Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh

by Marianne Walker

  Peggy sent Lois Cole a list of twenty-two titles that included Milestones, Ba! Ba! Blacksheep, Jettison, None So Blind, Not in Our Stars, and Bugles Sang True. Next to number seventeen—Gone With the Wind—she drew a star and in a penciled note identified Dowson as the source of the phrase and wrote: “I’ll agree to any one of these you like, but I like this one the best.”57

  On October 30, 1935, she told Latham that the day before she had received a nice long letter from Lois, who confirmed Scarlett as the heroine’s name and spoke of Tomorrow Is Another Day as a tentative title. But Sam Tupper, a neighbor of the Marshes who wrote reviews, told her that he had reviewed a book by that title sometime within the previous six or eight months. While she could not find a book by that title listed in the 1935 catalogue at the library, the librarians also assured her that there was such a book, published within the last year. She wrote Latham:

  Maybe we are all wrong and the power of suggestion is working on us. Maybe “Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” “There’s Always Tomorrow” “Tomorrow Will Be Fair” “Tomorrow Morning” etc. have mixed us up. . . . Also John who is an advertising man, blocked out that title and said that it was awfully long for gracefulness. I hate to seem a chopper and a changer but the more I think of it, the more I incline to “Gone With the Wind.” Taken completely away from its context, it has movement, it could either refer to times that are gone like the snows of yesteryear, to the things that passed with the wind of the war or to a person who went with the wind rather than standing against it. What do you think of it?

  Latham liked it. Many people agree with Finis Farr, who thought that the novel would have been a success if she had called it simply “A Story.” Farr said, “But the extra dimensions of success the book achieved may well be due, more than to any other single factor, to its perfect title.”58

  Lois Cole wrote Peggy on October 31, informing her that Latham was out of town but that she was forwarding Peggy’s letter and the original of the entire first chapter in hopes that he would find time to read it and advise her. “I am not at all sure that he will be able to, and, if he can’t, I will send it to the man at Columbia who read your whole book and is interested in it.” She added, “I know, however, you would rather have Mr. Latham than anybody else.” Although Peggy had not asked Lois, who was a little miffed, what she thought of the first chapter or of the title, Lois wrote: “Personally, I like Gone With the Wind very much, although I don’t think it fits the book as well as Tomorrow Is Another Day.”59

  About the blurb Lois wrote, “I am responsible for the paragraph in the blurb which mentioned you and your ancestors. Something has to be said about the author.” She was referring to the fact that Peggy had been annoyed with the manner in which Lois had changed the biographical description to read: “The author is descended from people who have loved and fought for Georgia for two hundred years.” Peggy protested that that would mean that her people came over with Oglethorpe’s debtors and bond servants and they did not. “Two hundred years ago is a very definite date in Georgia history,” Peggy pointed out. “As a matter of fact, my people straggled into Georgia at different times.”60

  Given the friendship the two women had enjoyed earlier in Atlanta, it appears that Lois would have been Peggy’s likely choice for an editor, but Peggy’s letters during this period indicate that she did not want Lois to function in any way as her editor and did not want to hear any of Lois’s suggestions. It is clear that Peggy preferred dealing directly with Latham, who as vice-president secured manuscripts but no longer edited them. Always more comfortable around men, she probably preferred working with them. And then, too, she was accustomed to working with John. However, Latham traveled and was often unavailable, making it necessary for Lois to carry on Macmillan’s communications with the Marshes.

