a character as Aliza Bullard or Mrs. Watkins or your Aunt Nanny Bob’s mother are the ones to use. Do you recall our trip to Columbus and can you remember Mrs. Branson. If you can remember her and her singing…. You do not need to do any library work as it is all here. You may have to omit a lot of the personal incidents as they may be too personal. Mrs. Foster knows I lecture on this and asked me to address her classes the last time I was there.
This is a very uncomfortable missive. French tells her daughter to use her material and claim she remembered things she clearly did not and instructs her as to how to pass off her work as her own. This overprotectiveness is tempered by another sentiment: “I hope deeply that this critical theme works the charm and gets you a good grade. I wish to help you in any honest way, but not for anything would I make it too easy for that would do you no good.”63
Overestimating her daughter’s modest academic efforts and abilities, French fruitlessly tried to get Katherine placed at Oxford. Either projecting her own wishes or hoping to provide inspiration, she wrote: “Every thing has its price, and the intellectual life demands a heavy one. However, you and I will sacrifice everything trivial for its possession.”64 Daughter Katherine was not a stellar undergraduate student, but it should be added that she went on to earn a master’s in art from Columbia University in summer sessions between 1937 and 1941. French wrote to her daughter during her summers in New York, confessing to nostalgia for her own days there: “I well recall my similar experiences. After New York, one gets lonely anywhere. But shall we omit going to the big city for that reason? I get so lonely for it, and for you, and for life some days.”65
French also explored the possibility of obtaining a position as president of Mount Holyoke, probably to be nearer her daughter. Here she hit a brick wall as the then president of the college, the iconic Mary Woolley, had no intention of resigning.
Like the rest of the nation, during the 1930s the Frenches were going through financial difficulties. Frank never struck it rich in oil, hoped-for appointments from the governor either did not pan out or did not pay much, and French often worked for long periods at Centenary without pay because of the toll the Depression took on the college’s financial situation.66 “This was the Depression,” said Kay Tolbert Buckland. “She taught for nothing at the college. She got very little. Nobody had any money to pay anything…. They worked for nothing…. Mom said they ate pancakes morning noon and night. They had friends jumping out of windows. A lot of their friends were these very wealthy people and they’re the ones who got hurt the worst.”67
Prior to and during the Depression years, Frank traveled a lot for work, trying to strike it rich in oil. A frequent word in French’s 1929 diary is lonely. There are several times she mentions spending nights alone because he was working. She also noted that he came to his mother-in-law’s funeral in 1920 ninety minutes late. Whether or not these entries indicate trouble within the marriage, they do indicate at least routine periods of separation as Frank and Katherine pursued their own careers.68
Briar Lodge: Old Kentucky Home
Despite deep financial problems, French managed to travel. In 1938, she sailed for England aboard the steamer Bienville, a trip made with her sisters and friends. She also made a point of staying in touch with her Kentucky roots. She was often a guest of honor at events in London. In 1933, she gave a speech near her childhood home at the dedication of a new state park, known today as Levi Jackson State Park. She attended the first Laurel County Homecoming in London in 1935, gave a speech about mountain ballad origins, and introduced Millie Phelps, who sang “Barbara Allen.” She continued to travel to London for summer homecomings and wrote “A History of London” for the town’s Founder’s Day celebration on August 17, 1940. At this celebration, her great-grandparents, the London founders John and Mary Hancock Jackson, were reinterred at the new Dyche Cemetery. Six thousand people attended the event.69
The Jackson Cabin in London, Kentucky. Courtesy of Kay Tolbert Buckland.
Summer visits to London became yearly events. Though her sister Annie was still living there, the Frenches stayed in a cabin in the hills of South London built on land that belonged to her oldest sister, Lou, in the mid-1930s. (The deed was transferred to Katherine and Frank in 1949.) The cabin was off in the woods on an eight-acre parcel of land that backed on a pig farm. It had no heat, running water, or electricity. Water came from a well, and the outhouse was down the path. There was a wood stove and a true icebox in the kitchen.70
A Shreveport Times article featuring French describes the cabin, citing its name as “Briar Lodge”: “[It is] in the foothills of KY on the Daniel Boone Trail … [a] quaint old-fashioned cabin built on land deeded her family in 1789 when KY was part of VA…. [It] is filled with antiques of the farm-type, such as wheels for wool and flax, rifles, powder horns, bullet forms, candle molds, cooking utensils for open fires, and much interesting furniture.”71
Kay Tolbert Buckland has vivid memories of summers spent with Grandmother Katherine:
She loved to play cards at night, ’cause we could light the lanterns. We would pop popcorn in the basket … over the fire…. At the big fireplace at the end of the room, … she would sit in this little school desk, and she could write at it, and she could play cards on it. I remember eating her raspberries, blueberries, she would make wonderful pies. My mother loved them. With the pies, she would serve a little brown sugar and butter mixture, you know you mix up and just put a little scoop on the pie … that was their version of ice cream…. I guess they just liked to get away from the city in the summer and go out to the cabin.”
They would also visit Annie, who lived in the big old Jackson family home, with a sprawling porch and a grape arbor and (by then) a mostly vacant upstairs where the children would run and play.72
French’s diaries reveal a quiet devoutness with regular attendance of church and various Christian organizations. Both she and Frank were active in the Methodist church in Shreveport during the year and in London during the summers. Frank was a member of the Board of Stewards in Shreveport; French’s diaries note regular teaching of Sunday school classes in both locations. She was also a constant attendee of the Missionary Society. Her language in her diaries is not overly religious, but, as we have seen, religion was a constant in her life.73
Retirement and Later Years
French became head of the English Department at Centenary College in 1945. In 1948, she attended her last conference of the Louisiana chapter of the AAUW. It was the organization’s eightieth anniversary, and the group met, fittingly, in Shreveport. French retired from Centenary later that same year at the age of seventy-three with bouquets of accolades. Dr. J. Mickle, the president of Centenary, wrote: “Perhaps no teacher in the whole history of Centenary College has left a finer and deeper impression upon student life both within and without the classroom than you have done. The fine quality of your mind and spirit has been matched with a co-operative and constructive attitude on all matters pertaining to the development of Centenary College. Furthermore, your contribution to the Shreveport community as a whole has been tremendous. It has raised the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual level of the entire city.”74
A proclamation from Mickle and the Board of Trustees declared: “[French] has created in her students a love of language and literature, and for two generations she has made Shakespeare live. She has had a lasting influence on the college and on the intellectual life of Shreveport. The Woman’s Department Club owes much to her efforts; she has given unstintingly of her gracious personality and her stimulating mind. Centenary College and Shreveport will long feel the far-reaching influence of Dr. Katherine Jackson French.”75
The 1948 Yoncopin yearbook was dedicated to her and describes her as “a woman of profound scholarship, gracious charm, and splendid Christian character—a humanitarian in the fullest and finest meaning of the word”: “Hundreds of students have known, loved, and respected the value of so gifted a woman and would well appreciate the tribute of the student who