by Willa Cather
I hate to bother you about this, but you see I promised the young man (he is twenty-nine, but he seems about nineteen) that I would show you and Alfred his book, and I have to keep my word. Alfred wrote me a nice letter to send him and I don’t feel that I am imposing on you greatly when I ask you for one, because I think you will really enjoy running through the book some evening. Please return the two press cuttings and mail the volume back to me when you have looked it over.
Faithfully yours,
W.S.C.
On second thought I decide to enclose a letter in which Stephen comments on, and explains, the book himself. Please return it to me. All his letters are illustrated like this—he does them at top speed—in a few minutes.
Tennant’s book, Leaves from a Missionary’s Notebook, was never published in the United States.
TO MARGARET AND ELIZABETH CATHER
January 24, 1938
My darling Twinnies:
I must tell you how splendidly the moving pictures that Edith took at Grand Manan came out. We have no projector, but we took Hephzibah and Yaltah Menuhin into a kodak shop and had them run off. They were perfectly splendid of you, and even of me! And the woods and water were grand. Yehudi was away on tour, but he wants to see them before he sails, because the girls gave him such a good account of them. If there is such a thing as a good projector in Colusa, we will mail the films to you sometime and then you can show your father and mother just what Grand Manan is like.
The champagne that I like best is Louis Roederer and 1929 is a grand year, also 1926 is very fine. I am having a busy life these days, for when Yehudi is in town the girls and I usually walk with him, and when he is away on tour we walk without him, and also go to the art galleries. Last Thursday night we had a grand Opera party; Yehudi took his two sisters, Edith and me to hear Lohengrin. On January 29th we have another opera party to hear Tristan and Isolde. [Written in the margin next to above paragraph:] If you listen in on Saturday you can here it too! Afternoon performance will be evening with you, will it not?
Anything about my doings with the Menuhins is confidential, my dears, I know you understand that. People are always trying to make themselves important by using their name. I think you know that it is because they are such beautiful and good human beings that I love them, and not because they are “celebrities.” Yehudi happens to be the kindest and noblest human being I have ever happened to know at close range, and to me his nature is more interesting and beautiful than his talent. Of course, I am forced to believe that in his case a great talent and a lofty nature are one; neither could exist without the other. We had a wonderful walk round the reservoir one day last week when the thermometer was only eight above zero and the wind very keen. After an hour and a half out there we were so warm and jolly that we none of us wanted to go in, and were late for lunch.
Your tactful Aunt Jessie tried to crowd herself in on the Menuhins when they were in Los Angeles. She wrote the father [Moshe Menuhin] a letter that she must see him in order to send a message to me (ME!) since he was going to New York!!! Little did the lady know that I had many times warned both the mother and father that they must never receive any relative of mine whom I had not asked them to receive. I am not going to have this family tormented simply because they have been nice to me. It is a measure of Aunt Jessie’s intelligence that she could think she might put such a dodge through.
Now my dears, forgive me for getting in a temper about Aunt Jessie. Good-by and heaps of love to you all.
Your devoted
Aunt Willie
[Enclosed and written on a page from Book Week for January 8, 1938, with a column by Sinclair Lewis praising Cather’s work:] I’ve never met Lewis but twice, yet he’s always doing these “big brother” acts for me. Nice and friendly of him.
TO HENRY SEIDEL CANBY
March 2, 1938
My dear Mr. Canby:
I am just back in town after a long absence, and hasten to reply to your letter. Of course, you have my permission to keep my name in the P.E.N. Club through 1939, if it will oblige you. I warn you, I shall be on the other side of the world in 1939, and as for the “distinguished group” which you propose to bring over, I had rather they stayed at home and wrote something interesting! I do not believe you could look me in the eye and tell me that you think all this getting together and talking with the mouth, has anything but a bad effect on writers. I wonder, indeed, whether it has anything but a bad effect on human beings in general? I wish the Tower of Babel would happen all over again.
