Road to Tara

by Anne Edwards

A few weeks later, Peggy had become close enough friends with Marsh to invite Frances down from Lexington, where she was finishing her senior year at the University of Kentucky, for the Easter holiday.

  Despite the cool reception given her by Mr. Mitchell, Frances Marsh had an enjoyable time in the “big cold house” on Peachtree Street. She took to Peggy immediately and was impressed by the way she ran the Mitchell household by herself. During Frances’s visit the house was the scene of several parties. At one, Upshaw drew her into a corner and confided, “John thinks he is going to win Peggy but I’m pulling the big guns.” Frances recalls, “I assumed that meant he was using all of his sex appeal — which he had a lot of!”

  Peggy basked in the excitement of this competition for her affections, prompting John to comment that she should be shot for giving a lifelike imitation of a modern young woman whose blistering passions were only held in check by an iron control. Peggy herself admitted to Frances that her coquetry frequently succeeded so well that all thoughts of seduction were tabled and “rape became more to the point.”

  After Frances’s visit, the two women continued their friendship by mail. Some years later Peggy was to write Frances, “John never tried to rape me. In fact he was the only one of my gentleman friends who didn’t have dishonorable designs upon me. It used to worry me an awful lot and I wept many tears for fear I was losing my sex appeal.” And John later confessed that he desisted only because everyone else was doing it, and he blandly hoped to shine in contrast.

  Always a flirt and a tease, Peggy now seemed to take a certain pleasure in pushing her beaus to the very edge of control — at which crucial moment she would suddenly become all righteous indignation. There was a kind of danger in this situation that titillated Peggy, and it appeared to be enough to satisfy her sexual needs. The game worked with men like John Marsh, who were staunch in their moral beliefs, but Red Upshaw was neither accustomed to being held off in this fashion by a woman nor would he accept such treatment complacently. His pursuit of Peggy intensified.

  Marsh remained constant but unpersisting, and Peggy successfully played one man off against the other for several weeks. Two men could not have been more dissimilar than Red Upshaw and John Marsh. One wonders how they ever came together as roommates. Upshaw was always in search of new excitement — he drove his car too fast, drank too much, spent money recklessly, dared strangers who criticized his behavior to fight or back down, and appeared fearless. If he had plans for the future, they were the only thing he kept to himself. Once out of school he seldom picked up a book, although he had been a brilliant student.

  John Marsh, on the other hand, was an extremely conservative and trustworthy man who seemed older than his twenty-seven years. He was not particularly attractive or memorable. Soft-spoken, almost as tall as Upshaw, but stoop-shouldered, he had the pallor of a man who had often been ill and who had never fully recovered. Glasses shielded his nondescript gray brown eyes. His sandy hair was already receding and flecked with gray. Peggy was the first woman — other than his sister and his mother, to whom he was devoted — with whom he had ever felt comfortable. There had been only one other girl in his life, Kitty Mitchell (no relation to Peggy), who had been in school with him at the University of Kentucky. He had thought they were secretly engaged but, during the war, in which he had served with a medical unit in England and France, she had met and married a wealthy Cuban businessman and gone to live in Havana. This had been quite a blow to Marsh, who had not seriously dated another woman in the intervening four years.

  Marsh was employed as a copy editor for the Associated Press in Atlanta and had also worked on the staffs of the Atlanta Journal, the Atlanta Georgian, and the Lexington Leader. Before the war, he had taught English briefly in his hometown of Maysville, Kentucky. He and Peggy could talk about books and authors, and she shared with him short stories she had written. Marsh was convinced that she had potential as a writer, although Peggy was not inclined to share his enthusiasm for her talent. Marsh had, in fact, once had literary ambitions himself, but he had given them up soon after the start of his newspaper career. Being a sensible, practical man, he had assessed his talents and had come to the conclusion that he might at best be a good editor one day, but that he lacked the creativity required to write a novel. Yet, he recognized Peggy’s ability, and he assured her that she could one day write “a fine American novel.”

  By June, both men claimed to be in love with Peggy and would even divide an evening with her, tossing a coin to determine who got her for the preferred latter half. But it was not long before the outcome became obvious. There had always been a restless, rather wild side to Peggy’s personality; danger appealed to her as much as did thumbing her nose at convention. Upshaw’s unpredictability excited her imagination, and his domineering personality made her feel tremendously feminine.

