by Willa Cather
But a sore thumb can’t go into these matters seriously, analytically. It (the original conception) was all light and shade, was meant to be neither wise nor instructive—certainly not heavy. Some weeks ago I put the discard (the excised chapters & paragraphs) on the bathroom scales, and they weighed six pounds. I was very pleased.
Affectionately to you both
W.S.C.
P.S. Certainly, I am perfectly willing you should place the note on names where Alfred places his notes on design. I placed it out of place in 1st edition because I feared some people of the same name used in [the] story, Frederick County people, might feel hurt. Second edition will probably change that.
Do you know there is nothing at all to a hand but a thumb?
TO ROSCOE CATHER
November 28, 1940
My dear Brother:
How long it is that I have wanted to write you. All kinds of pleasant things have been happening, but they happen much too fast. One of the pleasantest was a luncheon that I finally managed to arrange at Sherry’s, with your Margaret and Virginia, and Mary Virginia. After a long and very conversational luncheon we went to see the colored moving pictures, which Edith took of the twins at Grand Manan, thrown on a Kodak screen. Not one of the three nieces had seen these before. The pictures really are beautiful and do justice to the splendid cliffs and the blue sea.
Two weeks before this I had shifted round a lot of dates to get a free space, and telegraphed Margaret asking her to lunch with me two days following receipt of the telegram. She has no telephone and it is difficult to reach her on short notice. I, just at this time, can’t make any engagements otherwise than on short notice. When she sent me the enclosed note, turning me down for a bridge party, I felt a little hurt. But the moment I met her in the restaurant, I was so delighted to see her dear little face again that I forgot all about my astonishment at being turned down. Of course, the child could hardly have had any idea of how many calls there are on me just now from the printing office, from the business office, the editorial office and from newspaper offices. Anyhow, I expect it is good for me to be turned down occasionally.
I only hope the three girls enjoyed those 3 ½ hours at Sherry’s as much as I did. I was delighted to see West Virginia again, and felt immediately that there was a very interesting personality behind her blue eyes. Mary Virginia told me when I first came home from Canada that Virginia decidedly had “poise”—a thing which Mary Virginia admires very much. To “poise”, I would add, ease and relaxation. They are delightful qualities to find in young people and not at all common in the young people of today. In time, these three qualities become “distinction”. Dear little Margaret was just as sweet and appealing as ever, in a very becoming poke hat and black veil, just the kind of hat I used to find in grandmother Boak’s chests, in Virginia. It was quite the right shape for Margaret, and she looked very cunning.
I have never even had time to thank you for your dear letter from Grass Valley. I put it (the letter) in my “Lost Lady”, even though I had never heard of Grass Valley when I wrote the book. I thought she [Lyra Wheeler Garber] came from San Francisco, and it was not until Douglass told me, in California, that I knew Mrs. Garber’s grandmother was a Spanish woman. I am glad I did not know it, for I wasn’t a very practised writer when I did that book and I might have been tempted, as poor [Joseph] Hergesheimer always was, to use the charm of the “exotic”. But I was able, just by being truthful, to do her “from life”, as the painters say, and still give her that quality which several French reviewers caught and in describing the character said that “the portrait had a reminder of Spanish women.”
Now I must stop, my dear boy, for just at present my right hand is in a sling and I am behind in everything. Perhaps I wrote you that I autographed the édition de luxe (500 copies) in three days, and it sprained the big tendon in my thumb, which has gradually grown worse. If I have to have it strapped to a splint, I shall go to the French Hospital and let the nuns take care of me, for without a right thumb one is utterly helpless. However, I am not going until after Yehudi’s concert, on December 2nd, even if I have to sit in the box with my hand in a white scarf. Good-bye, my dear boy. I do love your three daughters, and Margaret has a particular charm for me. I can’t tell you just why, but one never can tell the why of particular affinities, you know.
Lovingly
Willie
TO FANNY BUTCHER
January 9 [1941?]
New York City
Dear Fanny Butcher;
You ask me what book I would rather have written than all others: I suppose you mean what novel? Well, since it’s a wishing game, why be modest? I imagine you expect me to name some neat obscure book, by some neat obscure talent. To be really chic I ought to say that I’d love to be responsible for the high-flying rhetoric of “Moby Dick”, where one metaphor about the Musèe de Cluny and the human soul runs to the length of a page and a half.
