Road to Tara

by Anne Edwards

  “Her daughter inherits that characteristic. She loves her village beau, too, but she can’t have him. And she will go through hell and everything else to get him. And then, after all these things have occurred — war, pestilence, and so on — she has her hands on him and all of a sudden finds out that it was just a juvenile fantasy.

  “And that is the crux. It’s a psychiatric novel.”

  But the millions of readers of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind would never accept Stephens Mitchell’s explanation of his sister’s book. Nor would they agree that he is the keeper of the Margaret Mitchell legacy. For Gone With the Wind has become a part of our culture and, therefore, its legacy belongs to the people. Atlanta and its environs will evermore be known as Gone With the Wind country, and the words of the title, Gone With the Wind, will always reverberate with the defiance of a people whom Margaret Mitchell refused to let die.

  In the vault of the Citizens and Southern National Bank, in a sealed envelope, are stored a few pages of the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind, preserved there as proof — should the need for it arise — of Margaret Mitchell’s authorship.

  Stephens Mitchell professes that he has not examined the contents of the safe-deposit box where John Marsh placed the envelope, which is supposed to contain samples of his wife’s manuscript with corrections in her own hand and special research material that would prove without “a question of a doubt” that Margaret Mitchell and no one else wrote Gone With the Wind. Back in 1952, Stephens said he had no intention of ever breaking the seal on the envelope unless requested to do so by tax authorities. This was never asked of him, and so those remnants of the writing of Gone With the Wind remain in the vault, the seal unbroken.

  Why John Marsh and Stephens Mitchell felt someone might challenge Margaret Mitchell’s authorship of Gone With the Wind after her death is understandable, because Stephens, at least, had had to continue to contend with numerous lawsuits brought by unscrupulous people who wanted to trade in on the bonanza the book had made. But what is not so easy to understand is why they did not simply give the material to a university or library, so that scholars could have access to it and so that there would have been no question as to the book’s authorship.

  The answer Stephens Mitchell gives is that his sister had wanted all her papers destroyed and, in fact, had a passion for leaving nothing in the way of close personal possessions behind her. He further states that she had told him she even wanted the house on Peachtree Street destroyed once he no longer cared to live in it, as she did not want strange people wandering through rooms that had once been hers. And that deed was done — 1401 Peachtree Street was torn down in the 1950s shortly after Stephens Mitchell’s first wife, Carrie Lou, died.

  Whether or not Gone With the Wind is a masterpiece has always been a matter of controversy. It is, perhaps, the most compulsively readable novel in the English language, a book that, despite its length — it is as long as War and Peace — has been read by people over and over again, and each time with great suspense, as though, somehow, this time the story might end differently. The book has survived the passage of many decades of world change, changes that have made much of the work of Margaret Mitchell’s contemporaries obsolete. But, ever since 1936, the South of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods has been viewed by Americans through Margaret Mitchell’s eyes.

  Excluding the Bible, Gone With the Wind has outsold, in hard cover, any other book, and its sales do not seem to be diminishing. To date, the book has sold six million hardcover copies in the United States; one million copies in England; and nine million copies in foreign translation. Worldwide, it continues to sell over 100,000 hardcover copies annually, and 250,000 paperback copies are sold every year in the United States.

  Perhaps the sales of a novel do not determine its literary qualifications, but its lasting images do. And who can now think of the South before, during, and after the Civil War without images drawn from the pages of Gone With the Wind? Scarlett seated under the shade of a huge oak, surrounded by beaus at the Wilkeses’ barbecue; Scarlett defying convention and dancing in her widow’s weeds with the dashing scoundrel, Rhett Butler; the hundreds of wounded lying in the pitiless sun, “shoulder to shoulder, head to feet” by the railroad tracks at Atlanta’s depot; the burning of Atlanta; Scarlett’s journey on the road to Tara; the moment when Scarlett claws the earth to take from it a radish root to stave her hunger; Black Sam and Shantytown; Mammy and her red petticoat; Prissy during the birth of Melanie’s baby; and — oh, yes — Scarlett O’Hara crying, “What shall I do?” when Rhett Butler finally decides to leave her and Atlanta, and Rhett’s reply, “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”

  To Edwin Granberry, Margaret Mitchell once wrote, “I didn’t know being an author was like this, or I don’t think I’d have been an author.’ Her life after the publication of Gone With the Wind certainly did become, as she said, “anxious and bedeviled,” and it is perhaps the world’s good fortune that Margaret Mitchell was not as prescient as she believed herself to be. Yet, it is my feeling that had she known that her novel was to become an enduring American classic, nothing could have stopped her from writing and publishing it.

