by Willa Cather
W.
The “cold, chilly” and “foreign” story is “Alexandra,” the story Cather combined with “The White Mulberry Tree” to make O Pioneers!
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
September 12 [1912]
Pittsburgh
Dear Elsie;
I am just back from two very busy weeks in New York, where I made satisfactory arrangements for my winter’s work. I am to stay here and write until January first, then go back to the office for five or six months. I’ve agreed to deliver two stories to the magazine between now and Christmas. I’m afraid, in the nature of the case, they can’t be very good ones, but I shall give only part of my time to them. I did not send you the Swedish story because I have been moved to do her over and lengthen her by half, thus making a two-part “pastoral”,—the most hopeless proposition under Heaven—quite enough to offset my doing two stories to order. So much for plans—you asked about ’em.
I went to see Mr. Burlingame last week and told him how much I had enjoyed your paper in the July number. But words of mine weren’t needed. I found him a Captive, bound hand and foot. As Tooker would say, you “have him buffaloed.” He said he was so sorry not to be in town when you sailed, which, for Mr. B.— I thought going some. He asked if you had done anything for McClures and listened with great interest when I told him. He ended by saying “Besides being a brilliant woman, she seems to have all the mark of being a really first-rate person,” from which I infer that he has not always found that he could safely postulate the latter in the former.
I saw almost no one in New York, and was really out of the office. The Arlisses [actors George and Florence Arliss] were there, very happy over the success of “Disraeli,” rich and prosperous and flaunting a motor car. I spent several evenings with them.
If you happen to think of it when you are in the marts of trade, do take a look at the English edition of Alexander—Heinemann—it’s so much better looking than the Houghton Mifflin. And do, in mercy, tell me whether there is any new French worth reading. I’ve gone back to Balzac in sheer desperation and have just run through “Histoire des Treize” and a French translation of Dostoiefsky’s “L’Idiot”, a dreary and disgusting thing enough. If you don’t have any new French books to recommend, pray suggest some old ones. You named one of Flaubert’s once that I’ve not read; what was it?
Yes, I think the first two chapters—or books?—of “Creative Evolution” [by Henri Bergson] glorious. But the last one, the historical one, I did not like nearly so well.
I wouldn’t have thought Sedgwick’s letter possible if you hadn’t sent it. The real truth is this, my friend—you probably know it—you are not flat enough for Ellery. He doesn’t know but your laugh may be dangerous; he doesn’t know just where you stand; you won’t give him the one solid paragraph that would make him feel safe about you. He’s afraid that if he follows your giddy pen about he may suddenly find himself laughing at something he shouldn’t laugh at. Didn’t I tell you how he once said sadly to me “Isn’t it strange that with such good actors the French have never been able to originate a drama or to write a comedy!” When I remonstrated he said “Irreverence is not humor”! That’s your trouble. Mr. Burlingame said you were a first rater because only they could see the humor of their own enthusiasms, but that does not go down with E. S. Bear yourself more seemingly, Audrey [paraphrase from Shakespeare’s As You Like It].
Why don’t you send me the article you sent Sedgwick? I’ve plenty of time now and should love to read it. My surplus of time, my release from office bondage is really due to the strange way that “The Bohemian Girl” has “gone”; at least the business office has heard a lot about it and we’ve had a lot of letters. One lady did write and quote Tennyson to say that I was in danger of becoming “Procuress to the Lords of Hell”, but I am sure she was prejudiced by Miss Wyatt. Everyone seems to like it much better than Alexander, which upsets all my theories about what people like and all Mr. Mackenzie’s.
I’m being very lazy, working only three hours a day and walking a lot. Let me hear very particularly about your health, please, and whether you can sleep and work. I can’t see how you can do either if you visit!
Affectionately
W.S.C.
The “two-part pastoral” would become O Pioneers! Cather never delivered the two stories to McClure’s that she promised by Christmas.
