...And all of it is as it has always been: again, again, I turn, and find again the things that I have always known: the cool sweet magic of starred mountain night, the huge attentiveness of dark, the slope, the street, the trees, the living silence of the houses waiting, and the fact that April has come back again...
And again, again, in the old house I feel beneath my tread the creak of the old stair, the worn rail, the white washed walls, the feel of darkness and the house asleep, and think, "I was a child here; here the stairs, and here was darkness; this was I, and here is Time."
Thomas Wolfe
from "Return"
Of all this country's major novelists, Thomas Wolfe was the most overtly autobiographical, his own family and boyhood providing the material for many memorable passages and characters in the first two and most successful of his novels, Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River. The scene of his boyhood was Asheville and, most specifically, "The Old Kentucky Home", a rambling Victorian boarding house run by his mother, Julia. Called "Dixieland" in his book, the frame, gabled roof house with its many porches, provided the author with an abundance of diverse characters and was the scene of some of Wolfe's most powerfully written episodes. The home, preserved as a memorial to Wolfe, maintains its timeless integrity and stands as a striking monument to him. It retains the character and feeling of the environment in which Wolfe was raised and which he portrays with great scope and energy. Those who have read the lyric, full-bodied characterizations in Wolfe's Works will feel the intimate relationship of the old home to his writing.
Thomas Wolfe was born in 1900 and lived only thirty-eight years. He was the youngest of eight children; the unusually close attention given him by his mother greatly affected his later life and character. The Wolfe family life began to deteriorate when Julia Wolfe bought the boarding house in 1906--her husband, W. O. Wolfe, refused to become involved in the enterprise, and remained at the family's former residence on Woodfin Street. The children shuttled back and forth between the houses. The conflict between their parents remained irreconcilable and kept the family in a constant state of turmoil. Wolfe continued to live an emotionally and physically turbulent life for all of his years.
Aside from its association with Mr. Wolfe's writings, the house is a fascinating place; it remains virtually unchanged since Wolfe's boyhood, the furnishings and personal effects intact. When the Wolfe Memorial was first opened to the public, Tom's surviving brother and sister arranged the interior of the house to look as it had during the period described in his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel. The house and its furnishings are typical of early twentieth century American homes of middle class families. One room contains the furnishings from the author's last New York apartment, including his writing table and typewriter.
Despite his early death after contracting tuberculosis, Wolfe's achievements had become a landmark in American Literature. Among the author's accomplishments during his lifetime were the publication of the first two previously mentioned novels; completion of a third, published posthumously, entitled The Web and the Rock; and numerous short stories, as well as other works. Vast amounts of accumulated manuscript were edited and published later, including Wolfe's fourth long novel, You Can't Go Home Again, and many shorter pieces.
...These things, or such as these, will come again; so, too, the high heart and the proud and flaming vision of a child--to do the best that may be in him, shaped from this earth, as we, and patterned by this scheme, to wreak with all his might, with humbleness and pride, to strike here from his native rock, I pray, the waters of our thirst, to get here from his native earth, his vision of this earth and this America, to hear again, as we, the wheel, the whistle, and the trolley bell; so, too, as we, to go out from these hills and find and shape the great America of our discovery; so, too, as we, who writes these words, to know again the everlasting legend of man's youth--flight, quest, and wandering--exile and return.
Thomas Wolfe
from "Return"
Admission is charged:
Adults - $1.00
Children - $ .50
HOURS OF OPERATION:
Address:
52 North Market Street
Asheville, North Carolina 28801
(704) 253-8304
The Thomas Wolfe Memorial is a North Carolina Historic Site
Administered by:
The Division of Archives and History
Department of Cultural Resources