Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (4 page)

After the group dropped the editor off at his hotel, one of Mitchell's companions asked why she had not given Latham her manuscript. Another aspiring author in the group overheard the question and expressed shock that Mitchell had written anything that would be worth the editor's time. Mitchell later recalled the woman bragging that her own book had been refused by the best publishers, as if that was a badge of honor. Although the story has an apocryphal ring to it, the comment supposedly got Mitchell's dander up and caused her to wonder whether she ought to give Latham the manuscript so that she, too, could brag about having been rejected by the best.
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When Mitchell returned to her apartment, she agonized over what to do. She did not want to expose herself, her story, or the South to anyone's ridicule. At the same time, she trusted Latham, sensing he would treat her fairly. Mitchell telephoned her husband at work and told him of the editor's interest. Marsh encouraged her to let Latham see the book. What did she have to lose? Mitchell agreed.

The editor had tentative plans to return to Atlanta the following week. Mitchell could have used those few days to pull the manuscript together. Or she could have taken her time to finish the rewrites and send the manuscript to him in New York later. But impulse had taken over. It was now or never. Latham was scheduled to leave that evening by train, and Mitchell did not waste any time getting the document to him. She hurried about the apartment gathering envelopes, many from under the bed and out of a closet. None of the chapters was numbered, and there were multiple drafts of several, but she did her best to pull together enough material to present a cohesive story. She had never written an acceptable first chapter so hastily drafted a synopsis of what she had in mind for the opening pages.
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She also grabbed her old novella, “'Ropa Carmagin,” and threw that in her car with the rest of the envelopes.

“Hatless, hair flying, dust and dirt all over my face and arms and worse luck, my hastily rolled up stockings coming down about my ankles” is how Mitchell once described her appearance upon arriving at Latham's hotel.* Bellboys followed behind, picking up envelopes she dropped as she crossed the lobby.
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Mitchell called the editor's room and asked him to meet her downstairs. When he arrived, Latham found the author sitting on a divan next to a towering stack of envelopes. Mitchell acknowledged the shabby condition of her manuscript and told him she wanted his opinion on whether, as raw material for a book, it was worth bothering with. He agreed to look it over and, at her insistence, promised he would not share the manuscript with anyone else.
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She told him to take it before she changed her mind.

In that pre-computer era, bulky manuscripts were standard fare. Many authors still wrote by longhand, and typewritten documents often contained hand edits. Cutting and pasting required scissors and paste. Even so, Latham was flabbergasted by the sheer mass—and mess—of what Mitchell had given him. He would later describe it as the largest manuscript he had ever seen. According to Mitchell, he “kept a straight face” and arranged for a bellboy to buy a disposable “please-don't-rain suitcase” for him to carry it in.
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He wrestled the manuscript onto the train that evening, along with a half dozen others he had picked up in Atlanta.

At some point over the next two days, Latham glanced through Mitchell's envelopes. Good editors have noses like hounds that enable them to ferret out the best manuscripts, and Latham's told him her story had promise. But, with a long trip ahead of him, he did not have time to assess the work thoroughly. That was a task best left to his associate editor, Cole, who was manning things back in New York. In today's world, Latham might have called Cole from his cell phone or dashed off an e-mail explaining the situation. In the 1930s, though, not even long-distance telephone calls were a routine tool of the business world. Operators had to place the calls, and it could take up to twenty minutes to make a connection, depending on the distance involved. The lines were unstable, often resulting in poor sound quality. And the calls were expensive, especially during business hours. Calling long distance was generally done only in the most urgent circumstances. Telegramming was another option but also could be prohibitively expensive. Latham fell back on the most popular form of business communication in those days—a letter.