In the fall of 1912, Cather and Edith Lewis moved to 5 Bank Street in New York, the comfortable apartment where the two would live for fifteen years, regularly hosting “Friday teas” for friends and colleagues.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
October 6 [1912]
Pittsburgh
Post cards are enough—I understand the rush and the number of notes and telegrams that “meeting” Londoners entails. Since I wrote you I’ve been in New York twice—have leased and moved my effects into the ideal, the perfect apartment, large old-fashioned, roomy, one flight up; good fireplace, good windows, good woodwork, wide stairs up, and, if you please, number 5 Bank Street, off Greenwich Ave., two blocks from Jefferson Market. I hope to be here now until January. Everything going well, work pretty well. These calls to the New York office do interrupt. Your card makes me restless. I want to be in London. There’s no place like it!
Hastily
W.S.C.
TO ZOË AKINS
October 31 [1912]
Pittsburgh
My Dear Zoë
I turn again to your beautiful long letter and again hope that you are quietly settled, with some fine person to keep you from shopping when you have a temperature. Working, writing, at least, is not apt to hurt you if you do a little at a time and try not to get excited about it. I believe one works better when one is reasonably calm, after all. Don’t you?
I am so glad you liked “The Bohemian Girl.” Yes, I really think it’s pretty good myself. I’m doing another about three times as long about the same country. In this new one the country itself is frankly the hero—or the heroine—though I think the people, Swedes and Bohemians, are rather interesting, too. There’ll be a little verse about that country in the December McClure’s.
I’ve been on to New York twice since I wrote you, and saw one excellent play there—Arnold Bennett’s “Milestones.” Quite a new sort of thing, strong as a steel spring. Of course I’d get on faster with my new story if the office would let me sit tight for awhile.
I loved your letter about California and the strange people you found there, especially Mrs. Oliver. She must have been a delightful person. What you said about liking to “impress” people amused me greatly.
I had such awfully hard training in the corn fields that I don’t think I had that joyful stage—no “effects” could be made there by any stunts I could do, except, maybe, horseback riding. You can’t get any rise out of a cow with a sonnet, none whatsoever. Still, the desire to shine a little to people we admire, we all have, and in you its a thing to which I find myself soft-hearted. I’m hoping for a line, with good news of you, when you have time.
Affectionately
W.S.C.
The “little verse” in the December McClure’s was “Prairie Spring,” the poem she had sent Sergeant a few months earlier.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
December 7 [1912]
Pittsburgh
Dear Elsie—
Such a splen-did letter as you did write me! I’ve been over it until I’ve deciphered every pencil stroke. Thanks for the tip about Harrison. I have nothing but work to talk about, as I’m on the home stretch with the new story. It is running about the same length as “Alexander” and is certainly a great deal better than The Bohemian Girl. It has been rather a pull because it’s knit so much closer than anything I have ever done before. No, I don’t think one can write much when one is getting the material—at least I, for one, can’t. But, do you know, I think getting the material, coming up against the surfaces of things, is the exhausting part of it. The mere wo
rking it off one’s pen is on the whole a peaceful chore. I don’t believe you can write over there unless you have a flat of your own and insulate yourself! One has to sleep to work, and one has to be dull to sleep.
Have you read Tchekov? “The Cherry Orchard” etc? Do! I’ve been reading such lots of things that I never have time to read in New York. I assume the office chains again January 1st, but not for long! There are too many things I want to write. I say, it’s great sport when you get down to it—get down and see! Do you know that rhyme
“Oh London, London, my Delight!
The flower that blossoms but by night;
Oh bloom and bloom I see them stand,
The iron lilies of the Strand!”
I want to write many things to you, but Christmas—people—a bloody murder in my story—(I’ve been three mortal days a-killing them!) all these have reduced me to a state where I can only make a few scratches and wish you well and well and well. Christmas in Paris seems good luck enough to wish any mortal—only I should go to Provence to meet the Three Holy Kings! Oh I hope I can be there where you are, sometime!
