R. K. Fowler
Clav Center, Virginia, was only the poor remnant of a town — a drab, straggling hamlet of some three hundred inhabitants. There had been a time when people of consequence resided there, when Clay Center had tasted its brief draught of prosperity. Before the war numerous plantation owners had made it their bartering place and point of contact with the social world. Well-filled tobacco warehouses and rolling acres of cornland had been the making of the community. There had been dancing and gaming, buying and selling in sufficient quantities to bring about mild affluence and complete contentment. The war had treated Clay Center with unusual harshness; its trade wrecked, its families scattered, the town had sunk into dismal obscurity. The plantations were in ruins now, and the descendants of the men who built them were mere bits of trash blown against a fence and left stranded. Many had eventually moved on, but a few found the effort too great for them. They were cursed with inherent laziness and could only stay where God had thrust them, waiting apathetically for an end that approached on limping feet.
In many broken Southern towns a pathetic feeling of class superiority still clings like a cheap perfume. The penurious offspring of the old grandees take on the air of lords and ladies merely because their ancestors were once somebodies in a deplorable nowhere. But the spineless dwellers of Clay Center had failed to erect even a shaky scaffolding of pride. They were content to exist bleakly in a bleak present — with the one stern exception of old man Willoughy Cranford.
The Cranford home stood at the intersection of Main and Oak streets. It was a shabby, respectable barn which passed for a mansion in Clay Center, and indeed was, in comparison to the hovels that surrounded it. Its paint was peeling off, leaving great raw welts, its front steps sagged rottenly on the side by the dusty hydrangea bushes and two panes were cracked in the fan-shaped atrocity of green glass that spread over the door. Still its vast, rambling size was impressive for the same reason that a mangy circus lion is impressive ; it hinted at something better than itself and stirred a dormant realization of past power.
Old man Cranford spent most of his time on the wide porch, glaring with childish hauteur at the passers and chewing greedily on his moustache. In him the stupid pride of caste was incarnate. He despised his fellow townsmen with a superficial rancor and secretly gloated over the envious glances they threw at the crumbling dignity of his home. There was no logical reason why he should set himself above the others, but like a true Southerner he had no need of logical reasoning. Pig-like, he wallowed in the muck of self-sufficiency, and found in such sullied baths the essence of satisfaction.
The comparative elevation of old man Cranford's fortune was due partially to luck and partially to stinginess. His father's home had been providentially spared when the Yankees razed the town in the clashing days of war. An elderly aunt in Georgia died intestate and her moderate means reverted to him. Willoughby Cranford was an accomplished hoarder. No spark of the vaunted Southern generosity had ever burned in the dry kiln of his breast; when money came into his hands he clung to it tenaciously, reluctant even to spend it on himself. So when his aunt's meager thousands, vast wealth in the eyes of Clay Center, became his property he quit his profitless brokerage business and turned to a life of leisure. He fastened a cold clutch on the inheritance, guarding the exit of each separate dollar, meeting the bare needs of existence with an impatient whine. Such methods endeared him to no one, but they enabled him to sit idly on his porch with a dirty shawl around his shoulders while he meditated on his consummate grandeur. The people of Clay Center hated Willoughby Cranford and looked up to him. His miserly habits and the fact that he classed his neighbors as unworthy inferiors made him tremendously unpopular. However, the glamour of an independent income and an authentic ancestral mansion was not to be denied. Though in public they derided the old man and referred to him as "that stingy old son-of-a-bitch who thinks he's better than God Almighty", they grudgingly admitted to themselves that Willoughby Cranford was cast in a superior mould. Their treatment of him was a queer mixture of disgust and humility. As for old i simply ignored the whole crowd, not even deigning to j rash individual gave him a hesitant good evening.
He shared his voluntary seclusion with his niece, Jane — a shy, sensitive girl of nineteen. She was the child of an emotional younger brother whose wife had left in despair after a vain two years effort to rationalize him. Relieved of this burden, young Cranford bestowed his tiny daughter upon the sedate Willoughby and casually drank himself to death. Jane was old man Cranford's sole gesture of kindliness, and even in her case the kindliness was selfishly motivated. When he took her he looked into the future and saw his declining years lightened by the services of a girl with a heavy debt of gratitude to pay off. In some ways Jane had been a great disappointment to him; despite rigid discipline she still showed traces of her father's unbecoming temperament, and though she usually ministered to the old man's crabbed wants without complaint she had her moments of rebellion. These attacks were quelled when old Willoughby faced her with the sorry fact of his generosity and, smouldering inwardly, the girl sank back into her role of unpaid servant. Clay Center folks pitied her, but did nothing to help her. To them she seemed beyond aid — a weak princess in the grip of an ogre.
