by Willa Cather
[Written in the top margin:] address c⁄o Thomas Cook & Son, 1 Place de l’Opera
Dearest mother:
We have safely arrived in Paris. When we got here Edith was very sick after two weeks of sea-sickness, and we drove about hunting rooms, found everything crowded, and had to go to a very grand and expensive hotel for two days until she got better. Yesterday we moved to a small old-fashioned hotel, where we pay only three dollars a day and are fairly comfortable. That would have been very dear for a small hotel in Paris before the war, but everything has doubled or trebled in price. We find the French people kind and cordial, though of course they distrust Americans because after making such friendly protestations, we behaved so badly about the Peace treaty.
I never felt better than I did at sea, but I am always let down for a few days after I land. It is rather hard to travel with anyone as frail and sick as Edith, though she is so patient and asks so little. If only she gets well over here, we will have a beautiful stay in Paris.
With much love,
Willa
TO BLANCHE KNOPF
June 12 [1920]
Hotel du Quai Voltaire, Paris
Dear Mrs. Knopf;
The wonderful basket of fruit you sent me lasted nearly all the way across the ocean and did a great deal to help out the monotonous Cunard table. The weather was fine and I never felt better than during those eleven days at sea. I got a complete rest and reached Paris full of “pep”. After a few days of costly magnificence at the Palaise d’Orsay I settled in this quiet hotel, just across the river from the Louvre. I have two small rooms, four flights up, facing on a quiet court; a bedroom, and a writing room in which I do not write one word! I write even my letters in the Luxembourg Gardens. The weather is gold and gray all mixed up—anybody would be a fool to shut themselves up with their own ideas with the city, this rather particular city, swimming in light outside. However, in the hours between sleeping and waking, in the hour before lunch and the idleness in the gardens after tea, I’m gradually getting the things I came for.
I live very comfortably for fifty francs a day—food and lodging, that is—which is not much if you consider exchange. Food is not so dear as in New York, and is of course ten times better, from the soup to the wonderful desserts. Theatre and music as cheap as ever, excellent seats for two dollars. But all the things in shops are twice as expensive as in New York,—hats, gloves, everything. The city itself never seemed to me so beautiful, and I find it a great advantage to live on the Seine. The streets are lovelier than anything in the art galleries. The Hambourgs will join me in two weeks and after lingering here for a time we will go South together.
With greetings and good wishes to you and Mr. Knopf
Faithfully yours
Willa Cather
TO FERRIS GREENSLET
June 20, 1920
Hotel Continental, Paris
[Written in above the hotel letterhead:] Do you know the rue du Chat qui Pêche?
Dear Mr. Greenslet:
I still live at the Hotel du Quai Voltaire, but am for the nonce visiting friends at this rich hostelry.
Last week Miss Lewis and I had an excellent dinner, with a good champagne, at Lapérouse for a hundred francs. I liked the place itself almost as much as the food, and it is not extravagant in price as Paris restaurants go now. At small hotels, like the Voltaire and the Hotel des Saintes Peres, one can still dine excellently, though somewhat slenderly, for ten francs. I am not going to shop any more than I have to, however. Everything in shops is costly, and the great change is that now all the less expensive things look cheap and shabby, as cheap things used to look in London. You can still get a beautiful hat for 500 francs, but a 150 franc hat looks like 14th street in New York. Silk gloves at 18 francs come to pieces the first time you put them on.
When we first arrived we spent a week in costly splendour at the Palais d’Orsay, and we still go there for dinner when neither of us is dining with friends. Miss Lewis goes on to Italy next week. The Hambourgs arrive on Saturday. I shall be here with them for several weeks, then go for a trip about the south of France with them. We will all meet at Sorrento about the end of July. Then I hope to fall to work in a lemon house in the garden of my friends there. The garden runs down into the sea—or the bathing beach which terminates it does.