  It was simple — Upshaw sent Peggy’s sexual temperature soaring, Marsh did not. For a time, these divided evenings helped her to control her natural response to Upshaw’s charms. At last, apparently remembering Maybelle’s advice that the answer to sex was marriage, she accepted the proposal she more or less elicited from Upshaw with the age-old line, “Not unless we are married.”

  Peggy’s engagement to Upshaw had the same effect on Atlanta society as her Apache dance had had — everyone was properly shocked and disapproving. For that matter, no one close to the couple accepted the news with enthusiasm. Marsh was crushed but, being a good sport — and an exemplary martyr — he agreed to be best man. Eugene Mitchell tried to talk his daughter out of the wedding until the last moment; Grandmother Stephens warned her that she was making a great mistake; and Stephens told her she had chosen the wrong man. At the same time, he argued with their father that Eugene’s violent stand was giving Upshaw just the edge he needed. Peggy would marry Upshaw out of her own stubbornness if Eugene persisted. Of course, Eugene Mitchell did persist, and the wedding was set for Saturday, September 2, 1922. Since the bridegroom claimed no religion and Peggy did not want to be married in the Catholic church, the house on Peachtree Street was chosen for the event.

  More was made of Marsh’s position as best man than of the wedding news itself. Not only did the local gossip columnists record their shock and astonishment, but the story of the best man who had also been a serious suitor and lost out to the groom was carried in the Lexington Leader as a feature story. What the papers did not know was the extent to which John Marsh had carried his gallantry. He wrote his sister how devastated he was by Peggy’s choice, but, with a touch of wry humor, he also told her that he was “helping Red to get a trousseau because he was getting ready to get married without even the proper clothes.”

  Peggy and her grandmother tried to patch up their differences to plan for the wedding, but Grandmother Stephens remained disapproving of the groom and of Peggy’s plan to be married by an Episcopalian clergyman. The Mitchell house was the scene of many family arguments during the few weeks preceding the wedding, and both Peggy and her grandmother were reduced to tears more than once. But Annie Fitzgerald Stephens hadn’t lost any of the grit that had helped her survive the Civil War and, twice, the burning of Atlanta. She brought in her dressmaker, arranged the menu, and ordered the flowers. There was an impasse when Peggy threatened to carry a bouquet of red roses, her favorite flower, but she finally backed down in favor of the traditional bridal white spray. Grandmother Stephens must have sighed with great relief — Maybelle’s daughter would have a proper wedding, despite a “heathenish bridegroom and an Episcopalian minister.” Peggy was even to have the traditional trousseau tea the day before the ceremony.

  Grandmother Stephens did her job well. The house on Saturday evening, September 2, 1922, was a perfect wedding scene. An altar constructed of palms, ferns, Easter lilies, white roses, and lilies of the valley, and guarded on each side by six silver candelabra, had been placed in the center of the entrance hall, its back to the front door and facing the wide Colonial stairway with smilax entwined about the ban
ister. The guests, who numbered about eighty-five, entered through the French doors leading from the veranda and were assembled in the two large reception rooms that flanked the hallway.

  At exactly 8:30 P.M., there being no piano in the Mitchell home, a recording of the popular “Kashmiri Song,” Peggy’s selection, was placed on the phonograph that had been set on a table in the stairwell. As the wedding party appeared at the top landing, a thin, high baritone voice signaled the start of the bridal procession.

  Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar

  Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?

  Whom do you lead on rapture’s roadway far

  Before you agonise them in farewell

  Before you agonise them in farewell

  Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar

  Where are you now? Where are you now?

  It was a song of parting, and it rather surprised some of Peggy’s guests, who were to recall it sixty years later as a bizarre choice.

  The two flower girls, Peggy’s young cousins, wore frothy lavender dresses and carried baskets filled with Ophelia roses and lilies of the valley. Following them, as the procession moved down the staircase, was Augusta Dearborn, the maid of honor, in an orchid, brocaded satin gown, carrying a bouquet of orchids and pink roses, and looking quite stunning. Stephens and another groomsman escorted two lavender-gowned bridesmaids.

