Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh

by Marianne Walker

  The copyeditor had also changed dozens of other things that he wanted put back as he had had them, although he said these changes were not nearly as important as those quotation mark changes were. For instance, he explained that

  “Miss Melny” appears on Galley 4 in the negro dialect as ‘Mel’ney’ and the editor asks if it shouldn’t be ‘Mel’nie.’ The style Peggy wishes used, and which is used later in the book, is ‘Melny,’ without the apostrophe. Failure to use the apostrophe in this instance is a departure from Peggy’s usual practice in dialect and was done for two reasons. First, it helps to collapse the word, as the negroes would say it. Second, it may help inform the average reader as to the correct pronunciation of ‘Melanie.’ The latter was the deciding reason. Two of Peggy’s stenographers spoke most highly of ‘Melanie’ and gave Peggy a spasm by pronouncing the name, ‘Melayney,’ accent on the second syllable. Peggy thought the use the of ‘Melny’ occasionally might help get over the idea that the accent should be on the first syllable. Usually the negroes say, ‘Miss Melly.’93

  John’s letter was delayed in getting to Lois in New York because of a storm, and by the time the letter arrived, the book had already gone to press. However, Lois answered immediately upon receiving his letter. She wrote on February 15, “The book has been very largely set, but we have called up and stopped the presses.” She tartly reminded him that if he had not said in an earlier letter that whoever attempted to “straighten out disparities” was to be guided by Parts II, III, and IV, Macmillan would have never tried to make the book uniform. She explained it was the attempt at uniformity that caused the elimination of the quotation marks from Scarlett’s thoughts since, she added, “We had no word that they were to be left as they were. Our editor was following the accustomed usage.” Lois went on to say, “However, I agree with you myself about the quotation marks, and although much of the book is set, Miss Prink says they can be inserted.”94

  On February 20, Lois wrote the Marshes again, reassuring them that Susan Prink, the copyeditor, was going over the first proofs and marking all the changes. No charges against Peggy would be made for changes in such things as the dialect and the quotations in Scarlett’s thoughts. But Lois warned, “every time you change a comma it means the change of a whole line and each line costs nineteen cents. Of course, you have a fairly big allowance, but also you have a pretty big book and a lot of pages to go over.”95

  Feeling tense, Lois did not know how to react when she received a note from Peggy a day or so later asking for ten dollars for a photograph for the book’s jacket. In a message to Miss Hutchinson, the bookkeeper, Lois wrote that she had just received a note from Margaret Mitchell asking, among other things, what her chances were of receiving a check for ten dollars for the photograph. “If we should decide not to send it I suppose she would take it gracefully, but I hope we can for the sake of peace.”96

  In less than two weeks, Lois wrote John saying the manufacturing department wanted all the galley proofs back by March 19 so that they could still publish on May 5. With the feeling that he had finally gotten a stubborn child under control, he finished the job on the evening of March 14 and asked Rhoda to “pack up the proofs so they can go out in tomorrow’s 5:00 a.m. mail.” A day or so before Peggy had received the balance of the five-hundred-dollar advance and also a check for ten dollars to reimburse her for the photograph.

  On Wednesday, March 18, a big package containing end pages arrived at the Marshes’ apartment. Horrified to see the thousand sheets waiting for her autograph, Peggy asked John, “How will I ever get all this done?” He shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands, and shook his head. Then, within minutes, Bessie slapped the following telegram into his hand: “Questions here regarding Scarlett’s age at end of book? How old was Ellen when Frank died? How long before Scarlett married Rhett? How old Scarlett when Bonnie born? How old Bonnie at her death? Questions age given as twenty seven seems too young to fit in children. Book being set today but if you rush reply we can change Scarlett’s age at very end if necessary.”97 John wired the answer immediately. Just after the printers received his telegram, they locked the forms on Gone With the Wind on March 19, 1936.

  Because of John’s meticulous scrutiny of the manuscript and the proofs, along with the work of Miss Prink, the proofreaders, and the typesetters, Gone With the Wind was printed with fewer than a half-dozen typographical errors, no inconsistencies in dialect, and only two minor errors. One error in a character’s name was pointed out by a fan immediately after the first edition was released. This fan letter intrigued John, who promptly wrote A. J. Putnam, one of the executives at Macmillan, asking if one comparatively minor change could be made in the next printing. “At the bottom of page 596 and the top of page 597, Scarlett addresses Frank Kennedy as ‘Frank’ for the first time. But she has already called him ‘Frank’ once before. . .on page 590. Peggy would like to have the correction made on page 590 so that Scarlett at that point would call him ‘Mr. Kennedy,’ instead of ‘Frank.’” John wanted Putman to call this correction to the attention of the publishers of the British edition also. He concluded his letter with, “The item published in Sunday’s paper to the effect that you already had orders for 326,000 is too fantastic for belief. Maybe Gone With the Wind will prove to be the new industry that will help to pull the nation out of the depression.”98

  This casual remark was not without some foundation in truth, for excitement about Macmillan’s forthcoming bestseller permeated the publishing world, revivifying an industry that had suffered during the Depression. Latham’s enthusiasm for the novel was infectious among the other editors and the salesmen, and for the first time in years, Alec Blanton, the sales manager at Macmillan, was happily setting up a big promotion to give dealers. However, the struggling Marshes did not know that in the publishing world, the word that Macmillan had a spectacular bestseller was spreading like prairie fire.

