by Willa Cather
Roscoe and I were not much together again until some years after his marriage although we wrote to each other very very often and never in the least felt apart. I was not able to spend any long time with him until I went for that never-to-be-forgotten visit at Lander when the twins were just one year old. That was a long visit and it was one of the happiest chapters of my life. I do not think I have ever been in a house anywhere which seemed quite so attractive as the home Roscoe and your mother built for themselves in Lander, with the Wind River Mountains against the sky, and the little River flowing in the backyard—if I had ever settled in a place like that, I could never have left it. Your mother and father and I made wonderful trips up into the Wind River mountains which were then unspoiled by automobile roads and traffic. We went to a great many places on horseback and I remember how your father’s critical eye was upon me to see whether I would flinch when a horse swam with me for the first time. Those were glorious days and I shall always remember them with pleasure and gratitude.
But what I remember best, and value most, is that your father was always such a fine gentleman toward every member of his father’s family and in his own family. He simply couldn’t be anything else.
His early business career was in a free world, and there was something joyful and romantic about it. The whole setting at Lander had something of the Old West. But though he lived on into times when business had become more systematized and had hardened into “high pressure salesmanship” he never became in any sense a salesman. The dirt of it never touched his finger tips. He never tried to put anything through or put anything over. He let “business” come to him; he didn’t go after it. His father was just like that, and his grandfather. This inheritance ought to make you always a little prouder than many of the people with whom you will be thrown, and a little more careful to keep yourselves up to that level.
I am afraid this is a queer kind of letter of condolence but it is the only consolation that I can find, now that my comradeship with your father is cut off. I had just written him a long letter and signed it, when the telegram came from your mother. And when I wrote her, I sent also the letter which I had written to him.
Good-bye, my dears, you will, I am sure, always remember your father’s gentleness—and gentility.
I am cutting my stay here short and will go down to New York in about ten days from now. I’ll have to stay over for a few days in Boston.
I am sending all three letters to you, dear Margaret, because I am not so sure of the address of either of your sisters. Please forward them for me.
Lovingly to you all, always
your aunt Willie
TO MARGARET CATHER SHANNON
October 3, 1945
Dear Little Margaret:
What a wonderful thing it was of you to take your baby and hop onto a plane and go to San Francisco! If there is a place in another world for good people, your father is surely in it, and he will surely know how his little daughter tried to get to him. I think you must know yourself that you have always been a special favorite with me, dear Margaret. And once, in Casper, when I was walking home from the bank with your father, you came running down the sidewalk toward us and Roscoe said, “She will look me over! She is always the first one to notice if I am especially tired or if one of my bad headaches is coming on.” I tell you this, dear, because you ought to know it, and ought always to remember it. There are few things in one’s life so precious as to have given that magical kind of perception and sympathy toward someone we love. The knowledge that he felt that so keenly ought to be a precious thing for you to remember.
I wish he could have seen your little girl. Meta wrote me that she is such a lovely child, and I know your taking the baby out there was a greater comfort to your mother than anything else could have been.
Lovingly
W.S.C.
October 5th
I have been quite ill since I wrote this note and the doctor kept me flat in bed. Much better now.
TO IRENE MINER WEISZ
October 22 [1945]
New York City
My Darling Irene;
I know these are anxious days for you, and I want you to know that I think of you very very often and hope all goes well. I have been ill ever since I got home from Maine. I don’t even try to do anything. I brought a new book home with me, but I have not had the energy to put it in order for Alfred Knopf to see, and I don’t care whether it is ever published or not. Roscoe’s death broke the last spring in me. He was always the closest of my brothers to me, in years and in feeling. Douglass and I twice had a little quarrel, but Roscoe and I never. We always felt the same way about things. The three summers I spent in Wyoming with him and his wife were among the happiest of my life. Now I don’t care about writing any more books. Now I know that nothing really matters to us but the people we love.
Of course, if we realized that when we are young, and just sat down and loved each other, the beds would not get made and very little of the world’s work would ever get done. For years, two weeks never went by that I did not get a jolly letter from Roscoe. I loved his three daughters and was able to do nice things for them. That gave him such great pleasure. When I last saw him in San Francisco he laughed and said “You know, the two summers you gave the twins in Grand Manan were the happiest summers of my life! I was so proud that you wanted them.”
Goodbye, dear Irene. God bless you.
Willie
TO SIDNEY FLORANCE
November 21, 1945
Dear Mr. Florance:
Ever since your tribute to Fred Maurer appeared in the home paper I have wanted to write you and thank you for it. But troubles came thick and fast at that time, and after them a heavy correspondence. May I take this opportunity to thank you? I still have the article and shall continue to keep it in my scrapbook.
In my first year in the Red Cloud High School I sat very near the Maurer boys,—two brothers, I think. They sat next the north wall, where there were no windows—almost no light at all—and I used to see one boy always struggling to read his textbook. Their parents must have been terribly poor, for the two boys came all through the winter wretchedly clad. They had no overcoats and seemed to have little underneath their jackets and long pants. Those boys never had a fair chance.
