Landscapes of the Heart

by Elizabeth Spencer

  “This memoir by a distinguished woman of letters will appeal to everyone interested in southern history and literature, and in what shapes a writer, what turns a person toward that difficult, challenging life.”

  —New Orleans Times-Picayune

  “The exemplary Mississippi-born writer … recounts a goodly slice of southern literary history through the lens of her own coming of age as a fiction writer.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Full of insights into the writer’s psyche … as complex and fascinating as anything she has made up.”

  —Austin American-Statesman

  “Spencer is a grand southern writer: There’s no doubt about that.”

  —Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Evokes an almost forgotten world… . The story of the recent history of the white South, with all its charm, its rigidity, its genius and its tragedy.”

  —Memphis Commercial Appeal

  “There’s so much to love and learn in this provocative memoir.”

  —Greensboro News and Record

  “Reading about Spencer’s childhood has the rare and comfortable feeling of being read to.”

  —Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

  VOICES OF THE SOUTH

  ALSO BY ELIZABETH SPENCER

  NOVELS

  Fire in the Morning

  This Crooked Way

  The Voice at the Back Door

  The Light in the Piazza

  Knights & Dragons

  No Place for an Angel

  The Snare

  The Salt Line

  The Night Travellers

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Ship Island and Other Stories

  The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer

  Jack of Diamonds and Other Stories

  PLAY

  For Lease or Sale

  SPECIAL EDITIONS

  Marilee

  On the Gulf

  Conversations with Elizabeth Spencer

  LANDSCAPES OF THE HEART

  A MEMOIR

  Elizabeth

  Spencer

  LANDSCAPES OF THE HEART

  LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE A MEMOIR

  Copyright © 1998 by Elizabeth Spencer

  Originally published by Random House

  LSU Press edition published 2003 by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03

  5 4 3 2 1

  Parts of this book have previously appeared, often in somewhat different form, in the following publications: Eudora Welty: A Tribute, An Apple for My Teacher, Family Portraits, Friendship and Sympathy, Mississippi Writers: Reflections of Childhood and Youth (Vols. I & II), Mississippi Writers: An Anthology, The Atlantic, Eudora Welty Newsletter, Opera News, The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, Oxford-American, Brightleaf, Gulf Coast, and Carolina Quarterly.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  The Estate of Lawrence Olson: Four lines from “1941” and six lines from another poem from The Cranes on Dying River by Lawrence Olson. Reprinted by permission of Jean Olson on behalf of the Estate of Lawrence Olson. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.: Three lines from “Death of Little Boys” and seven lines from “Ode to the Confederate Dead” from Collected Poems 1919–1976 by Allen Tate. Copyright © 1977 by Allen Tate. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Harcourt Brace 6 Company: Excerpts from ‘The Exiles Have Achieved Places of Eminence” in Mississippi: The Closed Society by James W. Silver. Copyright © 1964 by James W. Silver. Copyright renewed 1992 by Margaret T. Silver, James William Silver, Margaret Gail Silver, and Elizabeth Silver Little. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Brace & Company. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: Four lines from “Old Mansion,” one line from “Judith of Bethulia,” and two lines from “The Equilibrists” from Selected Poems by John Crowe Ransom. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Vanderbilt University Press: Four lines from “Lines Written for Allen Tate on his 60th Birthday” and eight lines from “Spoken at a Castle Gate” from The Long Street by Donald Davidson. Copyright © 1945,1950,1960,1961 by Donald Davidson. Reprinted by permission of Vanderbilt University Press.

  Illustrations on pages 38 and 41 courtesy

  Mississippi Department of Archives and History

  ISBN 0-8071-2916-X

  The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

  To William and Elizabeth Hamilton Willis,

  who know how it all was

  “… and how the night

  Came down the hills at Carrollton”

  —“Private Poem” from The Cranes on Dying River

  by Lawrence Olson

  “… I feel the need of a land, of a sure terrain, of a

  sort of permanent landscape of the heart.”

  —From “A Southern Landscape”

  by Elizabeth Spencer

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks are due to Louis D. Rubin, Jr., who was kind enough to offer advice on the writing; to Walter and Jane Sullivan, who helped me confirm the validity of many memories by fact checking; to Hunter Cole and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, who provided numerous photographs that would not have found their way into this book otherwise; and especially to Samuel S. Vaughan, my editor, who was supportive and encouraging every step of the way.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  List of Illustrations

  Part One The Circled World

  1. Riding Out

  2. The Town

  3. The McCains

  4. A Christian Education

  5. Down on Teoc

  6. Malmaison and the Choctaw Chief

  7. The Spencers

  8. Religion

  9. The Old Ladies

  10. Field of Battle

  11. Some Old Gentlemen and Others

  12. The Day Before

  Part Two School

  13. Miss Jennie and Miss Willie

  14. Growing Pains

  15. Some Social Notes

  16. The Poet

  17. “Them”

