This photo appears to have been taken at Casa Cuseni, Daphne Phelps'
villa in Taormina, Sicily, in 1962. The author visited Ms. Phelps in 1982 while
doing reserarch for the book. At the time Ms. Phelps was noticiably tight
lipped about her involvement with Henry, spooling out information a
little bit at a time, and not revealing much at that. At the time the author
chalked up the reluctance of Ms. Phelps to wanting to distance herself from
Henry's reputation. In 1999, seventeen years later, Ms. Phelps published
"A House in Sicily," which was richly praised by the New York Times,
among others. The significant thing is that the longest chapter in the book,
entitled "Henry Faulkner," (appropriately enough), goes into extreme
detail about Henry's time spent at Casa Cuseni. Ms. Phelps played her
cards close to the vest, then, to save her precious information for her
own book. Nothing she finally said in her book differed from the Faulkner
biography, but the author would have had a much easier time if she
had been a bit more forthcoming with info. Some of the information contained in
"A House in Sicily," appears to have come from "The Outrageous Life of Henry
Faulkner," a copy of which the author sent to Ms. Phelps after its publication
in 1988. Beware, you would-be biographers; it's a cutthroat business!
Other guests at Casa Cuseni over the years included Bertrand Russell,
Roald Dahl, Ms. Dylana Thomas, and Tennessee Williams.
Ms. Phelps' book, by the way, is a splendid read. Highly recommended.
And, if the author weren't such a blabbermouth, he may have done the same
thing under the circumstances. In any case there were several good sources
in Taromina who were delighted to talk about the "strikingly eccentric
American painter born at Egypt, Kentucky," as Ms Phelps described him
in her book. Henry, of course, was not born in Egypt, Kentucky as he
told everyone throughout his life. It was the name of a small post office
in a neighboring county whose name he fancied. He was born a couple
of hundred miles west at Beech Spring, in Simpson County.