Weekend Ramble: Trip to Oxford, MS, and Rowan Oak, Home of William Faulkner

Faulkner's library

Faulkner's desk in his living room at Rowan Oak

This past weekend my husband and I undertook to nourish our marriage by taking a trip sans children. We began planning this trip before my husband returned from deployment last fall, and our original destination was someplace a little more far-flung/exotic – Italy, Greece, Ireland? – for an extended period – a week or two? But in the hurry-burry of return to regular life, our romantic getaway shrank in size and scope. Since our time in Mississippi is drawing to a close, we realized we better hurry up and see the sights here, so we decided to jaunt up north for a weekend in Oxford, Mississippi, home of Ole Miss and William Faulkner’s last abode. We were joined by my cousin, who wrote her senior thesis on Faulkner, and her husband, to add to the fun.

Oxford is quite different from coastal Mississippi. You can imagine that its rolling hills at one time would have been quite wooded, and although many of the buildings built before the Civil War were burned by Union troops, the town still wears a little of the stamp of antebellum life. Wide two-story porches, tall windows and other elements of Greek revival architecture dominate the homes. We stayed in an inn characterized by those elements, although with minimalist furnishings, right between the University and the center of town, Jackson Square, so we could walk everywhere.

And walk we did. The weather couldn’t have cooperated more favorably – the sun warmed the mercury to about 75 for the weekend, and the warm temps brought out the co-eds in their shortest mini-dresses. Oxford seems to be a town with a high proportion of pretty girls, but then again, it is not hard to be beautiful when you are young.


Oxford also has a nice high proportion of book stores – the main square has three, although they all seem to be related: Square Books, a glorious incarnation of what a book store should be – shelves and shelves of books, arranged by genre and author and subject, so that you have to explore to find what you are looking for; Books on the Square, Jr, the children’s book store; and Off the Square Books, featuring sale and remaindered items, a sort of sad, bargain basement store where books go to yellow. I did my part for the local economy and purchased a copy of a book of children’s ghost stories told by William Faulkner to his daughter and niece, Dean Faulkner Wells, who authored the collection Ghosts of Rowan Oak, for our kids, and a Library of America collection of four of Faulkner’s books. Although I am almost through Go Down, Moses, one of the books in this collection, I wanted to read A Fable, Faulkner’s retelling of the Passion narrative through the experience of a soldier in WWI, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, but the only copy the bookstore had was a badly printed, poorly bound paperback. The  complete L of A collected works runs four or five volumes.

A third thing Oxford has going for it are delicious restaurants: our best meal was at the City Grocery, a place deservedly awarded a James Beard Best Southern Chef award. Most delectable was the starter: a slice of savory cheesecake made from chevre with roasted peppers and crab on a pecan crust. Too good.


The highlight and purpose of the trip was to peek into the life of William Faulkner. Visiting his home for the last 30 or so years of his life, named Rowan Oak, offers more than just a peek. The University of Mississippi has preserved a number of the acres surrounding his home, so we could walk through the woods where he used to sneak off to imbibe some local liquor. The trail was accessed just a couple blocks from our hotel and winded about a quarter mile to the house.  Baseball fans and traffic murmured in the distance, but the mockingbirds did a nice job of contributing to a feeling of remoteness.

You can visit the grounds of Rowan Oak any time, and when we first approached, early Friday evening, we interrupted a couple of romantic picnickers, who had brought a guitar along for serenades. But I can’t imagine the lovers reading Faulkner to each other without starting to drift into a late afternoon snooze.

The house appears grand with a brick walk flanked by cypresses planted to deter yellow fever leading to the main entrance, but it is not large. The property is beautiful, and in a couple weeks, it will probably be even prettier when the jonquils and redbuds burst into bloom.


Visiting historic homes is always a little funny. As museums, they are wonderful ways of envisioning the past, but a lurking feeling that you’re trespassing still haunts you. Faulkner’s daughter Jill only died a few years ago in 2008. You wonder how she felt about people gaping at the artifacts Faulkner used in his private life on display: cameras, a tobacco tin, his and  her riding boots, a box of Shakespeare's collected works. On the other hand, she apparently set many of the terms of the preservation of the house, dictating, for example, that there would be no gift shop. (A welcome term, I think.)