I tried to keep up some correspondence with Fred as long as the lovely Gurney girl was taking care of him. But after she, so young and happy, died, I felt there was no one with him whom I knew or could reach. This note is just to tell you that one old friend of yours deeply appreciated your appreciation of him.
Cordially yours,
Willa Cather
TO META SCHAPER CATHER
Thursday [fall 1945]
My Dear Meta;
This morning, (what is left of it) belongs to you. Yesterday I got down to my bank and turned in my bank stock exactly according to Mr. Rutedge’s letter of instruction. I had been kept in bed for several days by a slight heart attack—nothing serious.
Dear sister, I think you are mistaken about our being so very clannish. The truth is that Roscoe and Douglas and I were the “clan”. Jess and Jim and Jack were, in a sense, the wards of the clan. We, the three Virginians, tried to look after the younger ones. Ever since that summer I spent with you and Roscoe when the twins were one year old, I have felt that you were more truly my sister than either Elsie or poor Jess. I felt that because we were very companionable, and liked to do things together. That is what makes companionship. Do you remember when we started out to find Pete’s Lake—and never found it at all? I always loved to see Roscoe on a horse, and I love to remember him so. I often dream about him as he was when he rode with us then–––in the days of the other world war! In Casper we went round in a car—went farther, but it wasn’t quite so much fun. However, I rejoiced in that car, because I realized how much it saved Roscoe’s strength. You remember we went up to Sheridan, and the next day crossed the mountains near Gray Bull and had a long, hard drive home—by the worst par
t of the old road to Lander, if I remember right.
Meta, I would love to have one of the photographs of Roscoe with Elizabeth’s daughter on his shoulder. Margaret had one, and I liked it so much. He always kept his figure, which most men do not after fifty.
Jim was always a problem child. He was terribly ashamed of his gentle mannered father, and went with a tough crowd. There is a nice side to him, and his children have seen only that side. Whenever I have seen that side, I am weak to him. His greatest fault is that he thinks he has great business ability. He made the last twenty years of Father’s life unhappy by trying one disastrous experiment after another.
Jack is just always Jack. He is loyal, true, and loving. But he married rather queerly. Even Father, who was too courteous to dislike any woman, didn’t like his wife [Irma Wells Cather].
So you see, dear Meta, the clan was, but is no more. I am the only one left, and God knows I aint no clan! I should think you and I, together, represented the spirit of the old clan more than anybody else. So let us, in loyalty to those others, who are gone, try to keep together and be our own clan.
Jessie will always be mild and appreciative of any kindness. Elsie I have had to cut out. She followed me up with so much abuse that I just ceased writing to her. An old friend of mine who lives in Lincoln wrote me “why does Elsie let her jealousy of you spoil her life? It has become an obsession with her, and embarrasses her friends.”
Now my dear, you and I are simply the only clan there is. We can adopt Jack when he is good and is not tyrranized over by Jim. I mean to draw a little closer to poor Jessie. Really, Father was to blame for her marrying Will Auld. Didn’t he turn all my securities over to Will Auld? When Helen Louise was here one day last year helping me go over my accounts she exclaimed, “why, Will Auld simply stole twenty thousand dollars from you! Can’t you do anything about it?” “Nothing—except not to let him steal my peace of mind.” When I first found out how much I was stung, I sat down the next day and began work on Sapphira. Those old memories were a good cure for worry.
Now that my sprung tendon is bad again, I must stop, dear. But you and your dear daughters are more in my mind than any other people in the world.
Lovingly & gratefully
Willie
TO META SCHAPER CATHER
April 13 [1946]
My very dear Meta;
I want to tell you why I could not see Margaret when she and her two children were in New York for a week. It nearly broke my heart to miss her, but I was very ill all the week that she was here. This strange nervous collapse began with Roscoe’s death. I was never well afterward. I was below normal when it seemed necessary to go in for a surgical operation. After three weeks in the hospital I came home and I tried very hard to carry on. At last I began to cry a great deal. I broke down more completely over pleasant things than for sad ones. I really didn’t dare see little Margaret for that reason. I am too fond of her; of all my nieces she has always crept closest to my heart. I didn’t want her to see me when I was such a wreck.
Two weeks ago my oldest friend, doctor Taylor, came home and took a strong hand with me. For the present he will not let me see anyone at all. Even Miss Bloom, my secretary, broke down and is now in a hospital in Albany. So I am absolutely isolated and see no one but Miss Lewis. Time and being very quiet are the only things that will help me. It seems that if one has, for many years, cared a great deal for a great many people and a great many things, one suffers a kind of emotional exhaustion in the end, and has to rest one’s power to care.
I have [not] seen any friends since November, not even Yehudi, nor heard any music. I have simply had, for the present, to cut out all the things I loved most—and I want you to know.
Devotedly,
Willie
TO SIGRID UNDSET
May 20, 1946
Dear Sigrid Undset:
How many times I have read over your letter, which tells me so much about what you are doing and how you are in mind and heart. Of course, there were sad things about your home coming; of course, your little town cannot be the same place, and many of the young men have died. The big losses in wars do not hurt us so much as does the death of a friend’s son or a neighbour’s son. But it must be an inspiration for you to be at home, where everyone is working for one purpose and working together. I think nothing puts hope into one like that feeling of working together.
