#2095: Willa Cather to Roscoe Cather, [June 21, 1931]
VIRTUS NON STEMMA
The Grosvenor4
New York Dear Brother1
Things are pretty complicated just now—countless business details holding me here2 in this heat. I can't lie down when my publisher is working so hard for the new book5. It's going over big, as they say. But I still desperately hope6 to get the twins7 to Grand Manan8 in August. I can't be sure, tell them, but I hoping.
Lovingly Willie Mr. R. C. Cather1 1225 South Center St Casper3 Wyoming NEW YORK, N. Y.2 JUN 21 1931 5 PM VIRTUS NON STEMMA The Grosvenor 35 FIFTH AVENUE New York
Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only. Includes one envelope, handwritten.
[June 21, 1931]
Grosvenor Hotel (New York City): When Cather and Edith Lewis lost their 5 Bank Street apartment in 1927, they moved into the Grosvenor Hotel, where they continued to live until 1932. The hotel was located at 35 Fifth Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
The twins did not join Willa Cather in Grand Manan for the summer of 1931 (#2099).
Ickis, Elizabeth Cather (1915-1978) (half of the "twinnies"). Cather's niece. Elizabeth and her twin sister Margaret were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather's later letters to them she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Elizabeth moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937 and married Lynn S. Ickis, an electrical engineer, in April 1938. They lived in Cleveland, OH, and had two children, Margaret and John.
Casper, Wyoming, United States
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until 1940.
Work Annotations
Shadows on the Rock (1931) by Willa Cather