by Willa Cather
Please give my love and sympathy to Mary and Margie, and to Irene [all Carrie’s sisters] when you write to her.
Always affectionately yours
Willie Cather
Carrie’s mother, Julia Erickson Miner, appeared in My Ántonia as Mrs. Harling.
TO FERRIS GREENSLET
November 24 [1917]
New York City
Dear Mr. Greenslet;
Mr. Scaife put me in an awkward position when he was here, and as I have not been able to get any work done since, and the first of December approaches, I think I had better write and tell you my troubles.
You will remember that illustration was not my idea at all. When Mr. Scaife was here last spring, he urged it very strongly. I told him then I didn’t want a mere conventional frontispiece; unless I could get a set of decorations done that would have some character and interpret and embellish the text, I didn’t want anything. He distinctly said that I could go ahead and see what I could do.
I selected Benda as a man who knew both Bohemia and the West; and because he has imagination. He has already given me a great deal of time, making preliminary sketches and trying to get exactly what I want. Our plan was for twelve line drawings, which would print on text paper, to be scattered through the book where there were blank half-pages at the ends of chapters. Three of the completed drawings are already in; they are admirable and give the tone of the text better than I could have hoped for.
For the price Mr. Scaife named when he was here, I can’t let Benda do more than these three. Now three tailpieces, scattered in a book would look hap-hazard and mean. These three were meant to be a part of a developing scheme of decoration. One can’t ask a man to do twelve difficult compositions in an exacting medium, for $150.
Mr. Scaife told Benda over the telephone that he was indifferent to this scheme of illustration, anyway, and would much prefer one full page picture which he could use in advertisements.
Of course, it would be much easier for Benda to do one conventional wash drawing, wash is his usual medium, than to work out sympathetic compositions in pen and ink which require a careful study of the text and some work from models. I am clearly the one who is making the trouble.
I know, now, that I should have got a definite figure of expenditure from you[r] office before I proceeded at all. But I knew Benda would do the work more cheaply than anyone else for me—for one thing I knew he would like the story—and a figure like $150 did not occur to me. We seldom had an art editor at McClures, and when we hadn’t, I usually arranged for the use of the illustrations made for our serials and sets of stories by book publishers. We always asked one third of the original cost of the drawings, and got it without any trouble.
The misunderstanding, apparently, has come on the meaning of the word “illustration.” But I told Mr. Scaife last spring that if I had any pictures at all, I wanted real illustrations, not a conventional frontispiece. He also said that illustrations “enriched” a book, which I think, since he had only a frontispiece in mind, was misleading. The scheme of decoration which Benda and I have worked out does, I think, enrich the book, but three tailpieces won’t do anything but make it look shabby.
This is my position: If Benda’s first drawings had been unsatisfactory, I could say so, and get out of the whole thing. That was my understanding with him. But they are more satisfactory tha[n] I could reasonably have hoped, and he has put a great deal of conscientious work on them, besides special knowledge. I can’t throw them back at him and say they are not good. He must be paid for them.
These three drawings, however, three lone tailpieces, would make the book look patchy––––would be worse than no pictures. But I can’t ask Benda to do twelve difficult compositions in line for $150!
It’s a misunderstanding, and I am willing to admit that I am to blame for it. I absolutely misunderstood Mr. Scaife’s language and his meaning.
If you can see your way to write Benda a polite letter, offering him $200 and telling him you know it is very little for his work, I will try to get him to do eight, or perhaps even ten of the decorations as originally planned.—These decorations, you understand, are pictures, like old woodcuts in effect, and evolved out of close study of the text and western photographs which I have been at great pains to get.–––That, it seems to me, would only be evidence of good will on the part of the publishers. It wouldn’t by any means pay for the work Benda began at my solicitation, but it would somewhat cover my retreat.
If this is impossible, then we will have to pay Benda for three drawings and not use them. I don’t see anything else to do, unless Mr. Scaife wishes to withdraw entirely from the responsibility of this book, for which I am now, as always, perfectly ready. In any case, please do not go ahead with the dummy until you have told me what you can do. I don’t think it was quite fair play of Mr. Scaife to repudiate, without examination, a scheme of decoration which I had worked out with so much pains, or to destroy the zeal of the artist. He said something to me over the telephone about “little pictures” not being worth as much as big ones! Why, doesn’t he know that I know that [Frederic Dorr] Steele gets more for one pen drawing than artists usually get for several wash drawings?
Faithfully
Willa Cather
An inquiry from Philadelphia says the bookseller there cannot get “Song of the Lark.” Is it out of stock with you?
R. L. Scaife, to whom Greenslet showed the letter above, wrote Cather to justify the price he was offering to Benda—$150 for ten drawings—as a standard rate artists received for book work. Magazines, he said, had “spoiled artists” by inflating their fees.
