Frances Mayes’ Favorite Things

...and how she found home in North Carolina

Frances Mayes has traveled the globe, but now calls Hillsborough home. The New York Times best selling author’s books have long been rooted in her love affair with Italy, but her latest one, A Place in the World, is an homage to the many places she’s called home. One of those places is the Chatwood estate where she and her husband lived for years before recently downsizing. We spoke with Mayes to learn about her sense of place, most meaningful objects and deep connection to North Carolina.

YOUR OTHER BOOKS ARE ABOUT TRAVEL, BUT THIS ONE SEEMS ROOTED IN WHERE YOU LIVE — WHY IS THAT?

During the Covid lockdowns, my husband Ed and I decided to leave what we had thought of as our permanent home. I think those months caused a lot of people to look closely at their lives and goals and home, and to reevaluate the future. We can get awfully attuned to routine and the crisis shook up expectations. For me, a born traveler, I felt so trapped. My writing is often tied to travel and that was impossible. We thought our sense of confinement was an individual response but later, of course, we realized we were just part of a national trend and we had contributed to the housing craze that shot up demand and prices all over. I began to think about the question of what’s home, and to realize that as much as I have written about travel, I have an equal obsession with the four walls of home. The pandemic compelled me to write about roots and wings.

WHAT IS YOUR HOME LIKE?

Having left the idyllic farm, we are now nicely settled in a house that leaves us free to roam. Two writers need studies and this young house (it’s only fifteen years old) has plenty of space for tons of books, along with excellent light from big windows and a kitchen that works well for two cooks. On the farm, we were happily isolated but now we enjoy being close to people, sidewalks and shopping. I will always miss the house on the river but this was a good move for us, even if it was on a whim. Our place in Tuscany [Villa Bramasole in Cortona, which inpired the novel Under the Tuscan Sun] could not be more unalike. It is nearly 400 years old and has been home for thirty years now. It’s perched on a hillside amid olive trees and I always think it looks at home in the landscape.

HOW MANY HOMES HAVE YOU LIVED IN?

I’m not sure I can count that high! Fifteen? Oddly, I think of many other places where I felt at home, even if I was there for only a week. There’s a chapter, Momentary Homes, on that subject in my new book — how mysterious it is to find yourself so settled and comfortable in a place you are literally passing through.

WHAT IS IN ALL OF YOUR HOMES?

I cart around storage boxes of letters from friends — from back when people wrote real letters — and childhood scrapbooks and photographs. Books, books, books! And the silverware that Southern girls of my generation began collecting in high school.

WHILE TRAVELING, WHAT REMINDS YOU OF HOME AND COMFORTS YOU?

Walking the neighborhoods in strange towns, I love the banging pot lids, clink of cutlery and the aromas of dinner cooking that waft from open windows, that wonderful moment of dinner being served. At night, the lighted windows, music playing, those quick glimpses of how people live in other places. Those are homey images, but I love as much the excitement of looking out over the rooftops of Fez, the full moon lifting out of the sea in Santorini, the lights in the canals in Amsterdam — those sights that are utterly foreign but create a feeling of being at home in the world.

WHAT ABOUT NORTH CAROLINA CALLED YOU TO MAKE IT HOME?

We decided to leave California, another seeming whim, and I wanted to move back to the South where I grew up. From college in Virginia, I used to come down to UNC for parties. Later, we had good friends in Chapel Hill and had visited many times. Then I started working on a line of Tuscan-style furniture in High Point and was traveling to North Carolina frequently. We were attracted to the progressive atmosphere and the good airport and the town of Hillsborough in particular. There’s a sense of community there that reminded me of my early home. I always felt at home in the South and we just eased right in here. About that “seeming whim,” I’ve learned to pay attention to those whims. They come from deep instincts.

At the end of my new book, I discover a deeper reason that I was attracted to North Carolina, a hidden family taproot that reaches way down.

IF YOU HAD TO MOVE WITH JUST ONE SUITCASE, WHAT WOULD YOU PACK?

What a nightmare that would be! I’d grab my old diaries and travel journals, photographs (I should scan them!), my Prada coat, chef’s knives, a portrait of my grandson and autographed copies of favorite books.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SPACE?

The dining room of my house in Tuscany. We have a fresco of the local landscape on the wall and an antique oval table that seats ten. We have had so many festive and convivial dinners there! It’s special and full of memories. Here, I love the living room best because it has a wall of windows where the light pours in. Second would be my study, one of those huge rooms over the garage where there’s room for three desks. Who needs three? In the middle of a cookbook, travel book or novel, it’s a great thing to have room to spread out my papers so I can organize.

On November 9, WALTER will present At Home with Frances Mayes, an evening of food, wine and conversation about her travels. Learn more at waltermagazine. com/francesmayes.