James Larkin Pearson : A Biography of North Carolina’s Longest Serving Poet Laureate 9781498505208, 9781498505192

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James Larkin Pearson

James Larkin Pearson A Biography of North Carolina’s LongestServing Poet Laureate Gregory S. Taylor

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2015 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Gregory S. James Larkin Pearson : a biography of North Carolina's longest-serving poet laureate / Gregory S. Taylor. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4985-0519-2 (cloth) -- ISBN 978-1-4985-0520-8 (electronic) 1. Pearson, James Larkin, 1879-1981 2. Poets, American--20th century--Biography. 3. Poets laureate-North Carolina--Biography. I. Title. PS3531.E24Z88 2015 811'.52--dc23 [B] 2015008687 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Images Acknowledgments Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

vii ix xi

The Mark “Over the Range” “C-o-r-a” The Fool-Killer: Part One: “A Paper of Comment” The Fool-Killer: Part Two: The Paper Evolves The Will to Get Well The Pleasure and the Pain “The Soul of Poetry” Poet Laureate Immortality, Poetry, and Politics My Fingers and My Toes

Bibliography Index About the Author

1 17 31 53 71 89 103 129 153 177 197 215 219 225

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Images

Fig. 2.1

James Larkin Pearson in his youth.

23

Fig. 3.1

Cora Wallace Pearson.

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Fig. 4.1

The Fool-Killer print shop in Boomer, North Carolina.

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Fig. 8.1

James Larkin Pearson in 1937.

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Fig. 8.2

James and Eleanor Pearson embark on their honeymoon in 1939.

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Fig. 9.1

James Larkin Pearson farming in 1941.

156

Fig. 9.2

James Larkin Pearson after his appointment as poet laureate.

168

James and Eleanor at the time of Pearson’s eightieth birthday.

170

Fig. 9.3 Fig. 10.1

James Larkin Pearson deep in thought in 1963. 180

Fig. 11.1

James Larkin Pearson at age ninety-two.

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Fig. 11.2

James Larkin Pearson and his daughter, Agnes, in 1973.

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Acknowledgments

I must begin by thanking Danny Moore and M. Christopher White from Chowan University for their great generosity in allowing me the sabbatical during which I researched and wrote this book. Without that time and their support this work would not exist, and I am deeply grateful for their continued assistance. David Ballew and Dean Lawson, who covered my classes and advisees and generally bore the brunt of the additional work brought about by my sabbatical absence, also deserve the highest praise. I cannot thank them enough for the willingness with which they took on extra tasks and allowed me the opportunity to complete this project. My many friends and colleagues in Murfreesboro, North Carolina, and at Chowan University also deserve a great deal of thanks for their kindness in listening to me talk about the project and for offering insight and support along the way. It is with great pleasure that I thank: Trey Gilliam, Matthew Fullerty, John Davis, Hugh Davis, J. Brabban, Ken Wolfskill, Corina Wack, Stephen Beatty, Bruce Moser, Bryan Herek, Amy Wethington, Keith Reich, Emily Isaacson, William Bradley, Cynthia Nicholson, John Dilustro, Laurie Brook, and Randy Roberts. The librarians at Chowan University have done wonderful work and have been of great help to my research over the last decade. They always amaze me by their ability and willingness to dig up and retrieve hard to find material. Their assistance, support, and good humor in fulfilling my many requests for research material greatly facilitated the successful completion of this work. It is with great thanks that I acknowledge my debt to Georgia Williams, Linda Hassell, Sarah Bonner, and Deborah Baugham. The librarians at Wilkes Community College provided me unfettered access to the James Larkin Pearson archives and went above and beyond the call of duty in assisting, supporting, encouraging, and enabling my research. My frequent visits and numerous requests always were met with a smile and more aid than any researcher ever could hope to receive. I thus offer Christy Earp, Misty Bass, Vickie Cothren, and Rebecca Kruger my heartfelt thanks and the highest of praise. I also must thank the staffs of the North Carolina Collection, the Southern Historical Collection, and the Davis Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their help during my many research trips. And finally, many thanks to my family for all of their support and good humor during the researching and writing of this project. ix

Introduction

Since its inception as a royal colony on March 24, 1663, North Carolina has seen its image ebb and flow. For much of its history, however, the ebb has predominated. Lacking major cities, ports, or economic development, and sandwiched between the more prosperous colonies of South Carolina and Virginia, colonial North Carolina was denigrated by its neighbors. Outsiders and visitors alike found the population irreligious and without leadership, described the land as poor, pronounced the climate “indolent,” and generally regarded the region as a “natural asylum for outcasts.” In 1711, for instance, Colonel John Barnwell visited from South Carolina and found drunken and violent politicians whom he described as “the most impertinent, imperious, cowardly Blockheads that ever God created.” Reverend George Whitefield traveled from England in 1739 and found the colony so corrupt that missionaries had lost their faith. Scot Janet Schaw, meanwhile, later described the land she visited as “dreary, savage, and desert,” while surveyor Hugh Friendly pronounced it “a poor . . . barren, gloomy country.” 1 The most famous assessment of colonial North Carolina undoubtedly came from Virginian William Byrd II. While surveying the border between Virginia and North Carolina in 1728, he had ample opportunity to witness colonial life and its inhabitants. What he found confirmed the findings of others: “Surely there is no other place in the World where the Inhabitants live with less Labour than in N. Carolina. It approaches nearer the Description of Lubberland than any other, by the great felicity of the Climate, the easiness of raising Provisions, and the Slothfulness of the People.” Byrd thus did more than condemn the colony; he also explained its failings. From his perspective, the very facts about which he and others complained created a setting in which North Carolinians need not work to survive. Without that need, there seemed no incentive to strive and the population simply wallowed in its mediocrity. Indeed, North Carolina was known as “the best poor man’s country in the colonies.” 2 Little changed with the Revolutionary War and the creation of the United States, as North Carolina continued to lag behind its neighbors. The only major difference was the moniker. With Lubberland becoming passé, the state’s critics appropriated a Washington Irving short story and dubbed North Carolina the “Rip Van Winkle of the South”—shiftless and lazy, bypassed by modernity, and uninterested in progress. xi

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That outside belief in North Carolina’s indolence further manifested itself during the Civil War. North Carolinians served bravely and in astonishing numbers during the conflict. Of the approximately 129,000 adult men in the state as of 1860, 125,000, or 97 percent, served in the Confederate military. Of those soldiers, 19,673 never returned, a number that gives North Carolina the distinction of sacrificing the largest number of men for the Confederate cause. Despite that service and sacrifice, North Carolina’s soldiers often were held in contempt by their commanders, many of whom came from Virginia and derided their charges as “Tar Heels.” The term emerged from the fact that for much of its early history North Carolina’s economic base was the manufacture of naval stores— most notably tar, turpentine, and pitch—the production of which left workers filthy. Virginia commanders thus regarded North Carolina soldiers as grubby, ill-disciplined, uneducated, and “little more than wild men who had wandered up to Virginia from the primeval forest.” 3 Hoping finally to disprove the lingering stereotypes their neighbors laid upon them, during the war the state’s soldiers adopted the Tar Heel appellation as a source of pride. In 1862, for instance, North Carolina soldiers taunted a Mississippi regiment that broke during the Battle of Fredericksburg by suggesting, “If yer hadder had some tar on yer own heels yestiddy, yer would er stuck to them thar works better, and we wouldn’t er had to put yer back thar.” Similar sentiment was expressed in July 1863 when an unnamed soldier wrote to the Raleigh Daily Progress to describe the Battle of Gettysburg and signed the letter “Tar Heel.” In March 1864, meanwhile, North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance adopted the term to praise the state’s soldiers who “always stick.” Ironically, legend has it that General Robert E. Lee of Virginia also helped turn this derogation into a positive when, after the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse in 1864, he said, “Thank God for the Tar Heel boys!” 4 After the war the term caught on and spread amongst the civilian population who saw it as embodying their spirit of stick-to-itiveness and their cultural sensibility of refusing to yield or surrender despite the odds. By 1926 the state’s flagship institution of higher learning, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, confirmed the broad diffusion of the term when it adopted Tar Heel as the moniker for its football team, and soon thereafter for all athletic programs. 5 No longer were North Carolinians uncultured backwoodsmen; of their own accord they proudly adopted what was once a negative stereotype, turned it on its head, and used it to demonstrate their grit and determination regardless of the circumstances. That sensibility continues to this day, as evidenced by the fact that North Carolina has overcome much of its past lethargy. The Tar Heel state ranks tenth in population and ninth in gross domestic product, it is the sixth most popular vacation destination, and in 2013 Forbes.com ranked it the fourth most business-friendly state in the nation. Home to

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America’s second largest banking center, the state also boasts the hightech Research Triangle Park, the Piedmont Triad Research Park, and the Gateway Research Park. Although some parts of the state have missed out on such economic achievement, every county, city, and small town has at least one story that demonstrates the Tar Heel spirit of overcoming adversity to achieve great success. 6 Wilkes County, North Carolina, located in the western reaches of the state, is no different. In fact, the very emergence of the county and its largest city North Wilkesboro bear out that spirit. Wilkes County “lies mainly between the highest ridges of the Blue Ridge on the northwest and those of the Brushy Mountains on the southeast.” The Yadkin River waters the resulting valley, and the surrounding floodplain offers some of the most fertile farmland in the state. Majestic, powerful, and productive, the region eventually engendered a contented population that referred to their homeland as “Happy Valley.” 7 Despite that gloriously vital image, for much of its history the county was rough and underdeveloped. Initially populated by the Cherokee, the first white settler in the region was Charles Gist, who arrived in 1750. The county itself was formed out of Surry County in 1777, and the first government was organized in 1778. Not until 1801 was the town of Wilkesboro laid out, and it was not incorporated until 1847. Historian J. Jay Anderson later described the region in the nineteenth century as “rural and somewhat out of the way,” lacking in good roads and industry, and “economically poor.” Most of the 10,746 residents as of the 1850 census were simple farmers who eked out a living on the poor mountain soil. A few wealthy farmers owned the valley lands and benefitted from the richer soil and the labor of the county’s 1,142 slaves. The socio-economic divide that plagued the antebellum South at large thus found its equivalent in Wilkes County. Indeed, while many residents supported secession and the Confederacy, most of the county’s poor farmers owned no slaves and had no desire to fight for the “peculiar institution.” As a result, Wilkes County “voted overwhelmingly against secession” and saw a sizeable number of residents either support or fight for the Union. 8 By the 1880s these divides and the wounds of the war largely had healed, but the economy remained stagnant and the county remained poor. It consisted of a few scattered villages with no real city of which to speak, and the 1880 census counted but 19,181 inhabitants, with more whiskey distillers (fourteen) than doctors (nine) and dentists (one) combined. 9 Travel outside the immediate neighborhood, let alone beyond the borders of the county or state, was rare, and industrial development was limited. Progress finally began in 1890 when the railroad arrived. With a depot in the newly incorporated town of North Wilkesboro, the railroad connected the county to the city of Winston, some fifty miles to the east. The

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arrival of the railroad also encouraged the Winston Land and Improvement Company to lay out streets and develop an infrastructure for North Wilkesboro. With rail access and the beginning of an urban center, industrial development finally began in 1891 with the formation of the North Wilkesboro Brick Company. Four years later, in 1895, the C.C. Smoot and Sons tannery arrived and employed 200 people. Other businesses soon followed, and by 1906 there were a dozen additional factories, several dozen stores, three hotels, two banks, and thriving lumber and agricultural export businesses. 10 Although farming remained the pre-eminent occupation and the driving economic force in the county, by the early twentieth century modernization and industrial development had finally arrived. In an effort to continue that economic expansion, in 1911 the North Wilkesboro Board of Trade published “That Busy Town,” in which it described the region as one of those favored spots which, it seems, got a little more than its share of the natural advantages in the general distribution of things at the time of creation. In the first place, it happened to be located where there is just enough change of seasons to have the spice of variety. The winters are not too cold, just enough for the freezing to pulverize the top soil and make it productive, and the summers are just hot enough to make big corn, big sweet red-meated melons, fine potatoes, big red apples, golden wheat, etc., with nights cool enough to make cover feel good.

The local paper The Wilkes Patriot did its part to foster growth when it lauded the population: “Our people are above average in intelligence, they are hospitable and generous; loath and unwilling to cause distress but eager and anxious to relieve it—frank to deal with, pleasant to live among, but dangerous to monkey with.” 11 Such advertisements worked, and as the twentieth century rolled on the population continued to expand and the economy continued to grow and diversify. The people of Wilkes County thus demonstrated their Tar Heel spirit by overcoming their early backwater standing to create a thriving economic center in western North Carolina. Their spirit manifested itself culturally as well. Despite limited access to larger cultural centers, the residents of Wilkes County produced their fair share of art. While music and folk art predominated, the two cultural realms in which the county truly excelled were journalism and poetry. The county’s first newspaper, The Wilkesboro Witness, appeared in 1876 and dozens of small papers soon followed. Moravian Falls was the epicenter of the newspaper craze, and despite having a population of fewer than 250 people, eighteen different papers called the village home in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ten were professional papers, in that they ran advertisements to make money, while the other

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eight were amateur papers that simply expressed the thoughts and ideas of the creators. Among those amateur publications was The Yellow Jacket, a paper produced by R. Don Laws which eventually numbered some 200,000 subscribers. Although The Yellow Jacket was the exception rather than the rule, the simple fact that so many papers appeared in the county demonstrates an impressive level of cultural productivity. 12 Journalist and critic H. L. Mencken undoubtedly would have taken issue with the idea that newspapers are cultural touchstones. Indeed, in his 1917 essay “Sahara of the Bozart” he offered a scathing and hyperbolic indictment of the lack of Southern culture when he asserted that “the South has . . . lost its old capacity for producing ideas” and has “taken on the worst intolerance of ignorance and stupidity.” He lamented that “all who dissent from its orthodox doctrines are scoundrels” and argued that “it is impossible for intelligence to flourish in such an atmosphere. Free inquiry is blocked by the idiotic certainties of ignorant men.” As such, he found that “down there a poet is now almost as rare as an oboe-player, a dry-etcher or a metaphysician. It is, indeed, amazing to contemplate so vast a vacuity.” Wilkes County, however, offered evidence that in terms of poetry, at least, Mencken was mistaken. R. Don Laws published a number of his own poems in The Yellow Jacket, while Thomas C. Land gained fame with his poem “Tom Dooley,” which described Tom Dula (Dooley) and his infamous 1866 murder of Laura Foster. 13 Even more notable a poet was James Larkin Pearson. He penned nearly 1,000 poems; self-published seven books of collected poetry; and served as North Carolina’s poet laureate from 1953 until his death in 1981. Pearson’s artistic milieu also included prose and journalism. He wrote and published dozens of short stories and created eight amateur newspapers, including The Fool-Killer which attracted nearly 40,000 subscribers. A deeper examination of Pearson’s life reveals that he did more than create great art and demonstrate the error of Mencken’s thinking. He was a prime example of the Tar Heel spirit. He was poorly educated; buried two younger brothers, a daughter, and two wives; endured near constant poverty in the hills of western Carolina; and saw his cultural output ignored by contemporaries. Such suffering often led him to despair for his future, to lament his lot in life, and to endure numerous and often serious crises of self-confidence. Like the Tar Heel soldiers of yore and his ancestors who helped build Wilkes County, however, he overcame those moments, stuck to it, and used the various tragedies and traumas as inspiration for ever greater artistic achievement. As a result, by the end of his life he was personally fulfilled, economically stable, professionally famous, and beloved by his community. He was the epitome of the Tar Heel ethos. Countless other North Carolinians, of course, have demonstrated their Tar Heel spirit by overcoming tragedy and hardship. What separates

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Pearson from such figures is that he fought his struggle and achieved his success virtually alone. From childhood Pearson followed his own path, developed his own very personal worldview, and refused to concede to public pressures or expectations. He was, for instance, deeply religious but rejected the organized church as being parochial, hypocritical, and led by incompetents. Instead, he embarked upon his own journey for personal salvation. Similarly, he expressed frustration with politicians who refused to break from party orthodoxy. Pearson thus developed his own unique political perspective and refused to be forced into a single political party. He also rebelled against the constraints of his community. As a writer and thinker in a neighborhood that often disdained education, Pearson nurtured his passion for learning and stood out from his neighbors as an autodidact and bibliophile who believed knowledge was the pathway to a happy and fulfilled life. The most notable aspect of his individualism, however, is found in his art. North Carolina scholar and critic Richard Walser once argued that “the poet frees himself of all except that which is truth to him. Even at those times when he cannot attain unrestricted truth, he is an intense center about which life revolves and which he records. Our best poets acquaint us with our keenest sensibilities.” Pearson the artist did just that. As a poet he provided his readers with insights on the truth of life in rural America. As a prose writer he described similar realities. As a journalist he went even deeper and sought to understand why those truths so often proved painful. Pearson had nothing but disdain for most modern artists whom he believed were lazy and refused to do the hard work of unearthing and expressing that painful truth. As a result, and despite being poet laureate for nearly three decades, Pearson often felt isolated from the larger artistic community. He refused to compromise his art regardless of that isolation, and he produced an impressive catalog that demonstrates his struggles and exemplifies his willingness and ability to overcome. 14 Sadly, few outside of Wilkes County, where he remains a folk hero, are aware of Pearson’s life and work. To the rest of the state, and certainly to the nation at large, he is virtually unknown. Pearson long lamented his relative lack of fame and sought to remedy that fact by writing his autobiography. An inveterate saver, he had mountains of material, from correspondence to his own musings, and by the 1960s he had organized enough to pen an extended series of articles for a local newspaper that addressed the key moments in his life. Determined to do more, he tried to expand the series into a formal work with the hope that it would prove entertaining and educational. Despite living another fifteen years after the newspaper series, he never completed the task. One reason for that failure was his love of genealogy and his determination to tell the story of his family from as far back as possible. Indeed, in the opening article of his newspaper autobiography he announced, “I

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am a direct descendant of two people who lived at least six thousand years ago. There is an old family tradition which says their names were Adam and Eve.” After skipping ahead a few generations, he offered a detailed description of his more immediate ancestors dating back to their arrival in America in the seventeenth century. Pearson himself did not appear until the ninth of the newspaper articles, and when the series concluded thirty weeks later he had reached but the age of twenty-one. Such attention to detail and context can be overwhelming, and may well have prevented him from completing his life story. 15 A second factor holding back the completion of Pearson’s autobiography was his lifelong struggle with self-doubt. Not only did he struggle with an intense insecurity from his earliest days, but he also was frequently sidelined from writing for months on end by debilitating fits of misery and self-loathing. Those fits often were the result of family tragedies, economic crises, or professional shortcomings, and combined with a growing infirmity as he aged, the psychological struggles undoubtedly slowed his productivity. A final explanation may come from the very essence of the project. While elucidating his goals for the never completed autobiography, which he dubbed “Poet’s Progress,” Pearson wrote, I should like this book to be a sort of extended essay touching in a general way upon all the things that have happened to me in the course of my eighty-odd years here in this curiously interesting old world. I shall not try to tell everything, because that would require the writing of several volumes. Indeed, many of the things that I could think of would not be worth telling. Also, I had considered leaving out many things that might be of interest, but perhaps too intimately personal to tell. Then I reconsidered and decided that these intimately personal matters might be the very heart of my story. If I am to give a true account of my life and the things I have tried to do, I must include the events and influences that have shaped my thinking and given direction to my most intimate personal feelings. That, after all, is the world in which I have lived, and anything less than the full story of my mental and spiritual reactions to life would be a false and misleading picture. It seems, therefore, that this work, by the time it gets finished, will be mostly a book of Confessions. Not fashioned after any famous “Confessions” of the past, but just cut out by a new pattern to fit my case. Poet’s Progress is not to be just a formal autobiography—just a mere recording of events. Rather it must be a faithful picturing of my own thoughts and feelings—the story of my mind, my hopes and fears and dreams. And running through it must be that undercurrent of wonder and mystery and fear. There must be a build-up necessary to maintain that feeling all through the book. A sort of folk mystery. 16

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Such insight and intimacy can be difficult to achieve, especially when it involves revisiting the most heartbreaking moments in one’s life, and that factor may yet again explain why he was unable to complete the task. Although Pearson failed to organize his autobiography, the real surprise may be that no one since has written his biography. Apart from a few scattered short works on his life and an incomplete collection of his unfinished autobiographical efforts, the academic record on Pearson is astonishingly blank. This study seeks to fill that void and to tell Pearson’s story with the sort of confessional thoroughness and personal insight he desired. As such, the work describes the many and varied obstacles he faced; examines his relationships with his parents, friends, wives, and daughter; investigates his thoughts on sex, religion, politics, journalism, and poetry; and studies his many artistic accomplishments. Pearson wrote extensively about all of these issues and maintained a lively and long-lasting correspondence with hundreds of individuals throughout his life. He saved much of that material, and as part of the effort to make this work as intimate and personal as possible I have quoted him extensively throughout. The result is a wide-ranging and detailed biographical account, much of it in the first person, describing Pearson’s thoughts, emotions, hopes, dreams, and fears. Although these accounts often address private and delicate subject matter, I have taken Pearson at his word and included them in an effort to provide the intimacy he sought for his autobiography. To provide further depth and context to the study, I have incorporated additional material, including return correspondence from those with whom he was close, assessments of his works and ideas from both contemporary and modern critics, and the scattered efforts of journalists, historians, and literary scholars who have been drawn to his life story. The result is an intimate biography of a man who lived a life that was both fascinating and instructive. James Larkin Pearson was a poet, an amateur journalist, an individualist, and a proud Tar Heel who overcame a lifetime of struggle, lived a life worth remembering, and produced art worth preserving. His was a truly human endeavor, and it is to that endeavor that we now turn. NOTES 1. Byrd, Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, 110; Masterson, “William Byrd in Lubberland,” 154, 155, 163, 166. 2. Byrd, Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, 92; Ready, The Tar Heel State, 54. The term “Lubberland” comes from an anonymous 1685 poem. 3. Ready, The Tar Heel State, 217; Taylor, Tar Heels: How North Carolina Got its Name, 3, 10. 4. Taylor, Tar Heels: How North Carolina Got its Name, 12, 15–16. 5. Ibid., 17. 6. www.forbes.com/places/nc. Accessed July 2, 2014.

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7. Crouch, Historical Sketches of Wilkes County, 2. 8. Anderson, Wilkes County Sketches: Wilkes County Bicentennial Edition, 7, 9, 111; Van Noppen and Van Noppen, Western North Carolina Since the Civil War; Hayes, The Land of Wilkes, 153. 9. United States Census, 1880. 10. Hayes, The Land of Wilkes, 185, 186–87. 11. Anderson, Wilkes County Sketches: Wilkes County Bicentennial Edition, 7–8; Hayes, The Land of Wilkes, 287–88. 12. Hayes, The Land of Wilkes, 272–85. 13. Mencken, “Sahara of the Bozart,” 157, 158. 14. Walser, Poets of North Carolina, ix. 15. Wilkes Record, July 14, 1964. 16. James Larkin Pearson Collection [hereafter JLP Collection], Cabinet 12, James Larkin Pearson, “Miscellaneous Remembrances.” The “famous ‘Confessions’” to which he refers are those of St. Augustine. “Poet’s Progress” was the planned name for his autobiography and is the name of a collection of autobiographical documents put together by the library staff at Wilkes Community College upon his death.

ONE The Mark

James Larkin Pearson was a child of the rural, mountain south. Born when the Civil War still was a recent memory and raised amidst the poverty and chaos of a region still rebuilding from the conflict, Pearson entered a world of limited horizons and narrow expectations. As a youngster he felt constrained by his surroundings and marked as an outsider. Indeed, he felt marked in any number of ways and found himself standing apart from his illiterate and uninspired neighbors. Unwilling to change just to fit in, Pearson followed his own path. While that path demonstrated an inherent independence and determination, it came at the price of youthful isolation and loneliness. Pearson’s story begins in Wilkes County on November 15, 1839, with the birth of his mother, Louise Pearson née McNeil. Her parents, Larkin McNeil and Nellie Ferguson McNeil, were poor farmers who owned no slaves, opposed secession, and sided with the Union during the Civil War. Their eldest child Frank, however, divided the family and joined the Confederate army. Despite breaking from the family tradition, the others were distraught when they learned that Frank had died in battle in Spotsylvania, Virginia. They consoled themselves the best they could and took comfort in the fact that two younger boys, John and Milton, survived the war. 1 Sadly, other tragedy plagued the family. When Louise was just fifteen her father Larkin fell ill with rheumatism. The disease quickly overwhelmed him; he became bedridden and soon proved unable to feed himself. For lack of a better solution, Louise became his caregiver and looked after him for the next twenty-two years. As a result, she received little education, and while she “could read tolerably well in print,” she never learned to write. Her duties also meant that she mixed little with other people her age. By the time Larkin died on October 6, 1877, Louise 1

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Chapter 1

was thirty-seven, stood five feet five inches tall, weighed about 150 pounds, and sported “blue eyes, light red hair and a complexion which was blond tending a little to the florid.” At the same time, she was “quiet, retiring and self-effacing” with “perhaps . . . an inferiority complex.” Despite her physical attributes, her isolation only continued upon her father’s death as she moved in with her brothers; she appeared headed for spinsterhood. 2 Louise’s future changed when she met William “Bill” Thomas Pearson. Born in Wilkes County on August 7, 1853, Bill’s childhood proved difficult. His father Bartlett opposed secession and the Civil War, but he was drafted into the Confederate army nonetheless. He served despite his reservations and fought at Gettysburg where he was captured and died in a prison camp. His death left ten-year-old Bill a Civil War orphan who fared no better when his mother Diana remarried. His stepfather paid him little attention, and he was left largely on his own. He received little education, “could read in a slow, hesitating way, often pronouncing a word wrong,” and wrote with a “slow, cramped and awkward” hand. Despite his lack of learning, Bill had “an ample amount of selfconfidence” and was neither “backward nor bashful.” A devout Baptist, he attended the Missionary Baptist Church, read the Bible although little else, and was firmly convinced that to doubt any of it was blasphemy. As an adult he stood five feet nine inches tall, was of a medium build, had black hair, and eyes that were “a kind of variegated brown.” 3 He worked as a farmhand and never had much money. Although Louise was fourteen years older than Bill, they became acquainted after Bill began to work on the McNeil family farm. As Pearson described their courtship years later, “They worked on and on, and as they worked they talked. They talked about many things—the war, the troubles, the living and the dead. And then they talked about themselves. Two lonely people who felt a strange hunger that they couldn’t put into words had found some sort of companionship. It didn’t take them long to decide that they might as well go on working together the rest of their lives. Maybe it was their only chance.” Despite the age difference and the fact that Bill had little hope for a profitable future, they got along well and decided to wed. In a simple ceremony they were married by a justice of the peace in 1878. 4 The new couple bought some land on Berry Mountain, near Moravian Falls, North Carolina, and set to work building a home. Together they cleared the land and laid out a small farm. Bill used timber from the heavily wooded mountain to construct a small, one-room log cabin. The interior of the household consisted of an old walnut bureau, two chairs, a small table, and four books: a Bible, a dictionary, a medical almanac, and “Songs of Power,” a Methodist hymnal found in the pocket of Louise’s brother Frank upon his death in Spotsylvania. Water for the home was drawn first from a spring down the mountain and later from a well dug

The Mark

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in the yard. An outhouse served the needs, and bathing was done in a small wash pan with the water warmed on the fire. The couple was not rich, but Pearson later asserted that “they were not Poor White Trash by a long shot.” 5 In 1879 their lives changed when Louise realized she was pregnant. She was forty and the pregnancy hit her hard. She remained housebound for the majority of the term and spent hours alone in the small cabin while Bill tended to the farm. To help pass the time, she read and re-read the Methodist hymnal: “Hour after hour she read it. Day after day she read it. The hymns were simple and easily understood. They also supplied some kind of spiritual need. There was a sweet, sad music in them. Louise never actually sang the hymns, but read them in a sort of singsong manner which was half akin to a tune.” After months of reciting the hymns and worrying about her first child, Louise finally gave birth on September 13, 1879. The couple named their son James Larkin Pearson, after his great uncle James McNeil and his grandfather Larkin McNeil. 6 Two more boys would follow. The first died at birth and never was named. In 1883 John Milton arrived to complete the family. John was a good looking but sickly child who had little interest in education but possessed a knack for mechanics. He was outgoing and personable from a young age, but also stubborn and hardheaded. James later described one incident as evidence: The kitchen floor was very old and worn, and at one time a plank near the door broke out. One day while the plank was out John crawled down into the hole and began to yell for Paw to come and lift him out. It happened that Uncle Tom Barlow, a neighbor, was there at the time, and being close to the baby he picked him out of the hole and set him on the floor. Instantly he wriggled away and crawled right back into the hole and began to call louder than ever for Paw. Uncle Tom, who was a sort of dry old fellow, looked puzzled and remarked: “I lifted the little rascal out of that hole one time and he crawled right back in.” “Yes,” said pa, lifting the little brat out and sitting him down in a chair “he’s the awfulest chil’ I ever seed—just to have what he wants or he wont have nothin’; that’s his way.” 7

James, meanwhile, developed a very different type of personality. That person was the result, in part, of the family’s frequent moves, the first of which occurred in 1881 when his father sold the homestead on Berry Mountain and rented a small farm in Boomer, North Carolina. They moved again two years later to a farm along the Yadkin River near the mouth of Beaver Creek. This home was a step up for the family as it belonged to Louise’s brother Milton McNeil, who had been elected sheriff and tax collector of Wilkesboro. He moved to town and allowed the Pearsons the use of his old home. This house was much larger than the previous two homes in which the family had lived; it was a two-story affair with a separate kitchen, windows, a rock chimney, a small apple

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orchard, and a lightning rod. Although the new setting was nice, the family still struggled along, with both parents working the fields and young James tagging along. The addition of John not long after the move exacerbated the family’s struggles, but they remained in the home and on the land for the next eight years. 8 During this period James and John explored their new surroundings, and being children without much oversight, they generally ran about the place. James was the more awkward of the two and constantly was falling and tripping, skinning knees, twisting ankles, and cutting fingers and toes. As a result of his constant state of injury, his parents took to calling him “Thane,” after Thane Laws, a neighbor who was “harmlessly crazy.” According to Pearson, “one of the crazy things she did was tie rags around several of her fingers, though they were perhaps not hurt or sore at all. You never saw Thane without at least half of her fingers being tied up in this way. So when anybody had a tied up finger or toe it got to be the fashion to call him ‘Thane.’” 9 For much of his childhood, Pearson was “Thane.” More important than such name calling or child’s play, however, was an event that took place not long after the family moved to the McNeil House. Pearson was four years old and joined his father and cousin Jane on an ox wagon trip one cold winter’s day. Several hours into the journey Bill began to worry about young James and asked if he was cold. According to Bill, James responded, My fingers and toes, My feet and my hands, Are jist as cold As you ever see’d a man’s.

Bill laughed and said to Jane, “That young’un does beat all, anyhow. Don’t matter nary grain what ye say to ‘im, he’s allers got somethin’ ready.” Although amused for the moment, his parents grew worried when they realized James’s continued penchant for speaking in “a rhymed and measured pattern.” Pearson later claimed, [they] tried to shame it out of me. Then they tried to beat it out of me. They tried every way they could think of to cure me of the unfortunate habit. But the disease was deep-seated and incurable. They never seemed to think of the alternative of giving me an education so that I might possibly turn my misfortune to good account. And even if they had thought about it they couldn’t have done it. We belonged to that class of “poor whites” who took it as a matter of course that their children were to grow up in ignorance.

Indeed, of the few criticisms Pearson ever made of his parents, this was one of them: “They had no intellectual outlook—no capacity for understanding what lay beyond their limited view.” 10

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Despite that lack of intellectual support, and his parents’ best efforts, Pearson continued to rhyme as a youngster. Years later he offered his own psychological explanation for how he developed the habit and why he could not be “cured.” Pearson claimed it was the consequence of his mother’s reading of the hymnal while she was pregnant: “Week after week the low rhythmic swing and the measured beat of the simple songpoems sank deeper and deeper into the soft yielding mind-stuff of her baby’s unborn brain.” The result was what he called his birthmark: “I was marked with the indelible swing and melody of old-time sacred poetry.” Not only was he marked, he later explained, “There would never be any chance for me to get free from that mark. All my life there would be songs and poems imprisoned inside me, calling out for deliverance.” Indeed, Pearson soon realized that he “seemed unconsciously to THINK in meter and rhyme.” 11 Throughout his life he always explained his poetic ability as a result of his mother’s reading of the hymnal and this prenatal influence; eventually it would give him his career and fame, but as a youngster it seemed to set him apart. While in the McNeil house, Pearson began to feel marked and separated in other ways as well. Theretofore he had grown up around other families who were as impoverished as was his. Being young and having nothing else with which to compare his life, he assumed everyone lived the way he did. Upon the move, however, he came into contact with children of a higher social standing. With the arrival of Christmas he began to see clearly the economic divisions of the world—divisions that would lead him to a lifetime of questioning the nation’s social, economic, and political order. Those divisions not only led him to question such worldly issues, but, for a child, the more important issue of Santa Claus: Christmas, in my childhood, was a very simple and humble affair. Brother John and I hung up our little home-knitted stockings on Christmas Eve knowing that Santa Claus would not bring us anything more than a few sticks of striped candy or maybe a ten cent box of Chinese firecrackers. We had heard some of the rich boys talk about all the fine presents that they expected Santa Claus to bring them, and it was pretty hard to understand why Santa Claus would be so partial to the rich. And there finally came to be a suspicion in our minds that there wasn’t any Santa Claus except Paw and Maw, and that would explain our not getting any fine and costly presents—because Paw and Maw were very poor and didn’t have any money. That was it. Suddenly we remembered hearing a disturbance at the chicken house a few nights before Christmas, and of course that was Paw catching on old rooster to take to the store to buy John and me some striped candy. 12

Santa Claus and the related socio-economic issues were not the only factors that challenged Pearson’s perception of the world and demonstrated to him his “mark”; so too did his foray into the world of education. Although Pearson claimed his parents had little interest in education,

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they taught him well even before he ventured off to school. As he remembered years later, “When I was around five years old I learned my ABC’s from the wallpaper on the cabin wall. Not regular wallpaper, but any old magazine or newspaper that they could paste up. . . . At one place on the north wall there was a section covered with circus posters—big red and blue letters and pictures of lions, tigers, and elephants.” Curious, the young Pearson asked about all he saw. His parents, especially his mother, explained the pictures, taught him his letters, and encouraged him to read. He picked up language quickly, as evidenced by his rhyming ability, and his parents eventually purchased Webster’s Blue Book Speller for the price of an “old hen” and encouraged him to educate himself further. 13 Unlike many of his neighbors, Pearson was thus well prepared by the time he formally enrolled in school at the age of seven. He might well have started earlier, but his parents held him out because the school was a mile away and he had no one with whom to make the trip; his parents refused to allow him to make it alone. Eventually a neighboring child also was ready to go to school, and the two boys set off together on their journey. The walk led the boys across Beaver Creek, which they forded on a “foot-log” that often proved dangerous to pass after heavy rains. They then traveled up and down several small hills, picked up other children along the way, and fought through what seemed like everpresent mud: “By the time I got to the schoolhouse my home-made brogan shoes were so heavy with mud that I could hardly lift my feet. I had to get a stick and scrape the worst of the mud off before I could go in. . . . When I went bare-footed the mud squeezed up between my toes and got all over my feet and my legs.” 14 Once Pearson had rid himself of the mud, he entered the schoolhouse and found a roughhewn log structure that was used by local Baptists as a church on Sundays. The building lacked a bell to call in the children, so the teacher resorted to pounding a stick on the side of the building, and the classroom was heated by a single stove which caused those who sat nearby to overheat while those in the far corner froze. The drinking water, meanwhile, was brought to the school in a tin bucket from a nearby spring, and all the students drank from a “rusty tin dipper.” Despite such a rustic setting, the students found it charming and took to calling the school the Whippoorwill Academy. 15 Although Pearson later admitted he had little aptitude for grammar, “had only a very moderate liking of history and geography, and couldn’t endure arithmetic at all,” he generally did well in school. Indeed, on the very first day his teacher asked if he knew his alphabet and how to read. He responded “yes” to both inquiries, and when called to the front of the classroom to demonstrate he surprised the teacher with his aptitude: “I started in at the head of the first chapter and read through to the bottom without a hitch of hesitation. The teacher stood there and looked

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amazed.” Pearson’s reading skills readily improved with his introduction to formal schooling, and he developed a lifelong love of books: “I became a hungry and unsatisfiable bookworm, a tireless reader of everything I could lay my hand on, especially poetry. . . . There was a strange urge within me which drew me toward books and literature and made me want to be a writer.” Similarly, he asserted, “the little schooling I got did ‘set me on fire’ for more education, more book learning. It gave me a glimpse of the magic world of beauty that lay far ahead in the realm of literature.” Pearson found such passion lacking in his fellow students, however, and that both unnerved and disappointed him: “I discovered that they were living entirely in the material world and that they had no dreams and visions that led them away into the uncharted realm of the mind.” He, by contrast, “had the feeling and the sense of a broadening horizon that would never let me rest until I had explored its utmost bounds.” 16 An intellectual amongst uncultured classmates, Pearson again was marked. Although distinguished by his love of learning and intellectual ability, Pearson ultimately enjoyed but little formal schooling. During the spring, summer, and autumn he worked on the family farm “from dawn till dusk six days in the week.” He only attended school in the winter, yet the weather often precluded attendance during those months. As a result, while he went to school for parts of seven or eight years, he later determined that he attended only a month to a month-and-a-half per year and stopped going to school altogether by the time he was sixteen. Later in life he was fond of telling people that he had only fifteen months of formal education. 17 Beyond reading, among the passions that even this limited amount of schooling stirred within him was the joy of printing. Pearson was fascinated by how the printed words in his school books got on the page, and during his second year in school, at the age of eight, he decided to print his name inside his textbook. As he explained years later, I got hold of a thick piece of sole-leather. I whittled the little blade of my pocket-knife to a sharp point and [into the] smooth side of leather I began to cut with my knife the letters of my name. I knew that the printing surface had to be left in relief and the other part cut away. I also knew that the letters had to be read wrong side upwards in reverse from the regular order of reading. Nobody taught me this. I just figured it out myself. . . . For ink, I used the bottle of regular writing ink which my father had bought me. . . . I smeared the ink over the face of the leather-printing block and printed my name several times on the fly leaves of my third reader.

He initially printed his name as “J. L. Pearson,” although in later years he printed “James Larkin Pearson.” He also improved upon the ink his father purchased and thickened it by mixing in juiced pokeberries. 18

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This fascination with printing was no passing fancy, and at the age of nine he saved thirty cents and purchased a small rubber printing packet which he used to print up some of his childhood rhymes. At the age of ten his passion for printing was furthered when he got the chance to visit the “big city” of Wilkesboro. It was October 1889, and his father was heading to town to purchase fertilizer. For the first time he invited young James to join him on the trip, a journey of some twelve miles, the longest he had ever taken. Thrilled with the opportunity, he boarded the wagon and dreamed of the city as “Jack” and “Buck,” the family’s two steers, slowly took him into previously unseen lands. Although somewhat embarrassed by his filthy work clothes, as compared to the nice attire the city dwellers seemed to be wearing, James was determined to see a real printing press and quickly forgot all about his appearance as the wagon neared the offices of the Wilkesboro Chronicle newspaper: “The first glimpse of the printing office . . . is as vivid today as if it had been only yesterday. . . . It was the most interesting thing I ever saw, and I knew right then that I was going to be a printer.” Enthused, he plunged blindly into the building and began asking anyone who would listen about all he saw. He was especially fascinated by a small printing press that was being used to print envelopes: “It had a handle that they pulled and that made a big flat thing come down and squeeze the words into the paper. It was the most amazing machine I ever saw.” He continued to wander through the building and eventually stumbled upon the office of Bob Deal, the editor. He introduced himself and the two chatted briefly. Sadly, the day came to an end all too soon, and James and his father slowly made their way the twelve miles back home. 19 Undoubtedly exhausted by the adventure, Pearson would have been unable to sleep that night had he known what else was in store. The following week, as usual, Pearson visited his Uncle Bert and borrowed his copy of the Wilkesboro Chronicle. Inside he read, “Mr. James Larkin Pearson of the Beaver Creek community was in town last week and gave this office a pleasant call.” Pearson was in raptures: “Oh! Oh! Shout it from the housetops. The most amazing and impossible thing had happened. Glory! My very own name had gotten printed in the newspaper. And I couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about it. There was my own name in print.” 20 Such delight over seeing his name in print further marked him out from other boys whose focus tended more towards outdoor activities. Pearson, however, had little interest in such endeavors and actually loathed the popular pursuit of hunting: sometime during my boyhood I owned two guns—not at the same time. The first one, I think, was a .22 rifle. The next one was a small single-barrel shotgun. But I probably never fired them a dozen times, and if I ever killed so much as a rabbit the memory of it is gone. As a

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matter of fact, I never had any taste for hunting and killing things. Of course I would kill a snake if I could—something that might harm me—but rabbits and birds were not going to harm me and I didn’t have any desire to kill them. As I grew older and thought about the whole matter with a more mature mind, I still couldn’t see any fun in useless killing.

In another setting he explained his attitude further: To me there was something repulsive in the thought of getting out with guns and a gang of dogs and chasing and killing the poor little helpless and harmless woods creatures—tearing them to pieces and seeing them bleed—just for the fun of it. Fun? It wasn’t any fun for me. When I saw a little frightened rabbit, out of breath and straining its heart out in a desperate race to escape the howling pack, and knowing that the chances are all against the rabbit, my sympathies were all with the rabbit and a bit with the dogs. To get fun or thrill out of the suffering of any of God’s creatures was a thing foreign to my nature. Maybe it was my love for nature things—my unwillingness to see them hurt or punished—that made me see in them the embodiment of beauty and poetry. Maybe that was why I began at a very early age to make verses about the farm animals and the wild creatures of the woods and fields. I regarded them as my own folks—my kindred—an essential part of my life. 21

Clearly here was a thoughtful and expressive young boy who stood out from his family, friends, and neighbors. Even as a child, however, Pearson discovered the one thing that attracted people to him regardless of those marks—his poetry. While attending the Whippoorwill Academy, an African American folk song called “Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned” became popular with the schoolboys. They sang it constantly, but eventually grew bored with the lyrics and began to compose verses of their own. Although Pearson was a bit younger than those who attempted such new lines, he soon proved more proficient and prolific than all the rest: “One day I let it be known that I could make verses too. . . . It was soon very evident that I could beat all the rest of them. They had to work hard at it—struggle and sweat blood to get the rhyme and measure. But it all came very easy for me. It wasn’t long after that till I was the official poet of the old Beaver Creek gang. I must have turned out fifty new verses that could be sung to the tune of ‘Pharaoh’s Army.’” Not only did this ability win him friends and admirers, he later asserted that it was his success that determined him once and for all to become a poet: “From the time when I composed the verses for ‘Pharaoh’s Army’ I got right down to the serious business of being a poet. From then on, all other interests were secondary.” 22 As a part of that serious business, Pearson began to read and study the great contemporary poets.

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The mid to late nineteenth century, when Pearson began his study, was a transitional period during which American poets consciously broke from the British model and developed a distinctly American voice. This break happened in two phases. The Fireside Poets (William Cullen Bryant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and James Russell Lowell) often used uniquely American legends and stories as the focus of their poems, and occasionally incorporated contemporary social or political issues into their work. More importantly for their impact on Pearson, they eschewed stylistic experimentation and instead focused on conventional forms with strict rhyme schemes and meter. The results included the famous poems “Snow-bound” by Whittier, “The Courtship of Miles Standish” and “The Song of Hiawatha” by Longfellow, and “Old Ironsides” by Holmes. 23 The Fireside Poets thus remained wedded to the European style but introduced American themes into the realm of poetry. The transformation continued with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Determined to take the form even further, these poets rejected the traditional form of the Fireside Poets and created their own unique rhyme schemes and meters. Emerson was especially important in pushing forward this stylistic revolution, but it was Whitman whose poems truly changed American poetry. He ignored the traditional rules of poetry and instead “use[d] a style entirely his own, freeing himself from all rules and forms, admitting any word, however colloquial, if only it stands for a thing, and employing only the free rhythms naturally expressive of emotion.” At the same time, he pushed the thematic envelope by focusing on the most common of events, characters, and beings. He was determined to find the glory and the power in the simplest of places, and thus celebrated “not great or notable, but simple democratic persons; these, like leaves of grass, are indeed common, numberless, and indistinguishable from each other, but to the eye of sympathy all wonderfully alive and beautiful.” 24 Pearson thus came of age as poetry was transitioning from the conventional nineteenth-century form of the Fireside Poets to the more modern and freer poetry that would dominate the twentieth century. He was little interested in the artistic deliberations or larger cultural struggles that underlay this transition, and simply appreciated the poems and the poets whose work suited his ear. From Whitman he developed a passion for the commonplace, and throughout his career his poems sought to recognize the glory in the ordinary. Stylistically, however, Pearson rejected Whitman and instead turned to Longfellow as his model. In fact, Pearson became so enamored of Longfellow that as a youth “he thought that Longfellow was the only poet on earth and that he held his position by right of law, just as the president does.” Regardless of the misunderstanding, he determined “to grow up and take Longfellow’s place.” Pearson read all Longfellow’s poems, falling in love especially with “A Psalm

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of Life” which became the first poem he learned by heart. Not only did he read and admire Longfellow’s poetry, he quite readily determined to adopt the great poet’s style as his own. Pearson therefore studied the “conventional style” of rhyme and meter and eventually he “learned to follow all the rules without even knowing the rules,” finding that “they came as easy as breathing.” Thanks to his childhood “birthmark,” he discovered from his earliest efforts that poetry came almost as by second nature and that “it was no trouble getting the correct rhyme and accent.” 25 Pearson’s study of poets soon expanded when he discovered John Greenleaf Whittier. A member of the Fireside Poets, his works employed traditional rhyme schemes and meter, and thus suited Pearson’s ear. It was more than Whittier’s style, however, that attracted Pearson. Whittier was born to a poor New England family and enjoyed but a limited formal education. Despite that, he developed a passion for reading and poetry at a young age and published more than twenty volumes of collected poems. Although his proletarian background initially led critics and the cultured elite to ignore his work, by the time of his death in 1892 he had become a respected and well-regarded poet. Such a biography appealed to Pearson, who saw many of his own childhood struggles mirrored in Whittier’s life, and he realized that if Whittier had overcome the obstacles to succeed, then he could too. 26 Enthused by his studies of the great American poets, and more convinced than ever of eventual success thanks to his discovery of Whittier, Pearson set to work on his craft: I would write two or three poems a week on my old school slate, and after showing them around to some of the schoolmates, I would rub them off without any thought of copying them on paper so I could keep them. I remember that some of the students didn’t believe I was actually composing the verses myself. They thought I was copying them from some real poet, but they were never able to name the poet I was copying from. Actually, I was not copying from anybody. All the poems I wrote came right out of my own mind.

Other poems he composed while working on the farm: “I always carried my notebook and pencil to the field with me, and as I trudged between the plow handles in the hot sunshine my mind was busy working out a poem. When I got to the end of the furrow I would stop and write down what I had composed.” Creating poetry in such a fashion gave him “time to smell the clean earth, time to listen to the birds, [and] time to soak in nature.” Not surprisingly, many of his early poems thus dealt with his immediate surroundings. Whatever their focus, later in life when reviewing the youthful writings that survived the slate or notebook Pearson wrote, “I was a perfectionist in the matter of rhyme and measure. Every line has its proper number of poetic feet and every accent is in the right

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place. From a purely mechanical standpoint no fault can be found with these verses, unless it may be said that their very perfection becomes monotonous and is therefore a fault.” 27 He would maintain that perfection throughout his long career. Despite his poetic prowess, as Pearson grew into a teenager he faced new marks that proved more difficult to overcome. Always shy, the teenaged Pearson grew ever more so when his interaction with friends and schoolmates began to include parties and dates: “Some other boy was ‘the life of the party’ but I was always a wallflower. I stood around on the outer edge of the crowd and gaped in amazement and admiration of those who could be leaders. I realized that they had something that I didn’t have. . . . I couldn’t fail to know that in some way I was not normal. And it was very evident that my abnormality was a disadvantage to me in associating with other people.” Pearson’s shyness subsequently worsened, and he later explained, “[I developed] an ‘inferiority complex’ which I have never been able to drive out. I grew up a very timid and awkward boy, never having much to say, taking but little interest in the motivation of other boys, always burdened with a feeling that I was ‘not wanted.’” That complex and the sense of being unwanted were exacerbated by an underlying fear that his very existence was a fluke: “If my grandfather had not been afflicted requiring the care of his daughter, Louise, she would in all probability have married earlier—and would have married some other man. Therefore, the son that she might have had would not have been me.” 28 Such concerns plagued him throughout his childhood and led him to wonder for what purpose God had allowed him life. To this timidity and uncertainty was added another mark—a belief that he was a “homely little fellow” who was “ugly and awkward and ungangly.” Doing some self-analysis at the time, Pearson determined why he was so ugly. First, he was born “with stopped up nostrils” which made it difficult for him to breathe through his nose. The resulting mouth breathing, he believed, gave him a rather unimpressive air. Second, he realized he spent a great deal of time in deep thought trying to organize his ideas. He much preferred to write out those thoughts and further organize them before he let anyone in on his beliefs. This unwillingness to express himself until his ideas were fully formed and clearly presented precluded much social or informal interaction, and explains part of his shyness. Additionally, Pearson realized that when deep in thought his face took on a distorted appearance: “Because of my serious mental preoccupation I was letting the corners of my mouth sag down, which caused an ugly wrinkle down from each side of my nose, giving my whole face the appearance of hopeless dejection and bad disposition.” Taken together, Pearson believed he had an “ugly down-at-the-heel countenance” which made him “the ugliest and least promising boy in the school,” “the ugliest mortal what ever lived,” and “as ugly as the law

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allows.” All of these factors caused a fourth problem: they made him even more sensitive and led him to believe he was the butt of jokes or had been included in a group activity “as a sort of bad second choice.” 29 Those fears, true or not, made him unhappy, which further separated him from his cohorts, made them less likely to want to include him, and made him less likely to want to participate. While Pearson had been able to hide many of his earlier marks, his shyness and sense of inferiority became manifest publically and proved much harder to overcome. Sadly, these new marks also became evident at home: I had a strange sense of being alone in a vast lonesome world. Physically I was not alone. Paw and Maw and John were there, and we, as a family, were as well adjusted to each other as any family has need to be. There was not much outward show of affection, but the real devotion to each other was all the more sincere. And yet I had that overwhelming sense of being alone. In the hidden depth of my being there was a secret door that nobody could enter. And behind that door lay all the golden dreams and all the gnawing hunger of life and love and wonder and long unutterable loneliness.

Pearson felt similarly alone in the larger world: As soon as I began to develop a sense of awareness, there was about the world and life and everything an unexplainable strangeness and mystery. I couldn’t find out if other children, or even grown people, felt as I did. Just to be living seemed such a strange thing, and I was not only awed by the experience of living, but half afraid of it. And I wondered sometimes if it was going to be more than I could stand. I had not at that time been influenced by any particular experiences that could have given such shape and direction to my thinking. Whatever it was, it must have been born with me. 30

He was thus adrift among his friends, his family, and the universe. As if this loneliness was not enough, Pearson was marked and isolated even further as a result of a religious dilemma that emerged in his early teenaged years. Pearson’s parents were good Baptists and took James and John with them to church every Sunday. From an early age, however, James expressed reservations about worship practices he witnessed and the theology he was taught. One of the preachers he remembered vividly was a local farmer who, although uneducated in the finer points of theology, felt himself called to preach and took over the pulpit of the small, backwoods church the family attended. Pearson complained that the preacher “had just enough education to stumble through a few verses of scripture in a slow, hesitating manner, pronouncing many words wrong, and punctuating each pause with a solemn and impressive ‘um-nah.’ . . . Nobody knew any better, and they all thought it was ‘worshipping God’ to come there and be miserable for two hours.” 31 Pearson, however, was unimpressed.

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Other preachers offended him more viscerally: The old-time orthodox country preachers that I heard in the little rural churches didn’t talk about anything much except the Judgment Day and hell-fire and eternal torment. That kind of preaching, dinned into my childish ears every Sunday, was not calculated to make me love that kind of God. And yet they told me that God loved me, and I couldn’t see any sense in such a conflicting report. If one part of the story was true the other couldn’t be. But the whole thing kept me in a state of nervous jitters for years. Finally I settled the matter for myself deciding that both God and Jesus were infinitely good and that the hell story was just something that men had cooked up to scare me with. 32

It was more than the presentation of the beliefs and the underlying agendas that offended young Pearson; he also grew to question the very essence of Baptist theology. Two key issues stood out and insulted his religious sensibilities. The first had to do with the aforementioned traditional Baptist “belief in a literal everlasting hell of fire and brimstone— endless torment for the wicked.” The second issue was the immortality of the soul. Specifically, he questioned the Baptist belief that upon death the souls of the wicked would not die, but rather would suffer forever in hell. To Pearson, this did not sound like something a loving God would do. He found more palatable, instead, the First Day Adventist belief that the “soul is not immortal, and that only those who accept Christ will ever get immortality. The wicked souls, being mortal, will die and be blotted out of existence.” Intrigued, Pearson attended a few Adventist Sunday School services and later admitted, “away down in my boyish subconscious, I had a sheepish sort of feeling that I was on the wrong side. I had to be loyal to the household, but I remember that I couldn’t do it with very much enthusiasm. Actually my heart was on the side of the Adventists. Their argument made better sense.” 33 Although Adventist theology made more sense, at the age of fifteen Pearson followed the family tradition and joined the Baptist Church. One reason for that decision was a proclamation by the Adventist Church in 1895 that the “end of time” was at hand. Pearson later remembered, I just sorter got sick that day and moped around. I really was not sick, but was just pretending, in order to hide my uneasiness about the “end of time.” If I had stopped to figure it out, that was the very wrong thing to do, because if the end of time is at hand I should have been honest that day of all days. But here I was pretending to be sick when I was only scared stiff by the predictions that somebody had made. . . . But six o’clock came, and no end of time yet. I was feeling much better. Seven. Eight. Still no end of time. Still no Gabriel’s trumpet in the skies. It looked like a false alarm. And was I glad? I might be a great sinner, and this seemed to prove it. But at least God was going to give me some more time to get it right. 34

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Although pleased that he had more time to get right with God, the failure, as well as some other minor theological quibbles, kept him from joining the Adventist Church. He remained a Baptist, if not fully supportive of the entirety of the faith, for three years. When he was eighteen, however, trouble arose when a new pastor took over the local church. Pearson found him “the dumbest sort of a jackleg” and complained, “He thought he knew everything. He could preach eternal hell-fire and brimstone till he made hell so hot that you could smell burning human flesh all over the hill.” When Pearson questioned why a loving God would punish his own creation, the pastor replied, “If you don’t believe every word just as I preach it you are going to hell sure.” Not only did the pastor threaten him with eternal damnation, but he also informed the other parishioners of Pearson’s heresy and convinced them to expel him from the congregation. Pearson later explained, “I couldn’t see that having my name on [the church rolls] was going to get me to heaven, or that having it scratched off would send me to hell. So I didn’t worry about it. And I made up my mind right then that if the churches expected to do my thinking for me they would have another guess coming. And I never joined another church.” 35 Beginning at eighteen, and continuing throughout the rest of his long life, Pearson remained confirmed in the glory of God but skeptical of any organized church. Despite being comfortable with this compromise, his position once again publically marked him as different and raised eyebrows throughout the community. Pearson survived the ostracism and his difficult childhood and came to appreciate the various marks that separated him from his family and the larger Wilkes County community. Indeed, those marks helped turn him into an individualist and instilled in him the fighting Tar Heel spirit that would mark his later life. His childhood also exposed him to the glories of poetry, the power of the press, and the foibles of humanity. The very essence of the man was thus born at a tender young age, and he was gathering together the tools needed to move beyond the narrow intellectual confines of his community. That is not to say his life was going to be easy or that his marks proved entirely positive. He struggled throughout with his sense of inferiority, but having confronted it in his childhood, and with the individualism, spirit, and the tools of the poet at his command, he fought for his beliefs and overcame his demons. Pearson may not have appreciated the important lessons he learned as a child, but his disposition soon would pay dividends. As he entered young adulthood, the road to success beckoned. NOTES 1. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Louise McNeil Pearson, Mother, “My Mother.”

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2. Wilkes Community College Oral History Collection, Various Recordings of Mr. Pearson, “Unveiling of the James Larkin Pearson Portrait,” April 12, 1970; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Leslie Campbell; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 35; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Louise McNeil Pearson, Mother, “My Mother.” 3. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Leslie Campbell; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 37; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, “WTP” William Thomas Pearson, Father. 4. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Louise McNeil Pearson, Mother, typed 3x5 card. 5. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 37, 39, 40; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Leslie Campbell; JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, undated, “Sketch of James Larkin Pearson” by Ed Foster. 6. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 40. 7. Ibid., 44, 45. 8. Ibid., 42–44. 9. Ibid., 46. 10. Ibid., 47–48; JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #1. 11. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 40, 47–48; JLP Collection, Cabinet 12, “The Hymn Book Takes Over”; JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #1. 12. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 63. 13. Ibid., 72; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Leslie Campbell. 14. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 77, 80. 15. Ibid. 16. Pearson, Castle Gates, 3–4; JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #1; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 76, 80, 83. 17. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 82. 18. Ibid., 73. 19. Ibid., 73–74. 20. Ibid., 133–34. 21. JLP Collection, Cabinet 12, Untitled; JLP Collection, Cabinet 12, Miscellaneous writings, in a small notebook, “Notes for ‘Reading’ Tuesday PM Jan. 23, ‘40 at Greensboro Women’s Club.” 22. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 86–87; JLP Collection, Cabinet 12, “Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned”; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch of James Larkin Pearson,” 1. 23. Newcomb, How did Poetry Survive?, 1–2, 9. 24. Prescott and Sanders, An Introduction to American Poetry, 552–53. 25. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 86–87; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch of James Larkin Pearson,” 1; JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, undated, “Sketch of James Larkin Pearson” by Ed Foster. 26. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 89; Prescott and Sanders, An Introduction to American Poetry, 356–57. 27. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Writings, “How I Started Writing Poetry”; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch of James Larkin Pearson,” 2–3; Timblin, “James Larkin Pearson: North Carolina’s Poet Laureate”; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 76. 28. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #2, handwritten 3x5 cards; JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #1; News and Observer, March 6, 1955, North Carolina Collection [hereafter NCC], Clippings Collection. 29. JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #1; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 102. 30. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #2, handwritten 3x5 cards; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1892–1898, Teenage years. 31. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 109. 32. JLP Collection, Jan Thomas, October 1, 1958. 33. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 111, 115. 34. Ibid., 118–19. 35. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Randolph Hull, July 19, 1974.

