Do you believe in love at first sight?
“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.” Thomas Wolfe
If her memory is correct, it was on a Sunday afternoon late in 1878, the day Julia Elizabeth Westall first saw Mark Lance. She was eighteen years old, nearing nineteen. Since about 1876, she had been living at her father’s home a few miles from Asheville out the Swannanoa River Road. That cold morning, she was escorted by her brother Jim. They boarded a buggy and were joined by friends Tom and Lula Reed, neighbors from the Gashes Creek area, who rode on horseback. They were on their way south to an ‘old-fashioned singing school.’ Julia later remembered the school being held near Chimney Rock at a Baptist Church. It is very possible it was the church at Bear Wallow. We find mention of “A Great Singin’ Meetin” in an article printed in the Asheville Weekly Citizen January 1879. A choir had been preparing there for a month under the direction of Prof. A. B. Chase and was scheduled to perform an evening concert at the courthouse in Asheville.
It must have been a long day’s ride in those days. The travelling companions occasionally alternated from the buggy to horseback, and they stopped for dinner along the way. Approaching the crossing at Cane Creek, Julia saw Mark Lance on horseback, carrying a suitcase, also preparing to cross Cane Creek, and they were soon beside him. She would later learn that he was also travelling to attend the singing school. Worried that his hands would become cold, she wanted to offer to carry his suitcase in the buggy, but custom did not allow a lady to speak to a stranger, and her companions offered no assistance. Julia said in those days it was difficult to make introductions and you had to meet people the best way you could.
Julia recalled boarding that month at Dr. Robert A. Freeman’s house in the Edneyville area. On Monday morning the class began and by the third day a friend pointed out that a young man in class could not take his eyes off Julia. It was Mark Lance. She became determined to make an introduction. She devised a plan to ask him to help with a quartet, needing him to sing bass, as a surprise to the instructor Prof. Chase. She reminisced that they became quickly acquainted and that each afternoon he escorted her back to her lodgings, and then, although he was boarding a half mile nearer to the school, he came for her every morning over the next month. The best month of her life, she remembered. When the singing school ended, he would travel fifteen miles to Asheville to visit her and they corresponded regularly.
Here the timeline and story grow to become a little confusing. Julia said three years passed. They both had become students at another school. While not engaged, everyone assumed that they would marry. This is likely when she attended Judson College at Hendersonville around 1880-1881. During this time, she recalls; Mark “got jealous of this one-armed Irishman (an older man named Mr. Davidson) who was crazy over me.” And hurtfully, in a letter, Mark accused Julia of being “a flirt, flatter, and deceiver.” Mark Lance gathered his belongings and quit the school.
When W. O. Wolfe proposed marriage to Julia Westall in 1884, she claimed to still be in love with young Mark Lance, although, she admitted, she had not seen him in almost four years. Julia said, “I didn’t like the idea of ever marrying; I didn’t think I would find anybody that I’d ever love as much as I did Mark Lance.” She told W.O. that she would never love another man as she had once loved Mark Lance, but that did not discourage W.O. from marrying her. While she would not ever see Mark again, Julia kept track of the man. She knew that he had married much later than she did, and like Julia, he had taught school for a while, and became a merchant.
Indeed, eventually Mark Lance owned a country store near Marshall in Madison County and served briefly as postmaster. He was born in Henderson County, possibly in the Hooper’s Creek area near Fletcher. He married Lillie Wallen in 1887 at Marshall. They had one son born in 1896. Julia would learn from her husband that Mark Lance had been shot in 1900 by an angry customer over receiving credit for goods. He died a month later from the infected wound. He was interred at the Madison Seminary Baptist Church. Julia claimed that she learned in a dream, talking to his mother, who she had never met, that he had been shot in the lower part of the lung, and the bullet went out his back on the right side. His widow Lillie and son Mark Wallin Lance moved to Asheville, and Julia invite10d them to dinner. They later moved to Florida.
We find this story told in the recording of Julia Wolfe (pg. 18) The Wax Cylinders by John Skally Terry from the early 1940s, and again in the book The Marble Man’s Wife (pg. 128) based upon interviews with Julia Wolfe in 1943.
Messages from the Manager’s Desk
“Oh, it might have been all this in the April and moist lilac darkness of some forgotten morning as he saw the clean line of the East cleave into morning at the mountain's ridge. It may have been the first light, bird-song, an end to labour and the sweet ache and pure fatigue of the lightened shoulder as he came home at morning hearing the single lonely hoof, the jinking bottles, and the wheel upon the street again." Of Time and the River
Dear Friends,
I know you are all busy managing your new circumstance while adjusting to recent events. And hope you are doing well despite being at a distance from others. This newsletter was ready to go to the printer right before we closed the doors at Thomas Wolfe Memorial to the public, and nobody could predict where we would be two weeks later. So here I am working on the coffee table in my living room rewriting this message. It seemed important to take this moment to reach out to our greatest supporters, steadfast volunteers, and donors to check on your wellbeing and let you know how we are faring. It is serving the people who visit the Memorial that we love doing best. Be assured that we are continuing to maintain this special place and its significant collections by taking turns working on the property part-time and working remotely from home. We are examining ways to highlight some of our educational services and programs online and preparing for the day when we will reopen to the public.