The tour of the home is self-guided. We came back to the property Saturday morning and shuffled through the halls, peering into the cordoned-off rooms, and studying the display cases in the hallway of some Faulkner ephemera.  I especially enjoyed browsing a large scrapbook of newspaper clips. Plaques with excerpts of Faulkner's works and interpretive information prevented the house from feeling truly homey, but they added quite a bit of background information, such as the tidbit that Faulkner and his wife Estelle were high school sweethearts. Her father did not approve of Faulkner's desire to be a writer, so their romance was cut short, only to resume years later after she divorced the man of  whom her father approved. 

After wandering the grounds, peeking into stables and servants quarters and resting in the sunshine a few minutes, we hiked on to the cemetery to find Faulkner’s grave. The grave occupies an unassuming spot on the side, not the crest, of a hill, rather close to the road. Faulkner was laid to rest in 1962, and ten years later, his wife Estelle was buried next him. Above his head is buried his stepson. A vacant spot for another member of the Faulkner family remains next to the stepson, but I suspect that plot will remain empty. How many Faulkner descendents remain unburied?  Offerings littering the gravesite include cigarette butts, pennies, and a broken Jack Daniels bottle. We offered up the “Requiescat in pace” prayer for the man who said to students at University of Virginia: "Christianity has never harmed me and I hope I have never harmed it. I have the sort of provincial Christian background which one takes for granted without thinking to much about it, probably . . . within my own rights, I feel I am a good Christian - whether it would please anyone else's standard or not, I don't know."  Then we moved on.

This summary of the weekend would be incomplete if I failed to mention a couple other highlights: Saturday evening, in lieu of hanging out at one of the college bars or going to a Jimmy Eat World concert, we attended a performance of baroque pieces entitled “The Virtuouso Viol,” performed by Alison Crum on the viola da gamba accompanied by Roy Marks on the theorbo, an instrument I had never heard of before. The husbands were commended for staying awake. And for Sunday Mass, we participated in the service at St. John the Evangelist, the parish right in front of the gates to the University, which was preached by a youngish priest who gave a rousing homily, which he closed by noting that new construction was beginning on the parish hall behind the church. “Parents, please practice extra vigilance with your children,” he advised, “And kids, if you play in the dirt, the devil will eat your face off!” A little fire and brimstone for Sunday morning.



The woodland path



Yellow cedar line walk to Rowan Oak




Faulkner's fireplace

 




  

   

The smokehouse

Servants' quarters



Faulkner's grave is in the background.



*I am not being recompensed by the city of Oxford for this travelogue, but I'd happily accept if offered compensation!

Books on the Square - delight!

Bathroom at the bookstore

Signed photos of visiting authors



Breakfast at Triplet Day Drugstore on the coast. Beignets as big as your head for dessert.



Required tourist trap.

Spring is here!

From "Light of the World"

My latest read is the Peter Seewald interview with Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World. Not as meaty as I had hoped, but this quote was good:


“There does need to be a new realization that being human is something great, a great challenge, to which the banality of just drifting along doesn’t do justice. Any more than the attitude that comfort is the best way to live, that feeling healthy is the sum and substance of happiness. There needs to be a new sense that being human is subject to a higher set of standards, indeed, that it is precisely these demands that make a greater happiness possible in the first place. There needs to be a sense that being human is like a mountain climbing expedition that includes some arduous slopes. But it is by them that we reach the summit and are able to experience for the first time how beautiful it is to be.”

Arduous slopes and higher standards. We were just having a conversation last night around the dinner table about why I don’t want the older kids downloading heavy metal Christian music. Yes, it has a Christian message, if you can decipher it, but the mode of delivery has an anti-Christian origin. Can heavy-metal music be “baptized” like other artifacts of pagan culture? That arduous slope of fighting against popular culture is just beginning to get steeper at our house.

