A STRANGER IN TUSKALOOSA  

(from the June 13, 1900 TUSKALOOSA GAZETTE)

by Maurice Thompson    Maurice Thompson - Wikipedia

 Our Land, Our Literature: Literature - Maurice Thompson

 in the Independant. 

Tuskaloosa is a town of present importance; but its current activities and latest features do not set it apart or give it a significance greatly from that of other southern places in which the new order of things in slowly but surely overcoming the old. But as a badge of a faded civilization once worn proudly on the breast of a typical southern state, this old city has its peculiar beauty, interest and picturesqueness.

A drive in its principal streets and along many of the country roads about has filled my brain with sketches that will not be easily erased. I can recall no American town, with the possible exception of Tallahassee, Florida, as it was some twenty years ago, in which the forms, the masses, the composition. and the colors of old slavery days have stood out so perfectly against the beating tide of time. Were I an artist I could revel here for a month or two, making studies of these old lofty-pillared and tree-shaded mansions.

Were I a poet, what more could I want of inspiration to song than the dreamy, fading lines and shadowy figures of the great bygone civilization which somehow will not disappear from these brown hills and dilapidated mansions? Let it not be understood that Tuskaloosa is dilapidated. I do not mean to make that impression; but what is new is new, and what is old is fast gathering the mold and grime of age. Many of the typical mansions of slavery times are still well kept up, especially those within the city limits; but out in the country most of them look rather pathetically forlorn. Once handsome and spacious plantation residence, a mile from town, on a fine tree covered hill, overlooking all the surrounding country, is now a school for colored students. It is built of brick, with the walls stuccoed, and across the broad front runs a grand veranda with massive fluted columns tall and stately, almost imposing seen at a little distance.

Tuskaloosa contradicts itself at every turn. It says, "I am old and decrepit;", it says, "I am young, vigorous, wide-awake." 

At one street corner it looks intensely modern, at the next there hangs the film of sixty or seventy years ago. It has a busy cotton oil mill, a clattering oil mill and other flourishing local industries. Three banks do a large business; its merchants and mechanics, its professional men and capitalists are evidently active and successful. Yet here are the streets still in the condition of country raids; here are the sidewalks dilapidated beyond description, and here everywhere the need of paint makes the houses dim and unsightly. I saw many new houses going up, but no work being done on the streets. A curious phase of transition seems to be in progress - passing from, the beautiful, the spacious and the solid to the showy, the cramped and the jig-saw finished. Why do southerners let the roomy, massive stately old mansions go to decay, and in their places build planing mill Queen Anne band-box houses for homes? I drove out to the State University, a substantial set of buildings in lovely grounds. Not far away is the State Insane Asylum.

Dr Powers, president of the university, lives in a most attractive and typical southern house just outside of the campus. The Methodists and the Baptists each have a woman's college here, the latter having the site, I was told, of the state house, which was here long ago, when Tuskaloosa, from her shady hills beside the Black Warrior River, ruled Alabama with a free hand. Naturally much culture has arrived through many channels to the best people of the town. Wealth has always been here. While the seat of state government remained here, it attracted many brilliant men and women, whose families still lend their influence to society. The university and the colleges give to the atmosphere a decided literary touch.

During my leisurely drives with an intelligent colored coachman who seemed to know everybody's history, I called a bult in front of the plantation home of that de lightful poet, Samuel Minturn Peck. Taking due advantage of the absence of Mr. Peck, who was in New York, I sketched the house and surroundings for future reference. It is a quiet, gray, embowered place, of nondescript architecture, yet charmingly inviting. The front yard was aglow with roses and a variety of other flowers.

A grand oak overshadowed one end of the house. From my carriage while it stood before the home gate I could see for miles in all directions, even to some billowy mountain knobs against the sweetest of all sky-lines. A considerable plantation surrounds Mr. Peck's house, which is cared for by a colored family. Great fields of corn and oats (and what from a distance looked like cotton) showed excellent agriculture. The mockingbirds were singing under the poet's windows. While I listened to their marvelous voices and drew in the sweets of rose--garden and orchard and field and wood, I wondered why the southern poet prefers the rush and swirl of the metropolis to that restful, dream haunted nook, where he has written so many graceful and hauntingly pretty bits of true song.

I tried in vain to bribe my driver to face the danger of a dog and look up the colored tenants. I wanted some of Peck's roses to take home with me. What I did take away is an impression of a home that looks just like the nest of a songbird, cozy, drab, half hidden in bloom and foliage and altogether attractive.

 These poets of the south, Hayne, Lanier, Timrod, Jackson, Ryan, Requier, Randall, Flash, of the older set now nearly vanished, and the later ones, 

Robert Burns Wilson Robert Burns Wilson - Wikipedia

 Will H. Hayne, 

Samuel Minturn Peck Samuel Minturn Peck - Wikipedia

Frank Stanton Frank Lebby Stanton - Wikipedia 

-and a whole bevy of others- -how they have sung the very heart and life of this strange, self-satisfied, half lagging, half hustling, glorious, sun-burnt part of our mighty country. And how they all, or nearly all, look northward for their patronage! Well, were I a poet, you could never persuade me to leave such a restful, perfumed, rose-embowed house as yours, O Peck! and go off to New York to be swallowed up in trade, Tammany and turmoil, never, never, 

When tired of the carriage and my driver's free babble, I took leave of both and continued my pleasant explorations on foot. Is it not a stranger's privilege to enjoy what strikes his vision with the sweet shock of the pure and the beautiful in a strange place? Tuscaloosa is a town of beautiful women. Wherever I walked I met them, and could not keep off the wonder of their striking forms or faces. Why is it that this gift of beauty in abundance falls to one town and not to another. some places all of the women seem plain; you see scarcely any memorable countenances, scarcely any forms strongly attractive, while in others a pair of glorious eyes, a figure fit for a sculptor's model and a face of uncommon sweetness and graciousness can scarcely be avoided anywhere.

Tuscaloosa women are certainly southern in their style. They bear the unmistakable impress of southern breeding, and they are beautiful. A stranger with alert eyes in his head and a love of feminine gentleness, sweetness and symmetry of the colonial type in his heart can see and feel this while walking in the streets of the staid and picturesque old town. Before the days of railroads, electricity and all the crush and rush of our recently invented hurly burly in commerce, Tuskaloosa must have been a place worth making a long journey to see. The old regime had here its highest flower of success. Slavery gave its best and its worst to the strange, semi-mediaeval civilization.

Money, leisure and social loveliness were unlimited. and so was vice. Both influences have left their indelible marks. The horse- the mule-traders and the negro-traders used to come here in swarms; for this was their paradise during the palmiest days of cotton aud slavery. They bought and sold, they, gambled, they brawled, they (fought with knives and pistols.

And yet from the first and on till now Tuskaloosa has been a center of noble culture, unlimited hospitality and beautiful social and domestic life. The best survives. Slavery is gone: The drinking, gambling and fighting in their worst forms are but traditions. What is left in old Tuskaloosa is something mightily fascinating, the outcome of a most romantic and picturesque experience.