by Willa Cather
Faithfully
Willa Sibert Cather
The following was read at the Red Cloud, Nebraska, high school commencement in 1909 and published in the Red Cloud Chief on May 27, 1909.
TO EDWIN JAMES OVERING JR.
President of the Board of Education, Red Cloud, Nebraska
April 30, 1909
My Dear Mr. Overing:
As I wrote you sometime ago, I had very much hoped to be present at the Red Cloud commencement exercises this year. I had made all my plans to go west about the first of May, and until a few days ago, confidently expected to be at home by the time the school year closed.
Within the last two or three days, however, I have seen that instead of turning westward I must face in the opposite direction, and that very soon. I am sailing immediately for London to attend to some business matters there.
Since you asked me to go on the commencement program, I had expected to get something ready for you on my way west, but my hurried departure will not leave me time to prepare any sort of paper to send you. I would be glad to write something on the way over and send it back to you, but the time would be so short that in all probability anything mailed from England would not reach you before the 19th. Let me thank you for the invitation and ask you to express to the Board of Education my regret at being unable to accept it.
Since I cannot be present, therefore, I will ask you to let this letter represent me, if you see fit.
I have been interested in the Red Cloud schools for many years, and have kept in touch with them through so many brothers and sisters, that to think about them and wish them well has become a mental habit. I could not forget the schools if I tried; they play a part in many of my happiest memories, and some of my truest friends have been closely connected with them. If I had no other reason to love the schools of my own town—and I have many others—I should always love them because of Mr. and Mrs. A. K. Goudy and Mr. and Mrs. O. C. Case. When my father first moved into Red Cloud from his ranch, and I was taken to the old high school building to be entered as a pupil in the Red Cloud schools, Mrs. Case—then Miss King—was principal, and she was the first person who interviewed the new county pupil. She had a talk with me up in the old bell room. I remember her well as a stalwart young woman with a great deal of mirth in her eyes and a very sympathetic, kind voice.
I was placed in a class in Miss Gertrude Sherer’s room. I do not remember much about what went on during my first day in school, but that afternoon I brought away three distinct impressions that Trix Mizer was the prettiest little girl I had ever seen, that Margie Miner was so jolly I wanted awfully to know her, and that Eddie Emigh never looked at his book because he was always looking at Trix.
The next year Miss King was made principal of the South Ward School, and I was a pupil in her A. grade. I am very sure that Miss King was the first person whom I ever cared a great deal for outside of my own family. I had been in her class only a few weeks when I wanted more than any thing else in the world to please her. During the rest of that year, when I succeeded in pleasing her I was quite happy; when I failed to please her there was only one thing I cared about and that was to try again and make her forget my mistakes. I have always looked back on that year as one of the happiest I ever spent.
After I left Miss King’s room she became County Superintendent. As I went on through the high school she always helped and advised me; she even tried very hard to teach me algebra at night, but not even Miss King—who could do almost anything—could do that.
After I went away to the State University there came a year or two when I was so taken up with new things and people, and so much excited about my work in Lincoln, that I saw comparatively little of my old friends. Just before I went away to school Miss King had married Mr. Case and when I began to see a good deal of my old friends again, I learned to care for Mr. Case almost as much as for his wife.
I believe I am not the only graduate of the Red Cloud schools whose courage Mr. and Mrs. Case revived time and again. I believe that all the boys and girls whom they helped will agree with me that one of the things best worth while in life is to keep faith with those two friends of ours who gave us their confidence. In the long summer evenings Mr. Case and his wife used to sit on the front porch behind the vines and the little maple trees and plan out useful and honorable futures for the Red Cloud boys and girls. There is nothing for us to do now but to try to realize those generous dreams of theirs.
I can scarcely realize that it has been nineteen years since I stood on the stage in the Red Cloud opera house with two little boys—if I remember rightly we all three looked like little boys—and made my Commencement speech. Let me warn the graduates of 1909 that the next nineteen years will go so quickly that they won’t have time to turn around in them.
The thing I best remember about my own graduation is the class tree. It was a little crooked-backed honey locust that Alec Bentley and John Tulleys dug out of a row of locusts on my Grandmother Cather’s land. I don’t know why I was more interested in the tree than in anything else about graduating, but I was. My brothers and I carried water from the High School pump and watered it ever so many times that summer. The tree wilted and peaked and pined and languished all summer. But look out for what it would do next summer, we thought. But next summer it was no better, nor yet the next. The thing simply would not grow. For years it seemed to stand still. For the matter of that we all stood still; John didn’t grow, and Alec didn’t grow. But the tree, at least was getting ready to grow. I went home one summer to find that after having been a crooked bush for years and years it had really shot up to a considerable height. The tree stands in the south east corner of the High School yard, and I hope the Red Cloud boys and girls will be good to it.
