On Willa Cather’s birthday

Willa Cather was born on this day in 1873.

From a letter to Cather’s lifelong friend Carrie Miner Sherwood, written on a Sunday, possibly December 11, 1932. The editors of the Selected Letters note that “many of Cather’s old friends in Webster County, Nebraska, were, like most Americans, facing economic hardship.”

Now will you be my Santa Claus? I want them to have a good Christmas dinner. I know they won’t buy prunes or dried apricots, they felt too poor to get them last year.

Please have Mrs. Burden pack a box:

2 dozen of the best oranges,
3 pounds of dates,
5 pounds best prunes
3 cans Texas figs
3 pounds cranberries
3 bunches celery
1 peck red apples

If there is any money left over after you get these things, get some Butternut coffee — I know they will cut the old lady down on her coffee, so put whatever is left into coffee.

I’ve already sent Mrs. Lambrecht a Christmas box, a lovely sweater and a lot of toys, but that was before I got Lydia’s letter.

I’m sitting in the middle of a pile of trunks, dear Carrie. We move today. I think the new apartment will be lovely, but I’d have waited another year if I’d known so many of my old friends were going to be hard hit. I do want to help.

                                                Lovingly
                                                 Willie

From The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, ed. Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout (New York: Knopf, 2013).

I know of at least one other resident of the blog-o-sphere marking Cather’s birthday today, Heber Taylor.

Related reading
All OCA Cather posts (Pinboard) : All OCA posts from Cather’s letters

[The inconsistent punctuation in the list is Cather’s. I would never mess up when transcribing Willa Cather.]