Word: mother
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Thomas Wolfe stood six feet, seven inches tall and was broad in proportion. As a child, says Mrs. Wolfe, Tom was breast-fed "until he was three and a half years old," slept with his mother "until he was a great big boy." Only when Tom got "what old-fashioned people called lice," did his mother consent to cut his "beautiful curls." She still clung to him, however, and kept him in short pants until two years before he went to the University of North Carolina...
...Mother Will Know. At 20, he caught a heavy cold, and when he took his handkerchief from his mouth after a coughing spell, he saw with horror "a tiny spot of blood on it." Life, that had hitherto been "desirable and glorious," was charged suddenly and forever with the terror of death. This terror spurred Wolfe's rebellion against those who urged him to look for security in life-"the crawling, abject, bird-in-a-hand theory." To his mother's plea that he settle down to teach in Asheville, he replied "I must make or ruin myself...
...went to the late Professor George Pierce Baker's drama course at Harvard. He told his mother: "By God I'll write a great play. ... All the critics in the world may say it's good but a man's own mother will know." His letters revealed his desperate unease, his steady struggle to convince his mother that her money was being well spent at Harvard, and to show Asheville that his way of life was a superior one. He would not come home and "stagnate," but if his "beautiful dreams" came true he "would return...
...Bell Strikes 12. The divergence between his aims and his mother's was growing wider. In the boom years Mrs. Wolfe speculated in real estate. Tom wished her success, but warned her against losing "the capacity for enjoyment. . . ." In the strange mixture of bad, sincere, flamboyant prose that ran through all his writing, he spoke his unhappy mind: "The golden years of my life are slipping by on stealthy feet at nightfall; there is a footprint in the dark, a bell strikes 12, and the flying year has gone. . . . The great play is yet unwritten; the great novel beats...
...huge Rhinebeck estate where he spent an occasional weekend, he wrote: "If I had one tenth what those people have, I'd be a great man ten years quicker." He still felt anguish at being in his mother's debt; he hoped to repay her and assert his superiority by the little boy's revenge of becoming famous. "I shall be great -if I do not die too soon - and you will be known as my mother." During a 1924 trip through Europe he pleaded: "Please, if you are able, stand by me a little longer...