The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

by Willa Cather

  Affectionately always

  Willie

  On June 8, 1918, the New York Times printed Grosvenor P. Cather’s name among the list of Americans killed in battle in France.

  TO FRANCES SMITH CATHER

  June 12 [1918]

  My Dearest Aunt:

  Each time I try to write to you I feel helpless to do so, but a line must go to you today to tell you that you and your loss are in my thoughts always. Everything seemed strange and unreal to me on the day I saw G. P.’s name in the New York paper, under that glorious title “killed in action” which sets men off from their fellows. I feel proud and humble to be one of those bearing the name that your son put in a place of such honor. After watching the casualty lists closely for weeks, I had not opened the paper that morning when Isabelle came to me and said “Who is Myrtle Cather?” [Myrtle Bartlett Cather was G.P.’s wife.] I told her, and then she said “What is G. P.’s full name?” Then I turned around and asked, “Has anything happened to G. P.?” She nodded and took the morning paper out from under her jacket. I had thought that, out of so many thousand, harm would not come to G.P.

  I know how terrible it must be for you that it all happened so far away. But I feel sure that you are glad G. P. lived through his illness the time he was burned, lived to find the work he loved and seemed to be made for, and to give his life to the greatest cause men ever fought for.

  You remember, I was staying at your house the week in August, 1914, when this terrible war began. I drove over to Campbell one day, and G. P. took a load of wheat over. I was coming back and met him just on the edge of town, and we stopped to chat about the war news. I believe he always wanted to be a soldier. I can see him sitting on his wagon as plainly as if it were yesterday, in the middle of a peaceful country, with thousands of miles of land and sea between him and those far-away armies we were talking about. What would have seemed more improbable than that he should fall, an officer, in France, in one of the greatest battles the world has ever seen. He was restless on a farm; perhaps he was born to throw all his energy into this crisis, and to die among the first and bravest of his country.

  I know your heart will ache none the less, but you have always looked up to high things through faith, and it seems to me that now you must feel that your son is among those high things. Some people rise by faith, and some people by prayer. But there come critical times in this world when a man can rise in action to all that he could ever be. I believe G. P. was one of the men who can do that, and he found his opportunity.

  Goodbye, dear Aunt Franc. I keep thinking how lonely you and Uncle George must be feeling; yet, surely, you have cause to be proud and thankful, too, to have been able to help this country at a time of such need. There were so few men ready to take hold and help as G. P. did. Most of the willing ones were only a burden.

  My heart is full of love and sympathy for you.

  Willie

  Cather got the entire manuscript of My Ántonia to Houghton Mifflin in June, and they quickly got the rest of it into type and sent her the proofs for review.

  TO FERRIS GREENSLET

  July 2 [1918]

  The Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

  Dear Mr. Greenslet:

  Please give the enclosed proofs of cuts and instructions relating to them to the right person.

  The proofs are going well, except that the Riverside copy reader changed the spelling of Mama to Mamma—too sophisticated a form for these country people—and I have to change it back in every case. Also I have to insist on an occasional use of the subjunctive mood, and the copy-reader belongs to that ferocious band who are out to exterminate it along with the brown-tailed moth. I hope the Riverside Press won’t charge me for such corrections. I’ve enough changes on my own head, mercy knows!

  Please tell me if you have read the last part of the story, and please get the proofs to me as soon as you can.

  Don’t you ever motor out in this direction? It’s a pretty country.

  Did you see what a splendid citation was given my cousin, Lieut. Grosvenor Cather, who was killed in action May 28th? He led the list of American officers in the first citations published.

  Faithfully

  W.S.C.

  P.S. Most of the copy-reader’s changes were good, by the way.

  TO FERRIS GREENSLET

  July 11, 1918

  The Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

  Dear Mr. Greenslet:

  A lot of page proofs have come, but I am perplexed at finding that no blank pages have been left for the cuts. Wouldn’t it be much cheaper to print them in the four-page forms with the text than to bind them in as inserts?

  You know I am particularly anxious that the cuts should be printed on the same paper as the text, and not on coated paper.

  I wrote asking for page proofs of the cuts, so that I can see how they are set on the page. (In the dummy the cuts were set too high in each case.) Also I asked for information about the cut of the old woman gathering mushrooms, no proof of which was sent in the envelope which was supposed to contain proofs of all cuts.

  I have not yet had any light on either of these points. I would not be perturbed except for the fact that the make‑up seems to be going ahead without regard for the cuts.

  Hastily

  W.S.C.

  P.S. Had you rather I wrote directly to the department in charge of these details, and, if so, whom shall I address?

  W.S.C.

  Cather’s cousin G. P. Cather was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for bravely climbing a parapet and directing fire.

  TO ROSCOE CATHER

  July 19 [1918]

  Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

  My Dear Brother:

  Some Twins, those pictures! please thank Meta for me.

  The horrible increase in railroad and Pullman fares made Wyoming out of the question for both Miss Lewis and me. But mother says you may be in Red Cloud this summer with West Virginia. I will be there by the 15th (fifteenth) of August to stay a month. Do try to get there while I am at home if you can.

