The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

by Willa Cather

  A few years after this, I began to write regularly for the Sunday Journal, you remember, and I was paid one dollar a column,—which was certainly quite all my high-stepping rhetoric was worth. Those out-pourings were pretty dreadful, but I feel indebted to the Managing Editor of that time [Jones] that he let me step as high as I wished. It was rather hard on his readers, perhaps, but it was good for me, because it enabled me to riot in fine writing until I got to hate it, and began slowly to recover. I remember that sometimes a bright twinkle in Mr. [Charles] Gere’s fine eyes used to make me feel a little distrustful of my rhetorical magnificence. He never corrected me, he was much too wise for that; he knew that you can’t hurry nature. But I think his kindness, his easy wit, the ease and charm of his personality, helped me all the time. When he was listening, with such lively sympathy and understanding, to one’s youthful troubles, he would sometimes sit stroking his dark beard with his hand. No one who ever saw Mr. Gere’s hands could ever forget them, surely. Even in those days, when I was sitting in his library, it more than once came over me, that if one could ever write anything that was like Mr. Gere’s hands in character, it would be the greatest happiness that could befall one. They were dark and sinewy and so much alive; in a whole world-full of hands I’ve not seen any others that seemed to me to have such a singular elegance. None in the least like them, indeed. You see, even very stupid young people addicted to cheap rhetoric, are yet capable of perceiving fineness, of feeling it very poignantly. I was very fortunate in my first editor. He let me alone, knowing that I must work out my own salvation; and he was himself all that I was not and that I most admired. Isn’t it too bad that after we are much older, and a little wiser, we cannot go back to those few vivid persons of our early youth and tell them how they have always remained with us, how much pleasure their fine personalities gave us, and give us to this very day. But, after all, it’s a good fortune to have Mr. Gere alive in one’s memory,—not one but a thousand characteristic pictures of him, and I congratulate the Nebraska State Journal and myself that we both had such an editor in our early activities.

  You told me in your letter, dear Mr. Jones, that you did not wish me to make yourself the subject of my letter, but I am sure you will have no objection to my recalling Mr. Gere to the many friends who felt his quality as much or more than I.

  With pleasant memories of the past and good wishes for the future of the Nebraska State Journal, I am

  Most Cordially yours

  Willa Cather

  TO STEPHEN TENNANT

  March 28, 1927

  New York City

  Dear M. Tennant;

  Anne Douglas Sedgwick has been kind enough to send me, through a mutual friend, a note you wrote her about “My Mortal Enemy.” It gives me a great deal of pleasure, and I wish to tell you so. In form that story is faulty enough, certainly, but one has to choose the thing one wants most, and try for it at the cost of everything else. Nearly all my books are made out of old experiences that have had time to season. Memory keeps what is essential and lets the rest go. I am always afraid of writing too much—of making stories that are like rooms full of things and people, with not enough air in them. If writing is easy for you, it’s very hard not to over-write. I am now reading the proofs of a book which I’ve had great joy in writing, and in which I’ve succeeded better than ever before in holding the tone—in making detail do what I wished it to do. I’ve been turning it over in my mind in my long journeys in the South West for fifteen years, so that when I came to write it, it took only about six months—no work at all, like a sail on a fine summer morning. I didn’t have to use any of the old machinery, had things all my own way. I’m becoming extremely confidential, am I not? But I think you’ll like “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” It will be out next fall, and if you’d be good enough to write me how it strikes you, I’d be so pleased! Send me a line in care of my publishers, for I shall probably be somewhere in Old Mexico by then.

  I see I’ve written a long letter, mostly in praise of my own new book,—how like an author!

  Most cordially yours

  Willa Cather

  TO VIRGINIA CATHER

  Palm Sunday [April 10, 1927]

  Haddon Hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey

  Dearest Virginia;

  There are many opinions about what was in the cave—but I think it was a rattlesnake den. Jacinto [character in Death Comes for the Archbishop] thought there might be some around loose under the faggots. He was afraid the heat would warm the dry fellows up and bring them out. An Indian always knows the rattlesnake smell, but this Bishop hadn’t enough experience.

  We enjoyed M.V.’s [Mary Virginia Auld] visit (Easter vacation), though we saw little of her. But we enjoyed that little, and I think she did. I took her to one very grand party. Miss Lewis is down here getting well by the sea. She joins me in love to you.

  Willa Cather

  TO MARY VIRGINIA AULD

  Wednesday [June 8, 1927]

  Dearest M.V.

  Aren’t we a funny family! I have got my ticket for Casper, Wyo., starting this Sunday! The subway has become very intense, and goes on every night until midnight. We have put some things into storage, and I will come back in August to help Edith empty the apartment and go into storage. The noise and confusion here is beyond words—that is why I flee. I wrote Aunt Elsie at Lincoln the day before I got your letter.

  In Washington I advise you to stay at the New Willard, and to eat in the coffee shop in the basement of the hotel. The food is excellent and not expensive.