Now, another thing: I want to thank you for your review of Katharine Anthony’s book on Miss Alcott [titled Louisa May Alcott]. I see the Freud fanatics are getting on your nerves, as they are on mine. It happened that my old friend Mrs. James T. Fields, born a May, was a cousin of Louisa May Alcott. Several years before she died, Mrs. Fields asked me to destroy a great number of more-or-less family letters, which she did not wish to leave among her drawers-full of correspondence. There were a great many from Miss Alcott, who used often to come for long New England visits at her cousin’s house. Anything more lively and “pleasant” and matronly you could not imagine. She was often a good deal fussed about money, because, apparently, she was practically the only earning member of the family. You know the tone and conversation of the warm-hearted distinctly “pleasant” New England woman. The later letters showed her warm pleasure in “getting on” with her work and earning money that was so much needed. If the “naked bodies” of the men she nursed in her hospital experience left any “wound”, it was certainly not perceptible to her relatives, or in her letters—or in her very jolly books, as I remember them. Catherine the Great might be called fair game for Miss Anthony’s obsession, but certainly that warm-hearted and very practical New England spinster was not. I wish now that those letters to Mrs. Fields had not been destroyed. All these remarks, of course, are entirely confidential and are meant for you and Mrs. [Marion] Canby alone, but the tone of your review is so right that I want to add my hearty word of confirmation.
I am going to write to Mrs. Canby very soon, and I hope that we three can get together again before this almost-gone winter is over.
With my warmest greetings to you both,
Willa Cather
Both of Roscoe’s twin daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth, were married in 1938.
TO ROSCOE CATHER
March 26 [1938]
My Dear Boy;
Oh, they are all headed for matrimony, I can see it! You and Meta had better adopt me, I wont go back on you.
Please take your motor trip. Go to Tuscon, and go out to the very old mission of St. Xavier del Bac, go again and again. It’s about the loveliest thing on this side of the Atlantic. It’s Franciscan—read up a little on St. Francis. Everything about the place is lovely
I’ll write you about the Lake Placid plan later. Edith Lewis is a Delta Gamma, and greets her “sister in the Bonds”
Hastily
W.
Cather often took a keen interest when her work was being translated into French, as it was a language she knew well.
TO ALFRED A. KNOPF
April 19, 1938
My dear Alfred:
You will see by reading the enclosed letters from Madame [Marguerite] Yourcenar (the first written before she came to see me, the second afterward), that our interview greatly cooled her enthusiasm.
1. Unfortunately, Madame Yourcenar made her translation from the Tauchnitz edition [in English, though published in Germany], which contains many errors. She was no farther away than New Haven; had she applied to either you or me, a recent and corrected edition would have been sent her promptly.
2. Madame Yourcenar has never been in the Southwest at all, and seems to have no conception of how very different that country is from any other part of the United States. She has not informed herself about its people or customs—which, after all, are today very much as they were in Archbishop Lamy’s time. In so far as that country and people are conc
erned, her mind is an utter blank. Yet she says that there are some descriptive passages in the book (I don’t know how many) which she must “paraphrase.” How can one paraphrase descriptions of a landscape which one has never seen, or even informed oneself about? You will notice she speaks of these passages as descriptions of “American landscape”; as you know, it is Mexican landscape, not “American”.
3. Madame Yourcenar further told me that it would be impossible to use in her translation the local names of things—i.e., nouns such as burro, mesa, adobe (both a noun and adjective), casa, arroyo, hacienda, etc., etc. These words were, of course, originally Spanish, but they are now common words everywhere in the southwest. All the American farmers and railroad workmen use them without knowing that they are Spanish. There are simply no other names for these things. You cannot call an arroyo a ditch or a ravine.
