July 6, 1825—William Clark Falkner, the original of one of the major characters in the fiction of great-grandson William Faulkner, was born in Tennessee. Whatever commotion he might have caused after emerging from the womb, it was nothing compared with the swashbuckling path he would forge in his violence-filled and –shortened life.
(Note: Though some scholars give 1826 as the year of birth, I’m following here the lead of Faulkner biographer Jay Parini, who assigns it to 1825.)
When Malcolm Cowley was editing The Portable Faulkner, the novelist helpfully created a genealogical and chronological chart to help keep his Yoknapatawpha County characters straight. At points, the chart becomes not merely helpful but remarkable (Faulkner revealed the fate of some characters—something he had not done in his teeming fiction in some cases), and not merely for critics but, in one instance, for biographers.
What Cowley really wanted was for Faulkner to reveal more details about himself—like what he did in World War I. Not biting (unlike Ernest Hemingway, who, as I indicated in a prior post, had exaggerated the circumstances surrounding his very real and credit-worthy war wound), Faulkner put him off by reciting the heroics of someone he regarded as considerably more fascinating: his great-grandfather, the man for whom he was named:
“He was prototype for John Sartoris: raised, organized, paid the expenses of and commanded the 2nd Mississippi Infantry, 1861-2, etc. Was a part of Stonewall Jackson’s left at 1st Manassas that afternoon; we have a citation in James Longstreet’s hand as his corps commander after 2nd Manassas. He built the first railroad in our county, wrote a few books, made grand-European tour of his time, died in a duel and the country raised a marble effigy which still stands in Tippah county.”
The image accompanying this post—from a statue of Col. Falkner (the Nobel laureate added the “u” years later)—comes nowhere near to matching the dark, burning eyes in the photo of the Faulkner family patriarch in Parini’s biography, One Matchless Time. That showed a man who let nothing stand in the way of an acquisitive streak more deathless than he was.
William Faulkner’s description to Cowley is correct, as far as it goes. But, probably because his ancestor’s life was too filled with incidents, he didn’t mention other items, which I first heard about in the late great Carl Hovde’s American Literature class at Columbia University (and which Parini elaborates on):
* At age 15, WC (or, as his descendants often referred to him, the “Old Colonel”) got into such a bad fight with his brother that he nearly killed him. With undoubted wisdom, he decided that a change of scenery, further south, might be appropriate.
* In his travels, WC came across an uncle in prison on a murder charge. Perhaps negatively inspired by his example (surely there were a lot of potential land-grabbers who got into fights in this region, all of whom woudl eventually require legal counsel), he became a lawyer, even though he had no formal education.
* At age 21, WC got into another set-to, this time over a woman. He lost three fingers for his pains, along with his position in a state volunteer regiment.
* Here’s the fight I heard about in college that made my eyes pop: At age 24, WC found himself going mano a mano with a fellow who was sure the young lawyer had opposed his entrance into the local Knights of Temperance. (Let me get this straight: fighting over the Knights of Temperance?) This fellow had an intemperate reaction to rejection, taking it so personally that he pulled out a pistol and shot at WC at point-blank range. As Professor Hovde explained it, guns in those days had this swell habit of not always going off, and WC was an immediate beneficiary of this failure of firepower. He decided to turn the tables on his attacker with a weapon incapable of misfiring: a knife that he plunged into the other party. Yes, there was some trouble, but the jury bought his story of self-defense.
* He fought in the Civil War, in the manner described above by his great-grandson—only a bit more was involved. He developed a reputation for putting men's lives at risk that was remarkable even for many commanders in that war. He was voted out of the regiment he had helped raise, though he retained his rank of colonel.
* He made so much money from developing a railroad, as well as other business ventures, that by 1879 he’d earned $50,000—a nifty bit of change in those days.
* The Old Colonel also cut what passed for a literary career, including an 1880 novel called The White Rose of Memphis.
* In 1889, after a lifetime of constant motion, all things came to an end for WC when a business partner mortally wounded him in a duel, thus ending a remarkable life all too symbolic of the Deep South’s Gothic violence. WC's son decided against pursuing the matter because the murderer had plenty of friends who could make trouble for the younger Falkner in the business world. In any case, his great-grandson would give him a different kind of immortality in his third novel, originally called Flags in the Dust, then cut by an editor and reshaped into Sartoris.