This fallacy was due to Jane's introspective nature. Surface weakness spread like an opaque film over the turbulency of her thoughts. Her face was a dispassionate oval, meekly pretty — a precise duplicate of her mother's vapid countenance. Her mind was a seeth of emotion, intense to the point of hysteria. She was able to hate bitterly and equally able to conceal the angles of her attitude. She hated old Willoughby Cranford. At first the realization of hatred shamed her, but as time passed and her uncle's actions became more contemptible she felt that her secret animosity was justified. Through the indulgence of hatred she had become so hypersensitive that the old man's most harmless remarks seemed to convey insults and his every inoffensive request was a stern command. She went about her duties, silent, unassertive — waiting for a chance to nullify her real and imagined wrongs. Her own distorted ideas and her uncle's stupidity had filled her with a subtle poison. Her one wish was to make Willoughby Cranford suffer — to tear something from him in return for the pleasures she had been denied.
In the rear of the Cranford home old Mammy Linda lived with her mulatto son, Joe; they occupied a small white-washed shack adjoining the main part of the house. Mammy Linda was a heritage — born a Cranford slave and philosophically willing to die one. Joe was a slim yellow negro cringingly anxious to please. Their servile natures fitted admirably into Willoughby Cranford's scheme of things; he, the master — they, the creatures to crawl at his bidding. Given material of such plasticity the old man had shaped for himself a minute image of Southern serfdom. The days of slavery were over, but Mammy Linda and Joe were gratifying survivals. To Clay Center, the possession of living, breathing black slaves placed the stamp of divinity on old Cranford's mottled brow. It was seen as the supreme gesture of a man living in an alien age who refuses to break with tradition. "What's that old fool want to keep those niggers hanging around for?" they asked loudly. (Oh God, wouldn't it be grand to have slaves of your own?) Oblivious to all comment, Willoughby Cranford ruled his household with vicious serenity.
One morning Jane was clearing away the breakfast dishes. A ring flashed on her finger; old man Cranford's eye grappled with it incomprehendingly.
"Where'd you get that ring, Jane?"
Jane started, pretended not to hear.
"Where'd you get that ring?"
"Ed Grant gave it to me ; we're engaged." She wiped butter from her fingers on a soiled apron.
"You're what?"
"Engaged — to be married."
The old man struggled for speech. The boiling syllables within him refused to form words. Finally — "Joe." The mulatto hastened in. "Go down to the store and tell Mr. Grant that I want to see his son Ed — right now."
Jane's pale lips moved rigidly. "What are you going to do, Uncle Will?"
Rage engendered by the first shock was fading; he would soon have this matter in hand. "I'm going to break this thing up. Do you think I'd let a niece of mine marry the brat of a grocery-store keeper?"
"But I am going to marry him."
"And I say you're not." They waited in silence. After several minutes Ed Grant entered quietly, a thickset young man with hard eyes.
"You wanted me, Mr. Cranford?" His impersonal glance covered the over-furnished room.
Willoughby Cranford stared implacably. (He doesn’t seem much impressed.) "My niece says she intends to marry you."
The hard eyes caught an appealing look from Jane, fixed themselves stubbornly on a yellowing spot in the ceiling. "We're goin’ to be married next month."
"You're wrong. She'll not marry you next month — or any other time. Cranfords don't marry below their level."
"Uncle Will, you have no right — "
"Keep out of this, Jane. Did you understand me, young man?"
The words fell stolidly like a memorized fragment of scripture. "We're goin' to be married next month."
Repetition pierced the old man's shield of stern aloofness. His face purpled — the hue of a crushed grape. "Who are you, sir: The worthless, snivelling son of a grocer — a damned dirty merchant who says 'thank you, ma'm' to every nigger wench that buys a bar of soap! And you a filthy lout smelling of hog guts. You're common — you're nobody — you're not a damn bit better than a dirty field-hand."
"Uncle Will—"
He flung more words forth obscenely; they were like flecks of foam on his lips. Mad words. "And you want to mate with my niece. She a Cranford, an aristocrat — and you the offspring of a country shopkeeper and a draggletailed Clay Center slut. Nobody in town fit to kiss her feet, and you say you're going to marry her. Not while I live. And she willing to do it after all the sacrifices I've made for her — willing to give herself to a misbegotten bastard without a cent to his name."
"Uncle Will — " ( stop him, dear God. Ed's so proud.)
"I suppose you want her money. Well, you won't get it. Now get out of this house and never show your rotten face around here again."
A bowl slipped unnoticed from Jane's fingers. She stood stiff against the wall, her throat ragged with sobs. The young man came toward her. "Give me the ring, Jane." He wrenched it off harshly.
