The Selected Letters of Willa Cather Read online

  I am pretty well now, save for sundry bruises received in driving a certain fair maid over the country with one hand, sometimes, indeed, with no hand at all. But she did not seem to mind my method of driving, even when we went off banks and over hay stacks, and as for me—I drive with one hand all night in my sleep.

  You can read all of this letter to Ned and Frances except the last part, as I dont wish to corrupt them by spooniness. This is a very silly epistle on the whole, what Louise would call “soulfull,” she has broken me of writing this kind but once and awhile old tricks creep out.

  Yours

  Cather

  TO MARIEL GERE

  June 16, 1894

  Red Cloud

  My Dear Mariel;

  I arrived in this substitute for Africa in due season and found the children all togged out in their new dresses in honor of my arrival. I wish you could see the little ones this summer. Jack is just as pretty as he can be. I used to think he was a decidedly homely baby, but the charge won’t hold good this summer. Those big gray eyes and long black lashes make him quite a masher. Elsie is much better looking than she used to be, too. She is not so fat as she used to be and as cute as ever. The evening I arrived she asked me if I were going to stay all night and appearantly without conscious irony.

  Roscoe and I are reading Virgil at lightening speed. He is still wild over botany and when we are up to your place this summer we will capture that Jack-in-the-pulpit. He is busy classing and pressing flowers most of the time.

  Mr. Wiener boards over at Mrs. Garber’s now. Mrs. Garber came over yesterday and asked me to dine with them Sunday. Mr. Wiener has a new trotting horse and takes me out driving almost every after noon. As a proof of my gratitude I gave him The Heavenly Twins [a provocative 1893 novel by British feminist Sarah Grand] to read!

  We have had a little rain here and are hoping for more. Of course I want it to rain but I am rather disappointed in loseing such a good crop of suicides as dry weather would certainly have brought.

  Smile sweetly upon Edgar for me, I like the little chap immensely. I have spent the day sending all my acquaintances photographs. I send yours by this mail. You have probably already been overwhelmed by it before reading this. They are certainly the best I ever had taken. I sent one to Ally at Rising.

  Now I am writing this letter as a pretext to tell you something that I had neither nerve nor opportunity to say to you. It is not exactly a declaration of love, but of very great gratitude. I was in pretty hard straits this winter and spring. I sometimes came nearer the verge of desperation than even you knew. The fact is the thing I had been living for and in was torn away from me and it left just an aching emptiness in me. I dont think the scar will ever heal. But the fact is, if it had not been for you Mariel I never could have stuck it out in Lincoln at all. I dont believe you know quite how good and patient you were with me. I know I took an awful lot of your time, but I suppose soul-saving is a fairly respectable business, even when the soul is as worthless a one as mine, and you are certainly responsible for my pulling myself together. Of course my meeting with Miss Craigen [probably the actress Maida Craigen, who toured in Lincoln in the spring of 1894] helped me lots, but that was merely a lucky chance. It came and went like a flash and wasn’t the steady light I needed. She made me forget entirely for a little while, but you made me forget a little all the while which was much better. I told Miss Jones I never felt quite sure of Kit because she just withdrew, as it were, for about two years. Miss J— responded warmly that a friendship that could be under ground three years and then come up stronger than it was at first was a thing to be proud of. Yes, but I prefer friendships that have always kept on their pins to resurrected ones. Miss J— said Katharine practically considered me dead those two years. Kind of her! Perhaps I was, so she and the Prof. did not find the company of dead folk festive and they withdrew, but you stayed by the corpse and sort of held on to it, and the corpse in its blundering way is deeply grateful. How awfully patient you have been all these years. Patient when I raved over her grace, her beauty, her beautiful playing, her beautiful dancing! Patient and sympathetic when I was in rapture because I had accidentally touched her hand, and still patient when ever the happiness of loving her was lost to me forever. Well, I can’t thank you, I can only hope that you will never know such pain to need such a consoler. It is a good thing to love, but it don’t pay to love that hard. It makes a fool and dupe of you while you are at it, and then it must end some time and after it is taken from you the hunger for it is terrible, terrible!

