Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh

by Marianne Walker

  One relative remembered seeing some envelopes stuffed into the bathroom towel cabinet and a few crammed under a fallen cushion on the sofa. Jim Davis said that for a while, in the Crescent Avenue apartment, Peggy used a stack of envelopes to prop up a corner of their old, green-velvet Victorian sofa until she got its broken leg repaired.57

  John’s family were not the only people who wondered what was going on with Peggy’s novel. Friends, too, remembered seeing those mysterious, ubiquitous envelopes. At the Power Company socials, where she was popular, Peggy would often be laughingly hailed as the “great novelist” and asked, “How’s that great American novel coming along?” She would either laugh frostily and shout something back, or purse her lips tightly and stare through narrow little slits of eyes that said, “Go to Hell!”58 One of her friends said that Peggy reached the point where she took umbrage at any reference to her book. She thought that she and John had made a big mistake in ever mentioning the book, and as time passed and it became increasingly difficult to explain why no actual book had yet appeared, she grew to resent any comment or question about it. Sensitive to her feelings, John now had become noticeably quiet about it too, even with his family.

  Not everyone liked or admired Peggy, partly because she was so open about her dislike for some people. Some women made catty remarks not only behind her back but also to her face about her pretending to be a writer.59 Some gossips even poked fun at her for saying she was writing a book. Still others thought that if she could write the way she talked, she would have a bestseller.60 Eight months after Macmillan bought the manuscript, Lois Cole said that one of her and Peggy’s mutual friends had been “catty about Peggy’s never-finished novel,” until Lois startled her with the news about Peggy’s contract.61 The truth is that apparently no one—family, friend, or foe—believed that the ebullient little Peggy Mitchell Marsh was a serious writer capable of writing a novel, particularly one of the consequence and breadth of Gone With the Wind. Whatever the reason, the consensus was one of shock when her novel not only finally appeared, but became so gloriously successful.

  13

  In 1927, shortly after Peggy started working on her novel, Lois Dwight Cole, a Smith graduate from the Brahmin New England Dwight family, had been transferred from New York to Atlanta to run the southern branch of the Macmillan Company’s trade department.62 This was a fortuitous move for Lois Cole and for the Marshes.

  To introduce Lois to Atlanta’s female literary society, Medora, the grand dame of the Atlanta literati, gave a bridge luncheon at the Piedmont Driving Club. After lunch, when the ladies drew for bridge tables, Lois discovered her partner was Peggy Mitchell, whom she described as “a short, rather plump person with reddish brown hair, very blue eyes, and a few freckles across a slightly uptilted nose.” After the cards were dealt, Lois asked,

  “Do you follow any particular conventions, partner?” Our opponents stared, and my partner said solemnly, “Conventions? I don’t know any. I just lead from fright. What do you lead from?” “Necessity,” I told her, at which she gave a sudden grin.63

  Lois had a good mind, an excellent education, and an interesting job; she was the kind of woman that Peggy admired and wanted to be like. During refreshments, Peggy leaned close and whispered, “Can you come to supper Wednesday?” Accepting the invitation, Lois later wrote:

  Over fried chicken and hot biscuits I discovered that evening that Peggy was one of the best conversationalists and storytellers one could find. Not that she monopolized the talk; she was, as she said, “a good ear,” as genuinely interested in what other people had to say as she was in luring them to talk.64

  Peggy did not offer the invitation with the idea of getting a Macmillan editor to read her manuscript. Strange as it may seem, she honestly had no intention of ever letting anyone, except John, read that manuscript, and certainly not a publisher. Her fear of rejection was so strong and her resentment of criticism so bitter that she was not about to provide an opportunity for either one. She invited Lois Cole to dinner only because she liked her and knew that John would too. Also, she was eager for Lois to meet Allan Taylor, their bachelor friend who worked for the Journal. From Tennessee originally, Allan was an old friend of John’s; they had been roommates when John first arrived in Atlanta. For years, he had had such a serious infatuation with Peggy that he had reached the point where he annoyed her, much to John’s and their friends’ amusement.65 Peggy had long wished that he would find someone else upon whom to heap his devotion, and now she believed she had found that person in Lois Cole.66 Just as she had hoped, Allan was immediately attracted to the brainy, buxom, good-looking Yankee. The two of them started dating, and before long they married. Later, Peggy said she enjoyed being around Allan much more after he had fallen in love with Lois.67

