Out To Pastoral

By John Idol

HILLSBOROUGH, NC—(Weekly Hubris)—5/17/10—For a brief time in the 18^th century, Hillsborough, pretty much a frontier town in central North Carolina, served as capital of the Tar Heel state but, lacking the political muscle to keep the honor, lost that title to a site patched together out of farmland and called Raleigh, after the Elizabethan adventurer who attempted to plant a colony on the Carolina coast.

As county seat of Orange County, the village didn’t die and could later boast of Federalist architecture and genteel living as part of its charm. It had an eatery, the Colonial Inn, famous for its Southern cooking. Also, on its main drag, stood a female academy, the Burwell School, the favored place for many antebellum lasses sent to get a solid Victorian grounding in basics, morals, and charm.

Typical of many Southern villages, when the textile industry migrated from New England, Hillsborough had a mill, around which grew a small mill town that stood apart from what came to be called the

“historic district.” The mill and its impact on local citizens became the

subject of Doug Marlette’s The Bridge. The publication of this book

provoked a literary war, a subject for a later column.

When stock car racing roared on the scene, Hillsborough quickly built a dirt track, portions of which yet survive and serve as a gathering place for race and auto fanciers.

The historic district prided itself on          being home to a signer of The Declaration of Independence, William Hooper, and the man, J. G.

de Roulhac Hamilton, who served as the driving force behind the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina.

The town could also boast of a rare talent, that of Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell, who could recite from memory all of Paradise Lost. As another outlet for her love of literature, she joined with others in the village to establish the Hillsborough Literary Association. Her role in the educational and literary life of Hillsborough provided a model for a character in novelist Lee Smith’s On Agate Hill.

Novelist Michael Malone, in an act of tribute to antebellum Hillsborough’s active interest in literature, worked to re-establish a literary association in connection with the Burwell School. By the time Malone arrived in Hillsborough, bought the historic house restored by Doug Marlette, and looked around the village, he found abundant literary talent.

Novelist Allan Garganus bought a house in Hillsborough in the mid- 1980’s and settled in to write. Lee Smith came later with her husband, essayist Hal Crowther. With family roots in Hillsborough, cartoonist and comic strip artist Doug Marlette shucked the high-pressure life of metropolitan New York and came to Hillsborough. Another novelist choosing to pitch his literary tent in Hillsborough was Tim McLaurin. Later Jill McCorkle added her name to a growing list of wordsmiths  laying claim to a Hillsborough address.

Poets, historians, memoirists, journalists, and writers of children’s books fleshed out the writing community and they, along with the

nationally known authors Garganus, Smith, Malone, McLaurin, and McCorkle, attracted the attention of local publisher Elizabeth Woodman, who compiled a sampling of writings from over two dozen writers, calling the book 27 Views of Hillsborough: A Southern Town in Prose & Poetry (2010).

A reading sponsored by the recently opened Orange County Public Library in Hillsborough featured readings of snippets by over 20 writers and drew an overflow crowd of nearly 150 local residents.

Hillsborough’s lovers of literature had, over the years, come to enjoy

readings and performances by its writing community. A much anticipated event during the Christmas season brought Garganus and Malone together in a two-person dramatic reading of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, the two taking all roles in their adaptation of the classic tale. Doug Marlette read from his two novels and shared, as well, his experience of becoming a cartoonist. And to a packed house, Lee Smith, accompanied by musicians, read her Christmas Letters.

The performance of Garganus and Malone and Smith’s reading, planned and promoted as fund-raising events, represent a willingness of the writing community to foster and nurture literary, cultural, artistic, and historical activities in the town. But they are only a part, surely an important part, of Hillsborough’s literary life, for through the aforementioned Burwell School and the resurrected Literary Association, readings by lesser known or beginning writers provide literary fare. Yet one more event has resulted from the revived Association, invitations to writers from outside Hillsborough to read, the most recent guest being Reynolds Price.

Per capita, no other town or city in North Carolina and, perhaps, even the nation, hosts as many writers. A few writers, Malone among them, compare Hillsborough to Concord, Massachusetts where, in the 19^th century, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott and lesser known authors brought lasting fame to the village. Whether any of Hillsborough’s current writers will be read a century or two from now will determine how accurate the comparison is. And whether any of the homes of Hillsborough’s school will become shrines will be something to watch.

For the foreseeable future, Asheville will likely remain the destination of anyone seeking to explore a literary shrine: The Thomas Wolfe

Memorial in Asheville continues to be a strong magnet.

It is exciting to watch Hillsborough develop its own literary magnetism. It is a pleasure to chat with one of its authors at the post office or dry cleaners. It is rewarding to sit around a table with a few of them to plan some fund-raising event. It is a joy to hear them read or perform. It is an unexpected retirement bonus to live in a town where literature truly matters. Where else would a retired English professor rather live?

To be a part of a writing community, to live with the hope that Hillsborough’s writers will enjoy the fame and longevity of Concord’s

celebrated authors, to see the spirit and art of letters flourishing, all combine to make Hillsborough a literary mecca.