When Malcolm Cowley was editing The Portable Faulkner, the novelist helpfully created a genealogical and chronological chart to help keep his Yoknapatawpha County characters straight. At points, the chart becomes not merely helpful but remarkable (Faulkner revealed the fate of some characters—something he had not done in his teeming fiction in some cases), and not merely for critics but, in one instance, for biographers.
What Cowley really wanted was for Faulkner to reveal more details about himself—like what he did in World War I. Not biting (unlike Ernest Hemingway, who, as I indicated in a prior post, had exaggerated the circumstances surrounding his very real and credit-worthy war wound), Faulkner put him off by reciting the heroics of someone he regarded as considerably more fascinating: his great-grandfather, the man for whom he was named:
“He was prototype for John Sartoris: raised, organized, paid the expenses of and commanded the 2nd Mississippi Infantry, 1861-2, etc. Was a part of Stonewall Jackson’s left at 1st Manassas that afternoon; we have a citation in James Longstreet’s hand as his corps commander after 2nd Manassas. He built the first railroad in our county, wrote a few books, made grand-European tour of his time, died in a duel and the country raised a marble effigy which still stands in Tippah county.”
The image accompanying this post—from a statue of Col. Falkner (the Nobel laureate added the “u” years later)—comes nowhere near to matching the dark, burning eyes in the photo of the Faulkner family patriarch in Parini’s biography, One Matchless Time. That showed a man who let nothing stand in the way of an acquisitive streak more deathless than he was.
William Faulkner’s description to Cowley is correct, as far as it goes. But, probably because his ancestor’s life was too filled with incidents, he didn’t mention other items, which I first heard about in the late great Carl Hovde’s American Literature class at Columbia University (and which Parini elaborates on):
* At age 15, WC (or, as his descendants often referred to him, the “Old Colonel”) got into such a bad fight with his brother that he nearly killed him. With undoubted wisdom, he decided that a change of scenery, further south, might be appropriate.
* In his travels, WC came across an uncle in prison on a murder charge. Perhaps negatively inspired by his example (surely there were a lot of potential land-grabbers who got into fights in this region, all of whom woudl eventually require legal counsel), he became a lawyer, even though he had no formal education.
* At age 21, WC got into another set-to, this time over a woman. He lost three fingers for his pains, along with his position in a state volunteer regiment.
* Here’s the fight I heard about in college that made my eyes pop: At age 24, WC found himself going mano a mano with a fellow who was sure the young lawyer had opposed his entrance into the local Knights of Temperance. (Let me get this straight: fighting over the Knights of Temperance?) This fellow had an intemperate reaction to rejection, taking it so personally that he pulled out a pistol and shot at WC at point-blank range. As Professor Hovde explained it, guns in those days had this swell habit of not always going off, and WC was an immediate beneficiary of this failure of firepower. He decided to turn the tables on his attacker with a weapon incapable of misfiring: a knife that he plunged into the other party. Yes, there was some trouble, but the jury bought his story of self-defense.
* He fought in the Civil War, in the manner described above by his great-grandson—only a bit more was involved. He developed a reputation for putting men's lives at risk that was remarkable even for many commanders in that war. He was voted out of the regiment he had helped raise, though he retained his rank of colonel.
* He made so much money from developing a railroad, as well as other business ventures, that by 1879 he’d earned $50,000—a nifty bit of change in those days.
* The Old Colonel also cut what passed for a literary career, including an 1880 novel called The White Rose of Memphis.
* In 1889, after a lifetime of constant motion, all things came to an end for WC when a business partner mortally wounded him in a duel, thus ending a remarkable life all too symbolic of the Deep South’s Gothic violence. WC's son decided against pursuing the matter because the murderer had plenty of friends who could make trouble for the younger Falkner in the business world. In any case, his great-grandson would give him a different kind of immortality in his third novel, originally called Flags in the Dust, then cut by an editor and reshaped into Sartoris.
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