I hope none of your graduates tonight are as much frightened as I was when I got up to deliver my important oration. When Mr. Goudy read my name and I rose and went to the front of the platform, the room looked as if it were full of smoke and the people seemed to have run together. I looked at this blur and made out three faces looking intently at me. Mr. Henry Cook in the front part of the house, and further back Mr. William Ducker and Mrs. Case. These three friendly faces gave me courage, and I am sure they always will.
With a world of good wishes for your graduates, Mr. Overing, and greetings to my old schoolmates, I am
Faithfully
Willa Cather
Evangeline King Case was indeed remembered long and warmly by Cather; she served as the model for Evangeline Knightly in “The Best Years,” one of Cather’s very last stories.
The scouting trip that Cather mentioned in her public letter to Mr. Overing became a two-month stay in England. She met a great many interesting people—such as critic William Archer, and writers H. G. Wells, Edmund Gosse, and Katharine Tynan—and attended such diverse events as the funeral of writer George Meredith and the London premiere of John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. Another writer she met was British novelist Ford Madox Ford (then Hueffer), with the following unhappy results.
TO ELSIE MARTINDALE HUEFFER
May 20, 1909
Thackeray Hotel, London
Dear Mrs. Hueffer;
I am so sorry to have let you in for a sharp note from Mr. [Joseph] Conrad. You see the whole matter was, in a manner, accidental. I was telling Mr. Hueffer how much I hoped that we might be able to get some of Conrad’s works for the magazine, and he said “Why don’t you go down and see him?” Before that I had not the remotest intention of trying to see Mr. Conrad because I had not the slightest excuse for doing so beyond the wish to get some of his work if possible. Mr. Hueffer, who has been helping me to several good things for McClures, said he thought Mr. Conrad would not resent an interview on these general terms, and added that if I went down to Smeeth I would have a few hours with you. I do regret missing you altogether like this, and I hope I have not made a lot of bother for you. Surely you had nothing to do with with my projected invasion. You were the hel
pless victim of a letter and a telegram, and I can’t see that you were at all “drawn in” as Mr. Conrad says, to any attempt. I should say that you were quite guiltless.
I am leaving for Paris on Saturday, to return to London in about two weeks. Surely by that time you will have come to town, and I hope you can come to see me. I shall be stopping at this same hotel.
With greetings and many good wishes to you, I am
Faithfully
Willa Sibert Cather
In February 1909, Sarah Orne Jewett suffered a paralytic stroke at Annie Adams Fields’s home in Boston. She was moved that spring to her family home in South Berwick, Maine, where on June 24, 1909, she had a second stroke and died.
TO ANNIE ADAMS FIELDS
June 27, 1909
London
Dear Mrs. Fields;
Yesterday at noon I learned of the bitter loss that has come to us all and to you more than to anyone else. I think you will know better than I can tell you how constantly my thoughts have been with you since then. This city, and my walking about the streets of it, seem very much like a dream when my heart is straining over-sea to you and to her who loved you so well through so many years. For I cannot bring myself to feel but that somehow she is there near you, and that if I could go to you today I would feel her presence even if I could not see her, as I felt it when I went to see you when she was first ill in the winter. When one is far away like this one cannot realize death. Other things become shadowy and unreal, but Miss Jewett herself remains so real that I cannot get past the vivid image of her to any other realization. I know that something has happened only by the numbness and inertia that have come over me. I find that everything I have been doing and undertaking over here I have done with a hope that it might interest her—even to some clothes I was having made. And now all the wheels stand still and the ways of life seem very dark and purposeless. There is only one thing that seems worth hoping or wishing for, and that is that you and Miss Mary [Jewett] are finding strength and comfort from some source I do not know of, for I know that Miss Jewett’s first care and anxiety would have been for you. She was always so afraid of losing you, so afraid, as she told me at Manchester last summer, “that her life might be blown away from her without warning.”
I shall sail for home some time next week, as soon as I can get a boat, and I can hardly expect to hear news of you from anyone until then. I shall let you know as soon as I land in New York. If there is anything, little or big, that I can do, if there should be anything which I could attend to for you, or any way in which I could lighten your loneliness, it would help me more than anything else in the world could and give me deeper pleasure.
Dear Mrs. Fields, one cant speak or write what I want to say to you, for nobody’s heart can ever speak. Let me love and sorrow with you, and think of me sometimes when you are thinking of Miss Jewett. I could never tell you, I cannot ever tell myself, how dear you both are to me.
Willa
Cather returned to the United States in July, made a trip to Nebraska to see her family, and then returned to New York and magazine work. Though it is unclear what official title she held at McClure’s, she was (like other senior editors) at times practically in charge of the whole operation as S. S. McClure bounded around the world.