  Author’s Note

  All references to Gone With the Wind page numbers are to the original 1936 edition and are accurate only in printings with 1037 pages. There has been only one previous biography of Margaret Mitchell, Fihis Farr’s Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta (New York: William Morrow Company, Inc., 1965). For reference, I suggest Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind Letters, 1936–1949, Richard Harwell, editor (New York: Macmillan, Inc., 1976); GWTW: The Screenplay by Sydney Howard, Richard Harwell, editor (New York: Macmillan, Inc., 1980); Roland Flamini, Scarlelf, Rhett & a Cast of Thousands (New York: Macmillan, Inc., 1975); and Technical Adviser: The Makillg of Gone With the Wind; The Letters of Wilbur Kurtz (Atlanta Historical Society, vol. xxii, no. 2, 1978).

  The two largest collections of Margaret Mitchell’s letters and documents are in the Margaret Mitchell Marsh Archives, University of Georgia; and the Macmillan Archives, New York Public Library. Other collections repose at Smith College, Dalton Junior College, Emory University, the Atlanta Historical Society, the Atlanta Public Library, and the Margaret Mitchell Library in Fayetteville, Georgia.

  The following abbreviations have been used to simplify the notes to this volume:

  AHB Atlanta Historical Bulletin, Richard Harwell. ed.

  AHBMMM Atlanta Historical Bulletin, Margaret Mitchell memorial issue, Richard Harwell, ed., May, 1950

  AHSMMA Atlanta Historical Society Margaret Mitchell Archives

  AHSWKA Atlanta Historical Society Wilbur Kurtz Archives

  AJ Atlanta Journal

  AJ&C Atlanta Journal and Constitution

  AJMMM Atlanta Journal, Margaret Mitchell memorial Issue, Dec. 23. 1949

  AJM Atlanta Journal Magazine

  AJMA Atlanta Journal Magazine Archives

  EM Eugene Mitchell

  FF Finis Farr, Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta (New York: William Morrow Company, Inc., 1965)

  FMZ Frances Marsh Zane

  GB George Brett

  HCC Terry Bakken, Historic Clayton County Jonesboro: Historical Jonesboro, Inc., 1975)

  HSL Harold Strong Latham

  JM John Marsh

  LDC Lois Dwight Cole

  Letters, RH Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind Letters, 1936–1949, Richard Harwell, ed. (New York: Macmillan, Inc., 1976)

  MANYPL Macmillan Archives, New York Public Library

  MSM Maybelle Stephens Mitchell

  MFPAJ&C Medora Field Perkerson, Atlanta Journal and Constitution

  MFPMc Medora Field Perkerson, McCall’s

  MFPAUG Medora Field Perkerson Archives, University of Georgia

  MM Margaret Mitchell

  MMMAUG Margaret Mitchell Marsh Archives, University of Georgia

  NYTBR New York Times Book Review

  PI Personal Interview

  MMASC Mar
garet Mitchell Archives, Smith College

  SM Stephens Mitchell

  UG University of Georgia

  VM Virginia Morris

  Notes

  EPIGRAPH

  GWTW, p. 397.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Caroline Pafford Miller, Lamb in His Bosom (New York and London: Harper Brothers, 1933).

  “the great houses”: Mark Sullivan, Our Times — The United States, vol. 6, The Twenties (New York and London: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936).

  Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932). Caldwell (b. 1903 in White Oaks, Georgia) worked with MM on the AJ.

  “Peggy Mitchell Marsh”: AJMMM.

  “Peggy won’t like it”: AJMMM.

  “a product of the Jazz Age”: Letters, RH; MM to Gilbert Govan, July 8, 1936.

  The three men immortalized on Stone Mountain are Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson. and Jefferson Davis. They were not the men originally to be so honored. There were to have been five — Generals John Brown Gordon, Pierce M. Butler Young, Thomas R. R. Cobb, Henry . Benning, and Ambrose Ransome Wright. Work had not been completed on the monument in 1935. and it was not finished until 1963.

  “I have no novel”: AJMMM.

  “No sooner”: AJM, May 6, 1923.

  “I hate to press”: AJMMM.

