Boardinghouse Guests: A Girl from Little Washington
It was June of 1917. Thomas Wolfe returned to his mother’s boardinghouse from his freshman year at UNC. Just over a decade later, he wrote in Look Homeward, Angel, “There was at Dixieland a girl named Laura James . . . She was there when he came back.” In May 1924, in a letter to his mentor Margaret Roberts he exclaimed, “Did you know I fell in love when I was sixteen with a girl who was twenty-one? Yes, honestly — desperately in love. And I’ve never quite got over it.” He claimed all he could remember about her, “her hair was corn-colored.” However, in his 1926 Autobiographical Outline, his memories included “moonlight and the holding of a hand.”
It is not certain when Wolfe’s character Laura James was first identified as a young woman named Clara Paul. It likely was not long after Look Homeward, Angel was published in 1929. Recorded on her gravestone, Clara Elizabeth Paul was born on April 24, 1896. She was the daughter of Franklin D. Paul, a successful grocery merchant, and his wife Martha Sawyer. They had made their home at Washington, in Beaufort County, NC — often called Little Washington to distinguish it from our capital city. The town was fictionalized by Wolfe as “Little Richmond.” Clara was the second of five children, including Clyde b. 1894, Lola b. 1898, Earle b. 1902, and Ray b. 1906. Their father died on December 30, 1909, and their mother on February 27, 1910, leaving the orphans to be raised by aunts and uncles.
In 1915 and 1916, Clara boarded at St. Mary’s School in Raleigh while attending the college preparatory program for girls. In his original manuscript, O’Lost, Wolfe writes of Eugene Gant, during his sophomore year at college while visiting St. Mary’s School that he made “inquiries about her.” He writes that one of his roommate’s sisters “one year younger than he,” remembered her — “did you have a crush on her?” she asked. At St. Mary’s, Clara had been a member of the literary society, chorus, and played volleyball and basketball. In 1917, Clara was a student at Greensboro Women’s College. The yearbook describes her as a student in the Business Class, a member of the Irving Literary Society and Sea Nymphs Club. It is perhaps during this time that she met her future husband Wallace Martin, a mill worker who had served in the US Army. That summer, with her brother Ray, Clara traveled to Asheville and stayed at Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse. The reason for the trip may have been Ray who was recovering from a recent illness. Perhaps it was in the new sun parlor of the house, or on the front porch, that she was introduced to young Thomas Wolfe.
In a 1965 story in the Raleigh News and Observer, Clara was remembered by her sister, Lola Paul Dawson, as strong-willed, yet gentle, sensitive, and refined. Physically, a petite, beautiful young woman with naturally curly hair, milk-white skin, and tiny dark freckles. She was known by family and friends as a talented musician who sang like an angel. Wolfe writes, “Laura was a slender girl, of medium height…She had thick hair, very straight and blonde, combed in a flat bracelet around her small head…Her eyes were soft, candid, cat-green. Her nose was a little too large for her face: it was tilted…Her face was freckled lightly, over her nose and mouth.”
According to Lola, while a wartime marriage was discouraged by her family, Clara planned to marry a soldier. She was wearing his ring, the engagement had been announced, and the wedding date tentatively set. Lola told Wolfe biographer Andrew Turnbull about a letter sent from Asheville by Clara that summer long ago. It read in part, “A nice young boy, here, the son of my landlady, has a crush on me. Adding, “he has right much talent, I think. The most trivial things he says sounds like poetry.” In 1941, Julia Wolfe also remembered, “She came up here and made no secret she had her trousseau. Her little brother had had a sick spell, and she brought him up here, and I told Tom to go with them everywhere…Tom built it all up in imagination.” In Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe conveniently does not mention Ray and makes Laura James an only child. According to Lola, Ray remembered Thomas Wolfe. He made the connection in 1929 upon seeing Wolfe’s picture in a newspaper and reading a review of his book.
If you believe the accounts by Lola and Julia, the story of Clara Paul and Thomas Wolfe may properly be described as an “unconsummated infatuation between a teenage boy and a young woman whom he knew to be engaged.” Reading Wolfe’s description of the June affair, one would believe that although Clara was wearing an engagement ring, she did not discourage romance. Wolfe writes that Laura James kisses Eugene Gant on the porch of his mother’s boardinghouse, and he falls rapidly in love with her. That evening, climbing through a window into her room “her hair fell down about her like thick corn-silk, in a sweet loose wantonness. Her straight dainty legs were clad in snug little green bloomers….” The following day they go on a hike on nearby Beaucatcher Mountain and make passionate promises to never leave each other. But Laura does leave Altamont in late June, telling Eugene she will only be gone for a few days. She never returned. Wolfe describes Eugene receiving a letter from her informing him that she will be married the next day. In his biography, Andrew Turnbull concludes that Clara was indeed “responsive to his adoration, she may have permitted his advances, but all the evidence points to the fact that he never slept with her . . .”
Clara married Wallace Martin on July 5, 1917, at Morehead City, NC. With two years of service in the Infantry, he had achieved the rank of Sargent. Wallace reentered the US Army on 25 July 1917, serving until the end of WWI in September 1918. During the war, rather than return home after his sophomore year in 1918, Wolfe went to Newport News, VA, where he worked at Langley Field as a time checker. He was still thinking of Clara Paul, who was now married and living in nearby Portsmouth. He wrote his mother in July 1918 “I have not yet seen fit to look up Clara Paul although I have been over to Portsmouth once or twice.”
Clara Paul Martin gave birth to two sons, the first on her birthday, Wallace Jr., b. April 24, 1918, and Kenneth Thomas b. December 2, 1919. Clara died on December 17, 1919, from hypostatic pneumonia just two weeks after the birth of her second son. It was the result of an infection related to complications in childbirth. She was interred with her parents near Grantsboro at Silver Hill, in Pamlico County, NC. On her grave, the inscription “Gone but not forgotten.” Wallace soon remarried. His first child with his new wife was named Clara Paul Martin. Thomas Wolfe had learned from his friends at college that Clara had died, possibly a result of the third wave of the Spanish Influenza.