On Saturday, April 13, 1935, Latham wrote Cole from Charleston, South Carolina, using a typewriter he carried with him on the trip. He gave a status report on his Atlanta visit. After praising the assistant editor for being one of the most popular people in town and for having been a “good girl” while stationed there as the Macmillan office manager, he mentioned having obtained the manuscript from Mitchell. What he had read so far was promising, but he was unable to make a complete assessment because of its disorganized state. Moreover, it was as “big as a house,” and he could not carry it with him cross-country. So, although he had promised Mitchell he would not show the manuscript to anyone else, he was shipping it to Cole. He asked her to be prepared to talk with him about it when he returned to New York. Latham recognized getting Cole involved was a tricky matter given his promise to Mitchell, so he instructed Cole not to let on to her friend that she had it. He rationalized the deception, saying he knew Mitchell would be fine with Cole seeing it eventually. He promised to tell the author the truth at some point, but now was not the right time.
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Meanwhile, Mitchell fretted over having turned over the enormous pile of stained envelopes. With great embarrassment, she realized she had forgotten to give Latham some of the chapters and had included duplicates of others. She also worried about what would happen if the book was published. She feared a harsh critical reaction and thought she had “been several kinds of an ass” to get herself in “so vulnerable a position.”
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Amidst her throes of regret, she received a letter from Latham on April 15. He liked what he had seen of her manuscript. He wanted to give it a careful reading and circulate it to others at Macmillan for their input. Would she mind if he kept it until June? Mitchell had a hard time accepting his praise. “I am oppressed with the knowledge of the lousiness of what I write for even though I may not write well, I do know good writing,” she replied on Tuesday, April 16.
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She offered to take back the manuscript so she could tidy things up before anyone else at Macmillan attempted to muddle through her story. Embarrassed as she was, though, if he could do something with her work in its present condition, she was fine with him keeping it.

A week after leaving Atlanta, Latham typed Cole a letter on a train from New Orleans to Austin. Having trouble hitting the keys because the train was moving so fast, he vented that he was killing himself with the travel and the constant stream of engagements. The heat also distressed him: “It is as hot as HELL.” Nevertheless, he was pleased with his trip so far, especially Mitchell's manuscript. He wanted to know whether Cole agreed that “this woman has something” and asked the associate editor to send her impressions along as soon as she finished reading. Meanwhile, he wanted to play along with Mitchell carefully. Cole still should not let on that she had the manuscript. He instructed her to hold on to his letter for future reference but to make sure its contents remained secret.
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That same day, Latham also wrote Mitchell again. He assured her that he understood about the unfinished condition of the manuscript and asked her to be patient. Her manuscript had great potential, and he intended to keep at it.
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After the manuscript had made its way to New York, Cole took the pile of envelopes home to sort through with her husband's assistance. Physically, it was a disaster, as Latham had warned. A few of the chapters were typed neatly on clean white paper, but the rest were on yellow pages covered in pencil notations. In many cases, there were lengthy revisions of scenes. For instance, Mitchell apparently had trouble making up her mind about the best way to kill off Pansy's second husband, Frank Kennedy. In one version, he died of pneumonia after Pansy forced him to go out in a rainstorm to evict a family. Another had him killed by federal troops in a Ku Klux Klan raid. Cole and Taylor organized the chapters and sorted through the duplicates, trying to bring some order to the chaos.

In a fifteen-page report to Latham, Cole analyzed Mitchell's work in detail.
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She presented him an outline of what appeared to be a thirtychapter story, with five chapters missing. Overall, it was in extremely poor condition. The time sequence was hopelessly muddled. Important scenes were missing. Yet, Cole knew right away Macmillan had a winner on its hands. According to her assessment, the atmosphere was exceptionally well done; the plot was almost “sure fire”; the dialogue was “well in character and natural.” As for the characters, she thought Pansy especially good and Rhett “the strongest and most clearly drawn in the book.” Cole's impressions of Ashley and Melanie were less glowing but still positive. She described him as “shadowy” and her as “almost too good” yet still believable.

Overall, Cole deemed the characters memorable. Vivid sections of the story remained in her mind long after she finished reading. She liked the ending, praising it as “severely logical in its outline as a Greek tragedy.” She quibbled only slightly with Mitchell's decision to present Pansy returning to Tara, her family plantation, with a sense of hope for what tomorrow would bring. Cole thought this “implies an insouciance, a callousness, and a hope, which are all out of keeping. Pansy has lost everything she has, and even her limited intelligence must tell her that.” Cole wanted the book to end on that note so there would be no doubt Pansy was doomed. Beyond that, the editor had just two concerns: Would Mitchell be able to bring the story together into an acceptable whole, and was there a market for a novel about the Civil War and Reconstruction? Those concerns aside, the manuscript was too good to pass up.