I have not planned any new paragraphs for Claude yet, as a result of being here,—but I have planned to cut out several that otherwise would have gone in—so I feel I’ve not spent my francs in vain, especially those I have seen disappear in liquids ruddy and golden, lively and still, thin and sharp, thick and yellow as machine oil. The fruit and street flowers are not to be despised at this season. But the wines of France are really the supreme expression of its moods. I wish you were here. I could tell you a great many things that would sound absurd on either Bank or Park streets!
Faithfully
Willa Cather
TO FRANCES SMITH CATHER
July 4 [1920]
Paris
Dear Aunt Franc:
This morning I saw 20,000 French war orphans, who are supported by Americans, march down the Champ Èlysèes past our Ambassador and the President of France, each carrying a little American flag, and many carried a second flag with the name of the state in which their protector lives. They seemed nice, healthy children, not forlorn orphans, and very proud of they flag they carried. Certainly that flag never looked so beautiful to me before. Twenty thousand children are a great many, and surely that is a fine thing to do with money! All those children will grow up loving our country and our people. After the parade I stopped a number of the children and greeted them and one little boy would point to himself and say “I am Michigan”, and a little girl would say “I am Tex-ass”. The French always make the best of things, and these youngsters are so proud of being protected by the citizen of a great State, they regard it as a distinction as well as a charity, and they try so hard to speak a few English words. One tiny boy said he had to come so early, at eight oclock, tried to count the hours to me in English, got to six and had to finish in french!
Today the American flag is flying on all the old palaces of the Kings of France, and on all the public buildings. I find all the french people kind and friendly. The American soldiers are much beloved, though [Woodrow] Wilson is not. [Theodore] Roosevelt is still the great American name here. Next week I hope to get to Cantigny [where Franc’s son, G. P., died]. I have made several efforts to go, but it is a difficult spot to reach as the trains in that section are few and irregular. Cantigny itself is not on any railroad line, and the railroads in that region are very much disorganized. In that demolished district there are now no hotels and no places to spend the night. I want to get there if possible in order to see it for you and to tell you about it when I get home.
When I last heard from home you were much better in health, and I pray that by this time you are almost well again. I had a hard winter with two attacks of Influenza, but the sea voyage did me a world of good and now I feel quite like myself again. After a few more weeks in France I am going to Italy to spend the rest of the summer with some friends [Earl and Achsah Barlow Brewster] who have a house on the sea near Naples. I rather dread the long trip, as travelling over here now is difficult, with waits and delays and poor service. Goodnight, my very dear Aunt. I wish you could have seen the thousands of war orphans with their little flags. I like to think of them and thousands more in the remote parts of France, growing up with the feeling that that flag is their friend.
With a heartful of love to you.
Willa
This Fourth of July in Paris is the most American “Fourth” I have ever spent—no noise or row, but real feeling about something real, all the ceremonies solemn and beautiful.
TO CHARLES F. CATHER
July 7 [1920]
Paris
My Dearest Father:
If the weather is good I wish you would go out and tell Aunt Franc that I have at last succeeded in finding where G. P. is buri
ed. I have talked to a woman who has seen the cross on his grave with his name upon it, and his grave is properly and clearly registered here in Paris in the books of “The Society for the Care of the American Dead.”
He is registered:
2nd Lieut Grosvenor P. Cather
(Inf.) I.R.C. Att. Co. A. 26th Inf.
Location of Grave
Villiers Tournelle
Grave No. 2. Plot B.
I copy the above exactly. He is therefore buried in the American Military Cemetery of
VILLERS TOURNELLE,
which is about ten miles from Cantigny, and is in plot B, among the very first who fell. The bodies of the men who fell at Cantigny were taken up within a few weeks after they were first buried, placed in coffins and taken to Villiers Tournelle while that section was still under fire. The bodies had been wrapped in tarpaulin and blankets, each marked with his name and company, and the coffins were marked from that data, and each was simply registered,—so there can be no mistake. G. P. is unquestionably buried in grave 2, plot B.