TWO “Over the Range”

Although Pearson struggled with personal marks throughout his youth, he began to thrive as a young adult. He accepted the marks for what they were and realized the benefits of being different. Equally important, he turned more seriously toward his love of printing and poetry and saw both avocations turn into real careers. As a new century dawned, Pearson’s horizons expanded and his self-confidence grew. In 1891 the family Pearson left the McNeil place and moved a mile down the Yadkin River where they rented a home from Harrison Brown. The family did not live in the main house, where some of the Brown family remained, but rather stayed in a small cottage on the outskirts of the property. One of the main reasons for the move was that the farmland was much nearer the homestead and was of much higher quality than the previous farms on which the family had worked. They hoped for some economic gains from the move, and Pearson, who was now well old enough to help on the farm, chipped in by feeding the hogs, gathering leaves for their beds, and working the plow. The move did little to raise the family above the level of subsistence, however, and while they had hogs and access to meat, their diet was rather Spartan with cornbread and milk serving as the traditional supper meal. According to Pearson, “Each member of the family had a bowl or a tin cup. Mine was a tin cup. So was John’s. Paw and Maw each had an earthen bowl. We had a tin spoon. Maw handed me a chunk of bread, and I crumbled it into my tin cup. Then I poured milk in on it till the cup was full. Then I went to work with my spoon. That was supper. Just as simple as that. If I was hungry and one cup full wasn’t enough, I got a second helping.” 1 About the only expenses the family engendered at the local store were for coffee, sugar, and tobacco. Pearson’s father, like many in the region of that era, chewed tobacco while out in the fields. About the time the fami17

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ly moved to the Brown place, however, Bill began to suffer from health issues. He had spells of nervous trembles and weakness that occasionally got so bad he had to leave the fields and lie down. Once or twice the symptoms were so severe he had to quit working for several days at a stretch to recover. Without consulting a doctor, and of his own volition, Bill determined it was the tobacco that was the cause of his ailment and quit cold turkey. His health quickly improved and he returned to the farm more vigorous and healthy than ever. Young James was impressed by his father’s fortitude and determined never to partake in the tobacco habit. He never did. Nor did Pearson ever drink alcohol. Both his parents abstained and Pearson not only learned from them to reject the bottle, but also became a lifelong advocate of prohibition and clean living. 2 The move to the Brown Place not only marked the beginning of Pearson’s support for temperance, but it also marked the beginning of his real development as a poet. Despite the mechanical perfection of his early efforts, Pearson later considered such work mere dabbling: “at the beginning of the Brown Place period I really took it up seriously. That was where my Muse began to blossom.” Indeed, by 1896 his poems, although still reliant on traditional rhyme schemes and conventional formatting, demonstrate a marked improvement, an increased complexity, and a wider sense of the world. Others sensed this growth as well, and that same year Pearson achieved his first literary success when The Blue Ridge Times of Parsonville, North Carolina, published one of his poems. Pearson later claimed to have forgotten which poem it was, but he never forgot the joy of seeing his work in print: “I was positively certain that nothing half so wonderful had ever happened before in the world.” Such joy continued as over the next several months the paper published several additional poems. 3 A year later, when he was eighteen, he further burnished his credentials when the New York Independent paid him eight dollars to publish his Christmas-themed poem “Song of the Star of Bethlehem”: I have come from out the silence of the days that are to be: I have brought a holy message, line of Adam, unto thee; I have stood upon the summit of the highest hills of grace, And have seen One great of power take the world in His embrace. From the awful deep of darkness that has held the heaving earth, I have seen her issue smiling, blooming in her second birth; Yea, the Lord hath had compassion on the stricken souls of men—

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He hath plan’d a great redemption whereby they may live again. I have seen the Lord Jehovah summon forth His angel band— Seen the angels stand in silence while He gave the great command; “Haste ye earthward, shining children, where a people groaning lies; Tell them that to-day in Judah shall a mighty Priest arise.” Then I heard the swoop of pinions and I saw the morning light Straight descend and rest upon them, and it followed them in flight; Then the eyes were opened and the hearts of men were glad When they saw the King of Glory in those tattered garments clad. Magi! O ye men familiar with the language of the stars, Who have won the courts of Wisdom past her mighty gates and bars, I have come to bear you witness of the things that are to be; If ye seek the great Redeemer of all peoples, follow Me.

Pearson composed this poem, as he did many others, while working on the family farm. As he remembered it years later, he had chopped down trees and was clearing new land for planting: as I worked away . . . my mind was busy working out a poem. From time to time I would stop and take out my notebook and pencil and write down what I had composed. The poem I was working on was a Christmas poem, and I was going to call it “The Song of the Star of Bethlehem.” By noon the poem was finished. While resting at noon hour I made a pen-and-ink copy of it, writing it as carefully as I could, and the next morning it went off in the mail. . . . It was the first time I had ever dared to send a poem to any of the big publishers. I don’t know what made me do it. Just a blind impulse, perhaps.

Although the New York Independent never again printed one of Pearson’s poems, the success inspired him and he continued to write and publish his work in local papers. 4 The literary success also led Pearson to address his marks and perceived physical limitations. Determined to overcome his shyness, inferiority complex, and ugliness, he set about with the same passion that drove him to write poems:

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Chapter 2 I began standing before the large mirror and studying myself carefully. I imagined myself meeting and talking with people, and watched all the expressions of my face as I talked. I studied my eyes and mouth, and noted the effect of different facial movements. Seeing that my face in its habitual repose [w]as very sad and solemn looking, I began to practice the art of smiling at myself in the glass. . . . “There it is!” I said to myself. “I must lift up my face.” . . . from that time on I began to have a private “face-lifting” every time I could think about it. 5

While the face-lifting exercises improved his appearance, he also worked to overcome the psychological issue of self-doubt. To do that, he made a list: I purchased a little note book at the ten cent store and began to write down the names of all the people I knew who seemed to be uglier than myself in face, form or manner. . . . I divided them into two groups and culled out all the sorry people and failures, and kept only those who were successful, happy, and highly respected. I carried that list with me at all times and watched for chances to meet and study those people. If they could face the world without apology, so could I.

What he found when he met those people was that they were, or at least appeared to be, totally unconcerned about their appearance. Instead, they were focused on the job at hand. More important, he discovered that in public those people were not treated any differently than “good looking” people and that their appearance was no hindrance to their success in life. 6 Although that realization initially made him happy, he then began to wonder about the ugly failures. What was the cause of their lack of success? Were they overcome by their own sense of ugliness and unwilling to go out in the world? Were they weak and unable to deal with perceived slights that might result from their appearance? Or were they shiftless individuals who would have failed regardless of appearance? Whatever the answer, Pearson decided he was not going to let his looks hold him back. While he frequently lamented his appearance and handicaps throughout his life, and occasionally used them to refuse speaking engagements or other public appearances, those refusals came mainly in old age or when other problems were weighing him down. During the prime of his life he overcame his maladies with the simple realization that “people had not been noticing my ugliness one tenth as much as I thought they had.” 7 Beyond those efforts toward self-improvement, one of the reasons Pearson was able to overcome his self-consciousness was that he eventually realized some of his “problems” were advantages: In my youth I knew nothing at all about psychology; but without knowing what it was I got hold of the thought of compensation. I realized in my dumb way that to counteract my physical shortcomings

“Over the Range”

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I needed some sort of a compensating or balancing work to bring my average up to normal. . . . It must have been this thought that led me to form the writing habit. If I had been a normal boy—if I had felt myself the equal in every way to my youthful associates—the chances are that I should have had no impulse to become a writer. But I did it to piece out those parts of my personality that were deficient. In other words, to “get even.”

Similarly, while he thought himself lacking and inferior, in some senses he realized he was more blessed than others: “there was, somewhere in the back of my mind a more-or-less conscious feeling that maybe I had something that they didn’t have. . . . I had my secret hopes and dreams about being a poet, and that, to me, was more important than being popular with the shallow minded crowd.” 8 Thus driven, and sensing that his marks provided him with something others did not possess, Pearson continued his intellectual development. When he was fifteen a small library opened up not far from home. It had one hundred or so bound volumes, and he delighted in reading Pilgrims Progress, Aesop’s Fables, and Robinson Crusoe. Always a lover of books, and with so many more now available, he suddenly had the inspiration to write one of his own. After searching his mind for a suitable topic, he ultimately determined to write his autobiography. The title page read: Early life of Jim Pearson a Comprehensive Account of the Boyhood, School-days, Early Life, Etc. of the Author By James Larkin Pearson A Boy’s History of Himself Written in the year 1894, at the age of 15.

In it he described all the events that seem major to a teenager, including the moves the family made, the sense of being poor, his excitement upon seeing mechanical farm implements, his time at school, and various amusements with his friends. 9 The work is what one would expect from a precocious if poorly educated teenager, and it did little to affect the course of his life. It does, however, demonstrate his devotion to the written word, his determination to overcome his complexes, and his desire to achieve. Two years later, at the age of seventeen, that resolve only increased when his neighbor John Z. Barlow gave him a copy of Over the Range to the Golden Gate by Stanley Wood. It described, with copious pictures and illustrations, the Rocky Mountains and West Coast. Pearson recalled, “I read slowly and absorbed everything, and today when I see any of these places mentioned in the daily papers or magazines, the thought flashes into my mind, ‘Why, I have been there!’ Of course I have not been there, but the memory of that book is so clear and vivid in my mind that I can actually see the places.” 10 Having traveled but once as far afield as Wil-

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kesboro, Pearson had little real awareness of the rest of the world. Wood’s book gave him that awareness and opened his mind to all sorts of possibilities. He began to realize those possibilities in 1897 when the family moved to Elkville, North Carolina, some ten miles southwest of Wilkesboro near the county line. There he was hired as assistant postmaster and for the first time had real experiences beyond his immediate home and farm. He enjoyed those experiences and sought more. He was therefore excited when, in 1899, Barlow hired him as a carpentry assistant. Barlow was building a house and barn, and he offered Pearson forty dollars for two months labor to help in the construction. The construction site was three miles away, so Pearson had to walk the distance each morning to work and then the distance again home each evening. Despite the long commute and hard labor, Pearson enjoyed the work and learned a great deal about carpentry and life. Barlow planned for the entire project to take two months, but three months later they only had the barn framed and roofed, and a portion of the house complete. Realizing the project was taking much longer than expected, the two men decided to forgo the long trips to and fro and remained on the site, camping out in the hayloft and eating their meals over a fire. Pearson used the long nights to compose additional poems, several of which would later make their way into his collected works. Despite such literary achievements, as well as learning a great deal about carpentry, after eight months on the job, and with the house still not complete, Pearson took his forty dollars, left Barlow to complete the project, and returned home with the knowledge that life, like construction, does not always go according to plan. 11 In 1900, at the age of twenty, Pearson’s horizons again expanded when he left the farm and took a job in a newspaper office. There he learned all the skills needed to write, print, and publish a newspaper. More notably: “the print shop turned out to be my college, my university.” The opportunity for such an education came about when his cousin Bob McNeill and several fellow Republicans determined to start a newspaper. They purchased a press and some type, and named their fledgling paper The Republican Patriot. The sponsors of the paper had McNeill write most of the editorials and run the day-to-day activities, but he was neither inclined nor interested in making the press his livelihood. He remembered hearing about Pearson’s predilection for writing and printing, and offered him a job. Thus a few months after the ill-fated carpentry effort Pearson moved to Jefferson, North Carolina, and became the editor of The Republican Patriot in return for a small salary as well as room and board. 12 The move to Jefferson took Pearson some thirty miles from home, much farther away than he had ever before traveled. It also moved him out of Wilkes County and into Ashe County for the first time, and gave him his first look at the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Over the Range”

Figure 2.1. James Larkin Pearson in his youth. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

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Such a big move did not come easily, but after discussions with his parents he accepted the job. He then gathered together three dollars and his finest Sunday clothes and prepared for the trip. Although he was excited about the opportunity, when the day to leave finally arrived the enormity of the move began to sink in. This was the first excursion in which he planned to be away from home for an extended period. Although he had lived away while working as a carpenter, he had not planned to be away so long and easily could walk the three miles back home. Now, however, he was moving far beyond the friendly confines of his youth with the full expectation of remaining away for some time. As a result, the day he left, March 14, 1900, remained etched in his mind: As I was getting ready to shoulder my valise and start I hardly knew how to say good-by to Paw and Maw and John. Doggone-it, there was a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes and I couldn’t get my words out. Finally I just sorter grunted “G’by” and turned away and started walking. I didn’t even look back to see what they were doing. It took all the courage I had to keep walking. . . . If I had looked back just once and seen how lonesome they looked standing there, I probably would have turned around and gone straight back and declared that I didn’t want to be an editor no how. 13

He did not turn around nor did he stop, and after a long journey he arrived in Jefferson at the home of his cousin Julia Smith. Julia’s house was where Bob McNeill boarded, and the extended family lived together under one roof. That evening Pearson caught up his cousins on the family news and then asked about the job. Specifically, he inquired if he, as editor, would be allowed to learn how to set type and print the paper, which, he informed his cousin, was his real fascination. McNeill assured Pearson that he could learn all he wanted about the press and the printing operation, but explained that his primary task was to edit the paper. 14 His first day on the job Pearson realized the paper was little more than a “campaign sheet” and that he had little understanding of, or interest in, Republican politics. Despite that, he threw himself into the job, edited the paper nicely, and learned the tricks and techniques of successful printing. Indeed, not only did he learn how to typeset, but he also fell in love with the entire process: My first day at an actual type case was like a new birth or freedom—a sudden release from the cramping confines of dumb and voiceless longing. Here were the tools for building my house of dreams, with all of its beauty and music and mystery. Several thousand little pieces of metal arranged in boxes, and they had in them the magic quality of being able to say all the words that I would ever know. I could pick them up and stand them in like soldiers and they would obey my orders and become words that I wanted to say.

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While never the fastest typesetter, he was accurate and loved the job. He also took the opportunity for a little self-promotion and frequently included one of his own poems in the paper. 15 Despite learning such lessons and growing into his job, Pearson and the fledgling press faced some difficulties. Jefferson did not have access to a rail line, so all the supplies had to be hauled across the mountains from the nearest train depot in North Wilkesboro. To save costs, the press usually asked someone from town who already was making the trip to the depot if they would add the supplies to their wagon. While this saved money, it meant they were reliant on other people’s schedules. The result was that their supplies frequently ran out, costing the paper an edition or two. Pearson later admitted that “the paper missed about as many weeks as it managed to come out,” and he even dubbed it a “try-weekly.” Thus made aware of the precarious position of the paper, he grew even more nervous when he learned that the politicians who had supported McNeill in its creation had little interest in financing the paper to the level necessary to make it successful. 16 There were other problems as well. Pearson was the editor and David Lee was the publisher. The investors were unhappy with Lee, who as a Democrat had little interest in spreading the Republican cause, and within a few days of taking the job Pearson wrote to his father, I am editor of The Republican Patriot, all right, and will probably be the publisher in the near future. The company seems to be dissatisfied with David Lee as publisher, and they speak of putting the whole “shootin match” into my hands, and then I will get all that the paper pays. As the agreement now stands the profits are to be divided equally between Lee and myself. I am satisfied that I can make two or three hundred dollars over my expenses the first year, and hope to make considerably more.

Within a month the future he alluded to came about, and by April 1900 he was editor and publisher of the paper. 17 Bad news soon followed good, however, as he came down with the measles in May. When he returned from his cure, he found the press broken. Worse, no one in town seemed able to fix it. Pearson thought he had solved the problem after he convinced the investors to spend seventy dollars to purchase a press that local printer R. Don Laws had up for sale. Just prior to completing the transaction, however, Laws reneged after his new press broke down. This left The Republican Patriot with no way to publish its work. Pearson eventually found a suitable replacement for the press, but he faced a new dilemma when the paper’s investors, unhappy with its expense, failed to pay him the seventy-five-dollar salary they owed him. In July, he demanded a partial payment of twenty dollars and threatened to stop working without the remuneration. When the investors continued to drag their feet, Pearson vented his frustrations to his

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brother: “They have not paid me enough even to buy me a new suit of clothes, and I do not propose to work for them any more for nothing.” Despite that, he realized his experiences were priceless and admitted, “But I reckon I have not lost anything. I have learned a good deal about the printing business, and that is worth the time I have spent here.” He also explained, “If it were not for the experience I am getting it would not half-way pay me to stay here. . . . If I don’t make anything I will not lose anything, and I will have learned a good deal about the printing business. I am doing better than the average printer’s apprentice.” Of course, money is important and he held firm to his demands. The investors eventually paid him a portion of his salary and he continued with the paper. 18 Pearson stayed on the job until August 1900 when the paper ultimately failed. Despite its collapse, he understood that the six months on the job had changed his life forever: “It did result in ‘getting printer’s ink on my fingers’ and the alluring smell went deep into my soul, never to be erased.” Indeed, Pearson took with him the print-shop type in lieu of his remaining salary. Type without a press is largely worthless, however, so when he returned to the family in Elkville he built a wooden printing press: “It had a moveable wooden bed on which the type form rested, and this was pulled back and forth under a wooden cylinder. The cylinder was covered with heavy cloth and operated by a hand crank. The ink was applied to the type with a hand roller and the paper was placed on a hinged thing made of cloth with a frame around it, and this was let down on the type and then passed under the wooden cylinder.” According to Pearson, “Believe it or not, the thing actually worked. It actually printed. Not very good print, but you could read it alright.” Although it was a bit slow, with hard work he could make nearly three hundred copies a day. He put the press in the bedroom which he and John shared, and dreamed of some day running his own printing company. 19 The opportunity to become a professional printer came sooner than Pearson could have dreamed, as in 1901 the family moved yet again, this time to a small neighborhood commonly known as Jerusalem, just outside Boomer, North Carolina. They purchased twenty-five acres of land—giving them a place of their own for the first time since James was two. Pearson employed his recently developed carpentry skills and helped build the home on the new plot. He also took the opportunity to construct a separate two-room building for his press. The twelve by twenty-four foot building housed his press and type, and became his second home. In fact, soon after construction Pearson decided to start a paper. The first task was to devise a title, and while looking through his type, he realized that the only font big enough for a title was a collection of broken thirty-six-point type. Although incomplete and broken, Pearson used it as an opportunity for some word play and set about rearranging the letters into words in the hopes of coming up with a suitable title for his gestating paper. He eventually came upon Plain Talk as the title,

“Over the Range”

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and he figured it suited him perfectly. He could spell the words from his broken type and, as a paper which he planned to write, print, and publish himself, it would give him the opportunity to present plainly his personal philosophy and to talk openly about his take on the world. Believing he “knew everything,” he “felt a profound pity for other[s] . . . who didn’t know as much,” and proposed to use the paper to benefit the world. 20 The cocky twenty-one-year-old put out the first edition of Plain Talk in April 1901. It consisted of twelve pages, cost ten cents for a yearlong subscription, and had high aspirations. Pearson explained to his readers, “Plain Talk will not be a local paper nor the pet of any political preference; it will circulate all over the United States, carrying with it such an avalanche of editorial thunder and lightning that the whole atmosphere of Newspaperdom will quake and tremble. It will give you more genuine home-made hot stuff to the square inch than any other paper this side of Habersham.” He went on to assert that the paper would “make itself useful in teaching people that the old way of doing things is not the only way; that the false ideas of the olden time cannot compare with the coolheaded deliberation of modern scientific thought.” In the first edition’s formal articles he attempted to live up to those grand assertions as he attacked “medicine quacks,” claimed that “the tendency of the world is upward,” mocked those who “bowed down” to fashion, and called on the government to do more to help the poor and oppressed. In later editions he continued in a similar vein and discussed everything from the current state of American literature to his opinions on philanthropy and religion. 21 Plain Talk quickly gained several hundred subscribers, and after the third edition Pearson had enough money to purchase a “real” printing press. With this new press, he expanded the size of the paper and spent nearly every waking hour writing, editing, typesetting, and printing: “I worked with it almost night and day. Paw and John had an awful time getting me out to do any work on the farm.” Although he eventually found time to help put in the 1902 crop, printing had become his obsession. He continued on with Plain Talk, eventually changed it from a monthly to a weekly paper, and then altered the name to The Patriot. 22 While the paper brought in some money, it also exposed Pearson to a much wider audience than he had ever before enjoyed. As a part of that, he learned about amateur journalism and the National Amateur Press Association. Formed in 1876 by a group of teenaged journalists in Philadelphia, by the time Pearson joined the Association was a national group of several hundred writers and printers who traded papers and shared ideas. Pearson participated eagerly, and from the papers he collected and the contacts he made he realized his work was better than any number of publications, although far inferior to many more. Inspired to improve his work, he learned from the better journalists and slowly improved the content, the layout, and the printing of his paper. Even more important

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was the fact that many of the papers included calls for work, and Pearson began to send the better ones his poems. The result was a growing collection of published poems that found a home in these small amateur papers. 23 As he would do for the rest of his life, Pearson combined his passions for poetry and printing, and by his early twenties seemed to be on the path to a promising career. Pearson’s young adulthood thus offered him many opportunities for personal development. He was a spirited young Tar Heel who worked hard to overcome his personal failings, willingly struck out on his own in search of adventure and fulfillment, and learned from all his experiences, good or bad. Through it all he remained committed to his poetry and his printing, and slowly learned and developed each skill. The next decade would offer Pearson even more experiences and life lessons as his career as a printer-poet progressed only fitfully and his personal life seemed cursed. The shy and awkward but clearly brilliant young Pearson was about to enter the larger adult world—one that included literary endeavors, trips beyond the borders of North Carolina, and the pangs, pains, and joy of love. The real world beckoned. NOTES 1. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 52–53, 57, 61. 2. Ibid., 66. 3. Ibid., 51, 96; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 3. See Early Harvest for a collection of his poems written from the ages of twelve to twenty-one. 4. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 177–78; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 3–4; Pearson, Castle Gates, 31–32. 5. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 105. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., 106. 8. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1892–1898, Teenage years; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #2, handwritten 3x5 cards. 9. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, Family Life of James Larkin Pearson, “The Turning Point”; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, Family Life of James Larkin Pearson, “Early life of Jim Pearson a Comprehensive Account of the Boyhood, School-days, Early Life, Etc. of the Author By James Larkin Pearson.” 10. JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson, 1892–1898, Teenage years, “Going West.” In his archival material, Pearson misremembers the author as Julia McNair Wright. 11. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 183–84. 12. Ibid., 186, 188. 13. Ibid., 189, 191. 14. Ibid., 191–93. 15. Alspaugh, “A Conversation with James Larkin Pearson”; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 193–94, 198. 16. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 198; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Cora Wallace Pearson. 17. JLP Collection, William Pearson, March 14, 1900, and April 22, 1900. 18. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, John Pearson, June 22, 1900, July 8, 1900, and July 18, 1900; JLP Collection, William Pearson, June 14, 1900.

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19. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 199–200; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1899–1909, Young Adulthood, typed note from 1900. 20. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 185, 200, 202. 21. Plain Talk Volume 1, Number 1; Volume 1, Number 2; Volume 1, Number 4; Volume 1, Number 6; and Volume 1, Number 8; all in James Larkin Pearson Vertical Files, “Plain Talk.” 22. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 202–3. 23. Ibid., 203.

THREE “C-o-r-a”

The dawning of a new century marked the beginning of a new era for Pearson. His career and his personal life took dramatic new turns as he became a professional journalist, moved briefly to Washington, DC, published his first collection of poems, and fell in love. It was the later development that marked the real departure; wedded bliss soon turned to heartache as Pearson and his new bride faced domestic squabbles, illness, and death. For all the joy and new experiences this period of life provided, the horrors he endured made the marks of the past seem irrelevant. As Pearson entered adulthood, ventured out on his own, and saw the larger world, he discovered life was not all beautiful poetry. Much of the course of Pearson’s early adult life was impacted by R. Don Laws. Born in 1869, Laws was educated by his father but enjoyed little formal schooling. Despite that, he demonstrated a penchant for the written word and a passion for printing. Like Pearson, he built his own printing press out of wood, carved several different fonts of letters with a knife, and made his own ink out of “the bark of white walnut roots.” The first thing he printed was a “spring poem” he wrote when he was fourteen. After marrying Dora Wallace in 1895, the couple settled in Moravian Falls, North Carolina, saved enough money to buy a press, put it up in the basement, and set out to print a new newspaper. In June 1895 The Yellow Jacket appeared. Pearson, who later wrote a history of the paper, described it thusly: “The Yellow Jacket was a little three column, four page affair, published monthly at ten cents a year. It appeared to have been born with a fully developed stinger, and it took especial pride in applying its ‘business end’ to anything that looked or acted like a Democrat.” Historian Glenda Gilmore later added to that description and declared it “a Republican paper filled with anti-Catholic diatribes, pro-Ku Klux Klan editorials, and sneers at ‘nigger equality.’” 1 31

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The paper quickly picked up a small following, yet Laws had to farm each day to pay the bills before spending the evening writing, setting type, or working the manual press. The hard work paid off and the paper soon brought in enough money for Laws to construct a water-powered press. The press was powered by a stream that lay a quarter of a mile away, and Laws constructed a lengthy rope and pulley system that covered the entire distance and converted the flow of the stream into mechanical power to run the press. Although the result was an imperfect engine that frequently broke down, Laws continued to put out a highquality paper and saw subscription rates rise. In 1899 the continued growth encouraged Laws to move the paper from a monthly to a weekly. This increased demand even more and enabled him to purchase a kerosene-powered engine. In 1900 the paper became biweekly in order to give Laws more time to attend to editorial demands and ensure its high quality, and by 1901 writing and printing had become his full-time job. Thereafter, he moved the press from his farm into the village of Moravian Falls, where he employed a small staff to help him write, edit, typeset, print, fold, and distribute the paper. At its peak the paper numbered some 200,000 subscribers who appreciated its wit, its politics, and its sensibility. 2 Pearson was among those intrigued by the paper and subscribed from early on. Moravian Falls was well within his immediate orbit, and he soon ventured out to meet Laws and witness the enterprise for himself. The two amateur journalists met on August 1, 1900, and developed a fast appreciation for each other. Pearson was impressed with Laws’s ingenuity, while Laws, who already was familiar with Pearson having read some of his previous work, saw in the young printer a version of himself. The affinity inspired Laws to offer Pearson a job on The Yellow Jacket staff. Pearson accepted and agreed to start just days later. 3 When Pearson arrived for his first day at the paper on August 6, 1900, work took a back seat to love when he espied Cora Wallace, Laws’s sister-in-law. Born to Silas and Mary Jane Wallace on January 7, 1884, in Moravian Falls, North Carolina, she had three sisters, three brothers, and a half-sister from her father’s previous marriage. Blond haired, blue eyed, quiet, friendly, and deeply religious, she was sixteen years old when Pearson saw her in The Yellow Jacket office. She was working there in an effort to fulfill her life’s dream of becoming a missionary, a dream made all the harder by her father’s issues with alcohol. Despite such family turmoil, from a young age she was moved by the plight of the Chinese poor, about whom she heard much in church and Sunday school. While the sermons often encouraged people to donate to the cause, Cora’s family was too poor to provide any money. She determined to serve the cause in another way, and set her mind to become a Christian missionary. Her purpose, therefore, was to earn enough money at The Yellow Jacket so she could attend college, earn a degree, become a missionary, and travel to

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China to help the poor. She was single-minded and focused on a calling much larger than her immediate circumstances. 4 While Pearson had big dreams of his own, everything else disappeared when he saw Cora. It was love at first sight, and Pearson was smitten: “I knew then in an instant that she had been mine from before the foundation of the world. . . . Something went through my heart like a sweetened arrow, and I knew that those two eyes were destined to be the light of my life henceforth, and that lovely face the center of my universe.” While he had been attracted to women before, he soon realized those cases were “false alarms.” This time, however, the alarm was real: As I sat at my desk or my type-case from day to day, Cora Wallace was at another desk or type-case nearby. And if you have never been a young man madly in love perhaps you would not understand the mixed and confused emotions that were so hard for me to control. While I was putting into type the political editorial for The Yellow Jacket I was always getting hold of the letters that spelled C-o-r-a. And if I was addressing wrappers to send papers . . . I had to watch myself like a hawk to keep from addressing at least half of them to “Cora.”

To his diary he further confided that he was “going through the agonies of a man desperately in love” and “couldn’t think of anything else but Cora.” Like many who are smitten, he also built every encounter with her into a magical moment: “I stood in the door beside Cora tonight and gazed upon a beautiful scene. It was a sea of flocked and hazy clouds lingering upon the yellow crest of the moon. It was a scene for poets to praise and for artists to imitate. But as I looked at the poet—the artist— the angel at my side, I thought that she was more beautiful than the mingled glory of all the gilded clouds in ten thousand heavens.” 5 Pearson was not very good at hiding his feelings, and as he noted years later, “there was no way that I could keep it a secret. Every word I said and every move I made shouted it like a megaphone. Cora knew it and everybody else in the place knew it.” Cora showed not the slightest interest, however, and made it clear that her plans included no room for affairs of the heart. She was gentle with her refusal, but all that did was make Pearson love her even more: “Cora was just as kind about it as was possible under the circumstances, and that made me love her more than ever. I saw that she was a kind-hearted girl and that she would not willingly make anyone suffer.” 6 Ravaged by unrequited love, Pearson was despondent. On October 21, 1900, after two-and-a-half months of working at The Yellow Jacket and pining away after the disinterested Cora, Pearson abruptly quit his job. Laws was surprised and disappointed to lose such a good employee, but he may well have understood the cause of the departure. Pearson, meanwhile, returned to the family farm and set out to bury his sorrows in his poetry and through hard work in the fields.

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Figure 3.1. Cora Wallace Pearson. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

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Not long after his return, the November 1900 issue of Charity and Children magazine arrived. Inside were four of Pearson’s poems as well as an editorial noting, “We are delighted to publish four verses from the pen of Mr. James Larkin Pearson which he kindly wrote for this issue that are very full of melody. Mr. Pearson is quite young but his poems have been accepted by the New York Independent and he has been highly complimented by men of letters. We cannot write a line of poetry, but we think we know the genuine when we see it. Mr. Pearson will do.” Pearson was thrilled by the “fame” that came with the publication, and that thrill led him back to Cora. He began to imagine that once he was a famous poet he would be able to win her over as he had been unable to do as a poor country printer. Out of that desperate hope, he sent Cora a letter informing her of his good fortune. When she replied to his letter he wrote in his diary, “I got an answer. I had not expected it so soon, if at all. But the letter was very short and formal and didn’t give me any comfort.” In his mind, anyway, he was not yet famous enough for her. He was pleased, however, that she signed the letter “Your friend, Cora Wallace.” Pearson was ecstatic by the upgrade to “friend” and continued to correspond with her and record his feelings about her in his diary. Indeed, when Laws gave him a picture of Cora in December 1900 he was enraptured, carried it with him everywhere, and dreamed the most beautiful dreams of her: “I dreamed that I was in a house and Cora Wallace, more beautiful than ever she seemed, came in and spoke lovingly to me. I do not remember what she said, but she made me happy—such happiness as I had not known for many days.” Pearson did more than simply dream about Cora; he prayed for her love and took every letter she sent as a sign from God that his efforts were blessed. 7 By August 1901, convinced that his determination and faith had won her over, he finally proclaimed his love to her. On August 27, 1901, he duly informed his diary, “[I] laid my heart open before her, told her my great love for her and asked if I might come and see her. . . . I had never told a girl before that I loved her. But I do love Cora, and I thought she might like me—maybe love me—if she knew my great passion for her.” He was crushed when Cora responded to his proclamation of love by refusing to be his “darling,” although she expressed a continued declaration of friendship. Despite that, like any good young lover, Pearson found a ray of hope buried deep within her response and told his diary, “It is good to have her friendly with me, but oh, it is so bad not to have her love. Yet something tells me there is hope. She says she thought once that she loved me. . . . She virtually admits that she would love me if she could.” Six weeks later his hope bloomed further, and he informed his diary that she admitted there was something special in their relationship: “Oh, how delightful! The prize which I have sought so long is again in sight. I will now try to be sensible and keep her whose love means everything to me. I will write her a good sensible letter soon and try to show

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myself worthy of her, although I never can be really worthy of so sweet an angel as my Cora.” 8 As Pearson rode the roller coaster of love, the family made yet another move that played right into his hands. On November 23, 1901, they left Elkville and moved to Mount Carmel, North Carolina, not far from Moravian Falls and Cora. They had been planning the move for some time and had cleared the land and constructed a three-bedroom home into which they comfortably settled. Pearson had constructed an additional building for his press, which he then set up and continued to publish Plain Talk/ The Patriot. He also published the work of “non-printer amateur journalists,” helped on the family farm, and began writing editorials from home for The Yellow Jacket. 9 It was the later endeavor which proved key. Laws’s paper continued to grow, and he credited Pearson’s writing for some of that success. In November 1903 he re-hired Pearson, this time as a journalist, and sent him off to Washington, DC, as a correspondent. Pearson initially refused the assignment. He had never been out of the state or to a city the size of the nation’s capital, and he worried about his ability to survive the urban jungle. He also feared the move would undermine his continued pursuit of Cora. Laws persisted, and, despite his fears, Pearson eventually accepted the job. He arrived on December 1, 1903, and spent the ensuing six months covering politics, the theater, and the arts for The Yellow Jacket. Despite his initial trepidation, Pearson quickly grew accustomed to the city and enjoyed the many and varied opportunities it offered. Years later he remembered his time there as a “kick,” and explained, “Washington was not a big city, not an awful big city, like it is today. There were as many horse-drawn vehicles as there were automobiles, maybe more. And there were lots of bicycles. I remember renting a bicycle and riding all over Washington for an hour. The town was not too crowded and it wasn’t dangerous at all. I went anywhere I pleased and I was not afraid of anything.” He also spent a great deal of time at the Capitol covering Congress, and came to meet and know many of the nation’s political leaders. He even visited the White House and shook hands with Theodore Roosevelt: “I hadn’t been to the Executive Mansion before and didn’t see the President until I was almost on him; everything happened so fast I didn’t get a good look. So I went out the South door and came back in the North. I’m just a gonna go through the line again, I said. That’s what I did—shook his hand twice—and he didn’t know the difference.” 10 Cora spent some time in Washington, DC, as well. She left The Yellow Jacket to further her education, and after graduating from Peele’s Business School in June 1903, she took work as a stenographer and proofreader for Edwards & Broughton, Printers and Publishers of Raleigh. She worked there for ten months before taking a job with the B. F. Johnson Publishing Company in the nation’s capital, where she remained until September

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1905. In each instance, Cora remained determined to earn enough money to attend school and become a missionary. As a result, while the two Carolina natives continued to correspond, they had little contact even while living in the same city. Although Pearson’s personal life remained stagnant, his time in Washington pushed him ahead as a writer and a thinker: “It gave me a chance to look at life from an entirely new angle. . . . I was where I could see and learn the ways of the world.” Specifically, the twenty-four-yearold began to appreciate how government worked, learned about the politicians who ran the country, and developed a greater appreciation for the theater, the arts, and culture in general. He thus refined and developed many of the tastes that would have had little fodder in the hills of western Carolina. 11 In June 1904, however, his sojourn in the capital ended when Laws recalled him to North Carolina. Back home, Pearson continued to write for The Yellow Jacket and publish the works of other writers on his press in Mount Carmel. He also briefly produced The Southern Literary Banner, a sixteen-page monthly that focused on Southern literature. Although he brought out only five issues, his determination to write and produce his own paper remained, even as he continued to work for others. The most important facet of his return to North Carolina, however, was his continued pursuit of Cora, who in September 1905 left Washington, DC, and enrolled in the Baptist University for Women in Raleigh. The two corresponded regularly and in a friendly manner, although he remained the more passionate of the two. One issue that caused Cora to hesitate was that Pearson had long since broken with the organized Baptist Church over theological issues, while she was deeply devoted to her faith. Pearson understood this and often wondered if he should “let God have her.” Having wooed her so long, however, he could not give her up to anyone, even God. It was thus with a mix of emotions that he read the letters she wrote while attending the Baptist State Convention in 1906. She raved about the stories Christian missionaries told to the gathered crowds, and she made it clear that the missionary urge in her was growing. God, however, had different plans. 12 Cora always had been a healthy young woman, but during her time in Washington, DC, she developed a bad cough and asthma. Her return to North Carolina and the rigors of college life did little to ease her ailments, and they continued to worsen. Indeed, not long after the Baptist Convention of 1906 she became so ill she had to drop out of school and return home for convalescence. Pearson attended to her as often as he could, and that willingness gained great favor. More important, however, was Cora’s realization that her ailments most likely precluded her from ever fulfilling her dream of becoming a missionary. If college life in Raleigh proved too taxing, then life as a missionary in China certainly would prove too great a task. Determined not to give up, she made plans to

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travel to Florida for the winter in the hope that warmer climes would prove more availing to her clogged lungs. 13 As she prepared to travel to Florida, their relationship deepened. Pearson visited often and after one get together she complemented him on his good looks: “I forgot to tell you Sunday how nice you looked in your new hat, etc. the best I have ever seen you. Don’t mind telling you so, for I believe in ‘flinging bouquets’ at folks while they are living, don’t you?” Such compliments must have been music to the ears of a man who was desperately in love and for years had considered himself ugly. At the same time, however, Cora seemed little interested in the poems he gave her. While she thanked him for them, she offered no praise and failed to “fling bouquets” in that direction. 14 Despite her lack of interest in his poetry, his visits and ministrations finally won her over. On October 7, 1906, on his final visit before she left for Florida, they took a walk during which they spoke more frankly than ever before. She said to him, “Dear boy, I am sick. I have been cold and unresponsive to you. I gave you no encouragement when I knew you loved me and wanted me. And it would be doing you a sorry turn now if I came and offered myself to you when I am sick. I may be an invalid for life.” “That will make no difference, darling,” I said, “except to make me love you more and more. You will need me.” The tears came into her beautiful eyes as she said, “Do you mean that? Will you still love me now that I am sick?” “Forever and ever, darling,” I said, “I will love you forever and forever.” And there under the calm beauty of the October skies, we mutually pledged our eternal love.

Pearson was elated and described their conversation as “more like a dream than reality.” It was real, however, and after her convalescence in Florida they wed in Charlotte, North Carolina, on May 1, 1907. Of the nuptials he wrote, “Even after it had already happened I just couldn’t believe it. It was too wonderful to be true. I kept wondering when I would wake up out of my trance and find it wasn’t so. After nearly seven years of vain and hopeless love, which kept itself alive by sheer desperation, my hungry heart was so schooled in failure that it couldn’t grasp the reality of victory.” 15 Ecstatic with his marriage, Pearson foresaw a glorious future. Determined to enjoy that future as quickly as possible, the newlyweds eschewed a honeymoon and instead moved to Charlotte where Pearson took a job with The Evening Chronicle edition of The Charlotte Observer. He set type, did odd jobs around the paper, befriended Asa Harris, the editor of the Chronicle, and eventually convinced him to publish a weekly poem in the Sunday edition. Cora was not so fortunate, and she longed for something to fill the void that emerged when she gave up her hope of becoming a missionary. Pearson encouraged her to write poetry and

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prose, but such activity was not as fulfilling for her as it was for her husband. More problematic than her lack of purpose was her continued suffering with bronchial asthma, which worsened during their time in Charlotte. As Pearson recalled years later, “I knew I was marrying a sick girl; but with the high hopes of young love, I believed I could help Cora get well. But instead of getting better, the trouble was getting worse. The smothering attacks were more frequent and more severe and the distressing cough was a continual agony. There was no use denying it—my printer-girl wife was becoming a semi-invalid.” The fear the illness and the attacks caused Pearson was deep seated, and he worried from day to day that he was about to become a widower: “The smothering attacks became more adverse and more frequent, and they finally got so bad that it looked like she could not live another day. On one occasion she struggled for 36 hours, almost black in the face and gasping as if each breath would be the last. I had no thought of seeing her alive for another hour.” Visits to doctors in Charlotte did little, and the medicine they prescribed seemed to make things even worse: “We began to notice that her stomach was being ruined. She could no longer eat as before. Everything she ate filled her with gas and aggravated the suffering. She began to lose flesh and went down rapidly from 150 pounds to 90 pounds. She was just skin and bones and was still suffering the agony of death all the time.” 16 Their married life, which had begun with such devotion and love, soon turned into one of sorrow and agony. As they struggled in Charlotte, R. Don Laws contacted Pearson about returning to The Yellow Jacket. Although intrigued, Pearson rejected the offer after Laws acknowledged that business was a little slow and admitted he could not promise full-time work. In late 1907, however, Laws offered a full-time job with good pay. Hoping that a return to her homeland might help Cora, and with the offer of a higher salary than The Chronicle was willing to provide, they returned in November 1907 to Wilkes County and settled on land James and his brother John had purchased in 1906. Pearson returned to The Yellow Jacket and wrote editorials, set the type, and generally oversaw the mechanical side of the press. 17 Although Cora remained ill, good news seemed imminent when she learned she was pregnant. With a good job, a return to their homeland, and a child on the way, Pearson’s future looked bright. Sadly, when daughter Blanche Rose arrived on January 22, 1908, she was premature and stillborn. Devastated by the loss, they buried her the next day in the Moravian Falls cemetery. Cora, who had continued dabbling in poetry and prose, responded by writing a poem entitled “Our Little White Rose”: Never can I, love, forget that morning just one week ago When the tears of sad bereavement down my cheeks did gently flow, For a casket small was setting near, in which, so still and cold,

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Chapter 3 Lay our first-born baby, Blanche Rose—dead when but a moment old. All by chance they left us for a moment with our dead, And you laid the tiny darling close up to my aching head; When I felt the thrill of rapture of that first fond mother’s kiss Breaking seemed my heart with sorrow, e’en though filled with such sweet bliss. For I know that ere the sunset from our darling we must part, And not even would be left us the cold clay against my heart; But that scene will e’re go with me through the changing future years, Giving strength and inspiration, both in sunshine and in tears. Darling White Rose, yours and mine, love, (for such name the child was given) On the earth the flower was budded but ‘tis blooming now in heaven, And our hearts cry out in longing for our treasure pure and white, Yet we know ‘tis ours forever, e’en though taken from our sight. And that God who was its Giver knew ‘twould bloom in richer grace If transplanted in His gardens where no sin could e’er deface; When we go to be with Jesus, love, our dear White Rose we’ll see, And we’ll share with him its fragrance—to His name glory be. 18

Pearson, although a poet, handled the loss differently and pondered the spiritual implications of the tragedy. In three different musings he asked God what became of his stillborn child, and indeed of all such unfortunates. In a handwritten essay he asked, What will become of my daughter, Blanche Rose Pearson, in some future Resurrection time? Will she come to life and grow up and be a full grown angel like her mother? Or is she just the unsubstantial fancy of a passing moment? What will become of all the potential human babies that start out to be people but get cut off before they get finished? They have a sort of half-existence that will never come to full fruitage. Will God take account of these half-lives in his numbering of the saints?

In a separate handwritten query he asked, Suppose a woman’s pregnant and carries her baby just about half of its normal time. Then she has a miscarriage and loses the baby. What sort of a situation do you have there? The thing that started to be a human being was cut off midway and never became a complete human being. Did that unfinished baby have a soul? Or did it have just part of a soul? Did that part-of-a-soul go to heaven? What do they do with such souls when they get to heaven? Will that unfinished baby soul grow and develop in heaven until it gets to be a complete soul? Or will it always be just part of a soul? Do they have a big soul nursery in heaven where they keep all the dead baby souls that come up there from the earth?

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You see, I have a personal interest in it, and I would like to know what has become of my baby. She was the only baby that I was formatted to have, and her little body was dead when she was born. If she had a soul that was still alive and went on to heaven, I’d like to know what has happened to her in all these years since 1908. Did she grow up to be a big girl soul and then a mature woman soul? Or is she still a tiny baby-soul?

In one final pondering he wrote, I have often wondered about babies like that—babies that are dead at birth, or maybe before birth. They get started toward life, and then they are cut off before they even get a taste of it. It must be just the same to them as if they had not existed at all. They do not live long enough to know that they have lived, and of course they have no individual memory or consciousness. If you believe in the immortal soul theory— which says that people are still alive after they are dead—what sort of a situation do we have in the case of a dead infant who has never consciously lived? If that dead infant has a soul which is still alive and goes off to heaven, what does it do when it gets there? While in the body it didn’t know anything. Since getting out of the little dead body, has it become wiser and more capable of thinking and enjoying life? Is there a way in which the living souls of dead infants can start growing up and finally become gay romping children on the golden streets? Or do they have to remain as completely unconscious as they were before leaving their little bodies? Here is still a different problem: Suppose a pregnant woman has a miscarriage and loses her baby at two or three months. Is it a whole human being then, or just a part of a human being? Does it have a whole “soul,” or just part of a “soul”? In other words, when does a soul start being a soul? We know when the human body starts, which is at the moment of conception; but it isn’t much of a body until a few months later. If the soul starts at the same time—at the moment of conception—it isn’t much of a soul until a few months later. 19

Such issues wracked Pearson for years, and neither he nor Cora ever fully recovered from the tragic loss of Blanche Rose. What made the suffering even more intense was that as they grieved for their lost daughter they came to realize they would never have a child of their own. Both perceived that a possible cause of Blanche’s death was Cora’s illness. As an ailing mother, they believed, her body was unable to provide the sustenance for a fetus. They also feared that another pregnancy could endanger Cora’s precarious health. Not long after burying their daughter, therefore, they agreed to forgo having children of their own. Pearson determined, “It was my duty to see—for certain—that she must never become pregnant again. There was only one sure way—total abstinence. And for the rest of her life it worked.” Not only were they fearful that sex would result in pregnancy and problems for both mother and child, but Pearson also came to realize that Cora’s suffering sapped her of

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any real sex drive. He later admitted that Cora had no interest in sex throughout the majority of their marriage, and while he certainly had the urge, he repressed his needs understanding that “it would have been an act of inhuman cruelty” to have forced himself on her. The death of Blanche Rose thus not only added to the sadness the couple had to endure, but it also engendered a new stress on an already difficult marriage. 20 While nothing could fully eliminate the horrors of losing Blanche Rose or replace the loss of physical intimacy with his wife, Pearson eventually was able to refocus on his poetry, and in 1908 he self-published his first book of poems. Titled Castle Gates (A Book Of Poems) Through Which the Knowing Ones Are Admitted Into Some of My Castles In Spain, the collection was to include only his best poems, although he later admitted that several of them “were not much better than boyhood rhymes.” The poems in this book indeed are very simple, with traditional ABAB or AABB-style rhyme schemes. The content was similarly traditional, with topics ranging from love and marriage, to religion and nature, to current events such as the construction of the Panama Canal and the Russo-Japanese war. Pearson thus located himself stylistically within the conventional poetic form favored by the aforementioned Fireside Poets, although elements of the content focused on topics and events that more properly fall within the scope of Emerson and Whitman. His focus and style thus remained wedded to the past, and he openly admitted to aping many of the previous century’s great poets. 21 Pearson was not the only poet of the era to take such an approach, and scholars today describe the poets of the 1890s and early 1900s as writing “verse that was precise, scholarly, and patently reproductive of their literary loves.” There was thus little that was innovative in the poetry of this era. This is true despite the fact that the opening salvo of a new modern style of poetry was just becoming evident. Rejecting all that came before, the early modernist poets saw no purpose in abiding by set rules of rhyme and meter, nor did they address traditional themes. Instead they sought to escape the confines of form and content by employing free verse techniques in order to describe the ugliness they perceived in the modern, industrial, urban world. This new approach would explode in the years following World War I, but already by 1908 it was emergent. Although but thirty when Castle Gates appeared, and thus about the same age as these earliest apostles of change, Pearson rejected the new style and clung to the traditional form of his childhood. Indeed, his refusal to evolve artistically, his use of traditional styles, and his focus on natural topics remained hallmarks of his work for the rest of his life. 22 Beyond the style, content, and traditionalism of Castle Gates, what makes the work noteworthy is that Pearson not only wrote the poems, he set the type and printed the pages. Indeed, in the preface to the work he notes, “it took over 15,000 impressions to print the edition of 500 copies.

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It required nearly a month of hard work to set the type by hand and get all the sections printed and folded ready for the binder.” Working with Cora he bound the first two-hundred copies, but eventually he sent an additional three hundred copies to a professional bookbinder to complete the task. Once the books were complete, Pearson and Cora then focused their attention on advertising the one-hundred-page, ninety-three-poem collection. The printing was a bit amateurish, and some of the poems were rather rough, but with fortitude and mostly good humor Pearson managed to sell out the entire collection and provided a small addition to the family’s income. 23 As important as was the money, Pearson was even more interested in what critics had to say. The response from most was positive. Arthur Talmadge Abernathy, then a professor at Rutherford College and eventually North Carolina’s first poet laureate, told Pearson he was so impressed with the collection that he had contacted noted journalist and publisher Walter Hines Page in hopes that he would put out a larger and more professional printing. Page did not offer Pearson a publishing deal with his firm Doubleday, Page, & Co., but he agreed with Abernathy that the poems were “excellent.” Archibald Henderson, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also heaped praise on the collection, focusing specifically on “Castles in Spain” and “Babylon.” Of the former poem he wrote, “It may be that, in reading this poem, we are irresistibly reminded of the aspirations of the poet himself—the longing after the unattainable, the aspiration for the ineffable, with which we are all, at one time or another, filled.” Of the later he wrote, “In his ‘Babylon’ he gives us a vision of the lust for gold and power in ancient days, and deplores the recrudescence of this same spirit in our time.” He also called Pearson a “natural versifier,” commented favorably on the “homely touch of humor, racy of the soil, about many of his dialect and rural poems,” and concluded, I wish to disclaim any desire to tell Mr. Pearson how poetry should be written, what my philosophy of poetic composition may be, or how far his verse conforms to my standard. If his verse is faulty, if occasionally the sentiment is mawkish and its expression intrusive on the domain of taste, if sometimes the meter is unsatisfactory, the versification poor—I care not. For I know that his feeling is urgent for expression and that he has striven arduously to give expression as best he may to the thoughts, emotions, and nameless longings within his heart. And I know that his heart is sound, with a faith in the deeper realities of life, a strong fund of true sentiment, and a sane and buoyant philosophy. 24

The press offered similar acclaim. Southern Opinions magazine wrote, “He is a writer of clean cut poetry. His short poem entitled ‘Soul Sculpture’ . . . is one of his best efforts. The idea is good and it is well worked out. I hope Pearson will favor us with more of his excellent verse than he has

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been wont to give us of late.” The Charlotte Observer, meanwhile, praised the “simplicity, sincerity, [and] unaffectedness” of his work, noted that he had a “correct ear from meter, rhythm and cadence,” and pointed to the “simple and heartfelt ways of this sincere and unaffected man.” The paper also challenged the modernist poetry then beginning to find popular favor, and explained that the power of Pearson’s work “goes to prove that, contrary to the theory and practice of many raging and raving poetasters, it is not necessary to be bizarre, obtuse, idiotic, insane, coarse, risqué, morbid, grotesque, jarring, shocking, unmetrical or slipshod in order to win recognition as a poet.” 25 In her work “Living North Carolina Poets,” Elon College student Mary Elizabeth Swanson concurred and wrote, “his poetry rings true with the touch of an artistic nature in accord with a close application of the study of verse making.” She went on, “In many of his poems a humorous drollness is shown revealing this side of the versatile writer’s personality. But in his more serious work he is truly at his best. There is sometimes a quaint little turn to some of his poems which remind us of a short story by O. Henry.” She further praised his refusal “to be bound by another’s thinking unless it agrees with his own outlook on life,” acclaimed “Song of the Star of Bethlehem” for its “melodious lilting rhythm” and its “majestic . . . conception,” and concluded, “this, written by an unlettered farmer-boy while he was in the fields working for the harvest of the next year, shows that an inspiration had come into his life and his soul had overflowed with poetic beauty.” 26 This was high praise indeed for a poorly educated, first-time poet, and it momentarily eased his heartache. Trouble with Cora, however, once again dragged him from the ethereal world to real life. During the summer of 1908, Cora left Pearson and moved to Raleigh in hopes of finding a cure for her asthma. While away, she tried to convince Pearson that he needed to attend traditional church services and to pray for her if she was to have any hope of recovery. Although he had a deep and abiding faith in his own set of spiritual beliefs, he refused to attend church and doubted the power of prayer. She begged him to reconsider: “Sweetheart, won’t you please help me by being patient and forbearing with me and pray for me that I may be delivered from the evil powers which make my life miserable. Instead of telling me about losing confidence in my Christianity and all these things, won’t you encourage me all you can in reading the Bible and praying?” He again refused, and the combined pressures of loss, illness, and religious differences eventually led Cora to ponder whether or not they had made a mistake in marrying: Sweetheart, I do love you. In my better and saner moments I am sure of that. Perhaps the bitter experiences of the first few months were for the best after all, for I hope I have learned some profitable [lessons]. I have learned that married life is not the rose tinted life of my youthful

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dreams, but a life of responsibility. And yet a life of sweet happiness too. . . . I know you haven’t had the chances of some people, yet I know there is plenty in you worthy of a woman’s truest and best love, and if there has been any weakness on your part, or failures, I am partly to blame for it. Instead of bringing out the best in you, I fear I have done the opposite. . . . Sometimes I am tempted to wish I hadn’t married as my life has been so unimportant and unhappy and a general failure. Yet at my better moments I realize it is mostly my own fault, and the quiet, submissive life of a wife can be as great and worthy as a more public life, and so I do not regret being married if I could only live right. 27

While Cora took the blame for their marital difficulties, their relationship clearly was strained and the pressure only increased as the bills for her medical stay mounted. When Pearson expressed concern about their debts, Cora suggested selling off some of their property. She acknowledged how hard getting rid of the land would be, but reminded him of her own sacrifices: “Of course it will hurt your pride to have to sell it before its paid for, but not any more than my pride has been bruised by my failures down here.” Knowing Pearson would be unhappy with the suggestion, Cora took to addressing her letters to him with the endearment “darling boy.” Whether or not that had any impact, after initially rejecting the idea Pearson eventually gave in to Cora’s suggestions and when she returned from Raleigh in October 1908 they made plans to sell the land. They did so in early 1909, and then paid $500 for the house in which they had first met—the former home of The Yellow Jacket. Although the move to the place where their romance began might have sparked their relationship, they remained troubled by illness and poverty. Cora’s time in Raleigh did little to cure her asthma and she suffered horribly in their new home. She could not lie down at night to sleep and sat “propped up in bed, with pillows around her.” She coughed and fought for breath all night, and only improved as the warmth of the day eased somewhat her symptoms. Pearson struggled as well, staying up most nights to ease her suffering only then to head off exhausted for work the next morning. 28 The stress on the couple only increased in late 1909 when Pearson quit his job at The Yellow Jacket and decided to start his own newspaper. Although printing was a lifelong passion, giving up a stable income on the questionable premise of a start-up newspaper at a time when his finances were uncertain and his wife was suffering seems a bit selfish. Regardless, he set forth. In an effort to help his young paper and cure his wife’s illness, in the summer of 1910 he sent Cora to Asheville, North Carolina, where they hoped the pure mountain air would ease her asthma and where she might find additional subscribers for Pearson’s new paper. She sold few subscriptions, but soon reported that her stomach was feeling better and her cough had eased. Despite that, she acknowledged the con-

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tinued troubles in their marriage in her first letter from Asheville: “If we separate for a while I never want to come back to you unless I can be a better wife than I’ve been and a better woman. I’ve been nothing like what I dreamed I’d be to you, and it is a miracle if you love me as well as you used to. I can’t help feeling sad about leaving, yet something has just got to be done, and I think our plan seems to be the best thing we can do.” By early August, however, she was lonesome and heartsick and asked Pearson to visit. She even begged him to sell their home and move to Asheville so they could be together. The new paper seemed to take precedence over Cora, however, and he refused to move or even visit. Unwilling to remain alone any longer, by the end of the summer Cora returned to Wilkes County. She had made a modest improvement in her health, but it was temporary, and once winter set in her problems returned. 29 By 1911 the couple realized Cora’s health required more extreme treatment. With good money coming in from his newspaper, Pearson sent Cora to De Land, Florida, some thirty miles north of Orlando, for an extended stay in a sanitarium. She remained in Florida through 1913, amid a setting of orange groves, peaceful beaches, and a collection of doctors, nurses, and ailing patients. The sanitarium itself was a small collection of cottages and buildings of varying size. Cora initially stayed in a small, shared room, but by 1912 she was agitating for a larger one even though it cost twelve dollars a month, two dollars more than her current room. To Pearson she wrote, “I know you understand how much more pleasant and convenient such an arrangement will be for me in my condition, and I know how generous you are.” Pearson protested, pleading the price, but she eventually got the money and the larger room, and responded, “I appreciate so much your generosity. I know I’m ‘a plug.’” 30 Regardless of where she lived, the real purpose for her move to Florida was her health, and her early prognosis was not good. Beyond her pulmonary problems, doctors also diagnosed her as suffering from leukorrhea, a vaginal infection. The doctors told her the infection exacerbated her other ailments, and they set out to cure it first. By early November symptoms of the leukorrhea had disappeared, but she continued to have bouts of severe asthma, stomach problems, and gas. Doctors next set out to cure those issues, and she soon told Pearson she was feeling better and that her spells had lessened. Such sentiment seemed belied by the fact that when weighed she “tipped the scales at 86 ¾.” Although that meant she had gained one pound since her previous weigh-in, it also demonstrated the toll her various diseases had taken—she weighed roughly half of what she did when they married. 31 By December her weight had increased to ninety-four pounds, but she had grown skeptical of the role medicine was playing in her recovery: “I hope to get cured, but I won’t be by medicines or climate alone, I’m

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afraid, though a favorable climate will be a great importance—that is naturally, there’s a better way to be well if we only had the faith.” Indeed, her faith, always strong, increased while in Florida, and for every improvement she gave more credit to God and the power of prayer than to the doctors. When Pearson finally assented to her wishes and assured her that he too was praying for her recovery she exulted, Of course your prayers had something to do with my sudden improvement. I didn’t hardly know how to account for it before. Just hold on dear the prayers of a righteous man availeth much. I’m not worthy of your prayers, but they will make me more worthy. I’m so rejoiced over the “coincidence” for it will help restore confidence in both of us and if you but hold on and keep humble it will not be the end of it. When we get a blessing from God we are too prone to have too much confidence in ourselves and there will be times when God will allow the devil to darken the sky, but that does not mean that God is not still shining. . . . Your ministry is a great thing.