  Be sure to go to Crete [Nebraska], we will have a good time there I know. Doug will come too if he can leave the farm. He is cultivating 90 acres of corn himself this year. That is pretty steep work for a little boy. I hope that old paper wont take too much of my time. I want to have leisure to knock around with the rest of you. I guess I can make time though, I generally can. Write to me if you want to. That is, dont make yourself if you dont want to.

  Yours

  Willa

  In June 1895, Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska. She remained in Nebraska for several months while trying to decide what to do next.

  TO MARIEL, ELLEN, AND FRANCES GERE; ALTHEA “ALLIE” ROBERTS; AND MARY “MAYSIE” AMES

  January 2, 1896

  Siberia [Red Cloud]

  Mariel, Ellen, Frances, Allie, and Maysie;

  My Dear Push,

  I address you thus in a bunch because I dare not address Mariel singly as I do not feel equal to discussing Love and Live and Death and Alvary [Max Alvary, a German opera star] and German opera with her by mail. My spirit is willing but my pen is weak. When I see her I will consent to talk it however. I wonder if it would diminish Mariel’s adoration to know that Alvary’s real name is Max Achenbach and that he has nine charming little Achenbachs and a Frau who weighs three hundred.

  I had a fine time in Beatrice, the fascinating Katharine is just as fascinating as ever and Bertie’s charms grow apace. He and I used to sit around and quote Ella Wheeler Wilcox until we wellnigh drove Katharine crazy. He was very nice and I dont blame Katharine for liking him, I do and he is not my brother either.

  Well, girls, I must tell you about a New Year’s dance Douglas and I went to last night. Douglas made me go, for about sixteen girls wanted and expected him to ask them and he thought it would be nice to make them all furious. He sent to Lincoln for a lot of flowers for me and so on and I really had to go with them. And of all rough-house affairs, of all cake walks! The hall was big and the floor might have been good, but they had the floor heaped with shavings and chunks of wax, chunks which you had to leap and mount and clamber over with an alpenstock. For seats they had big rough planks resting on chairs. The boys and girls had the same dressing room. The refreshments consisted of ice water in a wooden pail, coffee and ham sandwitches which they passed in a bushel basket, a potato basket. But this is only the setting, the environment, the dance was the thing! The men caught your arm just as high as your sleeve would permit, fortunately they could not get up any farther than my elbow, and they hugged you like ten thousand Ourys. I had a terrible feeling that they were likely to lay hands upon my bare neck at any moment and wished for a high neck. The men fell down every now and then and you had to help them up. Yet this was a dance of the elite and bon ton of Red Cloud. Mary and Margie and Hughie and my fair cousin [Retta Ayres, who married Hugh Miner in 1896] were there. One thing was a comfort, Douglas did splendidly and he certainly was the most civilized looking object in the crowd.

  Say girls, you remember our handsome preacher Putnam whose bible Marie returned two years go, well he is pastor of the First Christian Church of Denver now. He was in town yesterday and he is better looking than ever.

  I suppose poor Ned and Frances are getting the best out of their vacation ere their period of servitude begins again. Smile sweetly on Mr. Oury for me, Neddy. I send him some literature on Virginia today. Have you heard any thing from John Charles or from the sister of John Char
les?

  Say Mariel, I am going to ask a favor of you and if you hate to do it, why just dont. Sarah Harris has a little book of mine, “Sapho”, by Alphonse Daudet, which I am very fond of as it is illustrated by Rossi and every picture is a whole French novel. Now considering the existing relations it would be snippy of me to write and demand it from Sarah, and alas I know too well her habit of forgetting to return things. Would you please tell her sometime that you want to read it and I told you to ask her for it? I really want the thing awfully and I dont want to ask Mrs. Imhoff to get it for me as I am afraid the book might corrupt her morals or dispel her illusions or something, but you see I have confidence in Mariel.

