The Selected Letters of Willa Cather Read online

  TO MARIEL GERE

  July 16, 1891

  Red Cloud

  My Dear Mariel,—

  What power on earth, or rather under it, tempted you to purchase that abominible Sappho [1884 novel by Alphonse Daudet]! I had fallen into that trap myself once,—the name of the book is both innocent and classic—and honestly wished to save you the pain which it gave me. So you see you thwarted the one Christian effort of my life.

  Kit [Katherine Weston] persisted in leaving Monday, and we really did not get time to write the combination letter, then you know Kit’s attitude toward the Pounds is not any too amorous. Say, you should have seen Kit and Mr. Myres, they just set me in the background completely, Kit went to church twice on Sunday to hear him and they just had raptures over each other when he called, you may know they found each other interesting as he stayed 4 hours. If ever you meet Katherine again, you will he[a]r a learned and scholarly, not to say enthusiastic, dissertation apon Prof [Ebenezer] Hunt and Mr. Myres.

  I feel awfully lonesome since all you fellows are gone, and am consoling myself with French History, Gorge Eliot, and endless rides over the prairie.

  Kit and I spent Sunday evening with Mrs. Garber. James McDonald still makes night hideous by wailing for Lincoln and Louise [Pound], he has kissed the combination photo until her face is almost obliterated, he does all the caressing on her side, I wonder if the one at North Platte [Nebraska] is not almost in the same condition by this time. By the way you must go down and demand one of those photos. Jim never said what I was afraid he would to Kit at all, he never noticed it.

  Just got a letter from Katherine stating that she had lent Sappho to a good, church going maiden in Beatrice [Nebraska]! the abandoned wretch! how could she do it, I at least try to warn others from those pitfalls which I have digged for mine own feet.—Now, I flatter myself that sounds very biblical.—Why on earth didn’t you ask me for a book to read on the train I forgot to give you one, it was a beastly shame! You left Mr. Kenyon’s Coulter [probably a college textbook] here, shall I send it or bring it up in the fall?

  Kit and I drove a good deal, and I continued to punctuate my effusions with the whip apon the horses back, until the poor creature presents a most startling figure of one vast “homogeneous amalgamation of a hetrogeneous mass” of comas, periods, colons, semicolons, and—as our discussions were generally very rapturous—of many exclamation points. I know you will indeed rejoice to hear that the Cather family have a new lap spread!

  I have been working on some frogs all morning for the purpose of getting some information concerning their circulatory systems. Both they and myself are rather tired now, so I think I shall kill the little fellows, and quit for the day. I don’t know by what method to advise you to move your cruel mamma, but if she remains inexorable, could you not get on the good side of the “devils” down in the Journal office, and make a table on some friendly “hell box,”—are you “on” to newspaper slang, or rather technicalities?—the roar of the press would drown your victim’s cries so nicely, and their blood and thunder are so appropriate in a newspaper office.

  Yours

  Willa Cather

  In the fall of 1891, Cather helped create a short-lived college magazine, the Lasso, with classmates Louise Pound and James MacDonald. Soon after its demise, she began working on the well-established campus literary magazine the Hesperian.

  TO MARIEL CLAPHAM GERE

  [October 1891?]

  Dear Mrs Gere,—

  I send you the first copy of “The Lasso”, which has been issued to any one. I suppose you will be somewhat interested in this latest “lark” of mine, as it is rather a dareing one, so not having leisure to come up my self this evening, I send you my private copy of the new venture.

  I would like to have told you of the plan some time ago, but it was found necessary for a time to keep the affair absolutely secret; and even now Louise and I shall keep our connection with it some what quiet. I have taken the liberty to mark my articles * in this copy I send you.

  Hopeing for your approval in this “our” new hazzard, and sure of your support, I remain

  Yours Truly

  Willa Cather

  TO MARIEL GERE

  Miss Mariel Gere

  is

  Cordially Invited

  to

  Be Present

  at

  An Informal Feed

  To be held at the Crypt of

  Wm. Cather Jr.

  Nov 26

  1891

  Seven O’clock Be there

  As evidenced in the following letters, Cather’s affection for classmate Louise Pound was one of the most passionate attachments of her young life.

  TO LOUISE POUND

  1:30 PM [June 15, 1892]

  Lincoln

  My Dear Louise,

  I am just about half through a nasty job of packing, and the idea has suddenly occured to me that after going up to your place tonight to see your new “Worth Costume,” I did not give voice to my admiration. I dont know just why I did not, but it rather overcame me, the general effect struck me so hard that I lost track of the incidentals. I find that I have four very distinct impressions left with me; the neck, the train, the color, and what the whole affair set off. I suppose you would object to my saying that you looked very handsome last night; well it is true at any rate, and the man in the dress coat had the greenest envy that I was able to generate,—I am not sure that it is the first time he has had it.