  Lois frequently offered her unsolicited advice, as she did here in a postscript to her letter:

  I am still worried about Scarlett. Somebody said it sounds like a Good Housekeeping story, and Rachel Field says it is unwise. . . . If I wasn’t so worried about it, I wouldn’t mention it. Have you any other thoughts?61

  The Marshes were more than a little annoyed with Lois’s “concern” and with her question, “Have you any other thoughts?” at a time when they were inundated with nothing but nettlesome thoughts about the book, particularly about the first chapter. They decided to ignore her remarks and go on about their business. When Latham’s letter of November 4 arrived, they sighed with relief, for he loved the first chapter. He exclaimed, “It is absolutely all right!” In fact, he thought that she had accomplished a great deal and saw nothing “self conscious or amateurish about the first two pages,” adding “They are, it seems to me, good writing and essential. I think to pick up intense interest as you do—and I’m sure that begins on page 3—is quite an accomplishment.”62

  Never failing to praise her, Latham wrote what she so desperately needed to know: “Reading this chapter now again stirs in me the emotions your entire book arouses: admiration for your style of writing, and for the excellence of your characterization, and the very human note that predominates in it. I am exceedingly gratified that we are to have the privilege of publishing this novel. I know we are going to do well with it.”63 He instructed her not to give another thought to the first chapter but to go on with the balance of the book.

  About the title and the name, he wrote: “I like Scarlett as the name very much. It seems just right. . . . Personally, I also like the title GONE WITH THE WIND—but I don’t know how our sales people will like it. I’m leaving that with Lois Cole to investigate with our sales people. . . . It seems to me that it is unusual and intriguing.”

  He thought her description of getting a photograph undeniably funny, “even though I know the difficulties are anything but funny. You have a way, however, of describing them that takes away from their seriousness.”64 He concluded by telling her with “all honesty” that there had rarely been a novel about the publication of which he had been so excited and to the appearance of which he looked forward more eagerly.65

  With that kind of editorial support, the Marshes were more determined than ever not to disappoint him. They worked frantically, talking on the phone often during the day. John kept a notepad by his side at work so that he could jot down notes, questions, and ideas. Many times he proofed some sections of the manuscript in his office during the day.66 Peggy would call him from the courthouse records room or from the library, tearfully asking him for advice or joyfully telling him about some wonderful information she had uncovered. He was so preoccupied with the manuscript that Rhoda did not see how he could continue keeping himself afloat holding down the two jobs. He lost weight and looked tired all the time. He kept a cigarette clamped in his mouth. Instead of eating lunch, he drank Coca-Colas and smoked more cigarettes. Because he worked past midnight every night, he would often oversleep and come to work late in the mornings. His coworkers remembered that around this time he started taking a cab to work instead of the streetcar.67 But neither Mr. Arkwright nor any of his peers criticized him, for as they said, he had “chips to cash in.” They were all quietly supportive, letting their imaginations run free about what the book would be like when it finally appeared.68 At this point John never talked about it with anyone there except Rhoda, Grace, Mary, and Mr. Arkwright. A kind of business-as-usual attitude existed among the men, and except for the occasional gossip of the secretaries who knew their bosses’ business, little talk went on about it.

  The two employees closest to him and who knew the most about his business at that time were Rhoda Williams, who was soon to marry Joe Kling, and Grace Alderman. Rhoda was working hard helping him keep up with all of his office business, and Grace was typing all of the manuscript to send to Macmillan. These two women stayed very busy, working overtime for months. Although he did not mean to do so, John made life difficult for them sometimes. He was obsessively careful with the revisions, and he was a perfectionist. Occasionally, he became incensed when eithe
r typist inadvertently changed the spelling or the punctuation of a dialect word or a colloquialism. And he was constantly revising. Every morning, John would take the copy he and Peggy had perfected the night before to work with him and give it to Grace, who would hand him the work she had completed the night before. Then John would proof her typed pages. After putting in a full day’s work at Georgia Power, Grace did all the typing of the manuscript in the evening at her home on her own typewriter. It was an enormous task for her in more than one way, not only in trying to read all the notes and corrections scribbled all over the pages but also in accommodating all the changes John was constantly making. He kept revising the revisions, the ones that she had already typed. And she was typing carbon copies, which made making corrections even more difficult. Although Rhoda was typing sections too, it got to the point where another typist was needed to help Grace stay caught up.69 Mary Singleton said Rhoda and Grace were perhaps the happiest, most relieved people of all when the book was finally finished.70

  7

  The pressure during the last weeks before Christmas was enormous. Peggy had become visibly tense and weak. In four weeks, she had lost seventeen pounds.71 With the shaved spots on her scalp where the boils had been removed, she looked like a small waif. She was also having gynecological problems that would later require surgery. “Ever since I got in that accident in November and got the steering gear in the navel I have been bleeding steadily,” she wrote Lois Cole.

