The Selected Letters of Willa Cather Read online

  She came back to Pittsburgh and, late in the winter of 1901, took a job as a teacher of Latin and English at Central High School, filling in midyear for a teacher who was ill. She hoped a teaching job would leave her some free time for her own writing. In the spring of 1901, at the invitation of Isabelle McClung, Cather moved into the McClung family’s large home at 1180 Murray Hill Avenue. Isabelle believed in Cather’s potential as a writer and provided Cather with encouragement and a room in which to write: a former sewing room on the third floor of the house.

  TO DOROTHY CANFIELD

  [March or April 1901]

  Pittsburgh

  My Dearest Dorothy.

  The first month of teaching is at an end and I have about decided to let some one else take up the good work for the rest of the year. I want to go home to Red Cloud and work for awhile. I know now that I can teach, and that better than I had expected, but I can’t help taking the matter seriously and I doubt whether that pays in a High School where the salary means ultimate financial ruin.

  Now about the letters [The Player Letters]. I think Mr. Carpenter was a Christian gentleman to give them his consideration, and I think his opinion on their ephemeral interest about agrees with mine. Then they seem to me to perilously approach fine writing. I had thought that Miss [Jeannette Leonard] Gilder might be able to use some of them in the “Critic” in the summer season when the theatres are closed and “copy” runs low. Have you any means of access to her? I believe she thinks rather well of me. If she were to see some half-dozen of the better ones she might consider the scheme.

  “Jack-a-Boy” appeared in the Easter Sat. Eve. Post with the most satisfying illustrations and so like my little brother that they gave me a turn. I will mail you a copy. I think Miss Gilder ought to see the letters this month. If you think it would be just as well for me to send her copies from here, let me know, though I am sure that, if you could face a thankless errand of that kind, a word to her from you would give them a better chance.

  Did’nt I write you about the Edouard Rod? I could not put it down after I had once begun it, and it seemed to me a wonderful piece of work and noble beyond most clever things. I want to read some more [Jules] Lemaitre whenever you can send him. I wish I knew the really wise thing to do about the school. I like to plow a furrow to the end, and yet to move, set up a room, unpack etc all for two months seems a good deal of trouble for a very little experience. Then the spring months are good ones to loaf and invite your soul, and if I went west something might come of it.

  The McClungs have moved into their new house next door to the old one, and Isabelle’s new room is a beautiful place to dwell in, with big windows that face on a wood and the sunset. I want to talk to you about the Pittsburgh novel, but it cant be done by letter, and an attack of cramps, several days over due is getting the better of me. Isabelle sends many messages to you, but I am being slowly drawn up into a lumpy coil and cant even write my own. With all my love to your mother and yourself, and anxiously awaiting word from you

  Willie

  “To loaf and invite your soul” is a reference to Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The “Pittsburgh novel” referenced above was never published. According to a February 11, 1950, letter from Edith Lewis to E. K. Brown held in the collections of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, it was titled “Fanny” and focused on “stage people.” Lewis told Brown that Cather kept the manuscript for some time, only destroying it after moving to 5 Bank Street in New York in 1912.

  At the end of the school year, Cather went to Nebraska.

  TO GEORGE SEIBEL

  July 17, 1901

  My Dear Mr. Sibel;

  I arrived home two weeks ago very much worn out by the years hard work, and am not feeling much rested yet. I am twenty pounds thinner than when you saw me last. I dont object to that but I do object to the good for nothing feeling that comes with it.

  I find my mother somewhat better than she has been for several years and Jack and Elsie grown beyond all belief. They ask me to tell them about Erna [Seibel’s daughter] every few days and are never tired of hearing about the Christmas tree and the bunnies in the cellar.

  I expect a story of mine will be out in the August or September Scribners; when I read the proofs it was scheduled for August but that guarantees nothing. I had a story in the June “New England Magazine” that I would like you to read if you have time. My mother has basely filched all my copies and sent them to deaf great-aunts etc, but perhaps you’ll have time to look it up at the Library some day. I start for the Rockies the first of August to be gone for several weeks and I hope to hear from you before then. I thought surely I would get to see you before I left Pittsburgh, but the horrors of the High School closing examinations ought to be exposed to the public. I simply had to give up everything in order to get through the work at all. Tell Erna she must not forget me, and that I hope to help her trim her tree next Christmas. Is the heat as terrible at World’s End as here I wonder? It is like to be worlds end in truth here. With my heartiest love to you all and prayers for cool weather.

  Willa

  In the early summer of 1902, after another year teaching at Central High School, Cather and Isabelle McClung sailed for Europe. They spent a few months touring England and France, satisfying Cather’s long-delayed desire to see something of the countries whose culture and art she adored.

  TO DOROTHY CANFIELD

  [Late May 1902]

  [Written in the top margin:] Remember me warmly to your Aunt Helen and my very best to your mother.