  Thus Peggy was startled when she started getting requests for articles from magazine editors who had read Macmillan’s advance publicity for the book. The first such invitation came from Oscar Graeve, editor of the Delineator, a prominent magazine for women. She responded, “As my publication date (June 30) approaches, my knees wilt like boiled custard and it takes all my courage not to take cover in a swamp like a rabbit. All this author business is practically the only thing that has ever happened to me that has thoroughly frightened me.”99

  CHAPTER

  9

  1936

  AFANTASTIC DREAM

  The reception the book thus far has gotten not only exceeds our fondest expectations, but surpasses anything we might have dreamed of in the wildest of dreams.

  —John Marsh to his mother, 26 June 1936

  1

  THINKING THAT THEIR WORK WAS COMPLETED AT LAST, the Marshes believed that all they had to do now was relax and wait for the book to appear. On March 22, John wrote his mother a long letter for the first time in several weeks. “Getting a novel to bed is more, far more, of a job than either of us anticipated when so blithely and innocently the contract was signed last summer. . . . We finished reading the proofs—without actually putting out both our eyes—a week ago today, so my part of the hard work is over. I hope it is. Since then, I have been staggering out of the fog, trying to restore some semblance of normalness to life, and catching up a few of the loose ends.” He added, “I haven’t, for example, yet made my income tax return, and whether they will give me the $10,000 fine or the year in the federal, or both, is something I am yet to discover.”1

  Although he felt relatively free that week, the pressure was still on Peggy. Macmillan, he wrote, fired “from one to five telegrams a day” to her, “each demanding an answer.” She was still busy autographing the end papers and had about seven hundred of them signed, ready to be pasted into the fronts of the novel. In the event that anyone in his family ran across some friend in the bookselling or book-reviewing business in Delaware, Kentucky, or California, with a personally autograph
ed copy of the book, John jokingly instructed his mother,

  You are to smile knowingly and not let on that you are on the inside of what Marsh-and-Mitchell consider nothing but a dirty Yankee trick. Macmillan is getting these copies autographed so they can present them to “key people” over the country with a sly smile and a wink, telling the recipient how they went to no end of trouble to get the great author to autograph the book “just for you.” It’s an idea of the Macmillan sales department and part of the special promotion they are putting behind the book. They say it will help to get it introduced and started off right, and perhaps it will, but it makes Peggy feel like all kinds of a fool. And it is quite a chore, especially when the list came in from the Chicago office and Peggy had to write “To Marie Guttenschlager from Margaret Mitchell,” “To Rudy Hippelhausen, etc.” and similar unearthly names.2

  When Peggy first balked about the autographing, Macmillan told her that they used this promotional tactic only with “very special books and very special authors,” but she and John had a strong suspicion that the “very special” aspect of this book was the fact that the publishers had to boost the price on it to three dollars a copy. He wrote, “It’s the first $3.00 fiction book Macmillan had brought out in many years, and they insisted that the least Peggy could do was to join in with them in their little deception on the Marie Guttenschlagers of this world, as a part of their heroic efforts to prevent the book from being a complete flop.”3

  The price was something that he and Peggy deplored more than Macmillan or anybody else could. John secretly feared that the length of the novel, which made the high price necessary, might kill the sale of it. But, in spite of that feeling, he got an enormous surge of pleasure after the manuscript had finally been delivered and they received a letter announcing that the thing was so long it would make a book only about one hundred pages shorter than Anthony Adverse. That news helped restore his confidence in himself. With characteristic modesty, he told his mother:

  Before that news arrived I had been wondering what was wrong with the Old Man Marsh. I had been working on the book steadily since last September every night, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, took my vacation during December and worked practically 24 hours a day on the book, seven days a week,—and the harder I worked the less progress I seemed to make. And I wasn’t writing a book, I was just reading it, “Copy-reading” it, straightening out the punctuation and spelling and paragraphing, checking up on the errors, seeing that the style of capitalization was uniform, seeing that babies weren’t born too soon after weddings, etc. And I just couldn’t seem to get through the job. I’d work myself blue in the face and then out and take another look at the stack of MS and I hadn’t even made a dent in it. So I thought it over and decided that the Old Man was slipping. I just couldn’t put the stuff on the ball like I used to could. Didn’t have the speed of my younger days. Old age was claiming me. Then the cheering news came in that the quantity of the thing was like unto “Anthony Adverse” and my spirits rose again. The job had been tremendously long but we had gotten out a tremendous lot of book.

  With eerie prescience, he ended this letter with, “Poor Peggy, I’m afraid, won’t be getting back toward a normal life for some time yet. The worst consequence of this book-writing business is still ahead of her.” In thinking about all the department stores and booksellers that were already frantically trying to schedule her appearance for autograph parties and book teas, he knew that Peggy would be busier now than ever. Furthermore, the Atlanta office of Macmillan was planning public appearances for her around the state.