I shall go to the cemetery next week and take a photograph of the grave for Aunt Franc. I had made all arrangements to go yesterday, but the heavy rains in that part of the country have made the roads impassable. Isabelle is going with me, as it is a hard trip. I leave Paris at 6 oclock in the morning and go to Montdidier (MONTDIDIER). It is not far, but there are two changes of cars and long waits, before one gets there and only one train a day. At Montdidier I will have to hire an automobile to take me to Cantigny and from there on to the Cemetary at Villiers Tournelle. There are no hotels in that devastated region, but a French woman belonging to the Society of French Homes will keep us over night. This beautiful Society tries to help Americans hunting for dead soldiers in every possible way. I enclose their letter which you will please give to Aunt Franc. After I have been to the cemetery and photographed the grave I will write to her. I know she will be glad to know that G. P. is lying in a cemetery, with a cross on his grave and his name on the cross. When I last saw her she thought he must be lying somewhere out in No Man’s Land. In the registry here in Paris, under the number of his grave and his name and rank, there is added “Killed in action at Cantigny.” His name on his cross is printed “Cacher,” but it is correct in the registry, and I will have the spelling corrected on the cross when I go up there. “The Society for American Dead” have given me authorization to do so, in order to make the name on the grave as it is in the Register. I want to do this because I feel it would be some satisfaction to Aunt Franc, and because it is all one can do to show one’s appreciation of a kinsman who was a brave soldier. If I were buried in France, I would want my relatives to come to see me if they were in this part of the world.
Goodbye now, dearest Father. I am well and am very happy to have Isabelle and Jan here. I am beginning to be a little homesick from time to time, and I shall not be sorry to turn away from all this beauty and from this wonderful people and face the West, toward the people and the country that are my own.
With a great deal of love to you and Mother and to Aunt Franc,
Willie
Though Cather went to the south of France with the Hambourgs, she never made it to Italy to visit the Brewsters as she planned. Edith Lewis found food scarce in Italy, so the two of them retreated to Paris, where they could stay comfortably. By November of 1920, they were back in New York.
That fall, while she was in France, Alfred Knopf published Youth and the Bright Medusa, and the critical response to the book of stories reaffirmed her reputation. The New York Times Book Review said, “If Willa Cather had written nothing except ‘Coming, Aphrodite!’…there could be no doubt of her right to rank beside the greatest creative artists of the day.” The book, though a minor one compared to My Ántonia, made her as much money in its first six months as My Ántonia had made her in a year, according to her biographer James Woodress. Cather was impressed with Knopf’s work and the attention he lavished on her.
TO FERRIS GREENSLET
January 12, 1921
New York City
Dear Mr. Greenslet;
After our last talk at the Brevoort I did not see Mr. Knopf for three weeks or more, but during this time I watched his advertising pretty carefully and decided that I would let him publish “Claude.” My decision is based entirely upon the conviction that his publicity work is, for me, much more spirited and effective than Houghton Mifflin’s has been. The publicity work he has done on this volume of short stories has helped me along very much indeed. The influence of the ‘strong talk’ on the jacket was perceptible in nearly all the reviews, and in his advertisements he did not hesitate to express an enthusiasm about my books which he says he quite genuinely feels. I have always believed that you have a strong liking for them, but your publicity department does not express this liking very convincingly.
I think you know that the publicity work is the only feature of the Houghton Mifflin handling of my books that I have seriously found fault with. Perhaps in a few years I will not feel that an enthusiastic publicity department is so vital to me. At any rate, I hope you won’t feel that you must consider this departure a final break. I don’t want to consider it as such. It is only a break with your publicity man or men. I would like still to call you my publisher, if you don’t mind, and maybe the next novel will be the Pittsburgh story you have always wanted. That you published my first novel, and that you used to urge me to try my hand at long stories, long before that, I do not forget. Just now I am really going away from your firm for Claude’s health; because I feel so sure that he particularly needs ‘presentation’, a certain kind of publicity work. But, unless you see it otherwise, I shall refuse to say that I have ‘left’ you. I would like to say that I have by no means left you, but that it is true that Knopf is going to publish this next book.
