by Willa Cather
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
October 11, 1913
Pittsburgh
Dear Elsie:
I was in hard luck to miss sharing the little house with you. I don’t know whether I shall be able to get into the country again even for a few days. I have to go to New York on business next week, then hurry back. I’ve been busy, but the result of my activities does not seem to be very thrilling. I’ve been thrilled by a new line of reading, however. I’ve been reading the directories of American cities. New Orleans, St. Louis, St. Paul, Minneapolis. They seem to me about the best literature we have produced. They leave Walt Whitman away behind. Try “L” and “K” and “O” in Minneapolis sometime; they stir ones imagination more than all the works of the New England school. Rather! When I am old and gray and full of sleep I shall read nothing but directories.
The wedding comes off tonight, Isabelle’s sister, Edith. Mr. McClure, by ill chance, arrives tomorrow.
You shall see all the notices someday. Here is one from the “Post” and “Nation” which pleased me. The Athenaeum had a good one, and Clement Shorter wrote a most enthusiastic one in his paper [the Tatler].
These ought to be grand days for work—I’m wishing power of hand to you!
Yours
W.S.C.
“When I am old and gray and full of sleep” is an allusion to the William Butler Yeats poem “When You Are Old.”
By the late autumn of 1913, Cather was deeply into her work on her new novel, and her article about Fremstad, Geraldine Farrar, and Louise Homer, “Three American Singers,” had appeared in McClure’s.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
November 19 [1913]
New York City
Dear Elsie:
Life and death and the things pertaining to both have kept me from writing. My Swedish cousin [Lillian Thekla Brandthall Gore, wife of Cather’s cousin James Howard Gore], of whom I was very fond, died in Paris under an operation. Her husband made two terrible trips across the ocean and brought her body back on the “France”, the boat on which I saw her off in June! I went to Washington soon after he got back and spent some days with him. I’ve been home a few days, and of course find a great deal to do, settling the apartment and making business arrangements. I’ll be glad when its over, for I am tortured by the temporary stop in work. “Tortured” is rather strong, come to think of it; It’s a bore to have to mark time, but I guess I’ll live through it. The new novel took a bound before I left Pittsburgh, and I did about 28,000 words in four jolly weeks; did it twice, which means that it’s in almost final form. That was going some! As the wind blows now I could keep that pace up for some months to come. If only I could nail up the front door and live in a mess, I could simply become a fountain pen and have done with it—a conduit for ink to run through. And I like that well enough, too. I’m less trouble to myself than I am at any other time.
Have you seen the Singer article in the December McClures? Fremstad’s “perfectly” delighted with it. Really, she says the most rewarding things about it—about the Farrar part, too, and she has not the least small quibble about my having gone into her Minnesota past. I do think that large minded of her. “Mind?” says she “what’s the use of minding, when its the truth.” That’s the attitude for a perfect lady to take toward her biographer.
For goodness sake write and tell me all about yourself. Mrs. Fields begs me to come to Boston; says she is pretty frail and tired these days. I do long to go, but I don’t see how I can until after Christmas. The world is certainly too much with me these days. I had the telephone disconnected, but all I got out of that was Fremstad wearing down her two-thousand-dollar Isolde vocal cords trying to get 2036 Chelsea, and always getting a Brewery! But send a poor sinner a line, do! I know I’m the lost chord myself, but I’ll come to the surface very soon now. Wasn’t it compromising to have Mr. [Hamilton Wright] Mabie [of Outlook] say all those kind things about “O Pioneers”! Him, of all folks!
I wish you were going to the Russian Dancers with me tonight. I’d give a good deal for a bit of an evening with you. Sometime you must let me tell you about my Swedish cousin. We were really and truly friends.
Yours very much
W.S.C.
Mrs. Fields writes of the last naked woman—they are all alike—on the McClure cover, “But Oh, this undesirable cover!” Undesirable! Nothing has pleased me so much for years! And [Cameron] Mackenzie feeling so happy and wicked all the time because he thought she was so lusciously desirable! Can’t you hear her say it “un-desirable” !
Cather regularly exchanged work with other literary friends, and often they encouraged one another and celebrated each other’s successes, but Cather could not be noncommittal and polite about something she found unworthy.
TO ZOË AKINS
Friday [January 1914]
[Written in at the top, above the letterhead:] I’ve kept this three days, thinking I’d write a milder one. But if I say what I think, it would always be more or less like this. You ought to know that heartless kind of story is not in my kind, Zoë!
Dear Z.A.
