Chapman James Milling papers

The papers of Chapman James Milling (1901-1981) span the years 1838 though 1987. Included in the papers are personal, family, and literary correspondence, literary pieces by Milling and other writers, news clippings, photographs, genealogical files, and miscellaneous bound volumes. Units of material in the collection reveal Milling's literary and medical pursuits, and the collection focuses principally upon these two lifelong commitments. The primary focus of the collection is Milling's literary career, reflected through various drafts and versions, published and unpublished of Milling's poems, short stories, reviews, and essays, as well as of the books he wrote, edited, or contributed to--Singing Arrows (1938), Red Carolinians (1940), Exile Without an End (1943), Beneath So Kind a Sky (1947), Colonial South Carolina: Two Contemporary Descriptions by Governor James Glen and Doctor George Milligen-Johnson (1951), and Buckshot and Hounds (1967)--and an unpublished novel--The Darkening Land or Wampum and Tartan--based upon the Cherokee Removal of 1838. Voluminous correspondence with editors, publishers, and fellow writers are evidence of Milling's long and productive life. Related papers reflect his concern both for the preservation and the creative use of folklore and his role in the founding of the Southeastern Folklore Society in 1935 and as advising editor of the Southern Folklore Quarterly.

Among the most recognizable names represented here by literary correspondence are those of fellow writers Henry Bellaman, John Bennett, Elizabeth Boatwright Coker, DuBose Heyward, Archibald Rutledge, Herbert Ravenel Sass, and Samuel Gaillard Stoney. Present in the collection, too, are the synopsis of a novel entitled Hospital, early attempts at drama, and the synopsis of an untitled professional book on the subject of psychiatry.

Milling's literary impulses found fruition early in his life. As a public school student at St. John's School, Darlington, young Milling edited the school paper, and as a freshman at Presbyterian College in 1919 he received his first check for a poem, a prize for a contest sponsored by the campus literary magazine. During his senior year there, Milling edited the college weekly. Following his graduation in 1923 with a B.A. degree, Milling taught biology, chemistry, and physics for one year at Rock Hill High School. While studying at the Medical College of South Carolina, 1924-1928, he took a correspondence course in writing from the Hoosier Institute in Indianapolis, published poetry in the Charleston newspapers, and learned the rudiments of guitar-playing from his landlady.

A large segment of news clippings and magazine tearsheets attests to the success of Milling's poetic endeavors which culminated in the appearance of Singing Arrows in 1938, published by Columbia's own Bostick and Thornley. Charleston author John Bennett cited the book for its demonstration of Milling's poetic "technique, pattern, subject-breadth," but especially for "its most generous human sympathy, for things, creatures and mankind--which gives your writing invariable appeal" (22 Nov. 1938).

During the autumn of 1940 the University of North Carolina Press issued Milling's book on Indians, Red Carolinians. The book was dedicated to his wife Edna Daniell Milling (1903-1953) who assisted with research and provided many photographs for the work. "This is a noble achievement," Archibald Rutledge wrote in a letter of 17 Oct. 1940. "You've approached the Indian in spirit and in truth." "How you have escaped making dust of so dead a subject I do not see," wrote Charleston artist Elizabeth O'Neill Verner in a letter, 18 Dec. 1940. "Instead you have breathed on moulded clay and made it come to life." Dr. John R. Swanton, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institute, wrote that the book would "promptly take its place among the volumes always to be kept at my elbow" (27 Sept. 1940).

Milling's next book, Exile Without An End, published by Bostick and Thornley in 1943, was an account of the destiny of the thousand Acadian exiles who arrived in Charleston from Nova Scotia in 1755. The book was dedicated to his mother, Mary Lanneau Whilden Milling (1860-1952), a direct descendent of one of the Catholic exiles, Pierre La Noue (Lanneau). Included in the papers are extant research materials Milling used in writing this book, as well as information collected after the book's publication.

Milling also edited and wrote the introduction to Colonial South Carolina: Two Contemporary Descriptions by Governor James Glen and Doctor George Milligen-Johnston. Published in 1951, this historical work was the first of a series jointly sponsored by the University South Caroliniana Society and Library. The 1947 book Beneath So Kind a Sky, for which Milling provided a lengthy introduction, was a collaborative effort between Milling and Carl Julien, under the direction of Frank Wardlaw, editor of the University of South Carolina Press. The long association between Milling and Wardlaw is reflected in their twenty-year correspondence. When Milling became a contender for South Carolina poet laureate in 1974, Wardlaw wrote that he hoped Milling would get the position and said that he was writing to a friend "to suggest that he put a bee in the governor's ears" (8 Mar. 1974).

Among the collection's literary manuscripts are several drafts of The Darkening Land or Wampum and Tartan, an historical novel based on the Cherokee Removal of 1838, whose main characters were the educated class of mixed bloods evicted from their plantation homes and herded to the territory west of the Mississippi (Oklahoma). Milling devoted major attention in his later years to this novel which was to have been dedicated to his third wife, Elizabeth Player Milling. Revised several times, and sent to numerous publishers, it aroused interest among Milling's literary friends and acquaintances but was never accepted for publication. In a letter of 5 Sept. 1974 his friend Frank Wardlaw asked--"Have you thought of employing the source material you used in your novel and making it a non-fiction account?" Encouraging Milling to retain the novel form, Elizabeth Boatwright Coker wrote in a memorandum of 25 Feb. 1976 that "your descriptions of the forests and the sights, smells, and sounds of it are always exciting and true, often breathtakingly lovely. Your accounts of hunting and fishing are absolutely marvelous, as is to be expected. There's no one better."

Milling's knowledge of nature lore and his enthusiasm for hunting had also been evident in his book Buckshot and Hounds, published by A.S. Barnes and Company during the fall of 1967. The collection contains photographs, a typed manuscript, and correspondence relating to his work, as well as hunting articles submitted to magazines, and manuscripts describing flora and fauna of Richland and Darlington counties.

By profession Milling was a physician who initially specialized in psychiatry. In 1928 he came to Columbia as an intern at the South Carolina State Hospital, where subsequently he was appointed assistant physician. He later specialized in diseases of the eye, ear, nose, and throat and in 1938 became department head at State Hospital in that area of medicine. In 1943 he entered private practice as an ophthalmologist and simultaneously served as interim director of Waverly Sanitarium, of which he later became director (1948-1968). Materials documenting his professional career and affiliations include medical correspondence and writings. His private journals, 1939 and 1934, and dream record, 1938-1940 and 1940-1943, are filled with personal observations as well as the record of his daily life, including lecture commitments and references to involvements with such Columbia organizations as the LeConte Scientific Society, the Quill Club, and the Town Theatre.

Family correspondence and miscellaneous materials relate to Milling's mother, Mary Lanneau Whilden Milling (1860-1952). Personal and family correspondence files include letters to Milling from his first wife, Edna Daniell Milling, who wrote from Chicora College and later from Thornwell Orphanage in Clinton, and from his second wife, Margaret Crawford Risher Milling.