Several weeks later she wrote, “Dora [Cora’s sister and R. Don Laws’s wife who joined Cora for treatment] is giving the climate all the credit. . . . I think first of all your prayers deserve most credit—no, not your prayers, but the goodness of God in answering them whether by natural or supernatural means.” 32 Despite her improvement, Cora began to fear she had tuberculosis, and in January 1913 she traveled to Port Orange, Florida, to be examined by Dr. J. M. Masters. She reported having several bad nights and a sinking feeling that the doctor was fishing for business and would find her infected whether she was or not. Although the doctor did not find any tuberculosis, he did find her right lung “a little dull” and explained that it would take a full year of treatment in his facility to cure her. She seemed to like the new facilities and respected Masters as a doctor, but expressed concerns about whether he was “a real Christian or not.” She also was turned off when Dr. Masters suggested that he would reduce her charges if Pearson was able to steer patients his way by including advertising in his newspaper. Despite her aversion to Masters’s faith and business practices, she ultimately stayed in the Port Orange facility for four months. Those months saw her continue to improve, or at least gain weight, and in February 1913 alone she gained ten pounds; by mid-March she was weighing in at 103.5 pounds. Unfortunately, additional issues with her doctor emerged that created some awkward situations. She told Pearson that Masters often flirted with her, and she complained, “Sometimes I think he’s a little more familiar with me than he ought to be.” She eventually backed off her complaints, however, and even turned them on Pearson: “he has to come into such close intimacy with me anyway, that I reckon there’s no use to mind. You know I like to be ‘petted,’ and you’re not here to do it.” She ultimately assured her husband, “I should be true

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to you, no difference how much Dr. Masters has to ‘mess’ with me,” but the circumstances only seem to affirm the strains in their marriage. 33 The strains were not only apparent in Cora’s interaction with her doctor. Many of their letters from this period drip with unhappiness, frustration, and outright anger. If Pearson failed to write for several days, for instance, Cora grew ill-tempered and sniped, “Well, if I don’t get a letter from you today, I’ll know you are glad I’m gone.” Even when he did write she often offered only backhanded compliments and thanks: “Not that I deserve so much attention, but you know I am your ‘charity object’ and you must keep me cheered up as well as feed me. I trust you will get your reward, even though I never am able to repay you.” When he grew frustrated, snapped at her for requesting additional funds to purchase clothes or other luxury items, and reminded her of the huge sums he already had laid out for her treatment, she snidely responded by thanking him for his “terrorgram.” When in the weeks after his “terrorgram” he again missed several letters, she informed him that she would no longer write: “I don’t get to do nothin but write to you old meanness, so I am going to stop for this time. And of course you don’t appreciate ‘em when I do send ‘em—don’t see how you could, they’re so badly written and inelegant in general.” 34 They also argued about his visits, which were few and far between, and his seeming interest in his paper to the exclusion of his wife. In October 1912 she tried to convince him to move permanently to Florida so they could be together, a union she believed would help her get healthy. When he made it clear the paper precluded such a move, she urged him to wrap up business early and spend a long holiday with her in Florida: “I’ll tell you what I’d do if I were you. I’d rush out the November and December papers and straighten up and come and stay till after Xmas, if it were a month! Then you wouldn’t have to wait till Xmas as you could very nearly get ready to come the first part of December.” When he rejected that suggestion as well, and made it clear that he would only be able to spare a brief holiday visit, she sadly wrote, “One has to put business before pleasure sometimes and you’ve got an expensive charity object on your hands now, and it won’t do to neglect business too much.” 35 They were similarly at odds over the construction of a new house. Pearson was overjoyed with the project and related to her its progress. For a man who had grown up poor and frequently lived in rented homes, the opportunity to build a nice home of his own was an accomplishment of which to be proud. Cora, however, worried about the cost, complained that it was one more thing that distracted him from her, and lamented that she never would get to see it. She even used the new home to try to guilt Pearson into paying her more attention and wrote, “Of course my home of flesh is more important than that one.” 36

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Despite such blow-ups, arguments, and misunderstandings, their letters just as frequently expressed their love and longing for one another. At the end of her response to the “terrorgram” she wrote, “Wonder if you are still loving me—you don’t never say whether you are or not. Or are you like me—afraid to love much for fear of getting too homesick. Ha! Ha!! One has to sorter ‘sqush’ down part of you know.” In other correspondence Cora addressed her letters to her “Dearest Sweetheart,” “Dear Boy,” and “Jamie Boy,” and in one letter she wrote, “I’ve put heaps of ‘cold storage’ kisses in and you can use all you want, such as they are. The fresh ones will taste better for having had to do without them.” In a December 1912 letter she assured Pearson, “I’ve got to have you, dear. I’m mean to you, and all like that, but I love you just the same.” Just weeks later, for New Year’s 1913, she suggested, Let us forget all the errors and pangs of the past and try to do better the coming year. Oh that I could be all I would wish to be, you would have the best wife in the world! But I would have to be born with a different nature and live in a different world or different environment, so it seems to me sometimes—yet no doubt that is untrue, and I could be all I was intended to be perhaps. I know that ill health is partly responsible for my failures. But oh if you will keep on loving me anyway maybe you’ll get your reward in the sweet by and by if not now. 37

They expressed their real affection for each other even more explicitly in a series of letters discussing the possibility of adoption. Cora initiated the idea and tried to convince Pearson of the benefits of having a child: “If I were to get one it would be company for me and I’d have something to induce me to go walking maybe. I could easily roll a go-cart around and feel like I was doing something.” In other letters she offered names for their future children and described dreaming about being a mother. Pearson, for once, seemed to be on the same page and responded, Darling, I, too, dream about our “babies,” and I often wonder if the Good Lord won’t some time permit us to see our dreams come true. So many people who have no proper appreciation of the value of babies are permitted to have them, while we, who want them so bad, can’t have them. It does seem sometimes like things are very improperly adjusted in this old world, but of course the Lord knows best. If it is right for us to have babies He will permit us to have them in the sweet by-and-by. Seems to me like you have been changing some of their names. I thought our oldest boy was named Victor Kenneth, but I see he is Kenneth McNeill now. Well, that’s all right, I guess. I am not acquainted with Marigold, and Daniel is a new one on me. But I love them all, because they are my dream-babies as well as yours. And I also love their sweet Mamma.

Eventually, however, they both agreed the time was not yet right for an addition to the family. They did not give up on the idea, however, and

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Cora later wrote, “But don’t forget that I’m always wanting one and aim to get one somehow soon as I can.” 38 Dreams of parenthood, of course, were subject to Cora’s health, and by the end of March 1913 she was growing frustrated. Despite the weight gain and fewer bouts of asthma, overall she did not feel any better than when she first arrived in Florida two years earlier. Worse, her doctors admitted she was no closer to being permanently cured than when she arrived. She blamed Dr. Masters’s inability to pay her more personal attention for the lack of progress, and begged Pearson to let her return home. In early April 1913 he consented, and she returned to North Carolina. They settled into the newly constructed home on a fifty-acre farm in Boomer, North Carolina, and resumed their lives as a cohabitating married couple. Despite their reunion, Cora remained ill, and Pearson remained focused on the paper. This resulted in continued tension in the family, but Pearson seemed willing to accept the turmoil as his paper took off and provided him an unprecedented amount of money and notoriety. 39 Although the early twentieth century was an era of mixed personal and professional accomplishments for Pearson, his Tar Heel spirit and individualism remained strong. He proved single-minded in his pursuit of Cora, continued to grow as a poet, printer, and journalist, and emerged as a fully-formed adult willing and able to take on all the challenges the world had to offer. In the 1910s those varied issues would come together and culminate in the creation of Pearson’s most famous journalistic endeavor—The Fool-Killer. While the paper offered Pearson the opportunity to express his unique worldview, it required all his spirit and energy and often sidetracked him from his poetry and his wife. He fought on nonetheless, and used all he learned to inform his paper and to grow as a human being. NOTES 1. Pearson, “A History of The Yellow Jacket,” NCC; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 73. 2. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 207; Pearson, “A History of The Yellow Jacket,” NCC. 3. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 207. 4. Pearson, The Double Standard, v, vi; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Cora Wallace Pearson, “Dear Howard”; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 208–9. 5. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 207–8, 210. 6. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Cora Wallace Pearson, handwritten essay on Cora. 7. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 211–12. 8. Ibid., 213–14. 9. Ibid., 215, 227. 10. Ibid., 227–29; Greensboro Daily News, September 10, 1974. 11. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 233. 12. Ibid., 234–36. 13. Ibid., 236. 14. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, September 13, 1906.

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15. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 237–39; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Cora Wallace Pearson, May 1, 1907; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 5. 16. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 245–46. 17. Ibid., 237, 246; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, R. Don Laws, May 4, 1907, and June 25, 1907; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 6. 18. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 239–40. 19. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Blanche Rose Pearson; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Writings, Soul, “About the Souls of Dead Babies.” 20. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 240; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Cora Wallace Pearson, “Handwritten note.” 21. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 242. 22. Modern American Poetry Fourth Revised Edition, 13. 23. Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 6–7; Pearson, Castle Gates, 3. 24. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Arthur Abernathy, February 9, 1910; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Arthur Abernathy, typed and undated; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Archibald Henderson, PhD. UNC, undated letter. 25. Southern Opinions, Volume 1, Number 2, March 15, 1906; McFarland, “James Larkin Pearson: North Carolina’s Printer-Poet,” reprinted from Charlotte Observer, June 9, 1929, NCC. 26. Swanson, “Living North Carolina Poets,” Folder 1, Chapter 7, 101–10, Southern Historical Collection [hereafter, SHC]. 27. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, August 22, 1908. 28. Ibid., October 17, 1908; Pearson, The Double Standard, x. 29. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, July 23, 1910; August 6, 1910; August 11, 1910; and August 15, 1910. 30. Ibid., October 1, 1912 and October 9, 1912. 31. Ibid., October 23, 1912. 32. Ibid., November 16, 1912; November 27, 1912; and December 6, 1912. 33. Ibid., January 19, 1913; January 25, 1913; February 7, 1913; February 28, 1913; March 7, 1913; and undated letter on Grand View Sanatorium letterhead. 34. Ibid., September 28, 1912; October 7, 1912; and October 18, 1912. 35. Ibid., October 30, 1912. 36. Ibid., November 2, 1912. 37. Ibid., October 28, 1912; October 30, 1912; December 29, 1912; and January 3, 1913. 38. Ibid., November 19, 1912 and November 21, 1912; JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Cora, March 20, 1913. 39. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, undated and March 25, 1913.

FOUR The Fool-Killer Part One: “A Paper of Comment”

Despite having a steady job at The Yellow Jacket and caring for an invalid wife, in late 1909 Pearson made the decision to return to the writing and producing of his own newspaper. He had read widely in the amateur press and realized there was room for his return. For the next twenty years Pearson took advantage of that room and used the paper to offer his take on the world to anyone who was interested; and thousands were. The result was one of the most productive and profitable times of his life. His family life remained problematic and his poetry was put on hold, but in the two decades prior to the Great Depression Pearson enjoyed a flourishing professional life as a newspaper writer, editor, and publisher. As Pearson grappled with the hardships of attending to Cora, he often relaxed by reading various works of amateur journalism which continued to flourish in the early twentieth century. As he read he realized, nearly all of them had one thing in common. They were personal organs of protest. Every fellow who could get hold of a second-hand job press and a few pounds of type started himself a paper. He saw all the evils of society and politics and the crudeness of things in general, and he wanted to do his bit at reforming the world. Seeing that the old-line political parties had not brought the Millennium, he looked hopefully toward the Socialist party as his guiding light. He was a left-winger and followed the lead of such great Socialists as Eugene Debs, Edwin Markham, Norman Thomas, and Upton Sinclair.

While “some show[ed] a little deeper pink than others,” Pearson was surprised to find a hint of socialist protest in nearly every amateur paper he read. With this new political perspective filling his mind, he took another look at his favorite poets and realized “nearly all the worthwhile 53

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living poets of that day were socialists” as well. 1 Pearson thus began to ponder returning to the field of amateur journalism with a new socialist paper of protest. In late 1909 he decided it was time to act. He realized that his work for The Yellow Jacket and The Evening Chronicle had honed his skills and that his new political perspective likely would attract more readers than did his previous efforts. He also came to believe there was much wrong with the world and that he had ideas about correcting those problems the public needed to hear. Beyond such lofty thoughts, however, he also needed money. While the salary Laws paid was better than he had earned in Charlotte, Pearson believed there was even more money to be made with his own journalistic efforts. Indeed, years later he admitted that he began the paper “in a fit of depression as a last final effort to drive the wolf from the door and provide a modest living for my sick wife and myself.” In hopes of making money and saving Cora, he set out to create “a monthly paper using droll, humorous prose pieces. It would have to be a ‘funny paper,’ because it was my ‘funny writing’ that was making money for Laws.” 2 The first task, he determined, was to create a catchy title: “After long deliberation I settled on The Fool-Killer as the best one of all. I remembered that there had always been an old saying to the effect that the fool killer will get you. And I remembered, too, that O. Henry had used the expression as the title of one of his stories. So I figured that the fool killer had some sort of fame already and would be easy to popularize.” In the first edition of the paper he explained further why he chose the title: “[I] wanted something unusual—something startling. I wanted a name that would first catch the eye of the reader, then excite his curiosity, then tickle his funny bone, and finally furnish him food for serious thought.” 3 With a title set, he next addressed the paper’s appearance and perspective. He decided to make it a four column “sensational” monthly that would serve as “a paper of comment” and would “be a champion of the ‘under-dog.’” As he later explained, “It was natural for me to take this stand, because I had always belonged to the poor and oppressed class— had always been an ‘underdog.’” He also realized that while championing the little guy the paper had to be funny as well. Therefore, “The object was to make a man laugh right big and cram a truth down him while his mouth was open.” As a part of demonstrating that agenda, Pearson used as the paper’s slogan: “A Pungent Periodical of Thrilling Thought.” 4 Once these foundational issues were addressed, Pearson set to work producing the first edition. He wrote the entire paper and, with the help of Cora, set and printed 1,000 copies in January 1910. Pearson was proud of his first effort: “I thought then and I still think it was a jim-dandy issue. It looked all right and it sounded quite professional when I read it over.” The issue complete, he then needed a way of selling it, so he began to visit his neighbors and neighboring villages to sell copies and seek annu-

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Figure 4.1. The Fool-Killer print shop in Boomer, North Carolina. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

al subscriptions. According to Pearson, “In a few days I had my pockets bulging with nickels and dimes. All I needed to do was to show the paper and everybody wanted it.” 5 Despite such success, he soon realized that to sell out the entire edition, and if he had any hopes of making real money, he needed to expand beyond his neighbors and the small mountain villages in Wilkes County. He thus used some of the money he earned, as noted earlier, to send Cora to Asheville to sell papers, seek subscriptions, and spend time at a local sanitarium in the hopes that the mountain air would cure her asthma. She did not sell many papers, gather many subscriptions, nor recover, and returned home that summer. 6 Despite Cora’s failure to sell papers, The Fool-Killer quickly gained a following. By August Pearson was reporting 650 subscriptions and was begging his subscribers for help in increasing that number. With their help, and his development as a humorist, the rolls slowly increased. By autumn 1911 Pearson reported 4,000 subscribers and asserted, “subscriptions were soon coming in from all over the country and I was handling more money than I had ever expected to see.” 7 He also had enough money to send Cora to the aforementioned sanitariums in Florida for her extended stay. Freed from the role of caregiver, he was able to spend even more time on the paper, with the result that the quality of the work and the quantity of subscriptions continued to improve. Pearson believed much of his success was due to the fact that he was “highly critical of the dollar aristocracy and all the high flyers of society, church and state.” The paper

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thus fulfilled his mission to champion the underdog. He also believed its success was contingent on how he wrote: “The language was the common cornfield English I learned and used while growing up.” He avoided condescending to his audience and won their support as a result. Finally, he believed the paper succeeded simply because it was funny: “My droll, unusual, serio-comic style of writing seemed to make a great hit with the common people, and they always wanted to see what The Fool-Killer was going to say next.” Pearson later expanded on this idea and wrote, “I had so greatly improved on The Yellow Jacket’s style that it became my own and I was fast becoming known all over the country as a ‘funny man.’ Lots of folks said I was better than Bill Nye [a nineteenthcentury humorist and journalist] or Mark Twain. . . . Thousands of people all over the nation wrote to me saying that The Fool-Killer was the funniest thing they ever saw. But they added: ‘It tells the truth; it says what needs to be said.’” 8 Although happy with the praise and the growth of the paper, Pearson wanted more and continued to tinker with it. In May 1910 he began to offer discounts, reducing the annual subscription rate from twenty-five cents to fifteen cents for groups of five or more. In June he went even further and offered a five dollar reward for the person who collected the most new subscriptions. More noticeably, in October he changed the masthead, which originally was simply the title of the paper. To the title he added a hand-drawn picture to demonstrate the real purpose of the paper. The image depicts “THE TRUTH” exploding and blowing away “the society fool,” the “religious fool,” the “political fool,” the “drunken fool,” “the gambling fool,” “the idle rich fool,” “the medical fool,” and others. Pearson explained the reason for adding the new masthead thusly, “I got tired of seeing this little missionary go out into the wicked world wearing such a plain every-day sort of head.” He then asserted that he drew the picture to offer a visual representation of what the paper was trying to do: “Look at the picture and observe how the bomb of truth has exploded in their midst, and how they are being blown seventeen ways for Sunday. It is lifting their claw-hammer coat-tails and causing them to turn double summersaults in every direction.” 9 The paper thus set out to upend those who exploited the masses. The discounts and new masthead worked, and circulation continued to increase. It hit 16,000 by November 1912; 20,000 by January 1913; 30,000 by October 1913; and 40,000 by January 1916. Within five years of its first edition, The Fool-Killer had reached a level of readership to which few other amateur papers could aspire. 10 What truly wowed the readers and won him new subscribers, however, was not the price or appearance of the paper, but rather its content. One element of the content his subscribers appreciated was how Pearson used the paper as a means of direct communication. Indeed, he personally addressed his readers with great frequency. Whether he was begging

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for help increasing the subscription numbers, explaining a missed edition or two, offering his biography, or simply keeping his readers informed about the state of the paper, Pearson was brutally honest with his subscribers. His first personal letter appeared in August 1910 when he begged his readers to help him attract more subscriptions. He noted that he had 650 subscribers and previously had advertised for help attracting more, but to no avail. He warned that he needed new readers to keep up production of the paper and directly asked his subscribers for their help. In January 1911 he again appealed to his readers, explaining that he needed a new press, and in May he asked for money promising to invest all of it back into the paper. In September he printed another large appeal for more subscriptions and promised that with the money he would buy a press that would enable him to put out 70,000 copies a month, after which he would not need to beg for additional funds. In December 1911 he returned to the need for a new press, said that he needed $500 to buy it, and urged his readers to find new subscribers. In January 1912 he thanked his readers for their help and noted that in the preceding month they had helped bring in $269.40 worth of new subscriptions. While that was only half of what he needed, he appreciated their effort and encouraged them to carry on. By March the efforts had paid off and he purchased a new press, which he pictured on the front page along with a note of thanks to his readers for helping him win “this victory.” 11 Such demands and interaction continued throughout the entirety of the paper, and his readers seemed to appreciate his honesty and acted as his sales agents spreading the paper’s word far and wide. Pearson did more than beg for money, however, and he often used his personal addresses to let the readers into his life. While such efforts often smacked of opportunism and an effort to win sympathy, hindsight allows us to see that what he wrote was the truth, regardless of the motive behind it. For instance, in August 1910 he informed his readers that he was living alone, having sent his wife to Asheville for a cure. He humorously described his shortcomings as a bachelor housekeeper and explained that when he tried to make bread he always ended up covered in dough, leaving little to eat. He joked as well that everything he cooked ended up looking the same: “A green hand couldn’t tell whether I had cooked eggs, potatoes, cabbage or pumpkin. All things look alike when I cook ‘em, and they all pretty much taste alike.” The month subsequent he rejoiced to his readers that his period of bachelorhood was over and that Cora had returned from Asheville. He joked that when she read his article she returned as fast as she could for fear he would be dead before she got back. As proof she returned just in the nick of time, he explained that when she arrived, “I was standing in the door with a dishrag in one hand and a newspaper in the other, and was dictating an editorial to the cat.” 12

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In the November 1910 issue Cora took the opportunity to introduce herself to the readers. She described her many diseases and ailments and stated, “I am just about a complete physical wreck.” She then explained their poverty and noted that the paper was their sole source of livelihood. She lamented that her health and their general poverty made it hard for Pearson to create his funny stories, and she worried the paper might fail. Their story told, she then begged readers to help the paper, and the couple themselves, to survive. In March 1911 Cora returned to refute one letter writer who claimed her sobs of illness were simply a ruse to get more money. She took offense at the charges and asserted that they did need money, but it was because they were poor and she needed medical care, not because they were greedy. She then thanked the readers for their continued support and assured them that with their help she and the paper would thrive. 13 In September 1911 Pearson took his personal relationship with the readers one step further when, after many promises to do so, he included a picture of himself in the paper. He laughed at how ugly he was and then offered a brief biography before thanking them for enjoying the paper. In August 1914 he did more and offered his readers an extended biography and a history of The Fool-Killer. In the biography he played up his backwoods and impoverished upbringing, his early determination to be a poet and printer, and his wife’s illness. He then offered a history of the paper itself, and focused on its growth despite Cora’s continued woes and the troubles he and the paper faced as a result. 14 Pearson thus opened nearly every element of his personal life to the readers, and they responded by snapping up copies of the paper by the thousands. While Pearson’s readers may have been amused, saddened, or moved to action by these personal stories they also wanted to be entertained, and Pearson was sure to include plenty of humor in The Fool-Killer. Each edition contained random epigrams and bon mots he labeled “Idiotorials,” in which he offered pieces of advice or comments on society in the form of pithy, biting, and sarcastic observations: “We cuss old John D. [Rockefeller]—and yet how many of us would refuse to accept his pile if he signed it over to us? I’m waiting for an answer.” “Did you ever read about where Jesus built a fine church and installed a pipe organ, and then charged pew rent? No, I didn’t think you ever did.” “The more worthless a man is, the more fish he can catch.” “Money is the root of all evil, and whiskey is the sap.” “Wisdom is the art of not letting other people find out how little you know.” 15 While the “Idiotorials” undoubtedly amused his readers, what Pearson really wanted to focus on, and what truly seemed to enthrall his readers, were his personal philosophies about politics, religion, the Ku Klux Klan, drinking, and gambling. Pearson offered his take on these topics with a mix of humor, sarcasm, biting wit, empathy, outrage, and horror, and through it all he hoped to educate his readers to his view of

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the world. Indeed, in the very first edition Pearson made clear the purpose of the paper: “From the seclusion of the wooded hills there will go forth each month a hot old bundle of literary dynamite that will shake the rotten foundations of society and cause the Church of Mammon to at least turn over in its sleep.” As a part of that, he called his paper a “journalistic battleship” and promised that “every line will cut like a whip, and every word will raise a blister.” 16 Among the major political issues Pearson addressed throughout the paper’s existence was the ideology of socialism. Based on the idea that workers should seize control of the means of production and distribution and then redistribute the nation’s wealth according to the labor of the individual, the Socialist Party of America was formed in 1901. Although it emerged from the ashes of two previous socialist efforts, the new party grew rapidly. By 1912 it had 100,000 members, its newspaper Appeal to Reason had 500,000 subscribers, and it succeeded in electing 12,000 socialists to political office. The most notable political success of the period was Victor Berger, who won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1910 as a congressman from Wisconsin’s Fifth District. The most famous socialist of the period, however, was less successful. Eugene Debs made a name for himself as the leader of the American Railway Union who supported the ill-fated 1894 strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company. Debs’ support for the strike landed him in jail where he was converted to socialism. He emerged as the movement’s most vocal advocate and ran for president on the Socialist Party of America’s ticket in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912. In 1912 he won 900,000 votes, or 6 percent of the ballots cast. Although he did not become president, the numbers demonstrate a surprising amount of sympathy for socialism amongst the American electorate. 17 The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thus witnessed a socialist upsurge in the United States, and Pearson found himself in the middle of that swell. Although he identified with the underclass and saw a socialist impulse in many of the great amateur journalists and poets of his day, in the earliest editions of his paper he offered pointed criticisms of the ideology. In the very first edition he asserted that while socialism was popular with the working class, most people, even its most ardent supporters “wouldn’t know Socialism from a load of cross-ties if they met it in the road.” He claimed socialism was misunderstood by just about everyone, a fact which undermined the potency of its ideas. After unsuccessfully trying to clarify what it really meant, he declared the socialist plan for solving the world’s problems impossible: “They are going to prove that an army of maggots can get into the carcass of a dead horse and bring the horse back to life and health.” 18 Pearson thus portrayed socialism as another failed utopian experiment that sought to create a better world from the corrupt cadaver of the old.

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Despite such a critique, many readers labeled Pearson a socialist, and in February 1911 he addressed the charges. He admitted that many of his beliefs corresponded with socialist ideals, but he asserted, “there are a lot of places where Socialism and Pearsonism can’t sleep in the same bed.” Part of the problem, he explained, was that there existed no single set of beliefs: “Socialism is a great thought-force at work among men, and it means to each man whatever he interprets it to mean. . . . All socialists are agreed that the infernal billionaires have run things their own way long enough, and that it is time to give Old Man Peepul a chance. But they are not quite so well agreed as to just the proper method of going at it.” With that foundation set, he then admitted, “if a man resents being knocked down and run over they call him a Socialist, and according to that rule I AM A SOCIALIST.” Conversely, he rejected many of the more revolutionary elements with which he associated socialism, including free love, atheism, and the redistribution of wealth. In the end, he asserted that he believed in “Pearsonism,” which “stands for any method or system that will stop the infernal pot-gutted money lords from oppressing the people.” He concluded, “call it Socialism or what you please.” 19 In 1912 his public political evolution continued as he once again explained his support for some elements of socialism along with his disdain for other parts. In response to a letter from one of his readers, he noted that he opposed many of the “free thinking” ideas held by socialists and “wouldn’t want to be found dead in the woods with a gang of free thinkers.” He specifically objected to their irreligion: “If a man has to be an atheist, an agnostic or infidel in order to be a Socialist, I wish to state most emphatically that I am NOT a Socialist and never expect to be.” He again lamented the failure of contemporary politics, however, and regarded both the Democratic and Republican parties as tools of the wealthy. He called for a new political movement that sought to help the downtrodden and for a new socio-economic order in which “the men, women, and children who do all the world’s work—who produce all wealth—can at least get enough of what they produce to make life a joy instead of a struggle.” He then asserted, “Now if that sort of talk makes a man a Socialist, I take unbounded pride in declaring that I AM a Socialist.” 20 In January 1914 Pearson moved beyond such hedging and admitted that he had long been a socialist but was afraid to admit it. He also admitted that The Fool-Killer always had a socialist leaning, but he wrote, “for a long time I was afraid to make it as Socialist as I really felt.” Ironically, what he feared was that publically expressing his true socialist sensibilities would cost him readers and money. By 1914, however, he realized “the more ‘radical and rebellious’ I make the paper the faster they rally to support it.” With an economic incentive to admit his true political nature, he publicly stated his position and encouraged others who sympathized with his beliefs to come out of the shadows and acknowledge their support. To encourage them to do so, he promised to

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make his socialist sentiment more evident in the paper. While he admitted he had to cover other issues, he assured his readers, “But whenever I do hit it [politics] . . . there’s going to be some music, and I sorter guess most of it will be in the Socialist key.” 21 With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Pearson came to believe he was riding a rising tide and assumed the horrors of war would convince others of the righteousness of socialism’s world view. The masses, he asserted, would learn “the folly of depending on kings and bosses who rob them of their rights and murder them in capitalistic wars. They will have learned that the common people of all nations have common interests, and that it never pays to fight each other.” He thus fully expected the number of socialists, and readers, to increase as the war dragged on. Frustrated when that did not happen, in July 1917 he penned an essay explaining the reasons socialism had failed to take off. He first blamed many of the movement’s leaders: “Most of them are the wildest sort of cranks, with an overabundance of cock-sureness and no tact at all.” Such leaders, he asserted, drove people away from the ideology. He then suggested that an inability to articulate a clear and cogent philosophy drove away others, while the support of violence and atheism frustrated many more. Finally, he obliquely criticized the federal government, which had passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918. The acts forbid interfering with the draft, aiding the enemy, or using language critical of the war effort. He believed such constraints terrified would-be socialist supporters and undermined efforts to spread the ideology. As if to prove that point, Pearson came to fear he might fall under the acts’ scrutiny and his criticism of the government therefore was limited. 22 Despite such lamentations, criticisms, and fear, when the war finally ended he offered a “Sermon on Socialism” in which he challenged the common assumption that socialism was dead. After admitting it was suffering serious growing pains and political threats, he explained that the underlying socio-economic forces that had led to the rise of socialism remained: “The ruling class has never made any effort to get the viewpoint of the workers, and it cannot reasonably expect the workers to get its viewpoint.” Since neither the workers nor the bourgeoisie could understand the other, the need for a working-class political party continued and socialism remained a viable political force. 23 Proof of that force, he argued, was the 1917 October Revolution in Russia which completed the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II and gave rise to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, whose ultimate goal was to take socialism one step further and ensure the redistribution of wealth based on the needs of the individual. Pearson viewed Bolshevism as the “general rebellion and uprising of the ‘underdogs’ of society—the poor oppressed and half-starved workers, those who have been the servants and slaves of the more fortunate classes, and who have never been permitted to enjoy

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any of the good things that their labor produced.” He blamed the revolution on the wealthy and argued that they simply were reaping what they had sown. Although he admitted the Bolsheviks “are certainly not what we would call ‘good people’” and criticized their irreligion, he believed they were doing God’s work: “Past history shows that God has often used wicked men and worldly institutions to work out His good plans.” 24 In July 1919 he returned to the topic, and asserted that the main objectives the Bolsheviks put forth were positive. While he acknowledged that much of Bolshevism was mean, he argued that its goal of destroying capitalism was worthy and that to destroy such a tough institution society might need to rely on such unpleasant forces as the Bolsheviks. He also argued that the Bolsheviks got a bad rap from the capitalist press, and noted that various papers had painted them as “hoofed and horned demons” while the word Bolshevik was made synonymous with “all that was repulsive, dangerous and dreadful.” He urged people to learn about the party from other sources, and noted that the wealthy would hate “white robed angels direct from heaven” were they here to destroy the capitalist system. 25 Pearson was one of the few thinkers to offer such a balanced assessment of Bolshevism, and while that appraisal would evolve over time, throughout the years of The Fool-Killer he remained a supportive skeptic of socialism and its implementation in Russia. As much as Pearson addressed issues of socialism in the paper, religion was a much more important focus. Indeed, in column 1 of the very first edition of The Fool-Killer he penned an article entitled “What I Believe.” Although an introduction, of sorts, for the readers of this new paper, it also clearly laid out his theology: “I believe in a God who knows His business, and a devil who is not as big a fool as some folks. I believe the Bible is a great deal nearer right than the smart guys who assail and denounce it. I believe God made the world, but the devil has been running it for a good many years. I believe the so-called Church of God is so asleep that Gabriel will have a hard time waking it up. I believe the belly and the pocketbook call more preachers than God.” 26 Although clearly espousing his Christian faith, this statement of belief also made clear his long-held skepticism of traditional religion. Both elements continued throughout the publication of the paper. He frequently asserted that many individual Christians were hypocrites who claimed to follow the teachings of Christ but failed to do so in reality. He noted that people gossip, “make fun of their betters,” and join the church simply because it is fashionable. In each case, he argued, these false Christians surely would be left behind: “When the final shake-up comes, and the sheep are parted from the goats, I am afraid lots of church letters will have to be used as through tickets to hell.” In a similar essay he criticized parishioners for being Christian only while in church: “Some people seem to have an idea that religion is a thing that they can put on and off

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with their Sunday coat—that they can be a saint in the church house and a devil everywhere else.” 27 He continued in this vein in an essay entitled “They Sang a Lie,” in which he wrote, “I went to church last Sunday and heard the congregation screw up its voice and to the highest pitch sing: ‘Take my silver and my gold; Not a mite would I withhold,’ and then when the service was over I saw a poor crippled beggar go through the crowd and try to get ten cents to buy a snack to eat, and he didn’t get it. But I saw several of those consecrated singers go home smoking ten cent cigars.” He was outraged at the obvious hypocrisy of the church members and concluded, “They didn’t mean a word of it, and if an angel had appeared on the scene and tried to separate them from their money, he would have had the most dickens of a scuffle that ever you saw. They would have pulled all his wing feathers out and sent him hopping back to heaven on crutches.” 28 While frustrated with the flock, he was equally outraged by the preachers. He criticized those who smoked as committing a sin which placed them in no position to tell their congregants not to drink, curse, or gamble. In a later essay he supported those preachers who felt called by God to preach, but not those who did it for the money. Similarly, he advised all preachers to avoid the flamboyance and theatricality he believed was too prevalent in the contemporary church: “they preach as if they thought everybody in the house was as deaf as a post, but the truth is they make so much noise you couldn’t even tail-hold on a thought if they should happen to express one. They mistake perspiration for inspiration and racket for religion.” To make his point clearer, he asked if his readers could “imagine Jesus cutting such capers as that,” and he urged his fellow Christians to focus on what their preachers said rather than how they presented their sermons. 29 Beyond the pastors and parishioners, Pearson also criticized the divisions within the Christian Church: “Jesus Christ established a Church when He was here on earth, and He didn’t call it Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, not any other sort. The only name it was known by was the Church of Christ. That was the true Church. But as soon as its Founder went away its leaders began to get jealous of each other. Each one wanted to be Boss . . . and so it came to pass that they began to split up and start new churches.” Pearson did not stop there, and went so far as to assert that “Jesus Christ did not establish a single one of the churches that exist in the world today.” Therefore, “All this denominational clap trap is the veriest moonshine—a scheme of the devil to lead man astray. The devil knows if he can keep the Christians fighting each other along denominational lines, he will get to make soap out of the whole bunch some day.” 30 He called for an end to the interdenominational conflict and for a reunion of all Christians into a single church of God. Pearson did more than simply espouse his religious ideas in the paper; he also willingly took on those readers who challenged him. Read-

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er Claude Carlton, for instance, criticized Pearson for asserting that man could not lead a sinless life. Carlton wrote, “the Bible teaches that we must live a sinless life here in this present world if we are to inherit the precious promises which God has given them that believe.” After giving several scriptural examples to prove his point, he asserted, “it is out of the question to be a Christian and sin all at the same time.” He concluded, “Now what are you going to say? Do not these Scriptures prove that we should live like he lived—a sinless life? They surely do.” 31 Pearson responded by admitting that Carlton had gathered a good collection of scripture to prove his point, but he then claimed there were just as many scriptures that disproved it. He also criticized Carlton for using the “King Jim” translation of the Bible, which, he asserted, “all Bible scholars today admit is very faulty.” He charged that “the men who made the King Jim version were nothing but mere men, and probably not very good nor very wise men, either,” and he then suggested that using a better translation would demonstrate that all men inherited Adam’s sin. That sin was the cause of death, he claimed, and to say we live a sinless life was incorrect. Building on this idea that death was the result of sin, he asked why no one lives forever: “You have to admit that the whole human race is dead, except the present generation, and if they all started life in a holy condition, isn’t it strange that at least a few of them didn’t remain so?” Such a fact, he argued, “seems to indicate that the absolutely sinless people in the world are sorter scarce.” He then concluded that what we really should take from the teachings of Jesus is not that we should lead sinless lives, but that we should follow better men and continuously try to improve ourselves. 32 In a similar vein, Pearson argued with Reverend John Milton Samples about two issues that had annoyed him since his youth: the immortality of souls and eternal torment. When the good reverend attempted to explain for Pearson the essence of the ideas and their place within the Christian framework, Pearson responded by asserting, I wish I could get you and everybody else to see that the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul and the “Eternal Torment” are two terrible errors that the devil has sown in the minds of men, and that they are both blasphemous and dishonoring to God. There is not a syllable of scripture anywhere to support them—except the devil’s lie to Eve in Gen. 3:4. God had told Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate the forbidden fruit, and the devil told them that they would not die. And the popular creeds all teach that God lied and the devil told the truth. Right there is the seat of the whole trouble. That first error right at the starting point has thrown the theologians clear off the track, and the further they follow that lead the further wrong they are bound to get.

For good measure, he later argued that immortality of souls was one of the issues that underlay the Protestant Reformation and drove Martin

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Luther to break from the Catholic Church. Pearson, who was no friend of the Catholics, therefore claimed Protestants violated one of their founding principles when they reinstated the idea. In the end, he declared his position clearly: “The Soul is NOT immortal; that immortality is a conditional thing and that only the righteous will EVER have it; and that there is not, never has been, and never will be such a place as the orthodox hell of eternal torment.” He declared contrary ideas “unscriptural, unreasonable, unscientific and unthinkable,” and concluded, “they can only exist by feeding on ignorance, prejudice and superstition.” 33 When readers continued to challenge him, he offered $1,000 to anyone who could find the terms “Immortal Soul” or “never dying soul” in the Bible. Wiley Dickerson wrote in to collect his money, citing Ecclesiastes 12:7 as proof of the concept: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.” He concluded the letter, “Now, according to your own offer, I believe that I am entitled to the One Thousand Dollars Reward; because these scripture verses given above furnish infallible evidence that the soul is immortal.” Pearson rejected the “proof” Dickerson offered, noting that he wanted to see the words, not an explanation: “You have only bobbed up with a few of the old stock arguments that ignorant people have always used in their efforts to prove that the soul is immortal. I am not asking you to PROVE anything. I am asking you to SHOW me something.” He then went a step further to take on all interpretations of the Bible: “Therefore I say if it IS so, the Bible ought to SAY SO, and it ought to say it in language so plain that it wouldn’t NEED any interpreting or explaining.” 34 Not everybody enjoyed these theological debates, and Pearson lost several subscribers as a result. One explained that he wanted to be removed from the mailing list because, “I can’t understand how you and others I know can take the risk to call God a liar, for that is just what you do when you say there is no eternal punishment for those who refuse to accept Jesus Christ. I pray to God that you and all who have been misled to believe such things that you profess to believe will come to see that you must accept the Bible as a whole, and that to take from or add to what God has said in his Holy Word will result in what he says in Rev. 22:18–19.” He concluded by suggesting Pearson read Matthew 24:45–46; Mark 9:43–48; Luke 18:23; and Revelation 21:3. 35 Another reader dropped his subscription and complained that Pearson nitpicked and failed to appreciate the “totality” of the Bible. He concluded, “You will never give God proper credit until you realize the scope of his power and love. He has willed that all shall be saved. His will shall be done.” 36 Despite such critiques, Pearson remained convinced in his interpretations and refused to relent regardless of the impact on his pocketbook. It was not simply Pearson’s take on theological issues that upset some of his Christian readers; others took offense at two additional elements of

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his religious focus in The Fool-Killer. The first was a recurring section called “The Devil’s Letter,” in which he created letters from Satan explaining where he stood on various contemporary issues. In one letter he thanked the many famous preachers of the day, including former baseball player turned hellfire evangelist Billy Sunday, for helping him out. With a focus on their own personal wealth rather than their congregants’ salvation, Satan wrote, such preachers were convincing people they were saved when they were not, thus making it easier for him to win their souls. He signed the letter “Sulphurically Yours, SATAN DEVIL.” 37 During World War I the devil wrote another letter in which he thanked America’s bankers for helping him out. Calling Wall Street “Hell’s American office,” he credited them for leading the nation into the war as a part of their drive for profits. The reason he was so thankful was that war meant killing, and since killing was a sin all the soldiers would go to hell. The devil was counting on a bumper crop of new residents as the war dragged on. Not everyone appreciated the subversive humor and sarcasm in the letters, and several dropped their subscriptions as a result. 38 Added to these “Devil’s Letters,” which Pearson ran for years, he also managed to outrage some of his readers with his open and proud antiCatholicism. While such sentiment had long been emergent in the United States as a result of the massive influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Pearson’s contempt for Catholics was startling. In the June 1914 edition he wrote, “The Fool-Killer is the original Anti-Catholic paper in the country.” Calling the pope “Pappy,” “God’s private secretary,” and “that old bald-headed Dago in Rome,” he asserted that “Roman Catholicism is as rotten and corrupt as the very devil.” He went on to charge that it was an enemy of free government, was founded in ignorance, and kept women in second-class status. In another essay he mocked the pope’s power to forgive sin by having the devil visit the pontiff and ask to be forgiven. After the devil offered his lengthy litany of sins, the pope agreed to forgive him, for a fee, and afterwards “The devil got off his knees, slapped the pope on the back and said: ‘say, Dad, its awful kind of you to do this for me. If you ever get in trouble just call on me.’ And the devil and the pope both laughed till their sides ached.” 39 As if linking the pope and devil as kin was not enough, in other essays Pearson challenged the very idea that Catholicism was a Christian faith: “When did Jesus get mad and curse about those who opposed him and threaten to do them bodily harm? . . . When did Jesus defy the civil authorities and refuse to be governed by the law of the land? . . . When did Jesus take a poor widow’s last dollar to pay Him for praying for her? . . . When did Jesus live in a gilded mansion? . . . When did Jesus wear royal raiment and a golden crown while millions of people were ragged and hungry?” 40 While Pearson offered many of the same criti-

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cisms against Protestant churches, in the case of Catholicism these questions caused him to doubt its actual standing as a true church under God. Such sentiment, even amidst the anti-Catholicism then pervading the nation, was too much for some of his readers who dropped their subscriptions. As much as Pearson enjoyed taking on Catholics and proffering his unique religious perspective, regardless of the consequences, he often expanded his purview to rail against the nation’s great secular sinners. Among those he singled out was the Ku Klux Klan, which was enjoying a resurgence after its re-formation in 1915. The group spread rapidly during the ensuing decade and found followers nationwide. Although this second incarnation expanded its list of enemies to include Catholics, for whom Pearson clearly had little but contempt, he despised the group. He complained that the “Ku Klux Klucks” claimed to be 100 percent Americans yet “they talk in hieroglyphics about a lot of wizards, Cyclops, Kleagels, and Giants.” Similarly, he wondered why good Americans would fight to oppose the king of England only then to take an oath of allegiance to an “invisible emperor.” He further questioned why the Klan feared the “secretive” Bolsheviks yet hid their own faces and identities. After addressing such hypocrisy, he criticized the group’s “heathenism, barbarism, witchcraft, and devil worship” and attacked its racial prejudice, national prejudice, and ignorance. 41 Few others joined Pearson’s crusade against the Klan, but he was convinced of their inhumanity and railed against them throughout the run of The Fool-Killer. The Klan was not the only secular group to endure his wrath, as he also criticized gamblers. While he opposed gambling on principle, he was especially upset that it had become popular amongst the elite, thus making it respectable. What was even worse was that churches were beginning to sanction gambling as a way to raise money. Not only did this validate sinful behavior, Pearson argued that it caused two additional problems. First, it meant the church was justifying the worldly search for wealth, which he believed often came at the price of the search for salvation. Second, he believed gambling led to other sins, such as drinking, smoking, and cussing. He saw it as a gateway to other behavior that once again distracted good Christians from the more important search for salvation. 42 Of those other sins gambling facilitated, Pearson made no secret of his support for prohibition and his belief that alcohol “is a product of the devil’s brain and the worst enemy that mankind has today.” He called it “sinful” and “wrong,” and argued that whether or not the government judged it legal, it remained evil. He went on to chastise those towns that thought building a saloon would bring in money, argued it also brought in violence, domestic abuse, and corruption, and claimed the only people who would benefit from the influx of money would be the elite. Beyond the social problems alcohol created, Pearson also questioned the physical

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toll it took. He could not understand why people would drink something that turned them into “an infernal nasty wallerin’ wild beast,” nor could he understand why people would consume something that left them feeling miserable the next day. He laughed at those suffering hangovers and expressed bewilderment that many went back and did it all again the next night. In the end, he concluded that if such people were so determined to wallow in filth, why not “pray God to give you forked hoofs so you can be a hog alright.” 43 Pearson had a similar reaction to tobacco use. In one issue he made fun of “snuff-dipping girls” whose “mouth reminds me of the back door of a tan yard.” He called it a nasty and repulsive practice of which any woman should be ashamed. He thought no better of men who used tobacco and, after dubbing it the devil’s doing, asserted that those who used it “became weak and unmanly.” In one final effort to convince his readers to give up the habit he invoked religion and asked, “How would Jesus have looked with a pipe, a cigar, or a quid of tobacco in His mouth? What would be our opinion of Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, if he had written to Timothy to be sure to bring him a box of R. J. Reynolds best plug tobacco and several bags of Duke’s Mixture?” 44 Whether resorting to religion, shame, or simple persuasion, throughout the paper’s existence Pearson attacked such sinful behavior and encouraged his readers to follow the straight and narrow path he himself trod. In countless other forms, The Fool-Killer offered Pearson a means of espousing his personal philosophies to tens of thousands of readers. The paper also demonstrated his spirit and individualism as he examined the most fundamental elements of human behavior with a determination and single-mindedness few other papers could match. While occasionally the effort cost him subscriptions, more often than not it seems his readers agreed with his assertions or simply enjoyed the manner in which he put them forth. Regardless of the paper’s impact, success, and adoring readership, Pearson eventually came to lament the paper’s popularity and believed he was wasting his talents. As a result, he soon began to look for new ways to fulfill his intellectual needs, and as the years went by both Pearson and the paper began to evolve. Indeed, as the 1920s rolled on he made a number of dramatic changes to The Fool-Killer’s content, coverage, and even its name. NOTES 1. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 243. 2. Good News, Volume 8, Number 2; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 247; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 7. 3. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 248; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 8; The FoolKiller, Volume 1, Number 1.

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4. Alspaugh, “A Conversation with James Larkin Pearson”; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 9; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 248; Arthur, “James Larkin Pearson,” NCC; The Fool-Killer, Volume 1, Number 1. 5. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 249–50. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Arthur, “James Larkin Pearson”; Alspaugh, “A Conversation with James Larkin Pearson”; McFarland, “James Larkin Pearson: North Carolina’s Printer-Poet,” reprinted from the Charlotte Observer, June 9, 1929, NCC; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 250. 9. The Fool-Killer, Volume 1, Numbers 5 and 9. 10. Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 10–11. 11. The Fool-Killer, Volume 1, Number 7; Volume 2, Numbers 1, 5, 9, 11, and 12; Volume 3, Number 1. 12. Ibid., Volume 1, Numbers 7 and 8. 13. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 10; Volume 2, Number 3. 14. Ibid., Volume 5 Number 6. 15. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 1; Volume 2, Numbers 4 and 5; Volume 4, Number 4; Volume 5, Number 2. 16. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 1. 17. Smith, Subterranean Fire, 69. 18. The Fool Killer, Volume 1, Number 1. 19. Ibid., Volume 2, Number 2. 20. Ibid., Volume 3, Number 3. 21. Ibid., Volume 4, Number 11. 22. Ibid., Volume 5, Number 7; Volume 8, Number 1. 23. Good News, Volume 9, Number 3. 24. Ibid., Volume 9, Number 6. 25. Ibid., Volume 9, Number 9. 26. The Fool-Killer, Volume 1, Number 1. 27. Ibid., Volume 1, Numbers 4 and 6. 28. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 5. 29. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 6; Volume 2, Number 2. 30. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 10. 31. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Claude Carlton, February 17, 1922. 32. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Claude Carlton, undated. 33. JLP Collection, Reverend John Milton Samples, March 8, 1920; The Fool-Killer, Volume 14, Number 3. 34. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Wiley Dickerson, January 30, 1920. 35. JLP Collection, R. L. Willis, June 20, 1926. 36. JLP Collection, Frank Zeller, September 10, undated. 37. The Fool-Killer, Volume 6, Number 3. 38. Ibid., Volume 6, Numbers 4 and 5. 39. Ibid., Volume 1, Numbers 1 and 9; Volume 4, Number 12; Volume 5, Number 4. 40. Ibid., Volume 5, Number 3. 41. Ibid., Volume 12, Number 10; Volume 14, Number 1. 42. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 2; Volume 2, Number 4. 43. Ibid., Volume 2, Number 6; and Volume 3, Number 9. 44. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 5; Volume 2, Number 1; Volume 3, Number 2.

FIVE The Fool-Killer Part Two: The Paper Evolves

Pearson did not spend all his time preaching to his readers, and as befits a newspaper The Fool-Killer also addressed current events. Pearson provided his subscribers with information on the 1910 passage of Haley’s Comet, the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan in Atlanta, the post-World War I bonus payment negotiations, and countless other contemporary stories. More dramatically, he offered extended coverage of Tennessee’s evolution controversy, national politics, and World War I. Such reporting allowed him to keep his readers informed and provided him yet another avenue from which to offer forth his unique worldview. Despite the success such coverage engendered, Pearson wearied of the effort and during the 1920s he began to tinker with the paper. That tinkering did not sit well with his readers, and as the Depression arose, The Fool-Killer collapsed leaving Pearson without a steady income as the nation plunged into the great economic catastrophe. Before that collapse came, Pearson offered some insightful and informative reportage and analysis of the evolution debate and the turmoil surrounding the Scopes Monkey Trial in neighboring Tennessee. The issue of evolution first attracted The Fool-Killer’s attention as a result of developments closer to home. In June 1922 Pearson commented on the problems facing Wake Forest College, where Dr. William Poteat, a practicing Baptist, president of the college, and a biology professor, openly admitted to teaching evolution and natural selection in his classroom. Poteat’s lectures created a frenzy thanks to T. T. Martin, a Mississippi evangelist, anti-evolution activist, and author of the anti-evolution tracts Hell and the High Schools and Christ or Evolution. In 1922 he traveled throughout North Carolina railing against evolution and demanding Po71

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teat’s ouster. Poteat survived the challenge and remained president of Wake Forest until his retirement in 1927. That did not stop Martin and his supporters, who foresaw eternal damnation should evolution remain part of the curriculum. They continually pushed for a state law banning the teaching of evolution, and in 1925 D. Scott Poole, a Democratic state legislator from Hoke County, North Carolina, took up the idea and proposed just such a piece of legislation. Despite several legislative defeats, Poole pushed the bill for years. Pearson initially found himself on the side of Martin and Poole. In fact, he argued that the reason Poteat survived the challenge and the reason the Poole bill failed was that the Wake Forest president had calmed the masses by making them think he had given up his support for evolution and would stop teaching it. Although he never did anything of the sort, Pearson asserted that he had and that he had lied about his agenda, as proved by the fact that Poteat called evolution “an incontrovertible act.” 1 Pearson did more than just challenge Poteat, however; he also offered his own explanation for why evolution could not work, an explanation that harkened back to his theological issue with the immortality of souls. In this case, however, he used the Baptist belief in immortality for his own benefit. Specifically, Pearson asked how, if humans evolved from animals, man had an immortal soul but animals did not. He assumed such was the case and pondered at what point along the evolutionary line man got a soul: “Now if tadpoles have NOT got immortal souls, and men HAVE got immortal souls, and yet if man evolved up from a tadpole or a sand lizzard, I ask in all seriousness—Where and when and how did man get that immortal soul?” 2 Despite contradicting his own theology, as well as being a dramatic misunderstanding of evolution, Pearson used it as the basis for his rejection of the theory. Public interest in Pearson’s ideas was minimal, however, as the controversy at Wake Forest was relatively minor and remained localized. In May 1925, however, the issue exploded when authorities in Dayton, Tennessee, arrested science teacher John T. Scopes for violating the newly passed Butler Act which forbade the teaching of evolution. The result was the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial and a nation riveted by the case. Much of that interest had to do with the lawyers involved. William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate, a former Secretary of State, and a progressive hero, represented the state, while Clarence Darrow, a renowned defense lawyer and a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, represented Scopes and the defense. The courtroom battles entranced the nation and provided Pearson another opportunity to espouse his views. Although he still opposed evolution as a scientific theory and continued to attack it throughout his coverage of the case, Pearson believed the Scopes trial had nothing to do with science. Instead, he viewed it as a case

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relating to the separation of church and state, and as such he considered it improper for the government or churches to tell teachers what to teach. He argued that “no religious group has any right to demand special favors of the state,” and he asserted that preventing schools from teaching evolution because it conflicted with church belief was just such an instance. It was not simply the separation issue that offended Pearson; so too did the manner in which opponents, including Bryan, attacked evolution. He argued that in most cases they simply offered “one man’s view” of the Bible. 3 As he did previously with the issue of the immortality of souls, he demanded people use Biblical facts, not interpretations, in their attacks on evolution. There was one final issue as well. Pearson noted that months earlier he had read a newspaper article which explained that coal and oil were the residue of plant and animal life that had existed millions of years ago. That, he argued, seemed to give lie to the young earth theory and offered at least some plausibility to the theory of evolution. He wondered why no one complained about that concept, and theorized that all the current uproar was simply hyperbolic publicity seeking. 4 In the end, Pearson rejected the theory of evolution but believed it was improper to prevent it from being taught in the schools. As befitting a humor paper, of course, Pearson also offered his own skewed take on the hullabaloo and the theory in general. Of the outrage he wrote, It recently became known that certain monkey professors in some of the monkey colleges had been teaching to the young monkeys a strange new theory called evolution. . . . The monkey professors have written books in which they submit evidence to prove their contention, and before the monkey parents knew what was going on this terrible theory was being taught to the monkey children in all the monkey schools. All patriotic and self-respecting monkeys will now rise up on their hind legs and raise a terrible howl and demand that this evolution stuff be cut out of all the monkey school books. It is a well-known fact that God made the first monkey out of a cocoanut, because you can see the monkey’s face in the cocoanut even till this day. 5

Even when addressing a serious scientific theory he could not restrain his humor. In a “Sermon on Evolution” Pearson went even further and offered his own unique perspective on the two sides of the debate. He explained evolution thusly, Darwin says we are hatched out of a frog-egg and lived on worms and other small game for the first billion years of our life. Then we hopped up in a sickimdog tree and lived on the installment plan and our wife’s kinfolks for the next billion or so. Then one day we happened to be reading the “Tadpole Times” and we saw where a two-legged man could get an easy job in the Garden of Eden. So we climbed down from

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That idea, he argued, was accepted by many, “but there has always been a little bunch of crazy cranks like Moses and [William Jennings] Bryan who just won’t have it that way. They claim to have some kind of book that tells it different. They can prove that their book is right smart older than Mr. Darwin’s book and a good deal more apt to be right.” 6 After laying out both sides of the argument, Pearson then offered a way to settle the debate: “Why don’t somebody ask the monkeys about it?” He suggested that if we did, the monkeys probably would be the ones offended: “How would you like to have it throwed up to you that you were the ancestor of a two-legged thing that chaws terbacker and cusses and tells lies and cheats and swindles and fights with gunpowder and ain’t got sense enough to live at peace in a world of plenty without letting half of the population starve to death?” Pearson’s answer, “no decent monkey would stand for such a slander against its race.” Indeed, Pearson later had a monkey address the issue: Dear Mr. Editor: Will you give me a space in your paper for a regular blue blooded monkey to say a few words? I see in the papers that you human folks have got up a terribly hot argument on the question of Evolution, and I want you all to understand that we monkeys are interested in that too. When it comes to bringing such awful charges against our monkey race as some of your scientists have done, it is time for us to speak up and defend ourselves. I see that a man by the name of Darwin has made statements that all you forked tongued things with shoes on can trace your ancestral line back to us monkeys. I shall now give you a few monkey reasons why the Darwin theory cannot be true. In the first place, monkeys are peaceable folks. We never invented gun powder, submarines, poison gas, and TNT. We never had a great world war among us and butchered up and starved twenty million monkeys just to humor the whim of a half dozen monkey Kaisers. We hardly ever get sick if let alone. It is only when taken captive and kept in your human society that we pine away and die prematurely. Therefore we have no use for drug stores and doctors, hospitals and hot water bottles. We have never had a lawsuit over a line fence, and we don’t need a great army of monkey lawyers to protect our personal interests from other monkeys. And then again, we monkeys don’t commit sin. We never have to be threatened with hell fire and damnation to keep us straight. We don’t need the services of a million monkey preachers continually trying to drag us into heaven. We monkeys don’t have to make money in order to live. We don’t have to sit humped up all day counting column after column of foolish

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figures on paper, and I’ll bet five bushels of coconuts against your store teeth that we get more enjoyment out of life than you do. Yours truly, Chimpan Z. Monkey. 7

Pearson thus had great fun with the evolution debate, but he also kept his readers informed of the ongoing developments and prodded them to examine their own thoughts on the subject. Evolution was not the only hot button issue Pearson addressed in The Fool-Killer; he also kept his readers up to date on politics. Among the political issues he addressed and long supported was female suffrage. As early as 1910 he came out in support, and jokingly argued that granting women the vote would give them something to talk about other than local gossip. On a more serious note, he attacked those who claimed women were not capable of voting by noting that he knew “thousands of tobacco-scented, likker-guzzling, foul mouthed good for nothing pantaloon racks who would go naked and perish to death if their poor little wives didn’t take in washing.” If such men could vote, he argued, so too should women. Finally, he challenged the idea that due to all the cussing, drinking, and smoking a voting precinct was no place for women. To that he wrote, “Question: who makes it that way? Answer: The men! The presence of women would change all that. Woman suffrage will purify the atmosphere around the voting place. And whatever will purify the voting place will purify the nation.” 8 Not only did women deserve to vote, but allowing them to do so would be good for the nation. One year later, in 1911, Pearson returned to the issue and again assailed the reasons many offered for why women should not be allowed to vote. With tongue firmly in cheek, he explained that the freedom of the nation would collapse if women voted because they were “too pure and angelic for such business, and that’s why their influence would corrupt and destroy our free institutions.” He also jokingly worried that if women voted there would be no one at home to take care of the kids. Of course, he went on, it was fine for women to leave the kids at home so they could work in the mills or factories or department stores, “but to walk a few steps once in two years and drop a piece of paper in a box— that would take her out of the home and away from the babies and just tee-totally ruin everything.” He finally concluded that women were the intellectual equals of men, their moral superiors, and could do no worse a job of governing the nation. 9 In 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote was ratified, and Pearson was proven correct. In 1911 Pearson moved from suffrage to the corruption and inequities of government with a “Fourth of July Oration” penned by “Uncle Sam.” In it, “Uncle Sam” explained that he was the “sole owner and operator of the Great American Circus,” where “If you are a billionaire you can have a reserved seat with upholstered cushions, and a nigger boy to serve you