Yours
W.S.C.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
[Early 1913]
New York City
No, my dear Elsie, I honestly don’t think I’m so bad as that! I can miss people even when I am happily and gainfully employed. But there are times when I am very little of an individual and when everything about me is rather pale. In Pittsburgh I was working in a house over hung with the shadow of a distressing and hopeless illness. Life and the world and the weather were pale, and if one got enough blood to pump into one’s daily stint of work, one did well. There were many days when I didn’t get it, and went out and kept the pale weather company. But when I got back and began to go to the opera twice a week and feel the world go round again, then I began to want things—and people. I never get much satisfaction out of seeing the people I care for under the wrong conditions, and the last time you were in New York conditions were bad enough—I hated the place where I was staying, and I hated myself for a piece of damaged goods. But if you can stop here in June, we’ll better it. I’ll be here through June, though I may go to the Blue Ridge for a few weeks in May. Please stop here in Bank street with me. If its Hellish hot I won’t keep you, I’ll be strong minded and send you away, so you’ll be taking no risk.
The Pioneers are on their way to you—must have gone out on yesterday’s boat. For the love of Gawrd tell me the truth about it. I know how hard it is to tell people the truth, but one can do it. And I promise you I can take it. I’m not sentimental about things just because I’ve made them. I’ve a notion there may be some flossy writing in this, too emotional, I mean. And if so, please hit it a swat. I can use the blue-pencil with a light heart. Shall I have Mr. Greenslet include “The Bohemian Girl” in the same volume with this, or do you think it will go better alone? It’s long enough to make a good sized book. I await your verdict—with terror!
W.S.C.
Edith Lewis’s presence at 5 Bank Street is conspicuously missing from Cather’s following report to her aunt about her new apartment. The March article for McClure’s she mentions working on was “Plays of Real Life,” about the New York theatrical scene.
TO FRANCES SMITH CATHER
February 23, 1913
New York City
Dear Aunt Franc:
It has been a long while since I got your good letter, but this has been a busy fall and winter for me. I have just finished a new novel which will be published in the fall, and I have been doing a great deal of magazine work. Besides these things, I have had the care of getting settled in a new apartment in New York. I did not move in to my new flat until the first of January, but I came on in October from Pittsburgh and leased the place and moved my furniture in. Then I went back to Pittsburgh to work on my story in peace and quiet. At last I have an apartment that is roomy, quiet, and that suits me perfectly. When I came back in January the first month was given over to paperers and painters and furniture dealers. I actually had to write an article for the March number of McClures while the floors were being painted under my feet. But I have taken a good deal of pleasure in fixing the place up, for it is exactly the kind of apartment I have always wanted, and I had almost despaired of ever being able to find one that would suit me for a reasonable rental. I have the competent colored girl who has been my maid for four years, and she tyrannizes over me—and makes me very comfortable. I have never before been so happy and comfortable as I am this winter. Probably one reason is that, for the first time in several years, I am perfectly well—well enough to enjoy everything, work and play alike. My office work I have cut exactly in half, and this gives me much more time to write—and to live, for that matter. I wish you and Bessie and Auntie Sister could see my new flat. What do you think of two open fires, one in the dining room and one in the sittingroom? I have a snug little study off the sittingroom and a comfortable bedroom and bath, a large dining room and a good kitchen. Plenty of sunlight in the two front rooms. I now own four very beautiful Persian rugs, of which I am very proud.
Yes, my dear Aunt, I know there was a sort of moral flimsiness about “Alexander.” But writing is a queer business. If one does anything that is sharp and keen enough to go over the line, to get itself with the work that is taken seriously, one has to have had either an unusual knowledge of or a peculiar sympathy with the characters one handles. One can’t write about what one most admires always—you must, by some accident, have seen into your character very deeply, and it is this accident of intense realization of him that gives your writing about him tone and distinction, that lifts it above the commonplace, in other words. Now there are three people, two men and one woman, whom I admire more than I do any other people, and about whom I feel very strongly. More than once I have tried to put these people, about whom I feel so keenly, into stories. I assure you, the result was a blow to pride—the stories, when I had finished them, sounded as if A. C. Hosmer [Red Cloud Chief publisher] might have written them, they were that commonplace. They were just like hundreds of other stories. Why, you ask? My dear Aunt, I don’t know. I only wish I did! But, to be worth anything, a story must have a flavor entirely its own. And often one can’t reach that point of differentiation with the subjects one would most love to handle. Maybe there’s a weakness in me that makes me able to handle the weak people better—I don’t know. Alexander has already gone through two editions in England, and the royalties are coming up to a nice little figure. The new novel is twice as long as Alexander and is much, much better. I’m almost sure you will like the heroine.
