My Spooky Writing Space: A Twisted Tale

Louisa May Alcott

     As a young girl I was very impressed with Jo, the heroine of Little Women.  I was especially intrigued by the description of the garret where she wrote.  An avid reader of Louisa May Alcott since probably the fourth grade, I had taken to scribbling poems and stories, which culminated with my piece de resistance in the fifth grade.
     I’d written for a class assignment a twelve-page, slightly over-heated story about six brothers and sisters having to spend Christmas with an aunt and uncle recently arrived from Norway.  Bereft because their parents had to go to the Southwest for reasons of the father’s health, the children ended up with an experience to remember.  My great-grandparents had immigrated from Norway, so I plumbed the memories of various relatives for anecdotes and pertinent holiday details to make my story seem more real.  At my teacher’s request, I read the paper aloud to my classmates amid mixed feelings of embarrassment and pride.
      Afterward, I believed, like Jo, I should have my own quiet, private place to write all those stories that would no doubt soon be published.  So I looked above for a solution–not for divine guidance but to our own attic. This space was a dark and cavernous room, particularly dark where the ceiling burrowed under the eaves.  It was, however, spotlessly clean and had decided possibilities.  I imagined Jo’s own attic was much like ours.  After all, we had an old house, too, built before World War I.
     To reach the attic, one ascended via a treacherously narrow stairway.  In the mind of a ten-year-old girl, that dark passage held uncertain perils--a corner landing that was pitch black, steep stairs, and no rails.  I don’t know what I expected–a criminal lurking in the shadows ready to pounce; a mouse scuttling across my path, though no self-respecting rodent would put up with my mother’s unrelenting attentions;  more probably, a slip of the foot and a painful crash down the stair well.
      A long cord hung from the top of the room to the foot of the stairs and when pulled would turn on the faint light above.  Nine times out of ten, the last person to exit the area would pull too hard and the string would fly back and catch on the steps above.  So I would have to climb with blind eyes, feeling my way on the curving, narrow treads.  Once I arrived at the top, it was not much better, illumination coming from two low windows a great distance from one another and a fifteen watt bulb in the center of the room.
      Nonetheless, because of zealous devotion to my craft, I tried to conquer my fears, seeing a large trunk that would make a fine writing table.  I hauled it to one end of the room near a window within easy reach of a homemade bookcase.  A small stool with a wobbly leg completed my arrangements; the young writer was poised for fame.
     But in arranging my papers, I noticed the trunk had a bumpy top that wouldn’t do at all.  My mother helped me cut out a piece of cardboard for a smooth writing surface but the glow had started to fade.  My work table had become non-authentic.  Would Jo have had a cardboard cutout?  And then the stool, unfortunately, was not suitable for long periods of sitting; it cramped my legs and strained my back to hunch on it.  I found I had to stand up and stretch a lot, albeit carefully, for though I was only five feet, two inches, the ceiling at that point was five feet high.
      What bothered me the most and kept me from writing as prolifically as I had expected was the strange muffled sounds I heard from time to time downstairs.  Bangs and thuds, thin human cries, and the faint ringing of bells (telephone? front door?) all necessitated my running to the edge of the stairs and yelling,”What was that?” or “Did someone call me?”
    I started quite a number of pieces of writing, but it was hard going when my pencil seemed to need sharpening after only a few sentences.  Also, the attic was as quiet as a tomb, and I couldn’t concentrate for lack of the usual distractions.  In fact, time seemed frozen..  How strange to spend long hours toiling over my writing only to be told by my mother when I went downstairs for a drink of water that a mere ten minutes had elapsed since my last visit.
    My writing was dull, unsatisfying; even my memoirs were lacking.  For inspiration I tried to write something based on a title stolen from one of Jo’s early stories, “The Repentance of Lady Clinton,” but I couldn’t decide what she was repenting about and gave it up as a bad job.
    As the summer days grew hotter and hotter, I discovered I could not think or write in the inferno our attic had become.  I moved to the more comfortable dining room table with unspoken relief, my mother diplomatically not saying a word.  The attic room was abandoned forever to old clothes and furniture, never again to be a haunt of the Muse.