  My Dearest Dorothy;

  I am mightily sorry to hear that your aunt Helen is so much worse, but glad you are out of the rush and riot in a cool and quiet place. The rush of examinations is about to begin and for the next two weeks I shall be dead to the world. We sail on the fourteenth on the Noordland, American Line, from Philadelphia. We will be in England until the middle or last of July, according to the date on which you can meet us in Paris. Let me know about that as soon as you can. I am unable to believe in it at all. It’s too good. I am none to joyful these days, and need to see you sorely, sorely. To think of your reading Hesperians! What do you mean by telling me there was anything good in it? As I remember it, it was really grand-eloquent stuff enough, of the heart-on-the-sleeve order. Ipsa glorior infama, as I remember, when there was little to glory in, God wot, and enough to be ashamed of. Well, we go on making fools of ourselves just so. I grow older and tireder but very little wiser. No, I surely was not very happy then. People cut me deeper than they do now.

  Please let me hear from you before we start and dont forget a steamer letter. Do you like these Marsyas verses at all? I think the Hawthorn Tree rather prettily illustrated. I’ve got to the point where letter writing will not answer, I must talk to you to let my heart out at all or to feel you with me. But I will do that soon, wont I? Heaven speed the day.

  Shall I send your French books to you in Vermont or express them to New York? Heaven! I wish I could see you before I sail. The distance seems long and the chances of missing you many. I wonder whether, if we do meet in Paris, I can shake off this fog that has gone clear into my bones and be made anew? I almost believe I can.

  All my love goes to you

  Willie

  Greet warmly for me your cousins Hermie and Nat and think a thought for me at Equinox and pray him to send me a little of his repose. Did I tell you that from Liverpool we are going right down to—Shropshire!? Someway I always rather link Equinox with Shropshire.

  “Lament for Marsyas” and “The Hawthorn Tree” were two of Cather’s own poems. Shropshire was an exciting destination because of A. E. Housman’s book of poems A Shropshire Lad (1896). As the next letter suggests, the book was one of Cather’s great enthusiasms. All of the quoted verses in the letter are from Housman.

  TO DOROTHY CANFIELD

  Sunday, July 6, 1902

  Ludlow, Shropshire, England

  My Dearest Dorothy;

  Oh come you home of Sund
ay

  When Ludlow streets are still,

  and Ludlow bells are calling

  To farm and lane and mill,

  Or come you home of Monday

  When Ludlow market hums

  And Ludlow chimes are playing

  ‘The Conquoring Hero Comes.’

  And they do play that tune every Monday in the year, and even now they are calling to farm and lane and mill. I’ve so much to tell you, Dorothy, that I’ve simply run away from the task of doing it; I never ran such a gauntlet of experiences. I draw a long sigh of relief when I think I am to tell you them in Paris.

  From Liverpool we went directly to Chester, lost our hearts to the place and stayed there five days. Then we coached fifty miles to Shrewsbury and there saw how

  “High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam

  Islanded in Severn stream,

  The bridges, from the steepled crest,

  Cross the water east and west.”

  We sat for two sunsets on the very spot where he must have done it and watched the red steeples in the clear green water which flows almost imperceptibly. And what do you think was going on in the wide meadows on the other shore? Why boys were playing foot-ball!

  “Is foot ball playing

  along the river shore?”

  Well I guess yes. And we went to Shrewsbury jail. You remember

  “They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail;

  The whistles blow forlorn

  and trains all night groan on the rail

  To lads that die at morn.”

  Of course they do, for the jail, which is the most grewsome building the hand of man ever made, is on a naked hill right over the switch yard and station, so you see “forlorn” was not put there to rhyme with “morn”. Somehow it makes it all the greater to have it all true. When we got into Shropshire we threw away our guide books and have blindly followed the trail of the Shropshire Lad and he has lead us beside still waters and in green pastures. Of course no one in Shropshire has his books or ever heard of him, but we telegraphed his publisher for his address and will see him in London. I read the old files of the county paper to where most of the verses first came out.

  I dont know when we shall leave here. Ludlow Castle in itself is enough to hold me forever. It is one of the most perfect Norman-Elizabethan compounds in England and one of the least visited. The history of the place and the magnitude of its interior together are enough to turn one daft. Is’nt it nice that Sir Philip Sidney grew up and first wrote in Ludlow castle when his father held the Welsh border here for Elizabeth? We have read those two singing Shropshire Lads until our eyes are blinded and our reason distraught. They are not so unalike, either. Yesterday we bribed the keeper and climbed the circular stairway to the very top of the old Norman keep, and there, over ivy, ivy, ivy, walls and walls, the ruined splendor of a thousand years, on the topmost turrets, a thousand scarlet poppies flaunted their color and nodded and balanced themselves in the wind.

  When ages old remind me

  How much hath gone for naught,

  What wretched ghost remaineth

  Of all that flesh hath wrought,

  Of love and song and warring,

  Of adventure and play,

  Of art and comely building,

  Of faith and form and fray,

  I’ll mind the flowers of pleasure,

  Of short-lived youth and sleep

  That drank the sunny weather

  A-top of Ludlow keep.

