by Willa Cather
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
April 20 [1912]
Winslow, Arizona
Dear Elsie:
I’ve been tramping about the West for two weeks now and have just reached my mail, which was all forwarded to Winslow. Your letter has made me feel that I would like nothing quite so well as to run over to North Carolina and see how you do. I feel pretty dismal about your being knocked out like this. There are so many people who could better afford to be ill—who would not be restive or impatient under it, and who would not use up their good brain-stuff in the dismal game of being sick, as I am afraid you do yours. Everything that happens is apt to set a good many wheels going, and wheels that do not in the least take the place of iron pills. Isn’t that so? It makes one rage to have wheels of that sort spinning in empty air. And when one is ill they do just spin on without registering. But you have got so much done in the last two years that perhaps all these things, even Polk County, will register in time. But I know you will be too wise to feel discouraged about being divorced for awhile from the manual labor of using a pen. It’s when you come to banking your fires that I’m doubtful about you. If one has the habit of living keenly they’re apt to go on doing, I’ve observed, in a desert, a cell, a pallet—in the dust, if the poppies that blaze on the Palatine Hill mean what they seem to. But I hope you can turn the lamp low for a little while. I would run over to see you if we had not the misfortune to be born in such a big country.
But “Bigness” is the subject of my story. The West always paralyzes me a little. When I am away from it I remember only the tang on the tongue. But when I come back [I] always feel a little of the fright I felt when I was a child. I always feel afraid of losing something, and I don’t in the least know what it is. It’s real enough to make a tightness in my chest even now, and when I was little it was even stronger. I never can entirely let myself go with the current; I always fight it just a little, just as people who can’t swim fight it when they are dropped into water. It is partly the feeling that there are so many miles—wait till you travel ’em!—between you and anything, and partly the fear that the everlasting wind may make you contented and put you to sleep. I used always to be sure that I’d never get out, that I would die in a cornfield. Now I know I will get out again, but I still get attacks of fright. I wish I didn’t. I somehow feel that [if] one were really a fit person to write about a country they wouldn’t feel that.
But really, the Bohemian Girl is in the right key, like that country, I mean. I went out into the Bohemian country when I was in Red Cloud and it seemed just like that to me. By the way, while I was in Pittsburgh I gave that story a good “going over” and I wrote in a new scene which I think helps it very much. I am grateful to you for backing me on that story, for it really is like the people, gets the undulation of the ground.
Now about Arizona: it’s good, but New Mexico is better. Winslow is an ugly little western town. I send you a picture of it. Only railroad people here, but a good hotel. The Santa Fe road carries no dining cars and all the through trains stop here for one meal or another. The homes are little egg shell affairs. My brother has a whole one—the “casa” the Mexican wash woman calls it, and what a “casa”—and I don’t believe the whole home is big enough for me to write in. But the real thing is that the air of the place is “off” for that sort of work. My brother, poor chap, couldn’t understand that, but it is. So I don’t think I shall stay here very long. I’ll run about the country with him a good deal for awhile and see a lot, and then fade away in search of that seemingly simple but really utterly unattainable thing, four walls in which one can write. After you cross two miles of tin cans and old shoes the desert is very fine—bright red sand, like brick dust, and the eternal sage and rabbit-brush. But the sand storms! They often stop the trains. I am almost sure I could work at Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is in the most beautiful country I have ever seen anywhere, like the country between Marseilles and Niece only much more brilliant. All around it lie the most wonderful Indian villages—not show places, real places, each one built close about its church. There are dead villages, too, that were Spanish missions in Elizabeth’s time. My brother and I are going there next week to spend a few days, and I’ll see whether you could find a room easily. After that I’ll know more about the place, too. But I think it would give you—well, just that something that one needs. If I were still here I could go over to see you. It’s only a night away, and when people live by and on the railroad that is nothing. I feel pretty sure that Winslow would depress you terribly—the wind, the sand storms, the tin cans, the stolid humanity. But Albuquerque is another story. There is a strong pull about the place, and something Spanish in the air that teases you. Such color! The Lord set the stage so splendidly there. It can’t have been all for nothing, for motors and phonographs and our damned good plumming! There really must be a new hope yet to come—a new tragedy or a new religion, some crusades or something. It is too utterly splendid, from Trinidad to Albuquerque, to go to pot. The valley of the Rhone is nothing to it. From Trinidad to Las Vegas there is a continuous purple mountain that does tune one up.