  The Macmillan branch office was not far from the Marshes’ Crescent Avenue apartment, and Lois, on her way home from work, would frequently drop by in the afternoons to visit. “Once when I came in with a friend, Peggy, in shorts, blouse and eyeshade, was at the typewriter. She got up and threw a bath towel over the table. ‘Well, Peggy,’ said the friend, ‘how’s the great American novel coming along?’ ‘It stinks,’ Peggy said with a half-laugh, ‘and I don’t know why I bother with it, but I’ve got to do something with my time.’”68

  As an assistant editor always on the lookout for marketable manuscripts, Lois asked about the book. But Peggy would not discuss it. Intrigued by the envelopes and her friend’s silence, Lois urged her to give her a glimpse of the manuscript. Peggy firmly refused. When Lois persisted and told her that “Macmillan would love to see it” when it was done, Peggy answered emphatically, “At this rate it won’t ever get done, and no one’s going to see it.”69

  In the late fall of 1930, while the nation was in the throes of an economic depression, Macmillan closed the branch offices of its trade department. Lois was transferred to New York, where she was promoted to associate editor. By this time, she and Allan were married and writing a series of juvenile stories under the pseudonym Allan Dwight. A year later, in her new role as an editor, she remembered her southern friend and wrote her a business letter on Macmillan stationery in December 1933. Lois asked Peggy if her novel were finished yet and, if it was, might Macmillan read it? In an equally businesslike fashion, Peggy answered that the novel was not completed and that she doubted it ever would be. But she promised that if she ever did finish it, she would let Macmillan have the first look.70

  14

  When her Grandmother Stephens died on February 17, 1934, Peggy was more profoundly affected than she had ever imagined she would be. She regretted all the arguments she had had with the old woman who had provided her with such a rich legacy of stories, and she regretted creating a break with her grandmother’s family, who still had not forgiven her, although that break was by no means all her fault. When her dejection lasted well into the spring, John decided to boost her spirits by arranging a two-week vacation that would allow them to get away and perhaps to research and work on the book. His mother had just visited them, and listening to her talk about her extensive trip around the country got them excited about their plans. The Georgia Press Association conferences that they attended every year usually initiated their vacations. That year the conference was in Savannah.

  No matter how far their destination, the Marshes never drove more than two hundred miles in one day.71 When John worked, he worked hard and steadily, but when he vacationed, he rested. “Our plan is to dawdle along the way, going down one route and coming back another, visiting with folks in the various en route,” John wrote his mother on June 16, 1934. In preparing for the trip, Peggy—now having problems with her feet—visited a Mr. Minor, who was making a pair of shoes for her. “Since the morning you left,” she wrote Mother Marsh, “I have spent about half of each day at Mr. Minor’s trying to get these blasted shoes in shape. At first, I asked for beauty and perfect comfort. Now, I would thank Heaven to be just able to walk in the things even if they did hur
t. . . . I do so hate to wear my heavy black winter brogues with white dresses and almost wept at the thought of going to the editors’ party where every one dresses fit to kill and having to wear my black gun boats.”72

  Around the end of June 1934, they began their trip, which John described as their “most ambitious” automobile vacation, and they brought sections of the manuscript and the typewriter along.73 With Peggy chauffeuring, they did travel Georgia from one end to the other. They started out by going to the Press Association Conference in Savannah, one of their favorite places to study black dialect, which was interestingly not all the same. The only dialect spoken in Savannah and the Golden Islands was Geechee, a term derived from the Indian name of the Ogeechee River. The history of this dialect went back decades earlier to the time when shiploads of blacks were sold to the Golden Islands plantations. The slaves left on the islands were cut off from the mainland, and thus they kept their native language. As late as 1934 when the Marshes were visiting, the dialect still retained many African words and was difficult to understand by anyone except the natives of Savannah and the Golden Islands.74 When she and John visited Savannah, they studied the dialect, took notes on it, and practiced speaking it with each other, and yet Peggy wrote as late as 1938 that she still had trouble understanding some of it.75