  Some times just a little, some times it rises to the hemorrhage point. It has been controlled with shots of petuitrin. However both doctors refused to have anything more to do with me until such a time as I was willing to lie down for two weeks and do nothing. They want to eliminate any possible nervous strain that might be affecting me. During this two weeks they intend to use some new gland stuff antuitrim “S.” I think it will do the job. The three shots I’ve had have worked marvelously. If rest in bed and shots do not work then I’ll have to go to the hospital. I do not know whether they will a try curretment first or not . . . I think and hope and believe that if I can just lie still and use these shots and gain back some of my lost seventeen pounds I will be all right in a month or so. I cannot believe I have anything badly out of place among my chittlings because I had them badly out of place more before and know the feeling.72

  With the combination of physical and emotional ills, she was no longer able to keep up her pace. By November, the work had overpowered her. In a pattern that she had followed all of her adult life when things got too difficult, she got ill, took to her bed, and stayed there until things blew over. In reading the letters that she wrote after the editing process began, one can see that her complaints about her health actually began shortly after the editing sessions started. Sitting long hours at the typewriter or in the library made her back hurt so that she was unable to rest or to sleep. Reading made her eyes weak, and on some days she had to lie in a dark room with a cloth covering her eyes. A growth that arose from holding a pen so much had to be removed from her third finger on her right hand. Then there were those hideous boils on her scalp. With such a wide range of ailments, probably both real and imaginary, she was excused from work. For weeks, she languished while John kept working. All the long, detailed business letters to Macmillan continued to be from him.

  Just after Thanksgiving, when Lois started persistently hammering him to give her the manuscript, he asked Mr. Arkwright for some vacation time. On December 16, Lois sent a drawing that was to be used on the jacket design and asked for approval but said that the artist needed the entire manuscript. On December 19, she telegrammed, “Rush all available manuscript.”73 John wired back, “Manuscript sent air mail, more to follow, also letter.”74 With reluctance, he sent some sections that he had not proofed as thoroughly as he would have liked.75 Now only the last section—part 5—had to be finished. Lois said that Mr. Latham and E. E. (Jim) Hale of the editorial department had come to her separately and both seemed very urgent about it. “I am sure you are working your head off, and I hate to hound you, but do shoot it along.” Lois and Jim thought that whatever was finished should be sent immediately and the rest later, although Latham thought it best to wait and get it all at one time.

  John worked straight through the Christmas holidays without taking a break until Christmas Day, when Peggy insisted they relax and have friends in. She invited so many people that, she wrote, “some of them had to squat in the hallway.”76 Even though the word about her book was out, and their close friends wanted to celebrate, she still did not feel comfortable talking about the novel until she saw it in print, and she did not talk about it. She lived in fear that something would happen—at the last minute—to cause Macmillan to cancel the contract.

  The day after Christmas, John picked up his frantic pace but with the help of a valuable assistant. Miss Margaret Baugh, an intelligent, quiet, sparrowlike woman, began working part-time for him to help finish getting the manuscript out. The Marshes had gotten acquainted with Miss Baugh while she worked in the Atlanta branch office of the Macmillan Company after it had reopened its offices there in 1934. Highly competent and trustworthy, she worked out so well that a year later, he hired her as Peggy’s full-time secretary. A loyal friend, Miss Baugh remained with the Marshes, and after their deaths, Stephens Mitchell hired her to continue taking care of the Gone With the Wind business. She never married and spent the remainder of her life looking after the book.