A second conversation with my husband this morning was about whether or not a servicemember who presumably committed suicide should be buried at Arlington National Cemetary.  While I am usually the sort of person who tries to assume that people act with the best of intentions, I surprised myself with how strongly I felt about this predicament.  This suicide victim didn't just give up on the mountain climbing expedition of life, but he deserted his comrades in the military. He may have served honorably until his death, but by taking his own life he went AWOL.  Apparently since he did not leave behind a note, the people in charge of the decision making about this burial are assuming that his intentions were unclear.  The stance they are taking is that, while there is no question he shot himself, maybe it was an accident or he was under some undue influence.  And I join them in hoping that perhaps he regretted the decision as he pulled the trigger.  But burial space at Arlington is not infinite; it should be reserved for those who stay and fight. By allowing suicides to be buried with the pomp associated with military funerals, it may give those left behind the message that it's okay to quit.

I feel very callous writing this, and I wouldn't withhold the right to burial on sacred ground for the young man in question. The image of Ophelia's burial in Hamlet is nagging me, but I'm feeling a little tired of excessive coddling, of trying to make everyone feel okay. Like the Pope says, comfort is not the sum of happiness.

A Valentine's Post

... even though I’m currently disenchanted with the holiday, after labeling some 80 odd pieces of candy for our 4 elementary students and anticipating sugar crashes after they’ve consumed some 20 odd pieces of candy by 3 p.m. Should I have formed a principle to pull them out of school for the day? Why do elementary school kids exchange Valentines anyway?* Because candy makes them happy… I suppose I could lower my scroogometer a notch and let them enjoy. I have to admit to having a weakness for cinnamon jell hearts myself.


But what I wanted to note today was that yesterday was World Marriage Day. At Mass, the married couples were asked to stand and renew their vows. I was taken offguard by how giddy I felt when my husband said my name and that he’d take me and all my weaknesses until death do us part. Could I smile any bigger?


A friend who had been sitting across the way came over after mass and asked if I smiled that widely at our wedding. (Yes, I had cheek cramps at the end of the day from smiling so much. My grandfather commented that he had never seen someone have so much fun at her own wedding.) I was grateful for her comment, especially since she is a single mom who hasn’t been blessed to find someone with whom to exchange vows. Public blessings of married couples must be a sword in the heart for the lonely. But perhaps they are even more painful for those who can’t repeat their vows without wincing. I admit there have been days when I wouldn’t want to have to stand up and say them again in front of witnesses.


By the grace of God, our marriage has weathered the valleys pretty well so far. I don’t have any fail-proof recipes for a perfect marriage, but, inspired by the announcement in the church bulletin about a recent marriage renewal retreat with the topic “Eight Things to Protect Your Marriage,” I gave some thought to what has helped pull us through low times. Since soccer games, birthday parties, and scout events made our attendance at the mini retreat verboten, I tried to come up with my own eight things:


1. Sit next to each other at church instead of separated by minions. (Although behavior issues may prevent this at times, it does make renewing your vows easier. And it’s also nice when you can give the kiss of peace or a quick hand squeeze when one of the songs from your wedding is on the playlist.) (This takes for granted that you go to church, and confession, and pray together.)

2. Write letters. Good for saying things you mean to say but don’t have time to when daily life intervenes.

3. Never drink alone. I liked the promise that Sheldon Vanauken describes in A Severe Mercy that he and his wife made to always get each a drink of water if the other asked. We haven’t always lived up to that, but we have gotten better about offering each other a glass of whatever beverage we’re having.  And we really like our coffee time on weekends (and tea or wine time together after kids go to bed.) A good opportunity to compare calendars to make sure no one gets left somewhere.

4. Take walks together. We started sneaking out after the kids were asleep several years ago to walk around the block a few times. Last fall we started getting up earlier in the mornings to jog before the kids wake up. (please don’t inform CPS – the house hasn’t burnt down yet.) Something about moving your legs makes your mouth move, too.

5. Eat dinner together as a family– this one has research to back it up – but sometimes go out for dinner or have people over to spark discussions.

6. Read each other’s books. Or at least take an interest in each other’s projects or do things you aren’t really interested in or think you don’t have time to do. I don’t really love spending money, but sometimes I have to get over my frugality and do things my husband likes to do or “let” him buy new tools for a project.

