Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh

by Marianne Walker

  19

  When Professor Everett’s rave comments and excellent summary of the novel reached him, Latham was convinced his first impression of the manuscript was correct and knew Macmillan had to buy it quickly. Everett’s excitement, which remains evident throughout his writing, comes through clearly in his beginning. “There really are surprisingly few loose ends, and the number of times one’s emotions are stirred one way or another is surprising. I am sure that it is not only a good book, but a best seller. It is much better than Stark Young’s.110 The literary device of using an unsympathetic character to arouse sympathetic emotions seems to me admirable. This is the story of the formation of a woman’s character. In the peace and quiet of plantation life before the war, in the crisis of the Civil War, and in the privation of the Reconstruction period.”

  Everett concluded, “This book is really magnificent. Its human qualities would make it good against any background, and when they are shown on the stage of the Civil War and reconstruction the effect is breathtaking. Furthermore, it has a high degree of literary finish. . . . By all means take the book. It can’t possibly turn out badly. With a clean copy made of what we have, a dozen lines could bridge the existing gaps.”

  Then he suggested two changes, both of which were bad pieces of advice, as it turned out. Interestingly enough, he did not like the ending, which he called “disappointing,” and he wanted to use Another Day for the title. But without any equivocation, he instructed Latham, “Take the book at once. Tell the author not to do anything to it but bridge the few obvious gaps and strengthen the last page.”111

  Excited about this manuscript, Latham sent the following memorandum to his assistants: “It is a book of tremendous importance and significance, of that I have not the slightest doubt. We shall make a serious mistake if we do not immediately take it. . . . The manuscript is not in its final form but all that will be needed to put it into its final form will be the spur that will come with a contract. I feel more strongly about this proposition than I feel about any novel that has been in our hands for some time.”112 His enthusiasm, along with Lois Cole’s and Everett’s, swayed the editorial council, who agreed that Macmillan ought to take the manuscript.

  On July 17, Latham sent the following telegram to Peggy: “My enthusiasm [for] your novel shared by our advisers. We would like to make immediate contract for its publication. Five hundred dollars advance. Half on signing. Balance on delivery manuscript. Account ten percent royalty first ten thousand then fifteen. My renewed congratulations and assurances. We undertake publication with tremendous enthusiasm and large hopes. Do wire your approval that I may contract immediately.”113

  Lois was so happily excited about her colleagues’ and Everett’s reactions to the manuscript that she sent Peggy a telegram saying: “Macmillan terribly excited about your book. I am most excited of all. Always knew you had a world beater even if no one could see it. Company planning great things for the book. How soon can you finish it?” Then she mailed a copy of Everett’s evaluation to Peggy, who read it in amazement. For someone who had always been so sensitive about not having a college education, such praise from a professor of English at Columbia University made her dizzy, and it surely must have made John proud. Lois saved the response Peggy wired back to her:

  Lois, your telegram just came and I am overwhelmed! It came at a grand time for I was just limping home from Grady hospital to lick my wounds, having been scragged by a young intern whom I have scragged several times in the course of Bessie’s illness. Do you really mean they like it? You wouldn’t fox an old friend, would you? I don’t see how anyone made heads or tails of it. I am very twittery about your wire and, having phoned John and read it to him, he said, “You’d better sit down quietly so you’ll have less distance to fall when the realization comes over you that someone besides me likes the damn thing.” Well, John was right. I think I had better sit down quietly. I shall fall down in another minute. You are a lamb to send me such a swell telegram and I shall frame it.114

  On July 27, 1935, a jubilant Peggy typed a four-page letter to Latham telling him that she certainly “had not expected so swell a report and it was only by bearing up sturdily that I kept from going to bed again with luminal and ice packs.”115