4. I had of course thought that Madame Yourcenar would do what all the other translators of this book have done—simply employ these native words as they are used in my text. She declared that this was impossible, as the use of foreign words was very objectionable to the French taste and, moreover, they would not be understood by French readers. Explanatory footnotes, she said, were very objectionable to a French audience, and in such bad taste that she could not use them. I reminded her that the pages of Carmen [by Prosper Mérimée] are peppered with Spanish words, and whole sentences in the Gypsy language which are translated in footnotes. This is equally true of Colomba [also by Mérimée]. She said this would merely make a book look old fashioned, and with great decision dismissed the suggestion. She consented to use the word pueblo in her translation, but would promise nothing further.
5. Since my meeting with Madame Yourcenar I have been running through the very excellent Italian translation made by Alessandra Scalero, and I find that in every instance she uses the New Mexican nouns and adjectives, those I have listed above in paragraph 3 and many others, exactly as I used them myself. The only difference being that she puts all these foreign words, even such simple ones as “poker,” “rancheros” and “hacienda”, in italic. She has very clear and enlightening footnotes on such words as “trapper,” “gringo,” and very short footnotes telling clearly what a “mesa” is, a “hogan,” “wampum,” etc. The Italian translation clearly and faithfully reproduces the English text of the book.
6. Now we will get to the heart of the matter. Madama Yourcenar feels that this book accurately translated would not make, as she says, “beautiful French”. I have every admiration for the writer who wishes to write his own language beautifully, and I am afraid she has chosen a book which is not suited to the kind of French she wishes to write. My apprehensions have to do with:
First, her absolute refusal to make use of the local New Mexican-Spanish words for which there are no English or French equivalents.
Second, the fact that she wishes to paraphrase the passages describing a country which she has never seen and about which she has read very little.
Paraphrasing in this case would certainly be improvising. And how many improvisions, one would like to know? Madama Yourcenar told me that some of these words were “not in the dictionary”. I find very clear definitions of the several she mentioned in the unabridged Webster’s Dictionary, published 1935.
After going through the Italian translation and seeing how possible it is to make a faithful translation, I think it is not unreasonable in me to ask that I should be allowed to see proofs of Madama Yourcenar’s translation before it is published.
Excuse this long letter.
Faithfully yours,
Willa Cather
Douglass Cather died suddenly in June 1938, at the age of fifty-eight.
TO ELSIE CATHER
June 21, 1938
My darling Sister:
There is nothing I can say—nothing I can say at all. When Edith told me she had bad news for me, I thought of almost every one in the family—except Douglass. Nothing in my life has ever hit me so hard. Father’s death and Mother’s seemed natural. They had lived out their lives, but this seems unnatural altogether, and I cannot get used to it or feel reconciled to it. Anyone so full of the joy of life, and so full of energy and hope—no, I can’t seem to accept it at all. A good deal of the time I cannot believe it’s true.
One thing I do feel humbly grateful for, that it was so quick, that he died without the consciousness of dying.
I hoped that you would not undertake the long journey to California, that you would feel reconciled to remember him as you saw him last, but I did not write or wire you because I think in such matters one has to decide for oneself.
I was grateful to Roscoe for letting me know the hour of the service. Since it took place at two o’clock there, it was six o’clock here. I wanted to spend that hour in a church, but was unable to find any Episcopalian Church which would be open at that hour. They close at six. So I went to the Church of the Dominican Fathers, which is only a few blocks from this house and where I have quite often gone for service. The Catholics seem to be the only people who realize that in this world grief goes on all night, as well as all day, and they have a place for it to hide away and be quiet.
Now, my dear, for your sake and for mine, do not try to write me about your trip out there or about the services, or very much about the family meeting. It would be too hard on you to write, and on me to read. We are, both of us, so deeply torn and moved by such things, and I do not want to ask you to go through the ordeal of writing to me. It will only make the wound bleed again—I mean bleed afresh. It will always be there for both of us, that wound. Nothing that has ever happened to me has hurt me or discouraged me like this.
Willie
TO ROSCOE CATHER
June 29, 1938
My dear Roscoe:
I can be of little help to you, but I think there are some things which I should confide to you.