  Which word in the text of GWTW MM considered dirty remains a mystery. There are numerous expletives in the text as printed, but none seem in bad taste.

  “Jackassed”: LDC, NYTBR, Dec. 12, 1962.

  “Please don’t talk”: AJMMM.

  “Why are you writing a book”: LDC, NYTBR, Dec. 12, 1962.

  “See!”: Ibid.

  “sixty first chapters”: MM to FM(Z), undated.

  “excerpts”: Ibid.

  “hatless, hair flying”: Ibid.

  “tiny woman”: AJMMM.

  “The book is about”: Macmillan pamphlet, 1936, MANYPL.

  CHAPTER TWO

  General William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–1891). The Atlanta Campaign (July 22, 1864) and Sherman’s subsequent March to the Sea led some historians to consider him the top federal officer of the war. After destroying Atlanta’s military resources on Nov. 15, 1864, Sherman proceeded toward Savannah, successfully violating military convention by operating deep within hostile territory. GWTW pp. 313–392 deal with the Battle of Atlanta.

  The founding of Atlanta is discussed in GWTW, pp. 141–143.

  “vast sheets of flame”: Captain George W. Pepper, Sherman’s Campaigns in Georgia, pp. 239–240.

  “go to the mayor”: Letters, R.H.; MM to Mrs. Julia Collier Harris, April 28, 1936.

  The house at 187 Jackson Street burned to the ground in 1916. Later, a Negro tenement occupied the spot. The area has recently been rebuilt.

  “taught things”: Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 1, 1979 (interview with SM).

  “It was like an ancient”: Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 1, 1979 (interview with SM).

  “Somebody’s Darling” is quoted in GWTW, p. 297.

  “scooped up”: AJMMM.

  “on bony knees”: Ibid.

  “Cavalry knees”: Ibid.

  “pistol factories”: Ibid. MM used this litany in GWTW, p. 146.

  “terribly important”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Description of afternoon rides: AJMMM.

  “It would have taken”: Ibid.

  “Fine and wealthy people”: Medora Field Perkerson, radio interview, July 1936.

  Sarah (Sis) Fitzgerald (1838–1932) and Mary (Mamie) Fitzgerald (1840–1932) were MM’s maternal great-aunts. Both were spinsters. Sis recorded her own oral history of the Fitzgerald family (MMMAUG).

  “There was just”: PI.

  “Annie, visiting from”: HCC.

  “hangin’ on”: Ibid. This episode was the foundation of a scene between Rhett and Bonnie, GWTW, p. 915.

  Stately Oaks, built in 1830, was moved in 1972 to MM Memorial Park, Clayton County; Johnson House (John-Blalock House), built in 1840, still standing; Warren House, built in 1840, visited often by MM, still standing; the Crawford House (The Crawford-Talmadge House), built in 1835, still standing. The latter could well have been the model for Twelve Oaks.

  “hold against”: HCC.

  The stories of MM’s maternal grandmother (Eleanor McGhan Fitzgerald) and her jewelry saved from the Yankees (Sarah Fitzgerald’s recorded oral history, MMMAUG) were the basis of two important scenes in GWTW, pp. 464 and 545.

  “blood-colored after rains”: GWTW, p. 8.

  “In the night”: MMMAUG.

  “contained depravities”: JM to Edwin Granberry, Jan. 1937.

  “the hide beat off of”: a phrase often used by MM in letters and interviews. It appears three times in Letters, R.H.; and in two of Medora Field Perkerson’s interview articles for the Atlanta Constitution.

  “because none of the little boys”: AHB, summer 1981.

  “I would never forget”: Ibid.

  “Watch me turn”: SM, AHBMMM. SM believes this accident was the basis of the death scenes of Gerald O’Hara (GWTW, p. 702) and Bonnie Butler (GWTW, p. 991).

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Tolstoy and most of the Russian”: Letters, R.H.; MM to Dr. Mark Allen Patton, July 11, 1936.

  “Dream of Heaven Waltz”: SM, AHBMMM.

  “Locations”: MMMAUG.

  “fought for Georgia”: Macmillan pamphlet, 1936, MANYPL.

  “had not made a social”: FF, p. 38.

  “Margaret was only happy”: PI.

  “Nearly everybody”: Ibid.

  “Unity, Margaret”: AHB, summer 1981.

  “There are authors”: FF, p. 34.

  “Peggy lay”: 1916–17 yearbook, Washington Seminary, MMMAUG.