  All eyes were on the top of the stairs as Peggy appeared on the arm of a dour-faced Eugene Mitchell. Her low-waisted dress was trimmed in pearls and ended at her knees, and her forehead was banded, flapper-style, by pearls that held her lace-and-tulle veil in place. A long narrow train, trimmed with pearls and bordered with silk orange blossoms with seeded centers, was attached to the back of her dress, and in one arm she carried a lavish spray of white roses and lilies of the valley, decorated with long white streamers. If the “Kashmiri Song” had been a strange choice, her flapper bridal gown, with its long grafted train and the oversized coronet and veil, was disastrous. As the towering bridegroom and his tall best man met her at the foot of the stairs, she looked like nothing so much as a child playing dress-up.

  Upshaw, handsome and elegant in a dark gray suit, a white rose in his lapel, stood erect and smiling, with Marsh, stoic and bland-faced, behind him. Peggy marched grandly and slowly to his side before the altar, stopping as the record ended. When the bride and groom knelt to exchange their vows, Grandmother Stephens lost her composure, sobbing so loudly that she was forced to retreat to the rear hall so as not to disrupt the service.

  The bride and groom made a dramatic departure immediately after cutting the cake. Still in their wedding attire, Peggy’s train nearly tripping her up as she tossed her bouquet to Augusta, they ran out into the night, jumped into Red’s bright green automobile, and drove away with a screech of rubber on pavement. They did not go far, however, as arrangements had been made for them to spend the night at the bachelor apartment of Upshaw and Marsh. Early the next morning, they left for North Carolina, where they planned to stay at an inn in Asheville before going on to Raleigh to visit Upshaw’s parents.

  After the honeymoon, friends noticed an edge in Peggy and Red’s attitude toward each other that seemed to indicate that it had not been the happiest of times. Later, Peggy conceded that she never should have discussed her romantic feelings for Clifford Henry during the trip, nor sent the Henrys a postcard.

  The young couple were to live at the Peachtree Street house by decree of Eugene Mitchell, who said he did not want to see his daughter starving somewhere in a rented room — nor did he want to lose her services as housekeeper. An argument developed on this point almost upon their return. Although his finances were unstable at best, Upshaw wanted Peggy to leave Peachtree Street with him and take her chances on how he was to support her. She refused to do so until he found a position with a guaranteed weekly paycheck. Quarrels ensued, and Peggy wrote complaining letters to John Marsh, who had been transferred to the Washington office of the Associated Press right after the wedding, telling him of their disharmony. Marsh’s return letters were always mediatory.

  But John Marsh was not the only person to whom Peggy wrote of her woes. As October 16, 1922, the fourth anniversary of Clifford Henry’s death, approached, she began a correspondence with Mr. and Mrs. Henry that was on a close, intimate level. It was at the time of her marriage to Red Upshaw, Stephens claims, that Peggy realized Clifford Henry had been her one true love. If true, this must have greatly affected her relationship with Upshaw. At this time, she often talked about Clifford Henry and their idealized romance to her close friends, and she discussed it in several letters to the Henrys. As for Upshaw, he was frequently and publicly drunk and was abusive to her at these times. Once, he physically assaulted her before guests.

  In December, Peggy begged John Marsh to return to Atlanta to talk to Red about his drinking problem. Frances Marsh was visiting her brother in Washington at this time, and he discussed the situation with her. “I think he went back to Atlanta mostly because of his love for her,” she says. “It was a steady love as far as he was concerned. Maybe for her, too. She realized that he would be what Red wasn’t, you see. Red was a wild creature.”

  Marsh did, indeed, return to Atlanta and it would seem from his sister’s words that he intended to woo Peggy away from Upshaw. It was not too difficult a task, for no sooner had he arrived than they telephoned to tell him they had decided to get a divorce and were on their way over to his hotel to speak to him. John calmed them down that night, but Peggy went home alone.

  “They attempted the impossible,” John wrote Frances, “and failed after an honest effort because it was impossible. Both of them have brilliant possibilities for the future if they leave each other alone. It is most gratifying to me that our trio remained a trio and didn’t turn into a triangle.”

