The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

by Willa Cather

  I have written a long letter and yet I have told you very little of what I mean. I think I must always have cared for something nervous and direct and supple in French prose itself, when I was too young to think about it or reason about it. It excited me more than English prose, just as the air in high altitudes always makes me feel better and stronger than the air at sea level.

  I may say that of all the French writers I have cared so much for at one time and another, I think I now enjoy Prosper Merimée perhaps more than any of the others. I feel as if the qualities which give me so much pleasure in other French prose are particularly present in him. I believe he is not fashionable in France at present, but he has almost everything I like in a writer—along with a proud reserve that makes me respect him.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Willa Cather

  P.S. I think an essay I once wrote, called “The Novel Démeublé” will give you exactly the information you want. You will find a convenient edition of it listed on the last page of the pamphlet I am enclosing with this letter.

  Sincerely

  Willa Cather

  Cather had reached the point in her career where honors began to pile up. In addition to the growing number of honorary degrees, she was notified in November 1929 of her election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

  TO ZONA GALE

  November 25, 1929

  My dear Miss Gale:

  As I feared, I won’t be able to accept the invitation from you [to come to Gale’s home town of Portage, Wisconsin] which pleased and tempted me so much. I shall have to go to my mother in Pasadena just as soon as possible after Christmas—which means that work is pretty much out of the question for this winter. But it is a lovely thing for me to remember that you did want to have me there, and I am not going to give up hoping for a sojourn near you at some future time. Things have been hitting me pretty hard of late, you know. You remember when Kent is in the stocks waiting for Lear, and says “Fortune turn thy wheel.”

  On the long, slow train ride down from New Hampshire I read your new book [Borgia] with such delight and amusement—amusement that was rather grim. Of course we are all Borgias—especially when we really get interested in other people and have kind intentions. I nearly ruined the life of a young brother by bringing him off the farm and giving him what I thought were “advantages”. But one cannot live isolated in a test tube—and most contacts are pernicious.

  If you come to New York before Christmas, or soon afterward, please let me know. I want very much to tell you about something that I wished to speak of when I saw you last fall, and didn’t. And I want to hear how things have turned out for the nice daughter you had with you—I did like that girl so much.

  Always faithfully yours,

  Willa Cather

  Warner Brothers had produced a silent film of A Lost Lady in 1924, starring Irene Rich and George Fawcett, and now, with the emergence of sound films, sought to remake the movie. Talking actors introduced new considerations for Cather.

  TO MANLEY AARON, ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

  November 29, 1929

  My dear Miss Aaron:

  My hesitation about letting Warner Brothers have the sound rights of “A Lost Lady” has been due partly to the fact that they offered me a very low price and partly to the fact that I do not want my name attached to dialogue written by some person whose name and ability I do not know.

  Of course, if they would agree to make no further use of my name than to say at the beginning of the film “Adapted from the novel of that name by Willa Cather,” I believe I would feel no further hesitation in the matter and would let them have it at the price they offer. I would however want a signed statement from them that they would, in all the advertising, use that phrase—“Adapted from the novel of that name by Willa Cather” or “Adapted from Willa Cather’s novel.” In case they are not willing to confine themselves to this limited use of my name, I would certainly want to have something to say about the person who should write the dialogue for a sound picture. I am writing you this letter because I have just heard that an old friend of mine, Zoë Akins, who writes for the movies is still in Hollywood. She is under contract at the Fox studio, I think; but the Warners might be able to make some arrangement to get her for the job, if they wished to take the trouble. Zoe Akins knows the period in which my story is laid, the part of the country in which it occurs and the kind of people who appear in it. Moreover, I feel pretty sure that she would do the best she could for me. You might send Warner Brothers a copy of this letter or extracts from it, and they could give you an answer. What they do not seem to realize is that I am absolutely unwilling to have the dialogue of the sound production written by some one I don’t know, and then have my own name used in connection with it.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Willa Cather

  TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

  December 20 [1929]

  Grosvenor Hotel, New York City

  Dear Dorothy:

  I feel as if I must manage to reach you at Christmas time, though I’ve no idea where you are. Forgive this dreary letter-paper—could anything be a better index of the dreary way in which I now live? I can’t take an apartment, you see, when I have to make two trips a year to California. I’m going there again in January.

  Dear Dorothy, I can’t thank you enough for the letter you wrote me from Spain this summer. I still have it by me. It reached me in my little house at Grand Manan, an island about thirty-five miles out from the New Brunswick shore. I went up there immediately after the Yale Commencement and stayed until late in September—really got rested and began to like life again. Then I went to a place I often stay in New Hampshire and came back to town in November, because I had to see my dentist, oculist, lawyer, etc. One does have to come back to cities for some things, and it’s easiest where one has connections all ready made (I mean all ready, not already.) But as soon as I get back here, I get rather used up. The old New York of ten years ago wouldn’t tire me, but the present New York—words fail me!

