After Peggy read that interview and the letters that referred to it, she picked up her letter to Slattery and typed the following postscript, which is freighted with anger:
P.S. This morning news arrived which upset me so much that I hardly know how to write to you about it. Several letters came to me from strangers, confusing letters, which said that after reading the article in the Washington Post they understood much about Gone With the Wind which they had not understood before. They said they had felt that no woman could have written such a book and, after reading in the paper that my husband had collaborated with me in the writing of it, they understood.
I was completely bewildered at this news—bewildered by the very idea that my husband had written any part of Gone With the Wind—bewildered about what had appeared in the Washington paper. Then a clipping arrived, sent by a friend who knew all about how the book was written and that I alone had written it and then I understood.
I am so upset about this error that I have been unable to do anything but cry ever since I read the clipping. I have given so many years of my life to the writing of this book, injured my eyes, endangered my health and this is my payment—that I did not write it! And I did write it, every word of it. My husband had nothing whatever to do with it. In the first place he is not a Georgian (he was born in Kentucky) and no one but a Georgian with generations of Georgian ancestors could have written it. In the second place, he has a very responsible position and works very hard and he seldom gets time to play golf much less write books.
In fact, he never even read the whole of my manuscript until after the Macmillan Company had bought it. It was not that I didn’t want him to read it. It was because the book was not written with the second chapter following the first, and the third following the second. It was written last chapter first and so on until the first chapter was written last—written, in fact several months after the book was sold. My husband could not be expected to catch the continuity of the story when I could only give him scattered chapters to read, which to him, did not connect up.
Not all the financial rewards I may receive can make up to me for this. Moreover it puts me in dreadful light before the world—that I had concealed my husband’s work on this book. And he actually had no part in it except helping me with the proof reading when my eyes gave out and my deadline was upon me.
3
This one letter, more than any other, reveals Peggy’s terrible insecurity, her great fear that the world would think of her, as she thought of herself, as a fraud. In a voice like that of an angry, frightened child, intensely pleading for someone to believe her, she insisted: “And I did write it, every word of it. My husband had nothing whatever to do with it.” The reader can almost see her wet eyes and trembling body.
In one way, her reaction here is understandable, as no one wants the credit that she or he has earned to be snatched away or misdirected. In her day particularly, it was all too easy to negate any achievement any woman attained. However, although her concern about the question of her authorship is easy to understand, it is not easy to understand why this one rumor bothered her more than all the others and caused her to answer in the panicky manner in which she did. All the other rumors made her so angry that she actually perpetuated them herself by talking and writing about them and trying to get to their source. At one point, she even encouraged Medora Field Perkerson to write an article on the rumors circulating about her for the Sunday Magazine. But this one rumor frightened her, and she never mentioned it in any of her other extant letters.
In fact, in writing her postscript to Slattery she did not even mention—much less correct—any of the other inaccuracies attributed to him. If she had done so, her argument that John had not coauthored the book would have been far more logical and effective because she could have easily shown that the entire Washington Post article was nothing but a mass of misstatements. She could have pointed out that her book had not been sold to the movies for one hundred thousand dollars; that Atlantans had not tried to exploit her and John; that they had not declined all invitations; that many more than two hundred thousand copies of the novel had been sold; that she had never even boiled an egg, much less cooked breakfast, in her life; that there never was and never had been any other Georgia Power advertising executive, or employee, named John Marsh, except her husband; and that it was he whom Slattery had encountered in the heated courtroom sessions. Instead, Peggy ignored all those errors and fastened on that one phrase about John’s coauthorship. That phrase must have seared her soul deeply for her to deny that he had any part in helping her with the creative process.
In fact, though, the question about her sole authorship began almost immediately after the novel appeared in the marketplace, particularly after a few pages from the original manuscript were exhibited in a showcase in Atlanta’s public library. After some people saw John’s handwriting all over the pages, speculation about his collaboration migrated around, mainly in the newspaper circles in Georgia and Kentucky and in the Associated Press office in Washington where John had worked. Lois, Latham, Everett, and others at Macmillan, and certainly Rhoda, Grace, and Margaret Baugh—all had seen the original manuscript with its heavily penciled corrections, notes, and revisions in John’s typing or handwriting. They knew too, without question, that John had been intimately involved in the writing of the story since its inception. Some of his coworkers remembered the Marshes’ taking the typewriter and sections of the manuscript along on John’s business trips, and Bessie and Deon remembered the Marshes’ long nightly sessions in which they discussed the work in progress. John’s family remembered how enthusiastically John and Peggy talked about their work on the novel. In 1935, when Lois told Latham about her friend’s manuscript, Lois said to the publisher, “no one has read it except her husband.”27 Peggy herself had explained to Latham when he first took the manuscript that it included so many versions of so many chapters because she had put them there for her husband to read and evaluate.