Your exile is by this [time] nearly over, I hope? I’ve been in Boston—and in shops, which accounts for my not writing. This story, my dear Zoe is written to be smart. You can’t make me believe it was written for anything else. Now lots and lots of people are interested in cleverness and liveliness and the airy touch. I am not. So what can I say that’s worthwhile about such a story as this, which seems to me to have nothing to do with human folk as I know them. Neither of the people seem to me individuals at all and the episode—you can’t expect one to take that seriously. It is phrased in a sprightly way, but that counts for nothing to me. I’m one-sided, so you may take that into account in reading what I say. Seems to me you are talking to hear yourself here—through your hat. Now when people talk through their hats, it’s all one to me what they talk about: murder and mistresses or tea and toast—they’re merely names and no more; the toast is no warmer than the lady, or the lady than the toast. You go in too much for the far-fetched and queer because it’s queer, to suit my farmer mind. There’s either got to be real feeling in a story, or an intellectual interest of a high order. You can’t dodge both issues and come it off over one by being queer. Now this is meant to be a scolding because I think you ought to be more in earnest and less interested in yourself and the part you make in the picture, and in what people think of you. I’m afraid you’ve been “spoiled” by fond parents. Can’t you pull yourself out of it? Or don’t you want to? You’ll never do anything worth while as long as you flutter so. No, that’s too strong; but you’ll never work up to your best in that state of mind. A serious New Years to you!
Hastily
W.S.C.
The following, written while she was hospitalized for a blood infection caused by a hatpin scratch, reveals Cather’s peculiar aversion to deformity or illness, though she was still able to make puns.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
February 24, 1914
Roosevelt Hospital, New York City
My Dear Elsie:
Not much to say. I’ve been here a week and shall be here one or two more. Operation went very well, I believe; back of my head shaved and most of the scalp seems to be missing. Dressings very painful and are to continue five weeks if all goes well, three months if it goes not so well. Seems it takes scalp a long while to grow back. These details are enough, are they not? There are others but they are just as unpleasant. As Fremstad says “if it had been a railroad wreck one might endure it; but when it’s a pin scratch, it’s simply silly.” And it simply is.
There’s no place in my scheme of life for the unlucky. I’ll have to think it over. People who go and have grotesque accidents are clowns, and I feel toward them exactly as the people who used to go from London to Bedlam felt toward the sport they went to behold. I can’t share the tender feeling of our time toward the abbreviated. People minus their leg or their hair are roaringly funny a
nd ought to be laughed at and exhibited, not coddled.
It’s very little coddling I’m giving myself these days. Don’t expect to hear from me. If anything worse turns up I’ll let you know. But for the present I’m in hiding—trying to grow hide. I have not, I’m sorry to say, begun to grow any yet. I’ll have to wait a week or two more before I begin to heal, and then it’s slower than time. Very well, once I get out of this place I’ll work, and curse! Can’t help about five weeks dead loss of time, and plenty of losses in other directions, especially self-respect.
Yours
W.S.C.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
[March 2, 1914]
New York City
Dear Elsie:
I’m home again, came yesterday, and am perfectly happy. I can’t understand now how I ever felt as I did at the hospital. But really, it was an ugly and agonizing business. Somehow, when you have blood-poisoning, you feel so unclean. You pulled me out of a bad situation in Boston two years ago and brought me to New York on your back. (I seem to be a mollusk when I’m ill.) This time Fremstad pulled me out. Singing only three times last week,—once in Brooklyn—she came down to the hospital unannounced and unheralded, with a motor-load of every kind of spring flower, pulled me out of the mud-shallows and got me into current again. She showed me how to do my hair in two braids above my forehead, German fashion, and to make a chiffon thing over the bandage like Elizabeth wears in the last act. She showed so much interest in and so little horror of my ugly head, that I lost my own horror of it. It had taken a sharp turn for the better the night before she came, and now it’s going ahead by leaps and bounds. The moment the destruction of tissue stopped, which was not until Wednesday night, the world turned a different color, and I was sorry I’d sent you such a disgusting letter. But while one is making poison, there’s a cloud of madness over one’s brain. I never put in any three weeks like those before. A high temperature, and consistently unrelenting pain in such an inconvenient place—well, they make a mollusk of one, that[’s] all. But now—oh everything’s so jolly. Forget the invertebrate, please, and consider me draped in chiffon, like Louise of Prussia!
Yours
W.
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
Tuesday [April 28, 1914]
New York City
Dear Elsie:
I certainly do not deserve the splendid heartening letter I got from you last night, but I enjoyed it as much as if I merited it. And I have laughed all these weeks about the story you wrote me about the Outlook. If that isn’t the skimpy old maid among magazines!
I’ve been out of bandages for five weeks now, and after I first got to work everything went swimmingly. I went to Atlantic City for a few days, and to visit Mrs. [Clara] Davidge-Taylor on Staten Island. Then I got off my trolley and couldn’t get on with the story for two dismal weeks. Now I seem to be on my wire again and I hope for consequent peace of mind. But there have been singing-teachers, more young singers, Fremstad’s last performances, all the petty politics of an opera fight—disgusting enough, but interesting when it’s new to you. All these things—except the Fremstad ones—would have been cut out if I’d been working, but since I could not figure out my next move, or rather how to make the next move, they kept me from getting sullen and taught me a good deal. I’ve been perfectly well for more than a month, but I had three months of unanswered letters to take up; and work going in jumps, like the weather; now all tension, now all sag. Very unsatisfactory way to have your brains behave.