  Yes, that actress in Pittsburgh was Lizzie Hudson Collier, cousin of Willie Collier. I wonder where she is now? She was as kind and good as new milk, or fresh bread. The worst of living fast and hard is that one can’t keep in touch with all the people one cared for. But the first little circle, I’ve always kept close to them. I yesterday sent off eight Christmas boxes, (very carefully chosen and bought, the contents) to as many old women on farms within 25 miles of Red Cloud. There used to be fourteen of them (not so old, then) Swedish, Danish, German, Bohemian, Irish. In all these years, since the early Pittsburgh days, I’ve never been too poor or too busy or too sick to send them something at Christmas time. I’ve had some true lovers among them.—You see, I’d loved them first. “In her last illness she talked of you so often,” the daughters write me afterward. I live only to get back to those old friends again—as I have kept going back, winter and summer, whenever I could, for half a life-time. But you see I can’t go now, with mother so ill. She’s terribly jealous—it will hurt her if I even stop there.

  Mother’s condition changes little—has improved a trifle, they tell me. Please give my love to your mother if you are with her. If you and I have to become the older generation, why in mercy’s name can’t it be done without so much pain? It’s like dying twice.

  Well, I honestly set out to write you a cheerful letter—things are not so bad with me; I’m quite well, for instance. Instead of a chatty letter, it’s turned out a homesick wail. I suppose my heart is always out there at Christmas time (it is so bleak, you know; and if one can love the bleak and bare at all—why one loves it more than other things. If I take up a pen at all, I’m very apt to write what I’m thinking hardest about, so you get this queer letter, my poor Dorothy!

  However, I do wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, God knows! If you are in town before the end of January, won’t you please let me know at this hotel?

  Lovingly

  Willa
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  TO ZOË AKINS

  December 31 [1929]

  My Dearest Zoë;

  Your wonderful crucifix has made me so homesick for the Southwest! What a touching and powerful thing it is—just the color of the poor believers in their little tawny houses. It’s a precious thing to have in New York. Thank you, with all my heart. I’ll be in California in February. Tonight I am leaving for Quebec to spend the New Year week. It will be lovely up there now—Miss Lewis goes with me and we’re taking a trunk full of coats and sweaters. There are mountains of snow over all this country now. I’ll drink your health in very good champagne tomorrow night, dear Zoë.

  With love

  Willa

  TO FERRIS GREENSLET

  [January 1930]

  Hotel Grosvenor, New York City

  Dear Mr. Greenslet:

  Will you please ask your business office to send me a statement of all royalties paid me in 1929. I must leave for Pasadena in a few weeks and must make my income tax report early.

  Hastily

  Willa Cather

  P.S. I like [Oliver La Farge’s] “Laughing Boy” very much!

  TO FERRIS GREENSLET

  February 6, 1930

  Hotel Grosvenor, New York City

  Dear Mr. Greenslet:

  You have emptied a pretty kettle of fish upon my head! Wasn’t it faithless of you (and, incidently, most illegal) to use my name, without my permission, in your ad. for Laughing Boy? Two old and intimate friends of mine published new books this fall, and their respective publishers asked me to let them use my name in exactly the way you used it. I refused in both cases, because if one begins that sort of thing there is simply no end to it. Sometimes the best possible friends write the worst possible books, and if they come to you and say, “you allowed your name to be used for this book or that book,” what is one going to say in reply? The only way to keep out of embarrassing situations is consistently, and in every case, to keep one’s name out of blurbs and advertisements. It’s quite right that reviewers and people who write professionally about books should be quoted, that is their job and their judgment ought to count for something, but a friendly expression of interest in a book surely ought not to be used in print without one’s consent.

  Now that I have got this off my chest, please have someone send me a copy of the new edition of Antonia. Living thus in a hotel, I have none of my own books, and I want to make some corrections in Antonia for the English edition (and for you, if you will make the corrections.)

  Also, since I am leaving for California about the 20th, would it be convenient for you to send me my royalty check sometime next week instead of March 1st? I want to get my business affairs all straightened up before I go, if possible.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Willa Cather

  TO DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER

  March 10 [1930]

  Las Encinas Sanitarium, Pasadena, California

  My Dear Dorothy;

  Mother had a little chuckle over the Mark Twain dinner picture you sent me. She is a little stronger than last spring but just as helpless,—and her state is just as hopeless.

  Sometimes I wonder why they build up a little more strength for people to suffer with. My sister is off for a few days rest and I am kept pretty busy trying to divert mother a little. We have a charming English nurse who has been with her a year now and never fails us. I have a nice little cottage of my own near mother’s cottage, the food here is excellent and I am very comfortable in body. The trouble is one can’t think of much but the general futility of existence.

  Willa Cather at the celebration of Mark Twain’s seventieth-birthday dinner. Cather is third from the right.