John’s letters to Macmillan alone are eye-opening evidence of his arduous work on the manuscript. Scattered among the papers in the Margaret Mitchell Marsh Collection are many notes in John’s handwriting on such items as “Yankee Repeating Rifles in 1864,” reference notes on “Plastic Surgery” and on “Reminiscences of an Army Nurse During the Civil War from a book by Adelaide W. Smith.” Other notes in his handwriting have to do with music, names of old songs, religious revivals, Bermuda grass in 1848, dogwood as medicine, and the use of iodine. There are also drafts of letters in his handwriting, letters that he composed for Peggy before they were typed and signed by her.
In addition to the chronologies of the characters and their dialects that he started keeping in 1927 were his notes on the reports of the Confederate forces designated as the Army of Tennessee under General Joseph E. Johnston and subsequently under General John B. Hood, who was married to John’s great-aunt. Also found on scraps of paper written in his handwriting are lists of the names of Confederate soldiers from Georgia buried in the Confederate Cemetery at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois. Whereas earlier, she had frequently mentioned John’s helping her with the manuscript, now she completely denied it.
But those who knew the Marshes long and well knew about the impenetrable bond between them and had wondered quietly all along about the nature of John’s contribution to the novel. Their doubts were not about Peggy’s lack of talent or imagination, but about her lack of the kind of discipline required to sustain work on a novel of such breadth and of her ability to polish it as finely as it was polished. They thought she was too madcap and irresponsible to produce a book like that. Besides, her dependence upon John and his loyalty to her were widely known. As a matter of fact, their friends would have been more surprised if he—with his writing and editorial skills—had not helped her.28 After all, writers—even the best—have editors.
Peggy did not write the Washington Post asking for a correction or a retraction, which is what she could have done—or, better
still, she could have had John or Stephens do it. If she had handled this situation as she handled every other important one, she would have discussed it with John, and he would have quietly set the record straight with Slattery. A calm, clear, balanced response from him would have been far more effective. The fact that she herself wrote directly to Slattery, and wrote while she was angry, suggests that she did not want John or Margaret Baugh to know what she had written. She must have felt ashamed about denying John’s help, but just like Scarlett, she rationalized her actions and begged:
Mr. Slattery, can you not ask the paper for a retraction of the statement that my husband collaborated with me in the writing of Gone With the Wind? Of course, the story has already gone out into the world to rise up and plague me all of my life but a retraction would help some. You see, it is my whole professional reputation which is at stake—my reputation which has been ruined through no fault of my own. I am so distressed about all this that I do not know what to do.29
The rumor about her not being the sole author of Gone With the Wind was not the only one that sprang up in the fall of 1936, but it was, by far, the one that bothered her the most. Although she must have realized that John’s help had illuminated her talent, not diminished it, she obviously feared that any acknowledgment of his assistance would have the latter effect in the eyes of others.
Although it is doubtful that they ever actually discussed it, the Marshes must have known such a rumor would surface. But early in their relationship, they had tacitly accepted the roles each was to play, and neither veered from his and her role. Consistent about remaining in the background, John was no different from any other good editor. He had no egoistic need to claim any of her limelight and never once tried to do so. In fact, he prudently did everything he could do to avoid calling attention to himself.30 Thus, there was no real reason for Peggy to react as she did when the rumor surfaced publicly in the Washington Post. In fact, she should have acknowledged graciously the editorial help that her husband had given her, instead of denying it.
4
Peggy’s reaction to this Washington Post article may have been exacerbated by a lightning bolt that had struck earlier, in July, when Dr. Thomas H. English of Emory University had written Peggy asking her to donate her manuscript of Gone With the Wind to the university. His request shocked her into realizing that she did not even have the original manuscript.31 She panicked and got hysterical when she realized her “first baby” was gone.32 After she called Latham to request the return of her manuscript, she became more distressed, for he told her that he was sure that she had it. Then, a day or so later, he wrote apologizing for upsetting her, for he had found the manuscript in the Macmillan vaults and was returning it to her.33
Finally, on October 15, 1936, all but three pages of the original manuscript of Gone With the Wind was insured at one thousand dollars and shipped to its home in Atlanta.34 The remaining three pages, which she said Macmillan “inveigled” from her because she was “too exhausted to argue,” were kept to exhibit in Macmillan’s display booth at the National Book Fair in New York in early November.35 An article in the New York Times, on November 9, 1936, states that many interested people viewed the manuscript display and that “the typed pages have been carefully and liberally corrected in pencil.” After these pages were returned to her on December 8, she vowed that as God was her witness not a single page of that manuscript would leave her possession ever again.
