Lucas Beauchamp, Ned Barnett, and
William Faulkner's 1940 Will
by
Robert W. Hamblin
Readers of William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust are
familiar with the land grant to Lucas Beauchamp by his white kinsman,
Zack Edmonds: "how [Carothers] Edmonds' father had deeded to his Negro
first cousin and his heirs in perpetuity the house and the ten acres of land
it sat in—an oblong of earth set forever in the middle of the
two-thousand-acre plantation like a postage stamp in the center of an
envelope."[1] Not generally known,
however, is that eight years before the publication of Intruder in the
Dust Faulkner had made a somewhat similar provision in his last
will
and testament for Ned Barnett, the black man who had faithfully served
four generations of the Faulkner family.
"Uncle Ned," as Barnett was affectionately called, was the male
counterpart in the Faulkner household to Caroline ("Mammy Callie") Barr.
He had been a servant of W. C. Falkner, the Nobel Laureate's
great-grandfather, and
had moved to Oxford after the death of his master in 1889. Transferring his
allegiance to one after another of the Old Colonel's descendants, Barnett
became, in William's time, the butler at Rowan Oak and a tenant farmer at
Greenfield Farm. Faulkner records his recollection of the old retainer in the
semi-autobiographical essay entitled "Mississippi":
Ned, born in a cabin in the back yard in 1865, in the time of the
middleaged's greatgrandfather and had outlived three generations of them,
who had not only walked and talked so constantly for so many years with
the three generations that he walked and talked like them, he had two
tremendous trunks filled with the clothes which they had worn—not
only
the blue brass-buttoned frock coat and the plug hat in which he had been
the great-grandfather's and the grandfather's coachman, but the broadcloth
frock coats which the great-grandfather himself had worn, and the
pigeon-tailed ones of the grandfather's time and the short coat of his
father's which the middleaged could remember on the backs for which they
had been tailored, along with the hats in their eighty years of mutation too:
so that, glancing idly up and out the library window, the middleaged would
see that back, that stride, that coat and hat going down the drive toward the
road, and his heart would stop and even turn over.
[2]
As Joseph Blotner has demonstrated, not only such love of finery but also
Ned's amorous escapades, sharp wit, and independent spirit find expression
in fictional creations like Simon Strother in
Sartoris, Ned
McCaslin in
The Reivers, and Lucas Beauchamp.
[3]
On March 27, 1940, Faulkner executed a new will, revising the one
he had prepared in 1934. Among other changes, Faulkner added a section
providing for the disposition of Greenfield Farm, which he had purchased
in 1938. The arrangement called for John, William's brother, to be given
the first option to purchase the farm. To this provision Faulkner attached
the following condition:
The above devise is made with the understanding that Ned Barnett,
colored, if he outlives me, is to have the house he now lives in, rent free,
as long as he remains on this farm. If at my death the title to said farm is
clear in my name, the said Barnett is to receive clear title to said house and
the piece of ground on which it rests and the line between his property and
the other property is to be established by my Executors and Testamentary
Guardians and is not to infringe upon other buildings. The said Ned Barnett
is also to have rent free to cultivate a five-acre piece of ground to be
selected by my Executors and Testamentary Guardians and is to have such
until his death at which time all of said property will revert to my estate.
My Executors and Testamentary Guardians are also to see that the said
Barnett is to have use of such livestock and tools as are on said farm and
necessary to cultivate the land left to him. At the death of the said Ned
Barnett, my Executors are to
use whatever funds necessary from my estate to send his body where he
wishes and to give him a decent funeral and burial. The amount to be spent
therefor is to be determined solely by my said Executors. If the said Ned
Barnett should leave said farm and my family, then my said Executors are
to pay him from my estate Five ($5.00) Dollars per month until his
death.
[4]
When Faulkner next revised his will, on February 1, 1951, he deleted the
above section, Barnett having died in 1947.
[5]
The parallels between Faulkner's provision for Ned Barnett and Zack
Edmonds' treatment of Lucas Beauchamp are striking, though doubtless of
greater interest in the comparison is the obvious embellishment of fact so
characteristic of Faulkner's handling of sources. The 1940 will provides just
one more example of the manner in which history was transformed into the
art of Yoknapatawpha.
Notes
