University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications -- Department of English English, Department of Winter 2017 Yet More Cather-Knopf Correspondence Melissa J. Homestead University of Nebraska - Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishfacpubs Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Modern Literature Commons, and the Reading and Language Commons Homestead, Melissa J., "Yet More Cather-Knopf Correspondence" (2017). Faculty Publications -- Department of English. 189. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishfacpubs/189 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications -- Department of English by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Yet More Cather-Knopf Correspondence Melissa J. Homestead | University of Nebraska−Lincoln Some years ago many of us were excited by the discovery of a in the dissemination of Cather’s works. These materials also cache of Willa Cather’s correspondence with publisher Alfred A. remind us that we should be attuned to the notable gaps in Knopf that had been in the hands of Peter Prescott, one of the materials located thus far and be on the lookout for additional succession of would-be biographers of Knopf. He died before he correspondence between Cather and both of the Knopfs. Later completed it. These letters are now held in the Barbara Dobkin in this essay, in the context of some remarks about gaps in the Collection in New York City. Before these materials came to Cather-Knopf archive that may yet be filled, I say more about light, researchers, including the editors of the Willa Cather Kolodin, a man who spent most of his life working as a music Scholarly Edition, had relied on a strange and fragmentary critic but late in his life was attempting to write a biography of “memoir” Knopf wrote of his relationship with Cather based Alfred Knopf. For now, it is enough to note that he died in 1988 on his correspondence files with her, and on the more narrative and in 1989 his papers were donated to the Music Division of the essay “Miss Cather” published in The Art of Willa Cather (1973), Library of Performing Arts. His papers were not processed until a collection associated with the celebration of the centennial of 2006, however, and it is not clear precisely when the searchable Cather’s birth. The unpublished “memoir” went to the Harry finding aid was published in the NYPL finding aids database. Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, but Knopf In any event, when I searched this database in December 2016 held back the correspondence files when the Alfred A. Knopf, in preparation for a visit to the NYPL, Kolodin’s collection Inc., corporate archive was donated to the Ransom Center unexpectedly popped up. Notably Cather’s name appears in the and when he subsequently added some of his personal papers.1 body of the finding aid but is not featured among names given Cather’s correspondence with Blanche Knopf was part of the prominence as “Key Terms” at the top of the finding aid; thus if donated corporate archive, but these letters provided relatively one were to search WorldCat, which aggregates research library scant information about the composition and publication of catalog records, for Cather as an author and restrict the search Cather’s works, documenting more of their social interactions, results to archival material, this collection would not appear including gift-giving to and personal services provided for a in the results. demanding author. So what Cather materials have been sitting at the Performing This characterization of the Cather–Blanche Knopf Arts Library in Kolodin’s papers unnoticed since 1989? Thirty- correspondence at the Ransom Center vastly oversimplifies— two Cather letters, notes, and telegrams to Blanche and Alfred there is correspondence about the composition and publication Knopf and to staff members at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; carbon of Cather’s works—but Cather scholars have nevertheless copies of outgoing letters from Blanche Knopf and her secretary tended to downplay Blanche’s importance while promoting J. Florence Rubin to Cather; and twelve letters from Edith Alfred’s. For instance, biographer James Woodress states that Lewis to Alfred Knopf dating from the period after Cather’s “Not only was Knopf her publisher, but both Alfred and Blanche death, when she served as literary executor.3 Thirty-one of the Knopf, and later their son Pat, became close friends” (316). He Cather-authored communications are new, while one is the thus categorizes Alfred as both her publisher and a friend and handwritten original of a letter long accessible at the Ransom Blanche merely as a friend. Cather scholars have not been alone Center in a typed transcription, namely Cather’s June 20, 1932, in diminishing Blanche’s importance to the publishing firm condolence letter to Alfred Knopf on the death of his father bearing only her husband’s name. As Laura P. Claridge argues in (Selected Letters 