  My love to you and your mother. I envy you a New England spring.

  Yours always

  Willa

  The picture was of Cather wearing an uncharacteristically frilly dress when she attended a lavish dinner at Delmonico’s in celebration of Mark Twain’s seventieth birthday in 1905. Harper’s magazine devoted its December 23, 1905, issue to Twain, the dinner, and photographs of the guests in their finery.

  In the spring of 1930, Woman’s Home Companion published Cather’s short story “Neighbor Rosicky.”

  TO MARGARET AND ELIZABETH CATHER

  March 19 [1930]

  Las Encinas Sanitarium, Pasadena, California

  Dear Twinnies;

  Perhaps you’ve seen the first part of “Neighbor Rosicky” in the [“]Woman’s Home Companion”—but I am sending you the first and second parts in another envelope, in case you have not seen it. Your daddy will read it aloud very well, as he knows the characters.

  Your grandmother is about the same,—comfortable, and most of the time cheerful. I am hoping to see you in a couple weeks, my dears. I will try to make my stay in Rawlins [Wyoming] on April 12th and 13th. I will let your father know later.

  With love from all of us

  Aunt Willie

  In May, Cather and Lewis sailed for France. Cather needed to make this trip in order to complete Shadows on the Rock, but she also wanted to see her old friends Isabelle and Jan Hambourg.

  TO MARY VIRGINIA BOAK CATHER

  May 24 [1930]

  Paris

  My Darling mother;

  Yesterday Isabelle and I were walking in a park full of grandmothers and children and she, paying attention to the children, turned her ankle and fell forward and cut a deep gash in her knee on a stone. It bled a good deal. We took a taxi home, where I washed it with iodine and bound it up, but I found the flesh was badly torn, and as soon as Jan came home I sent him for a doctor. He said she must stay in bed for several days, as a tear is worse than a cut and may suppurate. Isabelle had a very serious illness in the winter and will have to be an invalid for a long while. It is very sad for me that the two people I love best in the world get sick thousands of miles apart, and I such a poor traveller! I have seen very little of the gay side of Paris as yet, we have been here only a week today, and for the first three days Edith was sick and had to stay in bed, and now Isabelle is laid low with this cut on her knee, and for part of the time I have had a rather queer “tummy” from strange water and worry and being tired. Tell Doctor [Stephen] Smith for me that living-conditions are much pleasanter at Las Encinas than in any Paris hotel I have yet found—even the food there is more to my taste, though French food is always good. In spite of every-one’s being below par physically, I have made two trips over to the queer old part of Paris where part of my new story lies, and have been well rewarded. That part of the city has changed very little, many of the same houses were there when my story-people lived there two hundred and fifty years ago. I went to church at the church they always attended. Many, many things are still the same.

  Now I am going over to see Isabelle and be there when the Doctor comes to dress her knee—we will talk of you as we always do. She always wants to hear every little thing about you and the place you are in.

  Lovingly

  Willa

  The next three notes were written on postcards of the Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. Around the picture on the front of the first, Cather wrote, with an arrow to the bell tower, “The bells are in here,—still the same ones,” and, with another arrow and a reference to Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, “This is the parapet from which Quasimodo threw the wicked priest.” The second and third postcards feature images of Notre Dame gargoyles.

  TO MARGARET AND ELIZABETH CATHER

  May 28 [1930]

  Paris

  Dear Twinnies:

  This is the glorious church of which you have read so much. It always looks to me much bigger than any New York sky-scraper. I have often walked about the high parapet from which Quasimodo threw the priest.

  TO MARGARET CATHER

  May 30 [1930]

  Isn’t she a dreadful old bird? Awful to think she has been so full of spite for seven hundred years! I am sure all the figures were Quasimodo’s playfellows, and that he had special friends among them
.

  W.S.C.

  TO MARGARET AND ELIZABETH CATHER

  [June 1930]

  Dear Margaret & Elizabeth;

  There are countless figures like these perched all over the many roofs of Notre Dame. You have to climb all over the roofs and tower to see them all. They have been there since the year 1200, some before.

  W.S.C.

  TO BLANCHE KNOPF

  June 30 [1930]

  Paris

  My Dear Blanche,

  I have been very busy doing nothing for five weeks now and am beginning to get a little bored with it. I may go on to Vienna in a few weeks, or I may go home and up to Grand Manan, which seems to be the quietest spot in the world for work. It has been lovely to be so near Isabelle and Jan, we have done lots of nice things together, but I hate to be in a city in summer, even when the city is Paris, and if there is any really wild country in Europe I have never found it. The automobile has spoiled all that. When I first arrived everyone was having influenza, and I had it, too, for a week. I am very well now but I begin to long for green, quiet country. I’ve seen the Hambourgs and checked up on all my historical background, and I came over for those two things. If I decide to go home in August I’ll let you know.

  With love to you and greetings to everyone in the office.

  Yours