Manolia: of Tallulah

Written By: Stuart Ferguson - Shakespeare and Company | Issue: March-2022

Sure, it makes James Fenimore Cooper read like Hemingway; the characters have Shakespeare-ish names such as Rossius and Cassanio, who trade quips and quotes in Latin; and everyone turns out to be first cousins without knowing it. 

But the 1854 romantic-comedy novel titled The Georgia Bequest: Manolia or the Vale of Tallulah is actually a lot of fun. It features Oothlacoochee, the last Cherokee in the area, a party of college boys from Athens and a mysterious maiden who appears from the mist on the far side of the gorge—Manolia. It also includes many of the author’s pet peeves, among them the then-unfinished Washington Monument and the English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton of “It was a dark and stormy night” fame. (“Georgia Bequest” in the book’s title refers to a scheme where Americans—led by the state of Georgia–might be better inculcated with the virtues of our first president through education, rather than erecting a Pharaonic shrine to his memory.)

The title page claims Manolia was written by “A Georgia Huntsman,” but it’s a pseudonym for William Porter Rembert (1808-1879; though he really did spend a lot of time in the chase or casting flies). Rembert was a planter in Elbert County, Georgia, along the upper Savannah River, and a cousin of Robert Toombs, the very colorful U.S. Senator, and the Confederacy’s first Secretary of State. Toombs and Rembert were roommates at Franklin College – now the University of Georgia – until they were kicked out for loud laughing and card playing. (Toombs had been expelled once before, for threatening classmates with a gun, but this time the faculty meant it!)

Like his novel’s hero, Rembert had a summer house just below Tallulah Falls. Edward Norris Kirk, a Boston minister on a southern tour in August 1860, was invited to Rembert’s home for Sunday dinner after preaching at the local schoolhouse.  Kirk had been surprised to find that well-dressed gentlemen and their families in elegant carriages had come to listen to his sermon in the remote mountain region.

He wrote home that, “The scene that spread before us from the piazza (porch) of his house is altogether unique…On the left hand you see the mighty chasms which could contain four Niagaras.  Through them the Tallulah and Chattooga rush to meet and form the Tugaloo which flows directly below Mr. Rembert’s yard, 1,500 feet down. The slopes of so many mountains coming down to witness this meeting of the waters form a splendid spectacle.”

Rembert asked Kirk – an ardent abolitionist, though the Georgian may not have realized that – how he would vote in the upcoming election. “For Abraham Lincoln, sir.” 

It was a chilly social gathering after that, though Rembert himself was not in favor of secession and his novel praises the Cherokee and (gently) regrets slavery. Later, as the Confederacy collapsed, Toombs came and hid out with his cousin above the Tallulah, until the hue and cry died down and the hunted statesman was able to escape to Cuba and then France. 

There was only the one edition of Manolia and it will set you back at least $200, but it can be found online for free here: archive.org/details/georgibequestman00rembiala.