New Life for an Old Haunt of Jesse James: Edgefield

In the late 1970s a German friend and I were driving down the main street of Hendersonville, a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, when we saw a wrecking ball working on an early 1800s house called Darlington. My friend commented wryly, “That’s just like the Americans; they don’t let anything get old.” Jolted into a new awareness, I began to volunteer as a docent and eventually got appointed to the boards of two historic homes in our county, first of Rock Castle and later of Rose Mont. At some point, I was asked to write the text for a small pictorial booklet about a Nashville neighborhood called Edgefield that was being reclaimed from dissolution. What follows is an edited version from that booklet that describes the neighborhood, traces some of its history, and gives a sense of its present state. My researches into Edgefield gave me the idea for my Foxhill Series e-books that have a fictionalized Nashville historic area as a setting:  Flowers at Her Feet, Neighbors, and newly published Ever After.

Edgefield

 In the shadow of Nashville's skyscrapers looming beyond the Cumberland River lies a fifteen-square-block residential area with the intriguing name of Edgefield. This inner-city historical district began as a suburban home site for John Shelby in 1818, who over time built two imposing homes there, "Fatherland" and "Boscobel." Both have long since vanished, but something of the earliest history of Edgefield remains with streets bearing those names. During the nearly two centuries since its beginnings, the area was subdivided and prospered, was struck by tragedy and rebuilt, only to eventually fall into a decline it might never have recovered from. Then a community group promoted the inclusion of Edgefield in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, the first neighborhood so designated in Nashville. Since then, Historic Edgefield, Inc. has achieved a small miracle of matching the aesthetic values of historical integrity to contemporary housing needs along with community responsibility.

A visitor to the area might be struck by the varied appearance of the architecture that denotes its history. An expert eye could locate the sparely elegant homes of the early classical period; the eclectic Victorian styles, including Italianate, Gothic, Romanesque, Queen Anne, and Eastlake; the four-square and solid turn-of-the-century homes and public buildings; the Craftsman bungalow styles of the early 20th century; and in muted echoes of the earlier periods, brand-new cityhomes and townhouses. Yet architecture is only part of the story of Edgefield, for familiar names of past residents should find its way into a history of the area, especially the notorious "Mr. Howard, Grain Speculator," alias Jesse James, who for a time lived on Fatherland Street. (He and his wife, Zee, took up residence there in 1875 as a hideout until 1881 when the place got too hot for them, and they decamped back to Missouri. During those Nashville years, the Jameses lived on his ill gotten gains as he continued his nefarious activities in outlying areas.)

When John Shelby, in 1854, decided to turn his estate into housing tracts, Edgefield was ripe for growth, and influential citizens of Nashville scrambled to build in what was to become the most fashionable location around. In 1868 the community was incorporated as an independent municipality. Soon its burgeoning residential population demanded the construction of schools, churches, and commercial enterprises. Eventually seeing an urgent need for more public services to the little city, in 1880 Edgefield officially became part of Nashville.

The bell of St. Ann's Episcopal Church frantically tolling a warning knell, calamity struck Edgefield when the great fire of 1916 cut a swath through the area. The devastation was enormous, the fire leveling over six hundred homes and other structures. With so many of the older homes gone, the look of the neighborhood began to change as new post-World War I houses filled in some of the vacant lots. (A 1933 tornado as well as another devastating one in 1998 wreaked further havoc on structures and the landscape.) Until World War II, Edgefield continued as a viable community, but the years of the late 1940s and ‘50s saw movement away from the old neighborhood into new, distant suburbs. Traffic-laden roads and highways were by-passing the once proud area, turning it into a nearly forgotten way-station. Edgefield was not forgotten, however.

Today, the streets of Edgefield are quiet but wonderfully alive. Neighbors may be found greeting one another along the broad, brick sidewalks that invite a stroll. An Eastlake cottage may be getting its wood siding retouched in one of the vibrant, earthy hues authentic to that period. A Queen Anne two-story may be having its garden replanted. While Edgefield is no longer on the edge of the city, it appears now to be on the edge of an exciting future, delicately poised between the ideals of preservation and the drama of continued renewal.

