Literary Trails

The Wren's Nest

by Kathleen Walls

The Wren's Nest

Who hasn't marveled at the exploits of Brer Rabbit? Yet, few people know much about the creator of this delightful trickster. Joel Chandler Harris is a lot like some of his characters, a little hard to understand. After the release of Walt Disney's Song of the South, he was labeled a racist. A little confusing since a special Academy Award was given "James Baskett for his able and heart-warming characterization of Uncle Remus, friend and story teller to the children of the world in Walt Disney's 'Song of the South.'" The movie garnered other awards as well. It was nominated in the "Scoring of a Musical Picture" category, and "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah " won the award for Best Song at the 20th Academy Awards on March 20, 1948. The NAACP commented on "the remarkable artistic merit" of the film, but decried the "impression it gives of an idyllic master-slave relationship."

Lian Shakespeare at the Wren's Nest

Far from being a racist, Joel Chandler Harris owes the part of his education that led to the writing of his best works to the tales, originally brough over from Africa that he learned from Uncle George Terrell, Old Harbert, and Aunt Crissy, slaves on Harris' employer and mentor, Joseph Addison Turner's, plantation. Turner was the editor of the Countryman, a newspaper that was read throughout the South. He hired Harris as a printer's devil and took the young boy under his wing. He provided the best of a classical education. Joel, however was the illegitimate son of an Irish seamstress and because he was sensitive about his illegitimacy, his stammer and his Irish background, he was more comfortable among the slaves than the elite who visited the plantation. Perhaps the relationship Harris observed at Turner's plantation was the benign one he portrayed in his stories.

A visit to Harris' home, the Wren's Nest, in Atlanta, fills in many of the blanks about this author. The director, Lain Shakespeare, who happened to be Harris' great-great-grandson, walks you through the family home and offers insights to Harris' personality and lifestyle.

Curtis Richardson relates a Brer Rabbit tale

Harris worked for Henry Grady at the Atlanta Journal Constitution much of his adult life. He was a man who loved to be in his home and preferred to work there instead of his newspaper office. Much of his literary work was done at the Wren's Nest, the Queen Anne Victorian home where he lived from 1881 to 1908. The home's name came about when Harris discovered that a family of wrens had made a nest in the mailbox.

He also was a man of his times and worked with Henry Grady to bring about the idea of "The New South." He was a close friend of Franklin Roosevelt who visited Harris at the Wren's Nest and invited Harris to the White House.

Curtis Richardson, one of the museum storytellers, may entertain you with his renditions of the old folk tales from which Harris's Uncle Remus stories grew. You will leave with a deeper understanding of Harris the author as well as Harris the man.

For more info:

http://www.wrensnestonline.com/