Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (3 page)

From the stories she had heard all her life, Mitchell knew the historical background of the region and the period she wrote about by heart. And so she did not bother with organized research. Yet, throughout the years of writing, Mitchell read about the Civil War era in old newspapers, diaries, government records, and firsthand accounts of life in antebellum Georgia. She also had access to letters between her grandparents written during the war and benefited from articles her father and brother wrote for the
Atlanta
Historical Bulletin
. She would call out for special attention a piece Stephens Mitchell published in 1929 about wartime industries in Atlanta in the 1860s.
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She rarely made notes on any of what she read, using these historical details more for inspiration rather than literal adaptation. She once said the only notes she took were when an idea came to her in the middle of the night and she did not want to get out of bed to work on the manuscript.
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She was not one for outlines either; much of Mitchell's work went on inside her head. One section in particular frustrated her—a scene in which Pansy flees Atlanta and returns home through the war-torn countryside, only to find her mother dead and the plantation in ruins. “I prowled around it mentally for a long time, looking at it from all angles and not getting anywhere,” she said. “I could never write a line of it and never made a try at it, on paper. I didn't seem able to capture the smell of the cedars; the smell of the swamp; the barnyard odors, and pack them into those chapters.”
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But like so many writers, for whom the most unusual and unrelated stimuli—a smell, a remark, or a glimpse of scenery—can trigger a flood of thoughts and words, Mitchell had an epiphany. The words came to her at the Ritz Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where she had accompanied Marsh on a business trip:

I was not even thinking about the story when all this came to me very simply and very clearly. It was cold, wet winter . . . and yet I could see clearly how dusty and stifling a red clay road in Georgia looks and feels in September, how the leaves on the trees are dry and there isn't any wind to move them and how utterly still the deep country woods are. And there is the queerest smell in the swampy bottom lands at twilight. And I suddenly saw how very haunted such a section would look the day after a big battle, after two armies had moved on.
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Now that she had the “atmosphere” she had been trying to capture for so long, the couple cut short their trip so Mitchell could return home and continue writing.

She worked on her manuscript for the next several years at an inconstant pace. She suffered several spells of poor health, including bouts of eyestrain, pleurisy, and “the jitters.” Also causing her to pause was “an attack of the humbles” brought on by reading books about the Civil War such as Stephen Vincent Bene´t's
John Brown's Body
and Mary Johnston's
Cease Fir-
ing.
Bene´t, Mitchell said, had caught what she was trying to capture “so clearly, so vividly and so simply” and with such “a heart-breaking beauty” that she could not write for months. Likewise, Johnston had “done what I'd wanted to do and done it so much better that there seemed little use of me trying.”
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Toward the end of the decade, Mitchell wrote a friend that her work on the book progressed at a snail's pace.
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She reviewed what she had written so far. Much of it seemed silly, and her expectations for ever having the story published were not high.

The novel was substantially complete in 1929. In her own words, Mitchell hit it “a few more licks in 1930 and 1931,”
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then put it out of her mind, not having any particular impetus to add the finishing touches. After that, she “worked on the book only now and then,” Marsh later recalled. “She had reached the point where most of the creative job was done and there was nothing more to do except the drudgery of turning a rough manuscript into a finished one.”
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Throughout all the years of writing, Mitchell's husband was the only person with whom she discussed the novel in any detail. He reviewed drafts, made comments, and talked her through difficulties. The rest of her family and friends knew only that she was working on a book about the Civil War. She refused to disclose any details, making it clear she did not want to talk about the project. Even friendly inquiries about how her work was going were met with a bristled response. Mitchell would later explain that her standoffishness was bred of insecurity. She was not one of those authors who felt so sure of themselves that they happily talked up their latest endeavor to anyone willing to listen.
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Although most of Mitchell's friends did not push her about the book, one had a special interest in the project. Lois Dwight Cole was the office manager of the Atlanta branch of the Macmillan Company, one of the largest and most esteemed publishing firms in the United States. A handsome brunette with blue eyes that crinkled when she smiled,
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Cole first met Mitchell in 1927 through Medora Field Perkerson, a writer with whom Mitchell had worked on the
Journal
's Sunday magazine and who had served as matron of honor at the Marsh wedding. Perkerson introduced Mitchell to Cole at a luncheon, and the two literary-minded women hit it off right away. Cole was just two years younger than Mitchell and had graduated from Smith. If not for the death of Mitchell's mother, the two would have almost certainly met years earlier at the small college. They made up for lost time and formed a lasting friendship that would change their lives and literary history.

Cole's office was near the Marsh apartment, and she often stopped by to visit Mitchell on the way home from work. Their bond was cemented when Mitchell introduced the unmarried Cole to a reporter named Allan Taylor, with whom Mitchell had worked at the newspaper. Cole and Taylor eventually wed, and Mitchell considered herself the godmother of their marriage. The couples socialized regularly. If the two men worked late, Cole and Mitchell often spent evenings together, talking and performing domestic chores like turning the collars on their husbands' shirts.
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Their conversations gravitated toward discussions of people, poetry, history, and books. But there was one book they did not talk about—Mitchell's. Cole asked her about it several times, but the author stayed tight-lipped. On one occasion, when Cole dropped by the apartment and found her friend at the typewriter, Mitchell tossed a towel over the table to hide the manuscript.
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Even knowing almost nothing about the book, Cole could not help but suspect it would turn out well. Mitchell was smart, articulate, and funny, a winning combination for a novelist. She also was a natural storyteller, who told tales with such fun and skill that she could entertain an entire roomful of people.
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If Mitchell wrote as well as she spoke, Cole thought, the book was sure to be a humdinger.
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On various occasions, Cole let Mitchell know that Macmillan would like to see the manuscript. Mitchell shrugged off the idea, saying she would probably never finish the “damn thing.”