  About Professor Everett’s suggestions, she said she only wished he had made more of them. He was absolutely right in saying that “the author should keep out her own feelings in one or two places where she talks about negro rule.” She explained: “I hope I would have caught it in my rewrite—or that my husband would have done so but perhaps we wouldn’t have. I have tried to keep out venom, bias, bitterness as much as possible. All the V, B & B in the book were to come through the eyes and head and tongues of the characters, as reactions from what they saw and heard and felt.” About Everett’s criticism of her describing Mammy’s “ape face”

  and her “black paws,” she said she did not remember exactly where those phrases were but she would track them down and change them. “I meant no disrespect to Mammy for I have heard so many negroes refer to their hands as ‘black paws’ and when an old and wrinkled negro woman is sad, there is nothing else in the world she looks like except a large ape. But I had not realized how differently this sounded in type.”116

  Professor Everett’s criticism about the ending was, of course, wrong. He wrote, “There may be a bit too much finality in Rhett’s refusal to go on. . . . And it might not hurt to hint as much a little more strongly than the last lines.”117 Peggy responded:

  I havent reread that part of the book in over two years. Due to my unfortunate habit of writing things backwards, last chapter first and first last, it’s been a long time since I even looked at it and hardly recall what’s in it. But he’s probably right. My own intention when I wrote it was to leave the ending open to the reader (yes, I know that’s not a satisfactory way to do!). My idea was that, through several million chapters, the reader will have learned that both Pansy and Rhett are tough characters, both accustomed to having their own way. And at the last, both are determined to have their own ways and those ways are very far apart. And the reader can either decide that she got him or she didnt. Could I ask you to with hold final criticism on this part until I have rewritten that and sent you the whole book to look over again? My vague memory tells me that I had done no more on that chapter than synopsize it. Perhaps a rewriting would bring it more closely to what the adviser wanted.118

  About the two different versions of Frank Kennedy’s death, the first by an illness and the second by the Ku Klux Klan, Everett said that he liked the death by illness because “K.K.K. material has been worked pretty hard by others.” But Peggy justified her reason for preferring the second version. In rereading that part of the book, she had found “a very definite sag of interest over a range of six chapters. As ‘Alice’ would have said ‘There was no conversation and absolutely no pictures’ in that part. I was trying to build up that section in strength—and, by ‘strength’ I don’t mean a lot of melodramatic incident.” She asked if she could complete the book with the second, K.K.K. version, and if Latham and his advisors did not like it, she would change it to the first version. “God knows, I dont love that second version for its own sake. . . . The same applies to remarks written above about the ending. If you dont like the way it looks when you get the final copy, tell me so and I’ll change it. I’ll change it any way you want, except to make a happy ending.”119

  In this July 27 letter to Latham, she mentioned two other issues. The first had to do with the main character’s name, which she was beginning to dislike.

  When I began this book and called the central character “Pansy,” the unpleasant connotation of the word had barely reached the South. It is still not a popular term as I gather it is in other sections. Here, we refer to Pansies as Fairies or by another less euphemistic but far more descriptive term. However, if you think the name of Pansy should be changed please let me know and I will try to think of another name, equally inappropriate.
120

  In responding to Latham’s two questions: “When is Ella born?” and “Where does Archie come into the story?” Peggy said that at the risk of further confusing him, she was sending him an incomplete draft of the chapters containing those two characters. She apologized for the chapters not having numbers and said, “The best way I can place them is to say that they come after the chapter on Gerald’s death.”

  In a postscript, she asked for a little leeway on the title because her list of titles was missing. Bessie, her “black pearl,” the only one who knew where everything was in the apartment, had been ill and she had to wait for her return before she would know where the list was. She added: “‘Tomorrow is Another Day’ was my first choice but someone’s just used that. And ‘Tote the Weary Load’ came next though I think that’s too colloquial.”121

  Concerned about her not mentioning the contract, Latham wrote her on July 30 saying he hoped that by now she had received it and had found it satisfactory. If it were not, he wanted to know how she wanted it changed: “I’ll see what I can do about it. I shan’t be entirely happy until the contract is an accomplished fact, you see.” He liked her suggestion that they withhold the Pansy-Rhett outcome until the book was in its final form and wrote: “In fact, I think that’s what we want to do with everything.” He made it clear that Macmillan wanted to help her in every way. “We have large faith in this book—very large faith indeed—and we want it to be the best possible book that it can be.” He assured her that they would spare no effort to bring that about, and once they published it they would spare no effort to make it the success that they were confident it would be. He added:

