The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

by Willa Cather

  Then in Red Cloud they truly love, as they say “the voice.” It fills them with pleasure and content. She had to be a singer for them, not because I happen to go to the Opera a great deal. I wasn’t trying to put something over on Red Cloud. I was writing it from their point of view. And they did like it very much. I was out there when the book came out, and the way they talked it over was a great satisfaction.

  No, Dorothy, I’ve been unable to start a new book this winter. Judge McClung died in November, and the breaking‑up of my old home there was a sad thing to live through. On April 3d Isabelle is to marry Jan Hambourg, violinist, younger brother of Mark Hambourg—but very much nicer. I am glad, for she is very happy, but the final closing up of that long Pittsburgh chapter is very hard, all the same. May Willard is coming on to stay with me for the wedding reception, which will be at Sherry’s. Jan and I are not very congenial. He’s a strong personality—one likes him or one doesn’t. So, although Isabelle will be in New York a good deal, things can’t, of course, be as they were. It’s an amazing change in one’s life, you see, and on the best terms one can figure out, a devastating loss to me. My old friend Mrs. Fields, of Boston, died last winter. A good many doors have been closing. The next book is there, ready to be begun, but I’ve felt indifferently toward it. When my interest is out of commission, I have very little wit to work with.

  Are you never coming to New York? There are such a lot of things I’d love to talk over with you. Don’t you think the general misery let loose in the world gets to one? I believe that when nations war the milk and cream go sour and the hens refuse to lay. Of course the pursuit of happiness is not the reality it’s supposed to be. The pursuit of pain seems to be just as irradicable a human instinct, and it breaks out in spite of all the wisdom in the world. There were three Poles dining with me last night. Why do the Poles always have to bleed, no matter who cuts? I wish you were coming down, and that I could put these things up to you.

  Please return this New Republic notice. It presents the other side which it’s only reasonable to consider. The book moves about, and yet all hangs on the Moonstone relation—which latter fact this Mr. Bourne did not get. Anyhow, I’m glad the story gave you the same kind of “let-ones self go” feeling it gave me. Send me another note.

  Yours

  Willa

  PART FIVE

  Becoming Well Known

  1916–1918

  As long as one says “will people stand this, or that?” one gets nowhere. You either have to be utterly common place or else do the thing people don’t want, because it has not yet been invented. No really new and original thing is wanted: people have to learn to like new things.

  —WILLA CATHER TO ROSCOE CATHER, November 28, 1918

  Willa Cather in front of her tent in a pasture on High Mowing farm, near Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where she wrote part of My Ántonia, 1917 (photo credit 5.1)

  IN THE FIRST MONTHS of 1916 the McClung home in Pittsburgh where Cather had spent so much time so comfortably for nearly twenty years was sold, and in April her close friend Isabelle McClung was married to violinist Jan Hambourg. An important era in Cather’s life was over. No longer would she have the kind of companionship with Isabelle that she had cherished. But after these bitter personal disappointments she turned her energies to writing the novel by which she has been most widely known, My Ántonia, a story of affectionate memory set against a narrative of Czech immigrants and transplanted Virginians in the farming country and small towns of nineteenth-century Nebraska. It was—and is—a greatly beloved book, to the point that in Cather’s later years readers were sometimes disappointed because she didn’t go on producing others in the same mode, one after another. My Ántonia was also heralded by critics and fellow writers. It established her reputation and marked her arrival, after a long apprenticeship, at the status of true literary artist. Letters written during this period show how involved Cather was in every phase of the production of a book not only as a piece of fiction but also as a physical object: a total work of art.

  The following two letters to Cather’s brothers are a rare example of two pieces of correspondence written on the very same day, but revealing quite different moods.

  TO DOUGLASS CATHER

  July 8 [1916]

  Columbian Hotel, Taos, New Mexico

  My Dear Douglass:

  Edith [Lewis] and I are here again after five gritting hot days in Denver. The nights are cool here and the days are hot for only a few hours. We can get excellent horses. Edith is a showy rider, and I can at least manage to get about on a horse and don’t much mind a rough trail.

  You said you were coming north in July. I wonder how far north? As far as Albuquerque, for instance? Unless there is some good chance of meeting you we shall probably not stir far from here. Perhaps we may take another driving trip among the Rio Grande pueblos about Española, if Edith is well enough. Edith must be in New York on the 25th of July, and I am afraid her vacation so far has been more interesting than restful. After she leaves me I may go to Lander [Wyoming, Roscoe’s home]. Eventually I will reach Red Cloud, and then I hope I can persuade mother to go to Denver for a couple weeks, as Elsie writes that she is not well. I want to stay at home for a month or two, if it is agreeable to everybody, but I won’t stay after I begin to get on anybody’s nerves. I shall always be sorry that I went home last summer, because I seemed to get in wrong at every turn. It seems not to be anything that I do, in particular, but my personality in general, what I am and think and like and dislike, that you all find exasperating after a little while. I’m not so well pleased with myself, my dear boy, as you sometimes seem to think. Only in my business one has to advertise a little or drop out—I surely do not advertise or talk about myself as much as most people who write for a living—or one has to drop out. I can’t see how it would help any of my family any if I lay down on my oars and quit that rough-and-tumble game. It would be easy enough to do that. I’ve had a very hard winter and have got no work done except two short stories—one very poor. Judge McClung’s death and Isabelle’s marriage have made a tremendous difference in my life. The loss of a home like that leaves one pretty lonely and miserable. I can fight it out, but I’ve not as much heart for anything as I had a year ago. I suppose the test of one’s decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found out that one can never please the people they wanted to please. I suppose it’s playing the game after that, that counts.

