LETTER: 2 TLS to Mrs. Priestly re NY, the Southwest, WWII and the Atomic Bomb.
Cather on the Decline of New York,
the Beauty of the Southwest
and the Horror of the Atom Bomb
Cather, Willa. Typed and autograph letter signed, “Willa Cather,” to Mrs. [J.B.] Priestley; July 2-3, 1942; two leaves of tying paper, rectos only; the first page of the letter is typed; Cather continues writing the letter in ink on the bottom of the first page and the entire second page; creased. Together with original envelope and typed transcription. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
Together with:
Cather, Willa. Typed and autograph letter signed, “Willa Cather,” to Mrs. [J.B.] Priestley; August 23th and 29th, 1945; five half-leaves of "Asticou Inn/Northeast Harbor, Maine” stationery, rectos only; Cather typed the first page of the letter, and continues writing the rest of the letter in ink. Together with original envelope and typed transcription.
“Mrs.[ J.B.] Priestley” – Jane Wyndham-Lewis (ex-wife of D.B. Wynham-Lewis, a biographer and satirist, no relation to the artist Wyndham Lewis) was second wife of the British writer, playwright and broadcaster J.B. Priestley. According to an obituary published in the New York Times, Priestley once dubbed Cather “America’s greatest novelist”; he also wrote the Introduction for the British edition of Cather’s A Lost Lady (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1961).
These letters to Mrs. Priestley are affectionate and full of descriptions about New York, the Southwest, and the development of the atom bomb in the southwestern desert. As Priestley lived in Great Britain, Cather uses her words to illustrate these parts of the country for her friend, who seems to have visited these places several years previously.
In her first letter, Cather apologizes for not responding to a letter promptly, but explains that she was suffering from a broken tendon in her thumb and it was painful for her to write. Cather also mentions her guilt in not doing more for the war effort; she writes, “[Americans] are really trying awfully hard to be of use. We don’t get around very fast, and we waste a good deal of time and effort” (p.1).
Cather continues by sharing the view she saw from a train carrying her to San Francisco via the Santa Fe railroad:
When I awoke one morning at Las Vegas the whole world seemed different. All the way from Vegas to Albuquerque, on either side of the track, the “rose acacia” (Robinia Hispida) was in bloom. For miles west of Vegas (before the sun got hot) the silvery, gray-haired foliage still held the dew-drops – they trembled with the thud of the train. (pp. 1-2)
She goes on to describe the effects of some heavy rains on the area, and reminisces about the past,
The Rio Grande was full. All the Indian villages, Santo Domingo, Isleta, Laguna, had been newly whitewashed, and the tamarisk trees were green and violet as I had never seen them in the light year when I used to go there every summer. Wheat I saw for the whole day, from Las Vegas to Williams, was a kind of apotheosis of the whole country, where I made horseback and wagon journeys before the days of cheap automobiles. That day did me in for a week, but it was a grand way to be done in – made one feel like the burning bush. (p. 2)
Cather then mentions the social scene in Santa Fe and Taos:
…they have become self-conscious and ‘literary’ – and dress the part. Several quite decent-seeming women whom I know there have divorced their husbands in order to devote themselves to ‘writing.’ Americans are sometimes discouraging – especially the women. Almost any ‘attitude’ pleases them more than any reality. (p. 2)
Cather concludes her “rambling letter” by stating that “God is still good to trees and little adobe towns, and only woman (Enterprising Woman!) is vile.”
In her next letter – sent three years later – Cather thanks Priestley for sending news of V-E Day and of the safety of the musician Pablo Casals (“None of the musicians in New York…seem to know anything about
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