Bessie wrote me about G. P.’s [Franc’s son, G. P. Cather] hunting trip. Please congratulate him for me. Elsie [Cather] is so happy in her teaching. She loves the place and the work and the people. I am so glad. You were well when Bessie last wrote, and I hope you are now, my dear Aunt. Your niece would like to drop down for a day with you before this short month is over. I found such satisfaction in the time we had together last summer. One of the pleasures of getting older is that one can get so much nearer to one’s own people, and that the dear ones of them become dearer all the time. I always used to be a little afraid of my grown‑up relatives as a child. I felt as if all of them, even father, wanted to make me over, and I didn’t want to be made over—oh, not a bit! It’s worth nearing forty to have got rid of all those queer fears and shynesses that I used to feel with my own people—less with you and father, I think, than with any of the others, but still I was always a little nervous. For the last five or six years it has been such a pleasure to me to go back and find that all gone, to feel not a bit afraid, and to feel sure that where you did not agree with me you would give me the benefit of the doubt, and that people can be very fond of each other even if they cannot always think alike.
With a great, great deal of love to you,
Willie
In the spring of 1913, Cather was beginning to get personally acquainted with a woman
she had long admired on the stage: Wagnerian soprano Olive Fremstad. For the next two years, Fremstad was an enormous presence in Cather’s life, first as a central subject of her article “Three American Singers,” which appeared in the December 1913 McClure’s, and second as a major influence on the development of Thea Kronborg, the central character in Cather’s 1915 novel The Song of the Lark.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
April 14 [1913]
New York City
Dear Elsie:
Your glorious letter from Avignon makes me happy and rebellious. I am a fool not to have managed to be there when you are there. I’ve seldom been so happy as I was there. I knew you’d love it. Isn’t the Rhone the most splendid river in the world, anyway? I suppose all the little poplars along the shore were knee-deep in water when you wrote. I hope you’ll manage to get back to the “Rocher” to work, even if you go to Arles and Orange now. Are the gardens on tops of the Rocher as beautiful as they used to be, I wonder, and does a little ferry boat still come across on a trolley—always in danger of being swept off its wire and sent spinning down the current? And the terrific way in which the river sweeps about that elbow of the rock! It’s the most satisfying exhibition of force I’ve ever seen. You’ll be amazed when I tell you that I didn’t go [to] St. Rémy. I don’t know why, except that we kept putting it off and bad weather came on. You say you had mud in Arles—don’t I know how muddy it can be! But fair days there are never-to-be-forgotten. I hope the wild mustard will be in bloom about the tragic theatre.
The proofs of “Pioneers” have begun to come—I haven’t looked at them yet, not read a sentence, though there are a pile of them on my desk. As I wrote you before I am somehow “down” about it—I don’t know why. And this after being so well pleased with it at first. I’m more than glad you let Mrs. Muirhead see it, and that she liked it. NO! It made no difference, getting the ms. off a few days later or earlier to Harrison. I don’t think it interested him in the least, for he returned it nearly a week ago with the enclosed, and upon the cover six one-penny stamps. About the latter I won’t be punctilious—too much bother for too few stamps. It was the irony of fate that you should have to lug all Nebraska sod into Provence, probably paying excess baggage on it all the way! But I’m more than ever glad I sent it to you, now that I seem to have got separated from the story myself in some mysterious way. It isnt that I feel anything definitely wrong with it—I simply don’t get a thrill out of it anymore. But there, no more whining! I’m too dull to write any but a very dull letter today; and I should have waited, only I want to thank you for your splendid one from Avignon. Lord! I wish I were there this minute!