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ice cream and lemonade, free of charge. But if you are a poor devil you’ll have to crawl in under the tent and stand up, and if you ask any special favors I’ll have you arrested.” Carrying on the metaphor, he explained that the circus was a great place to have your pockets picked clean, where a good Bible cost ten cents but bad whiskey cost five, where congressmen with three wives got plaudits while a poor man with two got jail, where “we make bologna out of dogs, canned beef out of sick mules, and corpses out of the people who eat it,” where “we send a man to jail for stealing a chicken and to Congress for stealing a railroad,” and where “the checkbook talks, sin walks in broad daylight, justice is asleep, crime runs amuck, corruption permeates our whole social and political fabric, and the devil rides headlong over everything.” 10 After excoriating the entire political system, he then turned his venom to presidential politics. During the 1912 election he laughed off sitting Republican President William Howard Taft, but said he liked Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party. Roosevelt, who had served as president after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 and won election in his own right in 1904, declined a second full term and instead handpicked Taft as his successor in 1908. Dissatisfied with Taft’s policies, Roosevelt returned to the political arena in 1912 and ran on a platform that included calls for a graduated income tax, inheritance taxes, workers’ compensation laws, and child labor laws. Those programs appealed to Pearson, but only because he believed they had been “stolen bodily from the Socialist Party.” That theft worried him, and he wondered what else Roosevelt would steal. He specifically feared Roosevelt might steal the nation’s democracy, and he proceeded to call him a demagogue and to compare him to Napoleon. In the end, however, what worried him most was that so many of the nation’s richest and most powerful men were putting their money behind Roosevelt. He thus saw the former president as “just another plutocratic pill sugar-coated with imitation Socialism” who would speak for the masses on the campaign trail but would serve the moneyed interests once in the White House. 11 When Democrat Woodrow Wilson, or “Woodpile Will-soon” as Pearson called him, won the 1912 election, Pearson joked that the nation’s elite feared for their wealth and power. As such, he included a “Plutocratic Prayer” in February 1913 in which he had the wealthy begging “Will-soon” to allow them to continue to exploit the nation: “Now Master Will-soon, we leave us in thy care. We pray thee to give us all a cabinet position; and if there’s not enough offices to go around, then make some more. Help us pile up great fortunes and oppress the poor, even as we have been doing. These favors we ask in the name of hypocrisy, graft, and rascality. Amen.” By 1920 and the end of Wilson’s two terms, which Pearson believed showed that the plutocratic prayer worked, he had grown sick of both parties. He viewed them as one in the same, both serving the needs of the elite, and argued that elections simply resulted in

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“Uncle Sam pull[ing] off his old stinking sox to put them back on again.” 12 Related to politics, and indeed one of the biggest events The Fool-Killer addressed, was World War I. Pearson did not serve in the war, being thirty-five when it started in 1914 and thirty-eight when the U.S. entered the conflict in 1917, and he later reflected that had he been of age he would not have made a good soldier: “I have never believed that war is the sensible way for nations to settle their disputes. Therefore I wouldn’t have killed my fellow man with very much enthusiasm. I think it must have been divinely ordained and prearranged by the Higher Powers that I should not be a soldier.” Although he did not serve or fight, he did cover elements of the war. Not surprisingly, he used humor as one manner of examining the conflict and published a poem entitled “When the War is Going to End” that skewered the constant rumors of a cease fire: Absolute knowledge I have none, But my aunt’s washer-woman’s sister’s son Heard a policeman on his beat Say to a laborer on the street That he had a letter just last week, Written in Latin— (or maybe Greek) From a Chinese coolie in Timbuktoo Who said that the Negros in Cuba knew Of a colored man in a Texas town Who got it straight from a circus clown That a man in Klondike heard the news From a gang of South American Jews About somebody in Borneo Who heard of a man who claimed to know Of a swell society female fake Whose mother-in-law will undertake To prove that her seventh husband’s niece Has stated in a printed piece That she has a son who has a friend Who knows when the War is going to end. 13

Most of his comments, however, addressed the war seriously. Indeed, he was serious enough that in September 1914 he added “The paper, in spite of its name, does not believe in killing people” just below The Fool-Killer masthead to reflect his opposition to the conflict. The subheading ran for the remainder of the war. More substanitve evidence of his opposition to the conflict actually began to emerge prior to the outbreak of hostilities. With both sides in Europe itching for a fight, Pearson lamented the drive for war. What outraged him was that the political elite of Europe were the ones pushing for the war, yet they claimed to be pushed to that stance by the masses. Pearson rejected that idea and argued that the masses, who would be the

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ones who fought and died, desperately wanted to avoid a conflict. However, “A few ambitious and irresponsible kings and emperors have become jealous of each other and decided to settle their personal disputes by murdering a few million of their poor, innocent, subjects.” Since that was the reality, he offered an alternative: “If the kings and emperors would get out in the back lot and fight it out amongst themselves, it would tickle me to hear that they had killed out all their useless breed. But no!— they must keep hid behind a palace wall and send out all their nation’s best manhood to be butchered up like dogs.” 14 When fighting finally erupted in August 1914, it was not simply world leaders whom he accused of driving the world to war; he also blamed wealthy businessmen. Pearson asserted that the war had been engineered “just to please a few confounded pot-gutted millionaires” who saw the conflict as a money-making enterprise. He went on to charge that the war helped bankers who loaned the government money, with interest; it helped industrialists sell more munitions; it helped newspapermen sell more papers; it helped church leaders attract more parishioners, as people prayed and tithed for their beloved soldiers; and it helped the politicians who had something else about which to complain. The only people who would not gain from the war were the people who fought it— the masses. 15 These sentiments were firmly in keeping with Pearson’s socialist sensibilities, and as noted earlier, he desperately hoped the war would stimulate public appreciation for the ideology and put pressure on the warmongers to end the fighting. When neither development transpired and it appeared the United States was about to enter the conflict after a German U-boat sank the RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915, and killed 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, Pearson again objected. He admitted that it was a shame people died, and even worse that some of them were Americans, but he wondered if people would have been so exorcised if those who died had been poor. He also asserted that claims the ship was attacked without warning were lies, as the German government had warned Americans not to sail into belligerent waters. He went on to argue that even if they had not been warned, people should have been smart enough to avoid a British ship in the midst of the war. 16 As part of the same antiwar argument Pearson took on the “Preparedness” campaign, which sought to train American civilians in the military arts. Arguing that there were other more important things the government could be addressing, like helping poor people, he attacked the very essence of the campaign as a waste of time and money. Worse, he argued that it was artificially stimulating a desire for war on the part of the American public. Finally, he complained that those pushing the campaign were not going to be the ones to fight and die. As such, he called them “a purty confounded, cowardly, criminal crowd of crooks.” When the campaign continued despite his attacks, he published a mock letter

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by “Europe” in which the anthropomorphized continent sarcastically praised preparedness and snidely reminded the American public how well a similar campaign had served its purpose on the continent. 17 Despite such clear opposition to the war, once the United States formally entered the conflict in April 1917, Pearson was uniquely silent. Indeed, he only returned to the war in November 1918 after the armistice, and then only to examine the Paris Peace conference, not to reflect back on the war itself. Pearson later explained why he went silent: “The World War was going on and by the time the United States had gotten into it, it was dangerous for a paper like mine to be too outspoken. I was in no sort of shape to go to jail for my principles. But I must have gone very close to dead-line of safety sometimes, and I suspect that others went to jail for less radical things than I said. The Fool-Killer had always been for the ‘under dog’ and always very anti-military.” Pearson specifically feared the aforementioned Sedition and Espionage Acts; and he had real reason to be afraid. In 1918 his friend and fellow socialist Eugene Debs was arrested in Canton, Ohio, for violating the Espionage Act while making an antiwar speech. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. More than 1,500 others fell afoul of the law, and Pearson feared it might be turned on him. He also believed that many of his competitors, who were jealous of his success, used the laws and the war in general to bad mouth him in an attempt to ruin his paper. 18 Fearing arrest or ruination, he decided The Fool-Killer would keep a low profile throughout the war. Pearson did more than muzzle The Fool-Killer during the war; in August 1917 he shuttered it and replaced it with a religious-centered paper entitled Good News. From August 1917 through July 1919 religion was the near sole focus of Pearson’s journalistic efforts. As he explained in the first edition of Good News, the paper’s goal was to give “this war-weary world a message that really is good news,” specifically the news that “we are just at the beginning of the Thousand Years of Peace, during which Christ will rule the world in righteousness. The earth is going to be fit to live on after this.” Pearson made this change only after much thought, and in later years he explained he had become interested in end of time prophecies and came to believe the war was “the beginning of the great TIME OF TROUBLE predicted to come at the end of the Gentile Age.” Convinced a Biblical prophecy was about to unfold, he wrote, “it began to be impressed on me that I ought to launch out in this new field of Bible Truth and try to open the blind eyes of the people.” 19 It should come as little surprise that the focus of much of the new theologically centered paper was on two issues Pearson had long complained about: eternal torment and the immortality of the soul. Now with more space to focus on these issues, he elaborated on his complaints. Of eternal torment, he argued that a loving God would never inflict such punishment on anyone. He also asserted that there was no Biblical justifi-

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cation for eternal torment and that what the Bible really taught was that the wicked simply would remain dead with the second coming and would not get to enjoy a renewed life like the saved. 20 Of the immortality of the soul, he argued that mankind’s punishment for “Adam’s sin was just plain DEATH, and not life in any state nor condition. Moreover, it was an eternal death, from which there was no hope of delivery.” He went even further when a subscriber asked what the soul was. In response he wrote, The Soul is the Whole Person, including body and breath and mind and everything that goes to make up the individual being. It is a mistaken notion to say that a man HAS a soul. There is not a syllable of scripture for the belief that man HAS a soul of any kind, either mortal or immortal. The correct way to say it is that man IS a soul. And it takes ALL of the man, including his physical body, his breath, his life, his mind, his memory, his emotions, and everything that constitutes his conscious individual being—it takes all that to make a soul.

Therefore, when a man died so too did his soul. He assured his readers, however, that Jesus’ sacrifice allowed man the opportunity for a second life, but that opportunity came only after the death of both body and soul. 21 Pearson had made these arguments before and in an effort to move Good News beyond these old assertions he addressed other theological issues. For instance, he made a list of errors that had infiltrated mainline Christianity: heaven exists “up above the skies somewhere”; you go to heaven or hell when you die; the second coming will be visible to all the world at once; and “the End [will] be announced by a literal trumpet blast in the skies.” By contrast, he explained what Christians really should believe: the human soul is mortal and subject to death, but it has the chance for a second life should it accept Jesus; every human who has ever lived has an equal chance for salvation; those who refuse that chance will not face eternal torment but “will simply be blotted out of existence”; “the second coming of Christ will not mark the end of all natural life on earth”; and “Hell does not exist.” 22 While the readers of The Fool-Killer may have enjoyed Pearson’s diatribes on religion, the narrow focus of Good News cost him subscribers. Despite his effort to broaden his religious focus, the paper floundered, his income dropped, and in August 1919, with the Treaty of Versailles signed and World War I finally over, he resurrected The Fool-Killer to replace Good News. About the change back, Pearson told his readers that while Good News was well received, “I have had to deal with so many blind, ignorant creed-bound fools that I have come to the conclusion that the old name is more appropriate after all.” He further explained that The Fool-Killer allowed him to address more issues and a wider range of top-

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ics than he could in Good News, and he was excited to return to a more diverse form of journalism. 23 In reality, there may have been other reasons Good News failed. Pearson had grown weary of the grind of putting out a monthly paper and came to despise the banality of its content. Indeed, as early as July 1917 a writer for the Wilmington Dispatch reported that Pearson found writing the paper a hindrance, rather than a help to make his literary success. He says that he has never been proud of The Fool-Killer, as it has never represented his literary ideals and as one writer put it: “Those who have made their acquaintance of Pearson through The Fool-Killer have obtained their view of him from the wrong angle.” Pearson is not satisfied with the success of The Fool-Killer and says he feels that eight years of his life has been wasted—years that ought to have been fruitful in poetry, but on the other hand money made with the aforementioned paper has enabled him to provide many comforts for his sick wife that poetry might have failed to do and so it may be after all that he has done the best thing that he could. 24

Pearson made similar comments to another writer, explaining, “I have never really enjoyed writing the class of stuff which the Fool-Killer contains, but as it has proven to be quite successful from a financial standpoint I have tried to keep it up, realizing all the time that I was neglecting my better talents.” He went on to call the paper “a coarse slapdash thing, droll and sometimes funny and appealing mostly to uncultured rabble. I do it only because my better work will not sell, and that fool stuff does go a little better. It is a shame that a writer who wants to write better things must do a thing like that to live.” To yet another he complained, “It is very disheartening to think that the public will go crazy over my ‘FoolKiller’ trash (which is of absolutely no value) and will not notice my serious work on which I put my best efforts—the very highest and best that I can do.” Pearson was able to overcome that sentiment as The FoolKiller was bringing in money, but the economic failure of Good News exacerbated the dread that his real ambitions as a poet and a serious writer were being subsumed by the need to continue his “meal ticket.” 25 An additional problem was that Cora remained ill after her return from Florida in 1913. Frequently Pearson spent much of the night at her bedside nursing her through an attack, only then to set out for the writing table or the print shop to create the latest edition of the paper: There was seldom a night that I wasn’t up nearly half the night working with her, trying to do something for her ease and comfort. Many nights I didn’t try to go to bed at all; I only dozed a little in my chair. More than once I went a week without ever undressing for bed at night. This was going on right through the midst of my biggest prosperity. How I managed to hold up under it is a mystery. I got so used to losing sleep that it seemed to come natural for me. . . . After going

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Not only did Pearson compose the entire paper, he also edited, typeset, and printed both The Fool-Killer and Good News, and he oversaw subscriptions and accounting. In an effort to ease the burden, he first hired some local women to do the accounting and some menial labor around the print shop. In mid-1914 he went further and announced plans to hire additional writers. His call for work “got enough copy to choke several elephants,” but none of it was up to his standards: “Even the best of it was no more like my original word slinging than a dead mule’s carcass is like a box of young monkeys.” It was not until December that he finally found a writer worth hiring, and in the last edition of 1914 he introduced W. S. Morgan from Missouri as the first outside contributor to the paper. Pearson explained to his readers that Morgan was the author of several books and had contributed to a number of magazines. Morgan then introduced himself, explained that his goal was to make The Fool-Killer “the biggest little paper in the world,” and promised to “give you a clean cut paper, one that does not require a college education to understand, and one that strikes straight from the shoulder in exposing falsehood, false systems and corrupt practices.” To demonstrate that agenda, the December issue not only introduced the readers to Morgan the man but to his writing, as the edition included a poem and seven of his articles. The essays ranged from a celebration of Christmas to a collection of fake classified ads (including one offering for sale four million Bull Moose backbones “most of them used but once,” and another offering for sale eight U.S. senators and fifty U.S. Congressmen). 27 Morgan then penned nearly the entire January 1915 issue, with essays on “The Church of Mammon,” a poem entitled “Teddy’s Lament,” and a study of the “Gods of the 20th Century, which included the Gods of Greed, Lust, Pride, and Graft.” He penned much of the February issue as well, with studies of the Democratic Party, a “Sermon on Mammon,” and a “Devil’s Letter” to the “ninnies of earth.” In each edition Pearson included a request to his readers that they provide feedback on Morgan’s work. That feedback was largely negative, and Morgan received only two attributions in the March issue and none in April. Undaunted by Morgan’s failure, in April 1915 Pearson introduced readers to E. J. Wilson, whom Pearson explained would contribute a few articles each month. Wilson received two attributions in April, but never again appeared in the paper. 28 In May Pearson addressed his readers directly and explained that the reason he sought help was that illness in his family made it hard for him to do all the work. While he praised Morgan and Wilson’s contributions,

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he asserted that the readers wanted his writing, not that of a hireling. As such, he announced he would return as the sole writer for the paper. In later remembrances of the time, however, he was not so positive. Of Morgan and Wilson he wrote, “the stuff they turned out was as flat and soggy as a moldy flapjack and it didn’t sound anymore like my own ‘Fool-Killer Stuff’ than the dying groan of a sick jackass sounded like an angel band.” 29 The result was that Pearson resumed his position as the sole writer for The Fool-Killer and penned most of Good News as well. When The Fool-Killer returned to replace Good News in 1919, Pearson was thus exhausted, frustrated with the content, and weary with the entire enterprise. The result was a serious decline in the quality and the quantity of the paper. Pearson missed a number of issues and resorted to reprinting articles from earlier editions. Readership, which initially revived with the return of The Fool-Killer, subsequently declined and caused Pearson even more unhappiness. In an effort to reenergize both the paper and himself, in January 1923 he yet again changed the name of the paper, this time to Pearson’s Paper, and announced “our old friend ‘The FoolKiller’ is dead and gone.” He explained that the cause of death had nothing to do with the readers and everything to do with illness and “my backwoods location.” He then admitted, “I have become very tired of the name. It doesn’t appeal to me as it once did.” In fact, he argued that his writing and his mental state no longer fit the paper. With a more refined and highly developed intellect than he had when he first began publication, he could no longer “endure the crudity and coarseness of The FoolKiller” which required him to “be a monkey or a clown.” He decided the time was right, instead, to offer a more serious take on the problems the world faced, and he determined he could no longer do that under the auspices of The Fool-Killer. 30 Pearson’s Paper not only differed from The Fool-Killer in its content and attitude, it also was different in that throughout its run it relied on additional writers. Cora was the first new addition to the staff, and she wrote a column entitled “The Joycrafter” in which she hoped “to create joy in any way it is in our power to do so.” In her first installment she encouraged others to think happy thoughts as the best way to achieve happiness, asserted that “mind has power over matter,” and explained that the source of that power was God. She concluded with a list of “Joy Building Suggestions,” which included: “I CAN do it—I KNOW I can”; “I will have faith in God. I will have confidence in myself”; and “I will keep smiling.” In later essays she explained that her goal was not to cause people to change their religion, but rather to help them get more out of their current one. As a part of that, she encouraged readers to fight their fears, to create positive spaces for the ill, not to dwell on morbidity, and to believe all things were possible with God. She specifically argued that without God there was no chance for joy, and she encouraged people to

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practice and live their faith. 31 Cora continued to offer such advice throughout the run of the paper, but only as her health allowed. Pearson hired another contributor in the form of his neighbor and distant relative Paul Crouch. Crouch would later gain fame and infamy as a court-martialed soldier, a Communist, and an anti-Communist informant, but at the time he was simply a cub-journalist. Crouch acted as associate editor and published scattered and random essays on a wide array of contemporary issues. In “Thoughts From Here and There,” he pondered what the future would look like and suggested the collapse of the capitalist system was imminent. He argued the modern world was no good anyway, that its loss would be meaningless for most, and that the youth of the world would bring about the reordering of a better society. A month later he encouraged people to seek anything that would make the world a better place, even if it challenged traditional norms and beliefs. 32 He offered numerous similar essays, assorted book reviews, and generally a younger man’s take on the world. Despite Cora’s words of hope and Crouch’s radical perspective, the new paper did poorly. Rather than return to the lowbrow humor people wanted, in June 1923 Pearson offered a final edition of Pearson’s Paper and then shuttered the press. 33 He had been writing and publishing his own paper for thirteen years and it seemed the time had come to take a break. Lacking a steady income, missing the thrill of the job, and despite his previous concerns, Pearson returned in February 1925 with a revamped The Fool-Killer. As he explained in that new edition, the name change to Pearson’s Paper did not work: “It wouldn’t go. I found out you folks wanted The Fool-Killer and nothing else.” He elaborated that with the collapse of Pearson’s Paper he did not have enough money to restart The Fool-Killer, but with a move to Pores Knob, North Carolina, which he explained was closer to business centers, he believed he could afford to return to the endeavor. The paper remained in Pores Knob until November when he returned it to Wilkesboro, and he continued to put out editions through August 1926. An extended period of “sickness and other family troubles” forced him to close the paper until September 1928, when he returned promising to revive the paper as of old. The revived paper appeared for the rest of 1928 and January 1929, but failed to come out in February or March. 34 One cause of that failure was Cora’s lingering illness. Although at the time he asserted he would never blame Cora for his troubles, he did so frequently. In both personal letters to her and in explaining to others the cause of the paper’s demise, he always noted the role Cora’s illness played. Years later he was even more explicit and wrote, “Sickness in my family finally wore me down and caused me to neglect the business. The paper could not be run without me, and I was no longer able to give it my attention. Of course, it soon began to lose ground rapidly. That was the end. The paper had to die all because I was no longer able to write the

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‘funny stuff’ that would keep it alive.” It was like trying to be “funny at a funeral,” he explained, and while he was able to continue the charade for a time, the stress eventually proved too great. 35 While family problems helped undermine his revived paper, another setback was the appearance of a new local postmistress who rejected his application for a discounted mailing rate. Pearson claimed she judged his “heart to heart” talks with his readers about the status of the paper as advertising. Doing so meant he surpassed the amount of advertising allowed in an amateur paper and increased the postage rate to that of a commercial paper. The higher cost precluded publication, and in a letter to the postmaster general, he complained about the ruling on two counts. First, he contended, “these friendly and breezy letter from my readers, and these personal and human-interest talks with my readers, are not advertising within the meaning of the law.” Second, he claimed other amateur papers were publishing similar material without being charged the higher rate. 36 The appeal failed, but he managed to put out the April, May, and June 1929 editions despite the higher rate. Then The Fool-Killer disappeared forever. Although saddened by its end, Pearson eventually decided the paper’s failure was evidence he had outgrown it: I can’t get away from the feeling that The Fool-Killer isn’t the right thing for me to do. I suppose it used to be the right thing, and that it was one of the logical steps in my development. But I have passed on that stage and left it behind—or at least I OUGHT to have left it behind. But I am dragging it on with me, and I am afraid that is a mistake. My attitude towards life has changed so much since the days of the FoolKiller’s success that I never can be the same again and never can make it the same. I take that to mean that I am a better man and have higher ideals than I had at that time. For then I accepted The Fool-Killer as the proper channel through which to express myself. But the SELF that I had to express then was not the SELF that I have now, and I don’t like to feel that I am doing something that I must keep hid from my BEST FRIENDS—my LITERARY friends.

He also decided the failure was a sign from God: “I have thought, too, that the great difficulty I have in getting the paper started again may be the method that Divine Mind is using to tell me that it isn’t the right thing to do.” Finally, he realized his politics had changed: “While my sympathies are still with the underdog, I no longer believe in the methods of hate, antagonism and fighting that the agnostic radicals use. My study of psychology, New Thought, Unity, etc., has taught me that the ‘classconscious’ feeling which the radical organizations encourage is a wrong and harmful state of mind. So every time I write a ‘Fool-Killer’ article in that vindictive and fighting spirit, my better nature is telling me that it isn’t the thing to do.” 37 In other words, the socialist impulse that had impelled him to begin the paper had begun to wane.

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Despite such thoughts, the final collapse of the paper was heartbreaking, as it had been the focus of his professional life for twenty years and had provided some financial stability to the family. Pearson also loved the intellectual stimulation he got from the paper, as well as the opportunities it gave him to interact with his readers and to explore new ideas, theories, and philosophies. Sadly, not only did he lose the paper and its stimulation, he also lost his job. Although he still had the fifty acres in Boomer and was able to return to life as a farmer, the loss took its toll. As he noted years later, “The end of the paper meant the end of our income. The sickness and the expenses went on. It didn’t take long to use up all of our savings and we were as poor as when we started.” 38 Despite that sad end, Pearson’s work on The Fool-Killer, Good News, and Pearson’s Paper further exemplifies his spirit, individualism, and humanity. He overcame a great deal and made countless sacrifices to publish his papers. He also presented his unique perspectives on evolution, politics, war, and religion, even when those ideas threatened his freedom and his income. At the same time, he demonstrated his inherent humanness as he clung to his paper even as it proved unfulfilling and yet lamented its passing once it closed down. In a sense, all of these factors were expressed publicly thanks to the very personal nature of the paper. What most readers failed to appreciate, however, was that below the surface Pearson faced even greater crises. As the various papers waxed and waned, he struggled to resurrect his poetry, to care for his beloved yet ailing Cora, and to fulfill the demands of new fatherhood. We can add these issues as factors that exhausted him and helped bring The Fool-Killer to an end. Pearson fought on regardless, and once again demonstrated that Tar Heel spirit. NOTES 1. The Fool-Killer, Volume 13, Number 8. 2. Ibid., Volume 12, Number 3. 3. Ibid., Volume 13, Numbers 6 and 7. 4. Ibid., Volume 13, Number 10. 5. Ibid., Volume 14, Number 2. 6. Ibid., Volume 12, Number 3. 7. Ibid., Volume 12, Numbers 3 and 5; Arthur, “James Larkin Pearson,” NCC. 8. The Fool-Killer, Volume 1, Number 4. 9. Ibid., Volume 4, Numbers 1 and 5. 10. Ibid., Volume 2, Number 7. 11. Ibid., Volume 3, Number 6. 12. Ibid., Volume 3, Number 12; Volume 4, Number 1; Volume 10, Number 10. 13. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, John Pearson; Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, 269; Greensboro News, October 11, 1970. 14. The Fool-Killer, Volume 5, Number 7. 15. Ibid., Volume 7, Number 9. 16. Ibid., Volume 6, Number 10. 17. Ibid., Volume 7, Number 3.

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18. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 255; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 11. 19. Good News, Volume 8, Number 2; Pearson, “Autobiographical Sketch,” 12–13. 20. Good News, Volume 8, Number 5. 21. Ibid., Volume 8, Number 4; Volume 9, Number 9. 22. Ibid., Volume 8, Number 12. 23. The Fool-Killer, Volume 9, Number 10. 24. Wilmington Dispatch, July 22, 1917. 25. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1910–1919, Diary entry, September 13, 1913; Arthur, “James Larkin Pearson,” NCC; JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, James Larkin Pearson, February 19, 1917. 26. McFarland, “James Larkin Pearson: North Carolina’s Printer-Poet,” reprinted from the Charlotte Observer, June 9, 1929, NCC; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 254. 27. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 254; The Fool-Killer, Volume 5, Number 10. 28. The Fool-Killer, Volume 5, Numbers 11 and 12. 29. Ibid., Volume 6 Number 3; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 254. 30. Pearson’s Paper, Volume 12, Number 8. 31. Ibid., Volume 12, Number 9; The Fool-Killer, Volume 13, Numbers 6 and 9. 32. Pearson’s Paper, Volume 12, Number 12; Volume 13, Number 1. See also Taylor, The Life and Lies of Paul Crouch: Communist, Opportunist, Cold War Snitch. 33. Pearson’s Paper, Volume 12 Number 8 and 12. 34. The Fool-Killer, Volume 13, Number 2; Volume 14, Number 7. 35. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 297; Timblin, “James Larkin Pearson: North Carolina’s Poet Laureate.” 36. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Miscellaneous, July 9, 1929, typed letter to the Honorable Third Assistant Postmaster General, Washington, DC. 37. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, James Larkin Pearson, July 26, 1929. 38. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 297.

SIX The Will to Get Well

Although The Fool-Killer was the center of Pearson’s life for nearly two decades, during that era other important facets of his life continued to develop. He tried to write poetry, Cora continued to struggle with her health, and together they welcomed a new child into the family. Nothing seemed to go smoothly, however, which may help explain his obsession with the paper—it served as an escape from the difficult realities of his world. He could not escape forever, however, and as he produced The Fool-Killer and faced life’s many challenges, he demonstrated his continued ability to overcome. While The Fool-Killer took much of his literary attention during the 1910s and 1920s, Pearson tried to find time to devote to his poetry. Those poetical respites became especially important as he grew increasingly frustrated with the style of journalism he was producing. The effort proved unfulfilling, however, as he found himself drafting but single lines rather than completed poems. On September 16, 1913, for instance, he wrote several lines of poetry in his diary which he hoped to work into a future poem: “The witching artistry of dreams”; “The wooden stiffness of the law”; “A glint of white along the flowered way.” The next day he noted that the lines were “the beginnings of a poem which I want to write about the poet who, ere he has found himself, takes up the study of law, but he soon finds it too dull and prosy for him and abandons it for ‘the witching artistry of dreams.’” Whereas he had once composed complete poems behind the plow on the family farm, now he could produce only snippets and make plans for future works. As he confided to his diary, “My great desire now is to write poetry—real poetry—and I don’t seem to get the time. I have too much ‘business’ on my mind.” 1 Sadly, it was not simply The Fool-Killer business that kept Pearson away from his poems; Cora too occupied much of his time. Although she 89

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remained ill, during her brief periods of relative health Pearson helped her write, and by 1917 she had composed a small collection of poems entitled Bluets and Buttercups. Pearson encouraged her on the project and when complete he printed it on his press. Consisting of twenty-two poems printed on twenty-four pages, the work contained personal poems about Cora’s life and struggles. It should come as no surprise that “Our Little White Rose” was in the collection, or that there also was a poem entitled “To Blanche Rose,” which was written for what would have been her ninth birthday. The collection also included “In Florida” and “For James’ Birthday,” poems about her longing for Pearson. Most of the poems, however, had to do with her deep Christian faith. In “The World’s Need,” “Judge Not,” “The Way, The Truth, The Life,” “Be Ye Ready,” and others, she addressed her love of Christ and her abiding faith. The collection garnered few sales or critical analysis, but Cora was pleased to see her work in print. Determined to carry on, and again thanks to a period of relative health, in 1920 she completed a second work. This was a novel entitled “The Double Standard.” Although presses rejected the manuscript and Pearson proved unable to publish it himself at the time, Cora found some solace in the written word and enjoyed nearly three years of healthy, active living. 2 As the 1920s progressed, however, her health again took a turn for the worse and by 1922 she was back in a sanitarium, this time in Statesville, North Carolina. Cora and James had come to believe medication was not the answer to her disease, so this institution sought to cure her ailments through chiropractic work. While her first treatments caused her to “act the baby and cry a little,” she believed in the procedures and informed Pearson, “I am not caring about going home until I go to stay.” She also claimed to have spoken with several former patients who had endured the pain and ultimately been cured of their various diseases by chiropractic work. Indeed, she quickly saw her weight improve from ninety to ninety-eight pounds. She warned Pearson, however, “[Dr. Miller] says ‘your case is of too long standing to make rapid progress.’ So don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed.” Appreciating the expense involved in such an extended stay, she suggested Pearson sell the piano or the phonograph to raise money and urged him not to purchase a new car: “It wouldn’t pay you to go in debt for a car just to have a nicer looking way to come down here. It would be better to pay the jitney fare a few times than to go into debt again. The world is in too bad shape to be proud beyond one’s means. There’s too many people living at such a rate as that.” 3 Pearson, of course, still was running The Fool-Killer at this time and was trying to continue his poetry. The result was an occasional lack of compassion for Cora’s suffering. After a visit in late April 1922, he informed her that he was impressed by some of her progress but was upset

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that she viewed herself as a second-class citizen and allowed herself to be treated poorly and below her deserved station: The main thing I noticed was a difference in your NERVE. You may not be able to see it yourself, but there is a big difference in your ability to face people—to mix and talk and trade. You had just been here in the backwoods until you had got afraid to see anybody. The improvement is no doubt due partly to the adjustments, and partly to just being there among people. You intimated that Bertha [Cora’s sister] moved in the highest society of Statesville, but you were far below that, and that just anything was good enough for you. Now let’s not have any more talk of that sort. You are better and smarter in every way than Bertha is, and you KNOW it. You have more education and more brain capacity, ten to one, than she has. Your little Book, “Bluets and Buttercups,” has placed you among the North Carolina poets, and this is an honor and distinction which Bertha can never hope to attain. And besides that, you are the wife of a man who is widely and favorably known as a poet, and who is going to be still more widely known in the near future, when my “Complete Poetical Works” are brought out. So you have every reason to throw back your shoulders and hold up your head as the equal, at least, of anybody you meet. Let your consciousness of REAL WORTH forbid any feeling of false humility. Mix with the folks. Look them in the eye and talk to their heads. I know it can be done, because I have done it. I used to be as silet [sic] and glum as you ever were, and when I got out in the world I MADE myself talk until it became easy. . . . Cultivate Nerve! . . . Now DO it! And let me see some REAL RESULTS the next time I visit you. Just lifeless, listless dragging won’t accomplish anything. You have tried that long enough. So get busy. Put every life-cell of your body into active operation, and GET WELL! I know it can be done, and I expect to see you do it. Let’s go.

If such a pep talk was designed to raise her spirits, it failed. Cora replied that the nerve she had displayed during his visit was a façade, and that while he was looking at old tires during one of their walks she “had a cry.” She also explained, “I’ve never had any trouble getting along while out among strangers—they don’t know me and are not mentally picking me to pieces like home folks. Don’t make it harder for me when I go back by talking to folks there about how I do here.” She did admit, however, “your letter was fine advice and I’ll do the best I can.” 4 When her doctor subsequently informed her that she would need another seventy-five to one hundred adjustments before she was better, she again grew despondent and wrote Pearson, “it would be silly to give up and just quit so long as there is hope of future benefit and as long as the money is available. . . . But unless you bring yourself and my home down here I don’t know whether I can tough it out so long or not.” He

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again responded with not one but two seemingly inappropriate letters that simply urged her to stiffen her resolve. In the first he wrote, Are you just getting tired of it? I know that place has its disadvantages, and I wish you had a better staying place where you would have a nice room to call your own. . . . But if you have got homesick and dissatisfied you will not do any more good nohow. One of the main things necessary in order to get well or get any benefit from the treatment is for you to be SATISFIED and CONTENTED. Any kind of worry or homesickness will destroy all your chances of getting benefit from the treatment. It is for you to decide. IF you can’t get settled and SATISFIED you just as well come home. You have already got your back and shoulders in much better shape, and by the right kind of living and thinking you might go on improving even at home. But I hate for you to give it up if you CAN get satisfied to stay. When you are here you are not satisfied to stay HERE. Where WOULD you be satisfied? What is it that you want? Try to sit down and analyze yourself and see what it would take to satisfy you. You have just GOT to control your mind, for I tell you that is the main source of healing, anyhow.

Later that same day he wrote in a similar vein, “I am so anxious to stick to it and win this time if you can; but if you allow your mental resolution to weaken—if you give your mind any chance to lead off into the path of doubt—you just as well quit and come home. Of course for many reasons I would like it much better to have you here, but I want you to get well worst of all. But now that you seemed to lose heart and get home-sick, I don’t know what to say nor what to do.” He concluded the letter, “Cheer up and be brave.” 5 Evidence that he was employing the wrong tactics came from her reply: “The positive, ‘you can do it’ statements in your letters sound good, and if I could persistently and continuously ‘just know I’m going to get well’ I will, in spite of my own discouragement. When I feel good I’m able to keep in the right mental state, but I just can’t when I feel bad, and you know I’ve been feeling bad so much here lately.” 6 The growing frustration and concern with Cora occasionally led Pearson to lash out at family members, including Cora’s sister Bertha, whom he accused of ignoring Cora and doing too little to help him take care of her: The time for you to have done something for Cora was three years ago; but you preferred to run off and have a “big time” with people who didn’t need you. We needed you right then as never before, and you could have been a great comfort to us; but you throwed away the opportunity, and now it is too late! You say if anything serious happens I must let you know. What would you call serious? Maybe you think what has been going on all this time has been fun? I tell you it is all serious. If Cora is ever going to need your love it is while she is still alive and suffering. Love that does not mean anything in life will not be

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worth much in death. It will not do her any good for you to stand over her coffin and weep bitter tears of regret. May God have mercy on you, and soften you heart, and show you your duty. Sincerely and sorrowfully yours. 7

Amid such family tumult and uncertainty, Cora stayed in the Statesville clinic for three months, leaving in late June 1922. Despite the treatment, she remained ill and demanded much of Pearson upon her return. Indeed, while Pearson may have been happy to have his wife back, he soon was complaining about the lack of “quiet or leisure in which to concentrate or commune with the Muses.” He also grumbled about the additional housework and caregiving efforts he had to undertake. He seemed a man who could not be happy. 8 More sadness arrived in 1923. John Milton, Pearson’s brother, had a very different life than did James. He focused his attention on carpentry and mechanical pursuits, and continued such work despite losing two fingers on his right hand in a 1912 buzz saw accident. The loss of those fingers prevented him from serving in World War I, although he did travel to Virginia during the war to construct army camps. In 1919 he contracted influenza, but survived the disease that killed more Americans than the war itself. Single throughout his life, he died alone on April 29, 1923. Pearson and John were close, and in memory of his passing James wrote a number of poems about his brother, including “John” and “My Bud and Me.” The relatively young death of his brother certainly was no balm at a time when he had so much additional stress in his life. 9 Despite the sadness of John’s death and the difficulties resulting from Cora’s continued health struggles, once reunited Cora and James decided they needed a child to complete their family. As she expressed it, “If we don’t get one now it will be a lonesome old age. Even if I got well enough to have one of my own, the lonesome environment . . . would be a poor pre-natal ‘training ground’ because of my natural inclination to morbidness [sic].” Determined not to jeopardize her life or their child’s development with a pregnancy, they decided to adopt. In 1922 they went through the red tape and were approved by the state as possessing a home worthy of adopting a child. Although Cora’s continuing health issues led them to delay action briefly, they began visiting the Children’s Home of Greensboro in early 1923. There they were introduced to a “bright little girl of five” named Agnes. As when he fell in love with Cora, Pearson immediately was smitten with the young girl: “It didn’t take me two minutes to know that she was the right one.” Agnes later remembered their first meeting thusly, He was leaning forward a little with an air of expectancy, one rough stained hand holding a tattered hat on his knee. . . . We looked at each other a long moment, while I locked in the wordless emotions of a

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Chapter 6 frightened small child, stood poised in the doorway. Then I felt the expressions of warm welcome on his face settling like a blanket across my shivering spirit. So gently he spoke: “Hello. Don’t you want to come over and meet your new daddy?” Somehow the old hat was fumbled aside as I went with sudden complete trust into his outstretched arms and into a wonderful chapter of my life. The Poet had adopted a daughter. 10

They labored through all the additional red tape, and on May 2, 1923, took Agnes home. The new family celebrated her birthday on May 5, 1923, when she turned five, and according to Pearson, from the very first day she “fit in” and adopted her new Papa and Mama as readily as if she had always been with us. Her hair and eyes are the exact color of mine and if it is the common remark that “Why, she looks just like you.” Well, why not? Was she not sent as a gift from God to replace the lost Blanche Rose, and might she not be a resurrected Blanche Rose? At least, God was surely able to see where was the one most like us in the thousands of homeless ones and it was just as easy to send the right one as to not. 11

The three got along well, and for a brief time they were able to think beyond the press, the poems, or Cora’s suffering, and to focus instead on the joy of young Agnes. Pearson spent much of his time teaching Agnes, and he was pleased with the speed with which she learned to read and write. He saw an early affinity for poetry in the young girl and claimed she had “a bright mind and was quick to learn. Soon she was beginning to show an originality that we had not expected. She could go to the piano and improvise little melodies, composing the rhymed words as she went along; and we soon found out that our daughter was a natural child-musician.” Pearson encouraged Agnes to write down the poems and songs she composed, and in 1926, when she was eight, he set, printed, and bound them into a small booklet entitled “Glimpses into Poem-Land.” The majority of the seventeen poems deal with the glory and power of nature, although Agnes showed some significant personal insight in the poem “Lonely Girl” in which she watched several schoolmates pass by her house and pondered various methods of making them her friends. 12 Father and daughter also had fun exploring the fifty-acre farm and the surrounding countryside. In later reminiscences Agnes recalled that his hands “were companionably ready for a small hand to grasp when we walked about the farm. They could give a conspiratorial boost up to apple tree limbs for a peek at pale blue robin eggs” or knot “a length of rope in a low growing limb when a small girl wanted to swing. A few exhilerating pushes were always in order also.” Even when he was at work Agnes enjoyed being with him, and she described following along as he plowed the fields: “Behind him in the straight, deep moist furrow

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could be seen his devoted followers, one small child with enraptured bare feet, one inquisitive puppy and one or more industrious chicken.” Similarly, she enjoyed watching him set type and sit at his typewriter where she saw him hunt and peck with his forefingers at a “rather respectable speed.” Agnes quickly grew to love her new parents, and her stock phrase became “I’m happy all the time.” She was, in Pearson’s words, “the light of the home.” 13 By 1927, however, Cora’s illness was shadowing Agnes’ light. Agnes remembered waking at night to see her father tending to Cora’s every need as she struggled for breath. She recalled watching him “bending over her straightening pillows helping with a drink of water or just standing in helpless misery as she fought the asthmatic’s agonizing battle for breath.” She also noted, “To me the lovely word cherish has had the warm deep meaning of that unfailingly devoted care of my foster mother throughout her life.” 14 Despite such care, it soon became too much for James and not enough for Cora, and she took Agnes and moved to Morganton, North Carolina. There she hoped to find a cure for herself and better schooling for Agnes. While Cora and Agnes were away Pearson tried to refocus on his poetry, but with little success. Despite that failure, in September 1927 he assured Cora of his future achievement: “I am going to succeed again before I quit. I’ve just GOT to make some money. . . . I am going to make SOMETHING pay before long.” 15 That success would come, but in the meantime relationship issues once again plagued the couple. After Cora wrote him a loving letter, he responded, It is news to me that you are “grown to me like the bark on a tree.” It has seemed to me for years that I have been nothing more than a “waiting boy” and a mighty poor one at that, and that you would be glad of a chance to get away from me permanently. While I had money you could sorter endure me, but since I have been a “failure” there has been nothing at all to hold you to me except the lack of means to get away. This feeling that you were merely enduring me because you had to has been a constant nightmare in my thoughts, and I have wanted you to have a chance to get away. But of course I want you to be BETTER FIXED and BETTER SATISFIED than you were here with me, and that requires just one thing—money. If I can get something started to make money again, then you can live wherever you please and have a good time. I can’t insist on you coming back here to this cheerless place if there is anything better to be done.

Cora responded with consideration in her next letter: Of course it has been hard for you to understand my feelings toward you, because you are so emotional I haven’t had the courage to act out what I really felt. And we have been so irritable and fussed so much that it is a wonder we have got along as well as we have. Because I

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Chapter 6 haven’t got the physical side of love to give you I suppose you have failed to consider the other side. . . . of course you will always feel responsible for me for you are too noble to renounce me entirely. But I like to feel it is still prompted by the same old love—but I am not requiring any more than you can give me. I’m sure I don’t love you a bit less than I ever did, and I’m sure I love you more with the right sort of love. . . . Happiness only comes from the inside, and I’m as happy now as when I had more money I’m sure. I naturally have had to lean on you as a “waiting boy” and perhaps I could have leaned a little bit easier, but I hope that you did not think that was all the use I had for you. But it makes me cry too much to think along this line and that goes against me. I haven’t spoken much love in my letters, but I hoped you could read between the lines. But now if you want to start up love letters there’s no telling what all I could say. But don’t call yourself “waitin’ boy” any more please. . . . And I do hope you will no longer have those false nightmares you speak of. Really we are both getting old enough to quit being foolish. 16

Despite that rather balanced response, several weeks later she offered a darker view of their relationship when they were debating whether or not she and Agnes should return home. She wrote, Of course I’m willing to stay on if it will help you any, for Agnes and I add to your worries. Outside of that the financial part is as good one way as another. If we could keep a home for Agnes it is much better for her, but it seems you and I can’t be suitable companions. This community life is fine for her in one way, but it is bad for the cultivation of home life and ties. I guess your literary ambitions are of more value to you and the world than to be a home father, and as I have to share the responsibility of her perhaps it will be impossible to give her the ideal home life. You must think all these things over well before we make any final decision. 17

One idea they thought over as a sort of compromise was for Cora and Agnes to stay with Pearson’s parents. Cora eventually torpedoed the idea because she did not like Pearson’s father: “If it were not for your daddy I wouldn’t mind staying with Mrs. Pearson and doing her cooking, but I can’t have him over me as a boss.” Their domestic uncertainty thus continued with Cora at one point realizing, “I dread to stay here and I dread to go back—I like to stay here and I like to stay there.” They eventually decided Cora and Agnes needed to return to Wilkes County, if for no other reason than finances. Pearson simply could not afford to support two households. Despite that decision, he remained worried about their reunion: “As the time draws near for you to come back home I am getting sorter anxious about it. I want you back, and yet I don’t know how I am going to provide for you. I had hoped to get things in better shape while you were gone, but I haven’t made any progress. Haven’t written a line

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fit to print since you left. The trouble about finances has made writing impossible.” 18 Finances were not the only factor that led to the reunion—Pearson truly missed his wife and desperately missed his daughter. During their separation he grew sad that Agnes expressed little interest in returning home, and once she even stated “No, I don’t” when asked if she wanted to return to Wilkes County. Pearson demonstrated his sadness oddly, however, once complaining that since Agnes had failed to send him letters he was going to stop sending letters to her as punishment. He ultimately relented, realizing she was simply a child acting as children do. What concerned him more, however, was her emotional and intellectual development. Indeed, one of the reasons he allowed Agnes to travel to Morganton with Cora was his belief that she would get a better education. He also hoped the setting would keep her from getting spoiled and would address some of their other concerns about her: “I know she’s as bright as any but she doesn’t apply her mind to the lessons and doesn’t speak out as readily as some of the others. Her nervous condition has not been improved any by the haphazard drifting we allowed her to do there at home, I suppose. She certainly does need careful training but I don’t know how she’s going to get it.” 19 Ultimately believing the lessons she was learning in Morganton were no better than those in Wilkes County, he called his family back home in late 1927. Although the family was reunited by the end of the year, sadness once again subsumed them when Pearson’s mother, Louise, died on Christmas day 1927. She had been sick for ten days and fell into a coma several hours before she died. Pearson’s father, Bill, subsequently moved in with the family. The sad and expanded household did little to make life easier for any of the family members, and by 1929 Cora and Agnes were back in Morganton. This time they took up residence in an institution focused on the Kellogg model of dietary health. As a part of that model, Cora was placed on a low-fat diet that required her to consume large amounts of fruits and grains. She also was required to partake in physical exercise and to undergo regular enemas. She did not particularly enjoy the regime, but it seemed to have some positive impacts. Her weight increased from eighty-seven to ninety-four pounds, and she generally reported feeling better. While she gave some credit to her new routine, in a letter to Pearson she also hinted that simply being away was part of the cure: “I think weller than I was there, for I have not been coughing and throwing up as much old stuff. It is a great load off my mind to be free from the burden of trying to housekeep there and of course the food here is better for me.” She expressed great hope to remain at the facility for an extended period, noting specifically in June that she hoped to stay until Christmas. She also worked to justify the stay by reminding Pearson that the cost was half of her Florida stay: “Everything is not perfect here, but I

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paid $100 a month in Florida and didn’t get any better attention than here. And the $45 pays for two here.” 20 Although Cora seemed to be getting better, the conflict between the two remained obvious. In May she told him, “Agnes is at school, and of course it is going to be hard to keep her here with me. But of course we are better off than we were there.” In June she wrote, “I have no notion of going back there for you to worry with as long as I can stay away. Now that the pain of leaving is over I have no desire to go back to the old conditions there.” Among the issues that seemed to irk her and engender this determination to remain away was Pearson’s focus on his own success. In June 1929 several of his poems received a positive write-up in the Charlotte Observer. He expressed his pride in the publicity and hoped it would help them financially. He seemed to spend a little too much time on himself, however, and not enough worrying about Cora. Her snippy response of “Yes, of course I am proud of your fame” seemed made more to appease him than out of a real sense of happiness. 21 Equally problematic was Pearson’s continued assertions that Cora simply had to try harder to get better; his calls for her to “buck up” thus persisted. In June 1929 he told her, Just make up your mind and stick to it that you WILL GET WELL. You know as well as I do that the mind is the main thing. Just forget that you have ever been sick and learn to think of yourself as perfectly well and strong. That’s what the Unity and New Thought teaching is, and I fully believe it WILL WORK if used right. Get the “sick-consciousness” out of you. If you are going to depend on the Subconscious Mind to help you, you must not keep it full of sick thoughts. That’s what you have been doing all these past years. And whatever you keep the Subconscious mind fed on—that thing will be materialized. So just FORGET the sickness. Don’t even give it enough thought to DENY it; because when you deny a thing you have got your mind on that thing and you are acknowledging its existence mentally. So instead of denying sickness, just FORGET it, put it out of mind entirely, and VISUALIZE yourself as physically perfect and full of life, strength and energy, just as you would like to be. That is the whole secret, but I know it is a heap easier said than done.

A month later he was back at it: “I still believe that FAITH ALONE can cure you if you can have the faith.” In August he became even more convinced that faith was all she needed and wrote, Here is a thought I got the other day from something I was reading: In Divine Mind there is no past nor future. It is all the Eternal Now. In an eternity which has no beginning nor end the years cannot count. If they did, God must have started young and by this time would have grown old. We can’t conceive of such a thought as God growing . . . feeble with age. Therefore, in Divine Mind, it is all NOW, and if a good thing is going to come ten or twenty years from now, it can just as easily

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come this minute. There is no use to wait for health and hope that you will get better five or ten years hence. Just blot out the past and have no more to do with it and be well NOW. Claim health as your divine right and KNOW that you have it—not that you are going to get it by and by, but that you HAVE IT NOW. 22

Cora was in no mood for such theories and regarded the very idea as an attack on her person. If telling his wife that she remained ill simply because she was not trying hard enough to get better was bad, what was even worse were his complaints that she was to blame for his failures and their struggles: “While it can’t be denied that your long affliction has been a hindrance to my progress as well as a check on your own ambitions, still nobody will ever hear me blaming you for it. People with any sense will know without telling that it has been like a millstone around both of our necks. There is no telling what heights we both might have reached by now if you had been well.” Despite the hypocritical and disingenuous nature of this statement, Cora responded rather kindly and only reluctantly reprimanded him for such views: “But of course I’ll do all I can to get well, but you are depending too much on my efforts. There are too many discouraging features for me to have confidence enough to believe that I can do as great things as you expect of me. I only expect you to do the best you can and that’s all you should expect me to do.” 23 Her exasperation, however, was evident by the fact that she began addressing her letters “Dear James,” as compared to her previous penchant for using pet names. As difficult as were the separation, the expenses, and the laying of blame, the biggest problem Cora’s illness created may well have been Pearson’s underlying and continuing sexual frustration. In one letter to Cora he wrote, I was just thinking about the status of our love life, if we can be said to have such a thing. For a good many years, and without any particular cause, we have just gone along without much show of affection on either side, and yet I am sure we love each other as much as we ever did. Maybe not quite so romantically as at first, but at least as genuinely. Perhaps I have blamed you too much for being frigid and sexless. I have believed that if you would be mentally friendly to sex and less frigid in mind it would help you physically. I have believed, and still believe, that your lack of sex life is largely due to mental obsession. But of course I might be wrong. Naturally your weak body could not support strong sexuality. So I have been wondering what attitude on my part would be best for you. Have you been feeling that I was neglecting you because I have not been demonstrative in my love like I used to be? Would a renewal of the old romantic courtship please you? I have the feeling all right—in fact, too much feeling. Unless I keep it chained down it is hard to control. So I have been purposely suppressing my feelings because they didn’t seem to meet any response in you. But

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Chapter 6 maybe I have been blind and unjust to you, and maybe you have all the time been hungering for more affection. If that is the case, I am ready to do my part in being your “sweetheart” again to any extent that you desire. Please believe me when I say that I have not grown cold, but that I love you as truly as ever. On your part you NEVER DID love me like I loved you, and if you are EVER to love me that way it must be an entirely new thing. How do you feel about it, sweetheart? COULD you fall in love with your old no-account poet? Maybe a genuine love affair (with me) is the very thing you need to make you bloom out into new youth and health.

Cora rejected the idea of renewing their sexual relations, but a week later he tried again: You advise me to go on keeping my feelings “chained,” and so I shall have to do it. If you can’t meet me at least half way there is no use for me to make a monkey of myself by any show of affection that is not reciprocated. I really love you the same as ever, but your coldness through all these years has forced me in self-defense to seem cold also. I hope your inner feelings are as true and genuine as you think they are, but that is not enough. Happiness in marriage is not based on Platonic love. Right there is your fatal mistake. The marriage contract calls for something more. I know your body has been weak and afflicted and not able to carry out the marriage contract, and I have long ago ceased to expect it—unless you could get well. Then I would expect it. But I still contend that it is your MIND that has made your body like it is. Somewhere very early in life (and maybe before birth) you got your mind warped with a Puritan complex that made everything pertaining to sex or marriage seem evil to you. And it remains in your mind as an obsession and has built itself into your physical being until you THINK you never can be changed. You don’t give any promise that you will even TRY to change and be more friendly to the basic facts of life. 24

Such sexual tension may help explain his exasperation, frustration, and irritability, and certainly demonstrates the difficult state of their relationship. Pearson clearly had plenty of reasons to be frustrated in the late 1920s. His family life was in tatters as he had four people to care for, his career as a poet was largely stagnant, and The Fool-Killer was dying its slow death. Despite all the drama, he continued to develop intellectually and artistically, and yet again demonstrated the Tar Heel spirit to carry on despite the struggles. At the same time, his irritability and occasional lack of compassion demonstrated some very obvious human flaws. In the subsequent years his humanness would be exposed and his fortitude would be tested like never before. Pearson’s life in the Depression-era turned into a rollercoaster as personal tragedy and professional achievement swung him from joy to sorrow and back again. Through it all, however, he persevered.

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NOTES 1. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1910–1919, September 16, 1913 and September 17, 1913. 2. Pearson, Bluets and Buttercups; Pearson, The Double Standard. 3. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, April 12, 1922; Tuesday Morning, undated; Saturday morning, undated; Monday afternoon, undated; Tuesday, May 1922; April 24, 1922; and June 8, 1922. 4. Ibid., May 2, 1922 and May 5, 1922. 5. Ibid., May 30, 1922 and May 30, 1922 (afternoon). 6. Ibid., June 1, 1922. 7. JLP Collection, Bertha Wallace, July 12, 1917. 8. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 294. 9. JLP Book Series, “Readings from My Fingers and My Toes”; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, John Pearson. 10. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, Saturday morning, undated; JLP Collection, W.W. Sebastian, July 13, 1922; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 255–56; Winston-Salem Journal, June 21, 1981. 11. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 261. 12. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Agnes Pearson Fox; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 257; JLP Collection, Cabinet 7, Pamphlet files, Agnes Vivian Pearson, “Glimpses into PoemLand.” 13. Winston-Salem Journal, June 21, 1981; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 257, 261. 14. Winston-Salem Journal, June 21, 1981. 15. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, September 26, 1927. 16. Ibid., September, 28, 1927. 17. Ibid., October 10, 1927. 18. Ibid., October 14, 1927; October 19, 1927; and October 31, 1927. 19. Ibid., September 15, 1927 and October 31, 1927. 20. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 293; Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, May 24, 1929 and June 8, 1929. 21. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, May 28, 1929; June 7, 1929; and June 14, 1929. 22. Ibid., June 17, 1929; July 12, 1929; and August 5, 1929. 23. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Cora, July 28, 1929; Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, June 20, 1929. 24. Cora Wallace Pearson Letters, July 12, 1929 and July 18, 1929.

SEVEN The Pleasure and the Pain

Like the nation at large, Pearson endured some dramatic turns of fortune in the late 1920s and early 1930s. With the collapse of The Fool-Killer he returned to farming full time, but he made as much time as possible for intellectual development and artistic creativity. The result was a reawakening of his interest in socialism, as well as the publication of two works of collected poetry and the creation of two new intellectual friendships. Sadly, none of those efforts created much wealth, and he and the family suffered real economic deprivation as the Depression deepened. Worse was yet to come, and the end of this era was marked by death and sorrow. Despite such suffering and frequent moments of doubt or selfpity, Pearson carried on. Ever since his Fool-Killer days Pearson had been intrigued by socialism. Although his faith in the ideology began to wane as the paper collapsed, he remained interested by its teachings and continued to study the ideology as a part of his general intellectual development. As a result of that study, he engaged activist, labor leader, and Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs in a lengthy correspondence of shared ideas and mutual respect. At one point Debs praised Pearson mightily: “You have already accomplished [something worthwhile in literature], my dear brother, and you are going to accomplish vastly more in the mature years before you for which you have now taken the difficult and trying preparatory course. Need I say that my heart is with you and that I wish you in all earnestness the realization of your happiest dreams and your highest aspirations?” Pearson responded in kind: “Your whole life has been big and noble and unselfish—a life of love and service—but perhaps the thing that most endears you to me is your intimate association with the poets. . . . A man that the poets can love as they have loved you needs no other recommendation to me.” Pearson further demonstrat103

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ed his respect when he cast his presidential ballot for Debs in 1920 despite the fact that the candidate was in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta as a result of his opposition to World War I. He also penned a poetic paean entitled “To Eugene Debs.” 1 It was more than just Debs that led Pearson to continue his study of socialism; he liked much of the ideology as well. He believed “that for the government to own and run everything would be just what the doctor ordered,” and he asserted that socialism “would be the surest way to curb the plutocrats and give the under-dogs their chance.” He also came to see socialism as different from other reform movements which frequently replaced one set of oppressors with another: “The ‘under-dog’ claimed to be awfully good and railed against the sins of the ‘upper-dog.’ But if and when his protest was successful and he himself got to be the ‘upper-dog,’ he was just as mean and unfair as the other fellow had been. It seemed to me that what the social rebels wanted was not a better and more just arrangement for everybody, but they only wanted to be the dictators and tyrants.” 2 Pearson believed the socialists were different than their predecessors and truly wanted to reorder society for the betterment of all mankind. Beyond his acceptance of the righteousness of the ideology and his adoration for Debs, Pearson also continued to align himself with the socialists because doing so gave him something to be a part of and a place where he felt he belonged. As he noted years later, The thought also came to me that to be identified with a small minority group was an advantage in that I would stand a better chance to be noticed there—the frog in the pond idea—and because so many poets and literary people were Socialists or in some degree left wing adherents, I would thus be identified with their cause. And I found this to be true. Many widely known poets and writers in the socialist movement noticed me, whereas if I had been an outsider they perhaps would not have done so. The socialist party was for me a sort of “Free Mason Lodge” in which I was the comrade and friend of people like Upton Sinclair, Eugene Debs, Theodore Debs, Kate Richards O’Hara, James O’Neal, Congressman Victor Berger, Mayor Daniel Hoan of Milwaukee, and dozens more. I knew and admired many socialist writers that I never corresponded with, and I recognized in them co-workers in a great humanitarian cause.