TO R. L. SCAIFE
December 1 [1917]
New York City
My Dear Mr. Scaife;
The series of pen-and-ink drawings I had in mind, and Mr. Benda’s fitness to do them, was suggested by a similar set of pen drawings he made to illustrate Jacob Riis’ book, “The Old Town.” I knew that Macmillans paid him nine hundred dollars for these drawings, which were not used in any periodical, but in the book only. I had planned to have only about a third as many pictures as were in the Riis book.
Mr. Benda telephoned me after your conversation with him. He was very polite and considerate, as he always is, but he said that Doubleday had paid him $150 and $200 for one or two wash drawings to illustrate novels, and that had he known how little he was to receive for these pen pictures he would not have felt that he could undertake them. He also said he could not do the drawings we had blocked out, as they would require a great deal of work and some of them would have to be done from models. On the other hand, he had already spent a good deal of time in studying the manuscript, collecting material, and making preliminary sketches, and he thought perhaps we might be able to substitute a set of drawings more conventional and less exacting.
These drawings, however, would have to be done at odd moments of his time, and he could not promise to deliver them before the first of March, as he could not afford to put more remunerative work aside for them. On this point he was very firm.
I am going out to his studio on Monday night, to see what we can do toward planning new compositions, and after that I can write you more fully.
I am cutting the story a good deal in revision, and I can now say positively that it will run very little, if at all, longer than “O Pioneers!” I hope you can use the same type as in that book, and give the text pages the same look. I have broken it up into chapters as much as I can, and liberal page-margins and spaces at chapter-ends will make the decorations look better. Would your foreman be willing to let the artist and me size the cuts and decide on the reduction of the drawings, provided we do not ask for cuts more than a third of a page in size? If you could give me the exact size of the page and send me a sheet of the paper you will use, it would be helpful.
Benda asked me not to send away the three drawings I already have until we had come to some decision about those that were or were not to follow. I will send them to yo
u as soon as I have his permission to do so. Meantime, please let me know whether I may size the cuts.
Very sincerely yours
Willa S. Cather
Scaife didn’t immediately change his mind about Benda’s fees, but he did tell Cather to work with Benda to get the kind of illustrations she desired and they would work it out.
TO R. L. SCAIFE
[December 9, 1917]
New York City
Dear Mr. Scaife;
The dummy will reach you Tuesday morning, also two Benda drawings, with the size marked on the margins. Mr. Greenslet and I agreed when he was here that it would be better to give each of these drawings a full page, with plenty of margin about it, than to use them as tail-pieces. They are illustrations, in reality, not tailpieces, but should be printed small on a liberal page, to give the effect of old woodcuts, and without captions.
The drawings will be more effective if they all occur on right-hand pages. That, I think, is rather important.
They should be printed in the same black ink as the text.
Please use the accent mark over the initial A in Ántonia in the running title. Even if many of the accents break, the majority will remain and give character to the title.
Please send me proofs of the drawings as soon as they are printed. They will be a help to me and to the artist in future compositions.
One of the two drawings I send you is sized a little wider than the text measure, but I think that will make no trouble in printing. The other is slightly narrower.
Sincerely yours
Willa S. Cather
In the early months of 1918 Cather was nearly, but not quite, finished with the book. After reading the first few chapters, Ferris Greenslet told her he thought the story was “going very soundly” but he suspected a “strong dramatic thrill” should be coming in the next batch since it wasn’t in those early pages.
TO FERRIS GREENSLET
Friday [February 1, 1918]
Dear Mr. Greenslet:
I am afraid the Introduction will be almost the last thing I write. I shall have to wait to see how far the story tells itself before I know how much to put in the introduction. But I will do it as soon as I can.
Tomorrow I shall send back to you the dummy Miss [Helen] Bishop left with me. I like the look of it very much. My name on the cover is “Willa S. Cather”; if it is not too much trouble I wish you would ask them to cut out the S and solder the plate, leaving it simply “Willa Cather.” I think the S looks too business-like for the queer title above it. Cutting out the S., you have a bunch of queer enough proper names!
I shall have another bunch of copy to send you in two weeks.
Faithfully yours
W.S.C.
Please send Miss Bishop over soon again!
After she wrote a letter to Greenslet bemoaning her inability to complete the book as quickly as she wished, Greenslet wrote back to say that they should abandon publishing it in the spring and would just bring it out whenever Cather was done.
TO FERRIS GREENSLET
March 7, 1918
Dear Mr. Greenslet;
Thank you most heartily for your kind and consoling letter. Don’t you think it would be better to get the book out among the first of the autumn books, say late in September, than to get it out in the summer when people are out of town?
Will you please ask your printing house to save enough of the cream-tinted, rough-finished paper used in the dummy to print the full edition in the summer?
