by Willa Cather
W.S.C.
Cather’s twin nieces made a second visit to Grand Manan in the summer of 1937.
TO MARGARET AND ELIZABETH CATHER
Tuesday [August 1937?]
My Darling Twinnies;
Yesterday a wild north-easter—wish you could have seen it. Bitter cold, and breakers of black water pounding up on the Giants’ Graves under a very low black-gray sky. Today, fair and dreamy—all off on boat trips.
I finished the autographs on Friday morning and sent them over to Eastport by special messenger (Ralph!) on Saturday boat. He bore himself like a King’s messenger! Hadn’t been to Eastport for years. We left the box in back hall, he came for it at six a.m. bore it off without waking us. Took it on boat as personal baggage, got it through American customs, drove in a taxi to express office at the far end of Eastport, got it on the train for Boston. Such a proud man he was. Happy thought: if I take Ralph for my island secretary, then perhaps we may have Willie [Thomas] for gardener?
Willie went for Miss [Sarah] Jacobus to cut the alder thickets on the Dimple Downs with his double-edged ax. Ax rebounded from a dead alder and cut his knee to the bone. He walked home but was unable to work for some days—lost blood, of course, and such dirty clothes rubbing it as he walked home! Inflammation gone, however, and the wound has healed.
I was almost as much disappointed as you, my dears, about your being shut out of the comfortable Frontenac. I didn’t realize that after prohibition it would be crowded. I should have written the management two weeks before you went away, and demanded rooms as a personal favor. Ah, I wish you could see Quebec in Winter!
I am sending a very interesting book on G. Manan on to Colusa. My hand is still stiff, as you can see—autographing didn’t do it any good. I must get a note off to Stephen [Tennant] who cabled yesterday from Aix-les-Bains to know where I am and whether I am ill. So now I must stop this letter. Everyone misses you, my dear children, but no one misses you so much as I do.
Your very loving aunt.
P.S. Oh delight! Yesterday Miss Bonnell telephoned Gannet Light [Gannet Rock Lighthouse] keeper to ask if she might come to spend night first fair day. Keeper replied his wife away on visit for two weeks, and he was afraid Government Inspectors would not approve Bonnell’s visit! These are the actual facts. She had engaged motor boat.
TO ZOË AKINS
October 28 [1937?]
My Very Dear Zoë;
The book [The Hills Grow Smaller: Poems] came, some days after your letter. If the gracious inscription on the front page is true, I thank God for it—and your own generous mind. I read the book through in bed, after tea, which is an hour I save for things I really want to read. If I told you I liked it as much as I like your first book of verse written long ago, you’d know I was lying. For you yourself know it’s not so good. It’s not so singing. The lyric–––something isn’t here. Single lines don’t echo and stay in one’s mind just because they somehow had the rhythm one’s heart had then. You’ve gone and got thoughtful, as Edna Millay has! You’ve grown wiser in almost every way, my dear, but wisdom doesn’t seem to have much to do with Poetry.
Yes, you’ve grown wiser in every way except in the matter of self-protection. You will give the people who hate you a chance to vent their spite. I hope you won’t offer a new play in New York this season. Is there no place to put on plays except New York or some place where New York press men are taken thither by force? You’ll never get a fair showing from them—your plays are not the kind they like. You’re a romantic, and your hue is not the wear just now. The young men who “cover the theatre” have a grudge—and I’m afraid you have played into their hands a little. You have been indiscreet enough to write articles or letters to the paper explaining yourself—which always means defending oneself. The safe thing would be to present a hard and stony face to critics, not to take them into your confidence—and that is what you do when you reply to them. I, too, have my haters—they go for me every time they can; Messers [John] Chamberlain, [Lionel] Trilling, Kronborg [presumably Louis Kronenberger], Kaysmere [possibly Alfred Kazin?]—oh there are a lot of them. If ever I replied to them, or wrote articles setting forth my views and defending the kind of “art” I believe in, I think even Alfred Knopf would soon be trying to pass this brick along to another publisher, for he would come in for some of the ridicule. The nearest I have come to such a break was that article on Miss Jewett in Not Under Forty. It wasn’t a near break, (I may as well be truthful) it was a whole break. Nearly a hundred furious letters, and sly digs from the press generally, have shown me how foolish it is to make public a credo—one’s articles of faith ought to be the most protected of one’s secrets. Some of these horrid New York University graduates, all with foreign names and more foreign manners, had been publishing some of the most horrid articles about her and about “sex-starvation” in New England writers generally. Provincial ladies and lady-like men. It made me angry and I broke out. Silly performance. Now I have learned that if one is consistently silent where one’s own self is concerned, one must be silent when one’s friends are attacked. They reflect one’s point of view, one’s admirations—to speak for them is, in a manner, to speak for one’s self.