  Just a word about that Persian poem with a name which I have forgotten how to spell [The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Edward FitzGerald]. I wanted to get some thing that I liked awfully myself, something that I liked in its self, then it would not seem so formal, and so like carting merchandise up to your house. I thought of sets and sets, Ruskin etc. but, well, sets are sets. Then I thought of that Rubyat, I have liked it thing ever since I was a kid, and they are not so beastly common as every thing else, and I got awfully smitten with the illustrations [by Elihu Vedder], they are so queer, unlike any one else, and that swirl he brings in so often is a great idea if you take the note’s explanation of it. I dont know of any thing that has the horror and mystery of the whole thing so strongly as those whirling curves. I got that instead of any other or others because I just loved the book through and through as much as it is possible to love another persons work, and because of that I felt more of a right to inflict it upon you, see?

  I was rather a bore tonight, or rather last night now, wasn’t I? Well, I could not help thinking that it was the last time I should see you for some time, and it affected me rather strangely. If I had known how queer it would make me feel I would not have gone up to your house. I suppose you did not feel just as I did because I was only one out of a great many who was going away while Miss [Minnie] DePue and the Deputy Governor and all the rest will be on deck so that one gone wont make much difference with you. I did feel queer, I did’nt know it had gotten such a hold on me, I shook myself after I got away, but it did’nt alter the facts of the case any. I wanted very much to ask you to go through the customary goodbye formality, but I thought it might disgust you a little so I did’nt. It was so queer that I should want to, when three years ago I had never seen you, and I suppose in three years more—but I dont like to think of that, three years have’nt any right to make any difference and of course they will, and I suppose we will laugh at it all some day as other women do, it make[s] me feel horribly to think of that, it will be worse than if we should hate each other. It is manifestly unfair that “feminine friendships” should be unnatural, I agree with Miss De Pue that far.

  I did’nt congratulate you today because I did not know what to say, I care more for what you will do than for what you have done. I want for you in every channel just about the best that life has to give, thats all.

  This epistle is infinitly sillier than one I tore up last March and did not send you, but I am tired and just have’nt physical energy enough to tear it, so you will h
ave to pardon my “frame of mind,” and lay it all to the weather.

  Yours

  William

  I suppose you will get this in bed, for goodness sake dont let Tude [Olivia Pound] look over your shoulder.

  Save that Union photo, please

  TO MARIEL GERE

  June 1, 1893

  Red Cloud

  Dear Mariel—

  —I declare I don’t know whether your name is spelled with an e or an a—I am awfully sorry that I did not get up to bid you good bye before I left, but I got a telegram asking me to hurry home as my grandma was very ill. She is much better now but is still quite weak. All the other folks are well but James who has the measels at present. Elsie is a little beauty and is as cunning as she can be. The funniest thing she has yet perpetrated is that she persists in calling Louise “WILLWESE” and talks continually about “Willie and Willwese.” It is hard on poor Louise to be called a form of the name she detests. You know the fact that I lack a decent first name is a great trial to her, and strange to say she wont call me “Love”—not in public, at any rate.

  It has been very dry down here, and every one has been talking about rain. Mamma told Elsie that God made the rain. Yesterday Mr. McNitt had his two lawn sprinklers going for the first time this year. Elsie came running in screaming, “O Willie! come quick and see, there are two little Gods out in McNitt’s yard just raining away like everything.”

  Please write and tell me Mariel when you will return from Chicago and if you think you and the girls could come down and endure the solitude of semi-barbarism some time this summer. We live in rather primative style you know, but no more so than you did in the Black Hills I suppose. And the children wont bother you any more than the insects you had to contend with in camp.

  Say Mariel, you have that “Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward” business [book by the prolific author], have’nt you? Just send it down some time if you think of it. Louise wants to look over it once more when she comes down and see if she thinks the person who wrote it is necessarily the hardened villain she thought her two years ago.

  Mrs. Wiener is very much better. Mrs. Garber as jolly as ever.

  All the folks send love and Jim sends his regards to “those Gere boys” as he calls Ned [Ellen] and Frances. Tell Ned to telegraph me if she flunks in Latin.

  W. Cather

  I am forced to direct this Miss M— Gere, as I dont know how to spell your name

  TO MARIEL GERE

  August 1, 1893

  Red Cloud

  My Dear Mariel,

  I have not written to you before because I have been away. After Louise left I was lonesome and weary of life so I went westward and sojourned some days in the country.

  Well, I will begin at the beginning. The day before Louise came I bribed James for the sum of two nickles and a bottle of pop to go out in the country and stay in order that he might not bother the young lady. I was determined that she should not suffer what you girls had endured. James, being greatly in need of funds, went, but I, alas, forgot to specify how long he must remain away, and the very next evening he ran away from Papa and begged a ride of a farmer who was coming to town and dashed in on the newly arrived. They got on much better than I expected, but you know Jim is disposed to be affectionate, and the young lady is not used to children and used to positively blush under his caresses. He made brakes (or is it breaks?) as usual. Imagine my horror when one morning at breakfast he cooly said, “I say, Louise, they’ve got some mighty nice chocolate drops downtown, suppose you set ’em up to me, Ned did.” So she set ’em up. He liked her pretty well, but he struck the same ice that I have been three years getting through. He declares that “Louise is not as good as Ned’s little finger.” Tell Ned I have a lasting grudge against that little finger, though I am tremendously fond of the rest of her. For me the visit was all to short, just enough to make me feel the need again and then lose her.

