The collection contains corrected typescripts of "A chance meeting" published in the Atlantic Monthly (February 1933) and later collected in "Not under forty" and "Old Mrs. Harris" published in Ladies Home Companion (September, October & November 1932) and later collected in "Obscure destinies." In "A chance meeting" Cather give an account of her meeting, in a hotel in Aix, with a striking and energetic elderly woman whom Cather eventually discovers to be the 84-year old niece of Gustave Flaubert [Caroline Franklin Grout]. Cather describes her astonishment when the old lady reveals her literary connections: "there was no word with which one could greet such a revelation. I took one of her lovely hands and kissed it, in homage to a great period, to the great past, to the names that made her voice tremble." Later, at a performance of Boris Godunov, Cather recalls "It was interesting...at the opera that night, to watch the changes that went over her face as she listened with an attention that never wandered, looking younger and stronger than she ever did by day, as if the music were some very powerful stimulant." After extensive conversations in which the two discuss Flaubert's work ("les oeuvres de mon oncle"), her friendship as a young girl with Turgenev, Pauline Viardot and other luminaries of the remote past, Cather and the old lady bid an emotional farewell: "The last glimpse I had was as she stood in the dining room, the powder on her face quite destroyed by tears, her features agitated but her head erect and her eyes flashing. A great memory and a geat devotion were the things she lived on, certainly; they were her armour against a world concerned with insignificant matters." Cather later used this encounter as the basis for a story, "The Old Beauty" (1936). "Old Mrs. Harris," one of the three stories comprising "Obscure Destinies," was first serialized under the title "Three Women," and Cather received the enormous sum of $15,000 for magazine rights. The story was quickly recognized as one of Cather's most powerful. Dorothy Canfield Fisher singled out "Old Mrs. Harris" as "a creation of unexpected beauty." Cather's revisions are evident in numerous partial pages bearing inserted text--ranging from 2-3 lines to half a page--neatly cut out and pasted in place. A number of such insertions have been made in certain key scenes, like the extended description of Vickie (on pp.20-22), in which Vickie is looking at an illustrated edition of Faust, and translates the "Dies Irae" for Mrs. Rosen. On some pages, whole passages or sentences are lined out--but remain easily readable. On page 3 she deleted a passage reading "The best of everything that went on the table was her natural tribute. There wasn't much, to be sure, but what there was was Victoria's." And on page 21, Cather has deleted several lines of dialogue and added "'Where did you get that?--Out of Rigoletto?' It looked like that--but how would Vickie know?" On pages 30-31 she has lined out an observation about Mrs. Holliday: "One could never be sure just how much she meant to hurt people." In early pages, Cather has altered the name "Topaz Valley"--the western town in which the story is set--to "Skyline." There are extensive inserted blocks of text in Section IV (pages 26-27) and one passage is completely deleted: "There was no Presbyterian church in Skyline, so Mrs. Holliday attended the Methodist." On page 32, a four-line and a five-line passage are deleted; on page 33 Cather has lined out the sentence: "Victoria was naturally hearty and warm hearted and good humored"; on page 34, a passage reading "Whenever she 'bridled' or woithdrew herself, something of that kind had occurred," is crossed out. The last sentence reads: "They will say to themselves: 'I was heartless because I weas young, and so strong, and because I wanted things so much.'" The published story adds the concluding observation: "But now I know." In addition to the substantive changes and rewritings, Cather has carefully corrected and regularized punctuation, capitalization and typing errors.