1. I am enclosing a letter from Mary Virginia [Auld Mellen]. Please read marked passage. Neither Edith nor I can remember that Douglass said anything about a will on that occasion. The three of us were laughing and talking here together, and it is very possible that he may have said something that neither Edith nor I caught. Mary Virginia must have heard him make some such statement—she would not lie, but neither Edith nor I heard it. He might have said some such thing merely as a figure of speech—to illustrate the fact that he had been really worried. But in quoting a man who can no longer speak for himself, I must state exactly what I remember hearing him say and what I do not remember.
2. Douglass asked me to go down with him to Tiffany’s to select a present for Miss Rogers—he had already been there himself. He took me to a show case full of bracelets, but they all happened to be extraordinarily ugly. There really was not a very pretty bracelet in the place. I noticed, however, a case full of really beautiful rings—not the awfully expensive kind—prettily blended stones and lovely settings. I said quite innocently, “Why not get a ring?”—I really was not pumping him; I am a poor detective. But he shut one eye and screwed up his face a little and said, “No, no, that’s a little too, too pointed.” I laughed and said, “Oh, you mean decisive.” “That’s it,” he replied, and I laughed and said, “same old fox”, which seemed rather to please him. For the two summers when I saw a good deal of Miss Rogers at the sanitarium, I honestly saw nothing objectionable about her. She was competent at her job, not stupid, had good manners and was more attractive than Douglass’ other girls. (Wait till you see the Edith to whom he made a bequest!) Douglass was rushing Miss Rogers pretty hard, and she admired him very much. His lovely way with his mother was enough to win any woman’s heart. He told me, when he said good-bye to me the spring before Mother died, that he thought he might marry Miss Rogers, and I told him I could see nothing against it.
Now, six or seven years of courtship is pretty hard on any young woman who has to make her own living. I think she lost her position at Las Encinas because there was “talk”, owing to Douglass. When I knew her I certain
ly believe that she was no “gold digger”, but she was like any other girl who has found the man she wants (I should say loves, not “wants”) and tries to make him believe she can make him happy. In the six or seven years which have elapsed since I first knew her and used to take long trips with the two of them, she may have deteriorated very much. That constant demand for sympathy and affection-which-gets-nowhere, is very hard on a young woman. Her position now is certainly much worse in every way than when she first knew Douglass. She has lost several positions, has been “talked about”, has passed from the twenties into the thirties, which is against her professionally and matrimonially. I hope he was very generous to her during his lifetime, for the bequest in his will seems to me insufficient recognition. During the years when Jessica and Elsie were giving him lots of perplexity (these seem to be the two persons most offended), Miss Rogers was giving him the kind of companionship and sympathy he liked. If Douglass was very generous to her, I am glad. She did more than any of us to make him comfortable. I think we ought to look at the matter as human beings. How would you like one of your daughters to be played with like that, always expecting to be married next year? I am enclosing a letter from Elsie which needs no comment. When I knew Miss Rogers, she was a nice, straight girl, and she believed altogether in Douglass’ affection—which was undoubtedly real affection,—though it led nowhere for her.
3. Now there is something I hate to tell you, and yet I feel I ought to. In every letter that Jim has written me since he left Kearney and joined Douglass, there has been a strong taint of disloyalty—except in the last letter, written after Douglass was dead. At first and for years after, he was always complaining that Douglass had given him a few hundred dollars to throw sand in his eyes and cheat him out of his share of FATHER’S ESTATE—which he seemed to think very large indeed! I wrote trying to reassure him, telling him I would give Douglass the management of my own savings at any moment. Secondly, all his later letters—there were not many, he wrote about twice a year—were full of complaints of his being held down and made a mere hired man, when he knew as much about the oil business as anybody. He said repeatedly that the oil business required no knowledge, no intelligence of any kind. It was pure luck, and he intended to play around with the little fellows, the under-dogs who had not had the luck of Douglass and his partners.