  18. College

  Part Three Widening Orbits

  19. Vanderbilt Days

  20. Vanderbilt and Beyond

  21. The Magic Summer

  22. The Gulf Coast

  23. New York and Beyond

  24. Return to Italy

  25. Homecoming

  26. Leave-taking

  27. Writing in New York

  28. Places to Come To

  29. The Road Back

  Index

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Elizabeth Spencer at age six

  Elizabeth Spencer at age eight

  The McCain family home in Teoc, Mississippi

  John S. McCain (“Gan”)

  Mary James McCain (“Mimi”) as a young girl, about 1912

  Elizabeth Spencer at age fourteen

  Joseph Pinkney McCain (“Uncle Joe”)

  Esther May McCain (“Aunt Esther”)

  Malmaison

  Greenwood Leflore

  James Luther Spencer as a lieutenant in the Navy

  The Spencer family home in Carrollton

  Mrs. Jennie McBride

  Elizabeth Spencer on a Tennessee walking horse, about 1949

  Elizabeth Spencer with flowers

  Mrs. Kay Keenan (“Miss Willie”)

  The Carrollton schoolhouse

  Aunt Lucy Breckinridge and Jim

  Mary James McCain Spence
r (“Mimi”)

  Eudora Welty and Elizabeth Spencer, Baton Rouge, 1985

  Elizabeth Spencer in Milan, 1949

  Alberto Moravia, Monte Sant’Angelo, 1953

  John Rusher, Rome, 1955

  James Luther Spencer

  Elizabeth Spencer and John Rusher at their wedding, September 29, 1956, in Porth, Cornwall

  PART ONE

  The

  Circled

  World

  1

  RIDING OUT

  THAT day they would have brought the horse up for me. Usually I did it myself, dragging out the gear from the barn, catching, bridling and hitching him, brushing him down, throwing on blanket and saddle, cinching girth. But today I had to get an early start before the sun got up too high, so Bill, our handyman, or Charles, my father’s foreman, would have caught my horse, Charlie, and brought him round all set to go.

  At age twelve, a slight little girl all but enveloped in overalls, a long-sleeved white shirt, and a big straw hat, I had thirteen miles to ride alone over country roads from home in Carrollton to my mother’s family plantation at Teoc.

  Once there, I was set to stay awhile.

  Taylor Browning, the mail carrier, would already have been given my small suitcase, with a dress or two inside, plus shorts, toothbrush, comb and brush, and Sunday shoes. The plantation store was right on his route, so he would leave them for me there.

  The horse and I set out for the long ride.

  When we were past the iron overhead bridge across Big Sand Creek, Carrollton dropped behind, and “north town,” near the railroad, was soon behind us too. Then there were only a few outlying country houses, and the gravel road twisted free and open ahead. The road-working machines would have been through so many times over the years to grade and lay gravel that the roadbed sometimes now might be seven or eight feet below the original surface. Vines and bushes hung over the banks. If a car or truck came past me, yellow dust roiled up in clouds.

  The sun was getting higher. It was four miles to the first turn, this one to the left at the crossroads. Taylor Browning came tearing by me in his Chevrolet, spewing dust. He hardly paused for the mailboxes he opened and stuffed, hurrying on, sorting mail with one hand on the seat beside him, driving with one eye on the road. We were always sure Mr. Browning would have a frightful collision, but he never did. He waved to me.

  The next few miles were the hardest. The road ran flat and even with the surface. By now the June sun was beating down in earnest. As far as I could see there was nothing but poor picked-over fields, and not much else. No houses at all, and not a sign of anybody. Nobody knew much about this stretch of road. There were pines along low distant hills. “If anybody stops you,” my instructions ran, “you say, ‘I’m Mr. Spencer’s daughter from Carrollton, and my uncle is Joe McCain.’ “ I don’t remember ever seeing anyone to say it to. There was what we called the halfway house, exactly halfway along the road to Teoc. It was an empty cabin, sitting lonely in a field, the sides grown up in trumpet vine.

  This stretch was the only part of the long road where I felt afraid. Suppose somebody did appear, suppose they did stop me and I said what I was told to say and they didn’t care? Didn’t care that I was Luther Spencer’s daughter and my uncle was Joe McCain? It seemed impossible, but was a chilling thought. Did it worry no one but me? Would they take my horse? I had a dollar and some change in my suitcase, but that wasn’t with me. What then?

  On to a right turn where a brown-painted house stood in a heavy surrounding hedge, and we were in safe territory, homes of people we all knew—the Longs, the Meeks, the Balls. A sound feeling. Finally we reached the long descent down the last hill before the Delta stretched out, glimmering green and distant in the morning sun.

  Teoc Creek was just ahead, where Charlie shied, balked, and worried his way over the iron bridge clanking from his hooves. The wooden floor had been patched so often it was layered in various-colored wood, and the brown creek showed through the cracks and holes from far below.

  We were almost to the store. There were willows near it. On either side of the road, young cotton plants, in long rows wobbly as a child’s line on a page, ran outward, broken by patches of new corn.

