While digging for some boring billing documents last weekend, I came across this 1988 letter to me from Dr. Carol Daeley. Dr. Daeley, a former Austin College Professor of English, mentioned a number of potential classes I might take that fall as a freshman. She also said that if I “have questions about anything before you hear from me again, please do not hesitate to get in touch.” I still have some questions, Carol. Am I too late?
Funny thing about the list of classes Carol mentioned. I DID take one of them: “Faulkner, Modernism, and Film” by Carol’s English Department colleague Dr. Jerry Lincecum. Sure, I was an AC International Studies / History guy and not an English fella. But the idea of taking a Faulkner class sounded appealing for an unconventional reason. As you can see on the address portion of the letter, Faulkner was a part of my youth. That’s the street where I lived.
Linda and Paul Parrish moved to 2604 Faulkner in College Station back in 1980. Dad was a professor of English at Texas A&M. Perhaps not surprisingly, every pet we acquired at Faulkner Dr. was named after a William Faulkner character. Yup, the pets of my youth were named Hightower, Dilsey, and our favorite…….Snopes. See the comments for a picture of me with Snopes back in the day. Perhaps the Faulkner pets I knew by name as a kid could be introduced to me through a college class recommended by Carol, I thought at the time.
William Faulkner was my kind of guy in college. Our social lives had similarities. While AC Greek organizations are local, their histories are not. My Rho Lambda Theta fraternity built its customs, traditions, handshake, and songs straight from William Faulkner’s SAE fraternity at the University of Mississippi. Also, Faulkner wasn’t an English guy either! In college, he often cut classes and received a grade of “D” in English. Dr. Paul Parrish knew from the early Snopes days that I was not headed for an academic career in English.
I may not be an AC English guy. But I am an AC History fella. And I am familiar with the history of the Faulkner family in Northern Mississippi. Faulkner was born, raised, and lived his life near the town of Holly Springs, MS. His best work took place in the fictitious Yoknapatawpha County, which closely resembled the real Marshall County of Holly Springs. The “Snopes Trilogy” follows the Snopes family as it arrives and navigates the “peculiar institutions” of Faulkner’s Northern Mississippi.
William Faulkner’s actual links to Holly Springs are as interesting as they are debated. In 2010, Emory English Professor Sally Wolff-King claimed that the Holly Springs “McCarroll House” (built in the 1840s and still standing) was the source for a climactic scene in “The Sound and the Fury” (featuring Dilsey, another Parrish pet); other academics disputed the assertion. The Holly Springs Train Depot (built in the 1850s and still standing) was converted into a restaurant and was often frequented by William Faulkner himself. Some Faulkner aficionados claim that scenes are inspired by the Depot’s restaurant; others aren’t so sure. One thing that is for sure: the name of the owner of the Holly Springs Depot restaurant is used in a Faulkner story.
The roots of William Faulkner’s family in Northern Mississippi stretch all the way back to pre-Civil War times. Faulkner was highly influenced by the stories told about his great-grandfather William Clark Falkner, who immigrated to the area in 1842. The great-grandfather was also a writer of poems, novels, and plays. Of his great-grandfather, the younger Faulkner reportedly said “I want to be a writer like my great-grandaddy.”
The Faulkner family was Presbyterian. Presbyterian Reverend Hightower, the name of another Parrish family pet, is a major character in Faulkner’s “Presbyterian” novel “Light in August.” William Faulkner himself did not claim a specific faith but was married in a Presbyterian church in Mississippi all the same. It’s likely that Faulkner’s great-grandfather William Clark Falkner had close ties to the 1840s Presbyterian community in Holly Springs, MS.
And there is a good deal of Presbyterian history in 1840s Holly Springs. The Chalmers Building (built in 1837 and still standing) was home in the 1840s to the “Chalmers Institute,” a Presbyterian prep school run by Reverends Samuel McKinney and Daniel Baker. These two Presbyterians Ministers were Holly Springs residents alongside (and possibly acquaintances of) great-grandfather William Clark Falkner for years, until a fateful letter arrived.
From “Austin College: A Sesquicentennial History,” by AC History Professor Dr. Light Cummins:
“A letter arrived in Holly Springs during June of 1848 that reawakened Daniel Baker’s interest in Texas. A distant relative wrote Baker to request that he visit again. The Republic had become a state and was experiencing remarkable growth. Baker considered the matter. He felt that ‘my preaching in Holly Springs was not doing much good, I became restless and unhappy, and wished another field, where I might be useful.’ [His friend’s] request seemed ‘very remarkable’ to Baker, ‘and after much reflection and prayer, I thought I must at least visit Texas once more.’ Accordingly, Reverend Baker resigned his pastorate at Holly Springs, left his family in residence there under the watchful eye of Samuel McKinney, and departed for Galveston. Upon arriving, he wrote his wife: ‘I do hope my Master has something important for me to do in Texas.’”
Something important did indeed await Baker. One year later, he founded Austin College. Baker’s Holly Springs friend Samuel McKinney arrived in Texas that same year to serve as the College’s first President. Samuel McKinney, like Dr. Daeley, was also an AC professor of English.
Dr. Daeley, I’ll work on my questions you graciously offered to answer in the letter. I assume it is not too late to ask them. The way I see it, a 35-year-old Carol Daeley letter from “the past is never dead; it’s not even past.”
And yes, I’m now in trouble with my wife Dianne for not finding the boring billing documents and instead writing a William Faulkner Roo Tale. Priorities hon, priorities.