  However, the truth is usually gloomy, and one doesn’t have to talk about it all the time, thank goodness. I don’t see why you and I can’t meet and do things together, even if you find my sort trying. I know I’m “trying”. Most women who have been able to make over a hundred dollars a month in office work, have been spoiled by it in one way or another. It is bad for all of them and it was bad for me. But even so, I don’t see why we can’t make it go better, and have lots of good times together. I enjoyed every minute that I was with you in Denver last year. I can have a better time with you than with almost anybody, when you are not grouchy. And when you are grouchy, after this, I’ll simply flit. I won’t sit around and weep. I can’t be hurt again as badly as I was last summer. After this I’ll be more philosophical; I won’t expect too much, and I mean to enjoy any goodwill or friendship I get from any of my family. I enjoy every single member of my family when they are half-way friendly toward me. I enjoy them a great deal more now than I did in my younger days when I kept trying to make everybody over. My first impulse, of course, is to think that my own way of seeing things is the right way. But my second thought is always to admit that this is wrong and that I have been often mistaken. I even think I’ve grown a good deal milder in the last year—I’ve had trouble enough and losses enough. Three friends died during the winter whom it seemed to me I could not get on without. And perhaps the disapproval I got at home last summer has been good for me. I am quite a meek proposition now, I can tell you. I think I’ve had my belting, and it has
taken the fizz out of me all right—and I’ll tell you this, it’s positively shipwreck for work. I doubt whether I’ll ever write anything worth while again. To write well you have to be all wrapped up in your game and think it awfully worth while. I only hope I’m not so spiritless I won’t be able to make a living. I had two stories turned down this winter because they had no “pep” in them. The editors said they hadn’t and I knew they hadn’t.

  Be sure to meet me somewhere if you can. I think you’ll find me easier to get on with. Time is good for violent people.

  Yours with much love

  Willie

  TO ROSCOE CATHER

  July 8 [1916]

  Taos, New Mexico

  I got your letter just as Miss Lewis and I were leaving Denver for Taos. I would have preferred Lander, but Edith wanted very much to return here, where we had a delightful week last summer. Probably we shall be here for about two weeks now. I hope I can go up to Lander on our return trip. Eventually I shall get to Red Cloud. I hope I can get Mother to go to Denver for two weeks, as Elsie writes that she is not at all well. I am impatient to see the little West Virginia [Roscoe’s daughter Virginia]. Perhaps I shall stay at home until the late fall. The last winter has been a sort of Waterloo for me; my best and oldest friends dying or marrying all winter long. I got nothing done the whole winter long and spring long but two short stories. You probably saw the Century one—bad enough!—the other, sold to McClure’s, is much better. I have a new idea for a novel which I’d like to talk over with you—not very new, none of my ideas ever are. I don’t seem to have acquired a single new idea since Sandy Point [the make-believe town of their childhood]. The trouble about this story is that the central figure must be a man, and that is where all women writers fall down. I get a great many bouquets about my men, but if they are good it is because I’m careful to have a woman for the central figure and to commit myself only through her. I give as much of the men as she sees and has to do with—and I can do that much with absolute authority. But I hate to try more than that. And yet, in this new-old idea, the chief figure must be a boy and man. I’d like to talk it over with you. You might help me a good deal. I wish you’d kept a diary on your Yellowstone trip of long ago—It’s a little that kind of story.

  Pardon this spidery scrawl: Five Jewish travelling men waiting for the one ink bottle in this adobe hotel. It’s kept by a Mexican woman and a parrot that speaks french—property of her late husband, who was a Frenchman. Taos is a beautiful place, you know, forty dreadful miles across canyons from the railroad; all Mexicans, no whites, wonderful Indian pueblo near the Spanish town. I like the Mexican woman and her cool clean hotel and her grand manner. I wish you could do some of these things with me. But life is so awfully one-sided; if you keep free you’re too damned free, and if you tie up—why, there you are.

  Isabelle has married a very brilliant and perfectly poisonous Jew. Not one of her old Pittsburgh friends can endure him. Nice situation for me. I think I shall travel rather light after this.

  Goodnight, my boy. I want awfully to see you and Meta.

  Lovingly

  Willie

  The “bad enough” story was “The Bookkeeper’s Wife”; the “much better” one was “The Diamond Mine.” Cather called Roscoe’s daughter “West Virginia” because she lived in the West, to distinguish her from Jessica’s daughter, also named (Mary) Virginia. The new story resembling Roscoe’s trip to the Yellowstone may be My Ántonia, which is told from the perspective of a boy and a man, but might possibly be “The Blue Mesa,” which finally became the central section of The Professor’s House.