  This photograph of MM: MMMAUG.

  “hideous red glow”: AJ, May 22, 1917. MM used these exact words in GWTW, p. 383. MM drew images of Atlanta burning (GWTW, pp. 383–387) from this experience, and also from the AJ coverage of the disaster.

  “Lost children here!”: AHBMMM.

  “to see that the soldiers”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “There was no girl”: Ibid.

  “insisted that I spend”: Ibid.

  Clifford West Henry (1895–1918), “so sadly handsome” and “most sincere”: PI.

  “I noticed that he was looking at us”: MM to EM, Sept. 10, 1918.

  “Funny meeting, wasn’t it?”: Ibid.

  “Dear, you must have”: MSM to EM, Sept. 10, 1918.

  “crusty old place”: MMMAUG, MM to SM, undated.

  Letters from Clifford West Henry: similarities exist between the kinds of letters Ashley Wilkes wrote to Melanie (GWTW, p. 211) and those CWH wrote to MM.

  “The rest of us were”: VM, Photoplay, March 1938.

  There is considerable evidence that the character Ashley Wilkes was based to some extent on Clifford West Henry.

  “try to stump each other”: AJ&C, May 16, 1961.

  “One evening Peg and I”: Ibid.

  “a youthful genius”: AHB, summer 1981.

  “the air thick with screams”: MM to VM, Dec. 23, 1918, MMMAUG.

  “Dear Margaret”: MSM to MM, Jan. 23, 1919, in FF, pp. 43–44.

  Similarities between MM’s experience on the death of MSM and Scarlett O’Hara’s on the death of her mother, Ellen O’Hara: both real and fictional mothers died while their daughters were trying to reach their sides; each young woman took over her mother’s tasks upon her death; and both had fathers crazed with grief and unable to function.

  “Go back to Smith”: FF, p. 45.

  “I am beginning to miss”: MM to EM, Feb. 17, 1919, in FF, p. 46.

  “If I can’t be first”: MM to SM, April, 1919, in FF, p. 46.

  “When I get through here”: AJ&C, May 16, 1961.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Bessie Berry, later Bessie Jordan. She worked for EM from 1916 to 1926, and then for MM until her death in Aug. 1949, remaining to care for JM until his d
eath.

  Cammie’s last name is unknown, but MM confessed several times in print that the character Prissy in GWTW was modeled after Cammie and was MM’s favorite character.

  Grandfather Mitchell’s lumber business was to serve as a background during Scarlett O’Hara’s marriage to Frank Kennedy in GWTW.

  “all daring and put in its place”: AHBMMM.

  “stealing a young woman’s youth”: PI.

  There could be a link between MM’s experience at the dance — her unconventional attire, and her dancing with the dashing but socially unacceptable Berrien K. Upshaw — and GWTW, pp. 191–192.

  Grandmother Mitchell’s evening prayers were probably a model for Ellen O’Hara’s enforced evening prayers in GWTW, p. 68,

  “When a girl is making”: FF, p. 50.

  “Terribly amusing”: PI.

  “a woman who doesn’t”: FF, p. 55.

  Polly Peachtree: AJ, Oct. 17, 19 18.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MM’s fan letters to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Stephen Vincent Benét are lost. She mentioned having written them to both MFP and Frank Daniel, and later to LDC and to Benét himself.

  “And to the piles of lingerie”: Augusta Dearborn Edwards, Reader’s Digest, March 1962.

  “After the folks came back”: SM, AJ&C.

  “old fraternal order”: AJ, April 16, 1921.

  “to bring terror to the heart”: Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 6, The Twenties.

  “many a night”: Augusta Dearborn Edwards. Reader’s Digest, March 1962 .

  “exceptionally charming” through “razzle-dazzle”: PIs.

  “My new Sweetie”: JM to FM(Z), March 1922.

  “big cold house” through “I assumed”: PI.

  “rape became”: MM to FM(Z), Nov. 1925.

  “John never tried”: MM to FM(Z), Aug. 1922.

  “a fine American novel”: PI.

  “helping Red to get a trousseau”: JM to FM(Z), Aug. 1922.

  “heathenish bridegroom”: PI. The wedding announcement in the AJ stated Upshaw had been to Annapolis and in the U.S. Navy during the war. In fact, Upshaw attended Annapolis after the war. It seems likely that both MM and JM thought Upshaw was older than he was until the time of the marriage, and that both did think he had served in the war.