Not only could he belong, he could, metaphorically at least, rub shoulders with great men. Although he remained skeptical of the ideology’s atheism, feared its “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” nature, and “never quite went all the way with socialism,” he continued to study it throughout the era and found some solace and escape from his domestic concerns. 3 Pearson also found refuge in his poetry. Even if doing so proved harder than when he was young, the poems continued to flow from his heart and he won two second-place prizes in the Anne Spencer Penn

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Poetry Contest sponsored by the Pioneer of Statesville, North Carolina. One of the poems was “Kindred,” of which the judges wrote, “Mr. Pearson announces his kinship with other poets . . . and the form of the poem is consistent throughout.” His other poem, the sonnet “Cathedral Pines,” was described as “a good example of sonnet work” and was judged one of the top three of all the one hundred poems entered: The holy pines that worship on the hill Have built a dim cathedral of their own, More beautiful than any carven stone, More touched with magic of creative skill And classic lines to match the Maker’s will. A feathered choir sends up to heaven’s throne Music more rare than any organ tone, Bidding the world to listen and be still. One tallest pine of all the sacred grove Goes towering up, a great cathedral spire; An humbler tier the arching splendor bears. Glinting through lights and shadows interwove, The new-grown twigs, with passionate desire, Stand yearning up like little tender prayers. 4

As proud as Pearson was of such awards and accolades, he was even more pleased when in 1924 he was able to publish his second collection of poems entitled Pearson’s Poems. Consisting of more than four hundred pieces, the collection was organized chronologically with each poem including the date on which it was written and Pearson’s age at the time. Many of the works had appeared earlier in Castle Gates or in various newspapers, magazines, and journals, but a number of never-before-seen poems were included as well. The quality and content of the poems varied widely, and in the preface Pearson wondered “whether the stuff here presented is worth publishing at all.” Professional publishing houses answered that query in the negative, so Pearson again put out the work himself. Despite that, he was “rather pleased” with the result and left it to the public to determine the ultimate worthiness of the collection. 5 The book sold only modestly, however, and gained little national attention. That lack of attention was due in part to its limited distribution opportunities. Pearson had little ability to advertise the book nationally, and was forced to rely on the readers of his newspaper for orders. A larger factor was the new tone of American poetry. Beginning in the early twentieth century poetry changed dramatically, and this change was even more pronounced after World War I. By the time Pearson was offering up his second collection, the modernist movement that was emergent when Castle Gates appeared had become dominant. Poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, whose call to “Make it new” was the mantra of the movement, sought a formal break with the past, tended more toward free

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verse and the avant-garde, and focused thematically on man’s alienation and loss of individualism. Pearson rejected such developments and clung to traditional themes, rhymes, and meters. The literati thus found Pearson’s Poems dated and passé, and they had little interest in a work that harkened back to the poets of yore. Despite that failure at the national level, critics throughout North Carolina lauded the work. Unimpressed by modernism, the Durham Sun asserted that Pearson was “entitled to a gold star in the galaxy of North Carolina poets,” called him “a poetical genius,” assured readers that “he will be famous as a poet-laureate,” and concluded, “Mr. Pearson’s poems are worthy of a prominent place in every library where soul-stirring thoughts are wont to shine.” Frank Alderman, the vice president for North Carolina of The Verse Writers Guild of America, concurred and told Pearson, “[your work] shall cause your name to be written with blood and fire upon the hearts of men and in the Nation’s Hall of Fame.” Literary critic Samuel Loveman, meanwhile, described the poem “Homer in a Garden” as epic and “the equal of poetry written by any great poet— take any at hazard—Keats, Shelley, Blake, Swinburne, or who not else.” 6 Other critics took a more balanced approach. C. A. Hibbard of the Greensboro News wrote, “Were there nothing about the volume but its interest as poetry it could be dismissed in ten or fifteen lines. But there is just that something to it which demands serious and adequate consideration.” He went on to assert, “The volume gives ample testimony to the man’s ability to handle simple, sincere, close to the soil sentiment and common-sense. Dialect verse is, we think, his forte. . . . This book is a serious, dignified effort toward poetry. As such it deserves thoughtful consideration.” 7 Conversely, Hibbard offered some pointed criticism. He attacked the arrangement of the poems and argued that placing them in chronological order and noting the date and place of composition was a reward usually accorded only “a master poet.” He criticized the length of the collection as well: “We could wish, too, that the four hundred pages had been cut to forty. With that done, the sum total impression of the volume would be infinitely deeper; the first lesson a poet needs is temperance in print— and this Mr. Pearson has not.” Hibbard also complained that there appeared to be little growth from the earliest poems to the most recent ones, noted that the collection lacked “any point of view, any attitude, and, in short, unity,” and stated that Pearson spent too much time emulating the great poets rather than developing a style of his own. Finally, he lamented that many of the poems seemed like part of an exercise to demonstrate poetic versatility. Hibbard ultimately encouraged Pearson to focus on what he did best and concluded, “When Mr. Pearson learns to discipline himself more rigidly, when he learns not to print everything he writes, when, indeed, he settles into a style that is his own and not imitation,

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when he expresses his own self, we look for him to go far towards something really worthwhile.” 8 The Charlotte Observer also weighed in with a nuanced assessment. The paper found the collection “of uneven merit, his best poems reaching a distinctly high level, while some of the others are only mediocre,” and it joined Hibbard in suggesting Pearson focus his work. It also noted several errors and registered several complaints about word choice and rhyme scheme. The poem “Port Seekers,” the paper explained, was “marred by the obsolete word ‘wist,’ which is brought in for the rhyme; the emphatic position of this word in the next to last line makes it all the worse.” It also criticized the poem “The Kiss,” in which “the sudden lapse into colloquial prose brings in an incongruous note.” 9 Despite such concerns, the paper praised much of his work and in the process took its own shot at the modernist poets of the day: “The metrical perfection of Mr. Pearson’s work is most gratifying in this day of exasperatingly careless meters, when even editors do not seem to know what is correct, and when young poets, after seeing so much slipshod work published in the magazines, imbibe the fallacy that form is a matter of no consequence.” It judged “Aspiration” as “perfect in form, and as inspired in diction as in thought,” and asserted that “a poet who can thus give beautiful utterance to high thought and vision belongs to the inner circle of the elect.” In the end, the paper praised Pearson for having “a poetic gift of the highest order, comprising the twofold gift of thought and form, of high vision and adequate utterance.” It lamented, however, that “his superior talents have been somewhat obscured by the publication of a considerable amount of poetry and verse which falls below his best standards” and suggested, “if he will but keep his less meritorious work in the background . . . there is no reason why he should not take high rank as a poet.” 10 Pearson generally was pleased with the critical response to his work, and he took the local support for it as proof that his focus on traditional rhymes and meters was appropriate. He thus remained as committed as ever to the older style of poetry and became convinced that modernism was a passing fad to be ignored. While such beliefs renewed his artistic enthusiasm and energized his creative juices, the publication of Pearson’s Poems affected him in two additional and distinct manners. First, it offered him a lesson in the law. In 1911 he published the poem “When the Dollar Rules the Pulpit” in The Fool-Killer. He did not bother to copyright the paper nor the poem, and soon saw the poem being reprinted in other outlets, often without attribution. He considered taking legal action, but the business and his home life kept him too busy to follow through. When he published Pearson’s Poems he included “When the Dollar Rules the Pulpit” in the collection. By this point he had learned his lesson and took out a copyright on the book. He was shocked, therefore, when he learned that the OKeh record company was producing a record by Henry

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Whitter entitled “The Dollar and the Devil” with lyrics taken directly from the poem. Pearson himself explains best what happened next: I consulted a local lawyer who thought I had a case and that I could certainly get damages, or at least a royalty on the sales of the record. Then I secured the services of a regular copyright lawyer in Washington who agreed to look into the merits of the case. But when it became known that the poem had been first printed and widely copied without copyright, all my hopes were dashed to the ground. I couldn’t do a thing. It seems that the poem had become public property by reason of having been published without copyright, and my later copyright on the book wasn’t worth a cent in that case. The phonographic company goes right on making and selling the record of my poem, and I can’t get a cent. Can’t even get my name on the record as author of the words. 11

This wonderful opportunity to benefit financially from his poetry thus slipped by. The second result of the publication of Pearson’s Poems was much more positive and actually provided a career highlight. The work “Homer in a Garden,” which transposes his garden into the battlefield before Troy, remains one of his supreme compositions and brought him real national fame. That fame came as a result of assistance proffered by novelist and radical activist Upton Sinclair. Famous for his muckraking tracts The Jungle, The Money Changers, and King Coal, Sinclair also dabbled in politics, running as a Socialist for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1920 and for the U.S. Senate in 1922. He also was a supporter of poetry and edited several collections of the work of lesser known poets. As a socialist, a lover of poetry, and a friend of the downtrodden, he instinctively was drawn to Pearson when, in 1928, Cora sent him a letter regarding the family’s financial straits. Pearson was unaware of Cora’s letter, but when he found Sinclair’s reply, in which he promised to help, he was first appalled and embarrassed. He then had a change of heart and penned Sinclair a letter of thanks: I note your generous offer to write a letter or article about me for one of the New York papers. That is very kind of you, and I will be pleased to have you do so—if you can afford to stand sponsor for so humble and obscure a poet. It occurs to me that you might in this way start something that would result in getting me really recognized. I should not like to be presented to the public as a mere object of charity or of pity, a struggling poet who is begging for “help” because he needs it. There are thousands of such poor devils all over the country, and as suffering human beings they need help just as bad as I do, and most of them will never get it. Aside from what there may be in me as a literary possibility, I do not deserve any more consideration than the other would-be poets. It is only a question of whether I have something to offer the world that the world ought to have. Can I give full value for all I get?

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What I want is recognition for the work that I have done and can do, so that I will be able to pay my own way and not have to feel the humiliation of being an object of charity. . . . I don’t know what paper or magazine you have in mind, but whatever medium you choose to speak through will be satisfactory to me. In the meantime, if you can write anything for the newspaper or periodical press that will advance my interests in a literary (and financial) way I shall count it as a very great favor. And if I can ever do anything to return the favor I will always be at your service. 12

Sinclair fulfilled all of Pearson’s hopes, and then some. In March 1929 he sent the Author’s League Fund information about Pearson and his need for money. On March 20, 1929, the Fund sent Pearson fifty dollars and a letter of support. Then on April 4, 1929, Sinclair published an appeal in the New York Times entitled “A Poet in Need: Ill Health and Poverty Interfere with James Larkin Pearson’s Work.” It read, On various occasions The Times has published poems by a young poet from North Carolina, James Larkin Pearson, whose work has received from critics only a small part of the attention which it deserves. Pearson is a native American of the old stock and the old temper, and under happy circumstances might have grown up to be an American Robert Burns [the great eighteenth-century Scottish poet who often is referred to as a “peasant-poet” for his dialect filled poems about everyday life]. His life has been one long struggle with poverty, ill health and the needs of the family. For many years he published a little magazine full of real wit and native salt, called The Fool Killer. He set the type and printed it with his own hands, and its circulation grew, so long as his health allowed him to give most of his nights to work upon it. Being a man of finest feeling, he naturally does not like to tell his troubles to the world; but some time ago his wife wrote me a very pitiful and moving letter about the breakdown which was threatened, as a result of the double labors beyond his strength, and I have finally prevailed upon him to permit me to try to find someone who will appreciate his ability and give him the help which almost all poets have to have in one way or another. Among the readers of The Times there must be some lovers of literature who have a little of this world’s goods to spare. Pearson’s address is Boomer, NC. He has published his book of poems himself and sells it for $2; but, of course, he needs more than $2 if he is to be able to live and give his time to writing. I append to this letter one of Pearson’s loveliest poems. I think it may have been published by The Times some while ago, but it will not hurt to repeat it, so that lovers of poetry may see that there is a real poet on whose behalf I am making an appeal.

The article concluded with “Homer in a Garden”: A sheltered garden in a sheltered land, A pleasant seat upon the mossy ground;

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Chapter 7 A book of Homer open in my hand, And languorous sweet odors all around. Then suddenly the ages fell away; My sheltered garden floated off in space, And on some lost millennium’s bloody day I stood with storied Ilium face to face. The honeysuckle smells that would not fade Hung like a ghost above the fields of red, And every dreaming pansy-face was made The likeness of the faces of the dead. Such wonders were abroad in all the land, Such magic did the mighty gods employ, That every lily was a Helen’s hand, And every rose a burning tower of Troy. 13

Sinclair’s appeal was not the only help Pearson received. At about the same time “A Poet in Need” appeared, Charles Ernest Knowles published a small pamphlet entitled “Must He Wait Until He’s Dead?” In it he wrote, Americans have been so saturated with the idea that this is a land in which a person of merit is sure, sooner or later, to come into his own, financially, that it is difficult to get well-to-do people to even consider the possibility of the falsity of this view. The truth is, however, that a person of considerable literary ability, if not genius, may go through life unacclaimed, because poverty or some other obstacle prevents his work becoming known to the public. Probably there are few instances that more completely give lie to this common theory of a pursuing justice than the experience of James Larkin Pearson.

Knowles then told Pearson’s life of suffering and poetry, attached several of Pearson’s poems, and concluded by asking people to buy his books and help support the man and his work. 14 The response to both appeals was impressive. The very day Sinclair’s article appeared, future Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. wrote to Pearson, “I read Mr. Sinclair’s letter in today’s TIMES, and am giving myself the pleasure of sending you the enclosed $10. Kindly send me one of your books of poetry. Hoping that many others in this country will feel the same desire to help you as I do.” Humorist Will Rogers sent in a check for five dollars, muckraker Ida Tarbell purchased a copy, and the first lady of New York state Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, “Dear Mr. Pearson: I am sending you a small check and would be glad if you would send me the volumes of your poetry which it will cover. I will give them to some friends of mine and perhaps it may lead to your getting more orders. I was much interested in Mr. Knowles’ pamphlet, and wish that I could be of more service to you.” Pearson sent Mrs. Roosevelt five copies of the book and a letter which read,

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I was most happily surprised to receive your friendly letter of November 14 and your check for $10.00. . . . I had not expected Mr. Knowles’s booklet to penetrate into such high places and bring returns from the Governor’s mansion. . . . I feel some hesitancy about placing my crude and humble verses before so distinguished a representative of the cultural life of America. But since you have been so kind to respond to Mr. Knowles’s appeal in my behalf, I am going to hope that you will be as charitable as possible toward the weaknesses and shortcomings of my book of poems. . . . I thank you, Mrs. Roosevelt. 15

She responded with a Christmas card from herself and New York governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Home and Abroad magazine also took the hint and promoted Pearson’s work: “James Larkin Pearson strikes astonishingly exquisite notes—‘high as a star, clear as a tinkling temple gong.’ He rivals in several poems the beauty of [John] Keats [the great nineteenth-century British poet famous for his mythologically based poems], and he surpasses him in their passion. A magnificent symphony of song. This cornfield Keats of America has produced an important and enduring volume to which no poet of the past or present need be ashamed to sign his name.” 16 Such national notoriety forced North Carolinians to pay more attention to their hidden treasure. Although a number of papers had reviewed his book, the Winston-Salem Journal concluded that “it is a bit incongruous that North Carolina should fail to discover this man’s genius until after he has attracted the attention and respect of flint-hearted Gotham and the rest of the country at large . . . a bit incongruous and a bit pathetic.” Pearson seemed to concur with the paper’s assessment and lamented, “It seems that our people here in the South don’t pay any attention to such things. . . . It seems strange. Trying to be a poet here in the South is a thankless job. I love the South because it is my home, and it is a fine country and all that, but nearly all the help and encouragement I get comes from the North.” 17 It was not just that lack of recognition that caused him consternation, so too was the lack of financial gain: “Why am I getting so much favorable notice in so many ways—recognition that almost looks like the approach of fame—and yet it brings me no money, or very little? What can be the meaning of the wide divergence between my ‘fame’ as a poet and the financial returns from it?” That gap grew when he received a book entitled The Elbert Hubbard I Knew, a biography about the famed writer, publisher, and radical activist which was penned by his sister Mary Hubbard Heath. Hubbard’s son Elbert Hubbard II signed the book and sent along a personal note to Pearson. The letter caused Pearson to ponder his fate: Here I am, a poor uneducated mountain clodhopper, living in poverty and wretchedness and suffering, and deprived of nearly all the comforts and pleasures that other people have as a matter of course. And

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Chapter 7 yet there is something about me which is causing me to be noticed by the great people of the earth, and in many surprising and unexpected ways they manifest their interest in me. I met and talked with Elbert Hubbard just once in Washington, and he read The Fool Killer for years and was familiar with me and my work. But I am not supposed to be in his class. And yet his son does a thing which lifts me into the company of the great. What does it mean? 18

Pearson could never answer that question, and it haunted him the rest of his life. Wealth thus proved elusive despite the help of Knowles and Sinclair. Regardless, Pearson benefitted from their interaction if by no other means than continuing an extended correspondence with both men during which they spent much of their time focusing on the issue of religion. To Knowles Pearson wrote, It may surprise you to know that I have great respect for the views of the Agnostic or even the Atheist, if they are expressed in moderation. But when they become just as cock-sure and dogmatic in their “doubts” as the religious fanatic is in his “faiths,” then one is just as disgusting as the other. . . . I may be not so far from an Agnostic as it is. At least, I respect the viewpoint as being something within the bounds of reason and possibility. And I know it is a fact that nearly all the modern writers and thinkers lean strongly toward the Agnostic point of view. While on the other hand, those who hold to the old popular creeds are not, as a rule, very deep thinkers. When it is all summed up, I am decidedly FRIENDLY to the Agnostic view, though not accepting it fully. 19

While Pearson explained his relative sympathy for agnosticism in his correspondence with Knowles, with Sinclair he decidedly defended religion. Sinclair bashed Pearson for clinging to his faith, while Pearson tried to explain both his beliefs and his complaints with organized religion. It often seemed the two men were talking past each other, but it resulted in some fascinating debates. For instance, when Pearson claimed the Bible was a tool for telling the future, Sinclair wrote, I was very much disappointed to see that . . . you have got yourself mixed up with Bible mysticism. There is, so far as I can see, no more reason why one should look to find prophecies about present-day events in the Bible than in a collection of Negro songs from the Congo. The Bible is very good literature, and of course the Bible writers, like all other people, tried to peer into the future. But why any intelligent man should credit them with any special power to do so, passes my comprehension. 20

The debates continued when the two argued about the origins of the universe. Pearson referenced the Bible to support the idea that the universe was part of God’s divine plan. In response Sinclair wrote, “There

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are innumerable religions and mythologies and philosophies and systems of thought which attempt to explain the universe. The Bible seems to me one of the least plausible. . . . Don’t you see that you are simply writing as a victim of the Christian mythology?” Sinclair even went so far as to assert that such beliefs undermined Pearson’s poetry: “I think it suffers because of the fact that your attitude toward orthodox religion is conventional.” 21 Perhaps the most interesting bit of correspondence came when Pearson accused Sinclair of thinking that “it would be a decided blessing to the world if the Bible were put out of existence and Christianity were forgotten.” Sinclair called that “cruel libel.” He explained that he believed the Bible contained “a great deal of wisdom and nobility” and called Jesus “one of the world’s greatest revolutionaries, and one of my best friends.” At the same time, however, he asserted that the Bible contained “a great deal of rubbish,” he rejected the divinity of Jesus, and he concluded, What I believe is this: that we human beings are groping our way in this mysterious universe, and that we work out our moral codes as an adjustment to our environment; that different races of men at different times adopt different moral codes; and that none of them are perfect, and none of them are absolute truth. I think there have been good and wise men of many races and tribes; and I wonder if you really believe that all humane and wise men have been confined to your own variety of Christian doctrine? 22

Pearson responded by apologizing for his assertion that Sinclair wanted to destroy Christianity and the Bible. He admitted he got carried away and recanted those accusations. But he then went after many of Sinclair’s other assertions. Of Sinclair’s interpretation of Jesus and the Bible, for instance, he wrote, “You are quite willing for the Bible to survive as a mere human book, and you are willing for Jesus Christ to remain in the minds of men as a mere man. But when you have reduced them to that, you have destroyed them.” He continued with his explanation of Jesus and wrote, My belief is that during the 33 years of his life on earth he was only a man—but a perfect one. Understand, I don’t say that he was a MERE man. That would imply that he was just like other men. He was not. He was the perfect Pattern-man, and also the Life-Giver to a dead world. That is where the Christian religion differs from every other religion— it draws its power and vitality from the personality of its founder. Other religions rest on systems of thought or philosophy—abstract ideas—but Christianity rests on the person of Jesus Christ himself. It all hinges on where he DID rise from the dead, transformed into a God again. If he did not, then we give it up. . . . But we believe he DID rise from the dead, hence our hope that the dying race will also live again.

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For good measure, he then asserted that any contradictions in the Bible were simple misunderstandings and that many of the apparent problems with it would be made clear only when God decided we were ready to understand. 23 Pearson never converted Sinclair to his point of view, but the two remained friends, and Sinclair continued to help Pearson as he could. He included two of Pearson’s poems in his books—using “Homer in a Garden” in Money Writes and “The Prophet” in Another Pamela. Sinclair did more than simply include the poems; he also used the books to acclaim Pearson and seek out assistance. In the former work, after taking yet another shot at Pearson for believing “the wretched old Bible stuff,” he called him “a sort of American Burns” who “keeps sober and works hard,” yet “at the moment of writing . . . owns three dollars and twenty cents.” He encouraged his readers to “send two dollars for the book, and help feed the poet.” In the later work, Sinclair included a character named “Piers Plowman,” a North Carolina farm boy who was “modest and friendly in manner,” deeply religious but not doctrinaire, and supported Eugene Debs. Piers was described as a “people’s poet,” whose poems “are quite simple, and there is nobody that cannot understand what they mean.” Indeed, Sinclair juxtaposed such work with that of Irish modernist poet James Joyce, which the characters view as abstruse and indecipherable. While “Piers” went on to do many things Pearson did not, Pearson recognized himself in the character and even noted, “the name, Piers Plowman, was meant for me—‘Pearson the Plowman.’” 24 Pearson undoubtedly enjoyed the association and intellectual stimulation of corresponding with the likes of Knowles and Sinclair, but the relationships did little to fill his ever-dwindling bank account. As his savings from The Fool-Killer thus dried up, Pearson, who initially had been reticent to receive aid from Sinclair, soon grew bold in asking for direct financial assistance from just about anyone who would listen. In April 1929 he contacted writer and philanthropist Cora Gould, told her of his problems, explained that never drank or smoked, and concluded, “Perhaps I am too ‘moral’ to be a great poet!!” She sent him a $100 check in May. He graciously acknowledged the money, but then rather ungraciously explained that he needed a car, which would cost $300. In August 1931 she sent him a check for $200 and then purchased a car for the family. Pearson thanked her profusely for both gifts, but then informed her that if he was going to make his way back into the world he would need a new linotype printing press. In December 1931 Gould sent another check for $200 and promised to purchase the linotype machine of his choice; and indeed on Christmas Eve 1931 the press arrived to an ecstatic Pearson. Once again he pressed his luck, however, and he explained that to use the machine to its fullest he needed a whole series of additional accessories. Despite such seeming greed and ungraciousness, Mrs. Gould continued to assist him through 1937. 25

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The wolf remained at the door, however, and Pearson continued to reach out for help. In 1931 he produced a small pamphlet which he sent to those who had purchased copies of his work after reading Sinclair’s New York Times essay or Knowles’s pamphlet. He thanked the readers for purchasing his book, apologized for not thanking them sooner or more individually, and explained that the failure was the result of being “overwhelmed with work and worry” and with “having an awful time with sickness in my house.” He then explained that while some good fortune had fallen to him, in that a “good friend” had agreed to purchase a linotype machine for him for Christmas, trouble remained: “The old Building that my print shop now occupies is not in fit condition to receive the Linotype Machine. It must have a new roof on it, as the old roof is beginning to leak badly, and the floor and windows need some repairs. Also the building must be wired for lights and power, and the necessary shafting, hangers, and wheels put in. These repairs will cost around $300, which I must raise between now and Christmas.” He proposed that his readers could help him: “I still have on hand a supply of my book of poems (price $2.00), and I am hoping that each one of you will be good enough to speak to some of your friends and get me an order or two.” 26 The appeal came to little, and by the end of 1932 he was despairing: I have been going through unspeakable torment . . . and I am still in a worse than desperate fix. Everything that I had to look to as a means of support has vanished. My afflicted and dependent family is at the point of starvation. There is not food enough to last a week, and I have no money, no job, and no prospects of any sort. As a matter of fact, I could not go to a job if I had one, and I must stay right here at the house. There is no one else to do anything—I am cook, dish-washer, wood-getter, nurse, and everything else. My days and nights are so broken up and my mind is so confused and distressed that I can’t do any good writing.

Such despair eventually led him again to beg for help from his friends. In June 1933 he issued a pamphlet entitled “A Life of Tragedy—A True Story.” In it, he noted the good reviews his poems received, but said there was something hidden from the public’s view—his life of tragedy. He then wrote, This is not the time nor the place to give you a long winded “history” of myself. It is enough to say that my life, from the day of my birth until now, has been one long heartbreaking tragedy. Added to my own physical and mental handicaps which made my early life miserable, there came later the terrible affliction and suffering of my wife, who has now been an invalid for 26 years. This has completely ruined both of our lives, and has made it impossible for me to do the work I might have done.

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He concluded by noting that many of the great poets of the past suffered and died in poverty, implicitly lumping himself into the group, and he asked for his readers’ help in rescuing him from a similar plight. 27 Two months later, in August 1933, he put out yet another press release plea which read in part, Please read this letter and all the enclosed literature very carefully. I BEG you to read it, because it is almost a matter of life and death with me. I am sending this to you because I am in trouble and don’t know what else to do. I am hoping that you will be able and willing to help me in some way. You will see by reading the enclosed booklet of Press Notices that I am a man of some reputation. According to all the known rules, a man of literary standing ought to be able to get along well. But I have had such an awful misfortune in the way of sickness and suffering in my family for the past 26 years that I couldn’t get along and prosper like other men. It has been a constant and never-ending grind of hopeless drudgery. I have not had a day of rest or “vacation” for more than a quarter of a century.

After explaining that his daughter needed clothes and that he faced eviction unless he paid the tax assessor $32 dollars, he asked people to buy his books: “Please help me. I don’t want cold charity. I want a chance to pay my way honestly. I want to sell my books.” 28 Little money came from either appeal, however, so he continued his search and occasionally resorted to means other than asking for help from friends. In 1929 and again in 1931 he filled out applications for a Guggenheim fellowship. He listed his field as “lyric poetry” and explained that the purpose of his project was “to give utterance as best I may to the poetic inspirations that come to me. The ‘urge to write’ has been with me from childhood, and grows stronger as I grow older. But on account of sickness in my family, and financial difficulties, I do not have a chance to follow my chosen work except in a broken and spasmodic way. I sorely need financial help.” Under occupation he wrote, “Writing—poetry and other things—during the intervals when I am not otherwise engaged in driving the wolf from the door.” In each case he listed Upton Sinclair among his references. The applications provided no succor; he did not win a fellowship and the suffering continued. 29 Ultimately, the privations caused a return of the insecurity, self-doubt, and inferiority complexes that had plagued his youth. As he wrote to Knowles, I have learned, too, (by bitter experience) the power that MONEY gives to a man. In my prosperous days when I had plenty of money and was considered a successful businessman I could look the world in the eye and did not have the feeling of timidity and self-consciousness that I now have. I was a success financially, and that is about all the world looks at or considers. People looked up to me then, not because I could write a little, but because I had MONEY. Now that I am down and out

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financially they look down on me because I have no money, although I am a good deal more widely known as a writer than I was in my prosperous days. That means nothing to the average person. If I could find some way to strike it rich and make my little talent bring me BIG MONEY then I believe my self-confidence would return, and then I might get the operation performed on my nose and go out and be a successful platform speaker. But while I have the obstructed nose and the sense of helpless poverty there would be no use to try it. I know as well as you do that I should not be so sensitive to my poverty, but I can’t help it.

In another letter he lamented, But it is the fact that my face wears a dull and stupid expression which seems to advertise me as a half-wit. I have done everything in my power to overcome this “dullard” expression of my face, but it stays with me. The cause of it, to begin with, was an obstruction in my breathing passages in childhood. Both of my nostrils were always partly closed and I always had to breathe through my mouth. That caused me to go with my mouth open all the time, like an idiot, and my lips grew large and thick. . . . I was allowed to grow up with this handicap, and it placed its mark indelibly on my life. Not being able to breathe properly through my nose, I have always been bothered with a sort of choking-up or stoppage in my speech. Nothing like stammering at all, but just once in a while, every few minutes, I often choke down right in the middle of a sentence. No matter where the choke-up hits me I just have to stop and gulp and swallow and get my breath through my mouth. It is a terribly embarrassing thing, and when I am trying to talk to strangers or important people where I wish to make a good impression, it just RUINS me. Not knowing the physical cause, they think I am just an idiot. 30

As a result of these complexes and the return of his insecurity, he began to pass up opportunities to make money and spread his name. In June 1933, for instance, he cited three reasons for his refusal to accept a paid speaking engagement. First was his general poverty which left him lacking acceptable clothing for a public performance. Second was his inferiority complex: “Everybody knows that I am not a normal man. I have physical and mental handicaps that have always prevented me from ‘fitting in’ with normal people. Because of all these things . . . I am ashamed to be seen by anybody.” Finally, he explained that his family situation precluded a long absence from home. In the end, he declined to self-pity and explained, No man in North Carolina in this generation has been through the mill of agony and suffering as I have been—and for so long a time. Other people have their troubles, but they do not last forever. A few years at most, and there is some sort of relief. But my trouble never ends. It is a life-time of heart-breaking torture, with never a minute of rest. Not one

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Chapter 7 man in a thousand could have survived. They would have been either dead or insane. . . . NO words could begin to describe what I have been through; and if it could be expressed in words, nobody would believe it. Unspeakable sorrow has plowed its awful furrows in my face. It is not age, but suffering, that makes me look so old and worn, with such a helpless and hopeless look in my eyes. . . . There are times when I try to shake away the despondency and look for the silver lining, but it doesn’t do any good. Most of the time I am utterly despondent and hopeless. 31

Two months later, in August 1933, Pearson refused yet another paid speaking engagement that would have allowed him to read publicly several of his poems. In his letter of refusal he again explained, “I have none of the gifts or qualifications of a public speaker. I never made a speech in my life, and could not if my life depended on it. I was born with a physical defect which hampers my speech, and this had made me sensitive and self-conscious. If I can write a little, that is the only way I can express myself.” He went on to describe his nasal problems and lamented, “If my nostrils had been attended to in childhood my whole life might have been different. But nobody thought of doing such a thing, and the affliction has marked me for life.” 32 Of course, he ignored the fact that he had suffered from those marks since childhood and had overcome them with hard work and great striving. The personal, professional, and financial failures of the early 1930s, however, had unmasked the marks and caused him once again to question his place in the world. The return of the marks and the ensuing struggles not only led him to question himself, but they also resulted in a loss of his creative drives: “The conditions under which I live are very unpoetical. During recent weeks I have not been much in the mood to write poetry, and I do not seem to have produced anything worth offering to the press. But I have had these barren periods before, and then there would be a period of production. But even at its best, I am seldom satisfied with what I produce.” 33 Although poetry seemed a dead end, Pearson had been able to earn a good living publishing The Fool-Killer, so in 1932 he shrugged off his depression and decided to return to the amateur press with The Joycrafter. He always believed much of what he did in The Fool-Killer was nonsense, and he was frustrated that people liked it but not his “serious” poems. Knowing that, he went into The Joycrafter with eyes wide open. As he told Knowles, You entirely misunderstood the PURPOSE for which I intended The Joycrafter. You seemed to think it was a LITERARY venture and intended to further advance my poetic “fame.” It was nothing of the sort. It was merely a little BUSINESS undertaking that I thought might help me make a living. You seemed to think I was going to cater to the Literary Celebrities and that therefore it must compare in appearance

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with the Booklet you sent out. Wrong entirely. I had no thought of sending it to that class of people.

Pearson was aiming for the lowest common denominator with the highest potential return. Despite much hope, he closed the paper after printing just a few hundred copies of the first edition. 34 It seems his ability to be “funny at a funeral” had faded, and the public showed little interest in his work. A lesser man might have given in, but Pearson summoned his Tar Heel spirit and threw off the failure of The Joycrafter, as well as the aforementioned writer’s block, and in 1933 announced his plans to create a new collection of poems. His great hope was that this, his third collection, would find a professional publisher, and he sent book proposals to all the major presses. None of the New York-based publishing houses were interested, so he once again self-published the collection. Entitled Fifty Acres and Other Poems, the small work was a cheap, stapled, forty-fourpage, thirty-two-poem paperback that cost but twenty-five cents. Pearson never included the collection among his list of published works, yet the title poem, in which he favorably compared his humble mountain home to the most beautiful and majestic locales worldwide, became one of his most famous and popular creations: I’ve never been to London, I’ve never been to Rome; But on my Fifty Acres I travel here at home. The hill that looks upon me Right here where I was born Shall be my mighty Jungfrau, My Alp, my Matterhorn. A little land of Egypt My meadow plot shall be, With pyramids of hay-stacks Along its sheltered lee. My hundred years of brooklet Shall fancy’s faith beguile, And be my Rhine, my Avon, My Amazon, my Nile. My humble bed of roses, My honeysuckle hedge, Will do for all the gardens At all the far world’s edge. In June I find the Tropics Camped all about the place;

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Chapter 7 Then white December shows me The Arctic’s frozen face. My wood-lot grows an Arden, My pond a Caspian Sea; And so my Fifty Acres Is all the world to me. Here on my Fifty Acres I safe at home remain, And have my own Bermuda, My Sicily, my Spain. 35

The Sunday Herald-Sun (Durham, North Carolina) declared, “This poem is evidence that Pearson belongs to the line of great sweet-singers which includes [ancient Greek poet] Anacreon and [ancient Roman poet] Horace at one end and [Georgia state poet laureate] Frank L. Stanton and [late nineteenth-century North Carolina poet] John Charles McNeill at the other. Like them Pearson was ‘untaught to sing’ and had to teach himself.” Other locals praised him for putting “into poetic words the sentiments of many honest poor people who have found satisfaction dwelling in Wilkes County.” The poem was not simply a local phenomenon, however, as it enthralled readers nationwide with papers as far afield as the San Francisco Chronicle commending the poem and declaring, “James Larkin Pearson . . . deserves a wider audience than he has hitherto enjoyed.” 36 The success of the poem and the growing national acclaim Pearson won as a result led to a grassroots campaign to get him named poet laureate of North Carolina, even though the state had yet to create the position. The North Carolina Poetry Review sought to address both issues in 1934: “So far as we know, North Carolina has never officially designated anyone to occupy this post of honor, although one of our members and frequent contributors, James Larkin Pearson, has often been unofficially dubbed ‘the poet laureate of North Carolina’ by literary editors of State newspapers and others among the wide group of people who have read his works with pleasure.” The Elkin Tribune agreed, and suggested, “North Carolina could not make a better choice than to select Mr. Pearson [as poet laureate]. No writer of verse in North Carolina has produced a greater volume, and while much of what James Larkin Pearson has written, he himself will admit is mediocre, competent critics have proclaimed many of his poems as outstanding.” The North Wilkesboro Journal Patriot concurred: “At the present time no one is so designated, but we can think of no one more deserving of the title than James Larkin Pearson, of Boomer.” 37 A posting as poet laureate would come, but in the meantime, and despite the accolades, Pearson still faced the realities of an impoverished life in the mountains.

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As if the poverty and self-loathing were not enough for Pearson to deal with, even greater tragedies awaited. As is so often the case, however, those tragedies followed on the heels of what seemed to be signs that things were improving. On January 7, 1934, Cora celebrated her fiftieth birthday. Although still ill, she was healthy enough to write a poem about the event entitled “Fifty Years”: Half a hundred! Half a hundred! Half a hundred on! Fifty years! Fifty years! Half a life-time gone! Half a life! Half a life! Many wasted years. Fifty years! Fifty years! Mixed with pain and tears! Fifty years, fifty years, I would travel more; Half a life, half a life, Better than before. Fifty years! Fifty years! Grant me, Lord, this boon. Fifty years—half a life Passes by too soon.

Pearson hoped the poem was a sign Cora was improving, and he had even more hope when Agnes one day brought home a black spaniel puppy. Initially unhappy at having yet another mouth to feed and another creature to care for, Pearson relented when Cora developed a deep attachment to the dog—soon named Gyp. Pearson claimed that when the dog hopped into Cora’s lap, “suddenly there was a new light in her patient and long-suffering eyes.” Gyp seemed to feel a connection with Cora as well, and the two became inseparable. Cora spent much of her time in bed or sitting in her chair, and Gyp stayed nearby often sitting in her lap or curled up at her feet. Should Cora feel well enough to venture out for a walk, Gyp followed at her heels. Unfortunately, Gyp’s life was cut short. After only a few months with the family he became ill and died. Although the dog was Agnes’s, Cora suffered most from his death. 38 Sadly, there was much more death in store for the household. In 1932 Pearson’s father, Bill, suffered a stroke which left him slightly paralyzed. On June 6, 1934, he had a second more serious stroke which left him unconscious. He died on June 12 and was buried the next day in the Mount Carmel cemetery beside his wife and son John. As Pearson mourned the loss of his father, tragedy struck yet again. Just five days after his father’s death, Pearson lost Cora. After decades of suffering, the loss of her dog and her father-in-law proved too much. She struggled several days with severe asthma, and her weakened body simply could take no more. She died in Pearson’s arms on June 17, 1934, and was

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buried in the Moravian Falls Cemetery. Pearson was overwhelmed by the double tragedy and staggered along as best he could. He later reflected, “Going back alone to the old home, it was the darkest hour of my life when I had to turn away from the precious silent form and go back alone to the emptiest and most lonesome house in the world.” 39 He responded to Cora’s death in two different manners. First, and not surprisingly, he composed a poem entitled “My Love Lies Still, Lies Silent” in which he wondered how he could ever live without his beloved: My love lies still, lies silent; She sleeps the longest while. She does not wake at morning; She does not speak nor smile. Her lips are pale as lilies Grown in some shadow’d place, And something more than beauty Lies on her sleeping face. Her eyes, sealed fast with kisses, See not the dark nor dawn, And from her ears forever The sounds of earth are gone. My love does not remember; She does not understand How long I will be waiting In such a lonely land. 40

Second, he began to blame himself for her suffering and death: I keep wondering if I could possibly have caused Cora’s long years of affliction. . . . I know that for several years after we met, I was not included in her plans at all. Because her mind and heart were full of other interests, I am sure she had no more thought of marrying me than of marrying the man-in-the-moon. . . . Dark and hopeless as the situation looked, I felt absolutely sure that Cora would someday be my wife, and that she would come to me willingly and gladly. I cannot explain how nor why I had such a feeling of certainty about it. I was never so sure about anything else, except about wanting to be a printer and a poet, and how I could be so sure about that one thing is a mystery to me. 41

That certainty led Pearson to conclude that God had answered his prayers and given him Cora, but in the process took from Cora her dream of becoming a missionary. He even found Scriptural proof: This was clearly taught by Jesus Himself. In Mark 9:23 Jesus said unto him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” Right there Jesus was admitting the fact that believing is sometimes not easy. In fact it is nearly always very HARD. But He says: “If

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thou canst BELIEVE.” Right there is the whole secret. Many times you want something very much, and maybe you pray for it, but at the same time you don’t BELIEVE you will get it, and so your praying is all in vain.

He went on to quote Mark 11:24: “Therefore I say unto you, what things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” From that he concluded that he had prayed and believed he would have Cora and God delivered her to him: “I had BELIEVED with an unwavering faith that Cora would be mine, and the eternal and unchangeable LAW as laid down by Jesus Himself COMPELLED it to come true.” The way God compelled it, however, was to keep Cora from becoming a missionary: Something had to be done to change the girl’s plans. What more certain way could be done than destroying her health and making her fall back on the old love that she knew would be faithful? If that terrible thought had come to me at an earlier time I might have saved her from all that agony of suffering. Much as I loved her, I would a thousand times rather have turned her over with my blessing to the preacher of her choice, and I would have supported her on her mission field in so far as was my power. I would have done ANYTHING to save the precious darling from that 27 years of terrible suffering before she finally died in my arms. 42

Ravaged by such thoughts, Pearson never got over the sense that he had caused Cora’s death. Three decades later it still haunted him: My FAITH didn’t fail for a minute. I knew she had to be mine. Then what would bring her back to me? Did it have to be her HEALTH taken away? Did it have to be that awful sickness and suffering? If I could have known—as much as I loved her—I would gladly have given her up. I would gladly have gone my limit in paying her way as a missionary and as another man’s wife, rather than to have had her suffer like she did. That is how much I loved her. But instead of letting her go on with what may have been her DIVINE CALL, and in which service she might have been well and happy, I let my selfish love and my unreasonable FAITH ruin her life. Could it have been true love? I will always be afraid that it was. Is it possible that LOVE can destroy the thing it loves? 43

Even four decades later, after losing yet another wife and pondering his own mortality, the pain was still vivid: “I will never forget how I hung over her casket at the funeral and cried, ‘I can’t give her up! I can’t give her up!’ and they had to gently pull me away as the lid closed for the last time. Cora was my first love and my great love, and after forty years I still dream about her very often, and in my dreams I still love her to the extent of holy worship. Surely no woman was ever loved like I loved Cora.” He even admitted, “If I ever in my life thought about committing suicide it

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was during this period. I felt that I had nothing to live for anymore. All my folks were dead and gone except Agnes. . . . So it might have taken just a flip of a coin to decide my fate. But somehow I continued to live— month after month and year after year, getting weaker and thinner all the time, and continually more depressed in spirit.” 44 Despite such sorrow, he carried on. As in the past, when faced with a problem he set out to pull himself up by various means. In a small notebook he made a list of several famous people and what they overcame to become famous: “Edison—Deaf; Steinmetz—dwarfed, deformed; Helen Keller—deaf, dumb, blind; Lincoln—poverty, struggle; . . . Joseph Conrad—became master in a language he was not native to.” When examined from that perspective, his travails seemed less severe. In the same notebook he once again sought to rouse himself by penning a short essay entitled “Thank God for Problems” in which he tried to convince himself that from his suffering would come greatness: We are in the habit of thinking of our problems as something very undesirable—as obstacles that stand in our way and hinder our progress. But as a rule, that is not true. More often than not, these very problems that seem so ugly, so undesirable and so difficult to face, are veritable blessings in disguise. Did you ever stop to think what life would be without any problems? Just suppose that you had been set down at birth in an environment that was perfectly smooth and easy going and utterly without friction or any sort of difficulty. And suppose that all your life down to the present had been spent in that sort of setting—where you got everything you wanted without effort and where your smallest wish was granted without question or hesitation. Just sailing along like a boat on a perpetually smooth lake. No ups or downs. No waves of trouble nor buffetings of unknown fate. Under such conditions what chance would there be to grow strong in body and mind and soul—to develop character? Certainly none at all. You would get too lazy to even take physical exercise, and your body would become weak and useless. You would not have any incentive to mental activity, and your intellectual life would become a barren waste. Having no contact or experience with grief and suffering, your soul would become as dry and hard as a cinder and you would be cut off from all love and sympathy with your fellow men. It takes a certain amount of suffering to give us understanding and make us kind. Problems are useful as an exercise for the mind. One must become proficient in meeting and overcoming the obstacles that arise. And the greater the obstacle the more honor is due to him who overcomes. The lives of great men and women can only be measured or evaluated in terms of their mastery over adverse conditions. He who has never faced a problem has never had opportunity to try his strength. He is a total stranger to his own possibilities. And if he sails through life on such “flowery beds of ease” he will miss the most valuable and vital experiences that life has to give. 45

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Pearson certainly believed he had endured his fair share of problems, and undoubtedly hoped the painful “experiences” would soon lead to “honors.” In yet another essay, however, he admitted that continuing the struggle was proving difficult: I find that nearly all of the really great writers—those who today stand at the very top—have had their hard places and their long discouraging struggles just the same as the rest of us. And to realize this fact puts courage and high hope into a heart that might otherwise faint and give up. Temptation comes and says, “Well, they did it; but you can’t. They really had it in them all the time and they finally forced the world to recognize them. But it isn’t in you to do that. You are just a common clod, doomed to failure, and you might try just as hard as they did and not get anywhere.”

Despite such fears, he concluded the essay with evidence that, as always, he was determined to fight: “But I come back at Temptation with this: ‘Look here, you old black hearted hypocrite, I’ll bet you talked just that way to those other folks when they were struggling. You did your best to make them think it wasn’t in them to succeed. They didn’t believe you, and I won’t believe you, either. Git!” 46 Pearson thus understood himself well enough to realize the temptation to give in, but he remained a fighter who was determined to overcome and succeed. Indeed, the early Depression era challenged him like never before and left him with a bruised spirit, a broken heart, and a family torn asunder. Throughout the era he maintained his individualist perspective even when challenged by intellectual giants, he continued to follow his literary and journalistic muse regardless of the current trends, and he fought through a combination of personal, professional, and economic pain few can imagine. His ability to survive and carry on would pay dividends in the late 1930s as he enjoyed newfound fame as a poet, returned yet again to the field of amateur journalism, and even found love for a second time. While the first half of the decade proved heartbreaking, the second half offered hope that finally he would get to enjoy the fruits of his labor. NOTES 1. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Debs, February 10, 1924 and November 6, 1924. 2. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 244; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1930–1939, handwritten notes copied from a notebook, undated. 3. JLP Files, “Socialist Influences,” Pearson, James Larkin–Writings Folder, January 22, 1942; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 245. 4. Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, 170; William Stanley Braithwaite Papers, Folder 2, October 8, 1927, Letter to Braithwaite, SHC. 5. Pearson, Pearson’s Poems, xv, xxvi.

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6. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Pearson’s Poems Booklet Folder, “Pearson’s Poems” by “Old Hurrygraph” in Durham Sun, March 16, 1924; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Frank Alderman, June 11, 1929; JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, Samuel Loveman, undated. 7. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, C.A. Hibbard, January 3, 1925. 8. Ibid. 9. McFarland, “James Larkin Pearson: North Carolina’s Printer-Poet,” reprinted from Charlotte Observer, June 9, 1929. 10. Ibid. 11. JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson Vertical Files, “Copyright.” 12. JLP Collection, Upton Sinclair, January 25, 1929. 13. JLP Collection, Louise Sillcox, March 20, 1929; JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Ada Pearson, April 4, 1929; Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, 196. The New York Times published eleven additional poems by Pearson between 1926 and 1952. The list includes “Sea-Wind,” “Sunset,” “In Time of Hunger,” “Smothered Fires,” “Fulfillment,” “Dust,” “Growing Time,” “Nocturne,” “My Love Lies Still, Lies Silent,” “One-Talent Man,” and “Pussy Willows.” 14. JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson, Charles Ernest Knowles, “Must He Wait Until He’s Dead?” 15. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Henry Morgenthau, April 4, 1929; JLP Collection, Eleanor Roosevelt, November 14, 1930 and November 19, 1930. 16. JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, 1929, Home and Abroad, Autumn 1929. 17. Winston-Salem Journal, April 22, 1929; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, William Blair, May 2, 1929. 18. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 294–95. 19. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Charles Knowles, January 7, 1933. 20. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Upton Sinclair, October 12, 1930. 21. Ibid., September 8, 1934 and November 20, 1934. 22. Ibid., June 2, 1935. 23. Ibid., undated. 24. Sinclair, Money Writes, 201; Sinclair, Another Pamela, 250. “Piers the Plowman” also is the title of a poem by the fourteenth-century English poet William Langland. 25. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Cora Gould, April 16, 1929; August 1, 1931; August 6, 1931; November 18, 1931; November 21, 1931; December 5, 1931; December 24, 1931; and April 25, 1932. 26. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1930–1939, 1931 pamphlet. 27. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Jack Cole, December 3, 1932; JLP Collection, 1930–1939, “A Life of Tragedy–A True Story,” June 14, 1933. 28. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1930–1939, Printed Press Release dated August 16, 1933. 29. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Henry Allen Moe, 1931 Application for Guggenheim; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Miscellaneous. 30. JLP Collection, Charles Ernest Knowles, December 7, 1930 and December 11, 1930. 31. JLP Collection, T.E. Story, June 7, 1933. 32. JLP Collection, Phillips Russell, August 9, 1933. 33. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Zoe Brockman, August 31, 1933. 34. JLP Collection, Charles Ernest Knowles, June 21, 1932 and October 11, 1932. 35. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Charles Ernest Knowles; Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, 45–46. 36. Sunday Herald-Sun, August 27, 1933; Hayes, The Land of Wilkes, 350; Pearson, Reviews and Press Notices about James Larkin Pearson, NCC. 37. Pearson, Reviews and Press Notices about James Larkin Pearson, NCC. 38. JLP Collection, Cora Wallace Pearson; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 298. 39. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 299. 40. Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, 4. 41. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 300.

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42. Ibid., 299–300; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Cora Wallace Pearson Folder, “Did I cause Cora’s Sickness?” 43. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Howard Hanson, February 18, 1967. 44. JLP Collection, Ruth Ann Rogers, May 13, 1975; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1930–1939, handwritten undated notes. 45. JLP Collection, Cabinet 12, Miscellaneous Writings, in a small notebook, “Thank God for Problems.” 46. JLP Collection, Cabinet 12, “Temptation.”

EIGHT “The Soul of Poetry”

During the late 1930s Pearson slowly recovered from the loss of Cora and did his best to raise Agnes alone. He continued to write poetry, won statewide acclaim when he suddenly proved willing to speak publically about his work, and made another effort in the realm of amateur journalism. Despite those professional achievements, he remained financially insecure and eventually accepted federal relief. Through it all he also sought a wife and, after several false starts, ultimately found love a second time around. The years after Cora’s death were busy and trying times, but Pearson persevered and emerged a better man. Devastated by the loss of his wife, struggling as a single father, and dealing with his own psychological issues, Pearson did little for several months after Cora’s death. In August 1934 he admitted, “[since] my trouble in June I have been mentally on the bum. Have not been able to get my mental machinery back to normal. . . . Can’t concentrate worth a cent, and have done no writing either in prose or verse.” In December 1934, however, the siren song of poetry revived him after he unexpectedly accepted an invitation to speak at the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association meeting in Raleigh. Frank Porter Graham, then the president of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, introduced Pearson to the meeting. The poet read a few poems and then gave a short speech on “The Soul of Poetry”: A poem is said to have a soul in it when it is able to throw around its subject an unearthly glow of mystery and magic, of wonder and wistfulness, of deathless and timeless beauty. The old home, familiar landscape, the winding river, the cows on the pasture hill—they somehow become transformed, reflected in a light that never was on land or sea. They become glorified symbols of all the old homes, all the familiar landscapes, all the rivers, and all the pasture hills in the whole world. 129

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Chapter 8 They clutch at our heart-strings and bring back old memories, and make us so happy that it hurts. Fortunate is the old home or the river or the locality that becomes the subject of such a poem. It is better preserved than if carved in marble or cast in bronze. The poet must do more than [make his meaning clear and understandable]. . . . He must put into it that Soul without which it is not poetry. In fact, it does not so much matter about meaning, in the common, everyday sense of the word. Meaning may mean one thing in prose and something entirely different in poetry. Some of the most sublime poetry of the world is not at all clear as to actual meaning. So it isn’t meaning, primarily, that we want in poetry. We can get plenty of that in prose. When the thought is too obvious the thing generally becomes prose. The poet’s imagination must call to the imagination of the reader. There must not be a solid bridge across the magic river. There must be great spaces to leap and great thrills to encounter. The intelligent reader is inclined to resent the implication that he needs to be told everything. He welcomes a chance to use his own imagination in building up the picture. Not the blueprint of the draughtsman is wanted, but the light-fingered sketch of the artist. Some time recently I saw a definition of poetry which said: “Poetry is religion which is no longer believed.” That comes very near being a good definition. We do not believe old mythologies—the old religions of the past—and yet our poetry is full of them. After all is said, a man’s poetry must be like his God—he must have the sort that satisfies him. What appeals to me as true poetry may not appeal to the other fellow. 1

The crowd appreciated the speech, and local papers responded positively as well. The Raleigh News and Observer declared that Pearson did a better job addressing the Association than did Frank Porter Graham: “Pearson put on no airs. He attempted the most difficult of all psychological tasks—that of explaining personally and out of his own experience how he happened to get that way—in his effort to reach to the stars of poetry, not verse. . . . We think he qualified as a poet in principle and lived up to his subject, even if sometimes his meters do require crutches. Pearson’s idea was the old one that a poet is born and not made.” The Chapel Hill Weekly wrote, “One of the historians in the faculty here, returning from Raleigh, said ‘There’s no getting around it—the truth may as well be told: Pearson captured the meeting. Everybody there was more interested in him than in any of the literary people and historians. He stole the show.’” The paper also concurred with the News and Observer and asserted that “what made an even greater appeal to the company gathered about him was his simplicity in speech and bearing—the words spoken from the heart when he talked about his life and poetry. And those who listened knew that whatever reception the world might accord his writing, whatever rank he might have in these days or in the days to come—they were

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in the presence of a man possessed of the true spirit of poetry.” In another story, the News and Observer completed the praise by asserting, “More than any other living North Carolinian he has put the life of the people into poetry, made it tangible and beautiful and easily seen. He who can make culture does not need to be cultured. He can give and those who are merely city-bred and college-educated can too often only take.” 2 Pearson enjoyed the speech and the praise, and he spent two days at the meeting and three days more in Chapel Hill as the guest of President Graham; he then made additional stops at Duke University and Wake Forest College on his journey home. The trip seemed to invigorate him, and he later recollected, “[it] was one of the most thrilling and eventful weeks of my whole life and may be said to have marked a turning point in my career.” Indeed, although previously a reticent and reluctant speaker, he soon accepted speaking engagements all over the state. He traveled to Guilford College, Asheville, Greensboro, Durham, and Chapel Hill in 1935, and in 1937 spoke to the North Carolina Library Association. While there, he met Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Eliot Green and had supper at Green’s house. He also met novelist Sherwood Anderson and his wife, and later joined the couple at a luncheon where he gave a talk to several hundred people. In January 1938 he continued his public performances, and traveled to Winston-Salem where he spoke at Salem College and to the Winston-Salem Women’s club. 3 Thus, not only did he seem to be emerging from his cocoon, but he also seemed willing to do things which in the past he had outright refused to do. That vigor affected his writing as well, and he returned with more enthusiasm to his poetry. Indeed, he soon wrote, “To be a POET is still my highest ambition, and I still hope that there may be a chance for me yet. I am 54, and my own health is pretty good for a man of my age, and the hardships that I have been through. I don’t believe any man who has aspired to be a poet has ever had to travel a harder road than mine.” By 1936 many were beginning to give him credit for having made that journey, and literary critics, as if discovering him for the first time, offered a raft of positive reviews for Pearson’s work. Archibald Johnson, editor of Charity and Children magazine, argued that Pearson showed “more of the marks of a genuine poet than any other in North Carolina I know,” while poet Edwin Markham found “moments when Pearson’s poems flash with the true fire.” Frank L. Stanton of the Atlanta Constitution joined the praise parade and asserted, “His poetry has made his name a household word in the Old North State, and he is worthy of the place it has made for him in the hearts of the people.” The Raleigh News and Observer went even further and found that “Keats and [nineteenth-century British poet Lord Alfred] Tennyson never made purer music.” The paper called him an “‘honest man’ . . . a man whom Burns and Whitman would have loved—sensitive but never cynical—a stalwart and cheery soul at home in the universe because of harmony with it. The music in Pearson’s poet-

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ry is an intrinsic music, bubbling clear from hills that abide.” The Progressive magazine added to the laudatory statements and argued that while Pearson’s best poems focused on mountain life, “he has gone beyond the mountains in his philosophy, his humor, his understanding of life. He has nailed hypocrisy. He has pilloried sham. And many of his verses are exquisite. They are literary and emotional gems. He has a way of making you feel. His poems are a kind one likes to read—and then read to others.” 4 By 1937 his fame was such that the press was doing more than just covering his poems; they were interested in Pearson the man. The Winston-Salem Journal Sentinel did an extended piece on him which noted both his personal and professional modesty: “he denies that he has done anything unusual. He stoutly and stubbornly maintains that he is just one of the neighbors who has a knack for writing. Whenever he feels so inclined he writes a poem. He can’t see how he has done anything out of the ordinary in following out his natural impulse to create.” It went on to note, “he refuses to leave his little farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountain. When he is lonesome he can pore over the books in his private library, which is one of the best in this part of the state. Although isolated almost completely from people of literary nature, he enjoys mingling with the mountain folk who have been his companions since birth. They have been his inspiration and a part of his life. He is one of them.” 5 Ruth Linney of the Greensboro Daily News offered an even more intimate examination of the poet in “James Larkin Pearson: A Character Sketch.” She wrote, Poets are proverbially “different” from other people. There is a reason. In the very nature of the case, they must live largely within themselves, finding companionship in their own thoughts. The dream-world in which they live is more real to them than the actual work-a-day-world around them. Your typical poet, therefore, is apt to be considered odd and peculiar—a sort of misfit in the world’s money-mad scheme of things. The qualities of the mind that fit him to be a poet, at the same time unfit him for the battles of life. In order to meet the world on its own ground and force it to stand and deliver, he would like to make himself hard-boiled and unpoetical. This he could not do if he would, and would not if he could. In the prosy business of getting along in the world, therefore, the poet finds himself at a great disadvantage. If he likes his own life, remains true to his ideals and does his work, he is certain to be misunderstood and cruelly misjudged by those whose only standard is money. James Larkin Pearson is no exception to the above rule. . . . he has made no effort to cut his cloth by the world’s pattern. Far from wearing long hair, a Byronic collar and an esthetic pose, he still, on the other hand, does not flinch from underlining—and perhaps a shade too heavily—his aloofness from most of his environment; his supposedly “hayseed” appearance; and even the physical defects and family mis-

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fortunes that have conditioned his work. But honesty, pride, and sensitiveness go into this attitude. It also makes him conscious of being a lonely soul. . . . It allows him to be critical of his work and of his life, and helps him to fathom the causes of his deficiencies as a poet and of his eccentricities as a man. 6

The press thus lauded Pearson for his work and for the sincerity and honesty with which he lived his life. As is so often the case, however, the press missed the deeper struggles that frequently consumed Pearson’s life. Indeed, just as he was earning some much deserved praise for his poetry, another element of his life proved problematic. As a single parent he did his best to raise Agnes alone, but ultimately he determined she would be better off finishing school in Morganton. She returned not long after her mother’s death, but had a difficult time dealing with the loss and suffered through what Pearson called a “blue mood.” She frequently asked to return to Wilkes County, but he encouraged her to remain in Morganton, telling her that a good school and good friends would get her out of the mood and set her on the path to a better future. She did not take kindly to such advice, and wrote, “You’ve got to write me ‘fatherly’ letters, not just clipped cold notes. We’re all each other’s got now. Let’s stick by each other.” 7 As further evidence that his advice was unappreciated, Agnes’s grades dropped, she failed the tenth grade, and she was forced to repeat the year. Pearson lamented the struggles his daughter faced, and he grew even more concerned as she began to grow interested in boys. She asked her father for money for dresses and shoes, and then even more distressingly asked for permission to date. The harried father warned her that “the girl who is hard to win is more sought after and more popular (with the right sort of boys) than the girl who cheapens herself by being too easy and eager for boy company.” 8 After such a fatherly admonition, he agreed to let her date in the hopes that it would cheer her up, inspire her to do better in school, and reverse the downward trend of the previous months. While Agnes may have been rejuvenated by the greater social freedom her father allowed, Pearson faced other worries. Specifically, he was having a difficult time covering the cost of Agnes’s tuition. He feared the consequences of pulling her out of school just as she was recovering from her time of mourning, but without a regular income the finances were tight. In October 1934 he fell behind on his payments but sent a letter to school administrators promising to pay: “I am not being able to keep up the payments down there. It scares me, and I don’t know what you are going to do about it. If it isn’t possible for you to allow me time enough to get started, then I see no other chance than for Agnes to quit school and come home. I know she is needing more clothes, too, and I haven’t the

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Figure 8.1. James Larkin Pearson in 1937. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

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money to get them. . . . Tell me the worst. If I need to bring Agnes home I will, but I so much wish she could stay in school.” 9 The school accommodated his financial situation and Agnes stuck out another year in Morganton. During the subsequent school year, however, Pearson was unable to carry her tuition and she returned to Wilkesboro, where she finished her schooling. That return paid additional dividends as the seventeen-yearold Agnes met and fell in love with a man named Albert Eller. The two courted briefly and married on November 7, 1935. Pearson liked Eller and was happy that Agnes had found a good husband. The marriage also eased his financial burden, somewhat, and offered an added bonus when in 1938 they welcomed into the world Pearson’s first grandson, Kenneth. Two more grandchildren would follow, Cathy and Philip, and it seemed Pearson’s domestic affairs were finally turning around. 10 It was not simply his daughter who found a new attachment in this period, but so too did Pearson, who slowly ended his exile of mourning. Never the lady’s man, Pearson’s first affairs of the heart proved lacking. In later writings he tells of dating a “Mrs. X” who was suggested to him by some of his friends. She was thirty-five, while he was fifty-six, but they corresponded briefly and agreed to meet. He found her “very good looking, but not really pretty,” thought she had a “fair education,” and assessed her as having “the usual orthodox knowledge of the Bible.” More notably, he found her rather forward: “On my very first visit she was very frank to tell me that she wanted to get married. It wasn’t leap year and she didn’t exactly ‘propose,’ but it was rather close akin to it.” A bit overwhelmed by her forward nature, Pearson was “rather glad to get away” from their first meeting. The two continued to correspond nonetheless, and she continued to suggest they marry and have children. He responded to her suggestions by offering rather vivid descriptions of his life, most notably the lack of sex in his first marriage and his relative sexual inexperience with women. Apparently “Mrs. X” did not appreciate the explicit references to sex, despite her open desire to have children, and the relationship quickly ended. 11 Pearson faced a similar circumstance with Margene Doddridge, who lived in Cottondale, Florida. They carried on a lengthy correspondence in 1935 and 1936, and met occasionally. Once again, Pearson demonstrated an almost shocking willingness to write frankly about sex. For instance, on March 19, 1935, he explained that his wife Cora was ill throughout their marriage and as a result they only rarely had sex. He said he was committed to her and never cheated, but as a result he was unschooled in the bedroom. He thus asked, Having had a sexless wife, and having had no personal knowledge of other women, I am afraid I am very ignorant of what a normal woman really is like. And that was what I wanted to ask you about. You have

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Chapter 8 been a wife and the mother of eight children, and so you will be able to tell me. Does the normal and healthy wife have sex feelings or desire in anything like the degree that the husband has it? Is sexual union the thrilling and joyous experience to her that it is to him?