468−469). The Lady with the Borzoi: Blanche Knopf, Literary Tastemaker In a paradox to which I shall return, the bulk of the Cather- Extraordinaire, Alfred Knopf himself, who survived Blanche authored communications are to Blanche Knopf rather than Knopf by nearly two decades, was largely responsible for the Alfred. How these letters became separated from Blanche diminishment of his first wife’s legacy in publishing.2 Knopf ’s correspondence files that went to the Ransom Center Materials I recently surveyed in the Irving Kolodin Papers is not clear. Notably, even though there are more than sixty at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts suggest Cather-authored communications in the Blanche Knopf series that Cather scholars should rethink Blanche Knopf ’s role in Texas, that series does contain significant chronological gaps 2 Willa Cather Review | Winter 2017 into which these new materials fit. In the Kolodin papers are a son Pat. Again, addressing the two of them jointly in a letter full set of both sides of their correspondence in 1932, a similar received September 18, 1945, Cather thanks them for their set documenting the latter half of 1936, and variable coverage letters of condolence about the death of her brother Roscoe. in the years spanning 1937 through 1940. After 1940, coverage And in a letter that eludes a firm date (although she locates in the Kolodin papers leans even more heavily toward outgoing herself at 570 Park Avenue, so 1932 or later), she gushes over carbons than earlier—Cather spent more time in New York an “exceptional” Knopf Christmas party that featured “a kind at this period and could easily have responded to brief letters of glow over things.” by telephone. As this description of chronology suggests, the However, many letters focus more on business, including publication of Obscure Destinies (1932) is well-documented, as documenting Cather’s close attention to the design and are Cather’s long and much-interrupted labors on Sapphira and marketing of her books. In a letter received April 13, 1932, she the Slave Girl (1940). forwarded catalog copy All of the Cather- for Obscure Destinies, authored communications protesting that she will be published in wished it “were better, due course on the Willa but I think it will do.” Cather Archive (cather. In response on April 14 unl.edu) as part of Blanche called it “grand, the Complete Letters and we shall put it right of Willa Cather, but I into the works.” Writing review highlights here, to Blanche from Grand including information Manan on July 24, provided by outgoing 1932, Cather praised carbons that will not be the design of Obscure part of that publication. Destinies, calling it “a These carbons sometimes very handsome volume” provide information that and praising the title is not reflected in page produced by any Cather-authored Blanche Knopf and Alfred A. Knopf, 1932, by Carl Van Vechten. Library of Congress, Prints and George M. Stimson of communications, such Photographs Division. the Knopf production as a December 11, 1940, department: “I love letter in which Blanche describes arrangements for Cather’s Mr. Stimson’s title page. I hope he will feel like doing one for first in-person meeting with Sigrid Undset. And certainly there my next book.”6 The letter also locates the beginning of her are many letters that are largely social. Cather thanks Blanche composition of Lucy Gayheart on Grand Manan during that more than once for flowers, and also for a bright-colored bath summer. She tantalizes Blanche with the prospect of “a new robe that is fine enough to “wear to the opera! I wear it, and book” begun “just as an experiment.” “It’s about a young thing, shall very likely take to working in it because I feel so cocky in this time,” she elaborates; “If I finish it, I’ll call it simply by it” (letter received December 28, 1926).4 Responding to a long her name, ‘Lucy Gayheart’.” This reference decisively moves December 29, 1931, letter from Blanche reporting Myra Hess’s back the date that Cather began composition of the novel a U.S. performance itinerary from January through April 1932,5 year from the previously established date of 1933.7 Mixing the Cather explained on January 14, 1932, that she was sorry to personal with the professional, in the same letter she expands miss both Hess and Yehudi Menuhin but would be remaining on her feelings about the death of Alfred Knopf ’s father, in Red Cloud until early February to enjoy the “lovely snow reporting that she is “utterly unreconciled to his death” and that storms” and to take her nephew Charles “coasting,” which she has “been trying to follow the last advice he gave me, and made her feel “just about twelve years old.” In a letter directed to live for the present, not the future”—perhaps a surprising to both Alfred and Blanche Knopf and received in their offices statement for an author who has so often been described as on December 12, 1938, Cather thanks them for their birthday living in and for the past.