasure. It can! It has been for all of three nights. I wake up now and then, saturated with the pleasure of breathing clear mountain air (not cold, just chill air) of being up high with all the woods below me sleeping, too, in still white moonlight. It’s a grand feeling.

Edith Lewis, left, with Willa Cather in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, 1926 (photo credit 9.3)

One hour from now, out of your window, I shall see a sight unparalleled—Jupiter and Venus both shining in the golden-rosy sky and both in the West; she not very far above the horizon, and he about mid-way between the zenith and the silvery lady planet. From 5:30 to 6:30 they are of a superb splendor—deepening in color every second, in a still-daylight-sky guiltless of other stars, the moon not up and the sun gone down behind Gap-mountain; those two alone in the whole vault of heaven. It lasts so about an hour (did last night). Then the Lady, so silvery still, slips down into the clear rose colored glow to be near the departed sun, and imperial Jupiter hangs there alone. He goes down about 8:30. Surely it reminds one of Dante’s “eternal wheels”. I can’t but believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and unfailing appearances and exits, are something more than mathematics and horrible temperatures. If they are not, then we are the only wonderful things—because we can wonder.

I have worn my white silk suit almost constantly with no white hat, which is very awkward. By next week it will probably be colder. Everything you packed carried wonderfully—not a wrinkle.

And now I must dress to receive the Planets, dear, as I won’t wish to take the time after they appear—and they will not wait for anybody.

Lovingly

I don’t know when I have enjoyed Jupiter so much as this summer.