Remembering the importance of connecting with others, in this issue of The Ledger we share the story of Julia’s first love. We are also excited to tell you about the winner of the International Thomas Wolfe Playwriting Competition. With playwriting in mind we also share a piece about Thomas Wolfe visiting his father while a student at Harvard.
Cancelled for May, but on schedule for September near the anniversary of the passing of Thomas Wolfe, is the Look Homeward Riverside Cemetery tour. The tours have proven to be a popular program. We are hopeful that we will see the return of the Thomas Wolfe Society to Asheville for their annual conference. Plans for the meeting this year at the Renaissance Hotel promises new scholarship on Wolfe and his influence on other writers. The keynote address will be delivered by North Carolina native and author Stephanie Watts Powell, a professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. If you have not read her works, I encourage you to do so.
Thanks to your continuing support and donations, we will continue to focus on efforts to secure new generations of readers of Wolfe and explore creative ways to support educators teaching Thomas Wolfe in their classrooms. This year our annual student writing competition will feature part of Thomas Wolfe’s story “The Lost Boy.” We trust we will see you soon.
Tom Muir
Historic Site Manager
The Memory of These Hands
“Now the train was coming. Down the powerful shining tracks a half mile away ...it was his train and it had come to take him to the strange and secret heart of the great North that he had never known...his father’s country.” Of Time and the River
Graduating from UNC in 1920, Thomas Wolfe faced a crossroad. He wished to study playwriting at Harvard, yet worried about leaving his sickly father’s side. He considered teaching at Bingham Military School in Asheville, or beginning a career in journalism, but feared “a picture of the probable future. . . In ten, fifteen years, I will be a sour, dyspeptic, small-town pedant, the powers of my youth forgotten....” In
Look Homeward, Angel, W. O. Gant exclaimed “let him do as he likes, I can’t pay out any more money on his education. If he wants to go, his mother must send him.” Julia ultimately agreed to give him the money to go to Harvard for a year, and “then we’ll see.” Thomas Wolfe was determined to seek a brighter future, took his chances, and headed northward.
Accepted to Harvard on September 13th, 1920, Wolfe arranged to travel to Cambridge via New York. His father was receiving treatments at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and Thomas made it a point to stop and visit his father before heading farther north. In
Of Time and the River, Wolfe recalled saying goodbye “He knew that he should never see his father again.” Wolfe wrote, “take care of yourself, son, said Gant kindly. Do the best you can. And for a moment he covered the boy's hand with one great palm...”
During Wolfe’s first year at Harvard, he took several classes toward his Master’s degree in English, while also enrolled in Professor Baker’s playwriting course known as the 47 Workshop. In 1921 as summer was ending and his first year at Harvard completed, he frantically wrote to his mother about his concerns for his future, “if the time has come for me to go out on my own, so be it, but please try not to treat me with the indifference while I am alone and far away.” Julia had taken her husband back to Johns Hopkins Hospital and suggested that Thomas meet them there. In the course of the two-week visit he secured the promise of another year at Harvard and returned to Cambridge to continue his goal of writing a successful play. Wolfe biographer Andrew Turnbull notes that the final goodbye to his father depicted in
Of Time and the River occurred during this visit in 1921.
In 1922 W. O. Wolfe’s health continued to decline, and his letters to his son became few and far between. While Thomas was completing his MA requirements, his father took a turn for worse. He made immediate plans to return to Asheville. When his train stopped in Morganton, he purchased a newspaper and read the headline that his father had already passed away at midnight June 20, 1922, age seventy-one. In the short story “The Four Lost Men,” Thomas recalled seeing his father’s body at the funeral, “my father’s hands still seemed to live, and would not die. And this was the reason why the memory of these hands haunted me then and would haunt me forever after….”
Tom wrote to his mother in early 1923, “I think often of my childhood lately; of those warm hours in bed of winter mornings; of Papa’s big voice shouting from the foot of the stair ‘Get up, boy’...there is a great sadness in knowing you can never recall the scene except the memory; even if all were here you could not bring it back. Sometimes Ben and Papa seem so far away, one wonders if it were a dream.”
We Have A Winner
In March the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Advisory Committee, and PlayMakers Repertory Company, along with The Thomas Wolfe Society, proudly announce the winner of the first International Thomas Wolfe Playwriting Competition. The winner is Sara Jean Accuardi’s “The Storyteller.” Along with a $7,500 cash prize, the play writer will receive workshop development support from PlayMakers at UNC-Chapel Hill during its 2020/21 season.