TO FRANCES SMITH CATHER
January 5, 1910
New York City
Dear Aunt Franc;
Is it too late to wish you a happy New Year? I have been wanting to write to you for a long time. But as soon as I got back to New York this fall Mr. McClure went South, and then went to Europe, so I have been getting out the magazine alone. As I have not been very well any of the time, my editorial work has not left me with much time or strength for other things. During the Christmas holidays I went to bed for a rest of several days, and since then I have been feeling much better. Miss McClung, whom you met six years ago, came on from Pittsburgh and spent November and December with me. She did a lot of shopping for me and trained a new maid, and my apartment is really a very comfortable little place. I was so glad to have Isabelle with me at Christmas time, for that is usually a homesick season for me. New York is so full of homesick people then that there is a kind of wistfulness in the air. Last year, on the day before Christmas, I went down to Old Trinity Church to hear the children’s service—a glorious service, truly glorious, but most of the people who sat near me were crying, and I surmised that they were all thinking of little towns far away, just as I was. Jack and Elsie always go down to [the] grave yard at home on Christmas eve for me, and put holly and evergreens on Mr. and Mrs. Case’s graves. I always like to think of their doing it, and it will make them always remember those two dear friends. I get great comfort out of Jack and Elsie—they are dear children. And when Elsie is a little older she will not be so “sure” about things.
I have not heard from Bessie [Elizabeth Seymour] or Auntie [Sarah Andrews] lately, but I like to think that they are both together and comparatively free from care. I used to be so worried and distressed about both of them and it was pretty hard to know what I ought to do. That trouble was the only bitter, breaking trouble I have ever had, and everything I did about it seemed a wrong to someone. There was simply nothing to do, it seemed. And now it has all fallen out so fortunately, and everybody is so much happier that things are as they are. It makes every day of every week easier for me. I get up in the morning feeling better. And as for Auntie, there are more untroubled times than she has known for many years, I am sure.
I have the most cheerful letters from home. I have not known mother so well and contented for years, and Elsie is enjoying her work at school.
I remember that I spoke to you about an article on Mme. Vera Figner I got in London [“The Secrets of Schluesselburg,” about a Russian prison and former prisoner Vera Nikolaevna Figner]? I wonder whether you saw it in the December number? I have just been working very hard upon an article on the Cherry Mine disaster [“Heroes of the Cherry Mine,” about the 259 men and boys who died in a coal mine fire in Cherry, Illinois] which I got Edith Wyatt, of Chicago, to write. It will be in the March number, and I think it is a very strong and simple piece of work. There is to be a Grand Jury investigation as a result of our article on Tammany and the white slave trade [“The Daughters of the Poor,” by George Kibbe Turner, which appeared in November 1909], but the Tammany people are playing their cards so well that I am afraid the investigation will be a very superficial affair.
I expect I shall have to go to London again in the spring, but I am hoping to get home next summer, and to run out for a little visit with you. The one this summer was such a satisfactory visit. It was the first time I’ve really seen you for years. Mother was so willing about my going into the country this time, and I went with a light heart and enjoyed every minute of it. There is no place in the world where I can be so happy or rest so well. I am so glad that Bess and Auntie are near enough so that you can keep an eye on them. And whenever you see that they need anything, you will let me know, won’t you? And I will be so grateful to you. The pleasure of doing things for them is one of the most real I have.
A great deal of love goes to you with this letter, dear Aunt Franc, and many, many good wishes for you and yours.
Lovingly
Willie
TO ROSCOE CATHER
February 13, 1910
My Dear Boy;
What a wild winter you have had. Mine has been wild, too, but weather has had little to do with it. Mr. McClure has been abroad all winter and I have been in a seething whirlpool of work. Before Christmas I had a dismal bronchitis and was in bed for two weeks and Isabelle came on and took care of me. I was pretty sick for two months, but I had to dictate dozens of letters and read manuscripts and see people in bed. You see a magazine is like a sick baby—you’ve always got to be stuffing something into its blessed insides or it dies. The stuff I got in England last summer—the Russian stuff and the [Xavier] Paoli articles [the “Recollections of the Shah of Persia” and “Re
collections of the Kings and Queens of Europe” series] helped me out. I am about again now and much better, but I still have to lie down every day and drink lots of milk and behave like a baby generally. However, its been a very successful winter. From Sept. 1908 to Sept 1909, the first year that I have had charge of the magazine, we made sixty thousand dollars more than the year before. I say “we”; I dont get any of the money, but I get a good deal of credit.
Watch for the March number, I’ve taken such pains with it, and read “A Joint in the Harness” [by “Ole Luk-Oie,” pseudonym of Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton]. I got that in England. You know, my boy, if you would tell me what stories you like (and don’t like) it would help me a lot. I am so thankful when people do tell me. You see when they know you are responsible they are shy about telling you. Of course I dont like everything that goes into the magazine, by a long shot.
I have just been writing to Mrs. [Alice] Goudy, who is very ill in a sanatorium, and to poor old Mrs. [Adelaide Hazen] Fulton. She is quite blind, you know, and now she has broken her hip.
You were a nice boy to send me silk stockings at Christmas time. I love silk stockings and I was especially pleased with these, for I spent Christmas in bed and my presents meant a lot to me.
Have you ever seen Mary Virginia [Auld, daughter of sister Jessica Cather Auld] since she could talk? She is the dearest baby. I sent her a lot of jolly things at Christmas time.