7. Ask about each other’s day. Corollary: listen to the answer. Second corollary: use love languages, despite triteness. Sometimes it cuts down the amount of time it takes to get what you want if you accompany a request with affirmations, or actions, or whatever language it is that your beloved speaks. My husband and I speak different languages – and sometimes we need an interpreter.

8. Probably the best thing my husband and I did before getting married was to read Love and Responsibility and Casti Connubii together. Those writings gave us an ideal to fashion our marriage after and a vision of the big picture of the role of marriage in society and salvation. And it helped that we had friends and family whose marriages were worth copying. Doing NFP fits in this category, too. Sometimes it’s hard to take the long term view when some immediate little bitterness is trying to find a foothold, but when you only have a certain number of days to consummate your marriage, you make up faster.

Instead of going out on a date tonight, we had friends over for pizza yesterday to celebrate World Marriage Day (and, not less important, our son's 13th birthday.) But next weekend we're going on a little marriage retreat to Oxford, MS, to see William Faulkner's haunts.  This is a joint effort at #6 - since it's not the destination my husband would've chosen, I let him pick the hotel, a pricier place than I would've selected.

*I have to give credit to the school's principal, who announced that the classes would NOT have Valentine's parties. However, the room mothers confirmed that the kids could exchange cards and treats and wear red or pink shirts.

More on Gaudy Night

I finished Gaudy Night a couple days ago, but time to sit at the computer and write about it was scarce this week, in between subbing and practices, birthdays and snack making, and I really should be heading to bed right now, but I wanted to jot a few ramblings. The dreamy spell of reading it still lingers. Many of the allusions and inside jokes I missed, but every so often some quotidian event occurs that recalls a question raised in or by the book – the kids playing chess (Harriet’s poor antique chessmen! Why is the tragedy of their destruction almost as horrifying – if not as horrifying - as an actual murder? Do beautiful works of art have a right to life?), the celebration of World Marriage Day (Is that companionate marriage of equals that Harriet desires the best model, and if so, how to maintain it?), subbing and working last semester (and failing to be rehired this semester) (can a woman’s heart be equally devoted to scholarship and family life?)


In addition to the theme of marriage, the characters reflect often on principles. Since most of the characters are academics, these reflections don’t come across as overly heavy-handed, even in a detective novel, but they do come across as perhaps a little dated. Do people sit around and discuss compromising principles anymore?  Miss Edwards makes the provocative remark that “you can’t carry through any principle without doing violence to someone,” a viewpoint that seems more relative today - in a relativistic culture.

Peter replies that “if it ever occurs to people to value the honor of the mind equally with the honor of the body, we shall get a social revolution of quite unparalleled sort – and very different from the kind that is being made at the moment.”

Isn't there plenty of evidence that our dedication to principles has only lessened?

Another theme revolves around the question of whether married women should work at the college, if all the dons should be celibate.  My familiarity to Sayers prior to this novel extended to “The Lost Tools of Learning,” The Man Born to Be King, and Unnatural Death.  I also knew she was a friend of C. S. Lewis, so I was a little surprised at the strength of the feminist views expressed in this book.

One of the female dons, Miss Barton, has written a book that decries the Nazi proganda that women should be relegated to kinder, kirche, and kuche - children, church and kitchen. Connecting this viewpoint to the Nazis is cause for squirming, since so many conservative Christians believe that the church wants women there also. Obviously, one could counter that many women saints were women of action and position – queens, abbesses, doctors, and founders of hospitals and charitable organizations, as well as mothers. And yet, the balancing act is difficult, as illustrated by the situations of Annie Wilson and Mrs. Goodwin, the widow with children in the book who works at the college, but gets called away to tend to a child with measles. The other dons hurt their feelings in the discussion with Lord Peter about sticking to principles, because both of them are now single mothers after having been wed to disappointing husbands.