In 1932, Marsh received a promotion at the power company, and the couple moved to a larger apartment on East Seventeenth Street. That same year, Cole accepted a job as an associate editor at Macmillan's New York office. In her new position, she reported to Harold Latham, Macmillan's editor in chief, the leading editorial force at the company and one of its vice presidents. Among Cole's host of responsibilities was vetting manuscripts for her new boss. In the back of her mind, she considered Mitchell's book as something that might interest Latham. In the fall of 1933, Cole heard a rumor that Mitchell had completed the manuscript except for the first chapter. The associate editor wrote the author a formal letter of inquiry from Macmillan. Did Mitchell want to send what she had so far to the publisher for its advisers to read and make suggestions? “I do hope you haven't made arrangements to send your manuscript to any other house, as we have always been counting on seeing it,” Cole said.
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Mitchell responded with an equally formal letter, saying that Cole had heard wrong: the book was not done. She doubted it ever would be finished but agreed that, if she managed to pull it together, she would let Macmillan see it first.

Cole tried again in 1934, this time by telegram. Mitchell still would not budge about letting Macmillan see the incomplete novel.
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However, after several months of neglect, the author did redirect her attention to the manuscript and give it a thorough assessment with the idea of finally wrapping it up. The first three chapters failed to impress her, and she also noticed a lack of action toward the middle of the book. She decided to start there and began reworking several chapters, hoping to lift them out of their “sag.”
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Her plans were interrupted when, on November 22, she and Marsh were in an automobile accident while driving a friend home after a dinner engagement. The two men suffered neck strain, and Mitchell injured her back. For the next three months, she lay in bed, unable to work. After regaining her mobility in the spring of 1935, she remained in chronic pain. Sitting at a desk was difficult for her, so the manuscript remained on the back burner.

Although Macmillan received hundreds of manuscripts in the mail every year, Latham did not linger at his desk waiting for the next bestseller to fall in his lap. Beginning in the late 1920s, he took regular scouting trips to cities across the United States and England, looking for promising new authors. While on the road, he attended meetings, lunches, dinners, and cocktail parties with agents, publishers, and writers, hoping to ferret out hot prospects. These trips were a crapshoot at best, often full of disappointing leads and wasted time. Occasionally, though, the dice fell just right.

Such was the case in the spring of 1935 when Latham embarked on his first scouting tour of the South. Many of America's best-known writers came from that part of the country, and Macmillan wanted to publish more Southern novels of merit. En route to California, one of his regular destinations, he planned to visit Atlanta, Charleston, New Orleans, and Austin.
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Latham came to the South with an open mind and an earnest desire to learn about the area.
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He also came armed with some inside information that an ex-reporter in Atlanta named Margaret Mitchell Marsh might have a manuscript worth looking at. The tip had come, of course, from Cole, who recommended Latham seek out her friend.

The editor arrived in Atlanta the second week of April and sent local authors—established and aspirant—into a flutter.* The
Atlanta Journal
reported that “desks were ransacked, papers dusted” as writers scurried to pull together manuscripts for his consideration.
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Still in pain from her injuries, Mitchell did not join in the fray. Although Cole had told her in March that Latham would be in town, she had not been well enough to finish the book in time for his visit, and she had no plans of showing it to him in its incomplete state. As a special favor to Cole, however, Mitchell agreed to meet the editor and do what she could to make his stay pleasant and productive.

On Thursday, April 11, Latham attended a luncheon at Rich's department store as a guest of the
Journal
's Perkerson. Like Cole, the newspaperwoman knew little about Mitchell's book but suspected it would be worth the editor's time. At the luncheon, Perkerson arranged for Latham to sit with Mitchell and encouraged him to speak with her about her writing. Perkerson warned, though, that it would not be easy to wrest the manuscript from the budding novelist. Intrigued, the editor asked Mitchell whether she had a novel for him to see. She admitted to having worked on something for years, but said it was in no condition to be evaluated.
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The pair crossed paths again that afternoon at a tea, to which Mitchell brought along several fledgling authors eager to meet the New York editor. When Latham mentioned her manuscript again, Mitchell changed the subject and offered to take him on an outing with the group to see Atlanta's famed dogwood trees. It is hard to imagine a busy editor like Latham agreeing to spend an afternoon driving around looking at the local scenery, yet something about Mitchell interested him. She had impressed him with her intelligence, and he thought her a “nice little thing.”
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Latham accepted the invitation. During their tour, he steered the conversation to Mitchell's manuscript, and she again denied having a novel ready for him to review. At the end of the day, she told him she enjoyed their visit and promised that, if she ever finished her book, he would be the first to see it.