Margene answered his questions honestly, and on April 2, 1935, he thanked her, noting, I have always tried to live a good clean life and keep my thoughts as pure as possible; but because sex hunger (unsatisfied all through the years) just WOULD push itself into my thoughts, I feared that I was awfully bad. At the same time, I read in the sex books that the sort of life I was actually living could not be endured for long by any man without danger of going crazy. . . . Intellectually and spiritually, my wife and I were as well-mated and congenial as you would be likely to find anywhere. . . . Only on the one question of sex did she find it impossible to see with me, and that I am sure was because of her bodily weakness. I never blamed or condemned her for it, but tried to be as good a husband as possible in spite of the disappointment. 12

Pearson, in other words, not only broached the issue of sex with Margene, but he also discussed with her some very intimate elements of his previous marriage. Sex was not the only issue that cast some oddness to their correspondence. In April 1935 Pearson wrote to several people in Florida, including the local sheriff and a state senator, asking for letters of reference about Margene. Although both men responded positively, in his next letter to her he warned that he was not yet as romantically engaged as it seemed she was with him. In an effort to cure that, she visited him in June. Even that did not sway him, and in his next letter he explained, I have a curious feeling of uncertainty as to whether you and I are in every way fitted for each other. I don’t know any particular reason why that feeling of uncertainty persists, but it does. . . . If we could get our mental or intellectual adjustments brought to such a point of agreement and understanding as I believe we have already reached in the matter of the physical or sex life, then I think we might with reasonable safety claim each other. But somehow the mental phase of the question looms larger than I thought it would. I have a curious feeling of uncertainty as to whether our minds would be well mated.

He then questioned her about her love of poetry and reading, as well as her religious beliefs. She assured him that they did not have to agree about everything and that disagreements would give them something about which to talk. He agreed, but worried such discussions were not always taken the same by each party and could lead to problems. 13 In late July he spent ten days in the hospital with rectal problems, and during his convalescence he decided the relationship was not what he wanted. On August 5, 1935, he informed her, “this spell of affliction has

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changed my notion about some things. If I had had any thought of a possible second marriage, this spell has knocked it up for the time being. I would not think of offering myself to any woman until I get entirely well of this troublesome affliction.” When she tried to convince him otherwise, he responded by arguing, “I can’t do it now—in this fix. I couldn’t support a wife. Besides that, I suppose I am afraid of women. I am afraid to trust my judgment in so momentous a decision. . . . If I had a more decent home to offer a woman, and a more sure means of support for her, I might venture anyhow. I might try harder to fall in love. But I don’t dare do it until I can have better prospects than this.” 14 They continued to correspond for another year despite his determination not to carry on the affair; their letters slowly became shorter and less frequent, however, and by December 1936 ceased. Pearson did not give up his search for love, and in the summer of 1936, as his relationship with Margene Doddridge was ending, he was introduced to a widow named Clyde Linney Stephenson of Hickory, North Carolina. They met several times, although Pearson grew embarrassed when locals learned of their dates and began to tease him about “going to see her.” The teasing ultimately did not prevent him from visiting her several more times, and they corresponded frequently. Once again he was brutally honest and informed her, You have seemed deeply and sincerely interested in me, and I have not been able to quite be sure what direction your interest might take. It might just be friendship and nothing more. But some of the things you have said and written might very reasonably be interpreted to mean something deeper than that. And I didn’t want your interest to go too far until you knew the truth. I am not entirely sure that I am physically able to be a husband to any woman. I THINK I am, but it is a question that would have to be discussed with the woman who seemed willing to care for me.

He continued, You must believe me, Mrs. Stephenson, when I tell you I have kept myself sexually pure and clean and true, and I did it under conditions that were very difficult. Because my wife was an invalid she was practically sexless and though I was a married man for 27 years I lived the life of an unmarried man. And I did not go off after other woman as most men would have done, but I remained true to my wife and loved her tenderly to the end. But I am not pretending that such a life was easy. It was a terrible struggle, especially in the early years of youth and manly vigor. I had to fight many temptations, but I conquered and kept my record clean. But at what a cost! Physically and mentally I am only the shadow of the man I might have been if I could have lived a normal sex life. A lifetime of suppression, repression and inhibition of one of life’s strongest urges has almost ruined me. That’s why I’m so backward and timid, so self-conscious and awkward. That’s why my

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Chapter 8 eyes look so hungry and helpless, and why my whole face wears an expression of submission and defeat. All the result of a lifetime of sexsubmission. 15

Mrs. Stephenson responded with a mix of sympathy and joy. In her next letter she wrote that her “heart went out to” him and exclaimed, “I have made myself believe in the past that it is entirely impossible to love more than once. But I don’t believe that any more.” He expressed surprise at this and wondered with whom she was in love: “I can hardly imagine that it could be me.” He went on, “Please tell me—honest and true—are you in love with some other man? Or could it by any possible chance be me? If it should happen to be me, please don’t be afraid to tell me all about it, because it would make me happy.” She refused to answer his question until he went first, so he wrote, I was afraid to fall in love with you or with anyone else. And so I have held off and pretended an indifference which I did not feel. That last Friday evening that I was over there was the first time that I almost allowed myself to get sentimental, but I didn’t. The realization came over me that you looked real charming as you lay there on the bed and talked with me. Your arms uncovered and your breasts partly exposed made me realize that I was still a man, and that I needed the love of a woman. . . . When I took your hand at parting I had a strong impulse to raise it to my lips and kiss it; but I didn’t dare. . . . I will confess (now) that I have been growing more and more fond of you during the recent weeks, but I don’t know whether I should really call it love or not. I can’t quite be sure yet, and I suspect that when real love comes you always know it. 16

Clearly he was smitten, but wary. Just when their relationship seemed headed in the right direction, however, he informed her of his rejection of many orthodox and traditional religious beliefs. Three weeks later he wrote back asking why she had not responded since his last letter and wondering if he had offended her with his views on religion. She did not respond for four months, and when she did in January 1937 it was to wish him well on his planned move to Lincolnton, North Carolina, where she hoped he would meet some nice women. Shocked by this last element of the letter, Pearson was even more stunned days later when she informed him she was newly married. 17 Unlucky in love and seemingly destined to remain single, by the time of his breakup with Mrs. Stephenson Pearson took three actions he hoped would change his luck. And indeed, 1937 turned out to be a very good year. The first action was the publication of Fifty Acres and Other Selected Poems. Again he wrote, printed, published, and distributed the collection, which sold modestly. “Fifty Acres” and “Homer in a Garden,” two of his most famous poems which had been published previously, both ap-

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peared in the collection. Fifty-three additional poems of various quality and content also found their way into the work, through much of which runs a sense of sadness and longing with works such as “My Love Lies Still, Lies Silent,” “The Valley of Tears,” and “The Grave Tree” predominating. 18 The work received little critical comment, but the reappearance of “Fifty Acres” led a number of readers to inquire about its composition. Pearson explained, [it] was not written all at the same time. As I remember, it was composed over a period of several weeks. I am pretty sure that the idea for the poem was not a sudden inspiration. It must have come gradually as I worked on the verses from day to day. I had never traveled very much, but I had read about all the great and famous places of the world. So I think the idea must have come slowly—a little at a time—to see if I could make my little 50-acre farm a sort of microcosm of the whole world. Naturally, as I worked on the poem from day to day, I had all these famous far-away places in my mind, and eventually I found places on the farm that might stand as a small copy of the great places. It must have been a more original idea than I realized at the time, because the poem has gone widely over the world and has brought me a large part of whatever “fame” I have today. 19

Other readers asked about writing poetry in general. He explained that rarely did he sit down and compose an entire poem. Indeed, his archival record includes hundreds of scraps of paper with various lines and phrases jotted down, and he explained to those who asked that often he kept lines for years before finally finding the right place for them. He further asserted that writing poetry was hard: “Half of the time I don’t know where my poems come from. . . . None have been easy. I have to sit pretty hard on these things. I’m slow in shaping them up.” He admitted, however, that while most “are laboriously expanded . . . sometimes . . . an entire poem drops out of the sky already written.” 20 Still other correspondents wanted to know what it was like to “live” as a poet. He told one such letter writer: Poetry is well worth while in many ways. To those who are able to understand and appreciate it, poetry is food for the soul. It gives (to those who really love it) some sort of spiritual uplift that nothing else can give. And when the poet does succeed in writing a genuine poem, he has done something that will live through the ages. The true poet’s name is more secure than that of any other calling. So if you are willing to study and struggle and starve and climb to the top—go to it. But if you are expecting to make money out of poetry, you just as well forget it. Of all the trades or callings under the sun, the writing of poetry holds out the least promise of financial profit. . . . One time in a million, perhaps, some poet is able to make money out of poetry. . . . But Burns starved. Poe starved. Lanier starved. . . . But I am not saying this . . . to

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Chapter 8 discourage you or to keep you from writing poetry. If you are a true poet you will go on writing poetry, and you should. But for a long time you will have to be content to get it printed without pay in any newspaper or magazine that will print it. Build up your reputation slowly from year to year, and eventually you might—once in a while—get into the publications that pay. 21

Pearson seemed to enjoy offering such advice and insights, and while Fifty Acres and Other Selected Poems did not ease his financial concerns the response to it convinced him to continue his public appearances. The publication of his fourth collection of poetry and the subsequent public interest was but one component of the changes Pearson made in 1937. The second was more dramatic—a move. Although he had lived in Wilkes County for most of his life, he began to feel its limitations and decided to move: “The people around me are good neighbors so far as they know but they leave me hungry and unsatisfied in the matter of intellectual companionship. Not one of them talks about books, poetry, pictures, music, and the things of the mind and soul. And perhaps they think I am crazy to be interested in such things.” 22 Determined to find someone with whom to talk about such lofty topics, he moved sixty miles south to Lincolnton where he embarked on his third major action of the year—the production of yet another newspaper. Entitled The Literary South, the purpose was to offer an intellectual take on the region’s literature with more serious fare than The Fool-Killer. The first two issues appeared in January and February 1937 to mixed reviews. Poet and scholar Arthur Abernathy congratulated Pearson for disproving critic H. L. Mencken’s assertion that the South had no literary talent, and he praised the paper. Ethel Crittenden, a librarian in Wake Forest, North Carolina, offered a different critique and complained that the first edition was poorly printed. While she enjoyed the content of the paper, she feared the poor print would not endure and would hurt subscription numbers. Pearson acknowledged Crittenden’s critique and explained that the first one hundred copies he printed were so bad he had them destroyed. He admitted, however, that even the ones he distributed remained rough. He told Crittenden he hoped to earn enough money from the journal to buy better type and rollers, and he expected to improve the quality of the paper in the near future. 23 Before he could do any of that, or even put out a third issue, he moved from Lincolnton back to Wilkes County. The cause of the move was his unhappiness with the town. While he had hoped to find a more welcoming intellectual climate, what he found instead was an unfriendly and snobby citizenry who wanted nothing to do with their newest resident. Soon after his return he wrote about his time in Lincolnton: I spent three months there—January, February, March—under conditions about the most difficult of my whole difficult life. Was working in

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a printing office on South Academy Street, and I had no money to pay for room and board at a hotel or boarding house. So I had a bed (or bunk) in the dark and dusty back-end of the printing office, and there I stayed day and night for three months, feeding myself as best I could out of tin cans and paper bags. Although I was by far the most widely known person in Lincolnton, not a soul in the town ever seemed to know I was there. I met several of the town’s “leading citizens,” and they were bound to have known who I was (unless they are dumber than anybody has a right to be), but not once was any kind of courtesy extended to me in any way. Not once was I invited into any home in Lincolnton. . . . It is by long odds the most unfriendly town that I have ever seen or heard tell of.

To others he wrote, “Lincolnton treated me worse than an outcast. In fact, it so completely ignored me that it didn’t know I existed. Sometime it may have to build a monument to me on the site of that old print-shop where I suffered three months! That would serve it right.” Even thirty years later he remembered his time there bitterly: “I can recall very vividly those days at Lincolnton, which in some respects were not very happy days for me. . . . I lived there three months, eating and sleeping in the print shop, and was never at any time invited into any home in that town. . . . I felt that Lincolnton was the most UNFRIENDLY town that I had ever seen. . . . I couldn’t imagine how any town could be so snooty and unfriendly.” 24 Sadly, the return to Wilkes County did not solve his problems as he lost all of his previous work on the paper and then “narrowly escaped a physical and mental breakdown.” He needed two months of recuperation, and only in July did he begin work on the third issue of The Literary South. The August edition proved to be his last, however, and after its publication to lackluster sales he admitted, “My paper, The Literary South, seems to be permanently dead, and I can’t see any hope of injecting life into it. Nobody seems to want it, and I see no use of working myself to death making a paper that nobody wants.” 25 The results were crushing. He had placed high hopes on returning to the fame and fortune of his Fool-Killer days, but the paper “flopped” and left him broke: “[I] sunk in it every bit of money I could get hold of, and there was no return. Lost. Debts to pay and no money.” In a letter to his in-laws, he was even more explicit: My latest undertaking was such a complete failure that I am now right square against a stone wall and no way to turn for escape. I haven’t a dollar to my name, and there is no way in the world that I can get a dollar. The future looks absolutely black. I am homeless, friendless, helpless and hopeless. I haven’t a respectable shirt to my back nor any other clothes fit to wear in company. And I am hungry—starving— actual physical starvation. Don’t tell this to anyone, but it is a fact. . . . If something isn’t done soon there is nothing left for me but suicide. Life

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Chapter 8 is so unbearable! That’s what comes of being a so-called poet! Lord in heaven! Poet! If only I could have been a brick-layer, or a boot-legger, or somebody else with sense enough to make a living! 26

Despite such lamentations, and as he always seemed to do, Pearson eventually rebounded and briefly considered reviving The Fool-Killer, saying, “That sort of thing is what the people seem to want rather than good literature. I’ve got to do something and there is not much demand for my best, so I’ll give them my worst, by gosh.” He was torn, however, between returning to his poetry, which he believed was “the only thing that has ever brought me into public notice or made me any reputation” or focusing instead on the “Fool Killer stuff” which “only the cheap, uneducated, one-gallus fellows raved over.” While he admitted The Fool-Killer “stuff” made him money, he found it unfulfilling and of no lasting value. He really wanted to create a lasting literary presence and believed FoolKiller-type writing was not the way to go about that: “Why should I give nearly all of my time to a sort of work which will never bring me an inch nearer to the literary goal that I want to reach, and toward which I have already made a fair start?” At the same time, he needed money and realized, “they paid for it [The Fool-Killer], which did help a whole lot. . . . The only excuse for trying again is MONEY, and I might not get the money, after all.” 27 Pearson ultimately rejected the idea of restarting The Fool-Killer, in part thanks to the intervention of Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of the former president. By September 1937 Theodore and his sister Alice were organizing a collection of poems called The Desk Drawer Anthology and they asked permission to use “Fifty Acres.” Pearson quickly granted permission and sent along a copy of the poem to make sure they got it correct. He also included a personal note: “It might interest you, Mr. Roosevelt, to know that you and I have the same birthday—September 13.” Roosevelt thanked Pearson for the permission and responded graciously to the letter: “I like Fifty Acres very much. . . . It is very amusing that we have the same birthday. I am getting fairly ancient now, being fifty and a grandfather!” 28 When the anthology finally came out, Roosevelt sent Pearson a signed copy. Pearson then took the opportunity to request some help. He asked Roosevelt to get his publishing company, Doubleday-Doran, to publish Fifty Acres and Other Selected Poems. He exaggerated the book’s success, saying that he was unable to meet the demand in his own printing shop and that he feared missing the opportunity to sell more copies because he could not print enough. Roosevelt obliged and took the book to his publisher, who rejected it as a result of the company’s previous negative experiences with works of poetry. While they admired the content, they found such works did not sell well and determined that it did not fit their business model. 29

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Finding his dream of having his poems published by a professional press once again dashed, and still in desperate need of money, Pearson turned to the federal government for help. He had first done so in 1936 when he worked briefly for the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). Part of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, the FWP employed writers to collect folk tales, local histories, tourist guides, slave narratives, and other such preservative stories. Pearson’s first task was in keeping with the project’s agenda, and he was assigned to write about all the historic homes in Wilkes County. He traveled the county interviewing the owners of such homes, seeking information about the structures and the families who lived there. Pearson did not like this type of work and explained to P. G. Cross, supervisor of the project for North Carolina District 6: “I am an introvert, and live largely within myself—with my own thoughts. I want to write my thoughts in my own way. I haven’t the gift of mingling with people and seeing the outside world objectively. I haven’t the sort of personality that wins respectful attention from others. When I approach them for information they ignore me or treat my request as something of no importance. I can’t horn in and compel attention. . . . I am too timid, too retiring, too self-conscious.” Cross understood and gave Pearson a new task that required less human interaction—describing the scenery bordering roads in Wilkes County. Pearson did that task fairly well and soon was assigned to write up a “running description” of the Yadkin River from its source to Elkin, North Carolina. Unsure of what a “running description” was, as well as embarrassed about being on relief, he grew despondent. At one point he even wrote to Cross, “I have lost my morale—lost my grip on life—and don’t know whether I will ever be able to come back. I think it is due to the sort of life I am living—so utterly alone—not a soul in the world who cares whether I live or die.” 30 Pearson subsequently quit the Federal Writers Project at the end of August 1936. In 1938, however, he was desperate enough to give it another try, and by May he was back on the federal payroll. His first assignment was to collect “Legend Stories.” He again had trouble with the assignment as it required him to visit with people in order to collect the stories. By late June 1938, Sidney Jones, the assistant field supervisor for the FWP, was pushing Pearson to write up what he found and turn it in. Pearson explained, [I have] been giving my thought to the work for much more than eight hours a day, and will try to be actually at my desk or typewriter for the required number of hours. But it is just studying and grinding away— writing, tearing up and re-writing—and up to now the actual output of finished work is hardly a beginning. I see that I am not going to have any finished article to send when I send in the first time report. But I hope this slow beginning will be laying the foundation for better progress later. You know I told you that I was afraid I couldn’t do the

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Chapter 8 work, and I still have my fears; but I will try my best, and if you will be patient with me maybe I can get started.

He eventually collected fourteen tales and wrote them in a folksy and dialect heavy manner that pleased his bosses. 31 That success led Jones to assign Pearson the task of writing a history of Wilkes County, and he encouraged him to use the same manner and dialect writing that figured in the “Legend Stories.” By August 1938 Pearson had completed the task, much to the delight of Jones. He praised the work as having much that was excellent about it and then encouraged Pearson, “Keep up the good work. Keep up your courage. And everything will be okay.” But everything was not okay. His January 1939 paycheck was late arriving, and Pearson wrote a pleading letter to Jones: “I didn’t get the check this time as usual, so I’m afraid I am cut off. And I never needed money as before. Christmas left me broke, and if the Writers Project drops me now I will be helpless, with no money to live on nor to start anything of my own. I do hope I can be kept on a month or so longer, and I will use some of the money to launch some sort of a printing or publishing venture of my own.” The check eventually arrived, but so too did some criticism. Jones reported that headquarters was complaining that Pearson was not turning in enough material: “So you are still on the job, but I shall appreciate your doing what you said you were going to do and submit work more frequently. . . . I thoroughly appreciate the difficulty under which you are laboring, and understand that there are a great many things that interfere with your systematic efforts.” 32 Pearson eventually did turn in his material, having been assigned the project of writing the histories of key families in Wilkes County. Although this required him once again to meet with people, and may explain the speed with which he did the job, he completed three family biographies. He interviewed local mail carrier Carl Stokes about his family, local farmer Dave Franklin about his family, and local farmer Jane McNeil about her family. The stories Pearson wrote offered little useful insight into their individual lives or those of their extended families, and resulted in some criticisms from the FWP editors. Of his essay on Franklin, for instance, FWP editors complained that it “needs something” and determined that “not enough is told about the fundamentals of their economic condition.” Similarly, while editors praised the McNeil essay as “a marvelous thing, extremely well handled,” they changed the end of the story to make it more appealing. Jones informed Pearson of the change, but then explained, “we are unable in this office to handle Mrs. McNeil’s dialect in the masterful manner in which you have handled it. We are asking you, therefore, to read what we have done with your story and then rewrite it as you think Mrs. McNeil would have told it.” 33 Pearson was not used to having his work edited, having published all of

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his own work, and he grew frustrated. He completed the task nonetheless, but left the FWP soon thereafter. More depressed than ever, Pearson’s friends and neighbors continued to believe that his real problem was loneliness and that the solution to his misery was a wife. He agreed, but explained, “If I ever marry another woman I must KNOW that I love her, and I must THINK that she loves me. And right there may be one of my greatest difficulties. I can hardly imagine a woman loving me.” When his friends still pushed him, he offered two additional issues that prevented him from seeking a new wife. First, he said he needed to make some money. He believed no woman would be interested in a poor, widowed poet, and even if she was she would never live in a house such as his. At a minimum, therefore, he claimed he had to fix up the house before he had any chance of remarrying. Second, he admitted he still needed to overcome his own hang-ups: I don’t even understand my own mental attitude toward women. I am interested in women in general, but at the same time I am afraid of them. I think most of them are two-faced and untrue, and I can’t realize that there is any woman in the world who would be true to me. Feeling that way about women, I just don’t know how to approach them. The impression I get is that women do not like me, and I am certainly not going to force myself upon them. . . . This same situation has built up in my subconscious mind a defense mechanism which prevents me from falling in love. I have been rather surprised at myself for not falling in love with somebody, but I just haven’t. I feel that I could love if I could be sure that my love would be appreciated and reciprocated; but until I have that assurance I am not going to let myself be a fool over any woman. 34

Doubting he could ever find such a love, Pearson was surprised when he finally met “the right one.” Her name was Eleanor Fox. As the daughter of Guilford College professor Dr. Millard Fox, a 1915 graduate of Guilford College with degrees in voice and English, and the ex-wife of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Arthur Winsor, she had been surrounded by the academic world her entire life. Her nineyear marriage to Winsor ended in divorce in 1926, after which she took a job with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and returned to the Guilford College community. She remained in Guilford College for the next decade, worked for the IRS, and served as the president of the Friendly Garden Club and as a member of the board of directors of the Guilford County Association of the Blind. In 1937 she first met Pearson when he spoke at the college. Eleanor had dabbled in poetry throughout her life, and upon meeting Pearson she asked him to read and comment on some of her poems. They exchanged a few subsequent letters, but the correspondence soon ended. In 1938 he traveled again to Guilford College and

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looked in on her. They chatted about old times and agreed to resume their correspondence. Although the correspondence began very formally, with Eleanor addressing her letters “Dear Mr. Pearson” and signing them “Your Friend Eleanor S. Fox,” they soon began to discuss personal issues. Both expressed their skepticism about love and marriage, yet admitted to being lonely without a spouse. In one letter Eleanor explained her thoughts about a second marriage: “To be frank, I don’t know what I do think about it. Men seem so fickle. I really don’t know whether I could ever again believe! I still believe in the institution of marriage and if love should ever come again to me—well I suppose faith, or belief, would come with it—at least I should hope so! I don’t think it would be a sin to remarry. I don’t feel that way about it.” 35 Pearson was even more open. He worried that he would never be able to find another woman who would love him or another woman whom he could love as much as Cora: As I wrote you some time ago, and as I mentioned to you last Friday, I have never really fallen in love any more since my wife died. That hasn’t been because I couldn’t, but because I wouldn’t allow myself to do it. There has never been a time in my life when women in general were more attractive and interesting to me than they are now. But I just hadn’t come to the point of making a selection. There was no certain one that I was positively sure I wanted above all others. In addition to that, I haven’t felt myself financially able to marry, and I haven’t been able to believe that any worth-while woman would ever love me.

Despite that, Pearson held out some hope that Eleanor might be the one: Do you remember what you told me there at the Robert E. Lee [hotel]? When I remarked that I couldn’t realize that any woman would ever love me, you said, “Try them and see.” I don’t know whether that was a hint that you would be willing for me to try YOU, but anyhow that is exactly what I am going to do. I am going to start out by trying YOU. Honest and true, now, do you believe that you could ever love me? If you knew absolutely that I was desperately in love with you and that I would be true to you as long as breath remained in me, could you love me in return? . . . I came away from our meeting feeling strongly persuaded that I could love you in the way you want to be loved—if you would let me. Now please, dear Eleanor, don’t be offended at me for asking you that question. I am only taking your advice—“Try them and see.” Among all the women that I know, you are the one I am most anxious to try, and you can’t take offense, because you told me to do it. See? Of course I can hardly conceive of such a possibility as that a woman like you, with education, culture and charm, and who could (I think) have her pick and choice among men, could ever care for me. But if there is just one chance in a thousand that it might be so, I will gamble on that chance. 36

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Eleanor responded to his letter with a stirring one of her own in an envelope bearing her handwritten message “I can gamble.” In the letter itself she wrote, I have not yet caught my breath from all the surprises your last letter contained. . . . First of all, please believe me when I say that it never once occurred to me that I was tossing out a hint as regards myself. You see I thought you understood how I felt about myself—that I was an onlooker on the sidelines. However, it does seem mighty nice to be drawn into the stream again. I was overcome that you—North Carolina’s first poet—should even look my way. . . . But, dear man, I know you as a poet and one whom I admire greatly, but I have not had much chance to know you as a man and of course that is what would count in daily life. . . . So if all the lovely things you mentioned were true beyond a doubt, then you might take a gambling chance on that one thousandth chance!

She then noted that he planned to be in Guilford College in mid-October and suggested he use the opportunity to meet other women and firm up his opinion of her: “I want you to make a careful survey for you’ll be getting a veritable nest of old maids, maidens, and widows. You see I would want you to be absolutely sure if in case the wheel of fortune or fate should point my way—or any other way.” 37 Fairly certain of his decision, however, she invited him to stay with her family while he was in town. Pearson was moved by Eleanor’s response and wrote the word “Special" on the outside of the envelope. Yet in his very next letter to her he seemed to pull back: “You understood, of course, that what I said was not meant as a proposal—not yet—but it was just a preliminary ‘feeler’ thrown out to see if I might dare to ‘look your way’ seriously. And your answer seems to give me at least a little chance.” He then proceeded to relate his complexes and worries: “If I could be always and only my best and most worthy self—the poet that you know and admire—perhaps I might be in a measure worthy of you.” He feared, however, that he would be unable to live up to that self and would let her down. Although rather self-effacing and almost reactionary to the previous letter, his true feelings seemed to come out at the end, where he signed the letter “LARKIE,” as opposed to the previous letters which he signed formally “James Larkin.” 38 Despite such reservations, after he visited Guilford College and “surveyed” the other women he finally realized his love was real and formally proposed to Eleanor through the mail. She did not respond directly to his query, but rather invited him back to Guilford College in early December 1938. He visited and they ate out “in a little hide-away restaurant on the 14th floor of the Jefferson Building in Greensboro.” After the meal they “looked down at the moonlit city,” and he proposed once again: “My arm was around her. She lifted her face very close to mine as she

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whispered, ‘Yes.’ Then followed our first long, lingering Hollywood kiss.” 39 The engagement lasted four months, during which time they continued to correspond and visit. Although a time of joy, the engagement also gave Pearson time to fret. He worried first about money, as he realized he would have to support the two of them on his meager income. Over and over Eleanor assured him things would work out, reminded him that she worked for the IRS, and begged him to enjoy life and not to worry so much about the financial considerations: “Please my lover, don’t worry so much about the money part of living. . . . So let’s enjoy the present as much as we can as human beings for these . . . days will not come again. We both are so much in love with each other that things may loom at us because of our concern for the other’s welfare.” 40 Once Eleanor squelched that fear, Pearson then began to worry she was too good for him. To friends he described her as having “a beautiful figure and a charming personality. She used to be called the most beautiful girl who ever lived at Guilford College, and I think she is as pretty as she ever was. She is extremely popular with everybody here and a leader in all the church and community activities.” While a positive assessment, it led him to worry: “I am getting a much higher and finer type of woman than I had ever hoped to get. . . . Her college background, her fine education and cultural training, and her pleasing personality, make her really charming. I am awfully proud of her, and at the same time I feel my own shortcomings keenly. In so many ways I have been a failure in life.” 41

Figure 8.2. James and Eleanor Pearson embark on their honeymoon in 1939. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

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Pearson eventually calmed down and accepted his good fortune. They wed on April 6, 1939, before a crowd of fifty people in her family home. The happy couple spent a two-week honeymoon in Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, and he then moved into her home in Guilford College. Pearson explained to friends the reasons he agreed to move. First, he noted that he planned to keep his fifty acres in Wilkes County so they would have a place to visit in the summertime. He also explained that Eleanor had lived on a college campus all her life and, “It would be a rank injustice to her to pull her from there and bring her up here to this God-forsaken backwoods community where the ignorant neighbors would misunderstand her just as they have always misunderstood me.” He further noted that he always had wanted to live in such a setting and was excited that living in Guilford College would give him access to libraries as well as the nearby cities. Indeed, he quickly grew to like his new home and neighbors: “I like this college community. The people are nearly all Quakers. My wife is a Quaker. I find that they don’t have very much cut and dried theology. You can believe pretty much whatever you please and still be a Quaker.” 42 Happy with his neighbors and ecstatic with his wife, he settled into a joyful marriage. Pearson clearly overcame yet another difficult period in the late 1930s. His spirit was tested by his daughter, his search for a mate, his continued economic woes, and his struggles with the publishing world. He persevered as always and emerged from the era in a more positive setting than he had enjoyed in years. His daughter was happily married, he found true love for a second time, his wife’s income provided some semblance of economic security, and, while he still could not find a publisher, his works continued to be of interest to at least some of the state’s cultured elite. As World War II erupted, marking the start of a new era for the nation and the world, Pearson’s rollercoaster of life carried on as before. The 1940s would mark yet another dramatic period in his life as joy and success were soon followed by pain and heartbreak. Through it all Pearson held fast to his ideals, his spirit, and his poetry. NOTES 1. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Stewart Atkins, August 14, 1934; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Writings, Poetry, “The Soul of Poetry” (A paper read before the State Literary and Historical Association of North Carolina, Raleigh, North Carolina, December 4, 1934). 2. News and Observer, December 6 and December 23, 1934; Chapel Hill Weekly, December 14, 1934. 3. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 304; JLP Collection, James Larkin Pearson, 1930–1939. 4. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #1; News and Observer, February 9, 1936 and May 3, 1936; JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, undated, The Progressive. 5. Winston-Salem Journal Sentinel, July 25, 1937.

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6. JLP Collection, Autobiography, Miscellaneous #2, Ruth Linney, “James Larkin Pearson: A Character Sketch.” 7. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Agnes Pearson, November 14, 1934 and September 16, 1934. 8. Ibid., September 16, 1934 and September 25, 1934. 9. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, R. L. Johnson, October 17, 1934. 10. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Mary Livermore. 11. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 307. 12. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Correspondence, Margene Doddridge, March 19, 1935.and April 2, 1935. 13. Ibid., May 15, 1935; June 24, 1935; and July 13, 1935. 14. Ibid., August 5, 1935 and October 5, 1935. 15. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Correspondence, Clyde Linney Stephenson (Mrs. Stephenson), June 14, 1936 and August 19, 1936. 16. Ibid., August 31, 1936 and September 8, 1936. 17. Ibid., September 25, 1936; October 19, 1936; January 27, 1937; and February 3, 1937. 18. Pearson, Fifty Acres and Other Selected Poems. 19. JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, Fifty Acres. 20. JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, 1974, The State, April 1974; Greensboro Daily News, October 29, 1939. 21. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Pauline Cole, May 5, 1938. 22. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Rhonda Carter, April 16, 1936. 23. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Albert Abernathy, letter dated February 2, 1937; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Ethel Crittenden, “A Friendly Criticism from Wake Forest.” 24. JLP Collection, Minnie Nagel, May 24, 1937; JLP Collection, L. L. Huffman, May 25, 1937; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Howard Davis, March 25, 1965. 25. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, David Allison, August 20, 1937. 26. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Mr. Crutchfield; JLP Collection, C. O. McNeil, August 16, 1937. 27. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, A. G. Miller, October 26, 1937; JLP Collection, Mrs. Smoak, February 14, 1936. 28. JLP Collection, Theodore Roosevelt, September 23, 1937 and October 13, 1937. 29. Ibid., February 25, 1938 and March 3, 1938. 30. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Robert Lee Isbell, March 21, 1936; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, P. G. Cross, Supervisor of the Federal Writers Project [hereafter FWP] for North Carolina District 6, May 12, 1936; June 30, 1936; July 28, 1936; and August 7, 1936. 31. JLP Collection, George Andrews, typed letter from Pearson, June 10, 1938; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Sidney Jones, Assistant Field Supervisor FWP, June 28, 1938; JLP Collection, Short Stories; JLP Collection, Vertical Files, “Federal Writers Project.” 32. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Sidney Jones, Assistant Field Supervisor FWP, August 19, 1938; January 5, 1939; and January 9, 1939. 33. Folder 690: James Larkin Pearson and Claude V. Dunnagan (interviewers): Music Lost in the Mails, SHC, FWP Papers; Folder 691: James Larkin Pearson and Claude V. Dunnagan (interviewers): What is Left of a Family, SHC, FWP Papers; Folder 692, James Larkin Pearson (interviewer): The Story of David Franklin and Family, SHC, FWP Papers; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Sidney Jones, Assistant Field Supervisor FWP, January 18, 1939. 34. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Pansy Feller, undated; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Abbie Kerley, undated, separate page 2. 35. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Eleanor Fox Pearson, January 10, 1938. 36. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Correspondence, Eleanor Pearson, September 28, 1938. 37. Ibid., October 5, 1938. 38. Ibid., October 10, 1938.

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39. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 311. 40. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Correspondence, Eleanor Pearson, March 25, 1938. 41. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, France Mosher, December 18, 1939; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Ada Browning, January 24, 1939. 42. JLP Clipping Collection, “James Larkin Pearson, 1879–1981”; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Ada Browning, January 24, 1939; JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, France Mosher, December 18, 1939.

NINE Poet Laureate

Happily remarried and, for the first time since his foray to Washington, DC, ensconced in a vibrant and intellectual community, Pearson tried to enjoy life in the decade beginning with World War II. As with the rest of his life, however, bad times followed good as he reached the height of his profession only to suffer continued financial considerations, moments of despair, and the failure of another newspaper. Even more dramatic was yet more personal trauma. Through it all Pearson endured, produced his poetry, and commented bitterly on the world around him. In early 1939 Pearson received some positive news when he was informed that The World’s Fair Anthology had selected “Autumn Fires” for inclusion in its next publication: Let this be noted as we pass: The maple wears a flaming coat; And death has touched the aged grass, And crickets sound a sadder note. All day the far blue hills are fed With fainter light from weaker sun; And, mourning where their love lies dead, The late leaves redden one by one. Old chimneys wake with autumn fires, And send aloft their curling breath; And long-dead ghosts of old desires Walk nightly in their robes of death.

He earned $100 and gained yet a wider audience for his work. He could have received even more attention when his poem “When the War Is Going to End” once again began to circulate in the press. Written during World War I, it reemerged when World War II erupted in 153

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September 1939. While Pearson called it “my worst poem,” he lamented the fact that it often ran without attribution. Although embarrassed by it, he realized the poem’s fame could have been a benefit: “And then there comes the doggonedest sorriest piece of drivel you ever did write, and it rings the bell for all the world to hear! Gets itself so well known in so many places that people still don’t know where it came from in the first place, and you get cheated out of the doubtful fame of being the poor cuss who wrote it. Wouldn’t that burn you up? No wonder poets are nuts!” 1 He loathed the war as well, and just days after its outbreak he began to ponder the destruction of the planet, The Second Great War started Sept. 4, 1939. The end? Nobody knows. Going to be millions of people dead. Maybe all civilizations destroyed. But that will bring peace. What is peace after life is gone? After everything is gone? You can make a new start with a humbled and soldered race. Then for a long time people won’t make the same mistake. . . . But I wonder if it was not a mistake to ever make people anyhow. Maybe the world would have been better off without them. And why make a world? Who needs a world? . . . Back there in Wilkes, Moravian Falls, Boomer, Cora and Agnes, Pa and Ma and John. It all seems so far away. Back there when we farmed on the Fifty Acres and mostly made our living on the land. They are all dead and gone except Agnes, and she is so changed from what she was in childhood. Now she is a woman with her own little boy—Kenneth. He is a lovely little boy. Don’t know what he has come into the world for. Hope it is not to be cannon fodder. 2

Despite the horrors of the war and his fears for humanity and his grandchild, Pearson actually spent little time on the topic, worrying instead about man’s sanity in general. Indeed, it was not simply the war that caused him to question mankind’s mental state; so too was its continuing refusal to acknowledge the importance of the cultural arts. In 1940 poet Edwin Markham died. Markham was born in Oregon in 1852 and began writing poems in his childhood. Poet Laureate Louis Untermeyer described most of Markham’s work as “of no extraordinary merit,” but in 1899 he produced “Man with the Hoe” which “crystallized the expression of outrage [and] the heated ferment” of the late-nineteenth-century workingman. The poem was an immediate success, and millions of Americans joined Pearson in marveling at Markham’s ability to “spiritualize the unrest that was in the air.” Although few of Markham’s subsequent poems reached the majesty or fame of “Man with the Hoe,” Pearson remained a fan. He thus was shocked to stumble across Markham’s brief obituary buried deep in the newspaper. He then checked the front page to see what was of such importance that it deserved prime placement when the death of a great poet merited such poor coverage. The headlines he found read: “Billions to Be Spent by Allies for US Aircraft,” “Huge British Liner Ends Trip Safely,” “Three

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Men Get Commutation from Governor,” “California Divorce Granted to Betsey Cushing Roosevelt.” His takeaway from it all: These headlines show, as nothing else can, the comparative un-importance of a great poet’s life and death in this insane world. What can we hope for from a world which gives its big headlines to stories of war and crime and social and domestic upheavals, but dismisses the death of perhaps our greatest poet with a mere paragraph on the back page? To me this is a strange mis-judging of values. Of course the sensational things and the evil things must be recorded. A newspaper couldn’t live long if it didn’t cater to that morbid demand of the reading public. But one would naturally think that the passing of a great literary figure like Edwin Markham would at least rate some sort of a front-page story.

Although frustrated, he consoled himself with this hope: “If there is a newspaper in heaven when Edwin Markham gets there, I feel pretty sure that the story of his arrival will make the front page.” 3 One of the things Pearson liked about Markham, beyond the fact that they had a mutual respect for each other and corresponded occasionally over the years, was that he was a poet in the traditional sense of rhyme and meter. He wrote poems in the same manner and style as did Pearson. As noted previously, after World War I and continuing throughout the century poetry changed dramatically, and from Pearson’s perspective for the worse. Pearson thus used Markham’s death to lay out his continued critique of modern poetry: I don’t see very much that interests me in this “new” and “modernist” stuff. Most of it, to my way of thinking, is not poetry at all, but only (at best) the raw material out of which poetry might be made. Suppose I want to build a house. I will tell my contractor to build me a house. Next day he drives up to the building site and throws off a truck-load of rough lumber and says, “There’s your house.” I would not be satisfied with that. In the same way, I am not satisfied with a pile of the rough literary lumber out of which a poem might be built. I want the poet to build the poem. And if he can’t do it then let him quit calling himself a poet, and let him turn the job over to somebody who can do it. If you promise me a poem, don’t give me a pile of crooked corkwood that has been run over by a bulldozer. Most of the “new poets” as a rule don’t have anything to say, and they couldn’t say it if they did have. . . . It isn’t a case of occasional or accidental obscurity, but rather a studied effort to be crazy all the time. To be a poet is to be a skillful and careful craftsman, not just a slapdash word-slinger with loose ends flapping all over the place. I am very hopeful that this period of poetic insanity will soon pass and that we can get back to sanity in poetry. 4

Pearson would be disappointed with the continued trajectory of modern poetry, as well as modern politics, but once again family issues intruded on his intellectual musings and forced him to address the more mundane matters of personal existence.

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Although newly married and happily settled in Guilford College, Pearson could not shake the financial fears that had plagued him from the very beginning of his engagement to Eleanor. Although she had a good job with the IRS, they owned homes in Guilford College and Wilkes County and struggled to maintain both. To help cover the costs, Pearson moved his printing press to Guilford College and set up shop outside their home. The occasional printing jobs he received, however, added little to the family’s coffers. Things got so bad that he once again turned to his friends, and in April 1939 he sent out a short typewritten note in which he explained his circumstances and asked for money to build a new print shop, which he believed would attract more business. He asked for loans of ten dollars each in hopes of raising three hundred dollars, which he promised to repay with interest. Frustrated when little came from this gambit, and determined to do his financial part, he began to seek other avenues for income. In the summer of 1942 he found just such an opportunity and accepted a job in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. Eleanor was sad to see him go, but understood his need to work and wished him well as he set off on the journey. 5 Pearson arrived in Pennsylvania on July 17, 1942, and initially was impressed by the apparent prosperity of the region. That impression quickly changed, however, as he found the stores dirty, smelly, unsanitary, and generally lacking in supplies; he found the restaurants even worse. As a result, he determined that “southern towns are far ahead of the northern towns in sanitation. The appetizing cleanliness and fresh-

Figure 9.1. James Larkin Pearson farming in 1941. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

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ness of the stores and restaurants in southern towns is more appreciated now that I have seen what they have up here in Pennsylvania. I always thought the south was the best place to live, and now I know it.” He had a similar impression of the people, whom he found friendly but “more wrapped up in themselves and their own interests.” He also found them uglier than southerners, although less profane. 6 Despite such a perspective, he needed the work offered and took a job at the Veteran’s Hospital in Coatesville. He started work on July 23 under the impression that it was a hospital for wounded war veterans. In reality, it was a hospital for the insane: “Some of them were crazed by the horrors of the war and others were the victims of their own sins and lusts. Some of them were crazed from alcoholism and others from venereal diseases. There was syphilis and tuberculosis and other diseases among them.” Pearson was on duty in a ward of forty men, and he had to keep them in line, oversee their hygiene, organize them for their trips to the cafeteria, and generally keep the chaos in order. He later recalled that two aspects of the job greatly troubled him. The first was the fact that he came into direct contact with the diseased men while shaving or bathing them. He feared contracting their diseases, although the other orderlies assured him the risk was minimal. The other element that upset him was the general tumult and profanity that reigned in the hospital: “They were constantly walking the floor and cursing and carrying on in such a way that it was nerve-racking. From six to twelve of them were ranting all at once at the top of their voices, and it seemed that nearly every other word was ‘God damn,’ and nearly all the other words were the most sickening vulgarity. . . . It was the pandemonium of awful language I had to listen to, and then realizing the pitiful plight of the poor devils, and it soon began to get on my nerves.” 7 He lasted less than two weeks and quit on August 4. Pearson returned to Guilford College where he and Eleanor made do the best they could and enjoyed the minor victories along the way. In 1942, for instance, poet and North Carolina State University English professor Richard Walser put together an anthology entitled North Carolina Poetry. The collection included eight of Pearson’s poems, as well as a brief biographical sketch that concluded, “For a long while admired by critics in the farthest parts of the United States and also in Europe, he has been until recent years almost unknown in his own state.” 8 Nell Battle Lewis of the Raleigh News and Observer reviewed the work, with a special focus on Pearson’s contributions: I’m very glad to see James Larkin Pearson included. Recognition of this indigenous Tar Heel bard has been fairly recent and should be more general. But I was disappointed that Mr. Walser didn’t include the sonnet by Mr. Pearson which, if I were to choose one poem by a North Carolinian as my favorite, would be my choice. I’m even tempted to say that Pearson’s “More Than Power” has elements of greatness,

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Lewis went on to print the poem in its entirety and concluded, “No North Carolina poet has ever written anything better than that”: Long did the kings and potentates conspire To take by force the dwelling-place of man; To build on Blood and dedicate with Fire, And justify by Fear their awful plan. Love was a little waif that Mercy found Bleeding and lost upon a battered hill. Her cause ignored, her gentle voice was drowned In all the din of conflict raging still. But when their Power had wrought its own defeat, And when their Fire had burned their kingdoms down, They came to Love, in penitence complete, And placed upon her head creation’s crown. And so did Love, which seemed so weak and small, Become at last the greatest Power of all. 9

Battle’s praise and Walser’s recognition brought little financial help, so in December 1944 Pearson reluctantly sold his land in Wilkes County, the land made famous in “Fifty Acres,” to Harley and Leona Bumgarner for $1,100. Ironically, two years earlier the Winston-Salem Journal had proposed purchasing the farm. Pearson already was seeking a buyer, and the paper hoped to kill two birds with one stone. One was helping Pearson out of his financial hole. The other was what it proposed doing with the land. The paper suggested creating a “writers retreat—a place where distinguished writers from this and other sections of the country would gather during the summer months.” The idea was to create a place where writers could find peace to write, but also a place where young and aspiring writers could learn the trade from those who were more experienced. The paper concluded, “So why not a writer’s colony in the hills of northwestern North Carolina? And why shouldn’t this retreat be in an historical literary setting? Why shouldn’t it be on James Larkin Pearson’s famed ‘Fifty Acres’? It would encourage the development of North Carolina literature. And it would help provide deserved recognition for the greatest North Carolina poet of his generation during his own lifetime.” 10 Such recognition was not yet forthcoming, however, and Pearson had to be satisfied with the money made from the sale of the land. He also

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removed the lumber from the house and used it to build a new print shop on their land in Guilford College. Despite the money and the new shop, the loss of his beloved fifty acres depressed him and he once again began to wallow in misery. When asked to contribute to the local Community Chest, for instance, rather than simply beg off he wrote an extended and melancholy letter: I have been almost starving myself in order to save a little more to put on the debts. I have gone down in weight from 175 pounds to less than 150 because I do not eat enough. I have become so weak that I am not able to stand on my feet all day and work like I have to. . . . But it has not always been like this. I was once a prosperous business man. I built up and owned and operated for several years a nation-wide publishing business. I was an employer of labor, with an average of eight or ten people working for me all the time. I had a splendid income and was financially on Easy Street.

But then, he explained, it all went wrong: “I . . . lost my family. My home, my money, my business—everything was gone.” Worse, he informed the charity, now that he was remarried he was even more distraught that he could not take care of his family as he believed he should. Despite all that, and in keeping with his personality, he concluded the letter, “Anyway, I refuse to quit hoping.” 11 That hope manifested itself in 1947 when he threw off his depression and created yet another newspaper. Called The Lucky Dog, Pearson planned to use it to speak out for the little guy, whom he believed was being lost in the new postwar world of big government and standardization: “Conditions have changed—people have changed—and the things that once ‘took like wild-fire’ will now scarcely go at all. It seems that the people are getting more and more standardized and regimented, and very few people are doing any honest and sober thinking for themselves. Big money has cornered everything and we accept as gospel truth whatever is handed down to us from some ‘high-up authority.’ The little man’s opinions are ignored.” 12 Pearson hoped this voice of the underdog not only would give the little man the chance to express his opinions, but, ironically enough, also make him some money. The Lucky Dog cost forty cents per issue and, like The Fool-Killer, took on the issues of the day with a pointed perspective. In the paper’s statement of purpose, Pearson wrote, [it] is unlike any other. The Lucky Dog wears no bell, muzzle, collar nor halter. I am the fellow who works at the pump-handle on this pungent periodical of thrilling thought. I print only what I write; I write only what I think; and I think what I doggone please. The Lucky Dog is a monthly mustard plaster for the ailments of Society, Church and State. It is written with a red hot poker dipped in razor soup. It rides the devil a-straddle without a saddle, and spurs him at every lope. It is salted with wit, peppered with humor, and seasoned with sarcasm. 13

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As such, in the very first issue Pearson criticized Catholics, or “Pappycats” or “pope toe kissers” as he called them, for complaining about being persecuted. He claimed they were the real persecutors as evidenced by the Church’s outspoken criticism of the violence, immorality, and anti-Catholic sentiment in a new movie called Duel in the Sun. The Church’s attack, which including banning Catholics from attending the film, was proof for Pearson that Catholics were the ones causing trouble. Although such a perspective was pretty standard fare from Pearson, who had a long history of anti-Catholic sentiment, he now viewed it as part of his attack on the elite. 14 Catholics were not his only target, and he also aimed attacks on the media, foreign aid, and public sin. In the very same inaugural issue, without a hint of irony, he complained about violence in movies and on the radio. He claimed all such matter did was scare good, decent people and serve as a school for criminals. He added additional lamentations about the amount of American aid being sent to help rebuild Europe and Asia, and claimed all it did was turn those regions into children who grew reliant on the great American “Sandy Claws” to fulfill their needs. Similarly, he railed against the dangers of drinking and smoking and complained that the government refused to warn the American public for fear of upsetting big business. 15 After railing against the dangers of the church, Hollywood, and the government, he then settled in to the real focus of the first issue: universal military training. He argued against the call for universal training, which was gaining popular support as the Cold War settled over the nation, by asserting that in a democracy numbers matter. While he admitted many veterans groups and the American Legion supported the program, he argued that most religious groups opposed it. Since there were more church members than legionnaires, the only proper course was to follow the majority and do away with universal training. After that rather questionable bit of arithmetic, he moved on and wondered why we even bothered with soldiers in the nuclear age: Now what in the heck would an army of a million men do with a thing like that? Just get wiped out. That’s all. A million men with rifles and machine guns would be just as helpless as one man with a bow-andarrow. Oh but they say WE’VE got the bomb, and no other nation has it. Who in the dickens knows what other nations have? Would they likely broadcast it to the world the very minute they got it? We didn’t. We won’t have any more use for big armies than a hog has for saddlepockets. We will only need a small number of well trained flyers to drop our super bombs on the enemy country. And, mind you, we will have to drop them FIRST. If we don’t we will not drop them at all.

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In a later edition, he went so far as to assert that universal military training was leading the nation down “the road to a Hitlerized police state” and concluded, “Nothing more utterly insane has ever been imagined.” 16 Although a bit hyperbolic, Pearson was pleased with the first issue of The Lucky Dog and happily put out the second in October 1947. In it, he asserted that the first issue already had an effect as radio executives had promised to clean up their act and tone down the violence in their shows. He then moved on to a collection of bon mots and one-liners, à la The Fool-Killer, and again described the horrors of alcohol use. The two big topics in the second issue, however, were traffic safety and honor. On the former topic, he wondered why car companies spent so much time making their cars go faster, thereby negating any effort to make the cars safer. He suggested limiting speeds to forty miles per hour but admitted that was not what the public wanted, and he winced at the idea that people would rather be happy and dead than accept some limitations for their own health. 17 In a similar vein, he took on the age-old practice of fighting for one’s honor: “If the other fellow is low-down enough to want to insult me, I consider myself so far above him that I don’t want to nasty my hands with him. If a coarse-grained ruffian says bad things about me, I just consider the source, and then forget all about it. If I am a gentleman and conduct myself as one, only a gentleman could insult me—and a gentleman is not going to try.” 18 Although worthy ideas, already in the second issue Pearson seemed to have forgotten the purpose of his paper. Rather than railing against the powers that be, he was addressing man’s own foibles. In the third installment, however, he corrected course by taking on Hollywood, religion, and the concept of bravery as his main themes. The issue began with a renewed focus on crime and violence on the radio. Despite previously claiming to have forced radio stations to change their policy, he complained about a show called “The Inner Sanctum Murder Mystery” sponsored by Bromo-Seltzer: “Every time that Bromo-Seltzer program or a similar one goes on the air, ten thousand potential criminals are . . . going through with their graduating exercises and getting ready to start out on the road of crime. Moreover, such listeners as are not criminally-minded are left shocked and shuddering, their nerves unstrung and their sense of decency outraged.” He demanded the media clean up its act and take some responsibility for the social problems it helped create. 19 He then moved on to religion and expressed the essence of his theological perspective: “The man whose heart is set on treating his fellow men right—that man has got the only religion worth having, and he has no more need for a church creed than a duck has for a swimming school.” Knowing the follow-up question such a statement would bring about, he wrote,

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As he had during his Fool-Killer days, Pearson propounded his own unique brand of Christianity. The third edition of The Lucky Dog concluded with a study of bravery, a concept Pearson believed too many people misunderstood. Bravery, he asserted, was the willingness to stand up to those who were bigger and more powerful—just as he claimed The Lucky Dog would do. As a part of that argument, he asserted that the flea was the bravest of all God’s creations: it takes on creatures (man) “a million times bigger” than it is. If there was an animal a million times bigger than you are, I think you’d be sorter careful how you messed with it. You wouldn’t be apt to crawl up its leg and bite it on the belly or shoulder blade. You’d be afraid. But you are a million times bigger than the flea and he don’t ask you one bit of odds. He just shoulders his little meat-axe and goes galloping over your mortal corporosity any time he feels like it, and the only thing you can do is to claw and cuss. And so it seems to me that even the flea possesses some traits of character that we might learn to admire if we would just go at it the right way. 21

Although ignoring issues of free will and instinct, Pearson nonetheless implied that what many viewed as bravery was nothing more than taking advantage of those less fortunate. Real bravery, from his perspective, worked in the opposite direction. After a two-month delay, the fourth issue came out in February 1948. In it, Pearson complained about the “lost art” of deep and original thinking and argued that in contemporary society people wasted their time talking about “baseball or gals or cigarettes.” He lamented the good old days when people discussed real issues. He also lamented the lost days of the amateur journalist, and complained that in the current state of journalism everything was standardized and sterilized. The papers did not engender any real thought among the reading public and created a vicious circle of anti-intellectualism and a media herd all focused on the same irrelevant issues. In the end, he concluded that contemporary newspapers and magazines were “published by people with too much money and not enough brain, and they are bought up by a generation of morons whose brains, if they were dynamite, wouldn’t blow their hats off.” 22 Determined to change that, the final article of this edition dealt with the issue of “Precedent Versus Progress.” He argued that precedent has

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its place, but people need to be wary of relying on it too much. For instance, he noted that while he respected and revered the founding fathers, they didn’t know it all. We don’t accept their authority on modes of travel. They had the stagecoach; we have the automobile and the airplane. And we have improved on their method of sending news. They started a runner on horseback. We send it over a wire or an ether wave. They would have burnt a man at the stake if he had talked about flying; but we can fly. . . . Just suppose we had accepted them as our final authority on science and invention, and had hung every man who tried to improve something. The year 1948 would have been found sucking the hind tit of 1776, with the lice of ignorance a foot thick all over it.