We are in a very sad way here in the United States. There has never been such confusion before. Well may you say, “Oh, if Roosevelt were still alive”. John Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers, seems to be the most powerful man we have, because he can stop the entire coal output and all manufacturies and public utilities, including railroads. Coal, of course, is the basic generator of so many sorts of power. Just now wheels are standing still everywhere. I am not even sure that Miss Lewis and I can get up to Maine this summer. In Washington nothing is ever done, and nothing is ever settled. If we were up against great difficulties and shortages, I think we would not be so disheartened. But our troubles seem all to come from mismanagement and disagreements. We absolutely dread the morning newspaper. If you, in Norway, find anything hopeful in the American news, your reporters must spare you the worst. I think that everybody here feels the paralysis of a bitter disillusionment.
How fortunate you are to be where there is no “bigness” except that of the spirit! Where everyone stands shoulder to shoulder, and everyone is doing the best he can. I am glad that you saw this country when you did see it, and not as it is now.
Instead of living in the present, I have been trying to live in old Histories and in great books, which are always a source of strength. I am so gratified that your great trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter, has appeared again in three volumes, as it should be, and not crowded into one unwieldy tome. I hope you will never let those horrible producers at Hollywood put any of your books into films.
This is a sorry answer, dear friend, to your splendid letter, but one must have a spirit of hope to be anything but dull. Perhaps if we get up into the country again, the forests and the big tides on the Maine coast may put some heart into one. Then you will hear from me again, and I shall be a very different person, I hope.
Since you sailed I had a rather severe illness and was in the Roosevelt Hospital for several weeks. I think I am fairly well physically now, but there is a stagnation in the air which rather chokes one.
[Unsigned]
TO TRIXIE MIZER FLORANCE
June 12, 1946
My dear Trix:
I was so glad to hear about you and your family and your summer plans. I am grateful to have good news of Carrie Sherwood. I have known her a long, long time—a precious friendship of many years. My first memory of her dates back to the arrival of my family in Nebraska. We moved at once out to my grandfather’s farm, some eighteen miles northwest of Red Cloud. On the first trip I made to Red Cloud in the farm wagon, I was taken by some member of my family to the frame building which was then Miner Brothers General Store. I remember a young girl who came up to me, held my hand for a few minutes and talked to me. She had very bright eyes and looked interested. That was Carrie. The better you know her, the better you will like her.
With love to you and yours,
Willa
TO ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
August 16, 1946
Asticou Inn, Northeast Harbor, Maine
My dear Elsie:
I wrote you a hasty note to tell you that I could never be persuaded to submit to a “Portable Cather” published by Viking. These “Portables” seem to be the last derivative of the torrent of anthologies which very nearly wiped out all the dignity and nearly all the profits of the legitimate publishing business. After the war everybody wants to “get by” easy; schools, teachers and pupils. Nobody wants to toil through “For Whom the Bell Tolls” when they can read the worst chapters of the book and say “Hemingway? Oh, yes, sure!”
Why are you (telling me that you are working on a n
ew book in which you are very much interested) willing to squander your time and scatter your attention for a miserable collection which means to get by as a “Portable” when other forms of the Anthology have become a little stale??? Such a waste of energy!!
I think Alfred Knopf is still in England but I am quite sure that he would not have any dealings with a “Portable” when his entire list of any writer’s books are selling steadily all the time.
So let me wish you happy days and good luck on your new book and ask you to forget this insidious “Portable” suggestion.
Yours
Willa Cather
TO HELEN LOUISE CATHER SOUTHWICK
September 17, 1946
Asticou Inn, Northeast Harbor, Maine
My dear Helen Louise,
I sent you a telegram last night asking you to telegraph your father for me. I had at home in my desk three small address books, one for foreign addresses, one for family addresses and another for friends in this country and in Canada. Miss Bloom packed my papers for me and I suspect she thought two address books were enough. She neglected to include the family address book so I was unable to reach your father direct. I will be glad if you will send me his present address when you write.
I am sending you a funny little clipping because it gave me pleasure, and I think it might give you pleasure. This cutting was sent me by an unknown person in Indianapolis—probably some writer on the Indianapolis Star. Just at the end I think there is a nice word to come from my old chief—the man who published my first short story in his magazine and afterward my first book of short stories—which I hope you haven’t seen for most of it was bad enough. For the next three years after he had published that first book, I worked hard on Mr. McClure’s magazine and he sent me abroad twice to arrange some important contracts in England for him. Of late years I simply have not had time or strength to keep up my connection with him as I should have done. He has been more faithful and loyal than I. I wrote him a long letter not long ago and shall see him as soon as I go back. I send this little clipping to you, my dear, because now that Roscoe is no longer alive, there is no one left to whom it would mean anything. You could send it to Charles if you wished,—but Jack’s daughters whom I have never seen, do not seem to be very discreet though I am sure they are nice girls. They once sent me some poetry written by a high school teacher of theirs. The teacher, if not the girls, evidently had bright hopes that I could get it published for him, so I don’t feel that Jack’s family are safe confidants.