by Willa Cather
I got a nice long letter from Aunt Franc this week. I had such a good visit with her this summer, and with Bess and Auntie, too. I really love the “Far Country.” I get there so seldom that it seems about the farest and most restful country in the world.
I shall have to go to England in May if I am well enough. I wish you could run away with me on one of these long trips. What wouldn’t I give for a long talk with you! If I could, I’d start for Lander [Wyoming] tomorrow. But to do a job one has to stay on it, I suppose, and this is a harder job to boss than Sandy Point. Poor little Jim Yeiser, where is he now, I wonder? I’m afraid he’s fallen on hard times. Goodnight, my boy. I could write to you better if I could see you once again. This long stretch of time and distance takes the starch out of one. I think you’d be interested in a lot of the people and things I have to do with, but its hard to write about them. Some day I shall get desperate and take a west-bound train and let the office do the best it can.
Lovingly
Willie
“Sandy Point,” which Cather would frequently mention in her letters to her brother, was a play town made of packing boxes that she and her brothers and friends (including Jim Yeiser) created when they were children in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Cather was elected mayor of Sandy Point.
The next letter both demonstrates Cather’s ongoing editorial work at McClure’s and marks the beginning of a warm friendship with the young writer Elizabeth Sergeant.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
April 5, 1910
New York City
Dear Miss Sargent:—
We feel that there is very little about your article [“Toilers of the Tenements,” published July 1910] that will have to be changed; it will be mostly a matter of cutting and condensing. You realized yourself that the article would have to be cut, and we are going to use so many pictures that this will be even more necessary than I thought. It will be hard for me to write you about these cuts, so if you are willing, I will go over the article indicating the cuts and suggesting some changes here and there. I will send you the revised article by next Monday, April eleventh, and if you object to any of the cuts or changes, we can take that question up then. I don’t think there is the slightest need of your putting off your sailing date.
I will ask the business department to get your check for two hundred dollars to you within a few days, as I have always found it convenient to have all my checks come in before going abroad. I think there is no more than several hours’ work to be done on the article, and it is almost wholly a matter of condensation.
I am a little puzzled about a title; I wish you could suggest one—or several.
Very cordially yours,
Willa Sibert Cather
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
May 31, 1910
New York City
Dear Miss Sergeant:
The proofs of the article went to Brookline merely in the course of routine, they are always sent by the proof reader to the last address, etc., etc. But I read the proofs of the article myself and hope you will not find much amiss in it.
About the Labor Congress articles, I do not believe we could use more than one. Of course, what we want is not so much a report of what is generally done by the Congress, but a sort of summing up of the interesting things that have been done abroad for the protection of the laborer. We would pay $150. for the article and such photographs as you could send to accompany it.
I forget whether you intend to go to Germany at all. Do you know the Permanent Exposition for the Welfare of Workingmen at Charlottenburg, Berlin? I understand it is a museum where one finds practically everything that has been invented to protect the lives of workingmen, builders, firemen, divers, factory workers, miners, etc. It seems to me that an article on this museum, illustrated by many photographs of the apparatus would be tremendously effective. In short, it would be a new way of writing on the old and fascinating subject of “dangerous trades.” It might even be that under such a concrete guise you could best present your information about what is done at the Congresses.
Would it, do you think, be feasible to write an article professedly on the interesting exhibits in this museum (describing the most interesting apparatus and the dangers it is made to circumvent and overcome) and incidentally, to pack in the best of what you get at the Labor Congress?
Of course, I do not know how much you will get at the Labor Congress, or what ground it will cover, or in what shape it could be best presented. But I can see an article on that museum as a very good magazine feature, with a lot of very useful information and suggestions about labor conditions in other countries behind it.
If you think this sort of an article feasible will you write me at once. I wrote Mr. McClure about the idea the other day, and I am afraid he may put some one in Berlin on it. If you see the thing as a practical undertaking, I would much rather have you do it. For such an article, we would be willing to pay $200.
Miss [Edith] Wyatt is here at work on the Working Girl material. Whether we would be able to use an article on the French working girl depends a little, I think, on how long Miss Wyatt’s series runs. I wish you would give me a chance at the article, anyway.
No, I shouldn’t think you would mind being in Paris in the spring. I am afraid I am not able to read your letter with the properly unselfish spirit. So far as mere weather is concerned, I have nothing to complain of. I am wearing winter clothes to-day with great comfort. We have scarcely had a hot day. But weather does not go very far. Most of the buildings which were standing when you were last here [the McClure’s offices were at 44–60 East Twenty-third Street] are in the process of demolition. You cannot go a block in any direction without encountering a steam hammer and an iron drill. All the pavements are being repaired and all the sewer pipes are being changed. The place couldn’t be more smelly and noisy so we shall be in a pitiable state when it does get hot.
