Margaret Morley
(1858-1923)

Detail of cover, watercolor by

Margaret Morley had a special affection for western North Carolina. She came here in the early years of the twentieth century  and recorded her stay in The Carolina Mountains, published in 1913.

The book, like many of her other works, is a combination of biological observation, travelogue, and reflections on life. A graduate of Hunter College in New York, Morley was dedicated to the education of the young. Her books written for children include the beautifully illustrated Song of Life (1891), Insect Folk (1903), Little Mitchell, the Story of a Mountain Squirrel (1904), and the Apple-Tree Sprite (1915). Many of her books were used in the classroom as texts. Her, The Renewal of Life: How and When to Tell the Story to the Young (1906), is a sensitive and frank account of procreation. The Carolina Mountains, written while Morley was in residence in Tryon, North Carolina from 1890-1920, is one of the most loving accounts of the region by a woman to be found. One chapter, "How Spring Comes in the Southern Mountains," describes the awakening

"It comes slowly, which is its unique charm. ...Here the spirit of the South prevails, and the spring gradually unfolds for three months, rising in a strong, slow tide that finally breaks over the land in a tremendous  flood of color and fragrance and song. ... Pale green creeps daintily up the ravines proclaiming the awakening of the tulip-trees. Budding hardwood trees everywhere mingle delicate shades of pink and yellow and silver-white, soft greens, and bronze-reds, with the dark green of the pines. The forest is transformed, it gives the impression of one wreathed in smiles. The tide of life is rising strongly though yet slowly ..."

She was also a photographer and and artist.. Her gentle books are filled with images, fanciful and romantic. She favored scenes from nature, the life of mountain families, typical scenic views of the western area, and rural farm life. In Carolina Mountains, her descriptions of the early settlers, of Biltmore, of early education in the mountains, Flat Rock, local speech, the Cherokee, and the Great Smoky Mountains are sensitive and thoughtful. In her closing chapter "The Holiday of  Dreams," she muses

"... the world is coming; the old-time mountaineer is going ...Social transitions are always trying, and perhaps peculiarly so here, where the awakening consciousness suddenly sees the glitter of the prize without understanding the law of exchange. But the people are sound. To native intelligence they add a rude but strong sense of honor and of justice which with the passing of time will undoubtedly mould them happily into the new conditions."

Morley re-engages us with nature, nudges us to look closely at the world around us and asks us to treat our environment with a loving spirit that will assure that the next generations will be able to pass on their inheritance.

Her papers and photographs are held by the Stowe-Day collection at Hartford, CN.

"To-day Asheville takes itself seriously as a city, and you are tempted to grant the assumption when you see automobiles driving through the streets as unconcernedly as in New York or Washington. Street-cars come from various directions to a sociable gathering in Pack Square, the heart of the city. These same cars take you to the confines of town, or up over neighboring mountain slopes to commanding view points. You go to Asheville to do your shopping and t see the world. There are imposing castle-like hotels there, modern and handsome houses on the residence streets, a great many small houses, and outlying districts where the cottages are occupied by colonies of negroes. Yet you can never make the mistake of supposing yourself in a real city when in Asheville, for you have only to lift your eyes to see the vast green forest pressing close about you and the mountains rolling away, peak after peak, to the far horizon. Besides, in spite of its urban airs there is the ever-conquering sun, shining on Asheville and drowning the mountains in its sweet Southern haze there is the balmy languor of the South and the mellow voice of the negro, to make you feel yourself in some secluded haven of rest, some happy escape from the turmoil and strife of a city, and this in spite of the census and the convenience of street-cars.

But to the native mountaineer Asheville is not only a city, it is the city. ... The hills of Asheville lie at an elevation of about two thousand feet, and are surrounded by mountains that stretch away in summits and ranges in whatever direction one may look. That beautiful form with the dome-like top, southwest of Asheville, is Mount Pisgah, and that ridge, a little lower and to the left of the summit, is the Rat. "Pisgah and the Rat!" -- The two names inexorably yoked together because the two shapes make one group, and the lower of them has a form so suggestive that there is no escape for it. They are so near Asheville as to attract immediate attention from the newcomer, who according to his temperament, is shocked or amused at his first introduction to "Pisgah and the Rat."