Mr. Knopf, by the way, has not heard these glad tidings, though I think I will try to see him tomorrow. No, I remember no[w] that I shall be seeing him on Saturday evening at a party, and I’ll tell him then that I’m going to let him try it out with this book.
You’ve always groaned a little at the War—as do I!—and a great deal about the West, and this novel is so wholly West and War that maybe you will feel a little relief as well as, I hope, some decent regret, at not having to be responsible for it. Anyhow, please don’t lose interest in my humble affairs, please keep those of my books you have now on the market, and please don’t reject the next novel I send you.
Always faithfully yours
[Signature cut out of original]
When do you go to England? I want to write you a personal letter before you go—that is, unless I can see you. Please let me know if you are to be in N.Y.
Greenslet wished Cather the best with “Claude,” and then said he was going to go and read the Book of Job and lament his situation. He claimed that Houghton Mifflin would always welcome her back.
TO FERRIS GREENSLET
January 21 [1921]
Dear Mr. Greenslet;
I remain your everlasting debtor for the nice letter you wrote me a week ago. I often tell Mr. McClure that he and I never began to be the best possible friends until our business relations were over. I already begin to feel that poor Mr. Knopf is the day’s work and you are the vacation. Knopf, by the way, seems willing to print the name of my other publishers in the list of books facing the title page as you suggest. I have just had a statement from him of the sales of the “Bright Medusa” up to December 31st; 3385 copies sold up to that date, and my royalty amounts to eleven hundred and eighty some dollars. Surely, that’s very good indeed for a book of unrelated short stories, half of which were taken from an old book. I am sure he will always try to push the books you publish as well as the new one.
The Hambourg Trio has been here for ten days, giving concerts, and I have been terribly rushed. Drop me a line to let me know when you are going to be in town, and tell me when I can telephone you. No, I have no telephone: I am going to have a rubber stamp made
of that phrase! But I want to see you when you are here, without fail, and this time we won’t have any troubles to discuss. I wonder if you can manage to send me my March check before you go?
I seem to be needing a great deal of money this winter. When you come I’ll tell you how I was kidnapped about two weeks ago,—if Elsie Sergeant doesn’t see you and tell you first.
Faithfully yours
WSC
In April 1921, Dorothy Canfield Fisher published a review of Youth and the Bright Medusa in the Yale Review. It must have given Cather great satisfaction to read the ungrudging opening line of her old friend’s review: “There is no writer living in whose excellence Americans feel a warmer, prouder pleasure than we all feel in the success of Willa Cather.”
TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER
March 21 [1921]
Dear Dorothy:
Mr. Knopf brought in a copy of the Yale Review yesterday and showed me what a fine generous thing you had done for me in that number. I am the more pleased because the commendation of no other person would mean as much in Red Cloud, where you and your work are much beloved, and where I am always eager to give satisfaction. They have no opinion of ‘critics’ in general there, but they have confidence in you, and an expression like that from you will please them more than anything else could. The Red Cloud public is ready now to hear a good word, for after “Antonia” they really came round, and said “yes, it was exactly like that; that is the way we remember it.”
Are we never, I wonder, to come together for a talk again? There are so many, many things I would like to ask you about and tell you about. I have such a far-flung family that I am kept rushing about in the West when I am not at my desk on Bank Street. But won’t you write me before you come to New York next time, so that I can get at you? If we could get an afternoon away from the rest of the world, I think we’d both get a good deal out of it. Lucy Allen came in here one day and said she’d get me in touch with your mother sometime. I was pleased to see Lucy, but she brought along an up-and-coming club woman who spoiled the fun.