Fundraising efforts began in 2017 to support the project, and over 50 individuals and organizations contributed toward the competition, which launched in 2019 to celebrate the work of North Carolina’s most famous writer and 100 years of playmaking at UNC-Chapel Hill. Since 1919 and the first performance of the Carolina Playmakers, Thomas Wolfe has inspired generations of artists, poets and writers. More than 200 submissions of unproduced scripts were received from playwrights all over the world. A committee made up of nationally based artists, arts leaders, UNC-Chapel Hill scholars, and Triangle-based arts community members read the submissions, with each manuscript receiving at least two readings. The winner was chosen from among eight finalists by award-winning TV writer, playwright and UNC alum Bekah Brunstetter (“The Cake,” NBC’s “This Is Us”) and Vivienne Benesch, PlayMakers’ Producing Artistic Director.
40 years Ago in Asheville
Citizen-Times staff reporter Tony Brown described the first Thomas Wolfe Society conference held Saturday April 12
th 1980 at Asheville as a day-long Wolfe festival. Among their local coordinators was Miss Myra Champion of the Pack Memorial Library. Memorial employees led by Steve Hill prepared for the visitors. 75 scholars made reservations to attend along with distinguished guests Kadashi Kodaira, a professor from Yokohama City University in Japan, and Pulitzer Prize winning author Dr. David Herbert Donald. Highlights of the festival planned to include a Saturday evening program at the Sheraton Motor Inn, a visit to Pack Library to view the Wolfe Collection, a bus tour of Asheville historic places and a house tour at Thomas Wolfe’ mother’s boardinghouse, both conducted by employees of Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site. Unexpectedly, early in the week in a convalescent center at Spartanburg, SC, came the passing of Fred W. Wolfe, age 85. He was “Luke“ in Look Homeward, Angel and the last surviving member of the immediate Wolfe family. His funeral was rescheduled for 11 a.m. that Saturday at Riverside Cemetery, and in spite of heavy rains many members of the society attended the graveside service.
Thank You for Your Donations
Sharon & Vic Fahrer, Joseph N. Muzio, Adrian H. Cline, Roger "Wiley" Cash, Elaine Barnes, Gregory Zack, Mary C. Smith, Barbara Williams, Allen B. Hayes, Deb Borland, John R. Yelton, Simon Woodrup, John Grooms, Aldo P. Magi, Robert Hudson, Ray and Colin Walker, John and Sylvia Gordon, Fred Chappell, Victor A. Greto, Christine Hale, Robert Morgan, Marjorie A. Kasdin, Wayne Caldwell, John and Lori Turk, Frank and Melanie Coney, Peter Abuisi, Tom and Catherine Byers, Warren Anderson, Doug Orr, Paul Lilly, Fran Bagwell, Joseph B. Joyce, Gina Malone, Ken Richards, Thomas Alexander, Jeff Llewellyn, Charles A. DuCharme, Ingeborg Durre, Michael McCue, Tom Hearron, Michael Sartisky, Suzanne Fisher, Dr. William B. Trexler, Jane Knechtel, Bill Ware, Jan G. Hensley, William Eakins, Barbara Mueller, Sue Cooper Huffman, David Madden, Ellen Oglesby Carr, John and May Moss Parker, Anastasia Clare, Roslyn Diamond, Tom Rash, Karen Trogdon, Martha McPhail, Rebecca Mandigo.
Gift A Commemorative Brick Paver
With the help of the Friends of Thomas Wolfe, the Thomas Wolfe Memorial is replacing over 700 weathered bricks in the walkways leading to Thomas Wolfe’s childhood home. A donation of $100.00 will help us replace one 4 x 8 x 2 ¼ standard brick paver in our walkway. Each of the Plantation Red brick pavers can hold in a Helvetica font, 3 lines of 18 characters each, including spaces, commas, ampersands, etc...
Ask us for your Commemorative Brick Paver order form Today!
Limited Time Only - Order Soon
Become a Friend of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial
Membership in the Friends of Thomas Wolfe supports the Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site thru the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Advisory Committee, Inc. a 501 (c) 3. Your charitable donation is tax-deductible. Please send your donations to:
Friends of Thomas Wolfe, 52 N. Market St. Asheville, NC 28801.
Friend $25
Newsletter, free tour admission for cardholder
Boarder $50
Newsletter, free tour admission for cardholder, souvenir bookmark
Scholar $100
Newsletter, free tour admission for cardholder and one guest, souvenir bookmark
Angel $150
Newsletter, free tour admission for cardholder and three guests, souvenir bookmark
Rock $500
Newsletter, free tour admission for cardholder and three guests, souvenir bookmark, commemorative brick
*10% Gift Shop discount for all members.