Very sincerely yours,
Willa Sibert Cather
TO NORMAN FOERSTER
July 20, 1910
New York City
My dear Norman:—
I am genuinely and heartily delighted to hear how splendidly you have been getting on in English, both as regards the scholarly side of it and the practical side. The Monthly [the Harvard Monthly, which Foerster co-edited and contributed to], which you say you have sent me, has not turned up yet, but will doubtless do so, and I shall read it with the greatest interest. I am starting away for a week in the mountains, tomorrow, and that is why I am acknowledging your letter today before I have read the article on Gilbert White.
I always felt that you would learn to write well some day, if you cared to and had the patience. And now, your real work has just begun. The distance between excellent writing and good writing that has a commercial value because it is unique and individual, is the longest distance in the world. I am not speaking now of bad writing that has a commercial value, because there are millions of reasons why bad writing should have a commercial value. But there is only one reason why good writing should have it. A man must have experienced things pretty keenly and must have got pretty close to things before his experiences or the degree of his nearness can matter to many people in this frenzied workshop of a country.
When you were a young lad, I always thought you were well equipped and that the only thing that might tell against you was a certain mild self-sureness that almost approached self-satisfaction. This was quite inoffensive to other people, but I used to wonder whether it might not become a habit of mind and settle into a sort of philosophic self-content, which is apt to keep people from experiencing things very keenly and genuinely, and, as people grow older, to result in a sort [of] constitutional mental phlegm. When you tell me that your writing tends toward the manner of both [Walter] Pater and [Matthew] Arnold, I would be a little bit alarmed, if it were not true that every writer I know, at some time thought he wrote like Pater.
Now as to the practical aspects of the case: As to a book of es
says; we have no book publishing business. We sold our book publishing business to Doubleday Page and Company two years ago. They publish a good many nature books, however, and if you have anything you want to try there, I shall be glad to give you an introduction. I should think, though, that your kind of nature book might be much more in Houghton Mifflin Co.’s line. The head of the book publishing department there, Ferris Greenslet, is an old and dear friend of mine, and I should be glad to give you a letter to him, if you ever wish to approach them. As to magazine work, the McClure motto is “A great deal of matter and as little manner as may be.” We like scientific subjects handled in a style rather scientific than literary. But I am not sure that it might not be good drill for you to try, at some time or other, some popular science articles in which the information end was uppermost. For instance, I thought about you a long time in connection with an article which I have just had written on John Brashear, of Pittsburg [“John A. Brashear of Pittsburgh” by Edwin Tenney Brewster appeared in the April 1911 issue]. I remembered some themes that you did once on the Allegheny river valley as one saw it from the hilltops, and I thought you would be able to get the feeling of the place into the background—and Professor Brashear and his background do so belong together. But I thought you were probably busy with commencement matters and, when I mentioned you in writing to Mr. McClure, he replied: “Aren’t recent graduates often apt to be mannered and to be averse to giving information?” We wanted the facts about Mr. Brashear told pretty plainly, for the facts’ sake, so I sent Mr. Edwin T. Brewster of Andover, who has done a good deal of scientific writing for us, out to Pittsburg. Now, if you want to try a practical commission of this sort for us sometime, I shall be more than glad to give you a chance. Nature articles in the nature of essays, of course, go more properly to the Atlantic Monthly, as the interest of such essays is primarily literary rather than scientific. The popular scientific article must be done mainly for the sake of conveying certain information. In short, the scientific theme must not be used as a hook on which to hang a certain kind of writing. [Thomas Henry] Huxley, I think, is one of the best of scientific writers. He was never in the least too technical or too obscure or too literary.
This is, of course, random advice that occurs to me as I read your letter over. The commercial scientific article and the literary essay are two wholly different things. Of course, an ideal article on Mr. Brashear would have just as much feeling and just as much literary depth as the writer could put into it, but instead of being brought to the front it would be so restrained and crushed into the background as to be scarcely noticeable and all the more potent for that fact.
This seems to have become a long gossipy letter of the kind that I do not often have time to write and, even if you do not agree with me, I hope you will take it as a proof of my pleasure in your collegiate success and my interest in your future.
Faithfully
Willa Sibert Cather
Mr. McClure has been ill in Europe for six months and I have been running the magazine alone. I shall not get away for more than a week or two until he returns in October. So come to see me if you are in N.Y. I go abroad this winter.
During these times when Cather was “running the magazine alone,” she still managed to write and publish some fiction. The story mentioned in the next letter appeared in the October 1911 Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine as “The Joy of Nellie Dean.”
TO ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON
August 30, 1910
New York City
Dear Mr. Johnson:—
Would you be kind enough to change the title of the story which I recently shortened for you? The story never really had a name, and I think it was called “Nellie Deane”, or “The Story of Nellie Dean” provisionally. I think “The Flower in the Grass” would be a good title for it. That is really the idea of the story; a beautiful girl hidden away in the prairie country where nobody ever saw her. If you will ask one of your assistants to make the change on the manuscript, I shall be very grateful to you.