  Starting at the first of the year, telegrams were flying thick as snowflakes back and forth between New York and Atlanta. On January 7, 1936, Margaret Baugh sent Macmillan a telegram saying, “We are forwarding you about three quarters of Peggy Mitchell’s manuscript, the portion she has finished to date.”77 On the eleventh, Lois wired back acknowledging the receipt of the manuscript, saying she would send galleys soon, and asking, “When do you think you’ll have the rest finished?” Five days (January 16) later, Margaret Baugh sent more manuscript.78

  On January 26, 1936, Grace finished all of the typescript except a few sections in part 5, and John stayed up all night proofreading. Peggy slept late, for her physical state had deteriorated to such an extent that she was now spending most of her days in bed with the shades drawn. Her eyes had been strained so badly that her physician ordered her not to read anything, and her back ached so painfully that she could not sit up.

  When John arrived at his office around 10:30 the morning of January 28, 1936, the first thing that Rhoda hesitantly handed him was a wire from Lois Cole demanding: “When will the complete manuscript reach us?” Rhoda told others later that John was more exhausted and furious that morning than she had ever seen him.79

  Toward the middle of the afternoon, when it looked as if they were nearly through correcting all the final typed sheets, he instructed Rhoda, “Go ahead! Send the wire to Macmillan!” At 4:00 P.M., Tuesday, January 29, 1936, she telegrammed Lois: “Completed manuscript will be in mail tomorrow.”

  8

  In unison, they all loudly sighed with relief when Rhoda handed the envelope containing the last of the manuscript to the postal delivery boy. It had taken them nearly five months to do the job. But John and Peggy did not have time to rest or to rejoice in the thought of seeing the book in print or of getting some royalties from it. The day after the last part of the manuscript was mailed, John—not Peggy—entered St. Joseph’s Infirmary. His physician had been recommending for the past several months that John have hemorrhoidal surgery, as he had been passing blood for months.

  On January 30, 1936, the day he entered the hospital, John wrote Lois a seven-page, double-spaced letter. Exhausted and sick, he wrote nothing about his own condition, but his first line sets the tone for the entire letter:

  I hope my telegram and the g d manuscript have reached you long ere this. The Marsh family was in a state of collapse when we finally got it into the mail Wednesday noon and we have just come up for air. Peggy is still sick, hence my performing the job of letter writing to discuss with you on
e or two matters which she thought shouldn’t wait until she was able to sit up to a typewriter.80

  Politely but coolly, he said how sorry they were that they did not get to see Lois’s husband, their old friend Allan Taylor, who had recently been in Atlanta. “Peggy was in no shape to see callers at that time,” he explained, going on to say that during the last few months they had alienated the affections of quite a number of people who had been “pestering Peggy,” mainly those “in bare acquaintance and some total strangers” who wanted to be around her once they discovered her novel was to be published. About Lois’s invitation to Peggy to come to New York after the book came out, John wrote: “Don’t expect her to come and don’t let the Macmillan Company make any plans on the assumption that she may come. Of course, your remarks and his [Allan’s] may not have been serious enough to justify this comment, may just have been polite expressions of hospitality, but she wanted her position made clear to prevent any future troubles that might grow out of your—and Macmillan’s—failure to understand her position.”81

  He went into a lengthy description of all Peggy’s ailments, saying rather bluntly:

  The reason why she has been in bed the past two weeks is the fact that getting the book delivered to you involved the most serious and the most prolonged strain she has had to undergo in many years. She hasn’t yet recovered from the injuries to her back which she received in the automobile accident. . . . Sitting up for hours at a time, day after day, over a period of weeks, typing, editing the MS, handling heavy reference books, etc., was about the worst possible thing she could have done. It was a marvel to me that she held out as long as she did . . . and then her ailments got her down and the doctor ordered her to bed. The doctor thinks she may yet have to have an operation—one which she might have had a couple of months ago except for the book—and her whole campaign now is to get herself rested up and postpone the operation at least until after the proofs are read and the job is finished. It won’t help her resting a bit, if she thinks Macmillan is making plans based on her coming to New York when she may not be able to come.