  After traveling in New Mexico, Cather went to Lander, Wyoming, in July to visit Roscoe and his family, including his infant twin daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth. By August, she returned home to Red Cloud.

  TO ROSCOE CATHER

  Sunday [August 20, 1916]

  My Dear Boy;

  This is the first moment I’ve had alone. The day after I got here I had to make a speech to Gertie Coon’s Institute. West Virginia is such fun that I fool a lot of time playing with her. She’s a totally new kind of child to me and mighty interesting. I love her pretty little voice and cunning face. Her grandmother makes a brave show of discipline, but she babies her in secret and I fear the strong hand has relaxed a good deal. I don’t think Virginia has ever been homesick except on the one sad day when she saw her grandfather with his teeth out and cried all day, wailing “I am so ashamed of my grandfather.” She will be a hard child to bring up, I suspect, because she is very individual and because she seems to have no eye to the main chance. She will spoil a whole picnic about which she really cares a great deal because she can’t wear a certain hair ribbon, when she does not really care which ribbon she wears. Compromises seem foreign to her, and I suppose she will have to learn to yield in trifles to get the big thing about which she really cares. After she and her grandmother have a strong difference of opinion as to whether one should play in the rain-water tub with one’s white dress on, she never holds a grudge but comes up smiling. Her uncle Doug and I both think she has about the sweetest little voice in the world. You must be stern with her when she is fussy about which seat she will sit in or which ribbon she will wear, brother, for it will make her life simpler and stronger. People’s lives always get messy if they don’t acquire a sense of proportion. It’s about the only direction in which I think she needs improving. All her personal habits are charming. I want to see her learn good business, and not spoil the party for some little personal quirk—it will smooth the next ten years out for her so. I think she’s intelligent enough to see these things even now if you talk to her. Her dear grandmother can’t help her much there, for the ribbon or the jelly we forgot to bring home spoiled so many hours for grandmother herself. Mary Virginia and Tom [Auld] have learned not to fuss because they like to do things with their grown up aunts and uncles who won’t be bored with it—and this in spite of the fact that their mother [Jessica] encourages them to fuss.

  I don’t know what Jim [Cather] is going to do—no mortal could tell!—but if you have to come for V—, don’t come too soon. We all get so much pleasure of her and would miss her terribly. She and her grandmother have lovely times and I like to see them together. It’s quite touching the way mother loves her and keeps coming in at night to look at her—and mother is sure no sentimentalist.

  Do you know, I miss Margaret and Elizabeth as if they were real persons, and I wish they were old enough to write letters to. Please ask Mr. Sproul to make four prints of each of the three pictures of me and the twins in the back yard. I am very proud of them and want to send them to several people, Jack [Cather] and Isabelle among them. Ask him to mail the pictures to me, with the bill, just as soon as he can.

  When I went to Lander I was certainly sick in my mind. I was morbid and saw everything darkly. I came away another person. I am happy and well, and everything looks good to me. The twins really smoothed out my troubles with their sweet good little ways, and our long horseback rides just set me up in spirit. Then it was such a pleasure to get to know Meta and to find that we could be such congenial companions. You know how I am—I don’t mean to be difficult, but if I can’t like, I can’t. I’ve always been just a little timid about going to Lander, for fear that Meta and I couldn’t catch step, and I knew it would make me very sad, and you, too. Now I feel as if Meta and I could travel about and take the twins along and not get bored with each other. And travelling is that high-pressure test of congeniality. I hope we three can run about together a little someday. I wish I’d gone to Lander five or six years ago, but it never could have done me more good than it has this summer. I miss the twins aw-ful-ly! I find myself talking about them all the time. Did they like the bear Isabelle sent?

  With a whole heart-ful of love to you and Meta

  Willie

  Don’t forget to order the photographs of me and twins!

  In August, Cather’s editor at Houghton Mifflin, Ferris Greenslet, wrote as
king if she might have another book ready for them for their 1917 list. The Song of the Lark, he noted, was selling strong.

  TO FERRIS GREENSLET

  August 22 [1916]

  Red Cloud

  Dear Mr. Greenslet:

  I have been up in the Wind River Mountains in northern Wyoming for a month, and reached home today. Your letter greets me with cheering news. Have you seen Alice Maynell’s review of the book in the Manchester Guardian? The Westminster Gazette is also excellent. Indeed all the English reviews are very gratifying.

  Oh yes, I will certainly have another book ready by the end of next year. It will probably be a story of the Southwest, and the title will probably be “The Blue Mesa” or something of that sort, and it will be full of love and hate. I’ve not written a word of it yet, but I shall get to work the first of September, after our family-reunion house-party here is over. I shall try to work here, and if things go well I shall not go to New York before November or December. I ought to be able to pull copy out pretty fast after I do settle down to work. Last winter was a hellish winter, but I’ve forgotten it. I left the last memory of it above [the] timber line in the Wind River mountains.