  I did not go to Winchester—told the club women I would be in Wyoming May 31st, to avoid being a guest at a banquet.

  I’ll probably drop down in Red Cloud about four weeks from now, and Douglass will be there before that, he writes me. Tell Aunt Elsie that we will all meet up eventually to Charleston on the new carpet!

  With my dearest love to you both

  Willa

  How wonderful for Tom [Auld, Mary Virginia’s brother]!

  I do not know if Howard Gore has gone away for the summer yet. His address is 2210 R. St. If he is there [rest of line cut off]

  Cather and Lewis’s apartment at 5 Bank Street in New York had to be vacated, since the building was scheduled to be torn down to make way for new subway construction.

  TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

  August 17 [1927]

  Dear Dorothy;

  After much wandering your letter did reach me up in the Big Horn mountains. I took it back to Red Cloud to answer it, but there, just when we were all so happy, Father had a terrible attack of angina, the first serious illness of his life. For the present he is better, and I hurried back to New York to give up this apartment, where I have been for fifteen years, and to put all my books and goods into storage. I am in the midst of that doleful process now, having got back only the day before yesterday. I had taken passage for France on the 30th, but I can’t go when Father has an illness which can only terminate in one way. Probably I shall trail West again as soon as this packing ordeal is over. You can always reach me through the Knopf office, however. I honestly don’t know where I am going to be. My unmarried brother, Douglass, will take Father and Mother to California for the winter if Father is well enough to go.

  I can’t properly answer your letter, dear Dorothy, because I’ve almost forgotten I ever wrote the Archbishop,—so much has happened since then. I suppose some of the pleasure I had in following those two noble churchmen will go on to others,—though I can’t see many people in a moving-picture-world caring much about a book with no woman in it but the Virgin Mary. I wanted to save something of those remote places before they are gone for ever. Tomorrow, the movie cameras will be at Acoma. Forgive me that I have no spirit to thank you. Deep in my heart I am happy that I was able to make you see a little of what has bewitched me down there for so long.

  With my love, dear Dorothy

  Willa

  Death Comes for the Archbishop was published in September of 1927.


  TO FANNY BUTCHER

  Thursday [probably early September 1927]

  Hotel Webster, New York City

  Dear Fanny Butcher;

  Five Bank street is now a thing of the past. Everything that used to be there is in storage—including myself! You see all last winter the new sub-way was building right under the house, and it will go on for two years more. The noise is maddening, the neighborhood become a sham. I hate being in storage, but I want to be free of responsibility for awhile.

  I know how busy you are—but will you send me a line telling me if you got any pleasure out of the “Archbishop”? And please send me your review. (Send notes in care of Knopf, as I have no address of my own at present.) The morning World tells me that judged as a novel, it’s a very poor performance. Just what is a novel, I wonder? I’ve always wanted to try something in the style of legend, with a sort of New Testament calm, and I think I succeeded fairly well. A story with no woman in it but the Virgin Mary has very definite limitations; it’s a very special kind of thing, and you like it, or you don’t. I had a glorious year doing it, and working in that new form with no solid drama. I found in it a lovely kind of poverty—and richness; a deep content.

  You and Grant Overton were the only two reviewers in America who liked “Antonia” when it first came out. The “Archbishop” is even farther from the conventional novel. It’s a narrative, like Robinson Crusoe, and it’s a kind of writing that is colored by a kind of country, like a folk-song.

  Let me hear from you, if you have a spare moment. I was to have sailed on the “Barengaria” yesterday, but had to give up my passage. Was detained in Nebraska by the serious illness of my father. He suddenly came down with angina—the first serious illness he has ever had. I shall probably go to the White Mountains for a few weeks, then either to France or Arizona.

  With my love, always

  Willa Cather

  TO FANNY BUTCHER

  September 17 [1927]

  Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

  Dear Fanny Butcher;

  I said legend, didn’t I, not folk-lore? There’s such a difference. Folk-lore is unarticulated—detached. But legend is a sort of interpretation of life by Faith. It was that background of order and discipline that gave the lives of those missionaries proportion and measure and accent, like a work of art.

  Yes, of course you may use anything I said, provided that it doesn’t sound as if I were defending the book.

  I’m so sorry you[’re] tired and used up—I’m a wreck myself, trying to get rested enough to start for Arizona. Of course I’ll let you know when I go through Chicago. Rush your Archbishop for autograph along to me here—you can have it bound afterward. I’m not likely to have an address for some months. Awful way to live!

  You did nobly by me in your review—but sometimes in the country, you must run over that book just the way you read “Swiss Family Robinson” when you were little, not as writing at all, but sort of living along with the priests and their mules in a world where miracles really come into the day’s work, or into one’s experience of it, which is the same thing.