  Isn’t the news from France glorious? I was so proud of G.P’s citation. It was published in all the New York papers and dozens of people called me up to ask if he were any kin of mine. It seemed to me such a useful sort of bravery that he was cited for—so much more useful than if [he] had brought in a wounded comrade.

  I am here in this quiet hotel in the woods reading the proofs of my new book, and hope to finish them by the 6th of August. It’s a queer sort of book. It’s at least not like either of the others. Did you know that both the others are studied in a good many colleges now, for “style”?

  Goodnight and love to you and Meta. Didn’t Jack surprise you? I don’t know her, but if she’s nice and can spell, it may be a splendid thing for him [marriage to Irma Wells]. I think your marriage was a splendid thing for you, and I’m going to hope that Jack’s will be just as fortunate.

  Goodnight

  Willie

  Aren’t the American boys some soldiers! (I can’t write with this horrid “hotel ink”.)

  TO FERRIS GREENSLET

  [Probably late August 1918]

  Scarsdale, New York

  Dear Mr. Greenslet:

  I go West via New York and came here last Friday to spend a week with the Hambourgs, who are here for the summer. Ysaye and [violinist] Maurice Dambois are staying with them and [violinist Jacques] Thibaud has a house across the street. We have Beethoven quartettes and Motzart every night. Last night the Tenth Beethoven and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. The gods on Olympus’ hill do not have such music. One might travel the world around and not hear its equal. My right to be in this Heavenly choir is mainly that I loaned the bunch my cook, Josephine, for the summer. They are so fond of her good french food, and so afraid I’ll take her away that they will even play ‘request’ programs for me. It is a glorious party, but the silence of the cornfields will be almost welcome after so much of it. As Josephine says; “Les sonat�
�, les quatuores à deux heures le matin—c’n’est pas raisonable, vous-savez, mademoiselle!” [“Sonatas and quartets at two in morning—come now, this is outrageous, Miss!”]

  So this is why I won’t have the pleasure of lunching with you in Boston.

  After Sunday my address will be Red Cloud, Nebraska.

  Faithfully

  W.S.C.

  My Ántonia was published in October 1918, featuring eight drawings by W. T. Benda. The critics loved it right away. An early review in the Nation (November 2, 1918) said the novel was “among the best of our recent interpretations of American life.”

  TO IRENE MINER WEISZ

  October 26 [1918]

  Toronto

  Dear Irene:

  This review will answer your question as to whether strangers get the little things in a book like this. Apparently, this man got every least little thing. A stranger, if he has an eye trained for literary values, is apt to get the whole picture more as a whole than anyone who knew the people from whom the characters were sketched, and who must be more or less preoccupied with the question of where the characters are like the model, and where they are wholly unlike. The further you stand away from a picture of this kind, the more you get the painter’s intention.

  Please send this review to Carrie as soon as you have finished with it. I will send you a bunch of reviews after they come in. This one you need not return to me—you or Carrie may keep it. I like it because it is not so much a literary appreciation as it is an expression of honest personal enjoyment on the part of the reviewer.

  I have told Isabelle many times about my happy day with you in Chicago [Cather was in Toronto to see Isabelle McClung Hambourg]. I go on to New York and Bank Street on Tuesday, Oct 30th.

  Affectionately always

  Willie

  TO FRANCES SMITH CATHER

  November 11, 1918

  New York City

  [Written under the date in the top margin:] (an immortal day!)

  My Dear Aunt Franc:

  On this first day of the greater Peace, when this city is mad with joy and all the church bells are ringing, my heart turns to you who have helped to pay the dear price for all that this world has gained. Think of it, for the first time since human society has existed on this planet, the sun rose this morning upon a world in which not one great monarchy or tyranny existed. You remember [Ralph Waldo] Emerson once wrote that one day God would say, “I am tired of Kings.” I know you will wish that G. P. had lived to see this glorious day, and to help in the reconstruction work which must follow. But when I think of him I think of the last act of Macbeth, when they bring old Siward word that his son is slain in his first battle, and the old man says, “Why then, God’s soldier be he!”

  I like to feel that G. P. and the brave boys who fell with him, who went so far to fight for an ideal and for that only, became and are God’s soldiers. Whatever the after life may be, I know they have a glorious part in it.

  This is not meant to be a letter—I have so many letters to write to friends who have been bereaved by this terrible scourge of Influenza—but I must send you a greeting on this great day when old things are passing away forever. It is a day when we think of all the people we love, and I must send a word to mother and father, too. Goodbye now, and let us be thankful that we have both lived to see this day, and to know that our countrymen and kindred have done such noble things to bring it about. I love to see our flag in the churches. It seems to me to belong there more than it ever has before.

  Very lovingly

  Willie

  I enclose a letter from Elsie. Do not return it.

  The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, far more than died in World War I. Twenty-five percent of the U.S. population was affected by it.