While such sentiment may seem fair enough, Pearson then took the next step and controversially asked, If the good old men of those early days had such a limited knowledge of our material progress, and of what our industrial needs would be, how on earth did it happen that they were so all-wise in matters of government? How could they know just exactly what form of government would suit us best here in this Twentieth century? Here were are, a nation of living people, hemmed in and fenced about with the thoughts and theories of dead men, and with an ingrown belief that we haven’t the right to change anything. 23

For Pearson, such a charge was what bravery and deep thinking were all about, and what The Lucky Dog hoped to stimulate. Not everyone agreed, and sales of the paper were soft. The fifth and final edition began with an extended autobiography, as if Pearson was hoping to win readers with his life story. It seems, however, he realized that would not be enough and in one article he wrote, “I have decided that nothing I can say or do will save the world. If it is going to the devil, it will go anyhow, and I can’t prevent it. So why get all worked up about it and maybe have a nervous breakdown over something I can’t help? On the other hand, if the world is NOT going to the devil, there’s nothing to worry about.” This new perspective, he asserted, was “why this issue of The Lucky Dog has less of the fighting mood and more of the quiet joy of living. If people would try harder to make the world worth saving, the saving would take care of itself.” Pearson seemed to be giving up the fight, but never one to give in completely he concluded the paper’s run with a piece of satire arguing that the ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy should run for president. The 1948 crop of candidates included Harry Truman, a Democrat and the sitting president who was running for his first full term in office after taking over when President Roosevelt died in office in 1945; Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York and the Republican Party’s candidate; and Strom Thurmond, the governor of South Carolina and the candidate of the Dixiecrats—the party of South-

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erners who broke from the Democratic Party over the issue of civil rights. Pearson argued that compared to that group, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Charlie turned out to be almost another Lincoln.” As such, he announced, “The Lucky Dog is not going to rest nor let anybody else rest until the Honorable Charlie McCarthy is elected president of these Benited States.” 24 Neither happened, and The Lucky Dog quietly disappeared. As his paper collapsed, Eleanor convinced Pearson to take a trip to New Jersey to take his mind off of the failure. While there they stopped in Camden and visited the home of the great nineteenth-century poet Walt Whitman. Pearson often had “a Whitman mood,” and he liked to read and reread Leaves of Grass. As a poet, he felt a kinship with Whitman and was excited to be on the stomping grounds of one of the nation’s most famous poets. Indeed, while getting his picture taken on the front steps of Whitman’s house, Pearson recalled the joy of “standing in the intimate presence of Infinity and feeling close kinship with one of the great poets of our time.” This kinship can be seen in the content of their work. As literary scholar Jackie Kaye notes, Whitman speaks “at one and the same time of the permanent truths he has experienced and the time bound facts through which he has lived, and to do that he has to find a language which can be simultaneously transcendent and contingent to remain authentic.” Poet Laureate Louis Untermeyer found that Whitman revealed “the glory of the commonplace” and “transmuted, by the intensity of his emotion, material which had been hitherto regarded as too unpoetic for poetry.” Pearson too expressed in his poems the commonplace truths life had unearthed, and he did his best to present those truths in an authentic and poetic manner. If his language was not transcendent, the goal was as noble as Whitman’s. At the same time, however, Pearson was a stickler for form, while critics note that Whitman’s poems “offend the eye as they ramble across the page. They have no meter, no rhyme, no stanzic form.” 25 As he was unable to do with other poets, however, Pearson looked past his free verse stylings and found joy in Whitman’s thoughts and ideas. Inspired by this brush with history, Pearson’s vigor for poetry returned, and in 1949 he published a new collection of poems entitled Plowed Ground: Humorous and Dialect Poems. In the collection’s preface Pearson laid out how this work differed from the others: “Being naturally of a serious and studious turn of mind, most of my poetical efforts have been in that vein. But there have been occasional short periods when I was able to throw off the burdens of the world and get myself into a lighter and more playful frame of mind. In these lighter periods I have amused myself by jotting down in droll dialect or humorous verse the funny or ridiculous mood of the moment.” In thirty-five poems covering some ninety-one pages, the collection addressed everything from the joys of fishing, in “Let’s Go A-Fishin’ One More Time,” to the wonders of God’s greatest fruit, in “Peaches,” to the sadness of selling a prized horse,

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in “Gingersnap,” to the glories of brotherhood, in “My Bud and Me.” Focused mainly on issues of nature and faith, the collection also included the famous and previously published works “When the Dollar Rules the Pulpit” and “When the War is Going to End.” Throughout, Pearson used a humorous, entertaining, and dialectically unique style that highlighted the lives and language of the mountain people he knew. 26 His poetic vigor continued, and in 1952 he published Early Harvest, a collection of his earliest poems. In the preface Pearson explained that the work consisted of the “early experimental efforts of a poor farm boy,” and that he published it not so much because “they are much worth preserving as poetry, but just as a matter of sentiment.” Each work included the date on which it was written as well as Pearson’s age at the time of its composition. Covering his efforts from the age of twelve through twenty-one, the collection of fifty-three poems consisted of traditional verses with basic meters and rhyme schemes. Topics were similarly traditional and included studies of the seasons, the weather, a child’s wonder at Christmas, and even the fears of death. Among the collection’s highlights were “Song of the Star of Bethlehem,” the first poem for which he received payment after it was published in the New York Independent in 1896, as well as “Pictures of a Storm,” which he later called his best childhood poem: I see the lightning’s vivid flash That breaks the night asunder; I hear the curling waters dash, The burst of booming thunder. An angry storm-cloud sweeps across The dark horizon quickly; The gray old oak trees heave and toss, With brown leaves falling thickly. Now through the dark mist of the night I hear wild wind wailing, And in convulsion and affright The whippoorwills are sailing. No minstrel ever piped a song So full of solemn feeling As that deep tone which bounds along Wide heaven’s frescoed ceiling. The towering hills present a scene Disconsolate and dismal; The murky vales that lie between Seem endless and abysmal.

Pearson printed but 250 copies of Early Harvest, and while neither it nor its predecessor Plowed Ground sold well or attracted much critical atten-

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tion, they were enough to earn him the Poetry Council of North Carolina’s 1952 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for poetry. 27 An even bigger award came in 1953 when North Carolina governor William B. Umstead chose Pearson as the state’s poet laureate. The origins of the appointment go back nearly two decades. In 1934 Pearson visited with friend and historian J. Jay Anderson; during a conversation the issue of a state poet laureate came up. Anderson later claimed he then wrote a letter to Governor John Ehringhaus suggesting Pearson for the position. Ehringhaus responded that the state had no such formal position and the midst of the Depression was not the time to create one. Despite that, in March 1935 the state legislature passed a law creating the position of state poet laureate and the governor signed the bill into law. Although enacted, it was never acted on, and the position remained vacant until 1948 when, according to Richard Walser, “With amusement in his head, [Arthur Talmadge Abernathy] wrote Governor Cherry that he wanted the spot and Cherry, having nothing to lose, appointed him.” Abernathy became the state’s first poet laureate, and he remained in the position throughout the terms of Governor Cherry and Governor Kerr Scott. He did so despite the fact that many considered him “a mere newspaper rhymester—and a poor one at that.” 28 Although he added little heft to the position, Abernathy held the post until 1953 when he abdicated the title and suggested Pearson as his successor. According to Pearson, I had a letter during Christmas week [1952] from Dr. Abernathy, in which he seems in the notion of giving up the job of Poet Laureate, and states that he means to ask the new Governor to appoint ME as Poet Laureate. Me? For goodness sakes! It is true that I have often been called the unofficial Poet Laureate, but I never expected it to become official. But if such a thing should come to me of course I would be pleased and very grateful, and would do my best to be worthy of it. 29

As Pearson pondered the possibility, the governor’s office called on the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for help in choosing Abernathy’s successor. The Association selected nine members representing the entire state, and asked them to make a nomination. All nine chose Pearson. Governor Umstead went along with their recommendation, and on August 4, 1953, during a ceremony at the old capitol building in Raleigh, he introduced Pearson to the state as the new poet laureate. The governor spoke briefly and declared that Pearson “has seen fit to pour back into the life of North Carolina a quality of beauty that is recognized throughout the United States.” When given the chance to speak on his own behalf, Pearson thanked the governor, the members of the Literary and Historical Association, “and all my friends over the state who have had a part in bestowing upon me this distinguished honor.” He continued,

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I accept this gracious award with a mixed feeling of pleasure and deep responsibility and I can only hope that I may be in some measure worthy of it. I think it is a fitting thing, and a very fine and encouraging thing, that our great state of North Carolina has come to recognize poetry as a worthwhile commodity in our intellectual life; and I hope future generations of poets will have this as a goal set before them, inspiring them to higher achievement. For myself, during my incumbency of the office, I will try to wear the crown of bay leaves with becoming dignity. Thanks again to everybody. 30

He then read “Fifty Acres.” Pearson was seventy-four when he became laureate, and while he was gracious in his acceptance speech he realized he was assuming a position that offered no pay and had no term limit. For a man who was continually short of money, the former issue was particularly perplexing. Indeed, he often complained about it to anyone who would listen: “I have the unique distinction of being the only holder of a state office in North Carolina who does not get a salary, and perhaps that gives the measure of the low esteem in which poetry is held in the State. If ‘poet laureate’ had ranked as high as ‘dog catcher’ it would no doubt have had a salary attached to it.” To others he wrote, “If you took the title and 25 cents and threw it in the Yadkin River, you’d be out a quarter.” 31 The term of his appointment also perplexed Pearson, and in 1954 he asked about its duration. The governor’s office responded with a letter which explained, “you are to remain Poet-Laureate as long as you continue to be active in the field of poetry.” 32 Although many critics acknowledged that Pearson won the award for the works already created, rather than for any future works he might produce, he was given the right to remain laureate indefinitely. It was generally expected, however, that with his advanced age the term would expire relatively soon, which would open up the position for someone younger and more active. Pearson confounded expectations, however, and remained an active writer and advocate for poetry for another twenty-eight years. Regardless of Pearson’s quibbles with the appointment, it led to a rash of news coverage on his work and his life. The Winston-Salem Journal explained, The poetry of Pearson makes no radical stylistic departure from conventional form. He is no T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Robinson Jeffers, or Conrad Allen. But everything he has written has rhythmic and often alliterative beauty, depth of thought, rich humor or stirring emotional appeal. Pearson also has a gift for writing provocative verse in dialect, and some of his best work is expressing the racy idiom of hill men and the Negro. Through his more serious verse runs a strong thread of emotion and moral conviction.

The Journal Tribune, meanwhile, offered a biography of Pearson’s youth and turned to T. W. Ferguson, who grew up with Pearson, as its source.

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Figure 9.2. James Larkin Pearson after his appointment as poet laureate. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

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The paper reported, “From all outward appearances he was a rather unpromising youth and no one, even the most farseeing, thought at the time he would ever amount to anything out of the ordinary.” 33 The Guilfordian showed Pearson in his present state, and explained that “there lies in the bent shoulders of his body and the wrinkled lines of his face the wisdom of a full life, a life of hardship and work, pain and love, success and failure.” It also showed his humor, noting that he named the latenineteenth-century poet James Whitcomb Riley as the figure who had the greatest influence on him. “The most widely read poet of his day,” Riley composed in the traditional style Pearson preferred and employed a similarly dialect-heavy manner that focused on human emotions, natural settings, and rustic locations. Unlike Pearson, however, he was widely regarded and nationally known. President Woodrow Wilson lamented his passing in 1916 and his casket was placed in the Indiana State Capitol where it was viewed by 35,000 mourners. Pearson appreciated Riley’s style, themes, and success, and told the paper: “You don’t read much about him anymore. When I was a boy he was appearing in periodicals and I liked him very much.” His humor came out in the next breath when he informed the paper: “That’s why I decided to use my full three-story name. James Whitcomb Riley, James Larkin Pearson. See?” 34 The Greensboro Record, by contrast, focused on his individualism: “Pearson says he has never been satisfied to let other people do his thinking for him.” The result, the paper explained, was his refusal to join an organized church or a political party. Despite that, the paper assured its readers that “his poetry reflects a deep love of God and country.” Nell Battle Lewis from the Raleigh News and Observer, meanwhile, seemed to sum up the general sentiment of the state and wrote, “If North Carolina is going to have a poet laureate . . . then certainly the gifted and indigenous James Larkin Pearson . . . is as good a one as we can get.” 35 Never before had Pearson enjoyed such widespread accolades from the state’s cultured elite. He was ecstatic with the appointment and the notoriety, and he used the position as poet laureate to push forward his career. Indeed, Pearson was determined not to rest on his laurels, and he maintained a vigorous pace in the late 1950s. In 1956 he again tried his hand at amateur journalism with the publication of The Old Timer. The first issue came out in the summer of 1956, and he explained that it was “Published in the interest of the National Amateur Press Association.” In other words, rather than resorting to the humor of The Fool-Killer or the intellectualism of The Literary South, Pearson sought a small niche by focusing on those, like him, who produced their own papers. The first edition was largely autobiographical and described Pearson’s 1954 trip to New York and Boston, a 1956 trip to Boston, his early interest in amateur journalism, and his life in Washington, DC in 1903. He concluded the paper with this note: “Published occasionally, I hope, but not as big as this one anymore.” That hope was not to be, however, as the second and

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final edition lamented the lack of interest in his paper. He recognized several amateurs who had corresponded with him, thanked them for their letters, but concluded, “I don’t know what was the matter, but evidently I somehow missed the mark and my effort wasn’t of much interest to the A.J. fraternity.” 36 It seemed his poetry and his family were all he had left. On September 13, 1959, it was his family that took center stage as they came together to celebrate Pearson’s eightieth birthday. It was a quietly joyous affair, but that joy quickly passed when the next day Eleanor suffered a heart attack. She spent eighteen days in the hospital and another two months in bed at home before she was healthy enough to do even the simplest of tasks. Throughout it all Pearson acted as her nurse, cook, maid, and supporter. Such a position caused him to reflect on his life with Cora, and he feared what Eleanor’s health meant for the future of their marriage. Fortunately she recovered, but she decided it was time to retire from her job at the IRS. This she did, but soon she found another avocation to keep herself busy. She had long been fascinated with Dolley Madison, who was born in Guilford County, North Carolina, and she set

Figure 9.3. James and Eleanor at the time of Pearson’s eightieth birthday. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

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out to complete a biography. Indeed, in 1949 Eleanor had found Dolley Madison’s long-lost grave in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and later discovered an unknown collection of correspondence including letters from Dolley Madison, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Eleanor continued to research and gather material, founded the Dolley Madison Memorial Association, Inc., and served as the association’s first president. As president, she purchased the original lumber from Dolley’s birth home after it was torn down, and she made plans to rebuild the house. She also oversaw a $10,000 fundraising drive that sought to purchase Madison material from an estate in Pennsylvania. Eleanor succeeded in raising the money and used the newly purchased collections as the foundation for a Dolley Madison museum in Guilford College. 37 The couple’s good fortune continued in 1960 when the Poetry Council of North Carolina began a new book series called “The Old North State Poets.” Richard Walser was the editor, and as the first collection in the series he put out Selected Poems of James Larkin Pearson. The work consisted of fifty-seven poems divided into three sections. The book jacket explained, “Of the three sections of the book, the first is ‘A Poet’s World,’ in which Pearson sings out his faith. The second, ‘In Light Vein,’ shows him in antic mood to match the good humor of North Carolinians everywhere. The final section is a group of ‘Sonnets’ . . . and in these pages the sheer artistry of the poet is revealed.” Poet Walter Blackstock wrote the introduction and went a step further: “The subjects are dreams, ideals, love in the grand manner, the out-of-door of mountains and farms, God and man, and the minutiae of day-to-day existence. Disappointments, frustrations, deaths—these human sorrows are present; but the themes, by and large, are optimistic, emphasizing the realities and delights of mortal bliss, however fleeting it be; and the necessity and power of personal courage and hope.” After explaining that Pearson’s poems eschewed the modernist impulse and the “disjointed coruscations of ‘poets talking to themselves,’” Blackstock asserted, “the lyrical joie de vivre of the verses comprising this collection is their own principal excuse for being; the sincerity, the wit and humor, the kind of mountaineer local color which provides trustworthy historical data, the gentility of a bygone era—all are fused in the singing words of James Larkin Pearson.” 38 The local press concurred and offered positive reviews of the collection. The Winston-Salem Journal Sentinel called Pearson “a lyrical poet, idealistic and romantic” and praised him as one who “speaks to Tar Heels in their own language and about their thoughts.” Although the paper admitted, “Pearson sometimes gets trapped in awkward rhythms . . . sometimes lets slip though an unattractive line . . . [and] content and form suffer when he tries to stab at illusive intangibles,” it noted, “he reaches his height when he settles for the things he sees, hears and knows.” The paper ultimately praised him as a spokesman for the

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“aspirations” and “character” of the Tar Heel masses. The Salisbury Post agreed, and noted that his “subject matter clings rather closely to nature—mountains, farms, rustics, ideals, dreams and an occasional sprinkling of religion. . . . In truth, the man demonstrates an enviable closeness to his maker in many of the rhymed writings between the bindings.” Poet Burton Frye, meanwhile, praised Pearson for seeing the good in the world, as opposed to the newly popular Beat poets whom he contended focused on the ugliness: “We especially appreciate the poems of Mr. Pearson for he is a poet who lights a torch of truth and beauty rather than to waste time by erecting monuments of hate and fear. Mr. Pearson is possessed of humility. It is not going too far to say that he possesses a store of wisdom and the generosity to share it!” 39 Pearson had rarely enjoyed such unadorned praise, and he reveled in his new position as a critic’s darling. The couple enjoyed their combined fortuity, and in April 1962 Eleanor took some time away from her research and Pearson abandoned his poems long enough to take a two-week vacation in celebration of their twenty-third wedding anniversary. They visited the Tryon Palace in New Bern, North Carolina; saw the ocean at Morehead City, North Carolina; and then made their way to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where they attended meetings of the James Monroe Memorial Foundation, with which Eleanor had long been associated. Their traveling companions on the trip were Eleanor’s cousin George Reitzel and his wife, Judy. They had a splendid time and enjoyed the trip immensely. Little did they know it would be their last. On April 27, 1962, barely twenty-four hours after returning from their trip, Eleanor suffered a second heart attack and lingered unconscious for about two hours. Despite an ambulance trip to the hospital and the best efforts of the doctors, she passed away. She was buried beside her parents and brother in the Fox Family plot in Guilford College. 40 Left alone for the second time in his life, Pearson was heartbroken. Unable to send out a personal letter announcing the death to all of those who needed to know, he decided on a form letter. The letter described Eleanor’s life and death, but also included Pearson’s heartbreaking declaration of their love: As her bereaved husband, I want to add something more to the story. Eleanor and I were married on April 6, 1939, and we had 23 years of happiness together. Of course it was not all roses and sunshine. We had our problems and our dark days, as everybody does. But no man ever had a braver or sweeter companion to help him fight the battles of life. Sometimes I must have failed, but she never did, and because of her it was always a victory. Many times we have told each other that we would do it all over again. How my heart bleeds right now for a chance to do it all over again! But she is gone—gone—and I must go on the rest

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of my dark journey alone. All I can do for her now is to go to her grave and stand in silent worship, while my tears flow.

He followed the letter with a new poem entitled “I Love You, Dear,” which he dedicated to Eleanor: “I love you, dear,” is such an ancient phrase, Worn out by jaded lovers long ago, And we who flourish in these modern days Should have new words more fitting to bestow On one whose merits pass all common speech And dare imagination’s boldest flight. Then let us make improvements till we reach The perfect utterance of love’s delight. So I bethought me to invent new ways To try my new premeditated art; To cover you with passionate high praise And crown you in the throne-room of my heart. But my inventions fail and disappear, And I come back to this: “I love you, dear.” 41

The loss of Eleanor subsequently caused Pearson to remember Cora and to compare his two departed wives: “Cora was quiet and reserved in her manner, but she was so sweet that everybody loved her. Eleanor was more of a mixer and talker and she hardly ever saw a stranger, and her sweetness and goodness won every heart that came in touch with her.” He also compared his love and loss for the two: “I had also loved Eleanor sincerely, but my love for her had come at a later time, when I was older, and it didn’t have such a world-shaking effect on my life. She was still beautiful in death. I bent over the open casket and gave her a farewell kiss just before the lid closed the last time. Of course I remembered, with bitter heartache, that previous time, 28 years earlier, when I had to say farewell to my angel Cora.” 42 Eleanor’s death caused him two other concerns as well. The first was where to live. When he returned to their house in Guilford College after the funeral, he realized, “This was home. But the dear one who made it home is not here anymore.” As he spent the succeeding days and nights in their house it grew harder to live as the memories continued to intrude: “My bed and Eleanor’s bed—they are still there, and sometimes when the weather is warm I go in there and sleep and dream that Eleanor is with me. I go into the east room and stand on the spot where she and I stood the day we were married. The thoughts and the feelings that arise are hard to put into words.” Unable to live in a house so full of memories, Pearson returned to North Wilkesboro and moved in with his daughter Agnes and her family. They welcomed him in and built a building in the back of their property to house his book collection, by then some 3,000 strong, as well as his other possessions. So as not to intrude, Pearson

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eventually moved into the back building, sleeping and working there but taking meals with the family in the main house. 43 His home life settled, the second issue he had to deal with was where he would be buried. He now had two dead wives who were buried in two different locations, one hundred miles apart. As he thought about it at the time, “It was one of the hardest problems that I ever had to face. No matter which way I decided it looked like I would be deserting one or the other of them.” He finally solved the matter by deciding to be buried beside Cora. His justification was thus: In the Guilford College Cemetery Eleanor has her father, mother, and brother with her in the Fox plot, with the big Fox family marker, and there will be other members of the family there. And so Eleanor is not alone. In the Moravian Falls cemetery Cora has nobody except our infant baby. Her father, mother, brother, and sister are buried at other places. Since I am a native of Wilkes County and since I am living here again, I decided that I ought to choose my last resting place here in Wilkes with Cora and the baby. Somehow it seems like she needs me more than Eleanor does. It still seems like I am deserting Eleanor, but I certainly don’t mean it that way. If I could possibly do so, I would continue to go and put flowers on Eleanor’s grave from now until the Resurrection Morning, whenever that might be.

In later years he elaborated on his decision: “My theology is that none of us will know anything about it anyway, but while I am living it is a distressing problem. I don’t want to feel that I am deserting Eleanor, because I love her and her dear memory just as much as I love Cora. . . . The Moravian Falls Cemetery is a beautiful place and is beautifully kept. I can’t think of a more lovely place to rest and sleep away the long years till God calls us back to life, if that is the plan.” 44 Having made that decision, he then purchased a large granite gravestone and had his name, Cora’s name, Blanche Rose’s name, and all their important dates carved on it. Pearson had Blanche Rose’s part of the monument read, “Infant daughter of J.L. and Cora Pearson, Born and Died Jan. 22, 1903.” He had Cora’s section read, “Beloved wife of James Larkin Pearson” with her dates. For his section, he thought long and hard about his life and realized that since the earliest of ages, I wanted to be a Printer and a Poet. If I could be a Printer and a Poet, I would be satisfied. Well, I have been a very ordinary printer, never the artist with type that some printers have been. No doubt I have been a very ordinary poet and most of what I have written is perishable stuff. But I have some hope that a few of my poems are good, and if I have written ONE poem that will live, I will go out of this world rejoicing. So the three words that I had carved in small letters under my name on the grave marker are these: PRINTER AND POET. As long as the Moravian Falls cemetery exists, these words will stand as a witness to what I wanted to do, to what I honestly tried to do. 45

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The monument stands to this day. At the time of life when most people are slowing down, Pearson remained surprisingly active and vigorous. He published two collections of poetry, spread the gospel as poet laureate, received numerous longdeserved accolades, and attempted two new newspapers. His spirit, individualism, and faith in poetry thus remained. Each element was challenged, however, and this era taxed his humanity by taking from him his wife and both his papers. Despite the losses and failures, Pearson retained his intellect, wit, and energy, and as he looked forward to his ninth decade he remained remarkably energetic. Although his production of new poetry would wane, throughout his eighties and into his nineties he carried on strident and reasoned arguments about religion, science, poetry, and current events with anyone who would listen. It was almost as if The Fool-Killer was reborn. NOTES 1. Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, 226; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Paul Emory Carter, February 23, 1939; Pearson, Plowed Ground, 96. 2. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1930–1939, handwritten essay “In the Twilight Zone,” September 14, 1939. 3. JLP Collection, Cabinet 12, “Miscellaneous Remembrances,” Edwin Markham; Untermeyer, Modern American Poetry, 15, 102–103. 4. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, Interview with Bernadette Hoyle. 5. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 321; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Ada Browning, April 4, 1939. 6. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 323. 7. Ibid., 325; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1940–1949, handwritten essay “Two weeks in Hell,” August 14, 1942. 8. Walser, North Carolina Poetry, 86. 9. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Nell Battle Lewis, hand copied from Raleigh News and Observer, May 31, 1942; Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, 173. 10. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 391; Winston-Salem Journal, March 28, 1940. 11. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Helen Artley, October 14, 1943. 12. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Roy L. Barlow, December 21, 1947. 13. The Lucky Dog, Volume 1, Number 1. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 3. 17. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 2. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 3. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 4. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., Volume 1, Number 5. 25. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 339; Modern American Poetry, 13; Modern American Poetry Revised Fourth Edition, 6. 26. Pearson, Plowed Ground, 5–6.

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27. Pearson, Early Harvest, 7–8, 19; JLP Book Series, “Readings from My Fingers and My Toes”; Greensboro Record, October 16, 1952. 28. JLP Files, “Poets Laureate of Much Ado About Confusion by J. Jay Anderson,” Pearson, James Larkin, Poet L. Folder. 29. Ibid. 30. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 341–42; JLP Papers, 1952–1966, Folder 1, Pamphlet entitled “Governor of North Carolina Names Poet Laureate,” SHC; JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, 1953, handwritten acceptance speech. 31. JLP Collection, Janet Tate, May 10, 1961; Hensley, “Crowned with Laurels: A History of the Poets Laureate of North Carolina,” 9–16. 32. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Christopher Crittendon, December 16, 1954. 33. Winston-Salem Journal, August 6, 1953; Journal Tribune, January 5, 1957. 34. The Guilfordian, December 7, 1956; Modern American Poets Fourth Revised Edition, 94. 35. Greensboro Record, November 27, 1958; Lewis, “We Couldn’t Do Better.” 36. The Old Timer, Number 1, Summer 1956; Number 2 Summer 1957, NCC. 37. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 354–55; Greensboro Daily News, December 11, 1949. 38. Pearson, Selected Poems, vi, vii. 39. Winston-Salem Journal Sentinel, December 4, 1960; Salisbury Post, December 6, 1960; JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, undated, Burton Frye, Review of Selected Poems of James Larkin Pearson. 40. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 360–63. 41. Ibid., 363; Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, 5. 42. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 362; JLP Collection, Ruth Ann Rogers. 43. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 364–65. 44. Ibid., 371–72; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Clyde and Bertha Ballinger (Eleanor’s sister), December 21, 1965. 45. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 372.

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Settled on his daughter’s property, Pearson overcame the heartache of losing Eleanor and remained surprisingly active throughout his eighties. He proved a vigorous advocate for poetry in his position as poet laureate, spent much of his time addressing intellectual issues of old that had long perplexed him, kept abreast of contemporary developments, and found himself fêted and acknowledged as never before. Although moments of turmoil and angst occasionally interfered, Pearson seemed to enjoy his autumnal years. Pearson endured an extended period of mourning for Eleanor, but two years after her death he began to revive. In 1964 he wrote, “I miss my dear Eleanor a great deal and life will never be the same without her, but I feel that there is still work for me to do and I think she would wish me to carry on as long as I am able. The years have piled on me and I am now an old man . . . but my health is pretty good and I hope to have several more active and useful years. I have become quite hard-of-hearing, but my eyes are good and I do all my work and reading without glasses.” 1 His friends and family urged him to continue with his work and did their best to encourage him from his torpor. As a part of that, in September 1964 North Wilkesboro held a citywide celebration to mark his eighty-fifth birthday. Days later, the Poetry Group of the Women’s Club of Winston-Salem hosted him in an event honoring his life and career, while the University of North Carolina at Greensboro celebrated James Larkin Pearson day in October. The Raleigh News and Observer, meanwhile, named him Tar Heel of the week. To celebrate that award he attended a gala event at the Sir Walter Raleigh hotel with over 1,000 people in attendance and reveled in seeing his image and biography splashed across the News and Observer’s pages. 2

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Agnes also helped her father recover. In 1969 she wrote “Accolade to a Poet”: From a mountain-cradled cabin near the song of the Yadkin waters Came a child of rare endowment, poet-child, playmate of Muses, Born to strive with endless vision toward a clear and true communion. Then his spirit, always searching, driven by a nameless urging, Sensed the music of Creation—felt the unborn songs that waited, Songs that man forever yearns for, knowing not what he is seeking, Only that its name is beauty. Ever led by wonder’s beckon grew this child from youth to manhood; Loved the green cathedral forests, toiled amid the earth’s fruition; Sought the Holy Grail of Knowledge in the lore of learned volumes, Where the living words of Masters taught the paradox of Being; Toiling dirge of cosmic pity—clarion joy of rare perfections; Called him then to join their legion. Crafting years became, in passing, counterpoint of light and shadow Blending tones of winter rain-song with summer notes of laughter. Varied years, departing gently, touching not upon his spirit, Leaving music he has fashioned singing on in poignant phrases— Living for all generations.

She even wrote a parody of his “Fifty Acres” poem called “Owed to a Hippie Home”: I wish I were in London Or living now in Rome, As from the belly-achers I defend my hippie home My hundred thousand clippings I’ve saved since I was born Would tower above a Jungfrau Or Alp or Matterhorn. My ancient piles of papers Are dried to brittle crust; My heavy laden dresser Wears a coat of furry dust. The filtered sunlight shows me A window’s smudgy face, And gray chiffon of cobwebs Draped all about the place. My hundred piles of booklet, My cluttered window ledge, Must surely hold some items From all the far world’s edge. A land of total chaos My desk has grown to be,

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Where myriads of health books Preach miracles to me. Amid my awful clatter Which I cling to and adore, I’m collecting Fifty Acres Of dirt upon my floor.

In 1971 the poem appeared in The State newspaper and the linked article concluded, “Mr. Pearson, who is adept in writing humorous verse himself, apparently has taken his daughter’s parody in good grace. Whether he has cleaned up his den is perhaps a different matter.” 3 Although such efforts helped turn Pearson’s mind away from the hardships of old age and the loss of his beloved Eleanor, they also led him to ponder once again his relative “failure” as a national poet. He asked his friend and journalist Pat Alspaugh, If I am even half-way worthy of all the favorable notice that has been coming to me lately—if what I have done in poetry is good enough to rate that sort of attention—why is it that I cannot get published by a publisher? For more than 60 years I have been a printer, and in the course of these years I have printed my own books and have tried to be my own publisher, but I have had no money and no facilities for putting my book on the market. I have never been recognized as a published author, and even the book stores have never been willing to handle my books.

He noted that university and professional presses continued to turn down his work and lamented, “The amount of popular acclaim that has been coming to me personally here of late indicates that I must be pretty well known all over North Carolina, and I am fully convinced that there would be a good market for my poems if only they could be published and kept on the market. But there is nothing more I can do. I have given it up.” 4 The sense that he remained a failure or a fraud thus continued to haunt Pearson despite his posting as poet laureate. Despite such woes, Pearson eventually shrugged off the hardships and persevered. He did this in large part by delving into an extended period of intellectual debate achieved mostly through an extensive correspondence network. As he had done during The Fool-Killer days, Pearson argued about religion, poetry, and contemporary politics. In this correspondence, Pearson continued to deny, as he had done since his teenage years, the possibility of eternal torment or the immortality of the soul. Now with more time on his hands, he worked very hard to elaborate and clarify his beliefs. Of the former concept he argued, The “eternal torment” doctrine taught by the popular creeds and by the preachers makes God and the devil partners in crime. They say God made the eternal burning hell and then hired the devil to run it for Him and torture the poor unfortunate creatures that he (the devil) had led

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Figure 10.1. James Larkin Pearson deep in thought in 1963. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

astray. Wasn’t the devil the one most to blame for the fall of man? Then why wasn’t he the one who ought to roast? How did he happen to get a job of roasting poor fallen humanity? The devil was supposed to be God’s worst enemy—the arch-traitor of all time—but here we find God rewarding him and putting him in a place of great responsibility. . . .

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Did you ever stop to think about how utterly childish and unreasonable the whole thing sounds?

Even if such a “thing” really existed, he had additional qualms. He argued that while there were evil people in the world who deserved punishment, “good hellfire Christians would not be willing to see their worst enemy put in the fire and burnt for five minutes. And yet they accuse our Heavenly father of being a million times more cruel than they are. I don’t think they have any true conception of God or of Eternity. I am a Christian, and if the Bible has any meaning for me, it means that the incorrigibly wicked will just be blotted out—annihilated—cease to be.” Elaborating on that final point, he explained that he believed the “wicked will be destroyed, burned up, blotted out, as though they had never been,” but would never suffer the Hell of eternal torment so many churches seemed to describe. He concluded, “I think the theologians have got us terribly balled up and have taught us things that the Bible does not teach.” 5 He believed many were similarly confused with the concept of the immortality of souls. He wrote, “When a man dies he is ALL dead—just as dead as any dead animal—and there is not some part of him that remains alive and goes off somewhere else to live. The only hope that a dead man may ever live again is through a resurrection of the dead through the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.” To others he explained the ideas thusly: I do not and cannot believe that people have “immortal souls” that live after the body dies. I do not believe that people go either to heaven or to hell at death. I believe that the dead are entirely dead and entirely unconscious, asleep in the grave. I cannot believe that some part of the person remains alive and goes off somewhere else. There would be no comfort for me in such a thought. As I see it, the only chance for them to ever have a life or consciousness again depends entirely on a future resurrection of the dead. The Bible promise of a resurrection is a sweet and precious promise, and I love to believe it and look forward to it. But if the dead are NOT dead, how can they be restored to life? If the dead are still alive, and if they have gone right on to heaven or to hell at the death of the body, then where is any conceivable use or sense in having a resurrection or judgment?

Pearson did more than theorize on this issue of immortality, he tried to make it personal: My marriage vow to Cora had said—“until death do you part.” Death had ended that vow and I was free to make another. If I had believed that Cora was alive and watching me from her palace in heaven when I started to go to bed with Eleanor, I couldn’t have done it. In spite of the fact that my former vow was ended by what some people would call death and other people would call still being alive, I think I would have

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In one final letter, he demonstrated his continued faith in Jesus despite his reticence to accept immortality: “Death has taken away from me two dear companions, but I do not believe they are in heaven. I believe they are sleeping in the grave, entirely unconscious, and waiting for the resurrection from the dead. I do not understand how the resurrection is to be, but Jesus came to conquer death and to become the first-fruits to those that sleep. I will trust all that with him.” 6 As wrong as he believed both eternal torment and immortality were, what was even more problematic from Pearson’s perspective was that the two ideas had become interlinked and undermined the very foundations of Christian theology: “Just think of charging our loving Heavenly Father with taking children that HE made, and just because they don’t ‘toe the mark’ exactly like he wants them to, He will put them in a firey [sic] furnace and burn and torture them for endless eternity. That would make God a million times worse than Hitler.” He then asserted that while Hitler just wanted to kill the Jews as quickly as possible, here we have a popular church creed that says that some six million Jews had immortal souls that can’t die and they will still burn and torture and weep and wail during all of endless eternity, just because they were Jews and had not accepted Jesus as their Redeemer. Can’t anybody see how that would make God a million times worse than Hitler? Immortal Soul and Eternal Fire and Brimstone Hell are Siamese Twins, and you can’t separate them. If you believe one you must believe the other. But the big trouble is that people who have been brainwashed so long can’t see straight nor reason sensibly. 7

As he had since he was eighteen, Pearson remained devout but convinced that mainline Christianity had failed its followers with this twin heresy. As much as these issues perplexed him, immortality and torment were not the only theological topics that intrigued Pearson in his old age. In his correspondence he also offered his own unique notion of God: I think the conception of God which has come to be the God-pattern for the world at large is entirely too small and too much copied after the sinful limitation of man. It is assumed that God has all the evil qualities of human nature—hate, bitterness and revenge: that he can get stirred up with anger and go to war and kill his enemies; that He can take the people He has made (people who did not ask to be made in the first place) and burn and torture them through all the endless ages of Eternity. It can’t seem to get through the minds of some theologians that it would have been infinitely better and more merciful just not to have made the human race at all. And I think an All-Wise God would have seen the point, even if the theologians can’t see it. I know very well that

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I wouldn’t let my own worst enemy be thrown into the fire and burn two minutes before I would run and jerk him out, and I don’t want to think that I am so much better than God is. I think of God as always the Great Universal Divine Mind—AllGood, All-Wise and All Powerful—and I can’t make any plans for my life without taking His into calculation. The Divine Mind is present with me every minute right where I live, and at the same time He is present at every other point in the boundless universe. In other words, the boundless universe is literally alive at all points with an AllKnowing Power that staggers the imagination. Most people think that God is away off in heaven somewhere and busy with large affairs and they can “get away with something” while He is not looking. 8

Pearson, by contrast, believed in a much more intimate God who always was watching. Regardless of his qualms with the organized church, therefore, he was a man of faith who followed his own path toward salvation and lived a life devoted to fulfilling God’s will. This pondering about God also led Pearson to question the connection between religion and science, specifically God’s role in the origins and evolution of the universe. Of creation, he wrote, Even the earth, the whole universe, was first a thought in the mind of the great creator. I don’t know how God makes his thoughts turn into material things. I am not expected to know that. But we can’t escape the fact that Divine Mind is back of everything. The physical material out of which God made the universe—where did it come from? Was it created out of nothing at some definite point in time a few billion years ago? Or did it always exist? When I try to think in terms of a billion years I get lost. . . . It seems reasonable to think that creation is going on all the time—that new suns and stars and planets are being born and that old ones are dying and passing away.

In a similar vein, he began to acknowledge a grudging yet skeptical appreciation for evolution. To one correspondent he wrote, Your University studies will be teaching you . . . that Darwin’s theory of Evolution is now an established fact, and I have been just about convinced it is. There is too much hard evidence that human beings have been on earth a much longer time than the 6,000 years ago when Adam and Eve were made. And yet there is something that stops me cold. I can’t quite go all the way with Evolution. I mean, the HUMAN MIND. That awful gap between the highest animal mind and the highest HUMAN MIND. What monkey could figure out a way to go to the moon and back? What ape could discuss with Einstein how to split the atom? Just recently a perfectly new and amazing possibility has been rolling around in my old think tank. Just suppose, now, that Genesis and Darwin are both right. Maybe there was an Adam and Eve just like the Bible says, and maybe they were the ancestors of the Chosen People. And then maybe all the rest of the black, white, blue, and red

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Even with the final equivocation, this was quite a step forward for a man who forty years earlier had challenged the very notion of evolution. While Pearson refused to change his perception of modern poetry, he was willing at least to consider changing his mind about the origin of species. Such theological issues had long interested Pearson, and as he aged he seemed to take great pleasure in the leisure of examining and expounding on these ideas of old. While he enjoyed revisiting these religious questions, he also became intrigued by new developments in religion: I have tried to study all the healing systems, even as I am sure you have—New Thought, Divine Healing, Christian Science—and I think they all lead up to one GREAT CENTRAL TRUTH. They are like the three blind men who tried to describe an elephant by feeling of him. One got hold of his tail and said it was like a rope; another got hold of [his] leg and said he was like a tree; the third one felt of his side and said he was like the side of a house. And they were all partly right. I think that there is truth in all the mental and spiritual healing systems but maybe each one just gets a part of it. 10

He was even more fascinated with Pat Robertson and the 700 Club. He asked a friend, “Have you ever picked up, on your TV, that new bunch of Holy-Rollers at Virginia Beach, Virginia? It is headed up by a man named Pat Robertson, a middle-aged man, clean-shaven, who does an awful lot of laughing. Everything seems to tickle him. Then again, he prays, and he prays with such a vengeance that it sounds like giving orders to God, and God better take notice and answer his prayer just like he says.” Pearson then expressed his amazement at being able to watch as Robertson preached one day from Hawaii, some 9,000 miles away from his Carolina home. He explained to his friend that satellites made the broadcast possible and then declared, Maybe this is really the “last days” that they talk about, and maybe the Good Lord is healing smart scientists to develop all these great scientific wonders so that they can be used in a hurry to tell the last poor heathen in the world about Jesus and his free offer of salvation. There are at least five or six different groups of religious experts all competing for that great honor, and the winner will be the one who can make the quickest use of all these modern wonders. Billy Graham and his team are doing pretty well by it, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are making the devil shake in his boots, but I think I might just as well put my money on Pat Robertson of Virginia Beach and his Seven Hundred Club. 11

Although long a skeptic of organized religion, a few churches, at least, piqued his interest.

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Through all the debates and his fascination with new religious developments, however, Pearson’s personal faith remained remarkably intact. In the end, his theological position was clear: So it boils down to the fact that I am not a believer in some of the things that the popular creeds teach, particularly those two pet beliefs about “immortal souls” and “eternal torment.” . . . So I have just been going on for 75 years not being a member of any church. I wonder how much I have lost by not being a member of the church. In the matter of social prestige I have probably lost a good deal. . . . But I remember that Jesus didn’t belong to very many social clubs, and I doubt whether he could have joined any fashionable church in this United States. . . . For my part, I am just trusting in my dear Savior to get me safely across the Dark River and into the Promised Land. 12

As he was wont to do, Pearson followed his own religious path, suffered for it, but was content he had done what was righteous. Religion was not the only issue that kept Pearson’s mind and pen busy in his old age; so too did his continued unease with contemporary poetry and its place in society. As a part of that, he feared the modern world, with all its mechanization and standardization, left little room for individualists, most notably the poets: The poet does not want to be forced out of himself and into the channels of business and industry where he must become a very small cog in a standardized machine. He wants to be an individual and do the work that God gave him to do. Of all people in the world, he feels the greatest responsibility to get himself “uttered” in his own true voice. A poet’s overwhelming soul-hunger can become a terrifying thing. In a moment of desperate groping for the solid substance of his dream the whole world can fly to pieces. This is not a time for figuring incomes and balancing budgets. Rather it is a time for inspired vision and awful fear, as if another Moses saw a Burning Bush. The poet will hold that flaming glory before his eyes and he will capture it in a net of words. That is his moment of victory. Or he will let the shattered vision get away—beyond his grasp—and that is the end of everything.

He thus believed the modern world was in desperate need of poetry, yet he feared it also was a world that made it ever harder for the poet to practice his art. Indeed, he argued that while poets “have come nearer to voicing the universal heart-cry of the human race than any other living voice in all our lop-sided scheme of things . . . at the world’s groaning banquet table they have to take the scraps and the left-overs and be satisfied with posthumous honors.” 13 While lamenting that the modern world allowed little room for poets, he continued to rail against contemporary poetry, which he did not consider worthy of the name: “I am permanently committed to the old standard forms of the past—the kind of poetry that has been loved and honored for many generations. Today that kind of poetry is entirely out of

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fashion and all the ‘new poets’ are writing this crazy modern stuff that has no rhyme, rhythm, measure nor meaning, and that’s the only kind of ‘poetry’ that is getting any recognition today. I consider it a cheap and sorry burlesque of poetry.” 14 Pearson thus rejected the work of the avantgarde and postmodern poets of the 1950s and 1960s, and was frustrated at the continued evolution of American poetry away from the formal and stylized rules he adored and had worked with since his youth. He also assailed contemporary poets themselves: “Practically all the younger poets of today—those who are now getting the big acclaim—are not real poets to me. They are just people who play at being poets, much as a little boy plays at being a soldier.” Such individuals, he lamented, are “not skillful and they are not careful. Above all they are not craftsmen. They are just ambitious amateurs who want to be known as poets, but they have neither the talent nor the patience to produce a poem. So they try to start a new fad and make people think that their sorry drivel is poetry.” Pearson did not buy their claims to art, and asserted that “to be a poet is to be a skillful and careful craftsman, not just a slapdash wordslinger with loose ends flapping all over the place.” Poetry, in other words, was about conforming to the traditional rules and abiding by professional standards. Pearson acknowledged that “it isn’t easy to put into words that nameless and timeless Something which is the spiritual soil out of which poetry must grow.” But, he argued, that was what made poetry such a unique form of art: “It creates what may be called a mood of ‘wistfulness and wonder.’ The fresh ear that can be surprised at things; that gift of looking at the world each day as if you have never seen it before. To the poet, each blade of grass by the wayside has just this minute come down from heaven; and every rose in the garden is a holy miracle which calls for divine worship. To him the squirrel which sprints up the tree in the park is part and parcel of divinity.” Contemporary poets thus not only failed to do the hard work required of the true poet, but they also lacked the poet’s eye and failed to appreciate such worldly wonders. 15 While Pearson tried to keep these critiques professional, they often come off as self-serving. In 1978, for instance, he complained in Poets and Writers magazine that contemporary poetry’s popularity had caused him to stop making public appearances at literary events: “Since I belong to that segment of the Poetry World that is no longer recognized by the powers that Be (in Poetry), I never know what sort of reception I will get, and it would hurt me to get kicked out without any chance to introduce myself.” He then took the complaint a step further and lumped himself in with the great poets of the past, all of whom were endangered: The “powers that be” in the Literary world have agreed among themselves that all the old masters of the poetry trade—British and American—are out-of-date and can no longer be thought of as poets.

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Shakespeare and Milton and Byron and Shelley and Tennyson and Thomas Gray are all back numbers. Our own Longfellow and Whittier and Bryant and Lanier are not worth noticing anymore. They have cooked up a new sort of stuff they call Poetry, and if you don’t bow down before it and swear that it is the “real stuph,” you just ain’t got no sense nohow. These new tin gods of poetry wouldn’t know a poem from a wheelbarrow if they met it in the road; but you must call them “poets” or you may get yours. North Carolina has at least a hundred of that sort of poets, and they are making such a noise that my poor little weak voice is never heard. So I have just slunk away and hid till all this great wave of anti-poetry dies out.

His personal pain and outrage were even more obvious when he complained about an article in The State newspaper in which [the author] was discussing the amazing poetry situation in North Carolina. Why, man alive! You never heard tell of anything so wonderful. Poets are so thick in North Carolina that you can’t walk without stepping on them, and they are turning out great codlins of great poems that would make Shakespeare look like a greenhorn amateur. And how the names of the great poets did adorn those pages! But I noticed that the name of the Poet Laureate of North Carolina was quite conspicuous by its absence. 16

As if to reflect back that personal affront, Pearson then directly took on two renowned poets he did not like: Carl Sandburg and Robert Penn Warren. Sandburg was a contemporary of Pearson who spent much of his life in Henderson County, North Carolina, not far from Wilkes County. He won two Pulitzer Prizes in poetry, in 1919 for Cornhuskers and 1951 for The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, and he won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize in history for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. A socialist and supporter of Eugene Debs, there would seem to be much in common between the two men. Sandburg, however, adopted the free verse style and focused much of his work on the modern, industrial world. He also enjoyed national renown and was honored by President Lyndon Johnson upon his death in 1967. Pearson was unmoved by any of these factors and described Sandburg as “a great prose writer but not nearly as good a poet.” Specifically, he believed Sandburg did what many of the modern poets did, which was to bring “before you raw material of poetry not poetry itself.” While Sandburg’s supporters argued that he “was brutal only to condemn brutality; that beneath his toughness, he was one of the tenderest of living poets; that, when he used colloquialisms and a richly metaphorical slang, he was searching for new poetic values,” Pearson saw only the lack of form in his work and refused to acknowledge him as a true poet. 17 He was even harder on Robert Penn Warren. A member of the Fugitives and the Agrarians, two Southern literary movements that examined Southern traditions and extolled the glories of Southern life, Warren won

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three Pulitzer Prizes and nearly every other literary award during his long career. Despite his fascination with Southern folk culture, religion, and rural life, topics that should have proved endearing, Pearson disliked the fact that Warren evolved with the changing styles of poetry. Although many of his early poems followed the traditional rhyme scheme, meter, and organization that Pearson preferred, critics noted that by the 1950s Warren had adopted a “rambling conversational rhythm” that employed “very long and very short lines, the use of which creates an irregular meter and sentences that seem to wind down the page.” Many praised Warren for his new direction, but Pearson despised the new style. In a letter to a friend, he chastised the great poet for his stylistic changes and added some ad hominem attacks for good measure: A few weeks ago I read in one of my off-beat magazines that a man by the name of Robert Penn Warren is our greatest living poet. I didn’t have very much information about the work of this great poet, so I sent off an order to his publisher to get his “Complete Poems.” The book came promptly. It is a nice-looking book. The paper is exactly what I would choose for my own book. The print—the type—is the nicest you ever saw. I started reading it, but it didn’t make any sense. I opened it at another place, and it read just the same way—no sense at all. Then I looked again at the picture of this great poet. His eyes look like two holes burnt in a boss-blanket, and his whole face is a sad picture of dissipation and sin. Alcoholism, of course. After trying to read some of his “great poetry,” I have come to this conclusion: If Robert Penn Warren is our “greatest living poet,” surely we are in one helova fix. 18

In a classic case of transference, Pearson seems to have vented his own career frustrations on two of the most notable names he could find. What is more intriguing about these diatribes is that they demonstrate an apparent lack of knowledge about the true state of twentieth-century poetry. The two men he selected out for criticism certainly adopted styles and themes with which Pearson disagreed, but they were near contemporaries. Younger poets often adopted even more radical or idiosyncratic styles and themes, and yet Pearson failed to address them by name. He did not specifically criticize any of the Beats, the surrealists, or the existentialists, nor did he critique the various schools of poetry that emerged after World War II. The failure to address the new schools is particularly problematic as one of them, the Black Mountain School, was centered at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, not far from Pearson’s home. Writing in an improvisational style that sought to mimic natural speech and breath patterns, the Black Mountain School was one of the more dramatic approaches to the field, and yet Pearson offered no critique of the school that was in his own backyard. This refusal is striking and leads to the conclusion that Pearson may have been less aware than he thought about the truly modern trends in poetry; had he been more conscious, undoubtedly he would have been even more outraged.

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Whatever the state of his understanding of contemporary poetry, Pearson was astute enough to appreciate that many of the younger generation saw him as an anachronism. As a result, he began to fear he might lose his position as poet laureate. In 1963 he heard rumors that there was a bill in the state legislature to limit the term of the poet laureate to five years. When he was chosen a decade prior he was assured it was a lifetime appointment, but some in the state were beginning to push for a limit to allow the modern poets Pearson loathed to compete for the position. Indeed, by 1964 Oxford, North Carolina native Thad Stem Jr. was making noise that he deserved the title and that it was time Pearson voluntarily resign. Stem was still in his forties, yet already had published a series of well-received poetry collections. He also was a prolific newspaper columnist and produced a number of prose works as well. He was thus a viable candidate for the position, and Pearson admitted that Stem’s accession to poet laureate “might be a good idea, because I am not doing much with it and Thad is a very prolific writer.” He even acknowledged his own diminished output: “I am not even writing any of my own—not earning my title as Poet Laureate.” Despite that, he then rather disingenuously said, “I don’t know the official way to give it up,” and he made no effort to unburden himself of the post. Pearson ultimately saw the moves by Stem and the legislature as personal attacks, and while he admitted, “[if] the state wishes to terminate my term of office and give the job to somebody else it has a right to do so,” he refused to step down of his own accord and to allow a proponent of the very type of poetry he was railing against to become the state’s face of poetry. The state did not terminate his position, nor did it alter the terms of the appointment for another three decades. In 1997 the term was reduced to five years, but a stipend was added; currently the term is two years with a $15,000 annual stipend. 19 Pearson may well have appreciated both alterations, but throughout the 1960s and 1970s he retained the permanent, albeit unpaid post and used it as best he could to defend the traditional rhymed poetry of his youth. While Pearson loved to argue religion and poetry with his correspondents, those were not the only hot-button issues he discussed; he also spent a great deal of time on war, international relations, and politics. When the Korean War erupted in 1950, for instance, he feared it was part of a Soviet plot to bankrupt the nation: When we went into this Korean mess it was supposed to be a united action of all the free nations in protest against the aggression of the Reds. But it has turned out that the United States has had to furnish practically all the money and men, and we are just pouring both the money and the men into a bottomless sinkhole. In other words, we have walked into Red Russia’s trap. She wants to make us spend ourselves into bankruptcy and bleed ourselves white, while she sits back and laughs at us and doesn’t lose a man.

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He blamed the nation’s failure to appreciate this fact on “the people who are supposed to be running our so-called ‘free world’ [who] have no more idea what they are doing than any seventh-grade schoolboy would have. They are just floundering and kicking like a man caught in quicksand, and every kick sinks them deeper. And the tragedy of it is that they don’t know they are sinking in quicksand, and therefore they have no workable means of getting out.” 20 The end of the Korean War brought him no relief, as he then worried about the possibility of a nuclear war: “The threat of atomic war hangs over the world all the time, and our wisest leaders don’t seem to know which way to turn or what will happen next.” He blamed the United Nations for failing to address the threat, but most notably he argued that it was the lack of religious faith that endangered the world: “You know those Reds don’t have any such troublesome thing as a Conscience. Since they have no God they do not recognize Right and Wrong. And we of the free world who claim to have a God—well, we have strayed so far away from Him that we have mostly lost our sense of right and wrong, and we are not accepting and using the Divine Guidance that we do such need.” He felt safe enough, however, to state, “For my own part I try to have faith. I don’t think the Good Lord will let man destroy himself and his world.” 21 Despite his fear of war and his dislike of the conscienceless Soviets, Pearson was impressed by their scientific advances, especially Sputnik. As the first man-made object in space orbited overhead in 1957, he asked Agnes, What do you think of the new Russian “moon” that the reds have got circulating around the earth at the pace of 18,000 miles an hour? It has already made the trip around the earth more than four thousand times [sic] and is still going strong. It is the most amazing thing that has happened since the discovery of atomic power. The Russians sure have got ahead of the U.S. and all the rest of the world on that particular line. They have promised to share with the world all the scientific information they get from it, but I bet you they won’t do it. 22

While he was fearfully impressed by the Soviets, he was less impressed with developments in contemporary America. Much of that dissatisfaction had to do with issues of race and religion, and in arguments about those issues he demonstrated his age, his insularity, and his hypocrisy. Having come of age in a place where African Americans were few and at a time when segregation was the rule, Pearson had little appreciation for the civil rights movement. Even as an iconoclast who suffered for following his own artistic muse and his own theological beliefs, he refused to understand or accept the demands for equality African Americans were making. He thus was appalled in 1957 when Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to force Ar-

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kansas governor Orville Faubus to integrate Central High School in Little Rock. Of the incident Pearson wrote, “And then there is the Little Rock School mess—soldiers with bayonets forcing white children to go to school with negroes! That is more like Russian dictatorship than American freedom. Ike has lost all of his white friends in the South. I have heard Republicans and Democrats around here saying that they have worked for him and voted for him, but they would never do it again. I feel the same way. He has sold out to the niggers.” He continued his diatribe by complaining that “decent white people don’t stand any chance. . . . White people who want to remain white are regarded as criminals.” 23 Pearson showed a similar sense of racial bitterness and frustration when he commented on the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “King said he was working for peace and non-violence, but I think he was stirring up violence everywhere he went. I never did like his looks, but he had become a great leader among the negroes and I am afraid his death will bring on more race trouble. We had trouble enough without this, and of course it was a very foolish thing for anybody to do.” 24 For a man who had once published a socialist newspaper and often proclaimed himself a friend of the “little man,” such sentiments seem hypocritical and out of place. By this point, of course, Pearson was seventy-nine years old and, like many whites of the era, was stunned by the vigor with which African Americans were demanding equality. Race was not the only contemporary political issue that tormented Pearson. While he was unhappy with elements of Eisenhower’s presidency, he accepted him as a legitimate leader who was misguided on various policy issues. When Democrat John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, however, Pearson believed the very foundations of the nation were about to collapse: Well, the great calamity has happened. We here at my house are mad and disgusted and discouraged, and I think you were exactly right in saying that it might be the approaching end of representative government if Kennedy got elected. I can’t imagine why the voters were so dumb as to do this sort of thing. It is my belief that the Kennedy fellow is not at all fit to be president, and he will be ruled and dominated by the forces of evil that plan to destroy America. But Tennessee did its duty and North Carolina failed. . . . I am ashamed of North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and some of the other Southern States. . . . Guess we are in for at least another four years of Franklin D. or something worse.

His frustration with Kennedy only deepened when he began to govern and followed Eisenhower’s example by resorting to force to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962 and the University of Alabama in 1963. While appalled by Kennedy’s politics and actions, what outraged him the

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most was Kennedy’s faith: “I still can’t get reconciled to the fact that we have a Roman Catholic president. I am afraid of the silent undercurrents that are working all the time to put the Pope in power. There will not be much said about it openly till they get us thoroughly hog-tied and helpless. The Roman Catholic church is not a religion, but a great world-wide political conspiracy.” 25 Pearson had a long history of anti-Papism, and he clearly carried this along with him into his old age. As the radical sixties erupted around the growing conflict in Vietnam, the exploding youth culture, the terrifying urban violence, and the radicalization of the civil rights struggle, Pearson’s trepidation grew and he came to fear for himself, his family, and the nation. Indeed, to one friend he declared, “I am troubled about the whole world situation. It looks like it gets more and more hopeless all the time.” Although living far from most of the chaos, by 1968 he sought an escape from the turmoil and was saddened when the astronauts on Apollo 8 described the moon they orbited in December as “dirty plaster of paris.” The moon thus offered no escape from war, assassination, and urban unrest, and Pearson sighed, “Well, I guess I will have to stay here in the United States as long as I can.” Despite that hopelessness, Pearson found a ray of possibility in the unlikeliest of places: “maybe Nixon can manage somehow to make this country a better and a safer place to live.” 26 Surprisingly, by the late 1960s the former socialist had become a Republican, albeit with reservations: As I have travelled along through the years, I have seen a good many things that I have wanted to protest against. That has been a part of my life, especially my early life, when I was more of a radical than I am today. In those days, every worth-while poet that I knew about called himself a Socialist, and I thought that must be the right thing to do. So I called myself a Socialist and wrote and printed a lot of left-wing stuff that I was later ashamed of. As I grew older and had more time to think, I got rid of most of my Socialist ideas, but a few of the things I wrote in those days are still true and too good to throw away. I still have a little protest spirit in me, and I have some sympathy with the young people on the campuses and elsewhere who are doing so much protesting over the [Vietnam] war. But they get so violent about it that I’m afraid they do more harm than good.

Bringing those sentiments together, he told one correspondent, “I have some sympathy with the young people of today—on the campuses and elsewhere—who are protesting so violently against this useless war. I hate the war as bad as they do, and I hope Nixon can soon get us out of it.” When Nixon finally pulled the United States out of Vietnam in 1973, Pearson felt vindicated for his move to the political right and gave the president and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger all the credit. 27

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Despite this political evolution and his happiness with Nixon’s diplomatic achievements, as Pearson grew older he came to fear no one could save mankind from itself. Indeed, he foresaw a drastically changed future: I have been thinking . . . that 50 or 100 years from now all the big cities will be standing empty and alone, and the people—those who haven’t starved to death—will be back on the land—maybe not 20 acres—maybe only five—and that little spot of ground will be rich as cream with natural humus and no commercial fertilizer—what we would call organized farming. . . . If I hadn’t waited too long and not got too old, I ought to have written a book on that subject myself. 28

His faith in humanity’s future was revived briefly with the emergence of Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976. Like many Americans, Pearson was outraged by Watergate and was unhappy when Republican president Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon just weeks after he assumed office following Nixon’s resignation. Pearson was fascinated with Carter and saw him as an antidote to the political corruption and national malaise that was plaguing the nation. He wrote, I can’t help being amazed at the way Jimmie [sic] Carter has captured the Democratic Party, and the nomination for President. I almost find myself hoping that he may be elected. As soon as the Convention was over he went back to his small-town home in Georgia, and to his Baptist church, where he taught the Sunday School lesson and led in prayer. Just imagine Dick Nixon leading in prayer! After the horrors of Watergate maybe we need a religious man in the White House, for a change. But I am afraid the White House will need careful fumigating and disinfecting before it will be fit for a Christian President and his family to live in. I have heard report that one or two of Nixon’s leading “tough guys” in the White House did “get religion” while in prison, and maybe that will help some. I am keeping an open mind about Jimmie [sic] Carter. It just looks too good to be true, but if we will all do some praying, maybe it will turn out right. If Ford or Reagan—whichever gets the Republican top spot—will join in on the “amen Chorus” and help us all pray, maybe Uncle Sam can live awhile longer.

