December 19, 1921.

Mrs. Willa S. Cather,
5 Bank Street,
New York City.

Dear Mrs. Cather;

Miss McAfee tells me that you have a very interesting lecture on "Obstacles to American Art" which you might be willing to turn into an article for The Yale Review. I understand that in the course of it you wish to say a few words in criticism of prohibition among other things. This prospect does not frighten me in the least. I am particularly anxious for several reasons to have the article, if you can possibly manage it, by the first of February so that I may plan to publish it in the spring number of the magazine. Can you not touch up your lecture, making such changes and additions as you think best by that time? I would suggest a limit of about five thousand words, and I could offer you an honorarium of one hundred dollars. This would not, of course, be adequate payment for what you would write, but it is the maximum that The Yale Review can pay. Under another cover I am sending you a copy of our Christmas number with my compliments.

May 17, 1922.

Miss Willa Cather,
5 Bank St.,
New York City.

Dear Miss Cather:

We have you down on our announcement list for an essay on "Obstacles to American Art." I am afraid you will begin to feel that one of the chief obstacles to American art is the importunity of American editors. We should be the last people in the world to ask you to put aside your fiction in favor of a magazine article. But you cannot write fiction all the time, can you? And when the off-moment comes, we want you to remember The Yale Review. I hope you are beginning to get the full benefit of the loss of the offending tonsils.

With best wishes,

Very sincerely yours,

G*

September 23, 1922.

Miss Villa Cather,
5 Bank St.,
New York City.

Dear Miss Cather:

On my return to New Haven, I got hold of "One of Ours," and I am half-way through it. I am very much interested in the way in which you are working out your characters. As always, I am refraining from reading any reviews of the novel and of listening more than necessary to any verbal comments upon it.

You will recall the correspondence you have had with Miss McAfee about an article. You intend to let me have it--do you not?--very soon? I wish you would write to me, Miss McAfee has been in England since the first of August, but is now on the way home.

I am sending you a copy of the October number of The Yale Review, which I hope will interest you.

Yours most sincerely,

G*

October 16, 1922.

Miss Willa S. Cather,
5 Bank St.,
New York City.

Dear Miss Cather:

I was much pleased to receive this morning your good letter of October eleventh. What you say of the article upon Mrs. Field and her friends, apropos of Mr. Howe's book, interests me greatly. Yet I fear that Mr. Canby will snap it up if you send it first to him; and in the circumstances, I can hardly ask you to do otherwise. Mr. Canby and I are very good friends, but just now we are editing publications which though not really rivals sometimes have conflicting interests. Moreover, Alice Brown is going to write something for The Yale Review suggested by Mr. Howe's book.

I am loath to relinquish the idea of the article about which we corresponded last winter. Perhaps your trip abroad will give you a new perspective upon it, or will in some way revive your enthusiasm for it. If this

WHALE COVE
GRAND MANAN
NEW BRUNSWICK
CANADA

August 25th,

Dear Governor Cross;

I want to thank you most heartily for the first
understanding review I have seen of my new book. You seem to
be the first person who sees what a different kind of method
I tried to use from that which I used in the "Archbishop". I
tried, as you say, to state the mood and the view-point in
the title. To me the rock of Quebec is not only a stronghold
on which many strange figures have for a little time cast a
shadow in the sun; it is the curious endurance of a kind of
culture, narrow but definite. There another age persists.
There, among the country people and the nuns, I caught some-
thing new to me; a kind of feeling about life and human fate
that I could not accept, wholly, but which I could not
that feeling
but admire. It was hard to state in language; it was more
like an old song, incomplete but uncorrupted, than like a
legend. The text was mainly anacolouthon, so to speak, but
the meaning was clear. I took the incomplete air and tried
to give it what would correspond to a sympathetic musical set-
ting; tried to develop it into a prose composition not too
conclusive, not too definite; a series of pictures remembered
rather than experienced; a kind of thinking, a mental com-
plexion inherited, left over from the past, lacking in robust-
ness and full of pious resignation.

Now it seemed to me that the mood of the mis-fits among
the early settlers( and there were a good many) must have been
just that. An orderly little French household that went on try-
ing to live decently, just as ants begin to rebuild when you
kick their house down, interests me more than Indian raids or
the wild life in the forests. And, as you alone among my re-
viewers seem to recognize, once having adopted a tone so defin-
ite, once having taken your seat in the close air by the apoth-
ecary's fire, you can't explode into military glory, anymore
than you can pour champagne into a salad dressing. (I don't
believe much in rules, but Stevenson laid down a good one
when he said: you can't mix kinds.) And really, a new society
begins with the salad dressing more than it does with the de-
struction of Indian villages. Those people brought a kind of
French culture there and somehow kept it alive on that rock,
sheltered it and tended it and on occasion died for it, as if
it really were a sacred fire — and all this temperately
and shrewdly, with emotion always tempered by good sense.

It's very hard for an American to catch that rythm--- it's
so unlike us. But I made an honest try, and I got a great deal
of pleasure out of it, if nobody else does! And surely you'll
agree with me that our writers experiment too little, and pro-
duce their own special brand too readily.

With deep appreciation of the compliment you pay me in
taking the time to review the book, and my friendliest re-
gards always,

Miss Helen Mae hpee
The Yale Review
New Haven
Connecticut
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