  And now I’ll tell you a secret. I myself rather prefer the Ku Klux Klan ending to the other. I let Everett say his say on that subject, but I don’t altogether agree with him. I think your reason for the K.K.K. episode is a good one. I don’t feel that the book sags anywhere—not for one chapter or one page—but I do think this K.K.K. material adds color and excitement, etc. So here, as in the case of other matters, follow your judgment. . . .

  I do have the feeling that what you intimate might exist in some quarters in regard to the name “Pansy.” The connotation of this name is not pleasant in certain circles, and, if you find another name that is as appropriately inappropriate, I should be in favor of making the change, I think.122

  At that time the manuscript had no title; it was called simply “A Novel about the South.” Wanting to give her as much leeway as she wished, Latham said he thought “Another Day” was a better title than “Tomorrow Is Another Day” but he was a bit afraid of using “Tote That Weary Load.” “I wish I could make you understand just how I feel about this book,” Latham wrote. “I think I am as happy over it as though I had written it myself.”123

  It would be impossible to overstate Latham’s editorial role in finding the manuscript or his kind and gentle manner toward its author. His patience and his willingness to work with her and to go along with her instincts about all aspects of the novel were remarkable. Although others, including Lois Cole and Professor Everett, had reservations about certain aspects of the book and suggested changes, Latham never suggested that Peggy change anything except what she wanted to change. About his offer to send her suggestions from his other readers, she said she would welcome any suggestions that he sent her. She urged him not to feel hesitant about telling her what he thought about her “stuff,”

  even if you say “this is lousy.” All I ask is that you tell me why it’s lousy. I am not a sensitive plant and can take criticism. Otherwise I should have died of mortification or been divorced long ago. You see, my husband is not only a boss advertisement writer but he was formerly that rare creature, a newspaper reporter who knew the difference between a “shambles” and a “holocaust.” He also had a feeling for words and a feeling that there was an exact word for an exact meaning. And before that, he was professor of English at the University of Kentucky. I fear that nothing you or your advisers could say would be quite as hard boiled as what he has already said to me.124

  CHAPTER

  8

  1935 - 1936

  MIDWIFE TO A NOVEL

  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 one or two matters. . . .

  —John Marsh to Lois Cole, 31 January 1936

  1

  ON THE WARM, HUMID MORNING OF AUGUST 1, 1935, when the two-thousand-word contract arrived in the Marshes’ apartment, Peggy excitedly rushed to John’s office. Once inside the building, she rushed past everyone, including John’s secretary, without stopping to chat as she usually did. Waving an envelope in her hand, she strutted into his office, where he was working at his desk. The moment he looked up and saw the exuberant expression on her face, he knew she had the contract. As she plopped on his lap giggling, he opened the envelope and together they silently read it. Oblivious to the onlooking staff, they hugged each other tightly, kissed, and talked in whispers for a few minutes. Then they hurried out to her father’s law office to show the contract to him.1 A real estate attorney inexperienced in reading such contracts, he nevertheless selected some details that he thought Peggy ought to question. As he talked to them, he jotted down three questions he wanted her to ask Latham.

  On that very afternoon, back in their apartment, she wrote Latham thanking him for taking a risk with her, an unknown author, and saying that the contract was “not only a fair but a very generous one.”2 Because the publisher had told her about the special promotional activity Macmillan had planned for her book, she told him: “I am very pleased that you think the book good enough to merit special attention. Only hope you do not lose money on me!” She stated that she was quite willing to sign up with Macmillan, but there were a few things about the contract that needed to be clarified. “I come from a legal family,” she explained, “and, since childhood, have had it hammered into me never to sign anything without studious, even prayerful consideration of it. That is the reason, rather than any dissatisfaction with the general terms of the contract…, My father is a lawyer of the old school who can pursue a technicality to the bottom of the haystack—Lois can tell you about him!—and he suggested some of the questions I am asking.”

