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Robert F. Campbell Collection |
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Remarks by Robert F. Campbell at Thomas Wolfe's funeral, September 18 [?], 1938 at the First Presbyterian Church, Asheville, NC, where Wolfe and his family were members. Wolfe was buried in Asheville's Riverside Cemetery. His gravestone reads as follows:
TOM
"DEATH BENT TO TOUCH HIS CHOSEN SON WITH MERCY, LOVE AND PITY, AND
PUT THE SEAL OF HONOR ON HIM WHEN HE DIED." |
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| Box #13 | Folder # | Description | Quantity |
| 12 | "This
assembly of his fellow citizens is gathered to honor the memory and mourn
the untimely death of one who went forth from us to literary fame. "This is not the place or the time, nor am I equipped to measure the quality of his work. He undoubtedly had within a flame of genius which shone forth brilliantly and gave promise of a star of the first magnitude had he lived to reach the maturity of his powers. "His major productions were like his body, huge in their proportions. He spoke of them as 'torrential.' His thoughts and words poured forth from his brain and pen in uncontrollable floods. The literary world will look with eager interest, curiosity, and desire to the publication of the colossal manuscript of a million or more words now in the hands of his publishers. "As pastor of the family, I know Thomas Wolfe from his infancy. His early schooling was in the North State school, which held its sessions in Ravenscroft Hall nearby. As a small boy he was a pupil in the Sunday school of this church. He has put on record that he was disposed in those early days to hold up his head with pride in being a Presbyterian. The young are often more acutely sectarian than their elders, and the boy Tom seems to have relegated his companions of other dominations as belonging to what Kipling calls 'the lesser breeds without the law.' "In his later years my contacts with him were occasional and casual but very cordial. He had a habit which I greatly appreciated. Year after year as he returned from the university, he would come to the church, usually on a Sunday morning after the service to pay his respects to his old friend and pastor. He did this on his visit home last summer, but to my regret he failed to find me and I failed to see him. "I wish I had something definite to say about his religious life. As there was a restlessness and lack of definite form in his intellectual and emotional processes, it is natural to conclude that the same was true of of his religious beliefs and aspirations. This seems to find illustration in the words that appear on the preface page of his latest novel Of Time and the River: "'Where shall the weary rest? When shall the weary of heart come home? What doors are open for the wanderer? And which of us shall find his Father, know His face, and in what place and in what time, and in what land, where?' "'Where the weary of heart can abide forever, there the weary of wandering can find peace; where the tumult, the fever and the fret shall be forever stilled.' "Wadsworth speaks of 'central peace, subsisting at the heart of endless agitation.' As Tom's friend and pastor, I shall always cherish the hope and the belief that in the yearning desire of his restless heart to find his rest, his home, his peace in the heavenly Father's presence, there was the pith and substance of the Christian faith. "There is wideness in God's
mercy "For the love of God is broader "In the wilderness of God's mercy, manifested in the incarnation and the sacrificial death of His son, we find our only hope, which to the maturity of faith is a certain and confident hope, 'an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth in to that within the veil, wither our forerunner, even Jesus, hath entered for us, our High Priest Forever.'" |
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