"You're leaving me, Ed?"
"Yeh — I didn't know what the Cranfords was. He's old — I won't kill him." Ed Grant was gone.
Old Willoughby Cranford closed his eyes and rubbed his hand across them. (Lost my temper. Anyhow, that's settled.) Jane stooped over like a rusty automaton and picked the broken china from the floor.
The old man was vaguely embarrassed by her grief. "Don't worry over that, Jane. You'll soon see that I did right. There's nobody in this town fit for a Cranford to take up with."
The girl crouched as if beaten. An unctuous clearing of the throat. "After all, my dear, you owe me something. I gladly took you in and treated you like a daughter, gave you a good home — so shouldn't you have some respect for my wishes: Just think, you might have had a child by him and destroyed the purity of the Cranford blood. I acted for the best. Now go to your room and try to get over this foolishness."
"Yes—"
Jane parted the frilled curtains of her window. Her tears were gone now, her face an expressionless mask. She could see the the zigzag burnt orange ruttiness of Oak street, the squat shape of a Ford standing at the curb, the projecting eaves of the store on the corner. (Ed's store — but he's gone. He'll pass me on the street, not speaking. It hurts, God. ) She could see a splayed, quicksilver puddle on the pavement, two children gravely sailing twig boats. (I might have had a child by him. He bruised me — my uncle. What can I do to bruise him worse? ) Mammy Linda was washing clothes in the back yard; Joe stood waiting to hang them, his lithe body drooping languidly. She sang, "washed in the blood of the lamb." (Mammy Linda, Joe and me — slaves. I'm no better. I belong there.)
With the passing of minutes Mammy Linda left and Joe lazily pegged up the clothes. Jane watched him — her fellow slave. The larva of an idea squirmed in her mind. (Hurt Uncle Will; twist his soul. That damn Cranford pride.) She pushed the heavy blinds apart.
"Joe."
The mulatto bobbed respectfully. "Yes, Miss Jane:"
"Come up here — I need you."
His tread sounded hollow on the stairs. (Might have had a child.) He stood in the doorway, a carven yellow figure — immobile. (Purity of the Cranford blood.) "You want me, ma'm?"
Jane's words came soft through clenched teeth. "You told me you'd like to leave here and get a job in Richmond, Joe."
"Sho' would, but — "
"I have some money saved up. It's yours if you help me."
Joy rayed in the negro's face. "Anything, Miss Jane — just anything."
She spoke rapidly. Joe's eyes rolled in their sockets, he drew back terrified. "I-I couldn't."
"But you must." (My uncle — it will kill him.) "You've got to."
The mulatto hesitated. (A white girl — a pretty white girl.) He shuffled his feet and stole a furtive, sidelong glance at Jane's body. "You guarantee I git away safe to Richmond?"
"Yes."
"All right, Miss Jane."
She cautiously reclosed the blinds. (Goodbye, Ed. Slaves — together.) Her feet dragged through the bristling carpet.
From CAROLINA MAGAZINE, October 1926 issue, a student publication published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
archive.org/details/carolinamagazine19261927/page/n21/mode/2up
-=-
Want Editor to Resign. . . Carolina Governing Body Says Julius Starr Printed Obscene Story
Chapel Hill, Oct. 16—The student council of the University of North Carolina has requested the resignation of Julius S. Starr, editor, and R. K. Fowler, assistant editor of the Carolina Magazine on the grounds that the current issue contains a story regarded as “Indecent and improper,” it was learned here tonight.
Starr and Fowler have appealed to the faculty and President chase has referred the matter to a faculty committee.
Fowler is the author of the fiction sex story which he called “Slaves.”
From the front page of the Goldsboro News, Sunday morning, Oct. 17, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn93064755/1926-10-17/ed-1/seq-1/
-=-
From the University Library’s display on Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC:
Carolina Magazine Controversy
In October 1926, the University of North Carolina student publication, Carolina Magazine, published a short story titled "Slaves," written by the magazine's assistant editor, R.K. Fowler. In the final scene of the story, the author alluded to an incident of interracial sex between two of the characters, one a young white girl and the other the son of an African American servant. The story caused an uproar on campus and across the region. Letters poured in to President Harry Woodburn Chase, condemning Fowler's exploration of what was thought to be a taboo subject. Soon after publication, the UNC Student Council asked that the magazine’s editor, Julian Starr, step down and ruled that Fowler be dismissed from the University altogether. In response, President Chase formed a faculty committee to review the incident. The committee ultimately voted to overturn the Student Council's decision and ruled that Starr and Fowler could remain.
exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/academic_freedom/between-wars/carolina-magazine-controversy