Very sincerely yours,
Willa Sibert Cather
TO FRANCES SMITH CATHER
February 22, 1911
My Dear Aunt Franc;
How many times I have wanted to write to you this winter! But life drives us all pretty fast. Elsie came down from Northampton and spent two weeks with me at Christmas time, and we had such a happy Christmas. It was her first visit to a big city and she seemed to enjoy the stir and excitement of it. We were a good deal worried about mother, who had had a fall and was very miserable at Christmas time, but we began to get good news from her before Elsie left me. Elsie seemed to like my little apartment and my way of housekeeping and my excellent colored maid. This last named person is my chiefest treasure. She has been with me for more than a year now and my flat goes like clockwork and I have very little bother about it beyond doing the marketing. I have been ever so much better in health this winter than last, and I think it is partly due to getting the bother of housekeeping off my mind. Mr. McClure was ill and abroad all last summer and I had to stay in the city until late in September. It was a terrible summer, and I was pretty well fagged when it was over, but I went away in the fall and by the middle of December I had got my energy back again. Then Mr. McClure went abroad again, and since then I have been keeping the shop alone.
Several weeks ago I went to dine with Mr. Charles Wiener and his [second] wife. They have lately come back from a long stay in Europe and they have a beautiful house up on 124th street, where they own a great deal of real estate. Mr. Wiener looks very little older than he did twenty years ago, and a great deal of money has not made him hard-hearted or changed his simple manners. He had been ill with grippe, and his wife telephoned me that he wanted to see me. I had a great many things on hand that week and it was hard for me to go, but I was so glad that I did manage it for he seemed to enjoy having me there. He is very fond of his old friends. He asked about all of my family and enquired about you and your health and about Uncle George and the boys. Yesterday his wife wrote me that he is still confined to the house and I am going to see them again soon. She is a good woman, and I like her very much.
You remember my friend Isabelle McClung who went out to your house with me once? She is here making me a month’s visit, and she begs to be remembered to you. We are enjoying every day of these weeks together.
I had a letter from Howard Gore this morning and he tells me that he and Lillian [Thekla Brandthall Gore] are going to see the new king of Siam crowned. Howard went about the country with the new king when he was crown prince some years ago. I love Howard, but I wish my family wouldn’t strive to get mixed up with kings and move in the highest society. But really, all Washington people are like that more or less. It seems to be in the air. A little vanity can undo a really big man.
Bessie writes me a good long letter every few months, and keeps me informed as to what goes on in the neighborhood. She and Auntie seem very happy and contented. You are well this winter, she tells me, and Uncle George had wonderful crops last year. Sometime when you have an empty hour—I know you don’t have many—and are not tired, please write me all about yourself and the children. I may have to go to London in April, and I’d love to hear from you before I go if you have time. I send a world of love to you, my dear aunt.
Willie
Elsie Cather was in Northampton, Massachusetts, as a student at Smith College, which was also Aunt Franc’s alma mater.
When the following letter was written, Cather’s old college crush, Louise Pound, was a professor of literature and philology at the University of Nebraska and a highly respected folklorist.
TO LOUISE POUND
May 9, 1911
New York City
Dear Louise:
Elsie spent her Christmas and Easter vacations with me. She is in excellent condition and seems to enjoy her work at Northampton. She does not get nearly so much out of the English Literature, however, as she did under you, and she is really very appre
ciative of the help you gave her. I am so glad that she had enough work under you to get well started, and I only wish she could have had more. Perhaps she can do some postgraduate work under you. She would love that. I do think we had a pretty sane attitude about the immortals when we went to school.
Are you coming east this summer I wonder? Please let me know if you do. I shall probably be here until the first of August. I’ll love to see you. Of course you like Arnold Bennet[t], don’t you? He’s too fond of “symptoms” maybe, but at least he seems to have some goods to sell, which most of ’em emphatically have not, even when their salesmanship is most impressive and their floor-walking manners very grand.
Faithfully
Willa Cather
[Written on the back:] Does Miss Lathrop ever come to New York? Please tell her I want to see her.
TO LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY
May 25, 1911
Parker House, Boston
My Very Dear Miss Guiney;
I have come over to this pleasant hostelry to transact some editorial business, after a whole week with our dear lady on Charles Street. I meant to write to you from there, but Mrs. Fields had a good deal of company and there were some funny bits of shopping to do preparatory to her departure for Manchester next week. I think I have never seen her so well. She actually came to the station to meet me! John fell upon me as I descended from the train and said “Miss’ Fields herself is out there waitin’ in the carriage, an’ it’s the first time she’s been to the South Station in years.” You may well believe I hurried!
We had beautiful days and evenings, and the magic of that magically haunted house was never so potent for me. That other rare spirit whom we all loved so well [Sarah Orne Jewett] seemed not far away, and one kept stumbling upon things that were hers. We talked much of you (I had brought your last letter with me for Mrs. Fields to read) and last night, the last night of my stay, Mrs. Fields read aloud from the “Wayside Harp” for a long while. “The Cherry Bough” she read especially well, with her old-time fervor, and she wiped her eyes when she finished it and then read it through again.