Thank you! If I can choose, I won’t meekly say that the neck of the chicken is my favorite portion. I’d rather have written “War and Peace” than any other novel I know. I am not sure that I admire it more than any other, but I’d rather have written it; Simply for the grand game of making it, you understand, quite regardless of the result. I would like to be strong enough to have, and to survive, so many gloriously vivid sensations about almost everything that goes to make up human society. I would like to have had that torrent of life and things pour through me; and yet to be well-bred enough as an artist to unconsciously and unfailingly present it all in scale, with the proper perspective and composition and distribution of light; enough, at least, to hold the thing together. That much form, it seems to me, any satisfying work must have. From this you may infer that I wouldn’t choose to be swept away in Dostoevsky’s torrent, though it’s as big and full as [a] heart could desire. The richer the welter of life, the more it needs a restraining intelligence. I choose “War and Peace”, thank you, because it has both–––and in what a degree! You remember what an experience it is to read that book for the first time; can you imagine anything more exciting than writing it? The actual writing of it, of course, was a much more concentrated and unadulterated and smooth-running form of excitement than all the many, the countless excitements, long forgotten, which enabled him to write it at all. But there, of course, I’m getting into a matter which isn’t for general discussion. Every trade has its compensations; but it’s wiser to keep quiet about them, or somebody turns up and tries to spoil them for you.
Sincerely yours
Willa Cather
TO MR. WATSON
February 12, 1941
My dear Mr. Watson:
Your very kind and interesting letter would have been answered long before this, except for the fact that all of the month of November I was suffering from an injury to my right hand. The month of December, I spent in the French Hospital having treatment for my hurt. I am still unable to use a pen and my hand is under constant treatment. It progresses very slowly. I wish I were able to answer your letter at length for it is a thoughtful one, much beyond the range of the usual intelligent reader.
I can best answer briefly by saying that I never try to write any propaganda—any rules for life or theories about the betterment of human society. I by no means despise that kind of writing. It can be very noble, at its best, and very useful. But I think it loses some of its strength when disguised as fiction. You mention Dickens. Of course, important reforms resulted from his books. But he did not write in the reformer’s spirit, nor did he write in order to produce reformers. He wrote because his heart was touched, or his indignation aroused by certain abuses. In other words, he wrote about life itself, as it moved about him. He had no theories for the betterment of the world. So many of the books on social betterment which are written nowadays are written out of ill feeling; out of class hatred, or envy. Very often they are written out of a very great conceit and vanity, by young writers, who really think that the history of the world and the wi
sdom of the great statesm[e]n was all a very silly affair. These new writers think they can manage the age-old tragedies of life very neatly.
I am glad to have you tell me that some of your youthful friends can read my books with interest. My method of work is so simple that I have never had a conscious method. I never write about people or places that have not interested me intensely: that have not taken hold of me in some very personal way which I cannot explain. After a subject has hag-ridden me for a long time and the book is pretty well developed in my mind, then I begin to write it. The actual writing is usually a very pleasant experience. Accidents and incidents from the outside break in, of course, but the actual development of a story that has been carefully planned is the pleasantest occupation I know.
Let me thank you again for your friendly letter. The noble fortitude with which you bear those mischances, which in one way or another must come to us all, I shall not forget. If my hand is well enough tomorrow, I shall sign this letter myself.
Very cordially yours,
Willa Cather
TO VIOLA ROSEBORO’
February 20, 1941
My very dear Miss Roseboro:
My hand is still utterly out of commission and I am unable to write at all. The surgeon began mild exercise and massage too soon, and now I am back in splints again. I call this a terrible trial to patience.
It is awfully kind of you to be concerned about the reviews, but the truth is, Miss Roseboro, that this book has had a better “press” than any book I have written heretofore. For many years I have not had anything to do with a clipping bureau, but when the reviews are all in Alfred Knopf usually asks me to look them over. The New York reviewers always lament the fact that my new book (whichever it may be) is a marked decline from the previous book. Logically, I should have reached the vanishing point long ago. It might interest you to know that I did see practically all the reviews that followed the publication of Antoniá, and from coast to coast there were only two favorable ones. One by Fanny Butcher and one by Grant Overton. All the others said this book was formless and would be of interest only to the Nebraska State Historical Society.
I am asking Miss Bloom to send you the review by [Henry Seidel] Canby, which I really think is sound and discerning. He gives me credit for trying to do a definite thing, and doing it fairly well. Of course, most of the reviewers still want to know why I did not try to do a very different thing, which would have been more dramatic. This, however, applies only to the New York reviewers. After I got your letter I telephoned the office and asked them to send over a bunch of reviews from San Francisco to New Orleans. They were practically all very cordial, and I was astonished that the Southern cities seemed really enthusiastic. The personal letters that the book has brought in are a real source of satisfaction, as so many of the writers know the country and the conditions.
I hope this cold weather is not treating you too brutally. My hand is quite painful a good deal of the time, but what I mind most is the boredom of incapacity.