AMERICAN GIRL Writer, Frances Fitzpatrick Wright, RIP

    We met when she was leading a study group on C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity at the church I then attended.  I was attracted to her wit and intelligence, her clarity of expression, and her kind face.  Forty years separated us; furthermore, I was a Midwesterner, she a Southerner, but in a mysterious, magical way, we knew almost immediately we were kindred spirits.  That study group was succeeded by others on the Christian apologist, of whom the widowed Mrs. Wright said half-jokingly that she was “in love with.”  Before long, I was invited to lunch, the first of many such occasions, at her 1790s farm house near Nashville, Tennessee.  It was in that more intimate setting where I learned about a life that had been both hard and rewarding, but always grounded in her faith.
    She had been orphaned young, along with an older brother and sister, her mother going first from TB, whom Mrs. Wright quoted as saying before she died, “though He slay me, yet I will trust Him,” which deeply impressed the young girl.  This death was followed soon after by her father succumbing to a painful kidney ailment.  At that time, she and her siblings were living on a farm outside of Gallatin owned by their paternal grandparents, the grandmother lovingly depicted in Mrs. Wright’s last novel, Bless Your Bones, Sammy.
    An excellent student with potential, Fanny Belle, as she was called, had few prospects without money or position or parents.  College was out of the question; then her elocution teacher brought her home to meet her forty-year-old brother and their mother.  The eighteen-year-old was impressed with the fine old house, the neat little farm, and the welcome given her by the family with an old and respected name.  In short order, a marriage was arranged, mainly for the convenient getaway of her unmarried sister-in-law, Mrs. Wright told me.  The union produced three children, but not much income.
     Ever resourceful, the young wife and mother began sending out stories to various sources, including American Girl Magazine.  She became one of its main contributors for over twenty-five years, getting more fan mail than any other author.  Readers loved her tales, particularly of the Old Sampey Place, her fictional farm.  She sold so many stories that she published a book of them, and then another, until she had to her credit thirteen novels besides biographies of Sam Houston and Andrew Jackson written for the younger set.
    As she recounted to me her difficult early years, she was never bitter, and when she spoke of the hardships and other problems during her marriage she never castigated her husband, whom she termed as “intelligent but unlucky.”  She employed ingenuity through the years to give her rooms a look of timeless good taste by finding bargains at auctions and painting her own designs throughout the house.  Finally, in her eighties, she sold the much reduced farm, retaining a life occupancy of the  guest house on the property.
    At the beginning of our relationship she was my mentor when I was pleased to sit at her feet.  Soon I found we could talk about any subject in near perfect accord.  As she grew older and less able to get out and around on her own, she came to depend on me for companionship or to take her shopping.  Each year until she became infirm I brought her to a Nashville grade school where she would discuss one of her books the children had been reading.  This was a treat, not just for the children to meet a real live author, but also for Mrs. Wright to feel the love and appreciation of those she’d wanted to please through her writing.
    Mrs. Wright had the writer’s ability to penetrate the character of those around her, but she was never cruel in her estimation.  She once said with blue eyes twinkling, “I love my friends, but I belong to a book club where nobody reads, and a garden club where nobody digs.”  This phrase I found so deliciously apt, I used it in my novel, Rosehall.  In fact, some of the characters and incidents of that novel, though not the plot, were suggested by Mrs. Wright’s memories.  Among the townsfolk, she was loved for herself as well as her remarkable achievements.  For me, she was an inspiration.  In fact, she was an enlightened Southern lady without prejudice or pretensions.
    And then as the years went by, that keen mind began to dim from a faulty memory until in her late nineties, living in a nursing home, she failed to recognize me.  My husband and I moved to Texas for the next five years, and it was during that time a friend called and told me Mrs. Wright had died at the age of 103.  I was sorry I couldn’t be there to attend the funeral, but I had my own requiem for her in my mind and heart, which I hold from time to time in honor of the loving friendship she bestowed on me.
  