With you the case is more serious than with me. New York book reviewers have very little influence outside New York. Those in the “New Republic” and the “Nation” have, I suppose, but I really don’t care. The theatrical first night reviews are read everywhere by the small city Sunday editors and repeated—in print. I may be wrong, but I feel you ought not to bring out a new play here for a year or two. You don’t have to—so why not keep out from under the ax? Of course, if you show this letter to George [a mistake for Eugene?] O’Neill or any other theatrical persons, they’ll tell you it’s all nonsense. But they would be letting themselves off easy, and I am telling you an unpleasant truth—never an easy or pleasant thing to do. The New York theatrical writers have a grudge, have it in for you. Since you are certainly prosperous and don’t have to submit to punishment, why do you? A book, if it’s universally damned as the “Archbishop” was, can go quietly on and sell its five hundred thousand and keep selling. But a play can’t go quietly on by itself. There’s a big overhead. It can be kicked of[f] the stage and buried in a week—a night, for that matter.
My dear Zoë, I’ll put you on your honor to show this letter to no one. In preaching discretion to you, I’ve been indiscreet myself. I’ve been to honest because I want to save you pain, and because I feel it must be better for your reputation on the Pacific coast not to have these knocks coming back from New York. I’ve been thinking for a year about writing this letter. If a friend knows you’re up against a clique of prejudice and spite, it’s that friend’s business to tell you so, even if it is a mighty unpleasant job. As for the letter (now it’s written), read it, destroy it, forget it if it is painful. And let the next Willy-boy actor or Russian Prince you talk to persuade you that every play you write will have a fair greeting by the New York Press.
Now I’m tired, my dear, and must say goodnight.
Your True though Tactless friend
W.S.C.
TO ZOË AKINS
[Written in the top margin:] I remember your room at the Ritz was full of your own garden flowers
November 8 [1937]
Dearest Zoe;
The flowers reached me three days ago, and tonight they are as fresh as if they had just come out of your garden. And how did you know that I especially love the leaves and the balls of the eucalyptus tree? Do send me some of the balls or nutlets in late November. They keep fragrant all the winter through.
I hope these white flowers mean forgiveness, Zoë. I doubt if I had a right to write you as I did. Maybe you don’t mind being pummelled by a lot of New Deal boys who are out to knock you! Anyway, I mind it for you. Chiefly because it’s a frame-up, and I doubt if you could get a newspaper notice that was not a foregone conclusion.
I’m afraid my way of saying things is a little more cra
bbed than usual. I’m working on a new book [Sapphira and the Slave Girl] which is such a pleasure to me, and God and man seem agreed that I shan’t get ahead with it. Nothing is more disturbing to me than to work with Houghton Mifflin, and I have got into their net again with the subscription complete edition. Knopf has no subscription department, and he wanted me to do this—said it had to be. It’s given me the Hell of a spring and summer, and now it’s breaking into my winter and my new book. I don’t want anything but quiet and a fairly pleasant place to write in, and to be let alone. Do you think I can get it? I’d be glad to live on a crust if I could get just that. I can’t!! Now the Goddam movies are after “Antonia”. I’m in terror for fear Houghton Mifflin may sell me out; they can, you know. Isn’t it hard luck!