  I wish you could have been out in the country with Roscoe and myself. When you come down next summer we will drive you all up to Bladen [Nebraska] for we find that the drive can be made in one day though it is some what tedious. We will treat you to Bladen ice cream and if you survive that you will be good fellows.

  We spent several days at my uncle’s [George Cather], who lives in a small colony of Virginians who came out here overland ages ago about the time of the creation. They are a clannish set and hang together. They have the usual country “Literary” on a somewhat better scale than it is usually carried on. My aunt [Frances Smith Cather, or Franc], who is a graduate of Smith’s and Mt. Holyoak is at the head of it and surely does her share in distributing manna in the wilderness. Roscoe and I went to one of their meetings and it was really quite endurable, except a great deal of singing by a young lady who could not sing. You see the meeting was at the fair damsel’s house, so it was her great and only chance to go on the programme as often as she wished, and she sang twelve times not counting encores. Yes, positively she sang a song or rather warbled after every number on the programme. All the while that file-like voice grated on her mother stood in the doorway gazing on her with fond pride. The twelfth song had a refrain beginning “Pray does this music charm thy heart?” which, considering the universal disgust was a some what delicate question. The programmes were all printed in the paper and the fond mother bought fifty papers and sent them to all her friends “back east” to let them know what a talented daughter she posessed. The author under discussion that night was [Ralph Waldo] Emmerson, and I think the hayseeds understand transcendentalism about as well as most university students, some of them better. By the way I must tell you about that aunt of mine some time, she is one of the ugliest, smartest, and most eccentric of human kind,—they say I am like her in ugliness and eccentricity.

  One of our favorite amusements out there was sitting on top of the fifty foot wind mill tower at night. It was great on calm evenings. We could see for miles and miles, see “right off the edge of the world” as Ross said. The red harvest moon, swollen with plenty, rose over the lagoons and wheat fields, not very clear at first, but fleecy and cloud girt, as though timid of her own richness and fullness. But in an hour or so, when she felt the full zest of her race and the strength of her serenity, she left the vapors behind her. As soon as she was up, the little ponds all over the country began to glimmer, and the corn tassels in all those forests of corn looked white as silver. We could see the windmills and groves of cottonwoods all over the country as plainly as in day light. Moonlight has a peculiar effect on a country; it obliterates what is ugly, softens what is harsh,—and what is beautiful it raises almost to the divine and supernatural.

  But the greatest thing we saw from that mill tower was the coming of a storm. The moon did not show herself at all, there was a long black bank of clouds in the west, and the lightening kept playing along it as steady as the fire of a battery. The world seemed to get ready for a storm; the cattle all huddled together in one end of the corall, the corn leaves got restless and began to toss their long blades up as if to reach for rain. In a moment the big wind struck us, just such a wind as struck Roscoe and the girls out by the brick kiln, and we fifty feet up in the air on a four-foot platform! Roscoe howled, “Off with your skirts, Willie or we’ll never get down” you bet I peeled them off, all but a little light one. The descent was something awful, the tower shook and we shook, the wind hummed and sang and whirled all about us, if it had not been for Rosses grip on me I believe I should have fallen. My hands are still blistered from the way I hung to the rounds of the ladder.

  Roscoe is out on the farm making hay now. When he comes in he and I are going to have a pull up the river and brave the horror of that accursed island again, “Ora pro nobis!” [“Pray for us!”] Poor Jack has been awfully sick. All the babys around here have been dying and Mamma has been pretty badly scared about him.

  The world goes on as usual here. The elephant, Lora, still jumps the fence, “Winning Card” still paces the side walk attended by master
and mistress, “Chew Spear Head Plug” still burns before us in letters of living light as a guide to our youth and innocence. We were deprived of cream for some days after you left, using it all to annoint Roscoe’s back which was one large blister as a result of an unfortunate swimming expedition. The poor lad lay for two days on his stomach reading Ebar’s [Georg Ebers] “Egyptian Princess” in sore travil of back and spirit.

  Mother sends her regards and says she was very much pleased to get your letter, but she is too busy with Jaques to answer it at present. Roscoe sends his regards also, and James his “affectionate regards.” Neddins is the one Jim singled out upon whom to bestow his worthless and oppressive affections, though he feels that he must show proper regard for Frances because of certain mysteries connected with his beehive bank.

  I am afraid I must spend the rest of the summer at home and in the country. I want to get some more air and level, and write a little nonsense. I hope I can get up awhile before school begins, and if convenient I should like very much to spend part of that time with you. Give my love to all your folks, and if you meet a certain blond haired maiden gaze on her tenderly for my sake. I am eager to be back to my work, you see there has been a whole summer of DePue and it has left its mark. But DePue will marry this winter, and you know what that means, it means victory! I have won the ground from under her inch by inch, and that marriage of hers will be my coronation. You see when she is gone I will be first, and I will keep my place, if honor and watchfullness can keep it. Heaven help the Greek and Latin in this year’s warfare; you see it is a fight in which so much time must be spent in doing nothing gracefully and patiently.