  With my love

  Willa Cather

  Death Comes for the Archbishop was widely reviewed. Cather refers to the following reviews in the next couple of letters: Rebecca West, “Miss Cather’s Business as an Artist,” New York Herald Tribune Books, September 11, 1927; Frances Newman, “A Reservationist’s Impressions of Willa Cather’s New Mexican Catholic Missionaries of 1850,” New York Evening Post, Literary Review, September 3, 1927; and Michael Williams, “Willa Cather’s Masterpiece,” Commonweal, September 28, 1927.

  TO LOUISE GUERBER BURROUGHS

  [September 21, 1927]

  Dear Louise

  I’m really desperate. I have nothing on earth to read. Won’t you please see if you can get me Jane Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility” in a fairly good type—not the European edition, that’s to[o] small type—and rush it to me “special handling”? Then I’ll get it about Monday, maybe. Knopf keeps wanting to send me new books—but there is not one in his fall list that I want.

  I’m walking a good deal, and it’s glorious weather. Yes, I’ve just glanced at Miss [Rebecca] West’s review again. I think the question she brings up really interesting, and she says a lot about it that’s interesting to me. [D. H.] Lawrence is the Puritan reformer, for all he’s habitually indecent, and I am the Pagan, for all I’m stupidly decent!

  Hastily

  W.S.C.

  TO LOUISE GUERBER BURROUGHS

  Monday [September 26, 1927]

  Jaffrey, New Hampshire

  Dear Louise, you must have got Jane Austen here by air mail! No, I’ve not bobbed, but Miss Lewis has, with great success—very becoming. The weather is wonderful—one sun-soaked day after another. I’m not working, though, so I’m a little restless. I enclose Miss [Frances] Newman’s review—but you must send it back to me—I wouldn’t lose it. There is a review in the highbrow Catholic weekly, “The Commonweal” Sept. 28, which gives me great satisfaction. I feared nothing so much as seeming a sort of stage Catholic. I’m living in the woods every day, but I’m always a little bored when I’m not working. That’s a grave deficit of character, and I’m sorry to admit it.

  With my love

  W.S.C.

  TO IDA TARBELL

  Friday [probably October 1927]

  Shattuck Inn, Jaffrey, New Hampshire

  Dear Miss Tarbell;

  How happy your letter made me! The writing of that book was the most unalloyed pleasure of my life—and it keeps on bringing pleasures,—letters from priests in remote deserts and mountains that melt my heart. The rector of the Cathedral in Denver writes me that he still uses father Joseph’s chalice and the vestments made by Philomène and her nuns! He knows every inch of the ground and he really loves the book. He is an old man, and he wrote me a letter like a school boy’s.

  These letters do help me to bear the trials of this hour. Of course I miss my “Archbishop” awfully, working on him was almost like working with him, it was so happy and serene a mood. Then I’m homeless for the present—all my goods in storage. I had to leave Bank street because a sub-way station is being built almost under the very house in which I lived. I now expect to spend the winter in Arizona and with my parents, and go abroad in the early spring.

  If I am in New York at all, I do so want to see you. Nothing makes me quite so happy as pleasing my old friends, and I do like to feel that you are one of those.

  Affectionately always

  Willa Cather

  TO MARY AUSTIN

  November 9 [1927]

  New York City

  My Dear Mrs. Austin:

  I did not mean to put the burden of a letter upon you, but I can’t help being glad that you wrote me. I am staying at the Grosvenor, 35 Fifth Avenue for a few weeks, as just now I am utterly homeless! I had to give up the apartment on Bank street, which I loved and where I had been for fifteen years, because the new subway was (and is!) building a station almost under the very house I lived in. Last winter was wrecked by the noise, for both Miss Lewis and me, and the construction will go on for years. Nothing for it but to get out,—and all our goods are now in storage. We have not taken a new place because we want to go abroad for a few months early in the spring, while we are not paying rent. I am going out to Nebraska to spend Thanksgiving with my father and mother, but I shall be here when you come on in January. I hate these wasted, broken‑up interludes in life. I never manage to have much fun in them. You’re awfully mistaken if you think life doesn’t get all messed up for me, too! There are just occasional intervals when I can make things run smoothly and snatch a piece of work out of the temporary calm.

  I shall look forward eagerly to your article in The World Tomorrow. This book is just one too many for the poor reviewers. They complain about it, and say “it is almost impossible to classify this book”, as if I had put over something unfair on them. They feel so bitterly because Knopf cal
ls it a novel; I, myself, wanted merely to call it a narrative. I’m not sure that I know just what a novel is, and I’m not sure that the reviewers do. However, none of these things really matter. Enthusiastic reviewers may help a book along at the start; but after the first year or so, a book, like an individual, has nothing but its own vitality to carry it.

  Dear Mrs. Austin, I do believe that a few months in New York will benefit you more than all the doctors in the world. You are the sort of person who needs solitude, but for that very reason you need to be lost among people and crowds for a part of every year. If only because you’ll be so glad to find yourself again!

  If ardent good wishes could help you over this trying time, mine would do so. But I’ve a feeling that hideous, resounding New York will help you.