It is Asheville's position which has made it so long a favorite with those seeking these mountains for their pleasure. From its hills one looks away to peaks and ranges not too near and not too far, and one feels to the full that sense of elevation and of great sky expanse, which is so notable a part of the landscape of this region that the name, "Land of the Sky," once felicitously bestowed upon it, has clung to it ever since.

It would be tiresome to enumerate the mountains visible from the various hills of Asheville, one looks out upon so many, from the grand chain of the near Balsams on the west to the distant Craggy and Black Mountains towards the north, but one never gets tired of looking at them, and in these later days good roads lead away to parks and viewpoints, to the near and some of the distant villages, and to the artificial lakes now being made in increasing numbers to supply scenery and mosquitoes to the tourist; for the pleasure- seeking tourist has found the mountains, there is no escaping that momentous fact, and the mountaineer is everywhere waking up from his long slumber and beginning as it were to look about him.

There is so much that is interesting in Asheville and the country roundabout that it is easy to understand what Mr. Walker felt, for, like him, having once started, it is hard, even for a stranger, to stop "talking for Buncombe."

Morley, Margaret. The Carolina Mountains, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, pp. 134-137.

"The native people speak of the coming of winter as a calamity, and you, too, half dread the cold that is to pinch, and yet does not come. But one day it does come. The wind howls, the air is icy, and your blood chills. You fill the fireplace with logs, and resign yourself to the inevitable. But in three days you are out without a hat. How warm the sun, how delicious the air! And was there ever such color on the mountains! One has a rare surprise in this color of the winter mountains. They remain so warm and tender. They are drowned in light, and assume the marvelous pale blue which is unlike the blue of other mountains. But sometimes they are lilac, and blue in the shadows, or they are white and blue. They soetimes look white through the trees, a pure gleaming white with intense blue spaces, though there is no snow on them, only a shimmering light as though they were giving back the sunshine absorbed by them through the long summer. It is in the winter months that one gets that glow on the mountains, so tempting and so illusive to the painter's brush, when towards night you often see the southern slopes tinged with tthe pink of the wild rose, again warm lilac or deep red, while the sky and the earth that inclose them are sympathetic shades of blue and gray. It is nearing Christmas and Christmas berries are blazing in the thickets. Down the Pacolet Valley rustling canebrakes are green and gold, while golden sedge-grass spreads over slope after slope, its silky white plumes trembling in the breeze." Morley, Margaret. The Carolina Mountains, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, pp.79-80.

When Spring Comes to the Mountains.

"It comes slowly, which is its unique charm. ...Here the spirit of the South prevails, and the spring gradually unfolds for three months, rising in a strong, slow tide that finally breaks over the land in a tremendous  flood of color and fragrance and song. ... Pale green creeps daintily up the ravines proclaiming the awakening of the tulip-trees. Budding hardwood trees everywhere mingle delicate shades of pink and yellow and silver-white, soft greens, and bronze-reds, with the dark green of the pines. The forest is transformed, it gives the impression of one wreathed in smiles. The tide of life is rising strongly though yet slowly ..." Morley, Margaret. The Carolina Mountains, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1913, pp. 36-37

"It comes slowly, which is its unique charm. ...Here the spirit of the South prevails, and the spring gradually unfolds for three months, rising in a strong, slow tide that finally breaks over the land in a tremendous  flood of color and fragrance and song. ... Pale green creeps daintily up the ravines proclaiming the awakening of the tulip-trees. Budding hardwood trees everywhere mingle delicate shades of pink and yellow and silver-white, soft greens, and bronze-reds, with the dark green of the pines. The forest is transformed, it gives the impression of one wreathed in smiles. The tide of life is rising strongly though yet slowly ..."

Song of Life (1891)
Insect Folk (1903)
Little Mitchell, the Story of a Mountain Squirrel (1904)
Apple-Tree Sprite (1915)
The Renewal of Life: How and When to Tell the Story to the Young(1906)
The Carolina Mountains, (1913)