  The morning following their discussion with John, Red appeared at the house, pale, hung-over, drained of all anger and emotion. He dispassionately told Peggy he was going to Asheville, North Carolina, where he had a chance of a good job, and that she could go ahead and get a divorce if she wanted because he was never coming back to Atlanta. There was an indifference in his attitude that was to disturb Peggy for years to come. Perhaps if he had made some small conciliatory gesture that morning, she might have been willing to try again. But he left the house on Peachtree Street without a backward glance. He drove off in his sporty green car and did, indeed, head for North Carolina. But he was to return.

  Chapter Eight

  PEGGY TURNED to John Marsh as soon as Red Upshaw was gone, enjoying with him a warm, almost platonic relationship that put no pressure on her. Marsh admired Peggy, not for her daredevil abilities (he had never been either physically agile or inclined to any sport other than swimming), but for the writing talent he believed she possessed and which he knew he did not. There were other reasons, of course. Marsh was kind, gentle, unobtrusive, always dependable, a man who could be relied upon to get a job done in an impeccable fashion. But he was not an exciting or venturesome person and, until Red Upshaw had come into his life, he had been pretty much of a loner. He was not antisocial, but he was of a reticent nature and did not make friends easily. Like Upshaw, Peggy was a glamorous figure, and she appealed to him for some of the same reasons that his old roommate had. Not only was she a firebrand, and daring where he was not, she also had a quick sense of humor and a unique look that made her the center of attention at most gatherings. In Peggy’s company, Marsh had a sense of identity — a sense of importance and of being needed — that he did not have otherwise.

  It did not take a great deal of convincing on Peggy’s part to persuade John to remain in Atlanta, but he had to quit his job to do so, for the Atlanta office of the Associated Press now had no room for him. A position soon opened in the public-relations department of Georgia Power and Light, and, although the work was not creative, he wrote Frances that the pay was good and that he “wanted to get on with making the best living” he could.<
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  Her marriage to Upshaw over except for the legalities, Peggy was once again faced with the problem of her own immediate future. Eugene Mitchell’s financial position had not improved, and there would be no support coming from Upshaw. Either she had to be content to be her father’s housekeeper or she had to find a job. She elected to do the latter, and John Marsh convinced her that she had enough education and talent to become a reporter.

  Gathering together both her courage and some of her Smith English compositions, she went to the offices of the Atlanta Journal, in an old, five-story, red brick building that rose in grimy ruggedness above the railroad tracks on Forsyth Street. Peggy asked for an interview with city editor Harlee Branch and, after a two-hour wait, she was finally ushered to his desk in the paper-and-spittoon-cluttered city room and began her assault. Branch was a tough-talking old pro who did not much approve of women in newspaper offices and who was as proud of his all-male staff’s ability to drink hard as he was of their ability to work hard. He later said he was impressed by Peggy Mitchell’s earnestness and the way she had gone about asking for a job, and he claimed he would have given her one but for the fact that the only women reporters on the paper worked on the Sunday magazine and the society sections, and he did not feel the time had come for the Journal to hire “regular” women reporters.

  Peggy went back to John with this news, and he wasted no time in contacting Medora Field Perkerson, whom he had known when he had worked as a copy editor for the Atlanta Journal Magazine, to tell her about Peggy. Medora was married to Angus Perkerson, the magazine’s editor, and was herself the assistant editor. She suggested that the young woman call Angus for an appointment.

  Perkerson was the dour Scotsman that his name suggested. Yet, he was a mild-mannered, gentle man, and those close to the Perkersons felt that he made few moves without Medora’s approval. His wife had liked the idea of a former debutante working on the Sunday magazine, believing it might lead to some good society stories, and, as a woman staff writer was quitting to get married, Angus agreed to see Mrs. Upshaw. When Peggy — weighing less than ninety pounds and looking about sixteen in her boyish suit, a beret pulled down gamine-fashion over one eye — walked into his office, he was not at all sure Medora’s first instincts had been sound. But the more Peggy talked, glibly exaggerating her experience, telling him of her brief — and, he was certain, nonexistent — newspaper job on the Springfield Republican, and “swearing she was a speed-demon on a Remington,” the more he became convinced that his wife was right. Mrs. Upshaw would make a good newspaper reporter, for she knew how to talk her way into someone’s confidence. By the time she left the office, Peggy had been hired as a cub reporter at twenty-five dollars a week, the lowest pay on the paper, and with the warning that she was only on trial.