I will send you three Benda drawings tomorrow; the two full figure ones, of Antonia and Lena Lingard—the latter fairly busting out of her clothes—I think extremely good. I wouldn’t ask for better. That will make eight drawings I have sent you. I have still two more which do not quite suit me. Unless I can get Benda to re-draw them for me someday, I won’t use them. But will you please ask Mr. Scaife to send Benda his check as soon as you receive the three drawings I am sending you by express? His work is all done. If there is any business office formality which prevents your paying an artist in the middle of the month or the dark of the moon, won’t you please send him the check and charge it to me until such time as it becomes proper to transfer it to manufacturing charges.
Will you also please have one copy of “O Pioneers” and one of “The Song of the Lark” mailed to W. T. Benda, 140 Wadsworth ave. New York, and charge to me.
If you like I will send another bunch of copy to you in two or three weeks, and you can return it to me, as I may want it by me until the end, which I devoutly hope will not be very far off. I’d like to have you see the next installment before I begin the last round, if you will have time to look it over. I am well again, and what is more important as regards the production of copy, the maid is now well enough to keep the kettle boiling.
Faithfully yours
W.S. Cather
Benda illustration from My Ántonia of Lena Lingard “busting out of her clothes”
TO CARRIE MINER SHERWOOD
March 13, 1918
New York City
My Dear Carrie;
It has been a long while since I received the letter from you which gave me so much pleasure. I still have it and shall always keep it. I like to know that you, too, feel that our friendship is simply one of those which last for life. How few of those friendships one has, in the long run, and how precious they become as time goes on. One has to live about forty years to find out which things are the temporary excitements, and which are the lasting affections. In every letter I get from Father I hear something of you, and of what valuable work you have done this winter for the Red Cross.
I have had a rather hard winter, though many pleasant things have happened and I have never enjoyed living more. The fuel shortage was inconvenient for me. My study is heated by a coal grate, and during the terribly bitter weather, which lasted over a month, I had to vacate my study and work in the dining-room, where we managed to keep one coal grate going. The change was disturbing. Then Josephine, my good French maid, was ill and not able to come for a month; and scrub women and ice-men and laundry-men frittered away my time. The net result is, that my new book, which was scheduled for spring publication, cannot come out until early fall. It is a disappointment, but the book may be all the better for not being hurried. At least, I hope so.
Several weeks ago I had a nasty bronchitis for about two weeks, before my maid was well enough to come back to work. When I was recovering my old friend, Olive Fremstad, the singer, came to my rescue and made life more cheerful. Every evening she sent her car down for me and hauled me up to her apartment on 86th street—about three miles from Bank street—gave me a good dinner and a little music, and then sent me home again in her car. Since no German operas are being given this winter, she had had more leisure than ever before, and we have done many pleasant things together.
I have also done many pleasant things with the Hambourgs. I get on well with Isabelle’s husband now; have really learned to like him. Like most people, he has many good qualities when you come to know him well. We have gone to concerts and to the opera often together. We heard [soprano Amelita] Galli-Curci several times during her season here. That is certainly one of the loveliest voices that have come along in my time. She had an overwhelming success here.
Before Mr. [Charles] Wiener died, during his illness of four months, I was at their house often. I usually dined there Sunday night, and after he grew too weak to come to the table I used to see him in his room after dinner. His death is a great loss to me. He was the oldest friend I had in this part of the world. All his family here have always been cordial and friendly to me. At the funeral I was put in the first carriage, with the widow and the only remaining brother, and all the troop of nieces and nephews came after. I would not have thought it would ever make much difference to me in which carriage I was put at a funeral, but somehow this pleased and touched me very much. I thought it an appreciative recognition of a long friendship. The brother, Dr. Richard Wiener, telephoned me of
ten during Mr. Wiener’s illness. He comes to see me sometimes. He is a very interesting and cultivated man, and fond of music. He is [pianist Ignacy] Paderewski’s physician, and [soprano Marcella] Sembrich’s and [violinist Eugène] Ysaye’s. His wife, too, is such a cordial, human sort of person. I have a warm feeling for the whole family. They are not clannish and selfish like many big rich Jewish families.
Edith Lewis sends her warmest regards to you and Walter [Sherwood]. She had a hard winter, but kept pretty well. While we managed to keep part of this apartment comfortable, in spite of the fact that the gas and water froze, many of the office buildings were almost entirely without heat, and Edith’s office so cold she had to work in her coat and furs for weeks. The suffering in the poor quarter to the south of us was disheartening and discouraging. But it’s been, on the whole, a happy winter. Every Friday afternoon there have been pleasant and interesting people here for tea, and we have given some jolly little dinner parties. When Josephine is well, she is a splendid cook and a good manager, and makes us very comfortable. How I would love it if you could drop in on us sometime. There have been a lot of Lincoln people here this winter, at one time and another.
Now I must close a long letter. Please give my love to Mary and Margie, and keep a great deal for yourself and your household.