De Spain Mansion in The Mansion (Location)

The mansion in The Mansion originally belonged to the de Spain family. The novel does not give any specific location for it, and throughout the Yoknapatawpha fictions the de Spain residence moves around quite a bit; we have chosen to locate it in Jefferson. The original house was "jest a house: two storey, with a gallery [porch] for Major de Spain, Manfred's paw, to set on" (170). But when Flem takes it over, he determines to make it into a "physical symbol of . . . generations of respectability and aristocracy," like Yoknapatawpha's plantation mansions (171). He hires a family member, Wat Snopes, turn it into a more stately mansion with "colyms to reach all the way from the ground up to the second storey roof" (171). Wat bases the renovations upon a "picture in a magazine" so that the "fireplaces" have "colonial molding and colyums and cornices too" (173). And Flem employs a "Memphis expert" on interior decoration to furnish the mansion (173), though in order to be comfortable, given his own poor white background, he also has Wat nail a board to the elaborate fireplace on which he can rest his feet.