Lovingly
W.
TO ELSIE CATHER
December 22 [1937]
My Precious Sister;
How kind you were to write me a lovely long letter and tell me all about the ceremony for the windows, and about the old folks at home! I don’t deserve it. But this year I tried to send cards to every one of mother’s old friends, and all those of “our crowd” at home. I did forget Mrs. Warren, but I sent one with a little note to dear Mrs. Macfarland in California.
Life has been crowded, for the Menuhins arrived only a few days before Douglass came, the mother very ill and forbidden to leave her bed, and I tried to be with the little girls (who are no longer little, but as lovely and loving as ever) until Yehudi and his father arrived from New Orleans and other Southern engagements. But I arranged so that I could be with Douglass as much as if I had no other ties, and he went to Yehudi’s first concert here—I gave him my seat, and I sat in the Menuhin’s box. I am sure he enjoyed the splendor of Carnegie Hall and the almost theatrical welcome and triumph New York gave Yehudi.
Douglass was here for my birthday dinner—poor M.V. had to work at the Library that night and could not come, and I wouldn’t ask anyone not “family”, so he and Edith and I had a wonderful evening to ourselves.
I don’t know if you know that he came on largely to see a doctor. The best heart specialist in New York pronounced his heart absolutely all right. What a relief that was to both of us. The pain in his left arm comes from some form of neuritis. Please dear use this little check for something jolly.
A merry Christmas to you, dear.
Willie
TO FERRIS GREENSLET
January [really December?] 29, 1937
New York City
My dear Ferris Greenslet:
Thank you for your letter bearing good wishes, and may I send you all possible good wishes for the coming year?
I have been a long time in replying to your letter of December 4th. I have thought your proposition over carefully and I am still, as I was when I first read your letter, strongly against any plan to make an illustrated edition of Antonia for next year, or for any other year.
Certainly, I like Grant Wood’s work, but his whole view of the West, and his experience of it, is very different from my own. Our geographical background was different. Iowa is a black-loam and heavy-clay state: too much rain and plenty of mud. In Central and Western Nebraska the soil is sandy and light, not nearly so productive as in Iowa,—that is why the farms were so much further apart. Settlers in Nebraska were seventy per cent from overseas. Foreign population in Iowa was much smaller—though there were a good many Czechs there.
Why can’t we let Antonia alone? She has gone her own way quietly and with some dignity, and neither you nor I have reason to complain of her behavior. She wasn’t played up in the first place, and surely a coming-out party, after twenty years, would be a little funny. I think it would be all wrong to dress her up and push her. We have saved her from text books, from dismemberment, from omnibuses, and now let us save her from colored illustrations. I like her just as she is.
I would, of course, be pleased if I could feel sure that the Benda illustrations will never be ripped out again, and I would be greatly gratified if one of the excellent proof-readers at the Riverside Press would run through the book and mark the broken letters and illegible words which should be replaced. In case you should ever decide to reset the book, I beg you to use just the same type and the same slightly tinted paper now used.
By the way, I think very well of a book you have recently published, but I would not dare tell you which, lest one of your enterprising young men should manage to work my name into an advertisement.
