Reverence and research result in balanced biography of complicated writer and artist
A product of her time and place, Sara Mayfield paradoxically stood outside both. A throwback to genteel Southern culture but also a thoroughly modern visionary who eschewed convention, she benefited and suffered from the dictates of “proper” female behavior.
Jennifer Horne captures these contradictions beautifully in “Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield.” Even the book’s form, with Victorian-style chapter headings, nods and winks to Mayfield’s mosaic nature.
Horne combines meticulous research with a fascination with Mayfield, who was a writer, artist, inventor and amateur scientist. The result portrays a woman who triumphs over a culture that tried to suppress her.
Mayfield is a dream of a biographer’s subject. She kept a journal and wrote letters prolifically. Neither was unusual for educated women in her era; what was unusual was that she kept copies of all letters she sent. Much of her life as she saw it exists in ink and paper at the University of Alabama’s Hoole Special Collections Library.
“As she saw it” is an operative phrase because, as Horne points out, Mayfield was prone to hyperbole and conspiracy theories. These primary sources could be problematic in less capable hands, but Horne expertly reads beyond Mayfield’s autobiographical slant. You might say that Mayfield served as her own “spin doctor” and social media machine. Horne sifts through muddy water and brings a gem of a character to life.
Weaving Mayfield’s own words into a captivating narrative, Horne tempers reverence with measured, objective acknowledgment of Mayfield’s neuroses. In another time, these eccentricities would have gone virtually unnoticed or perhaps been medicated, but in Mayfield’s milieu they landed her in a mental hospital twice, the second time for nearly two decades, and both times courtesy of her own family.
Mayfield and Zelda Fitzgerald grew up together, and in many ways her life paralleled her more famous friend’s, but Mayfield consistently made decisions that insured she transcended the tragedy that befell Fitzgerald. Undeniably, Mayfield’s life had tragic elements, but ultimately her choices had positive outcomes. As a young woman, she ended an unhappy marriage when divorce was taboo, prioritizing her writing. More remarkably, she made the best of being committed to a state mental hospital for a good portion of her life. Mayfield certainly lived in an “insane asylum,” but she didn’t die there, nor did her spirit wither. Her art saved her.
As a patient, Mayfield wrote, painted, and cultivated relationships with scholars, writers and artists. She behaved “as if” she were simply living in an apartment. Her social status and family played roles in her being able to come and go in a way that other patients could not, but Horne reminds us that Mayfield’s social status and family also landed her there in the first place. In those days, prominent citizens hid away difficult women rather than contend with the scandal presented by “unladylike” behavior. Through those years, Mayfield focused on her goals and published the first of three books at age 63, a few years after being discharged.
Horne diplomatically punctuates her admiration with observations that Mayfield’s view of reality was sometimes skewed. While she certainly was not delusional enough to be hospitalized for nearly two decades, there were hints of paranoia. Horne skillfully brings the sometimes-blurred line between objectivity and admiration into focus, walking it carefully. Luckily, people who knew Mayfield were still living while Horne corroborated information. Her interviews with Mayfield’s circle make an already terrific life story even more compelling.
A biographer achieves success when readers feel they know the subject. This biography accomplishes that and more. I not only feel that I know Mayfield, but I wistfully think how marvelous it would be to enjoy cocktails and conversation with this fascinating, resilient, brilliant and creative soul.
For the book’s epigraph, Horne chose one of Mayfield’s own quotations: “By some odd chance, I was born in the hurricane season and have lived in one ever since.” Perhaps. But true to her nature, Sara Mayfield was also her own calm before, eye and clear sky after.
— Bebe Barefoot Lloyd is a freelance writer and retired English instructor. She lives in Nashville. Contact her at bebebarefootlloyd@gmail.com