Annie’s emotional display at the end unveils an image of marriage that is everything what Harriet fears – a marriage of unequals, probably full of resentments, between a couple who sacrifice principles out of a false understanding of love. Harriet claims that “if anybody did a dishonorable thing and then said he did it for one's sake it would be the last insult.” The dean suggests that only educated women feel that way. Evidently, unlike Harriet, Annie believed her husband loved her because he sacrificed his integrity, but her unnatural resentment suggests a crippled mind.

Certainly plenty of daily news events suggest that even many educated people don't feel that way anymore. Love and romance trump integrity in most movies.  If this book were made into a movie, I wonder if viewers would have much sympathy for Harriet's hesitations about marrying Lord Peter.  Sexual attraction and money would be plenty to recommend him as a good love interest.  How would a movie maker play up Harriet's fear of compromising principles? Are principles now relegated to being just forms of mind games? Or am I misguided in my guess at the number of people who live quiet lives devoted to maintaining intellectual and moral integrity?

Perhaps the current popularity, among home schoolers at least, of Sayer’s ideas in “The Lost Tools of Learning,” will inspire greater devotion to principles and integrity.

On Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night

A wonderful distraction from pressing realities has been reading Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night. Set in Oxford before the second World War (interbellum?), this mystery centers around criminal action taking place at a fictional women’s college, Shrewesbury. The main character isn’t Sayers’ famous Peter Wimsey, but his love interest Harriet Vane. Someone has been leaving crude and insulting letters directed at the unmarried women academics, destroying gowns and dissertations, and causing havoc in the women’s library. Harriet is called in to uncover the culprit, but I’m 300 pages in, and she hasn’t made much progress. Lord Peter has just arrived on the scene, and they are punting on the Isis in their white linen. Sigh.

Though the pace is slow, the diction is rich, and I’m savoring it. Reading this novel is almost as good as a little vacation to that time and place. (I’m also resurrecting memories of Oxford from a brief visit my mother and I made 14 years ago, when I was 8 months pregnant with my first, to see my sister, who was studying for a semester there. Spring was just arriving, and we spent about a week touring around the Cotswolds in a little micra car and wandering about Oxford. Poking around the museum of natural history was a highlight, as was an afternoon concert. Three days after our flight back home, which was Newport, Rhode Island, at the time, my water broke while we were at church in Boston, and our first born entered the world five weeks early. Happily, he’s a healthy lad who turns 14 next month.)


I have my suspicions about the identity of the criminal, but I’m a little unsure about the romance – will Harriet finally accept Peter’s proposals of marriage or will he stop proposing or will she remain married to her work, writing detective novels? The compatibility of marriage and career is an interesting theme running through the book. None of the female dons is married, but the reasons for not marrying are varied: some are adamantly opposed to women academics marrying, some pity the married, one seems to be a manhater. The “poison-pen” is assumed to be one of the faculty because one of the letters was in Latin, and the suggestion is that celibacy has made this person bitter and malevolent, or at least that is what the college is afraid the outside world will assume.

Harriet has declined Peter’s marriage proposals not only because she apparently was involved in some romantic scandal in an earlier book, but also because she fears an unequal marriage, in which either her career or her husband’s will have to be sacrificed to uphold the marriage. She worries that spouses are doomed to envy or resent the other. She and one of the suspected dons have a conversation about how marriage is a job: “The worst of being a job,’ said Miss de Vine, “is the devastating effect it has on one’s character. I’m very sorry for the person who is somebody else’s job; he (or she, of course) ends by devouring or being devoured, either of which is bad for one.”

If this were the only view presented, I’d despair of Harriet ever accepting Peter’s proposal, but Miss de Vine also says “though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t look on themselves as jobs but as fellow creatures.”

An interesting side trail: I was reading somewhere that the attraction to vampire romances is rooted in the sublimated desire to be consumed by one’s beloved, a sort of twisted desire for unity.


So not only am I trying to put together clues about the identity of the perpetrator, but also clues about Dorothy Sayers’ view of marriage. She has one character say that marriage makes you fat, another is proof that marriage causes premature aging. One epigraph from Richard Burton praises virginity. But then there are a few bright examples of marriage: the archaeologist and her husband who complement each other so well, and Harriet is greatly flattered by a proposal of marriage from an undergraduate she befriended. And her feelings are obviously conflicted about Lord Peter. She seems to be afraid they would be unequally yoked, but it is clear that Lord Peter would view her as a fellow creature, not a job, and would allow her to continue writing and solving crimes.