  Not wanting to appear “pickayunish,” she wrote that she was not “a hard person to trade with,” but her father insisted that the book be more clearly identified, “for failure to identify the property contracted for can render the entire contract invalid.” She suggested that they identify the book as “a novel of the South (exact title to be determined).” Her second request had to do with wanting to see the cover design and the dust jacket before a final decision was made. Because she had seen so many books about the South that had jacket illustrations “of such un-Southern appearance as to arouse mirth and indignation,” it was absolutely imperative that the cover be true to the South in every detail, just as the book itself was. Her third question had to do with the dramatic and motion picture rights, which the contract stated would remain with her prior to publication. “What happens to the dramatic and motion picture rights after book publication?” she wanted to know. She suggested that “a new clause be written stating the arrangement as regards dramatic and motion picture rights, separately from the matter of serial rights,” which she said she did not understand either. Quoting the phrase “shall be apportioned as mutually arranged,” she asked, “What would happen if they didn’t mutually agree? Couldnt we arrange and agree now? I don’t know what your usual agreements are with authors on this matter but I am confident that they would be acceptable to me.” Her final question demonstrated her childlike simplicity and directness: she asked what would happen to her if Macmillan went bankrupt. “I havent a notion that you will but shouldnt there be something in the contract stating what my rights would be under such r
egrettable circumstances?”3

  Peggy was also concerned about Latham’s statement that he was eager to get the contract signed so that Macmillan could begin talking about the book. Afraid that he meant he wanted to start promoting the book right away, she wrote:

  As I told you I have been working on this book for several years and have never been able to finish it because of mine oft infirmities. My friends have continued inquiring about it, and, over a period of years the constantly repeated question of “Well, how’s your book coming on?” has grown a bit wearing. Finally, last year, I answered all such questions by saying flatfootedly, “I have torn up the damned thing and I have no intention of finishing it and I hope to God you’ll never mention the matter again.” Besides, I hate to talk about anything I have written and would rather take a whipping any day than get cornered by even the best meaning of friends who think it only a courtesy to ask me questions.

  In fact, John and Lois are the only people I ever even discussed it with in any detail. I have avoided all conversations about it when ever I could and my own preference would be to continue to avoid discussions of it with my friends until the job is actually done and the finished manuscript is in your hands. Only then, can I be certain that the work is actually completed.

  My mind is made up to finish it, of course and in the shortest possible time. But with my habit of getting sick more or less frequently I do not know how long a time it will be before I can deliver it and it would be definitely embarrassing if anybody down here discovered that I signed a contract and then a period of months should drag on, during which my friends would be constantly asking me about the book and I would be able to make no answer except that I had gotten sick again and hadnt finished it.4

  Peggy had been teased so much about the book that her feelings expressed here are understandable. Perhaps, too, she was afraid that she could not finish it—ever. At any rate, she said she had told no one about the contract except John and her father: “I wouldnt have even told Father except that he would have skinned me if he ever discovered I’d signed any contract without his first looking over it. And then, too, as he’s the authority in these parts on Southern Civil War history, I’d have to confess eventually because I want him to check my material in every detail so the United Confederate Veterans and the embattled United Daughters of the Confederacy can’t land on me like ducks on a June bug.”5 She did not mean to keep the publisher bound to secrecy until the manuscript was delivered, for she added: “The very minute when I feel that I have the job in hand and that the book is going to be finished, I will let you know and you can turn loose the dogs.” She urged him to tell Lois, who had so many friends in Atlanta, not to let the word out just yet. “Then I’d have guests popping in at all hours to sit forever on the sofa and say ‘Is it hard to write a book?’ And there would be an influx of utter strangers with manuscripts which they’d want me to read and edit.” Instead of ending her letter there, she wrote another half-page describing an incident involving a young woman who wanted her and John to edit her manuscript.