EDITOR’S NOTE: Western North Carolina is weird – and it always has been. From Cherokee myths to Bigfoot and alien encounters, the Blue Ridge Mountains host the quirky and bizarre from past and present. We would not have it any other way, and neither would you. Join us in unfolding the histories and unraveling the mysteries of this strange land we call home.
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“Look Homeward, Angel” was Thomas Wolfe’s first and most popular novel. But it was not only a book. His father, W.O. Wolfe, was a tombstone salesman who happened to sell angel statues. After decades of conflicting claims, the true narrative of Thomas Wolfe’s famed monument has been revealed.
W.O. Wolfe Monument Works
William Oliver “W.O.” Wolfe was a stonecutter and tombstone salesman. In his son’s novelization, the monument maker was referred to as W.O. Gant.
“W.O. Wolfe Monument Works” stood at 22 North Pack Square in downtown Asheville for 35 years. By the release of “Look Homeward, Angel,” the 13-story Jackson Building, considered Asheville’s first skyscraper, had replaced Wolfe’s workshop. A plaque in front of the building honors W.O. Wolfe’s legacy.
Wolfe sold all sorts of monuments including tombstones. As the story goes, he had eight Italian marble angel statues which took him years to sell. Although he crafted many stone works, sculpting seems to have been his weakness.
Asheville Citizen-Times columnist Rob Neufeld wrote on June 6, 2017, “If Wolfe’s statement about W.O. Gant in “Look Homeward, Angel” applies to W.O. Wolfe, ‘he never learned to carve an angel’s head. The dove, the lamb, the smooth joined marble hands of death, and letters fair and fine — but not the angel.’” Indeed, as Atlas Obscura explains, “Although an accomplished artisan, the senior Wolfe did not have the skill to carve an angel’s face. The stone angel that inspired the novel’s angel was ordered from New York and stood for several years on the porch of Wolfe’s shop as an advertisement.”
In his son’s recollection, Wolfe had the “Look Homeward, Angel” outside his shop, acting as a sign to passersby. Reportedly, W.O. Wolfe was not too fond of his storefront mascot.
According to Literary Traveler, “Publicly he called it his White Elephant. He cursed it and said he had been a fool to order it. For six years it had stood on the porch, weathering, in all the wind and the rain. It was now brown and fly-specked.”
“Look Homeward, Angel” by Thomas Wolfe
“An Angel on the Porch” is a short story that was released prior to Wolfe’s beloved book, first introducing the angel statue. He edited those brief comments and added them to his later novel.
“Look Homeward Angel” is set in Altamont, a fictional reinterpretation of Asheville. Wolfe’s composition seems to be an embellished journal recounting the first two decades of his life, in some way attempting to grapple with his past in Asheville. Cover to cover, the concordance categorizes the people the author grew up with, crassly calling out some and uplifting others. While the characters have different names than their real-life counterparts, anyone familiar with Asheville during that period can read through the thinly veiled autobiography.
Eugene Gant is a stand-in for Wolfe himself and his family are the Gant’s. Published on Oct. 18, 1929, Wolfe’s mother was alive at the release of the semi-autobiographical work, who is called Eliza Gant in the fictionalized retelling. W.O. Wolfe did not live to see his son’s magnum opus, dying in 1922.
Eugene’s father is an alcoholic and his mother a businesswoman. While W.O. is off drinking somewhere, Eliza mans a boarding house known as Dixieland. In reality, the residence was called “My Old Kentucky Home,” a reference to the state song of Kentucky written by Stephen Foster. Thomas’ caricature of himself, Eugene, meets the various members who patron his mother’s established, learning the ways of the world by watching them.
Many more than 100 characters are featured in Wolfe’s revolving door of a book. New personalities enter just as quickly as they depart. Their existence, in one way, is to cease existing, leaving an existential angst on the pages.
Similarly, “Mr. Gant’s occupation is a kind of memento mori,” illiterates a particularly poignant review. “He frequently reminds his family, especially when on a bender, that he supports them financially. This reminds us that he makes a living as people die.” Dixieland, the reviewer says, serves a comparable purpose. “The boarding house with its variety of people passing through reminds us that we all are just here on earth for a short while. It becomes like Ecclesiastes, ‘all is vanity,’ or Hebrews, ‘we are pilgrims and sojourners.’ We are all just strangers passing through.”
“Angels are a mysterious, symbolic presence in the novel,” Literary Traveler explains. “It could be that they represent hope and are symbolic reminders of a world that we cannot see or understand.”
The Search for the Angel
For three decades after the release of “Look Homeward, Angel,” fans of the text wondered where Wolfe’s beloved statue could be.
In 1949, Buncombe County librarian Myra Champion successfully identified the angel. The Reference Department at Pack Memorially Library concluded Oakdale Cemetery in Hendersonville, N.C. had the claim to fame of harboring W.O. Wolfe’s porch mascot.
Their claim that Hendersonville’s angel was the one Thomas Wolfe has written of was justified for three reasons: because Thomas Wolfe’s mother said she did not think the statue was in Asheville and name dropping Hendersonville as a possible destination, the purchaser of that angel said it was bought from W.O. in 1906, giving Thomas the first six years of his life to admire the sculpture before it was shipped away, and most importantly, it is the only of the possible candidates to meet all the criteria laid out in “An Angel on the Porch.”
As Wolfe described in his short story, “it had come from Carrara, in Italy, and it held a stone lily delicately in one hand. The other hand was lifted in benediction; it was poised delicately upon the ball of one phthisic foot.” To be phthisic is to be showing the effects of tuberculosis, the illness Wolfe would die from a decade after penning those words.
Of the eight known angels sold by W.O. Wolfe, the sculpture in Hendersonville is the only to meet all the criteria.
“In the novel, the statue of the angel is purchased to mark the grave of a young prostitute, a fallen angel so to speak,” wrote Literary Traveler. Unlike most of the rest of the book, this element of the story is entirely fabricated. The real “Look Homeward Angel” protects the remains of Margaret E. Bates Johnson (1832-1905), the wife of a college president and mother of nine children.
“Once people recognized the Oakdale angel as ‘the’ angel, they would visit the cemetery to see it and sometimes touch it,” Mandy Gibson wrote. She is currently drafting a book on the Johnson family, whose ancestor Wolfe’s angel flies above.
“In 1973, a young man named David Lubin accidentally broke a wing and a hand on the monument. He immediately went to the police and then went to the farm to apologize to Margaret Johnson’s grandsons, Vernon and Leander.”
Gibson continued, “Leander Johnson felt no ill will towards Lubin, [writing] ‘The accident the young man had turned out to be a blessing for the Angel and our plot there, it was becoming neglected looking, the brick wall falling down. He seemed like a nice young fellow, told the officers about it as soon as it happened.’”
The City of Hendersonville made the necessary repairs and added a wrought iron fence to protect the statue from further damage.
For more information on the “Look Homeward, Angel” statue, read “Tombstone Tales: ‘Look Homeward, Angel’ above Johnson’s grave.”
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Do you have a bizarre, weird or extraordinary story about Western North Carolina? Let us know by emailing jvander-weide@avlradio.com. Your tall tale could be the next Strangeville story.
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