Now please write to me, and write plain script, because I want so much to hear from you, and not to be in any doubt as to what you say. (This is slightly facetious, for I can really read you very well now.) But I do most particularly and definitely and acutely want word of you; of how you do and of what you are thinking and feeling—though I do sincerely hope you aren’t feeling anything but sleepiness and laziness. It is because I really want word of you so much that I have prolonged this letter so unduly, and keep on writing. You know that absurd and interesting habit of mind—which always acts on the principle that if one bullies an idea long enough the idea will give back. And now, as the poor Mexicans say to their sweethearts, “May all the gold I have ever dreamed of be yours.”
Yours
Willa S.C.
TO MARIEL GERE
April 24, 1912
Winslow
Dear Mariel
I have been travelling and missing my letters and have only just heard of your dear mother’s death [Mariel Clapham Gere]. It is very hard for me to believe that she is not with you anymore. I cannot realize that she is not there, just the same as she used to be, with all her force and kindness and dignity and keen understanding of life, that was tempered by so much charity and such a rich sense of humor. I can hear her little laugh now, the one she was so apt to laugh when young people were talking large or taking themselves too seriously. How much more good that laugh did one than any amount of scolding. It was so wise and kind that for the moment it made one wiser too. How much I owe her; and I am only one of many. I always loved her very dearly, even when I was too young to be willing to show that I did. And I always really wanted to please her, even when I was too silly to want to show that, either. I don’t believe anyone but your mother could ever have persuaded me to let my hair grow or to try to learn to spell. I remember, as distinctly as if it were yesterday, the first time you took me home to dinner, when I was a preparatory student, and how your mother knew just what tack to take with me, and how kind your father’s eyes were when he looked me over and said I looked like “Sadie Harris.” I can’t believe it was so long ago. I hope you and I can keep half the gallant spirit your mother did, and the splendid love of life and pleasure in people. I cannot think of her except as living as richly and vigorously as she did in the years when she was so kind to me—when she did so much for a clumsy country child simply by being her lovely and gracious self. It was like reading a fine story to be with her, I used to think. Her kind of charm and vivacity were such a new thing to me.
I wish I were to see her again, Mariel. I had counted upon stopping to see you on my way East, whenever I am called back to New York. I had a sharp illness and an exhausting little surgical operation in February, so Mr. McClure is going to let me stay away as long as possible.
Please let me send my love, useless as it is, to Frances and Ellen and to
you. Letters do not help one, I know, and the ache of another heart does not ease one’s own. But I want you to know that I do not forget.
Very lovingly
Willa Cather
I am ever so much better in health now, and am here visiting Douglas.
While she was on leave, S. S. McClure wrote to ask if she would ghostwrite his autobiography when she returned.
TO S. S. MCCLURE
April 22 [1912]
Winslow
Dear Mr. McClure;
I will certainly be glad to help in any way I can with the autobiography. You have, indeed, wonderful material. I am having the most interesting adventures with my brother here, exploring the Pueblo towns and re-discovering the cliff-dwellers. We are planning to go to the Moki [Hopi] snake dance, and we are going over to old Mexico.
I can imagine how shocked and horrified everyone in New York must feel because of the Titanic disaster. Even here in the desert it shakes me up a little. I am so sorry about poor Mr. Stead.
The one book everybody is talking about in Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona is “The Iron Woman.” They are piled up in the Santa Fe “Harvey Houses” and every brakeman owns a copy.
How splendid this part of the world is!