  TO ROSCOE CATHER

  Thanksgiving Day [November 28, 1918]

  New York City

  My Dear Roscoe:

  Your nice letter deserved a speedy answer. I am so glad that you and father and mother liked this book. Most of the critics, too, seem to find this the best book I have done. I got quite a wonderful letter about it from France today, and it will be published in France very soon. Personally, I like the book before this one better, because there is more warmth and struggle in it. All the critics find “Antonia” more artistic. A man in the Nation writes that “it exists in an atmosphere of its own—an atmosphere of pure beauty.” Nonsense, its the atmosphere of my grandmother’s kitchen, and nothing else. Booth Tarkington writes that it is as “simple as a country prayer meeting or a Greek temple—and as beautiful.” There [are] lots of these people who can’t write anything true themselves who yet recognize it when they see it. And whatever is really true is true for all people. As long as one says “will people stand this, or that?” one gets nowhere. You either have to be utterly common place or else do the thing people don’t want, because it has not yet been invented. No really new and original thing is wanted: people have to learn to like new things.

  [Unsigned]

  Cather’s quotations in the letter above are a bit of a mystery. The passage she claims to quote from the Nation does not appear in the review published there on November 2, 1918, and no published or unpublished remarks about My Ántonia by Booth Tarkington have been located. However, Tarkington does use the comparison “as simple as a country church—or a Greek statue” in a letter to S. S. McClure praising McClure’s Autobiography (see Lyon, this page).

  Shortly after turning in the manuscript for My Ántonia, Cather began corresponding with Greenslet about a possible book of short stories focusing on writers and artists.

  TO FERRIS GREENSLET

  December 2 [1918]

  New York City

  Dear Mr. Greenslet:

  I don’t seem to feel much interest in getting the short stories together just now. I haven’t time to write enough new ones to make a volume. I’ve begun a new book—in fact I’ve begun two new books, and they are rather chewing me up just at the present writing. One is company, but two are a crowd. When you are next in town I would like to talk them over with you.

  Meantime, please telephone the Atlantic Monthly and get Edward Garnett’s present address for me.

  And please have four (4) copies of “Ántonia” sent to me here. How is the book selling now?

  Hastily

  W.S.C.

  Isn’t it terrible about poor Elsie Sergeant being so badly hurt? I had no idea it was anything serious until I heard from her the other day.

  Please for mercy’s sake send a copy of “Antonia” to the N.Y. “Globe”! I’ve just had a piteous note from the editor saying that they would rather review my books than most, but that they had never received a copy. I’ve long bought the Globe for its book reviews—they are the only ones I read and I think they are much the most intelligent and interesting that appear in any New York paper.

  Won’t you please rush off a copy yourself to

  N. P. Dawson

  Literary Editor N.Y. Globe

  Sergeant had been injured while touring a deserted battlefield in France as a correspondent for the New Republic. Her official guide picked up a “souvenir” from battle and it exploded, killing the guide and seriously injuring others who were nearby. Sergeant had shrapnel embedded in her legs and ankles and had to spend several months in the American Hospital in Paris, where Cather directed the following letter.

  TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT

  December 3 [1918]

  New York City

  My Dear Elsie:

  What you write me about yourself simply amazes me! I was in the west at the time the paper announced the accident. They had your name entirely wrong at first, and later said you “got off with slight injuries”. Got off somehow conveyed to my mind—well, that you had “got off”—certainly not that you had most woefully got in! F.G. [Ferris Greenslet] didn’t write me about it. I got back to town just a few days before the Armistice was signed, saw very few people, and did not he
ar a word about you. Your letter simply struck me dumb, therefore. I wonder you had to come in for a share of the unjust suffering of this unjust war. Why did that poor foolish woman go and pick up something? I thought the French were always gaily guying the Americans because they pick up souvenirs—I didn’t know they practiced such countrified habits.

  My shaved head seems a trivial thing to compare to cruelly shattered bones, but when I remember how sort of degraded it made me feel, it makes me groan to think of you—being knocked about in dressing-tents and railways when you were in such pain. The mere shock of the explosion and the suddenness of the way in which you were hurt must have broken up your nerves terribly, and the long “getting well” process is about the worst of all. Do you know, it seems as if you were fated to have this war get through your skin. I know it had already tortured your mind and heart.–––––The Mauretania got in yesterday with five thousand of her sister’s avengers—the first big landing of troops. But one meets lots of them about now, in theaters and hotels, and oh Elsie they are so jolly and modest and amused at everything—so just all that one could want them to be. They are not conceited as I heard a very clever and very nasty Frenchman say the other night, and they don’t think they won the war. The newspapers put on swag, and the Tammany mayor does, but not the soldiers. A funny little marine is coming here for dinner tomorrow night who never wears his croix de guerre except indoors because people look at him so. At the French theatre last night I saw a few of “ours” among a lot of nice French soldiers and sailors—but my gracious “ours” were nicer! So different—the French boys were awfully fine fellows—but ours were so wonderfully, so unsuspectedly picturesque and they seemed so more alive than anything one had ever seen before! You could see their eyes and teeth flash when the lights were down. Oh, my dear Elsie, the flood of french that has broken loose on Broadway! All the shop girls speak it now when they dine at Monquin’s, and one is always hearing “vive le France” and “Je suis amoureuse de cette robe” I could give you a hundred joyful phrases from the stenographer world. It’s going to make quite a new Broadway language—like the Norman Conquest!