  I dont know when I will appear in Lincoln next, nor do I much care. One of the charms of the Province is that one gets indifferent toward everything, even suicide. “Then think of me as one already dead, and laid within the bottom of a tomb.” Please let me know the university and “social” news from time to time, you know I really am interested in all those complicated matters. When you next see “all my friends” give them my love, unqualified and unmodified.

  Farewell, O Maids,

  “And when like her, O Saki! you shall pass,

  Among the guests star scattered on the grass,

  And reach the spot where I myself made one,

  Forget me and turn down an empty glass.”

  Thats poetry, I quote it to Jack and the cats now that I have not Allie and Bert Weston anymore.

  Farewell all of ye

  Willa

  Love to your Papa and Mamma.

  The poetry quoted at the end of the letter is from FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

  Hoping to get a temporary teaching appointment at the University of Nebraska to replace her favorite English professor, Herbert Bates, she tried to draw on her friendship with the influential Charles Gere to obtain the position. She did not get the job.

  Will Owen Jones, mentioned in the following, was the managing editor of Gere’s newspaper, the Nebraska State Journal, and an important early mentor for Cather.

  TO CHARLES GERE

  March 14, 1896

  Red Cloud

  Dear Mr. Gere;

  I inclose a letter from Professor Adams which will explain its self. I have just seen regent C. W. Kaley and he tells me that the whole business of appointing the new Instructor rests with Mr. Morrill, himself and the Chancellor. I think if I could get the appointment for the remaining two months of the year that I could hold it next year. I have been in all of Bate’s classes and he writes that he will recommend me to any extent I desire. If you could see the Chancellor and Mr. Morrill for me I think my chances would be good. Of course the two principal things against me are my age and sex, but I think I could over come both of those. On the other hand the university is hard pressed for funds and I would go in as an Instructor and they would pay me five hundred dollars less than the man they intended getting who would have been Adjunct Professor. Mr. Bates says that whatever is done must be done at once, and untill I can get up to Lincoln I must trust to my friends. If you could see Mr. Morrill and the Chancellor it would be a great help. Please ask Mr. Jones to send me some transportation as soon as possible so that I can go up to see to it. I telegraphed him please to send it this afternoon, but he may not understand.

  Of course you know how much the appointment would mean to me if I could only get it. I have had some experience in coaching students in English and I am sure I could teach it.

  Faithfully yours

  Willa Cather

  The “Pound scrape” mentioned in the next letter probably refers to Cather’s publication of a thinly veiled lampoon of Roscoe Pound (Louise’s brother) in the pages of the Hesperian in March 1894. Why she chose to ridicule him in print remains a mystery. It led to a falling out with the Pound family.

  TO MARIEL GERE

  May 2, 1896

  Red Cloud

  My Dear Mariel,

  You are a trump, and you seem to have the knack of soothing the afflicted spirits of the undersigned when no one else can quite reach them. You have sort of been a bracer to me ever since I was a shaved headed Prep with very idiotic notions about things and a sweet confidence in myself which, odious as it must have been, I wish to God I had back. I never should have got through that Pound scrape without you, as I have told you before. No matter how daffy I may seem sometimes I have never forgotten that when my father and my mother and Katharine and the Lord himself deserted me, then you took me up. Heavens Mariel, I wonder will I ever be done making a fool of myself? There has been another little scrap recently with some one I like that I may tell you about sometime if I can get my nerve up. It was all my fault and I am an unspeakable fool to let it hurt me, but it is not in one’s power to help being hurt sometimes. Lord but I have always been a monumental idiot and I dont see how you have stood me at all. For a time I affected the scholastic and quoted Greek at you, and then I affected the Bohemian and what not. They were all honest enthusiasms at the time, but they seem terribly silly now. I think I should get so disgusted with myself that I would just quietly take a dose of Prussic acid to rid myself of my own company if it were not for this one thing, that most of my idiocy has come from liking somebody or other too well. That’s a very pitiable sort of justification, but it’s the best that I’ve got. I might say from liking things as well as people. Its a curse to be built that way. In the years I have been away I have kind of grown away from my family and their way of looking at things until they are not much comfort and I have the unpleasant feeling that they are all the time kind of waiting for me to “do something.” People have joshed them about my “ability” until they sort of expect something unusual of me and the Lord only knows where its coming from for I dont. I feel all played out. How can I “do anything” here? I have’nt seen enough of the world or anything else. I am a terribly superficial person. If it were not for Jack I should get quite desperate sometimes. That little chap’s big grey eyes have a power of consolation in them, he comforts me just as he comforted Katharine in her woe last summer. He is just made to love people dearly—a sweet enough thing for other people, but it will cause him suffering enough I am afraid.