  John concluded his letter by saying, “Thank heaven, I will escape that. I shall lurk behind a potted plant and be sympathetic but unseen.”

  2

  After lunch on March 20, Peggy sat at her typewriter and began what was now to become her full-time career—writing letters. Instead of writing articles or beginning a new book, she wrote letters—thousands of them. She wrote each one in a tone that was as friendly and informal as if she were sitting in a room chatting with an old friend. Not just to the reviewers but to any stranger who paid her the tiniest compliment or did the smallest favor or asked the most banal question, she wrote lively, conversational, and sometimes very long letters.

  Her first public speaking appearance as the author of Gone With the Wind occurred the first week in April when she was the guest of honor at the Macon Writers’ Club annual breakfast. She made a huge hit with this audience. Later that evening, when she told John about the event, he got so tickled listening to her that he removed his glasses to wipe his eyes. Whenever she saw those glasses come off, she always knew that she had a winning story.4 Deciding this one was too good to keep, she set it down on paper and sent it to Lois Cole. Perhaps better than anything else extant, Peggy’s “Macon letter” gives us an idea of what her contemporaries meant when they all said she had a talent for embellishing ordinary events and for making people laugh. She started out, of course, by denying that the event was a hilarious success.

  “Now, about that Macon Writers affair—it was the most dreadful ordeal I ever underwent and untold wealth would not make me repeat it. As to why I didn’t tell yall—first place, I didnt know you’d be inter-ested….” She went on to describe how Sue Myrick and others in Macon had pressured her into making this public appearance before her book had even been published:

  I repeated that I hadn’t been published, that I loathed meeting strangers, that I had never made a speech and God willing, never intended to and, moreover that I had glands [her slang for illness]. “You and your goldarned glands,” said Sue. “If your glands would hold up under writing such a long book, they will hold up as far as Macon. The UDC [United Daughters of the Confederacy] as well as the Literary ladies are on my neck so get yourself over here.” I refused and heard a muffled argument with Aaron. “Appeal to her better nature.” “Bah,” said Sue. “Try bribery, then.” Sue said, “We’ve got Sherwood Anderson hid out at Aaron’s country place and if you’ll come, we’ll let you associate with him.” I said that not even James Branch Cabell would be bribe enough for making a speech. “Try intimidation,” said Aaron. “If you don’t come,” said Sue in a sinister voice, “I will review you in the Telegraph and compare you favorably with Ethel M. Dell and Temple Bailey and Aaron will review you in the News and compare you with ‘Diddie, Dumps and Tots’ and moreover he will use the word ‘poignant’ seven times and the word ‘nostalgic’ eight times and he will refer to your opus as ‘Adequate.’” So I said, “Alright you so-and-sos, I’ll come.”

  It took me from that moment till I got on the train to buy a dress and a hat. I’ve fallen off to size eleven and there was not an eleven year old dress in town that looked dignified and authorish. Desperate, I finally got a green affair that was unendurably juvenile. I didn’t have time to think of what I’d talk about, I thought I’d think of something on the train. But there were people I knew on the train and I didn’t get a chance. And Sherwood Anderson met the train and we went to Aaron’s house and I never got the chance to think about the speech that night. And Sue let me oversleep till I barely had time to make the luncheon. And when I got to my seat and saw that enormous room jammed with something over two hundred people, I ardently wished I was dead…. While the president was introducing me I sat like a newly gigged frog and tried to think of what I would say and I couldn’t think of a thing….

  When I rose trembling I had a vague memory of how horses “lock” their knee joints when they go to sleep standing up and fearing that I’d fall on the floor, I locked my knee joints and took a good grip on the table and also on some whipped cream on the table cloth. Don’t ask me what I said. I haven’t much idea. I only know that I hadn’t said five words when the crowd began to bellow which so disconcerted me that I couldn’t get a word out for a minute. And from then on it was a riot. . . .

  She told her audience about the first conversation she had had with Mr. Latham. When he asked what her book was about, she said she answere
d vaguely, “The South.” When he asked if it were like Tobacco Road and if it had any degenerates in it, she told him no and explained something about her characters. “Then he said that if Southerners felt that they were maligned by such books as ‘Tobacco Road’ why didn’t they write books to show themselves as they truly were? Editors would just as soon publish books about decent people as Jeeter Lesters—if the decent books were as interesting as the others.” She went to explain why she had never submitted the book to anyone except Mr. Latham and only then upon his persistent request.

  I had told him that I didn’t think it would sell because there were only four Goddamms in it and only one dirty word . . . and that I didn’t think the book would sell because the heroine was in love with another woman’s husband for years and they never did anything about it. This is where the UDC’s fell on the floor.

  After they had been retrieved I had forgotten what I was talking about and plunged into the horrors of galley proofs. I admitted that I could either take subjunctives or leave them, was partial to split infinitives and would not know a dangling participle if it rose up and gave me the Bronx cheer but that Miss Prink was, unfortunately for me, well informed on these subjects and that Macmillan, alas, had a high standard of English. I forget what came next. I had only flashes of consciousness.5