  My uncle might be there. If not, somebody I knew would see me go by. Sam Long, the storekeeper, old Dr. Maybry stopping in to play cards or have a Coke, or Miss Lucy Wollard Ball, driving in for the mail. Somebody would wave. The Negroes all knew me—“How you, Miss ‘Lizbet.” Inside, whether I saw it or not, somebody would be calling ahead, turning the crank on the dusty phone in that still morning hour, when most of the labor was out in the field, to say I had arrived.

  The horse made the last turn, toward the house a half mile away. Sweaty withers toiling faithfully on, he was glad to sniff the end, with barns ahead and well water.

  There was the oak grove that sheltered the house, and Uncle Joe on the front porch in shirtsleeves, foot on the railing. “Get on down, hitch him there. Hurry up, you limb of Satan. It’s close to dinnertime.” Later than I thought. Soon, from out in the back yard, the huge plantation bell would ring, calling the wage hands to come in from the fields, time to eat.

  Inside, I washed off in cool water. It had been a long ride.

  2

  THE TOWN

  THE town I rode out from, Carrollton, is one of the oldest North Mississippi towns, dating back to the early nineteenth century. Communities around it were also settled before the Choctaw removal and had Indian names; but Carrollton, like others throughout the country, took its name from Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration. In college days and later, when I traveled home by bus, my baggage was always being sent astray to Carrolltons in Georgia or Alabama or Missouri or Kentucky.

  This one is in the hills, but only a few miles from the Delta, that flat, rich farming area south of Memphis. It is situated pretty much straight down from Memphis, about a hundred miles, though before the new interstate the distance was longer, and a hundred miles north of Jackson, the state capital. In the ring of hills going east of the Delta, the old towns have similarities: fine old white-painted houses, generous yards of flowering shrubs and cedar-lined walks, a courthouse square with places of business—law offices, post office, bank, drugstore, grocery and hardware store.

  The land surrounding Carrollton, which you sweep through so rapidly now that the big highways have come to stay, used to be a difficult terrain of bluffs, bottomlands, and wayward little streams we called branches. You reached town by tunneling slowly on dusty gravel roads, worn down into deep roadbeds. The hills were seamed with eroded red gullies, but also rife with dogwood and redbud in the spring, and heavily wooded along the ridges with wonderful oaks, sycamores, and gum trees, hiding hollows where clear springs pulsed up over white sand.

  During my childhood in the twenties and thirties, getting in and out of Carrollton could be a problem. The stagecoach to Natchez was the last public transport to go right through, though later the Trailways bus would detour off the highway and stop on the courthouse square. Now that service too is gone.

  It is a spread-out town, sprawled over the contours of the hills; its unexpected geography knits itself together by adjacent back yards or narrow lanes, then strikes off, contrary fashion, in another way entirely. You can never see it all at once.

  3

  THE McCAINS

  WHEN I read that happy families are all alike, I get suspicious. Who could find even two to compare?

  But in my growing-up time, I thought of our two families, my mother’s (the McCains) and my father’s (the Spencers), as part of one, which was mine, and believed we were happy. I think that back then we mostly were.

  Parents, aunts, and uncles were young, cousins even younger, and the future lay all ahead, promising ease and gaiety, full of hope. Worries, financial and otherwise, seemed peripheral, the dark beyond the firelight easy to forget with so much liveliness dancing around in plain sight.

  The first thing I remember was learning to walk. I
think maybe it was the second time I learned, for I had been perilously ill and had to start over in many ways.

  I am sitting in a large leather suitcase, playing horse with the straps. My father helps me stand up. Then he reaches out his hands. “Walk to me,” he says and lets go. I teeter, almost fall, and then step forward, out of the suitcase onto the carpet. After two steps, I fall forward and am caught, but I have done it. Everyone claps.

  Another earliest memory is of sitting on the floor at my grandfather’s feet. He is napping in his chair and a fire is burning. It is afternoon. He wakes with a snort, which startles me. He says he was dreaming but does not say about what.

  My grandfather was the only grandparent living for me to know. John S. McCain. I called him Gan.

  He was a tall gentleman, white-haired, with a neatly trimmed white mustache and wide, honest eyes. He wore brushed dark suits both summer and winter. Suspenders. Bands on his sleeves above the elbow kept his cuffs in place. His starched collars were white as snow, his black bow tie set daily in place. His walking sticks were many, ranging through various woods all the way up to a gold-headed cane, which I, returning from a family funeral many years later, left forgotten in the overhead rack of an airplane. I could never recover it.

  To me Gan was that primal image of love which I wish everyone on earth could know. What better thing to wish? Food, clothing, and shelter? Even these basics, possessed without the regarding face of love, are only tokens of survival and do not ensure happiness at all.

  It is hard to imagine him except in the way I knew him, sitting in his usual armchair before the fire or in a front-porch rocker or a lawn chair beneath the trees, walking cane propped beside or laid across his knees, reading or conversing with whoever was near. Or walking, swinging the cane briskly before him.