  
   

From Norway to Vicksburg and the Long Road Home

    He was thirteen when he traveled with his family from Etne, Norway, to the verdant prairie land of central Iowa.  The year was 1855, and Severt Tesdel felt an immediate kinship with this seamless vista, so different from the picturesque hills where his father had scratched out a living.  That little farm remained as his sole knowledge of Norway, never even visiting Oslo, the capital.  The Iowa prairie must have seemed like the whole world with all its possibilities stretching out before him.  But soon after their arrival, his mother died, and the five children had to take on many responsibilities.  Severt helped work the land with his father, a task he welcomed.  Soon, though, he hired out as a farm hand to a neighbor. The family liked the intelligent, hardworking young man, who picked up their English handily, and they taught him to read and write in this new language.  Each Sunday, Severt traveled by horse to the Norwegian Lutheran church and afterward spent the day with his own family.  His devotion to the church became a lifelong practice.  Within five years, the boy had become a man with his own land, purchased with his earnings.
    Then war broke out; Severt heard the call to arms, and at the age of twenty, he joined the 23rd Iowa Volunteers, Company A.  He loved his new country and believed in the Union.  The danger was great, the odds of survival were poor, but it seemed the right thing to do.  And so his odyssey began in September, 1862.
    The company trekked to the Mississippi River, boarding a steamboat to St. Louis, where they spent some time carrying wounded soldiers taken off boats to hospitals.  Severt comments in a letter: “It was a gruesome sight to see those poor fellows.”  Their orders were to stay in the vicinity until the ten regiments there were joined by thirty or forty more, the troops massing for the eventual assault on certain Mississippi strongholds, including Vicksburg.  He describes several skirmishes around Camp Patterson during the winter months; it would be a slow and perilous march with the troops at last boarding another steamboat for New Madrid.
    All spring they marched and fought their way toward their target, Vicksburg. “I am still well,” Severt writes, “for which I thank God,” a prayer he expresses several times in his letters. Many around him, including all the Norwegians from his company, had taken ill, some dying.  On the way, they engaged the enemy in a hard fought battle, taking 5000 prisoners and escorting them to Memphis before returning to Mississippi.
    By now, it was early July, 1863, and the Battle of Vicksburg had begun.  Grant’s army had surrounded the city, bombed the redoubts with cannon, assisted by gunboats, and even charged forward with bayonets.  Now the plans, Severt writes, were to starve out the Rebels, “because it is almost impossible to conquer them in battle.”  The night of July 3, Severt was part of a tunneling group that was spotted by the enemy, who had themselves tunneled in the hope of blowing up the Union soldiers.  Their efforts to bomb them failed, and both tunnels were abandoned.  The next day, July 4, Vicksburg surrendered, with 27,000 being taken prisoner.
    Then for the next year or more, Severt writes of their movements along the Gulf coast, from Mobile to Matagorda Island in Texas, where they picked up a Norwegian prisoner, whose wife’s brother-in-law was a neighbor of Severt’s in Iowa.  “Brothers fighting brothers,” he laments.  Finally he was mustered out in September, 1865, after spending three full years fighting.  Of  the 58 men in A Company who had left together in 1862, only five returned.  For his war efforts, he got no medal, but instead won his citizenship, a prize infinitely more valuable to him.
    He resumed the life of a farmer, having sent his pay home regularly to his father with instructions to buy cattle and horses in preparation for his eventual return.  Ultimately, he acquired more land, amounting to 1000 acres, as well as a wife, the strong and handsome Ingaborg Lie.  They reared six children, including my grandmother, who found herself through her mother’s line to be the second cousin of Chief Justice Earl Warren, another Norwegian.  She herself married--who else--a Norwegian farmer, Cyrus Sydnes.
    Severt never forgot Norway, the land of his birth, treasuring his memories like a small jewel in an old fashioned setting, brought out occasionally to admire.  His new country, however, had captured his allegiance, and as a small businessman, he preferred the Republican Party.  In 1913, along with the other early emigrants still living, Severt was honored by the Governor as one of the Original Pioneers of Iowa.  He died in 1920, respected and successful.
    His story is not unique, not even out of the ordinary, but it should not be forgotten.  It is stories like Severt Tesdel’s that make up the fiber of our nation, so diverse, yet one.  Courage, devotion to family and God, resilience, and industriousness define his character.  I am proud to claim him as my great-grandfather.

