NORTH CARROLLTON -- Hunter Cole, who was master of ceremonies Saturday, Feb. 15, for the memorial service honoring his friend, the late Elizabeth Spencer, said the writer now belongs to the world of readers.
In fact, the warmth shared by the approximately 100 gathered to remember her and her outstanding writings since her first novel, “Fire in the Morning”, was published in 1948, was evidence that Spencer, who died Dec. 22, 2019, at the age of 98 in Chapel Hill, N. C., showed that she has long belonged to her readers.
Cole said Spencer’s ashes had been interred Feb. 1 on the grounds of the Episcopal Church at Chapel Hill. She was predeceased by her husband, John Rusher, after their move from Montreal, where they’d settled years earlier, to that college city in North Carolina.
The memorial program, sponsored by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, which had given Spencer many honors during her lifetime, was held at the Cotesworth Culture and Heritage Center.
Cole recalled Spencer’s retort when she’d been described at the most famous person ever to come out of Carrollton -- she was born there in July 1921, the daughter of Jimmie McCain Spencer of the Teoc McCains and of James Luther Spencer -- was that no, that would have been J. Z. George.
George, who ended life as a United States Senator, lived at Cotesworth.
Spencer’s parents had lived on College Street in the old town, but Cotesworth, the 1800s coach stop and plantation house with its unusual law library in its side yard, is considered being in the new town across the Big Sand Creek from old Carrollton, North Carrollton.
While Cole was the emcee and first speaker in the morning’s lineup, Ann Abadie of Oxford introduced him. Peggy Prenshaw, considered the leading Spencer scholar and a longtime friend of the writer, repeated some of the observations she’d shared during the dedication of Spencer’s marker on the Mississippi Writer’s Trail on the Carrollton Square in October.
No matter where she’d lived, Prenshaw said, Spencer “carried her memories of Carroll County, Mississippi.” She was a Southern writer -- at heart always a Mississippi writer, though she proved time and again she had an intellectual connection and understanding of people in all kinds of settings.
Spencer’s sophistication ranged from the classics of a century earlier her visits with her McCain grandfather instilled in her imagination to those of an early mentor, Eudora Welty and the Fugitive Poets during her further studies.
Don Shaffer, who also spoke at the Writers Trail marker dedication, briefly talked of Spencer’s breakout novel, “The Voice at the Back Door”, published after Spencer’s return from Italy, where she’d traveled on a prestigious grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. His theme was racial reconciliation, underlining the a term describing “the marginalized, who can only enter through the back door”.
Movie rights to the novel were sold, and Glenn Ford was to have had the lead. The movie was never made.
The University Press of Mississippi is publishing Shaffer’s work, “Though There Be Giats in the Land,” later this year.
Another fan, Sarah Frances Hardy, read from Spencer’s essay, “The Day Before.”
Suzanne Marrs, first holding up a tee shirt given her after a reading from Spencer’s well-known novella, “Light in the Piazza” at the Lincoln Center, a shirt bearing the “Light” motif, read from Spencer’s sweet novella, which was made into a well-received play several years ago.
Marion Barnwell, who knew her fellow Mississippi novelist and short story magician, Spencer, from Barnwell’s years in the Delta, read from “Landscapes of the Heart”, the memoir Spencer wrote and was published in the late 1990s. Barnwell’s reading was from the chapter, “The Old Lady,” in which Spencer remembered Lizzie George Henderson, whose electric car has in recent years been displayed at Cotesworth events. In her day, however, the car never could manage to climb Valley Hill.
Jan Taylor, who was to have read from “The Salt Line”, was prevented from attending the memorial program, Cole reported, over concerns about the potential flooding in the Jackson area.
Pam Lee, mayor of Carrollton, accepted a colorful urn from Cole, which the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters had given Spencer as part of their lifetime achievement award in 2009. Spencer had left the urn in Cole’s care. Cole said the urn now belongs to the town of Carrollton. Lee said it will join the growing Spencer and McCain exhibits in the Merrill Museum.