  Yesterday I drove overland twenty miles to Blue Hill [Nebraska] with Douglas to a dance. It sounds giddy, but I went because the kid was wild to go. I did’nt expect to have a good time but I did. In the first place I found a dandy sort of a girl, handsome as a picture and finely educated, reads and speaks French and German like a top. She is teaching for the first time and by some strange chance drifted to Blue Hill. She is boarding with an old high school Professor and his wife whom I went up to visit. Then at the dance who should I meet but old Fred Gund, once a co-editor of the Hesperian with me. He was a cigarette smoking sport of the Sawyer gang then, but now he is a sane manly business fellow and cashier of the Blue Hill bank. He was awfully nice and devoted himself to me the whole evening and it was good to see him and talk over old times. There were thirty five dances and I danced them all. After the dance Professor Curran had a lunch for us and Fred went with us. After lunch the Miner girls—they went up to the dance too—played on the violin and piano a long time it was half past three when the young gentlemen said good night. We had danced until two. Then the Hill Girl—Miss [Anna] Gayhardt—and I went to bed, and she was so glad to meet somebody “from civilization” that we talked books and theatre until the daylight came through the shutters. Then we slept just two hours and got up for breakfast. I came home on the train at noon. The worst about going out and having a good time is that it makes you all the more blue when you get back to your solitude and your accursed unfinished manuscripts that you haven’t got the heart to work at. “Life is one d—d grind, Cather” as Prof. Hunt used to say. There is nothing to do but quietly peg along and lie low until I get out of debt, for I haven’t got the nerve to ask my family to help me out any more. Besides they cant. Hang it, I’ve made a sweet muddle of things for a maiden of one and twenty. I’d b
e all right if the several fair actresses to whom I have rashly loaned money would see fit to remit, but bless you they cant live without paste diamonds and champagne and I haven’t the heart to dog them about it. I suppose they would do as much for me. Anyway I have learned a lot from them—not that it’s much worth knowing, but I suppose I must consider it all for the “good of the cause of art” and let it go as the price of experience. Only there have been times when I could better afford to pay for experience than just now. I cant tell this sort of thing to Katharine—you know why. Well, I have bothered you enough for this time. I want to come up to Lincoln sometime this month and I will be only too glad to stop with you a day or two—my stay in Lincoln wont be long. I get the happiest letters from poor old Bates, he is so gay now that he is in a hill county where people care about Paderewski and Swinburne. I think he has come into his kingdom. Not a big one, but he will get a sight of pleasure out of it.

  Yours as Ever

  Willa

  PART TWO

  The Pittsburgh Years

  1896–1906

  There is no God but one God and Art is his revealer; thats my creed and I’ll follow it to the end, to a hotter place than Pittsburgh if need be.

  —WILLA CATHER TO MARIEL GERE, August 4, 1896

  Willa Cather and a young fellow passenger aboard the S.S. Noordland on her way to Europe, June 1902 (photo credit 2.1)

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1896, when Willa Cather was twenty-two years old, she left Nebraska to become a self-supporting working woman. Building on her college experience working for student publications and the Nebraska State Journal—and probably with the help of the Lincoln newspapermen who had befriended her—she got a job as editor of the Home Monthly Magazine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Though she got homesick for her family and friends in Nebraska, this daring move east suited Cather’s ambition. She went to a new community where she could re-create herself as an independent woman, spending her time and money as she saw fit. Moreover, she could do it while editing and writing: this magazine would need to fill its pages, and that was something Willa Cather—or her nom de plume “Helen Delay”—could do.