Faithfully
Willa Cather
Influential British investigative journalist William T. Stead died when the Titanic sank in April 1912. The Iron Woman (1911), by Cather’s Boston friend Margaret Deland, was one of the biggest best sellers of the era.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
April 26, 1912
Winslow
Dear Elsie—
People are the only interesting things there are in the world, but one has to come to the desert to find it out, and until you are in the desert, you never know how un-interesting you are yourself. When it’s too windy to walk or ride, I am a punctured balloon. My brother is out with the construction gang most of the time. He shares this casa with a well-informed brakeman named Tooker. Douglass has been away for three days now, and Tooker and I have been living on together, which is quite in accord with the proprieties of Winslow. Tooker has been off on his “run” two of the nights, and then I’ve been quite alone. (The tipsy London cockney whom my brother picked up overcome by thirst in the desert, and who does the housekeeping! would afford small protection) But dear me! I don’t mind being here alone at night. I’m so glad to get the well-improved Tooker out of the house that I’d gladly get up at any hour of the night and make cocktails for any wandering Mexican who would come in to relieve the boredom of life. Tooker reads Emerson—in full morocco—all the time. He is one of Nature’s Noblemen and looks just like [actor] Henry Miller in “The Great Divide” [play by William Vaughn Moody]. Also dresses as such. Don’t tell me that life is anything but a poor imitation of art—and of mighty poor art, always. I’ve been doing target practice with a pistol, and I know the day will come when I shall let drive at Tooker. I cannot stand either his information or his nobleness much longer. He has done a lot of prospecting in South America and worked in mines in Mexico and he really can tell one a good deal. But the square jaw and the bold carriage of the head make him useless to me.
I would perish if it were not for the Mexicans. We have an inferior lot, of course, but it’s a lovely speech, and they have such nice manners and go their own way. They all live “south of the tracks” and their village is a delight after this hideous little railroad town.
I do want to hear from you. I shall hope to get a letter by Saturday or Sunday. I suppose I really am very lonely. But you would die here; you are at least one thousand years more civilized than I. You’d simply go up in smoke. I can see you getting on the train in your little nightie; you wouldn’t stop to dress. Maybe you could save your soul by studying Spanish with the priest. I can’t even do that. But my brother returns tomorrow and then we are off for Flagstaff and the Cliff Dwellers.
Tooker never permits himself an action in one syllable. He “arrives”, and he “removes” his hat, and he reflects. When the wind blows the sand it “retards” his freight train and he is late on his runs.
The cockney housekeeper is good fun, but he is reeling drunk all the time, and has to be sat upon and sent away. He once worked in a stable in Paris and speaks an awfully funny kind of French very fluently. When he is at his worst he recites his poem “The Widenin’ Foam” and weeps bitterly. Every verse ends:
“Where’ere I look, on sea or skies,
I see them fair, deceivin’ eyes.”
But really, with the best will in the world, one tires of freaks. Please write to me. I’ve been thinking a great deal about you.
Buenas noches
W.S.C.
Tooker, the brakeman, contributed to the brakeman Ray Kennedy in The Song of the Lark. The “tipsy London cockney” who keeps house shows up in the character of Henry Atkins in The Professor’s House. But Cather felt that the wealth of material in the country she was experiencing extended beyond these unusual characters. She would feature the Southwest and its history in multiple novels, including The Song of the Lark, The Professor’s House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.
The following was written on a postcard showing an adobe “Mexican home” in New Mexico.
TO HELEN SEIBEL
May 12 [1912]
Winslow
Tell Mr. S— to revise his idea of a Cliff-Dweller house, and to come down here and do it. There is lots of material and I am saving it all for him. The old Spanish Mission churches are wonderful.
Willa Sibert Cather
The following was written on a postcard with a view of the corner of pueblo of Mishongnovi, Arizona.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
May 12 [1912]
Winslow
Dear Elsie:
I’ve been hard bit by new ideas of late and am as happy as possible. I’ve caught step at last. Am just back from a long overland trip with the priest out to his Indian missions. A string trio of Mexicans come often to play for me—one a bartender, two are section hands. They play divinely, and there is a boy of unearthly beauty who sings. He is simply Antinous come to earth again!
W.
Antinous, a frequent subject of classical sculpture, was a beautiful youth beloved by the Roman emperor Hadrian.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
May 21 [1912]
Grand Canyon, Arizona
[Written above a picture of El Tovar, Grand Canyon, in the top margin:] I’ve been walking with such nice English people here—went down to the Half Way House—an awful pull!