Lovingly yours
Willa Cather
per Sarah J. Bloom
TO ROSCOE CATHER
March 2, 1941
My dear Roscoe:
I am so sad to hear of your illness. I would have sent out inquiries, but all the time you were sick with the flu, I was in a particularly low and discouraged state about my hand. I am not writing any of this to Elsie because she is generally so communicative, and there are some people in Lincoln (people like the Pounds) who would be delighted to hear that my right hand was permanently out of commission. For the weeks while you were ill, it did seem as though I were not to have any right hand at all in the future, and the number of things you can do with your left hand are trivial and base. My surgeon here earnestly tried to persuade me to learn to compose by dictation—a thing absolutely impossible to me and against all my taste and habits. The Knopf office became as much alarmed about the situation as I. They entered into a correspondence with Dr. Frank Ober of Boston, who mended up so many of the English officers disabled in the World War. His New York patients generally fly to Boston for treatment, but he comes to New York once a month to see those who are not well enough to make the trip. He saw me just three weeks ago today. In his Boston shop he had constructed for me a metal glove reaching to the elbow, shaped metal underneath held on by leather straps across the top of my hand, wrist and arm. My own physician here thinks it a wonderful contrivance. I have worn it only one week, and while I cannot see any great improvement, I am not suffering from jars and little hurts all the time, as I was when I wore a wooden splint. Also, my wrist is absolutely immobile in metal, whereas in a wooden splint it would move about a little.
I have not written you very seriously about this before, because I am afraid that I have a rather bad reputation in my family—a reputation for howling about my ills. But somebody in the family ought to know the facts. Of course when a hand gets in this shape, a painful arthritis sets in, and the question is whether I can ever use it again to write books or even letters. The surgeons in the New York Orthopedic Hospital thought my only way out was dictation. Dr. Ober thinks I have a chance to write again, if I am very careful and never use my hand for anything but work on a manuscript—never write letters, or even sign them when I can avoid it.
You are perfectly right. I want to give the bank stock to Charles Edwin [Cather], but you can see that just now, with no preparation yet made for the income tax, I haven’t the time to attend to it. I cannot describe this situation to you, but if you will tie your hand up in a handkerchief when you get out of bed and keep it tied until you get ready to go to the office, you will understand something of the laboriousness of caring for your body with one hand. Even then, you won’t have to put up your hair! You know, with my metal glove, I feel just like Otto of the Silver Hand [from the children’s novel by Howard Pyle]!
With love,
Willie
P.S. [written in the hand of S. J. Bloom] Dear Roscoe: Since I dictated this letter, a letter has come from Elsie charging me with inconsiderateness toward her and my friends in Red Cloud for not telling them on what date I will arrive there. I thought it best to let Miss Bloom write her how impossible it would be for me to travel under the circumstances. Miss Bloom wrote her on Friday.
Dictated by Miss Cather
S. J. Bloom
[Clumsily handwritten and enclosed in a small envelope:] The garden of spring flowers came last night! You are too good to me, dear boy.
TO CARRIE MINER SHERWOOD
March 22, 1941
My dear Carrie and my dear Friend:
I cannot write you as I wish to until I can write you with my own hand. But in these days when the weather is very bitter and I am confined to the house a good deal, my thoughts are often with you, going over the long, long past which we have shared together, even though we have so often been far apart in body.
Mary’s telegram did not altogether surprise me, because only a few days before it came I had received a letter from her telling me that Walter [Carrie’s husband] was very ill indeed. Of the wonderful care and nursing you were giving him I had heard again and again from Elsie, and Mary [Miner Creighton], and Trix Florance. I love to think that he died in his own home among those who loved and cherished him, and in a community that honored him. Do you know, it doesn’t seem so long to me since you showed me a photograph of young Walter Sherwood inside your watch case, when you were going away to school in St. Mary’s. I must not talk of these things to you, for it makes me cry and it will make you cry. But it is strange how, at this end of the road, everything is foreshortened, and we seem to possess all the stages of our life at the same time. The perplexities that I have with my hand and the perpetual inconvenience I suffer from it, are not half so real to me as mother-and-father’s golden wedding, or your own wedding day, or Douglass’ last visit with me here. Perhaps one reason that I enjoy so much remembering these things is that this winter I have been alone a great deal—my choice. I have see
n almost no one but very dear friends, the true and tried ones. Yehudi and his lovely wife [Nola Nicholas Menuhin] came often while they were in New York, and Mary Virginia has been a great help in every way. Whenever we meet she always leaves me in better spirits than I was before. I often wonder how two such selfish people [Jessica Cather and J. W. Auld] ever came to have such a nice child.
You will hear from me very soon again, my dear, because within a few weeks I hope to be able to make plans. My general health is good and my hand seems to be making definite improvements since Dr. Ober, the surgeon from Boston, took hold of it. Some day I shall write Mary about his treatment. As a doctor’s wife, I think it would interest her to know.
Now I have said so little of what I wanted to say! But, oh, how thankful I am that I had those two winter months with you in Red Cloud almost ten years ago! I can remember those evenings with you and Walter before your fireplace, and what good advice both you and he gave me.
I send my heart to you, Carrie
Willie
Langston Hughes wrote Cather after the publication of Sapphira and the Slave Girl thanking her for “the sympathy with which you have treated my people.”
TO LANGSTON HUGHES
April 15, 1941
Dear Mr. Hughes:
I wish to thank you for your friendly letter, and I am glad that the characters in the book seem to you truthfully presented. All of the colored people in the book are people whom I have known at one time or another, in Virginia or elsewhere. Some of them are people for whom I had an affection in my childhood.