In response to all the letters that had flashed back and forth between him and John about the film and the foreign rights, George Brett, on that same day, November 9, issued to all Macmillan officials a memo stating that no change of any kind was to be made in Gone With the Wind without first referring the entire matter to his office. Because the publisher had assumed so many “unusual duties” in connection with Gone With the Wind beyond those stated in the original contract, Brett stated it was now imperative that an entry be made on the record in all of the departments to which his note was addressed that no change other than the correction of typographical errors be made in the plates, and that no reissue at a different price or in a different format be made without referring to the contract file to make sure that Macmillan complied with all of its obligations.36 As of this point, the Macmillan-Marsh relationship lost the friendly element that had once characterized it and from this time on remained only perfunctorily cordial.
During this time, John’s attitude toward Peggy’s success began to change. No longer did he speak or write of it in awe. In fact, anyone reading the letters he wrote during this time would think that the Marshes were dealing with some kind of tragedy. He wrote Frances:
It occurs to me that Peggy is about as fine an example as I ever encountered of one who has had “fame thrust upon her.” She had given up the book as a bad job long before Mr. Latham ever came to town, and I don’t think she would have ever turned the MS over to him except for my urging that she do it “on a chance.” From that moment until now, events have been sweeping us along, against our will, much as in the case of poor Scarlett and the others in the book. Did I tell you that I already have a title for Peggy’s next book—the story of the young couple who sowed a “Gone With the Wind” and were “Reaping the Whirlwind.”
In a brooding, philosophical manner, he summarized his feelings:
Things have happened in such rapid succession that we have both become “anaesthetic” to the situation. We had a long hard training in bad fortune and I think we learned to stand it pretty well, but we have had practically no experience with large scale good fortune, and we find it a real problem to adjust to it. Trying to analyze our state of mind, I think the trouble is that we both were well satisfied with our lives before and we rather resent the new position of prominence we have been thrust into. We were very pleased with each other’s company and that of a few friends, we had learned to live inside our income so we had no ambitions for wealth, our material wants were few and, above all, we had achieved the privacy we both enjoy by getting rid of a lot of boresome acquaintances. Now all of that has changed. We have about as much privacy as the proverbial gold fish. (For an example of what we are up against, I find myself wondering if I should write such things in a letter to you. We have become the objects of public curiosity and must guard our words and our acts, for fear we will find them written up in some newspaper. That thought shouldn’t intrude in writing a letter to one’s sister, but it does involuntarily as a result of recent events.)
Of course, we’ll get used to it. And as I told Mother, my theory is to let matters slide for the present, not try to comprehend the uncomprehensible and wait until later when we will get used to it and begin to enjoy it. Too bad all of this couldn’t have happened when we were at the depths of our poverty. . . .
Please don’t get the impression that we are downcast and sad over the book’s success. We’re not, but we are more than a little confused and bewildered by the extraordinary chain of events. And you would be, too, if it ever happened to you.37
An example of the kind of invasions of privacy that John wrote about occurred one sweltering September morning when Peggy, dressed in one of her plain, cotton sundresses and flat-heeled shoes, ventured downtown to do some long-delayed shopping. Once in the department store, she found her hopes of avoiding detection dashed as she was immediately surrounded by people wanting to get her autograph. A couple of hours later, tired from standing on her feet for so long and angry because her shopping was still undone, she returned home and went straight to bed, asking Bessie not to disturb her. As she was stretched out on her bed resting and listening to the hum of the fan as it circulated hot air around the darkened room, she suddenly heard an unfamiliar, loud, female voice demanding that Bessie get Margaret Mitchell out of bed. This voice belonged to a woman who had come all the way from Philadelphia, bringing a photographer with her, wanting to be photographed shaking hands with the great author Margaret Mitchell.38 Bessie, whom John described as being in a class with the best personal sec
retaries because she had developed “a real talent for firmness accompanied by a smile,” managed to get rid of the strangers though it took her a good half-hour to do so. That evening, when Peggy told John about the episode, she said she thought it strange and disappointing to learn that people were for the most part unsympathetic and rude to those they supposedly admired.39
Public interest in her never seemed to subside. Atlanta was often flooded with tourists wanting to get a word with and an autograph from Margaret Mitchell. Strangers walked right up to the Marshes’ doorstep and rang the doorbell, asking to see the author. When Bessie would tell them that Miss Mitchell was not at home, they would sit in their automobiles for hours in front of the apartment, waiting for her return. Because Peggy usually used the back cellar door, she told Lois that “the tourists have photographed practically every inmate of the Russell Apartments in the happy belief that they have snapped me.”40 In another letter a little later on, she told Jim Putnam, “I will never understand strangers who . . . ask Bessie for ‘just a peek’ at me. I feel that this puts me in the class with an educated pig, a flea circus or a two-headed baby in a jar of alcohol.”41
5
Then, truly great news came in November 1936 when Peggy and John learned that Gone With the Wind was among the nominations for a Pulitzer Prize. However, this thrilling development brought what Peggy considered an effrontery when Sam Doerflinger of the Macmillan Company wrote asking her for her age and for biographical information to give to the Pulitzer Committee. She shot back:
Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh Page 44