Letter from Willa Cather, Pittsburgh, to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, 1912 August 14 : autograph manuscript initialed.

Record ID: 
428829
Accession number: 
MA 1602.17
Author: 
Cather, Willa, 1873-1947, sender.
Credit: 
Gift of Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, 1954.
Description: 
1 item (3 pages) ; 23 x 17.6 cm + envelope
Notes: 

Envelope, postmarked and stamped, addressed to "Miss Elizabeth Sergeant / c/o Miss Lester / Woodstock / Conn."
Part of a collection of 76 letters from Willa Cather to Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant between 1910 and 1946. See related records for more information.

Summary: 

Thanking her for her long letter; writing that last night Isabelle (McClung) and she read the Scribners paper aloud with such enjoyment; requesting that when Sergeant is settled she look over the other "foreign" story she did in Cherry Valley; talking about how she was tired of the west and is glad to be out of it; describing the experience as "dans le desert, voyez-vous il y a tout et il n'y rien; Dieu sans les hommes" (In the desert there is everything and nothing--God without mankind); saying how she explained this to Julio who "was a wonder, but he couldn't, for very long, take the place of a whole civilization"; stating that Isabelle (McClung) and she have had peaceful and satisfying days reading volume 9 of Michelet.