Elsie I so l-i-k-e (like) the Hoyts [artists Alice and Henry Hoyt]! They are about the only married people I know in New York who are both nice. Before I was ill I had a string of endurance tests, enduring stupid wives for clever husbands and vice versa, until I was a-weary of the world. One is so pleasantly sure with the Hoyts that one won’t suddenly become conscious of a strain between them. I went to their exhibit, and there was so much freshness and charm about the out-of-door things. The portraits I did not care for so much.
I expect to leave for Pittsburgh on the fifth of May. But if my time is extended beyond that, I shall certainly stay until the tenth to see you. Is Mr. Greenslet writing novels, I wish to ask, and many other things. But also I would like to show you a fat and grinning face and to convince you that I am no longer of the Caliban mood. But when I’m hurt like a beast I’ll always become a beast, NOT a saint! Cum Lupibus Vivens, Lupus Sum [“When living with wolves, I am a wolf”]. I invented that in the hospital, so I’m not sure about the participle. I have not quite got back my drive for the story yet, but otherwise I think I am as well as I was before.
I’ve ordered “The Romance on the Riviera” but it’s not come yet. I’m eager to see it.
I don’t think there will be much trouble with Mexico. Yes, I wish they would take a nerve tonic and repose themselves and let me go and explore the buried cities. I’ve found some lovely cliff-dweller things in the Natural History Museum here—a really rich find. If we meet on the 10th I may drag you to see them. Please send me some more Provence things when I get settled in Pittsburgh. I have such peaceful hours of reading there. I hope you’ve been going at a more even pace than I have. With joyful thanks to you for yesterday’s good letter.
Yours
W
Fremstad flees on Friday to the inclement wood of Maine.
The ghostwritten autobiography of S. S. McClure was published serially in McClure’s from October 1913 to May 1914 and in book form later in 1914. McClure was listed as the author of the book, but included a note: “I wish to express my indebtedness to Miss Willa Sibert Cather for her invaluable assistance in the preparation of these memoirs.” Her personal copy of the book, now at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is inscribed to her by McClure: “With affectionate regard for the real author.”
TO WILL OWEN JONES
May 29 [1914]
Pittsburgh
Dear Mr. Jones;
Yes, I enjoyed writing Mr. McClure’s biography; mainly because he was so honest about it and was not for dressing up the truth any. If he had wanted it ornamented or softened, or had wished to put all the emphasis on the pleasant side of farm life in Indiana, the story would have been dull to write and dull to read. He told me the facts exactly as he remembered them, and wanted them put down that way.
Yes, the newspapers have gone down a lot in the last few years–––and so have the magazines. The news-stand public prefers yellow fiction to anything else. All the flashy young business men in this part of the world want to be gay dogs and to be thought worse than they have time to be. It’s a curious phase; probably comes from too much prosperity.
No, I don’t hold any grudges about those early stories. They were warped, but they were so frankly so that I wonder that anyone should have misunderstood them. If a young man—or young woman—sits down in the cornfield and howls because he can’t hear any music-dramas, it does not mean that he has fallen out with the corn-fields. Give him all the music he wants and take him about the world a little until his mind finds what it’s hunting for, and he will come out all right with the corn. His was a case of mental dietetics; he hadn’t found the right food and went about half-nourished.
When I was working on the Journal you were always more than kind to me, and I cannot think without amazement of the amount of rhetorical wild oats you stood for. I don’t believe anybody ever made such hideous sounds in trying to learn to play an instrument as I did. When I’ve had to wrestle with young writers on McClure’s, I’ve often remembered your patience.
I am away on a long piece of work now and shall not return to New York until the late fall. I am going to Wyoming this summer and may see you in Lincoln, as I shall of course go to Red Cloud.
Faithfully always
Willa Cather
TO ROSCOE CATHER
June 5 [1914]
My Dear Roscoe:
Thank you, my boy, for your nice hearty letters. I wish I could go out to see you at once, but I must do one more
lap on this story or it will get away from me. I am turning a hard corner in it just now and must get it turned before I quit. I am never afraid to leave a story when it is going well, but it is bad policy to leave it when it is hardening up on one—takes too much energy to make it loosen up later. I do think I will get to you in July, but you must never kill any fatted calf for me—unless you have plenty of cold storage! If one will have an uncertain job like writing, one has to be governed a good deal by its uncertainties. On Sunday I am going up to Maine to spend a week with Mme. Fremstad, the opera singer, in her camp. I had not expected to do this, but it is the first summer that she has spent in this country in many years, and goodness knows when she will be here again. So I had better get her while I can. She is a combination that the Lord must have made to interest me even more than she does the rest of the world. The greatest artist of her time—which interests everyone—and a Swede off the Divide, “all same yense”, which interests me most of all. When I was ten years old I knew that a great artist, a new kind of artist, would come out of “the old peoples in a new world”, and it has been a fine adventure to see that belief realized. But I will tell you about all these things when I see you. I am perfectly well again. Indeed I do want to see Meta and the little Virginia. Now I’m off on “the long trail, the trail that is always new”—human people—most interesting things God made—beat the Grand Canyon!
With a heartfull of love
Willa
“The long trail, the trail that is always new” is a reference to Rudyard Kipling’s poem “A Long Trail.”
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
Tuesday [June 23, 1914]
Pittsburgh
My Dear Elsie: