A Rediscovery of
Wolfe's England
On a Mummer trip our urilt»r follows
tht» (racks of North C arol ina's most
famous literary figure.
By GUY OWEN
Although Ihc anniversary of Thomas
Wolfe’s seventy-fifth birthday was
celebrated with considerable fanfare in
Asheville and throughout North
Carolina, it did not cause a ripple in
England, in spite of the fact that Wolfe
wrote most of Look Homeward. Angel
in London and Oxford. Last summer
while doing some unrelated research at
the British Museum. I decided, as a
devotee of the Tar Heel novelist, to
visit the various places he had stayed
in London. I did not have time to trace
his excursions throughout England,
though I did manage to get to Bath and
Oxford.
(I even ate at Simpson's, one of his
favorite elegant — and expensive —
restaurants, and stood before his fa¬
vorite paintings at the National Gal¬
lery. Wolfe, like Mark Twain, did not
care for what he lablcd the “old mas¬
ters." preferring Hogarth. Breughel.
Holbein and Turner.)
Curiously. Wolfe's biographers An¬
drew Turnbull and Elizabeth Nowell
have not studied the author's London
visits in depth, sometimes not even
mentioning where he stayed. How¬
ever. since his Notebooks were pub¬
lished in 1970, it is now possible to
follow his movements abroad with
some precision.
Thomas Wolfe was in London for
four extended stays. He first went
abroad in 1924 when he was twenty-
four years old and teaching English at
New York University. He was in Lon¬
don for only a month, staying at the
Imperial Hotel on Russell Square,
which is close to the British Museum
and overlooks a lovely park. I discov¬
ered that the hotel is still there, but a
clerk informed me that it has been so
completely remodeled that Wolfe
would not recognize it today. (Inciden¬
tally. he had never heard of the North
Carolina novelist, nor had the two cab
drivers who helped me locate the other
addresses I was searching for.)
Enough of England
The fledgling author kept a detailed
journal on his voyage on the Lancas-
tria and his roamings throughout
Europe, writing vignettes and travel
sketches. In 1924 Wolfe was planning
to continue writing plays, though he
had failed to find a New York pro¬
ducer. However, the sketches he
wrote on his travels apparently con¬
vinced him that he had a talent for
prose, and gradually he drifted toward
the idea of autobiographical fiction. In
fact, it was on a later visit to the Lake
Country with his mistress. Aline
Bernstein, that he decided to write a
novel based on his experiences and
trials growing up in his mother's board¬
ing house in Asheville. It was at first
titled
О
Lost.
On his first London visit Wolfe spent
a lot of time simply w alking the streets
day and night . absorbing c very thing on
“the queer, blind, narrow , incredible,
crooked streets." listening and taking
notes, comparing London and New
York, England and America. He even
bought a pair of English shoes, w hich
“made him feel very John Bullish."
But he quickly tired of London’s fog
and greyncss. and after a visit to Bath
and Bristol he had his fill of England,
crossing the channel to France. Actu¬
ally. the young writer quickly became
disillusioned with London and Great
Britain. London was not as fascinating
as Paris, nor "as beautiful or evil." He
thought English girls ugly and the men
too conventional or vulgar.
3.000 Words a Day
Since Wolfe was so impressed by the
Tower of London. I dutifully made the
tour, guided by the famous costumed
Beefeaters. I stood on the spot where
Essex was beheaded, toured the
numerous rooms of armour and
weaponry and stared at the closely
guarded crown jewels. I also located
the quarters where Sir Walter Raleigh
was imprisoned, noting where he had
scratched his name on the wall with
others who were incarcerated there.
Thomas Wolfe sent his impressions
of the Tower home and his article was
published in the Asheville Citizen. He
was disappointed that his hometown
paper did not publish the rest of his
account of his visit to London; this is
still among his unpublished papers.
Wolfe’s second London stay was in
1926-27. This time he had the company
of Aline Bernstein— though, of course,
he made no mention of this in his let¬
ters home. After she left for America.
Tom Wolfe, on a erip to Europe m 1 936 The Bninh
intrigued him. but he fell closer to the Germons
Wolfe rented a flat at 32 Wellington
Square, in Chelsea, only a ten minute
walk from the Thames. His apartment
was in a row of three-storied buildings
with marble fronts. Here he began to
work in earnest on his first novel, often
writing three thousand words a day.
Today Chelsea has become London's
Bohemenian district, crowded with
hippie-types and sidewalk art shows.
After a hurried visit to Belgium, where
he encountered James Joyce. Wolfe
returned to London. But he soon grew
restless again and moved to Oxford,
where a friend was a Rhodes Scholar.
When Wolfe returned to London in
1930. after traveling in Europe on a
17
THE STATE, June 1976