Pearson ultimately decided Carter’s faith was not enough, and he voted for Gerald Ford in 1976. After Carter’s election, however, he held out high hopes: “Jimmie [sic] Carter is something entirely new in the President line and I hope he will do well and make a great name for himself. Maybe he will get to be greater than Franklin D. Roosevelt.” 29 Although Carter failed to live up to Pearson’s hopes, his election intrigued the former socialist and revived his faith in the nation and in humanity. Pearson addressed countless other issues in his expansive correspondence throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but he clearly remained focused on long-held religious, artistic, and political beliefs. Throughout his discussions on those topics, and despite passing ninety years of age, Pearson

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continued to demonstrate his individualism, his spirit, his faith in poetry, and his wit. In subsequent years his output slowed, but he remained active intellectually and showed a surprising amount of vigor for a man nearing one hundred years of age. Sadly, his final years once again would test his soul as bad times followed good and sorrows followed joys. He was strong throughout, and enjoyed two final triumphs that seemed to vindicate his grit and determination. NOTES 1. JLP Papers, 1952–1966, Folder 1, Christmas letter, December 28, 1964, SHC. 2. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 329. 3. JLP Clipping Collection, James Larkin Pearson, 1879–1981, NCC; Richard Walser Papers, Folder 482, The State, April 15, 1971, SHC. 4. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Pat Alspaugh. 5. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Abbie Kerley, April 18, 1937; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Furman Cooper, July 24, 1964; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Pansy Feller, January 7, 1935. 6. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Abbie Kerley, April 18, 1937; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Pansy Feller, January 7, 1935; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Randolph Hull, July 19, 1974; JLP Collection, Virginia Trammell, April 28, 1966. 7. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, June Dockery, February 15, 1974. 8. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Writings, “religion,” untitled. 9. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Howard Hanson, April 19, 1967; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, June Dockery, September 30, 1974. 10. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Miscellaneous, “Letter to Martha,” October 26, 1965. 11. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Robert Crude, April 23, 1979. 12. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Randolph Hull, July 19, 1974. 13. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Eva Mae Grice, January 24, 1951. 14. JLP Collection, Faith Polito, December 7, 1968. 15. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, George Hobart, February 18, 1955; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Writings, “Concerning Sanity in Poetry”; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, Writings, “Poet’s Dilemma”; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, Interview with Bernadette Hoyle. 16. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, typed letter to Poets and Writers, June 7, 1978; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Arlene Edwards, February 3, 1977; JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Charles Mathis, June 21, 1976. 17. The Guilfordian, December 7, 1956; Modern American Poetry Fourth Revised Edition, 289. 18. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Arlene Edwards, February 3, 1977; “Robert Penn Warren, 1905–1989,” Poetry Foundation Biography. 19. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Fred Bonitz, April 7, 1964; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Emily Sargent Councilman, July 6, 1963. 20. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, France Mosher, December 20, 1951. 21. Ibid.; JLP Collection, Sallie Sharpe, December 14, 1955. 22. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Agnes Pearson, October 15, 1957. 23. Ibid. 24. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Clyde and Bertha Ballinger (Eleanor’s sister), April 5, 1968. 25. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Henry Brown, November 12, 1960 and May 4, 1961. 26. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Clyde and Bertha Ballinger (Eleanor’s sister), February 6, 1968 and December 26, 1968.

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27. JLP Collection, Ethel Squire, June 19, 1970; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1970–1979, undated; JLP collection, June Dockery, September 30, 1974. 28. JLP Collection, C. P. Robertson, February 12, 1975. 29. JLP Collection, Fred Randall, July 18, 1976; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Rosalie Campbell, April 2, 1977.

ELEVEN My Fingers and My Toes

Pearson remained surprisingly active during his final years, and he did more than simply rehash age-old debates. He put out Cora’s decades-old novel, he continued to write, and he finally succeeded in getting one of his works published by a professional press. He also enjoyed the fruits of fame as the county and state recognized him as never before. Sadly, tragedy continued to nip at his heels, and time eventually caught up to him. He struggled with poor hearing, weak legs, and the general consequences of aging during his last years, but through it all he remained a fighter, a wit, and a poet. Part of Pearson’s literary activity in the last years of his life included his effort to write an autobiography. This was his third attempt at such a feat—the first came when he was fifteen, and the second came in 1919 when he published a brief “Autobiographical Sketch of James Larkin Pearson: A Short Personal History of the Ups and Downs of the Feller Who Invented and Made The Fool Killer.” The former lay buried in his mass of writings and proved largely interesting only to Pearson as he reread it years later. The other work was self-published and consisted of some thirteen pages with a collection of press notices at the end. It offered but the most cursory study of his life and reached almost no one. With this latest endeavor, he sought to reach a much larger audience and to tell his story with greater depth and detail. The Wilkes Record offered him the first opportunity to reach that audience when it agreed to run an extended serial on his life. Entitled “Poets Progress: The Autobiography of James Larkin Pearson,” the paper hyped the work as “the previously unpublished life story of North Carolina’s Poet Laureate.” Every week from July 1964 through April 1965, the paper turned over a full page to Pearson and his biography. Showing the humor that made The Fool-Killer famous, Pearson began by noting he was a 197

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direct descendant of Adam and Eve. He then offered a detailed study of his more recent genealogy before describing his life with all the love and loss and joy and sorrow it entailed. By the paper’s demise in April 1965, Pearson had provided thirty-nine articles but reached only his twentyfirst year. 1 Thus, while The Wilkes Record forced him to put pen to paper, he was unsatisfied with the incomplete results. Although he lived for another fifteen years and continued to write out the many and varied stories of his life, he was unable to complete his autobiography; he simply never was satisfied enough with the work to put it all together into a coherent tale. There were myriad reasons for this inability and dissatisfaction. His aforementioned determination to be as thorough and introspective as possible demanded a great deal of reflection on any number of difficult and heartbreaking topics, and slowed his pace. His age also slowed him down. The most notable factor, however, may have been his continued artistic and intellectual activity. He remained surprisingly vigorous, and while such activity slowed down the production of his autobiography, it proved as fulfilling as anything else he had ever accomplished. Among those fulfilling activities was the publication of his first wife Cora’s one and only novel, The Double Standard. He had promised Cora he would publish the work, and in 1966 he finally was able to live up to his word. Out of respect for Cora he left the manuscript untouched, as she had last edited it, but he added a seven-page preface of his own as well as her biography, her picture, and her physical description. He also described their extended friendship, marriage, and the suffering she endured throughout her life. He concluded the preface by explaining, I have kept her manuscript among my choicest treasures and have always believed it to be a good piece of writing. Too good to be finally lost after all the hard work she put on it. I have read it over and over, and at each reading I became more and more determined that it should be made into the sort of hard-cover book that Cora wanted. I failed to get it done while she was alive. I must not fail to get it done while I am alive. I want it to be a Memorial to her dear memory. Dear reader, you are holding Cora’s book in your hands. Please love it just a little for her sake and mine. 2

The book itself was a rather traditional tale: “It is the old story of an innocent girl betrayed by a false lover and then cast off and rejected by her own family, while her destroyer goes on and climbs to high honors in politics. . . . After going through several years of hell she is later married to the decent, honest boy who has loved her all the time. It is a very sweet ‘happy ending.’” The specifics of the story center on Elizabeth Howard, an art student and the prettiest girl in the village of Elmore, and Richard Ellington, the most eligible of the town’s bachelors who is about to em-

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bark on his study of the law. Both come from wealthy families, although Richard’s is ascendant while Elizabeth’s is in decline. 3 The story opens with Ellington returning from college and enjoying the attention of his many suitors. Although others are prettier and wealthier, he has eyes for Elizabeth. Unhappy with this attention paid to Elizabeth, another of his suitors, Edith Benton, does her best to interfere and win Richard for herself. Richard soon uses this competition to convince Elizabeth to give herself to him. She becomes pregnant as a result. The pregnancy forces Elizabeth to give up her art studies and it outrages her family who fear her fall will taint all of them and further the family’s decline. Indeed, her mother seems more outraged at her own potential fall than that of her daughter, and she refuses to have anything to do with her. With no home to call her own, Elizabeth flees to the big city. After a brief stint working in a department store, her situation becomes obvious and she loses her job. Taken in soon thereafter by a pimp, she is forced into prostitution for the next four years. In the meantime, Richard suffers nothing for his part in Elizabeth’s fall, and after earning a law degree from Harvard, he wins election to the state legislature and later Congress. Elizabeth eventually escapes her prison and returns home, still estranged from her family. The only people who care for her are old family friends Aunt Sarah and her son Wingate, who long adored Elizabeth and is one of the few to understand the cause of her fall. In the end, Wingate and Elizabeth marry and leave the town that seemed to hold few good memories. 4 Pearson was pleased with the story and happy to put out the work, but he worried about how it would be received: I don’t know how Cora’s story will rate among the literary critics. Perhaps it is too old-fashioned for them. But I thought it was too good to be finally lost after all the hard work she put on it. The problem it deals with is not quite the same now as it was 50 years ago. The unfortunate girl today who lets her too-trusting heart lead her into trouble is usually not cast off and disowned by her own mother as was the case then. Maybe in that respect the world is getting better, or at least more kind-hearted. I have tried to make the book a loving tribute to a very precious memory. 5

Despite Pearson’s fears, a few local papers offered positive reviews. The Winston-Salem Journal admitted that the theme was unoriginal, but praised Cora for including “some provocative twists that make it interesting, and into the narrative as well as into the introduction is interwoven the deep religious faith and moral convictions of the author.” The State similarly praised the work declaring, “It is couched in the language of long-ago romantic novels; the author’s philosophy is wholesome, uncompromising, and, for this day, almost incomprehensible. Her villains are villains; her heroes are heroes, and there is no marginal nonsense. The

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story is told straight away, swiftly, and with a talent for suspense.” The Greensboro Record, meanwhile, offered an extended write up about Cora, James, and the book. Few other papers bothered with the work, and Pearson was especially upset that the local Greensboro News failed to review it. To a friend he raged, “Which proves that the old story holds true again—that the ‘prophet’ never gets any honor or any notice in his home town. . . . The doggoned old newspaper can just be snooty about it if it wants to.” Despite all that, he was “glad to get Cora’s book printed, regardless of how it is received.” 6 His mixed emotions surrounding the publication and reviews of Cora’s book quickly were subsumed by two new tragedies that befell Agnes and recalled for Pearson the horrors of 1934. Agnes’s husband Albert Eller had been diagnosed with cancer in 1964. He battled the disease bravely and it went into remission, only to reemerge with a vengeance in 1968. After several months of struggle and suffering, he died on July 2, 1968. Less than three months later the family again faced tragedy when Agnes’s son Philip died at the age of twenty-four after crashing his car into a tree. Cathy, Agnes’s daughter who had been living in WinstonSalem at the time of the tragedies, returned home to live with Pearson and Agnes. She remained with them until her own marriage in 1970. 7 Although horrific for all involved, Pearson overcame the tragedies and in 1970 reached new professional heights when he finally succeeded in getting a professional firm to publish his work. The process originated in 1965 when he began to sort through his vast collection of nearly one thousand poems and determined it was time to gather together all his best work into a single volume: “I want to preserve only such poems as will be a credit to me after I am gone. I have selected and retyped—and in a few cases revised—about 300 poems that I hope are worth keeping, and I am discarding perhaps twice as many that don’t measure up to my critical standard and don’t have any permanent literary value. . . . The book, as it will finally be printed, will be regarded as my Complete Poems, all that I care to have remembered.” 8 Pearson first contacted Dr. Howard Thompson, president of the newly constructed Wilkes Community College, to see if the institution would be willing to publish his work. Thompson declined the opportunity, noting that the college still was in its infancy and needed money to build additional buildings and meet other student needs. At the same time, Pearson began to realize that if the college published the book “it would be stated as just ‘privately printed,’ as all the little regional publishers are rated, and the big professional critics and reviewers would not pay any attention to it.” He went on, I have been “privately printed” several times and the common uncritical reader has enjoyed my efforts, but so far as moving any higher and getting any safer footing on the “ladder of fame,” I might just as well

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have been “whistling at the wind.” Not once in ten thousand times will a “privately printed” book get any notice. . . . I don’t want any more “privately printed” jobs. IT IS NOW OR NEVER. I am determined to have my last book of the COMPLETE POEMS OF JAMES LARKIN PEARSON published by one of the biggest and best publishers in New York. 9

This determination was not new, as a decade earlier he had admitted to his friend Richard Walser that he was frustrated with having never been published by a professional house: All through the years I have tried many publishers—all the way from Knopf on down. I went personally to Knopf’s office in New York and tried to interest them in my work, but they turned me down. So did several other New York publishers, as well as the N.C. Univ. Press [sic] and John Blair. So I made up my mind some time ago that there was no use to try anymore and that I might as well burn up my stuff and forget it, seeing that I had wasted my life and my best energy on something that nobody wanted. Naturally I became very discouraged and disillusioned about poetry.

Fortunately he reconsidered: [I took] a second and respectful look at my life’s work before I finally fed it to the flames, and I ask[ed] myself—is it entirely worthless? Have I wasted my life on something that nobody wants? Honestly, I do not think so. I have gotten a lot of joy out of creating these poems that nobody seemed to want, and I still believe that some of them are good, and that if they get half a chance they will live longer than the miserable mockery of poetry that the half-baked smart-elicks [sic] are raving over today. So I have delayed the bonfire indefinitely. 10

With the poems spared from the flames, but still without a publisher, Pearson was surprised to learn that although the community college could not publish his book it would get behind his effort to find a professional press. Dr. Fay Bird, director of Learning Resources, took the lead in the campaign. After five years of work and several failed efforts, in 1970 Byrd submitted the manuscript to Ingram Book Company of Nashville, Tennessee. The company agreed to publish Pearson’s collected works, and paid him a $600 lump sum in lieu of royalties. Ingram then created a book of 278 pages, with a similar number of poems, in a quantity of 3,000 copies. The college agreed to take one thousand copies and serve as the sales agent for the surrounding region. At the age of ninety-one, Pearson finally had his professionally published collection of poems. 11 He was happy to have completed that element of his life’s work, and was equally happy that his old friend and literary critic Richard Walser agreed to write the introduction. In a letter to Fay Byrd in May 1970, he explained that he wanted Walser because he understood the type of poetry Pearson wrote and was not among those “new poets” whose work he

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did not appreciate. More importantly, he believed Walser would do something few other critics in the past had done—actually study the poems. He was frustrated that so many of the recent write-ups about him focused on his poverty, tragedy, and biography in general, and he wanted Walser to help him complete his transition to a “real, serious” poet by including an academic study of his work in the introduction. Indeed, in other writings he expressed this desire for a real, critical analysis of his work with even greater fervor: It is gratifying to know that common, uncritical readers have taken an interest in my poems, and that all over North Carolina hundreds and possibly thousands of school children have memorized and recited them on Friday afternoons. But that is not enough. I want to know what the scholars and literary critics have to say, and up to now they have not said anything. I want some person who is a capable scholar and critic of the old standard poetry to take the time and to give my manuscript a careful reading, and then I want him (or her) to write a fair and important introduction of whatever length to this last book that I will offer to the public. If my work has any merit—if I have written even a few poems that might have a chance to live—I want the introduction to say so, if my poems have no permanent value, I want it stated with equal frankness. 12

The selection of Walser was a good choice, as he beautifully blended a brief biography of the poet with critical analysis and historical context to create a well-balanced sense of the man and his poetry. He wrote that he viewed the collection as an autobiography, of sorts, and explained, “First there are glimpses of Pearson’s family. Then, long before his reminders of twentieth-century science and inventions, we learn about a mountain boyhood in an age not so sophisticated as ours. . . . In the slow, cautious movement towards an attainment of his own unmistakable mature voice, handsomely exemplified in the sonnets, we follow a poetic autobiography almost as engaging as the subjects he treats and the themes he explores.” Walser continued, “Throughout the book we are always aware that it is Pearson the Poet who speaks. Supported by a melodiousness and religious fervor which knows its direction, Pearson’s philosophy is an optimistic one. If one may not know the future, it is well to fill one’s days with work and beauty. While such a stance does not prevent the poet from occasionally being indignant at wasted lives and ‘proud conceits,’ he is nevertheless and finally hopeful.” Noting Pearson’s acknowledged debt to Edgar Allan Poe, John Charles McNeill, and other American poets, Walser concluded by asserting that the compilation was “evidence not only of a life spent in reaching an ambition, but also evidence of the esteem with which he is held among those who love poetry.” 13 With Walser providing this stirring introduction, a professional press producing the collection, and a local community backing him to the hilt,

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this should have been a time of joy. Sadly, it turned into a period of frustration as three issues outraged the poet. First, lines for his poem “Homer in a Garden” were broken up to better fit the page width. Byrd gave the publisher approval to make the change, apparently without Pearson’s knowledge, and the poet was unhappy with the result. He explained that some of the long lines had internal rhymes that were lost in the editing. Others he had made purposefully long for appearance or emphasis; that too was lost due to the editing. 14 The press rectified the mistake, but it rankled Pearson nonetheless. Second, the original cover of the book listed him as “Larkin Pearson.” To Fay Byrd he again complained, “For more than seventy years I have been advertising and publishing James Larkin Pearson as my ‘literary name,’ and not just Larkin Pearson. Larkin Pearson would be entirely unknown to everybody except some of the local people, and many of them don’t know me as a writer at all. So a book by Larkin Pearson would lose all the state-wide advertising value of James Larkin Pearson, which is rather widely known over the state.” 15 Byrd succeeded in correcting that issue as well, and the book included his full name on the cover. What outraged him most was the press’s determination to change the title. For as long as he had been pondering this final collection he had in mind the title “The Collected Poems of James Larkin Pearson.” The press, however, decided it would sell better with the title My Fingers and My Toes—the name of the poem he composed at four years old while riding in a wagon with his father on a cold winter’s day. Not only that, the press decided to place on the cover an image of a young boy. Pearson hated both the cover and title and made no secret of his unhappiness. He tried to reach a compromise with the press by suggesting both titles appear on the cover: “[they] can have the childhood ‘quote’ for a catch-line, but I want my title. There should be room for both on the title page.” He asked Fay Byrd to act as a go-between, but the press refused to budge. Byrd tried to console him and explained, Children’s classics are those books that were many times written for adults, but the children recognized the beauty and took the books for theirs. I certainly do not mean to imply that your book is a children’s book, but we must give credit to them [the press] as they have made your name immortal. . . . The book will be a classic for it has warmth and appeal to all ages. For example, in my family the book appeals to a ten year old and a seventy year old and the thirties. If I were a poet, my appeal would be to the youth. They love poetry and there are more young people and therefore more libraries. For those ages, librarians leave the jackets on the books. As we grow older, we lose the magic of the cover and try to get to the contents. The boy on the jacket shows the love and warmth from the past and the strength to attack the future. 16

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Pearson ignored Byrd’s justification and continued to rage. He complained to the Gastonia Gazette, “they ruined it by putting that ridiculous name on it; and to make it worse, they put a picture of a small boy— supposed to be me—dancing around on the front of the jacket. They were trying to make my book a ‘school book’ and they were trying to make me a little boy. . . . My book is not a school book and I was not a little boy.” He complained to others, “I have been mad as a wet hen about it ever since. . . . Well, my fingers are not bad for an old man of 92. They don’t have any swollen or aching joints—no arthritis or rheumatism. But I don’t want the public looking at my old crooked and smelly TOES. Maybe my baby toes were cute when I was 12 years old, but they lost their cuteness a long time ago.” 17 Even six years after publication he was still mad, complaining about the book and taking shots at the publisher: They had never published a book and they didn’t know any more than a jackass about publishing a book. They could hire a printer and get a book printed, and they thought, along with other ignorant people, that when a book is printed it is published. They couldn’t take their eyes off my baby toes long enough to see if I had a head or a heart that could be wounded like driving a hot iron stake through it. They gave no thought to my feelings and objections. Whatever you do, please don’t have the impression that I had anything to do with putting that awful unsuitable name on my last book of poems. I will never get over it—unless I can live long enough to change it and get my poems published the way I want them.

To one friend he went even further: And please tell your retired preacher friend in the Baptist Home that I don’t care how much he reads my poems and how much he likes them; but please tell him to pray that the devil will get that bunch of hellians [sic] that insisted on putting that ridiculous baby-name on my book of poems—agains[t] my strong protest. . . . In all the world’s history there has never been such a kussed [sic] mistake in the naming of a book. Nobody will ever know the agony of soul I have suffered over that thing. 18

Despite such vitriol, Pearson eventually gave in, accepted the title, and apologized to Byrd: “I am very sorry that I had to get sort-of ‘disturbed’ over the book jacket, but after I saw that everybody else liked it, I became willing to accept it.” He later offered an additional reason for going along with the title despite his outrage: I wanted to object very strongly; but I was afraid that if I raised too much objection they would back out and not do the book at all. So I had to just keep my mouth shut and let them go ahead with it. I was SO anxious to get my poems published by a publisher—something I had never been able to do before. . . . The critics and reviewers never pay

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any attention to a privately-printed book. Now I had been hoping that when my poems got really published by a publisher, the critics and reviewers might pay more attention to my book. 19

Pearson’s desire to be published thus overcame his qualms, and he accepted the title and cover. The book sold well despite Pearson’s outrage, but critics paid little attention to it as there was nothing new about the collection and most of the poems could be found elsewhere. Despite that, the community rallied around Pearson and his new book. In April 1970 Governor Richard Scott invited him to the governor’s office in Raleigh, where he issued one decree making April James Larkin Pearson month and another making him a “Distinguished Citizen of North Carolina.” When he returned home he found that the Wilkes County School District had declared Friday, April 23, James Larkin Pearson Day. Then on April 25 there was a big celebration at Wilkes Community College with “Publication Day” and the presentation of My Fingers and My Toes to the public. That day the Wilkes Community College chorus sang several songs, president Dr. Howard Thompson offered words of welcome, Mr. Frank Roberts of the Ingram Book Company presented the book, John Moses Pipkin of the North Carolina Poetry Society offered some words, Pearson read several poems and offered some comments, and Mrs. Delbert Goodrow sang “Fifty Acres” to musical accompaniment. 20 The celebrations and support continued in the years that followed. The city of Wilkesboro declared April 25, 1971, James Larkin Pearson Day, and in 1973 the community college held yet another event to honor Pearson. For the later event, two students, Janet Brookshire Atwood and Kay Miller, followed in the footsteps of Mrs. Goodrow and put several of Pearson’s poems to music. Pearson was pleased with the result and told the two women, “I had never dreamed that I was writing song poems or anything that could be set to music. But you two girls have done the impossible and have found an angel in my work that I didn’t know existed.” In an effort to spread that angelic work, the three eventually recorded an album entitled Things That Come No More: A Collection of Poems by James Larkin Pearson. The album included fifteen poems, several sung by the two women with the remainder read by Pearson to musical accompaniment. 21 The festivities continued in 1975 when, after a stay in the hospital for a kidney infection, Pearson celebrated his ninety-sixth birthday at the community college. His birthday then became an annual event, and the next year the college added to the celebration by awarding him an honorary Associate Degree in Fine Arts, the first honorary degree it awarded. Although he was wheelchair-bound and had a hard time hearing the ceremonies, Pearson was happy throughout and noted, “It was a big day and a big crowd and I enjoyed it very much.” But it was more than a big day,

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Figure 11.1. James Larkin Pearson at age ninety-two. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

as the community college declared September 12–18, 1976, James Larkin Pearson week. 22 In 1977 the celebrations grew even larger when the General Assembly of North Carolina issued “A Joint Resolution Honoring the Life, Service and Memory of James Larkin Pearson.” It read in part,

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Figure 11.2. James Larkin Pearson and his daughter, Agnes, in 1973. Courtesy of the James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College.

Whereas, James Larkin Pearson is a true poet of the people, springing from the mountain folk whose lore he has immortalized in poetic language, printed with his own hands, and given to the world. . . . . Be it resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring: Section 1: That the General Assembly of North Carolina does provide yearly recognition beginning at the time of James Larkin Pearson’s birthday celebration, September 13, 1977. Section 2: That a monetary substance be considered for a building to house the James Larkin Pearson collection on the campus of Wilkes Community College. 23

Pearson was especially ecstatic about the second section of the resolution. As early as the late 1960s he had sought a place to keep all his collected works, books, and correspondence upon his death. He mentioned his concerns one day in conversation with Dr. Thompson, the president of

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the community college. Thompson expressed empathy for Pearson’s dilemma, so Pearson pressed his luck and asked if the president would be willing to keep the material on campus. Thompson not only agreed to house the Pearson collection, but eventually told Pearson, “The college will build here on its campus a separate building to hold all of your valuable things and it will be called The James Larkin Pearson Memorial Library.” Of the decision, Pearson wrote, “This is so much more than I could ever have expected that I just can’t ‘take it in.’” The two men soon reached an agreement to house the material, to build the building, and to provide Pearson access to it all as long as he lived. As a part of that agreement, Pearson made a formal bequest granting Wilkes Community College “all the professional possessions acquired by me during my career as a printer, poet and author, with the understanding that the Wilkes Community College will place these items in a building designated as the ‘James Larkin Pearson Memorial Library.’” In return, the college promised to use the library to “preserve the history and talents of Wilkes County by housing the collections of the North Carolina Poet Laureate, Mr. James Larkin Pearson.” Additionally, the college planned to use the building to “preserve important facts, artifacts, and cultural heritage and folklore so vital to our historical, cultural, and social growth.” 24 Pearson was overjoyed with the agreement, and as architectural designs were drawn up and the fundraising to pay for the building began, he never ceased to inform anyone who would listen of the plans. He liked to tell people that “the building (the Wilkes Community College Library) will be located just a few miles from the lonely mountaintop where I was born in a crude log cabin. To think that I would be honored in such a way is so much more than I could ever have hoped.” While he was proud of the building in and of itself, he also liked to explain that it was to be made of “poured concrete,” which seemed to excite him with its sense of permanence, and that it was expected to cost $100,000. In letter after letter throughout the last years of his life he never ceased to note those factors. He also wanted to share that joy with those who were most important to him, and he made it clear that while his name was on the building it would be “a memorial to my father (who died at 80); my mother who died at 88; my brother John who died before he was 40; my first wife, Cora, who died at 50; my second wife, Eleanor, who died at 70; and finally, it will be a memorial for me and for my dearly adopted daughter Agnes, with whom I am now living.” 25 The price for the new building soon exceeded the $100,000 estimate, and the school held fundraising events such as talent shows, parades, and bake sales to raise money. The college also solicited funds from state agencies, which culminated in the 1977 resolution. With the financial support in place, on September 10, 1978, the college broke ground on the new library. Pearson visited the nearly completed site in the summer of

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1981, and the formal opening was scheduled for September 13, 1981, to coincide with his 102nd birthday. Despite the accolades and excitement that came with the new building, time moved on. While Pearson remained sharp and as witty as ever, his body grew older and feebler. On his ninetieth birthday, for instance, he reported, “I’ve got lots of friends and I’ve got more girls than I can count. Time used to be, when women in this part of the country were afraid of a fellow who liked books and wrote poetry. Now the girls, young ones, and married ones, too, come up to me and act like I was something pretty. Why, I’ve had more hugs and kisses since I turned 90 than in all the other years put together.” In 1972, however, he began to complain about insomnia: “There is nothing that can be any excuse for keeping me awake. Unless it is that my old brain is just too active— always trying to work out some problem that does not concern me, or trying to create a masterpiece of literature. The old brain is always conscious of the fact that I have not accomplished what I expected to do as a writer. . . . It is a serious thought, but I don’t want my brain to work at it when I should sleep. That’s the trouble—I can’t control my brain!” As a result of the sleeplessness, he complained that “in day time I am so dullheaded and drowsy that I can’t make myself get down to the typewriter and attend to my letter writings. . . . No hurt—no ache nor pain—just can’t sleep. The more I try to go to sleep the less I succeed at it, and I probably won’t get two hours of good sound sleep any night. It is all very foolish, but it is hard to control.” 26 Those complaints notwithstanding, in 1975 he reported, I seem to be in very good health in every respect except one: My legs have given out. They are very weak and tottery when I walk. I can hardly walk at all without my cane. . . . I don’t have an ache nor pain anywhere. So I feel that I am in very good shape except my weak legs. I have no Arthritis or Rheumatism no high blood pressure, no stomach troubles; I can eat anything I want—if I can get it—and it never hurts me. I am never sick. My eyes are not as good as they were when I was young, but they are doing very well.

A year later, however, he injured his back in a fall. He spent two weeks in the hospital and recovered, but from then on he required a walker or a wheelchair to get around. 27 By 1978 he was largely deaf, hunched forward with a stoop, and generally was immobile: “I just sit here in my bedroom at my daughter’s house, and I can’t get out of the house without help.” A year later he described similar circumstances, For the past three or four years I have been a sort of invalid, and pretty much confined to my room here at Agnes’s house where I live. . . . I couldn’t live without Agnes, though she is just an adopted daughter. I have nobody of my own flesh and blood closer than a second cousin

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Agnes took good care of her father, but as he became feebler there was only so much she could do. She finally realized she could no longer act as his sole caregiver and moved him to the Vesper’s Nursing Home. Despite this move and his declining health, or maybe because of it, the community college continued to support him. Each year the students, staff, and faculty hosted his birthday celebration with a party on campus, and each year he promised to return for his one-hundredth. He was good to his word, and on September 13, 1979, he celebrated his centennial. The Wilkes Central band played, president of Wilkes Community College David Daniel welcomed the crowd and spoke briefly, the choir sang “A Song of Hope,” and Pearson answered questions. Although confined to a wheelchair, covered in a blanket, and using his cupped hand to his ear to help him hear, Pearson seemed to enjoy the evening. When asked what he thought about having lived one hundred years he quipped, “I guess the Lord thought if he gave me enough chance I’d be worth something.” He enjoyed a similar event for his 101st birthday and nearly three hundred people showed up. 29 What everyone really was waiting for, however, was his 102nd birthday and the opening of the James Larkin Pearson Library. Sadly, Pearson contracted pneumonia and died on August 27, 1981, just two weeks before his birthday and the opening of his library. He was buried in the Moravian Falls Cemetery beside Cora and Blanche Rose. Despite the sad news, the college turned the opening of the library into one last day of celebration for Pearson’s life. The North High Band played; historian, author, and president of the Wilkes County Historical Society J. Jay Anderson gave the welcome; the Christian Harmonizers sang two songs; president David Daniel read one of Pearson’s poems; more poetry was read with musical accompaniment; Daniel spoke about the “appreciation for a dream come true”; Anderson gave some additional comments; and Dr. John T. Wayland gave the memorial prayer. There followed a ribbon cutting for the new building and a reception. 30 Praise for the man and his achievements soon followed his passing. Pearson’s successor as poet laureate Sam Ragan wrote, “James Larkin Pearson’s verse was traditional in style and theme, but often he had rare insights into the human condition, and his love of nature often came through.” North Carolina Governor James Hunt said, “He reminded us again and again to seek our pleasures in the simple values of home and family. I’m sure that he is now, in his own way, delighted to be once again on his 50 acres; safe at home.” The Daily Tar Heel noted that “Pearson generally wrote bright, optimistic poems, but because he wrote from

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the heart, he also wrote on life’s disappointments and sorrows.” His hometown paper the Journal Patriot wrote, “James Larkin Pearson commanded deep respect throughout his home state not only for his life’s work in poetry but for the gentle, humble man he was. He readily set strangers at ease with his warm blue eyes, his handshake or embrace, and his genuine interest in other people. Pearson was an unpretentious person who remained constant over the years.” Agnes, meanwhile, simply asked people to remember him as “a natural man, honest, without guile, someone who loved people. He is one of a kind.” 31 The James Larkin Pearson Library was one way people remembered him, and it remained on the Wilkes Community College Campus until June 2004, when it was demolished to make room for a new building. The contents of his library survived the demolition but were culled. The essence remained, however, including Pearson’s old press which now stands in Lowes Hall, the building that replaced his library. The paper contents of his collection are now preserved in the Pardue Library on the Wilkes Community College campus. The building behind Agnes’s house in which Pearson lived after Eleanor’s death also remained as a reminder of his life. In 2003, however, the home and the building in back were demolished by the North Carolina Department of Transportation in a road-widening plan designed to expand NC Highway 18. 32 Fearing such losses would erode people’s memory of Pearson, the community college and local supporters pushed the state to create a more permanent memory. While awaiting the state to act, the community college published Poet’s Progress: Autobiography of James Larkin Pearson or The Life and Times of James Larkin Pearson in 2005. The first portion of the work corresponds closely to the material Pearson wrote for the Wilkes Record in 1965. The remainder includes sketches, thoughts, and other ideas Pearson had been trying to organize for years into his more formal autobiography. Although the result is incomplete, it provided the public a more permanent sense of the man. That permanence was furthered when the state finally complied with the college’s request and placed a historical marker for Pearson at the corner of South Collegiate Drive and River Street, near the entrance to the Wilkes Community College campus. On March 27, 2008, the college held a ceremony to celebrate the marker and once again to commemorate its native son. 33 Pearson’s family, meanwhile, carried on. Agnes moved beside her daughter Cathy Anderson and lived there until her death in 2004. 34 Cathy remains in Wilkes County and continues to uphold her grandfather’s memory. Other family members do their part as well. Charlotte West Wade, Pearson’s distant cousin, hosts a blog titled “The Wests of Wilkes,” in which she keeps in contact with her extended family and tells the tales of her ancestors, including Pearson. The community college also upholds Pearson’s memory and work, and the librarians there continue their preservation efforts.

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More than the campaigns of his family and friends, however, what truly preserves Pearson’s legacy are his work and his spirit. His poetry remains alive and can be found in libraries, anthologies, and high school textbooks where it serves as an example of the traditional, rhymed poetry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His journalistic efforts enthrall others. Ken Welborn, the publisher of the Wilkes County Record, once described his delight when in 2003 Pearson’s granddaughter Cathy provided him original copies of The Fool-Killer and The Lucky Dog. 35 Like many historians and history buffs, Welborn appreciated the opportunity to touch and feel the actual papers. While those who appreciate such sensibilities may be fewer than those who appreciate his poems, the continued existence of his journalistic efforts, in whatever form, serve as invaluable historical documents and have helped preserve Pearson’s memory. We must admit, however, that it was Pearson’s spirit and individualism that informed his poetry and his journalism and have engendered their survival. These factors thus prove as important to his legacy as his art. He was a man who knew what he believed and stuck to his ideals regardless. He refused to change his faith despite being expelled from his church, he refused to change his poetic style despite the changing tastes of modern poetry aficionados, and he refused to admit defeat despite numerous professional failures and personal tragedies. This last factor is key. His struggles, his ability to overcome those struggles, and his willingness to write about those struggles make Pearson and his work especially compelling. In his poetry and his prose, as well in the very life he led, he evinced an eminently human spirit and embodied the strength, resolution, and resiliency of North Carolina. That spirit endures, and should make North Carolinians proud to claim James Larkin Pearson as one of their own. NOTES 1. Wilkes Record. 2. Pearson, The Double Standard, v–xii. 3. JLP Papers, 1952–1966, Folder 1, “Some Books You might want from Pearson Publishing,” “The Double Standard,” SHC. 4. Pearson, The Double Standard. 5. JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Alfred Mordecai, September 22, 1966. 6. Winston-Salem Journal, September 25, 1966; The State, November 1, 1966; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Shelly Boger, October 3, 1966 and November 29, 1966. 7. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Clyde and Bertha Ballinger (Eleanor’s sister). 8. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 337. 9. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1970–1979, typed letter, undated. 10. JLP Collection, Richard Walser, March 7, 1960. 11. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 374.

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12. Ibid., 393–94; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1960–1969, handwritten letter, undated. 13. Pearson, My Fingers and My Toes, xv–xvii. 14. JLP Clipping Collection, Gastonia Gazette, 1971, NCC. 15. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Fay Byrd, January 27, 1971. 16. Ibid., February 22, 1971; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 395. 17. JLP Clipping Collection, Gastonia Gazette, 1971, NCC; JLP Collection, Cabinet 2, Lelia Sutter, October 2, 1972. 18. JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1970–1979, handwritten undated letter; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Mrs. George Anderson, September 26, 1977. 19. JLP Collection, Fay Byrd, January 27, 1971; JLP Collection, Carol Timblin, August 10, 1971. 20. JLP Collection, Alameda Ross, April 22, 1970; “Publication Day,” Folder 482, Richard Walser Papers, SHC. 21. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Janet Brookshire Atwood, September 26, 1973; Things That Come No More: A Collection of Poems by James Larkin Pearson. Masterpiece Records, September 1973. 22. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Cynthia Blake, September 15, 1975; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Clyde and Bertha Ballinger (Eleanor’s sister); JLP Clipping Collection, James Larkin Pearson, 1879–1981, July 18, 1976, NCC. 23. JLP Files, Pearson, James Larkin, Resolution, 1977 Folder. 24. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 376–77, 392; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, James Larkin Pearson, 1970–79, undated; JLP Collection, Cabinet 6, “James Larkin Pearson Building.” 25. Journal Patriot, September 3, 1981; Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 377. 26. JLP Clipping Collection, James Larkin Pearson, 1879–1981, “Poet Pearson is Fit and Gets Many Kisses,” unnamed and undated; JLP Collection, Carol Timblin, August 10, 1978; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Zoe Brockman, January 21, 1972 and February 19, 1972. 27. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Mrs. A. R. Armstrong, January 16, 1975; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Garner Ted Armstrong, May 26, 1976. 28. JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, John T. Barber, February 1, 1978; JLP Collection, Cabinet 1, Alice Bray, January 3, 1979. 29. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 381; JLP Files, Flyer for 100th birthday party, Pearson, James Larkin–100th; JLP Collection, Cabinet 4, 1979, Greensboro Daily News, 1979; JLP Files, Pearson, James Larkin–101st. 30. JLP Files, Flyer for James Larkin Pearson Memorial, Pearson, James Larkin–100th Folder. 31. Ragan, “Remembering Stalwarts,” 145–46, NCC; News and Observer, August 28, 1981; Daily Tar Heel, September 4, 1981; Journal Patriot, August 27, 1981 and September 3, 1981. 32. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 381. 33. JLP Files, Pearson Highway Marker, Wilkes County Folder. 34. Pearson, Poet’s Progress, 381. 35. See: Walser, ed., Poets of North Carolina; Walser, Literary North Carolina; Buckner, ed., Words and Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry; Wilkes County Record, April 7, 2010.

Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES James Larkin Pearson Library, Wilkes Community College Cora Wallace Pearson Letters James Larkin Pearson Collection James Larkin Pearson Files

Pardue Library, Wilkes Community College Alspaugh, William. A Conversation with James Larkin Pearson. Video Recording. 1963. Pearson, James Larkin. James Larkin Pearson. Video Recording. 1967. ———. Things that Come No More. Sound Recording. Taylorsville, NC: Masterpiece Records. 1973. ———. As Susie Sees It: An interview with James Larkin Pearson. Video Recording. WXII News. 1977. ———. James Larkin Pearson. Sound Recording. ———. Various Recordings of Mr. Pearson. Sound Recordings. ———. James Larkin Pearson: Various Recordings. Sound Recording. ———. James Larkin Pearson Book Series. Sound Recording. Timblin, Carol. James Larkin Pearson: North Carolina Poet Laureate. Video Recording. 1979.

North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Arthur, Billy. “James Larkin Pearson.” 1981. Clippings Collection. “James Larkin Pearson.” The Fool Killer. Moravian Falls, NC. 1910–1917, 1919–1923, 1924–1929. The Good News. Boomer, NC. 1917–1919. The Literary South. Lincolnton, NC. 1937. The Lucky Dog. Guilford College, NC. 1947–1948. McFarland, Alice. “James Larkin Pearson: North Carolina’s Printer-Poet.” Reprinted from The Charlotte Observer, June 9, 1929. The Old Timer. Guilford College, NC. 1956–1957. Pearson, James Larkin. A History of the Yellow Jacket. Moravian Falls, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1906. ———. “Autobiographical Sketch of James Larkin Pearson: A Short Personal History of the Ups and Downs of the Feller Who Invented and Made the Fool-Killer, His Poetical Adventures and Press Notices.” ———. Reviews and Press Notices about James Larkin Pearson. Boomer, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1934. ———. “Reviews and Press Notices concerning the poetry of James Larkin Pearson: A Symposium of Reviews and Press Notices Gathered from Many Eminent Literary Critics.” Guilford College, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1947.

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Bibliography

Pearson’s Paper. Boomer, NC 1923.

Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill William Stanley Braithwaite Papers, #4215-z. Federal Writers’ Project Papers, Folder 690, Pearson, James Larkin and Claude V. Dunnagan (interviewers): Music is Lost in the Mails, #3079. Federal Writers’ Project Papers, Folder 691, Pearson, James Larkin and Claude V. Dunnagan (interviewers): What is Left of a Family, #3079. Federal Writers’ Project Papers, Folder 692, Pearson, James Larkin (interviewer): The Story of David Franklin and Family, #3079. Guy Owen Papers, #4287. James Larkin Pearson Papers, #4109-z. Living North Carolina Poets. Mary Elizabeth Swanson, #5352-z. Richard Gaither Walser Papers, #4168.

Books by James Larkin Pearson Castle Gates (A Book of Poems) Through Which the Knowing Ones Are Admitted Into Some of My Castles in Spain. Wilkesboro, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1908. Pearson’s Poems. Wilkesboro, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1924. Fifty Acres and Other Poems. Wilkesboro, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1933. Fifty Acres and Other Selected Poems. Wilkesboro, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1937. Plowed Ground: Humorous and Dialect Poems. Wilkesboro, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1949. Early Harvest: The First Experimental Poems of a Self-Taught Farm Boy. Wilkesboro, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1952. Selected Poems of James Larkin Pearson. Charlotte, NC: McNally of Charlotte, 1960. My Fingers and My Toes. Nashville, TN.: Ingram Book Company, 1971. Poets Progress: Autobiography of James Larkin Pearson or The Life and Times of James Larkin Pearson, 1879–1981. Wilkesboro, NC: Wilkes Community College, 2005.

Books by Cora Wallace Pearson Bluets and Buttercups. Boomer, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1917. The Double Standard. North Wilkesboro, NC: Pearson Publishing Company, 1966

SECONDARY SOURCES Anderson, J. Jay. Wilkes County Sketches: Wilkes County Bicentennial Edition. Wilkesboro, NC: Wilkes Community College, 1978. Broadfoot, Jan. Twentieth Century Tar Heels. Wendell, NC: Broadfoot’s of Wendell, 2004. Bruns, Roger. Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Bucker, Sally, ed. Word and Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1999. Butterfield, R. W., ed. Modern American Poetry. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1984. Byrd, William. Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina. Raleigh, NC: The North Carolina Historical Commission, 1929. Crouch, John. Historical Sketches of Wilkes County. Wilkes County, NC: 1902.

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Gilmore, Glenda. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919–1950. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. Hayes, Johnson. The Land of Wilkes. Wilkes County Historical Society, 1962. Hensley, Jan G. “Crowned with Laurels: A History of the Poets Laureate of North Carolina.” 2005. Historical Record Association. North Carolina Lives: The Tar Heel Who’s Who. A Reference Edition Recording the Biographies of Contemporary Leaders in North Carolina with Special Emphasis on Their Achievements in Making It One of America’s Greatest States. Hopkinsville, KY: Historical Record Association, 1962. Joint Committee on North Carolina Literature and Bibliography of the North Carolina English Teachers Association and the North Carolina Library Association. North Carolina Authors: A Selected Handbook. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Library, 1952. Lewis, Nell Battle. “We Couldn’t Do Better.” News and Observer, August 9, 1953. Masterson, James R. “William Byrd in Lubberland.” American Literature, Vol. 9, No. 2 (May 1937), 153–170. Mathis, Charles. “The Poet Everyone Loves Far Beyond His Native North Carolina, James Larkin Pearson at 92 Charms Thousands with His Views of Life.” National Retired Teachers Association Journal May–June 1972, Volume XXIII, Issue 107, 27–29. Mencken, H. L. “Sahara of the Bozart.” In The American Scene: A Reader. Edited by Huntington Cairns, 157–168. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. Newcomb, John Timberman. How Did Poetry Survive?: The Making of Modern American Verse. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Oldham, Edward. “History of Early Amateur Journalism in North Carolina.” In The History of Amateur Journalism. Edited by Truman Spencer. New York: The Fossils, Inc., 1957. Prescott, Frederick and Gerald Sander, eds. An Introduction to American Poetry. Miami, FL: Granger Books, 1976. Ragan, Sam. “Remembering Stalwarts.” The North Carolina Historical Review, Spring 1982, Volume LIX, Number 2, 145–46. Ready, Milton. The Tar Heel State: A History of North Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. Sinclair, Upton. Money Writes. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1931. ———. Another Pamela, Or Virtue Still Rewarded. New York: The Viking Press, 1950. Smith, Sharon. Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2006. Taylor, Gregory S. The Life and Lies of Paul Crouch: Communist, Opportunist, Cold War Snitch. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 2014. Taylor, Michael W. Tar Heels: How North Carolinians Got Their Name. Raleigh, NC: Division of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1999. Untermeyer, Louis, ed. Modern American Poetry Fourth Revised Edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1930. United States Census. 1880. Van Noppen, Ina W. and John J., Western North Carolina Since the Civil War. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1973. Walser, Richard, ed. Poets of North Carolina, Richmond, VA.: Garrett and Massie, 1963. ———. Literary North Carolina, Raleigh, NC: State Department of Archives and History, 1970. ———. “Pearson, James Larkin.” In Dictionary of North Carolina Biography: Volume 5, P–S. Edited by William S. Powell, 46–47. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Index

Abernathy, Arthur, 43, 140, 166 “Accolade to a Poet,” 178 The Agrarians, 187 Alspaugh, Pat, 179 amateur journalism, xiv–xv, 27, 53–54, 169–170 Anderson, Cathy, 135, 200, 211–212 Anderson, J. Jay, xiii, 166, 210 Anderson, Sherwood, 131 Apollo 8, 192 Asheville, North Carolina, 45–46, 55, 57, 131, 188 “Aspiration,” 107 Atwood, Janet Brookshire, 205 Author’s League Fund, 109 “Autumn Fires,” 153 “Babylon,” 43 Barlow, John Z., 21–22 Barlow, Thomas, 3 Barnwell, John, xi Black Mountain School of Poetry, 188–189 The Blue Ridge Times, 18 Bluets and Buttercups , 89–90, 91 Boomer, North Carolina, 3, 26, 50, 55, 86, 109, 121, 154 Burns, Robert, 109, 114, 131, 139 Byrd, Fay, 201, 203–204 Byrd, William, xi Carter, Jimmy, 193 Castle Gates, 42–44, 105 “Castles in Spain,” 43 “Cathedral Pines,” 104–105 Catholicism, 31, 63, 64, 66–67, 160, 191 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, xii, 43, 129–131, 145 Chapel Hill Weekly, 130 Charlotte, North Carolina, 38–39, 54

Charlotte Observer, 38, 43, 98, 107 Coatesville, Pennsylvania, 156–157 Crittenden, Ethel, 140 Cross, P. G., 143 Crouch, Paul, 84 Daniel, David, 210 Debs, Eugene, 53, 59, 79, 103–104, 114, 187 DeLand, Florida, 46 Doddridge, Margene, 135–137 The Double Standard, 90, 198–200 Durham, North Carolina, 120, 131 Durham Sun, 106 Early Harvest, 165–166 Ehringhaus, John, 166 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 190–191 Eliot, T. S., 105, 167 Elkville, North Carolina, 22, 26, 36 Eller, Agnes Pearson, 121, 123, 154, 190, 207; adoption of, 93–98; care of Pearson, 173–174, 209–210, 211; death of, 211; poetry of, 178–179; teenage years, 133–135; tragedies faced by, 200 Eller, Albert, 135, 200 Eller, Kenneth, 135, 154 Eller, Philip, 135, 200 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 10, 42 Espionage Act, 61, 79 eternal torment, 14, 64–65, 79–80, 80, 179–181, 182, 185 evolution, 71–75, 183–184 Federal Writers Project, 143–145 female suffrage, 75 “Fifty Acres,” 119–120, 138–139, 142, 158, 167, 178, 205 Fifty Acres and Other Poems, 119 219

220

Index

Fifty Acres and Other Selected Poems, 138–139, 140, 142 Fireside Poets, 10–11, 42 The Fool-Killer, xv, 50; additional writers for, 82–83; on alcohol, 67–68; collapse of, 84–85; creation of, 53–54; criticism of, 65–66; on evolution, 71–75; on female suffrage, 75; on gambling, 67; “idiotorials” in, 58; on Ku Klux Klan, 67; Pearson’s attitude toward, 81, 83, 85–86; Pearson’s commentary in, 56–58; on political corruption, 75–77; on religion, 62–67; sales of, 54–56; on socialism, 59–62; on tobacco, 68; on World War One, 77–79 Franklin, Dave, 144 Friendly, Hugh, xi Frye, Burton, 172 The Fugitives, 187 Good News, 79–81, 82, 83 Gould, Cora, 114–115 Graham, Billy, 184 Graham, Frank Porter, 129, 130–131 Green, Paul Eliot, 131 Greensboro Daily News, 132–133 Greensboro News, 106–107, 200 Greensboro, North Carolina, 93, 131, 147, 177 Greensboro Record, 169, 200 Guggenheim Fellowship, 116 Guilford College, 171; Eleanor and, 145, 147–148, 172; Pearson and, 131, 149, 156, 157, 158, 173–174 The Guilfordian, 167 Henderson, Archibald, 43 Henry, O., 44, 54 Home and Abroad, 111 “Homer in a Garden,” 106, 108, 109–110, 114, 138, 158, 203 Hubbard, Elbert, 111–112 Hunt, James, 210 “I Love You, Dear,” 173 immortality of the soul, 14, 64–65, 72, 79–80, 179–182

Ingram Book Company, 201, 202–205 Internal Revenue Service, 145, 170 Jefferson, North Carolina, 22–24, 25 Johnson, Archibald, 131 Jones, Sidney, 143–144 Joyce, James, 114 “The Joycrafter,” 83–84 The Joycrafter, 118–119 Keats, John, 106, 111, 131 Kennedy, John F., 191–192 “Kindred,” 105 King Jr., Martin Luther, 191 “The Kiss,” 107 Knowles, Charles Ernest, 110–111, 112, 116–117, 118–119 Korean War, 189–190 Ku Klux Klan 31, 58, 67 Land, Thomas, xv Laws, Dora Wallace, 31, 47 Laws, R. Don, xv, 25, 31–32, 33–35, 36, 37, 39, 54 Lee, Robert E., xii Lewis, Nell Battle, 157–158, 169 Lincolnton, North Carolina, 138, 140–141 Linney, Ruth, 132–133 The Literary South, 140–141, 169 The Lucky Dog, 159–164, 212 Markham, Edwin, 53, 131, 154–155 Martin, T. T., 71–72 McNeil, Jane, 144 McNeil, Larkin, 1, 3 McNeil, Nellie, 1 McNeill, Bob, 22–24, 25 Mencken, H. L., xv, 140 Miller, Kay, 205 Moravian Falls, North Carolina, xiv, 2, 31–32, 36, 39, 121, 154, 174, 210 “More Than Power,” 157–158 Morgan, W. S., 82–83 Morganton, North Carolina, 95, 97–98, 133–135 Morgenthau Jr., Henry, 110 Mount Carmel, North Carolina, 36, 37, 121

Index “My Fingers and My Toes,” 4 My Fingers and My Toes, 203–205 “My Love Lies Still, Lies Silent,” 122 National Amateur Press Association, 27–28 News and Observer, 130–131, 157, 169, 177 New York Independent , 18, 19, 35, 165 New York Times, 109, 115, 126n13 Nixon, Richard, 192–193 North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, 129–131, 166 North Carolina Poetry, 157 North Carolina Poetry Review, 120 North Wilkesboro Journal Patriot, 120–121 North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, xiii–xv, 25, 173, 177 Nye, Bill, 56 “Owed to a Hippie Home,” 178–179 Pearson, Blanche Rose, 39–42, 90, 94, 174, 210 Pearson, Cora Wallace, 32–33, 34; arguments with James, 44–45, 48–50, 90–92, 95–97, 98–100; belief in God, 35, 37, 40, 46–47, 83–84; compared to Eleanor, 170, 173; death of, 121–124; and death of Blanche Rose, 39–40; education of, 36–37; illness of, 37–38, 38–39, 41–42, 44, 45–48, 50, 81–82, 84–85, 90, 93, 95, 97–98; James’ wooing of, 33–36, 38; and Pearson’s Paper, 83–84; poetry of, 39–40; publications of, 89–90, 198–200; and The FoolKiller, 54–55, 58; and Upton Sinclair, 108 Pearson, Eleanor Fox, 145, 148, 170; compared to Cora, 173; death of, 172–173, 174; and Dolley Madison, 170–171; health issues of, 170; James’ wooing of, 145–149 Pearson, James Larkin, xv–xviii, 23, 134, 156, 168, 180, 206; and Agnes, 93–95, 97, 133–135, 178–179, 200, 207; amateur newspapers of, 26–28, 36, 37, 79–81, 83–84, 118–119,

221 140–142, 159–164, 169, 212; antiCatholicism of, 66–67, 160; appointed poet laureate, 166–169; and appeals for financial aid, 115–116, 143–145; autobiographies of, 21, 197–198, 211; belief in God, 9, 12, 62, 85, 161–162, 166, 171, 190; birth of, 3; and Charles Knowles, 110, 112, 118–119; commemorations of, 210–212; and Cora Gould, 114–115; and Cora, 32–36, 37–38, 41–42, 44–50, 81–82, 84–85, 89–93, 95–97, 97–100, 121–124, 171–172, 174–175, 198–200; dating history of, 135–138, 145; and death of Blanche Rose, 40–41; early aptitude for poetry, 4–5, 9–12, 18; early childhood of, 3–6, 17; early love of printing, 7–8; education of, 6–7, 21; efforts toward self-improvement, 19–21, 124–125; and Eleanor, 145–149, 148, 170, 170–171, 172–174; and Eleanor Roosevelt, 110–111; and Elbert Hubbard, 111–112; and Eugene Debs, 103–104; and The Evening Chronicle , 38–39; death of, 210; first jobs of, 22–26; health issues of, 209–210; lack of self-confidence, 12–13, 116–118, 124–125, 158–159; opposition to hunting, 8–9; in Pennsylvania, 156–157; poems of, 18–19, 77, 104–105, 109–110, 119–120, 122, 153–154, 158, 165; on poetry, xvi, 9–11, 42, 105–106, 107, 129–133, 154–156, 185–189; poetry collections of, 42–44, 105–108, 119–121, 138–140, 142, 157–158, 164–166, 171–172, 200–205, 205; on politics, 75–77, 103–104, 189–193; religious beliefs of, 62–65, 79–80, 112–114, 161–162, 179–185; and The Southern Literary Banner, 37; theories about God, 13–15, 40, 62, 63–67, 73, 79, 94, 98–99, 112–114, 122–123, 179–181, 182–183; and Upton Sinclair, 108–110, 112–114; in Washington, DC, 36–37; and Wilkes Community College, 200, 201, 205–208, 210; on World War Two,

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Index

154; and The Yellow Jacket, 31, 32–35, 36–37, 39, 45. See also The Fool-Killer. Pearson, John Milton, 3, 4, 5, 39, 93 Pearson, Louise, 5, 12, 17, 24; childhood of, 1–2; death of, 97; marriage of, 2–3 Pearson, William, 5, 13, 17, 24, 27, 97; childhood of, 2; death of, 121; and James, 4; and John, 3; marriage of, 2–3; and tobacco use, 17–18 Pearson’s Paper, 83–84 Pearson’s Poems, 105–108 “Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned,” 9 “Pictures of a Storm,” 165 Plain Talk, 26–28, 36 Plowed Ground, 164–165, 165 poetry: in the nineteenth century, 10–11; in the twentieth century, 42, 43, 105–106, 155–156, 185–189; in Wilkes County, xv. See also James Larkin Pearson. Poets & Writers, 186 “Poets Progress,” 197–198 Poet’s Progress xvii–xviii, 211 Poole, D. Scott, 72 Port Orange, Florida, 47 “Port Seekers,” 107 Poteat, William, 71–72 Pound, Ezra, 105 The Progressive, 132 Ragan, Sam, 210 The Republican Patriot, 22–24, 24–26 Rogers, Will, 110 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 110–111 Roosevelt, Franklin, 111, 163, 191, 193 Roosevelt, Theodore, 36 Roosevelt Jr., Theodore, 142 Riley, John Whitcomb, 167 Sandburg, Carl, 187 Schaw, Janet, xi Scopes Monkey Trial, 71–75 Scott, Kerr, 166 Scott, Richard, 205 Sedition Act, 61, 79 Selected Poems of James Larkin Pearson, 171–154

Sinclair, Upton, 53, 104; Pearson and, 108–111, 112–115, 116 socialism, 59–62, 103–104 “Song of the Star of Bethlehem,” 18–19, 44, 165 “Soul Sculpture,” 43 The Southern Literary Banner, 37 Southern Opinions, 43 Sputnik, 190 Stanton, Frank L., 120, 131 Stem Jr., Thad, 189 Stephenson, Clyde Linney, 137–138 Stokes, Carl, 144 Sunday Herald-Sun, 120 Swanson, Mary Elizabeth, 44 Tarbell, Ida, 110 Tar Heels, xii, xv, xviii Things That Come No More, 205 Thompson, Howard, 200, 205, 207–208 Truman, Harry, 163 Twain, Mark, 56 Umstead, William, 166 Vance, Zebulon, xii Walser, Richard, xvi, 157–158, 166, 171, 201, 201–202 Warren, Robert Penn, 187–188 Washington, DC, 36–37 Welborn, Ken, 212 “When the Dollar Rules the Pulpit,” 107–108, 165 “When the War is Going to End,” 77, 153–154, 165 Whippoorwill Academy, 6, 9 Whitefield, George, xi Whitman, Walt, 10, 42, 131, 164 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 10, 11, 186 Wilkes Record, 197–198, 211 Wilkes Community College, 200–201, 205–208, 210, 211 Wilkes County, North Carolina, xiii–xv Wilkesboro Chronicle, 8 Wilkesboro, North Carolina, xiii, 205 Wilmington Dispatch, 81 Wilson, E.J., 82–83 Wilson, Woodrow, 76–77, 167

Index Winston, North Carolina, xiii–xiv Winston-Salem Journal, 111, 158, 167, 199 Winston Salem Journal-Sentinel, 132, 171 Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 131, 177, 200

223

World War I, 42, 61, 66, 77–79, 80, 93, 104, 105 World War II, 154 The Yellow Jacket , xv, 31–35, 36–37, 39, 45–46

About the Author

Gregory S. Taylor was born and raised in Rochester, New York. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Clemson University, a master’s degree in history from the University of Alabama, and a PhD in history from the University of Mississippi. He is associate professor of history at Chowan University in Murfreesboro, North Carolina, and is the author of The History of the North Carolina Communist Party (2009) and The Life and Lies of Paul Crouch: Communist, Opportunist, Cold War Snitch (2014).

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