Faithfully yours,
Willa Cather
TO SINCLAIR LEWIS
January 14, 1938
New York City
My dear Lewis:
I have had a grand time reading The Prodigal Parents—all through it I had the sense of coming home again to my own people. Even the sawdust son and the detestable Sara are unmistakably American—couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Maybe it’s the fact that they are so easily taken-in that makes them seem so much our own kin. With a world-wide reputation for being smart and on-the-make, aren’t we just about the most gullible and easily taken-in of all peoples? It’s our incurable optimism and sweet trustfulness that have got us into all this mess. When this country is chock-full of solid people who always come up to the scratch without any rhetoric, like Fredk. Wm. and Hazel [Cornplow, characters in Lewis’s novel], will you tell me why we lie down and take a booting? I half believe that it’s because we can’t seriously believe evil of anyone. We don’t like to believe evil. It’s more comfortable not to believe it. We think that Stalin must have very good points, and we know Mussolini has made Italy so comfortable for tourists. I don’t believe we’ll waken up to the situation we’ve drifted into until the knife is at our throat. There are Howard Cornplows in every country, but I think in other countries they have more meanness and sharper claws than this poor dub. The reason I so enjoyed this book is, that it fairly glows with that peculiar and generally misplaced and unintelligent kindness which is so peculiarly American. (For a hundred years we have been begging all the crooks and incompetents in the world to come over to us and be happy. Well, we’ve got them). What is worse is that we’ve got their grandsons, and with the right kind of political manipulation they’ll do us all in very nicely. Anyhow, I’d rather live and die in such a silly soft-hearted country than in any other. Wouldn’t you? All the same we are in a tight fix just now, though not many of the people you meet on your lecture tour will realize it. They will tell you that “things will come out all right”, just because they always have.
Please come and have tea with me when you get back.
Your obliged
Willa Cather
TO YEHUDI MENUHIN
January 22 [1938]
My Dear Yehudi;
It is impossible to get these letters here in German. Travellers cannot carry big books about, so I send this tiny little one, which contains all the preserved letters of a young man who died at thirty-one [Franz Schubert]. They are rather heart-breaking, these letters, when one thinks of all that lay behind them. (I like to think that if you had been living in his time you would have seen what the others did not see, and would have helped him.) But put all the hardships and disappointments together in one heap, and match against it all the lovely things he made in fifteen years,—can one then say that he had an unhappy life? Being hungry wouldn’t matter much if one’s mind were blooming every day like that, would it?
Happy Birthday, dear and noble artist. God send you many years of achievement and happiness.
Your loving and grateful
Aunt Willa
Stephen Tennant, a flamboyant British artisocrat, writer, and artist, began a correspondence and friendship with Cather after reading My Mortal Enemy in 1926.
TO FERRIS GREENSLET
January 24, 1938
My dear Ferris Greenslet:
I am going to ask a favor of you and I have put it off a long time. Under another cover I am sending you a book of drawings by young Stephen Tennant, the fourth son of Baron Gle
nconner. Anne Douglas Sedgwick wrote to me some twelve years ago and asked if she might give this boy permission to write to me. Since then Stephen and I have been good friends, and two years ago he spent the winter at the Shattuck Inn in Jaffrey and gained thirty pounds. (I sent him there for a three weeks’ stay, to recover from a cold he caught on landing. He stayed there the winter, all alone with his valet.) He is a very handsome fellow, with great talent, but very frail health. I enclose with this letter two of the notices which greeted his book in England. The review by Connolly is really very discerning.
Of course, since the book has attracted attention in England and has delighted Margot Asquith, Stephen’s publishers do not see why they should not be able to export a few hundred sheets to the States. I promised Stephen that I would present his book for the consideration of the only two publishers with whom I have direct relations. I made this promise before I saw the book! He warned me that the tone was ribald. But when it arrived I saw at once that it wasn’t the kind of ribaldness that goes in America (I think myself that these sketches, done in 1929, were a natural reaction of the young man’s upbringing, which was very puritanical). Viscount Grey was a firm stepfather and his feeling about “Nature” was certainly very different from young Tennant’s; I should liked to have heard their breakfast table conversation.
You will enjoy looking through this book,—the drawings are really remarkable, you know. All I beg of you is to write me a personal letter, telling me how the book strikes you and giving me a few words of explanation as to why it would be rather impossible for an American publisher to handle this book. (Of course, if you know of any publisher who would be able to use imported sheets, I would be delighted to send the book to him.) It is difficult to explain to Stephen why, when we are so indecent in some things, we draw the line at others: certainly we simply won’t stand for any “lyrical beauty”, as Mr. Connolly calls it. We want Hemingway and words of four letters, without any perfume.
