Mrs. Littlejohn's Place (Location Key)

"Mrs. Littlejohn's huge, unpainted boarding house" in Frenchman's Bend already exists in Faulkner's imagination in Flags in the Dust, though it is only glimpsed as Byron Snopes drives past it in the dark (278), and both Mrs. Littlejohn and her "hotel" - as it's called in The Hamlet - play important roles in the first two novels in the Snopes trilogy. The Hamlet describes the building itself as "a sprawling rambling edifice partly of sawn boards and partly of logs, unpainted and of two storeys" behind a sign advertising "ROOMS AND BORD" (31). Flem Snopes eats lunch there with a relative in "Lizards in Jamshyd's Courtyard" (148). Its rooms are rented mostly by "drummers" - traveling salesmen - and "livestock-traders" visiting the area on business, in particular V.K. Ratliff, though several of the rooms are very briefly visited by one of the "Spotted Horses." It is either "a quarter of a mile down the road" from Varner's store ("Lizards," 149) or directly across the road from Varner's (Hamlet, 31), and at least in that novel serves as a gathering place for men "from the adjacent homes within walking distance" when the store is closed after sunset.