I’m eager to read more, but I'm glad the book is a thick 468 pages…

An extremely brief history

I've appreciated words of encouragement lately.  A friend just sent me this note:
"Just googled Guam, and saw this:


Guam braces for population 'explosion' ABS-CBN News Latest ...

Jan 12, 2010 ... HAGATNA - Guam is bracing for a deluge of people when thousands of American troops and their families relocate to the island from Japan in ...

...so I guess they know you are coming, with your deluge of Cooks."

Made me smile.  Except for that part in the article about the uptick in crime and social problems!

The growth in population will occur in a couple of years, when one of the US marine bases closes in Japan and relocates to Guam. My husband will be involved in the construction of the new facilities in Guam. Not much attention is paid to the military presence in Japan, except when some servicemember gets in trouble. 

Although this transfer of facilities and troops to Guam is hugely expensive, it does seem logical to have the troops based on a US territory, rather than a foreign country.  However, I wonder if the native Chamorros see this as increased imperialism or increased opportunity. The island became a colony of Spain in the 1600s, and then the United States took control of the island in 1898, when it drove out the Spaniards without bloodshed. The Japanese briefly occupied the island during WWII, until the US drove out the Japanese with bloodshed in 1944.  According to Wikipedia, multiple referendums have revealed that nearly half of the Chamorros would like to be in the closer relationship of a commonwealth, rather than a remaining a territory of the US, and some voted to be recognized as a state.

It is not an entirely comfortable feeling to be in the position of colonial imperialist.  I will have to study up more on the relationship between Guam and the United States.

Poor banished children of Eve

We had one of those crazy weekends. Friday I subbed in the library and was planning to write a post about all the fun books I read. I came home cheerful and chatty. Buzz, buzz, buzz. I talked my husby’s ear off for about an hour before he finally told me his news.

Guam.

For three years we’ll be living on a remote Pacific Island, starting this summer.

Crash.

Ok, I knew this was coming. For months we’ve known he was penciled in. But I was in denial. The Navy wouldn’t send a family with 6 kids there! We’ve always been told that big families don’t get sent overseas.

The salt in the wound is that another family we know with 5 kids is going to Naples, Italy. The injustice. My husband speaks Italian! He knows Rome after spending a year there in college. But he didn’t want that job, and he keeps reassuring me that his bosses wouldn’t have sent him there, even if he asked for it.


After hiding in my room and moping for a couple hours, and shooting painful, barbed glares at my husband for an evening, I have started to come to terms with our sentencing orders. I DID say that if we were going to do 20 years in the Navy, it would be fun to have one adventure tour. (I was thinking Sicily or Rota, among other possibilities.) Everyone we know who has been to Guam (4 people, including my in-laws) loved it. But none of them had teenagers with them when they lived there.


My second response to finding out about Guam was to decide to spend a lot of money before we go. Right after dinner Friday night, I announced we were all going to see the high school play, so everyone jumped in the car, and we made it just after the curtain rose.

On Saturday we had a birthday party for my now 11 year old son. I shopped on ebay for a saxophone for my almost 13 year old. Then I looked into booking a trip to Seattle with my sister. I shopped online for a hotel in Rome for the pope’s beatification. And then on Sunday we went to ATT, signed up for cell service, and came home with an iphone and another phone.


But I lost 4 different bids on saxophones. My sister and I haven’t committed to dates for a trip. I never booked a hotel in Rome. And on Monday I returned the second phone to ATT and cancelled the second line. (The iphone was actually a gift from my in-laws. I have been sort of proud of the fact that I have not had a cell phone contract up to this point, only pay as you go service. But it turns out I am an inconvenience to society because everyone wants to send texts these days.) So I didn’t really spend hundreds of dollars.

Then I got online to do some research on Guam. It is pretty. And I’m sure there are nice people there, like on other remote Pacific islands. Maybe the kids and I should start to learn Chamorran.