My Dear Elsie:
For the first two weeks nothing happened to me. Then things began to happen so fast that I’ve had no time to write letters and I wanted to write to you too much to send postcards. I wrote you about the trip with the Priest over to his Indian missions? The[n] came Julio—pronounce Hulio, please—and he came and came, too beautiful to be true and so different from anyone else in the world. He is the handsome one who sings; from Vera Cruz; knows such wonderful Mexican and Spanish songs: But there, if I began on Julio you would have to like me very much to be patient, and I don’t wish to put you to any such test as yet. But he is won-der-ful!
Then came three days in the upper Canyons—Clear Creek, Jack’s Canyon, and Chevelin. It had all the advantages of a camping trip and yet we got home every night and had hot baths and beds to sleep in. We started every morning at day light, light wagon and light camp outfit, canteens, coffee, bacon, fruit, cream etc. Tooker is a different man in the Hills. All his miserable information, the encrustation of a wash of millions of magazines, drops away, just as a boy drops his clothes when he goes swimming, and there emerged the real Tooker, the man the sheep camps and the hills made, a very decent sort, strong and active and lots of nerve. We did some really good stunts in climbing. Went down one cliff 150 feet by hand-holds, and it was no joke. I have some white canvas shoes with red rubber soles that I got in Boston, and they are fine for rock climbing; you
can walk right up a slant of 45 degrees on sandstone or granite. And Tooker told me lots of stories; he’s a perfect mine of them when you get through the sediment deposited by magazine articles.
Then came a day in the Painted Desert with Julio. It took several days to get over that; and I have already been five days at the Grand Canyon. It is really the most attractive place I have found in this country. Wonderful walking and riding. The whole place is interesting aside from the “wonder”, which, indeed is wonderful enough. Of course a “wonder” that has only a geological history can be interesting for only a limited space of time. But the place is so “let alone”. Not one shop, you can’t buy an orange, even; Not one amusement. Two hotels—one magnificent and the other excellent—set down in an immense pine forest; these, and silence and the “wonder”, nothing else.
I don’t know what to tell you about New Mexico. It’s all so big and bright and consuming. And it’s expensive everywhere. The old Bright Angel Camp house where I am staying is comfortable but very simple. It costs me three dollars a day and is the very cheapest place I have found. Then all the places most worth seeing are off the railway, and you pay about $2.50 a day for a riding horse and five dollars for a team and open wagon. Then it takes time and strength to find ways and routes. Then you would certainly pick up a Mexican sweetheart—don’t laugh scornfully, for you couldn’t help it, and he certainly couldn’t—and wouldn’t; and he would take just as much time and strength as you would give, and he would be so attractive that you wouldn’t be tight-fisted, and so it would go.
I have a feeling that about Albuquerque and Old Santa Fe things are closer together, simpler, cheaper, and I’ll certainly let you know. I meet my brother in Flagstaff Friday to find some Cliff Dwellers along the Little Colorado. Then I shall be in Winslow a few days, for I have to go to a Mexican dance I’ve been asked to; and then if I can really sever Julio’s strong Egyptian fetters, I am going to Albuquerque with my brother and from there trail about over pretty much all of New Mexico. Write to me at Winslow, please, the faithful Tooker will forward all mail. But will you go to Mexico with me some day? My brother and Julio have told me of such splendid places to go as soon as the fighting is over—buried cities and Aztec ruins and gold mines—perfect Arabian Nights stories. Julio knows one such lovely story about an Aztec Cleopatra, and it is called “The Forty Lovers of the Queen” and I am going to write it when I can go to the place where it happened. There are some very sharply cut figures in it, not at all the type-figures. [Historian William] Prescott has a dim account of it, I remember, but Julio’s version is much more alive. He’s never read anything but the prayer-book, so he has no stale ideas—not many ideas at all, indeed, but a good many fancies and feelings, and a grace of expression that simply catches you up. It’s like hearing a new language spoken, because he speaks so directly. He will drive any number of miles to see flowers or running water, but Cliff Dwellers bore him awfully. “Why,” he says raising his brows “do you care for Los Muertos? We are living.” For him, as for Mrs. Bell, there are only the quick and the dead; it is fitting to say masses for the dead, but that ends our business with them; any further attention is a waste of time. It annoys him to be pressed about certain dim details connected with the “forty lovers”. “No me importa. They die so long ago. Pobrecitos! (poor fellows).”