  I’ve been madly a-doing those poppies in every metre I know ever since I saw them, and all are alike unsuccessful. We are stopping at the most beautiful old hotel in the world, which was for three hundred years the over-flow house to the Castle, all black oak and diamond windows and that. We are going to bicycle to Wenlock Edge this afternoon, “Oh tarnish late on Wenlock edge” etc. I’ll not quit Shropshire till I know every name he uses. They are just making hay now, too, and I think I might almost find Maurice behind the mows somewhere. I hope to find letters in London telling me when to meet you in Paris. To meet you at last, and tell you everything!

  A light heart to you from me

  Willie

  The lines beginning “When ages old” were later published as part of Cather’s poem “Poppies on Ludlow Castle.” Dorothy Canfield, then doing graduate work in French at the Sorbonne in Paris, joined Cather and McClung in London, and the three went to call on poet and classical scholar A. E. Housman. Housman received them politely, but Cather struggled to make conversation with him. He and Canfield, however, had a pleasant chat about Latin manuscripts. After the visit, Cather was so disappointed that she broke into tears.

  Evelyn Osborne, mentioned in the following letter, was a friend and classmate of Dorothy Canfield’s who accompanied Cather, Isabelle McClung, and Canfield in their sightseeing. Osborne had a disfiguring scar along the left side of her face, and in every existing photograph of this trip to Europe in which Osborne is present, she stands in profile, showing only her right side. This letter to Dorothy and the following one to her father were both written on a blank postcard.

  TO DOROTHY CANFIELD

  August 9, 1902

  Paris

  My Dear Dorothy:

  This morning we took the films to the photograph place and were disappointed to find that we could’nt get the prints until Monday. Then we went with Miss Osborne and purchased many foolish underclothing, called at the American Express, etc. After eating unto discomfort of Mme Sibut’s delicious fish au gratin, we went to the Luxemborg, sat in the garden and put in two hours in four rooms. Then we had a royal bath and, returning, clad ourselves in white duck which fired Miss Osborne to array herself likewise. Dorothy do please speak to Miss Horne about our washing. The woman failed to return a new suit of union underwear that I paid much good money for. Love from us all.

  Willa

  Weather fine.

  TO CHARLES F. CATHER

  [August] 1902

  Paris

  [M]y Dear Father:

  I have [b]een in Paris now two weeks [and] I shall remain two weeks [more]. The city is certainly the most [beau]tiful that men have ever [?] and genius to create. I find new pleasure and wonder in it every day. The tomb of Napoleon is the only thing I have ever found in the world which did not at all disappoint. I think it must be quite the most impressive and awe-inspiring spot on earth. The people here are the most industrious, neat and painstaking people I have ever seen, and yet they take life comfortably. The do not wear themselves out, but whatever they do they do thoroughly and well.

  Much love to momma and the children.

  Willie

  Cather and Dorothy Canfield in Europe, summer 1902 (photo credit 2.3)

  While visiting Paris, Cather and McClung stayed at 11 rue de Cluny at the boardinghouse operated by the Sibut family.

  TO MARIEL GERE

  August 28 [1902]

  Paris

  My Dearest Mariel;

  Every day since I have been here—four weeks now—I have said, “tomorrow I will write to Mariel.” But you know how many things there are to do. Isabelle and I find this the most interesting family to stay with. Both the old ladies are as kind as possible and Mme. Merton certainly is an admirable and remarkable woman. Pierre [Sibut] is good for nothing but to look at and enters the army next month. Blanche is away. Dorothy and I do not agree at all about Mlle. Céline [Sibut]. Dorothy joined us in London, spent three weeks with us there and came on to Paris with us. She left some days ago to join her parents in Scotland. A New York girl who is a classmate of Dorothy’s is stopping here at 11 rue Cluny, and we like her tremendously. Heaven knows its a comfort to have a sane American somewhere near, who believes in baths and self control and has no “temperament”! We three went out to Barbizon together and have a great many gay parties. We also ran across Louise Pound’s friend Miss Lathrop in London and how we did like her. Why Mariel, that girl just put in her days showing us about and being nice to us. I hated mightily to say goodbye to her. We hav
e been singularly fortunate in meeting the nicest kind of people ever since we started out, and, after all, people count more than places, do they not? We leave for a two weeks walking trip through Provence and along the Mediterranean next Monday. I have enjoyed both Paris and London, of course, but I like the country even better. We had a delightful walking trip up the Valley of the Oise, the scene of Stevenson’s “Inland Voyage.”

  I have good news to tell you: Douglass expects to spend next winter with me in Pittsburgh. He will meet us at the docks when we return to America. Won’t that be famous? I have so much to tell you that it is useless to try to write it. I will certainly see you next summer if you are at home. My warmest love to your dear mother and Frances and Ellen, and Isabelle and the Sibuts join me in a great deal to you.

  Faithfully always

  Willa

  All during her tour of Europe, Cather wrote travel articles and sent them back to Nebraska, where they were published by her old paper, the Nebraska State Journal. In the fall of 1902, she returned to Pittsburgh and to another year of teaching—and writing. By this time, she had enough poetry to make up a slim volume, April Twilights, which was published in the spring of 1903 by Richard G. Badger. Though Cather doesn’t mention this in the following letter to Will Owen Jones, her old friend at the Nebraska State Journal, Badger flattered aspiring poets with an offer of publication but also requested that they pay the costs of such publication themselves.