  In addition to Geechee was another, somewhat similar dialect known as “Gullah,” spoken only by the blacks around Charleston, South Carolina. Fascinated with the speech, John and Peggy took many notes on it. For instance, when they visited Magnolia Gardens in Charleston, they made notes on how their guides combined English with Gullah, recording “get” for “gate,” “race” for “rice,” and “ef” or “effen” for “if.”76

  Equally fascinated by speech variations, John and Peggy took many notes on all they heard as they visited various southern locales, and they became experts on all the southern dialects. In one area, they noted that “did” was used for “if,” as in “did I pick up a snake I would be a fool.”77 They noted that “middle Georgia darkies (around Macon) have different constructions from the North Georgia ones. And those from the older sections of the state around Washington, Ga., have some pronunciations and constructions that are practically Elizabethan.”78 They also made careful distinctions between the dialects of field workers and house servants during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.79 His coworkers remembered how John delighted in listening to different dialects as he traveled around the state and said that he often made notes about the various ways words were pronounced.

  Although most readers of Gone With the Wind do not realize it, the dialects in the novel are the result of much painstaking research and writing, and as such they preserve an interesting bit of history that otherwise may have been lost forever. For one of many examples, Peggy made her wonderful character Mammy a Savannah black who had lived in north Georgia for twenty years. If readers will notice in Gone With the Wind, Mammy’s Geechee dialect is different from that used by the other blacks in the novel. Peggy and John were very proud of the dialect as it appears in the novel, and she bristled when anyone, not as enlightened as she about the subject, criticized her use of it.

  Before going home that summer, they went to a cabin in a beautiful, secluded area near Tallulah Falls so that they could work on the manuscript without any interruptions and, no doubt, while the dialects were still fresh in their minds. In writing to his brother Henry about the place during this time, John showed that he had dialects on his mind because he spelled the names phonetically. He wrote “T’roar-ah” and “Tal-lu-lah,” and referred to a “Mr. Meschine,” who he said was the operator at the plant who looked after his affairs there.80

  This cabin was owned by the Georgia Power Company and given to John to use for business as well as personal purposes. About two miles away, one of Georgia Power’s hydroelectric plants and company villages was built near the Tallulah River Falls. The river meanders its way for about six miles around the stony shoulders of a mountain until it comes to a place so deep and narrow that the force of its descent against the rocks is so rapid and awe-inspiring that the Indians called the falls “Terrora,” their word for “terrible.” The Marshes loved this quiet place. It was where they had spent their honeymoon nearly a decade earlier and where Peggy often hid away from the public immediately after she became famous.81

  After the long vacation, they returned to the cabin in late September when Henry and his new wife, Mary Hunter, joined them there, along with some of their newspaper friends, for a long weekend vacation.82 On such weekends as this, John was the chef. He barbecued ribs, broiled steaks and potatoes, and cooked big pots of chili. In Peggy’s old photograph album, there is a wonderful faded snapshot taken of her and the others sitting outside of this cabin. Dressed in a sleeveless shirt and shorts, sitting cross-legged in a lawn chair, she has her short hair tied back with a ribbon and an impish smile on her face. She looks beautiful and happy in this picture.