Stephens College and a Returning Woman

     You know how something completely unexpected and unplanned can change your life to the good?  
     Well, I nearly botched one of those God-given opportunities at the outset.
     In the mid-'80s, I had just been hired as a writing aide at Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, Tennessee, with only an associates degree under my belt.  I knew that in order to get ahead in the academic arena, I'd need more education, but I was stumped as to any viable choices. There were no near-by colleges in those days offering night courses for part-time students.  Then, by chance, I ran across a newspaper article about a program called Stephens College Without Walls. 
    Intrigued, I called the contact person and found out that any "returning women," as they were designated, over the age of 23 with a high school diploma were eligible to enroll and work toward a bachelor's degree.  I particularly liked Stephens' motto:  "Women who are going places begin at Stephens College."  I signed up immediately.
     A few months later, I hopped a plane for Columbia, Missouri, to join fourteen other women of  different backgrounds and education.  We were to be closeted together where we would receive orientation to the college while attending a duo-discipline course--all within eight days. 
     It was an enlightening experience.
     After I returned home, I completed the course work begun at the college, and began work on Jacobean Shakespeare, and that's when near disaster overtook me.  My first assignment was The Taming of the Shrew.  I wrote my required essay, not availing myself of the suggested theses, but constructing one of my own choosing, which the instructions allowed.  Days later, I got the essay back in the mail without a grade, marked heavily with red ink, but with no constructive criticism.  The comments seemed trivial to my mind; nonetheless, I was told I needed to redo the essay "to improve it" and send it back for a grade.
     Well!  For two days I stewed over this, but I couldn't see that I'd goofed in any way, being very familiar with the essay form.  Finally, I called the professor.
     "Sir," I began respectfully, "you're asking me to improve my essay, but I can't.  I feel that I've supported my thesis and done the best job I could in writing this.  I'd have to write a completely different essay."
     "Jeanne, I'm sure you can do a better job.  I always have students re-do their first essays they turn in."
     "I'm afraid that's not going to happen with me," I said, hotly.  I had been frustrated; now I was angry.  "I said I'd done my best, and your criticisms didn't really make sense to me."
     "Jeanne, I'm your professor. You can't talk to me like that!"  He really did sound shocked, but I felt cornered and had no place to go other than defend my assertion.
     "I can and I did!"  With that, I slammed the receiver into the cradle of the phone (we had real phones then, not just electronic devices.)  He called me back immediately, but I had my son answer the phone and say I was not available.  What more was there to say?
     But this couldn't be the end of my dreams--surely.  So I called the English Chairwoman, whom I had earlier met.  I tried to remain calm as I explained my dilemma.  Her first words were, "He's a nice person, really."  Then she suggested I make a copy of the essay and send it to her.  She'd get with him and then back to me.
     I had little hope of this coming out right.  I'd defied and then challenged a professor, right out of the starting gate!  Yet the next evening I got a call from him telling me he would not require a re-do of my essay. 
      "Let's start over with the next assignment, Jeanne.  Shall we?"  He seemed more than accommodating. "I hadn't examined closely enough your originality.  I'm sure we can work together in the future."
     I did finish that course and then another one from him, doing well in both classes.  In fact, we became quite friendly.
     A year and a half later, at the Awards Ceremony prior to Commencement, it was that professor who handed me my prize, a book from the English Department who had selected me as "Outstanding English Student of the Year."  I mention this not to brag but to illustrate the importance of doing what we believe is right for us, whether it's jumping into a new venture or standing up for ourselves.
     The professor did say, upon our first face-to-face.  "You look different from what I had imagined."  I wondered if he'd had the face of a gargoyle in mind!
    Stephens College has discontinued this program, but for me, my experience remains one of the saving graces in my life, and I'm grateful for the opportunity given me.  I went on to graduate school and then to teach English at the college and become Director of the Writing Center, my own pet project, all because of College Without Walls.