Latham wrapped up his scouting trip at the end of May and returned to Macmillan's Fifth Avenue headquarters. Busy working on the firm's fall releases, he also wanted to get things moving on Mitchell's manuscript. He decided to send it to Charles W. Everett, an English professor at Columbia University who served as a freelance reader for Macmillan. Latham had tremendous confidence in Everett's judgment and wanted a second opinion on Mitchell's manuscript with a particular focus on what she needed to do to complete it.
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By July 1935, Mitchell had still not heard back from Latham with his final verdict on whether her story was worth publishing. And, apparently, Cole had followed Latham's instructions about not letting the author know of her involvement. After almost three months of no news, Mitchell began to get antsy. She had been mulling over the plot since Latham left Atlanta and wanted to finish the book once and for all. But, because he had the manuscript there was not much she could do.
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She tried working from memory and with the duplicate chapters she did have but found it impossible. On July 9, she wrote Latham explaining the situation and asking him to return the manuscript. She acknowledged this was a crazy thing for an aspiring author to do but said she could not restrain herself.

Reading perhaps a little too much between the lines, Latham worried that Mitchell wanted the pages back so she could show them to other publishers. He had no intention of letting that happen.
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The editor replied on July 15, apologizing for the delay in getting back to her. He assured her he remained keenly interested in the book. He thought it had every chance of becoming a considerable success and hoped she would be patient a little longer.
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That same week, Latham received Everett's assessment of the manuscript. It was an even more glowing review than Cole's. The professor thought the book “magnificent” and “breath-taking,” and praised the author's control of the plot's tempo.
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He recommended Macmillan offer Mitchell a contract immediately and predicted the novel would likely be a bestseller.
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Despite its rough appearance, the manuscript needed little work before it would be publishable. Everett suggested Mitchell bridge a few gaps in the plot and tone down what he saw as negativity toward Reconstruction. Like Cole, he thought the ending needed to be reworked. However, he took a different approach and recommended pulling Pansy away from the brink of certain doom by leaving open the possibility that Rhett might return someday. Finally, Everett offered a title for the as-yet-unnamed book: “Another Day.”
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With Cole's and Everett's ringing endorsements—and having read it himself with great enthusiasm—Latham prepared to convince his boss, Macmillan president George P. Brett, Jr., to buy Mitchell's manuscript. Brett had recently taken over the reins of Macmillan from his father, George P. Brett, who still sat on the firm's board. The dynamic between the younger Brett and Latham was an interesting one. Brett had no formal education beyond high school and had joined the firm in 1919 after serving in the U.S. Army in France.
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He and his younger brother, Richard, the company's treasurer, worked their way up the ranks under their father's tutelage. By contrast, Latham had joined the firm after graduating from Columbia University in 1909 and had climbed the ladder on his own. Although there was a mere six-year age difference between him and Brett, they might as well have been father and son. Brett played the role of young and impulsive leader to Latham's refined elder statesman.
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Latham approached Brett and the firm's editorial council on July 17, 1935, and suggested they offer Mitchell a publishing contract. Certain the book had great potential, the editor predicted Macmillan would make a terrible mistake not publishing it. He wanted to act quickly and stretched the truth to make that happen. Not only did he say that other publishers were after her—a faulty guess on his part—but he also attempted to paint Mitchell as an established literary figure. Perhaps sensing that the council would be wary about investing in an unknown author, Latham shamelessly bolstered her resume, claiming she was an editor at the
Atlanta Journal
, had written for magazines, and was counted as a figure of importance in the Southern literary world. He predicted this book would certainly make her.
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Mitchell would have been horrified by Latham's exaggerations. A stickler for the truth, she had no pretensions about her literary qualifications. She had worked as a reporter, not an editor. While she had plenty of friends in Georgia literary circles and remained a member of the Atlanta Women's Press Club, her name carried no more weight than that of any other ex-reporter/ aspiring novelist. But puffery aside, Latham was correct about what mattered—this book would be the making of Margaret Mitchell.