  15

  Shortly after midnight, on November 22, 1934, an accident involving the Marshes and a drunk driver occurred. With eerie foreshadowing, this accident took place in almost the exact location on Peachtree where Peggy later suffered her fatal accident. Rain had poured all day, and around midnight the Marshes were taking their dinner guest, Journal editor John S. Cohen, home. With Cohen in the front seat with her, Peggy was driving cautiously as she always did; the roads were wet and slick. When she started into the block between Peachtree Place and Eighth Street going south, getting ready to turn left, she asked John, who was sitting in the back seat, to see if any cars were coming. He said no. A few seconds later, they all saw the reflected headlights of an automobile coming fast from behind them. Peggy decided not to make the left turn, put out her hand to signal a stop, and slowed to a stop. There was no traffic on the street going in either direction, and they thought the car would pass them either on the left or the right. Instead, it slammed a solid blow into the center of the rear of the Marshes’ car, knocking it some forty or fifty feet. Knocked unconscious momentarily, Peggy managed to jerk the wheel around so that the car did not hit the telephone pole at which it was headed. She suffered spinal injuries from the jerk when the other car hit them in the rear, and then again when she pulled the wheel around to prevent her car from crashing into the pole. Shouting to the other driver to stop, John ran over to him. The man, named Littlejohn, had a strong odor of whiskey on his breath, and he did not deny that he had run into them.

  Neither Cohen nor John sustained any injuries, but for the remainder of that year Peggy wore a backbrace and was confined to bed because of back pain. For months she regularly visited Dr. Sandison, an Atlanta specialist who administered electric therapeutic treatments, and Dr. Mizell, the Marshes’ family physician, who had been treating her for arthritis.

  After the New Year’s holidays, on January 20, 1935, John told his mother that his wife, “a real trouper,” was feeling better and getting out a little. Both loved movies and had gone that day to see The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. He wrote, “She walks for exercise even if it does hurt her. . .life is beginning to get back to a somewhat more normal basis for us.” But John told his mother that he had failed in his attempts to measure Peggy for a knitted dress Mrs. Marsh had offered to make for Peggy. He explained, “Her measurements, bust and waist, do vary enormously when she is practicing inflation and deflation and when sitting and standing, and I didn’t consider myself a sufficiently competent architect to attempt to get her plans and specifications to you.”83

  16

  That’s how things stood, with nothing eventful happening, until April 1935 when Harold Latham, a vice-president of The Macmillan Company, went on a scouting trip to the South. Having gone on scouting trips abroad, found good English authors unknown in the States, and successfully published their works, Latham thought he would roam around his own country looking for new books.

  Caroline Miller, a Georgia writer, had won the Pulitzer Prize for 1934 with her novel Lamb in His Bosom,
and perhaps for this reason Latham decided to tour the South in the spring of 1935.84 When Lois heard about his tour, she said, “I told Mr. Latham about Peggy’s book—that no one had read it except her husband John, but that if she wrote as she talks it would be a honey.”85 For that reason alone, Latham decided Atlanta would be his first stop.86

  Lois told Latham how stubborn Peggy was about refusing to talk about her work, but she hoped that he, a mild-mannered, persuasive man, might be able to convince Peggy to let him see her manuscript. Lois also wrote to Peggy and to Medora asking them to make her boss’s visit pleasant and productive. Thus, by working from both ends of the exchange, she hoped to accomplish her mission.87

  Medora and Peggy took Latham to lunch at the Athletic Club and during their conversation, Medora told him that if he were looking for a novel about the South, “Peggy is your best bet.” Latham turned to Peggy, asking her if she had a manuscript he could see. Leaving him the impression that she did not want to discuss her book, she answered emphatically, “No, I have no novel.” Her reply demonstrates her lack of confidence in her manuscript, for most unpublished writers would have jumped at such an opportunity.

  After lunch Medora, who had to go back to work at the Magazine, suggested that Peggy drive Latham out to Druid Hills to see the dogwood in bloom, and also show him Stone Mountain. During their drive, as they talked about southern literature, Latham asked Peggy again about her own work. Firmly but pleasantly, she told him again she was not ready to talk about it or to submit it.

  The next day, Latham was the guest at a luncheon and tea given for Georgia writers by Rich’s department store, which was exhibiting Georgia books and manuscripts. At this gathering, Latham approached Peggy more than once about her book and each time she replied, “I have no manuscript to show you.” He was disappointed because his interest in her had been stimulated by his conversations with her and by the talk he had heard about her.88