Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (6 page)

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A Manuscript of the Old South

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n August 7, 1935, the day after she signed the contract, Harold Latham shipped Margaret Mitchell the reorganized manuscript, which he now referred to as the “MS of the Old South.” Under separate cover, he returned the novella “'Ropa Carmagin,” which he deemed a splendid story but too short to be of commercial interest as a book. The editor suggested Mitchell try to place it with a magazine later.
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For now, he wanted her to focus on the saga of Pansy and Rhett. The reality of Mitchell's new life as a professional novelist was hammered home when, on August 21, Macmillan sent the first installment of her advance—a check for $250.

With Latham and Lois Cole on vacation, Mitchell settled in to what she knew would be a formidable task: creating a book out of her loose and incomplete assemblage of chapters. She hoped to get the job done quickly. Latham had been kind to her, and she wanted to do something nice for him. Finishing the book in a hurry might show her appreciation. Almost immediately, though, Mitchell felt miserable about what lay ahead. The plot needed organizing. Gaps in the narrative had to be filled. She had to write a first chapter. She also wanted to rework the ending to address Macmillan's concern that it sounded too much like Rhett left for good. Her intention had been to leave the ending open even though she knew many readers might not find that satisfactory. As she once said, “My idea was that, through of 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 didn't.”
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Mitchell was willing to make adjustments short of giving readers “a happy ending.”

In addition, the manuscript needed a title. Mitchell was not satisfied with those mentioned so far, or with several others she had come up with such as “Bugles Sang True,” “None So Blind” and “Not in Our Stars.”
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The only one that struck a chord with her was “Gone With the Wind,” a line she had run across in an 1891 poem by English poet Ernest Dowson, a piece with a lengthy Latin title but commonly referred to as “Cynara.” She liked the sound of the phrase, and it had the added plus of appearing in her manuscript when Pansy makes her way to Tara after fleeing Atlanta: “Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia?”
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On a list of twenty-two possible titles, she put a star beside “Gone With the Wind” and a note stating it was her favorite but that she would agree to any that Macmillan liked.
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She also wanted to find a new name for Pansy. It occurred to Mitchell that people in some parts of the country used the word “pansy” as slang for homosexual. In her uninhibited way, she had told Latham back in July that, in the South, “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.”
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She had generated a list of possible substitutes by scanning the society pages of the
Atlanta Constitution
for the names of visiting belles, but none of those were quite right.
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She would have to give it further thought.

Beyond these big picture issues, there were many small details that required tending. Over the years of writing, the author had not paid much attention to practical matters such as punctuation and spelling. Once the narrative was straightened out, every page would have to be thoroughly edited. The same careful scrutiny would have to be applied to the hundreds, maybe thousands, of historical references in her story, most of which she had incorporated from memory.
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Coming from a family of history buffs, Mitchell was adamant that the book be as historically accurate as possible. She especially wanted her accounts of the war “air tight so that no grey bearded vet [can] rise up to shake his cane at me and say, ‘But I know better.' ”
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With the encouragement of her husband, who promised to take off two weeks from work to help, Mitchell mustered the energy to get started. She began by tying up loose threads in her story line. In some cases, years had passed between the time she wrote a particular chapter and those preceding and following it. When the different parts were fitted together, it came as no surprise that there were many gaps, overlaps, and conflicts in the plot. There also were scenes that now seemed extraneous. She deleted several sections, including a chapter of more than thirty pages in which Rhett lends one of Pansy's neighbors money to buy some horses; a chapter about what happened after General William T. Sherman entered Atlanta; a lengthy discussion detailing when the slave Mammy leaves Pansy and goes back to Tara; an in-depth description of the education of young women in the Old South; and two long sections on the lives of various minor characters after the war.
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As fast as she completed her work of cutting and rewriting, John Marsh followed behind editing for grammar, accuracy, and uniformity. As Mitchell described his role, “He painstakingly compiled a glossary of all Negro dialect words used by my characters, and Cracker words, too. He ‘styled' the manuscript for consistent spelling, capitalization and punctuation. He summarized my notes about the fighting from Dalton to Atlanta and around Atlanta, to make certain that the actions and statements of my characters conformed to the actual historical events.” Marsh also created a chronology of the characters' lives to ensure there were no inconsistencies, such as having babies born at inconvenient times.
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Once she got started, Mitchell was relieved and surprised to find the work smooth sailing. While the original drafting had involved much drudgery, on September 3, she wrote to Latham that, “for the first time in my life, working is comparatively easy.” She had a fresh sense of optimism that the book would come together in short order. “As John says there's nothing like signing a contract, having a conscience about delivering the goods and burning your britches behind you.”
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Mitchell predicted that, if all went well, the work would be done in six weeks—by mid-October.

When Latham returned from vacation in early September, he was pleased to read Mitchell's status report. Eager to get her book to market, he replied that if she managed to finish the manuscript the following month, it could be published in the spring of 1936. Yet, the editor knew that getting the book ready for production in such a short period of time would require a prodigious effort on Macmillan's part. The company already had a long list of books for spring release, and it would be no small feat to fit another one into the schedule. Macmillan's spring catalog would be issued in January, so time was short. With all this in mind, Latham made it clear that Mitchell was under no pressure to push for a spring publication. Although Macmillan would be delighted to go to press then, she should take as much time as she needed. He did not want to hurry it: “That would be fatal, and the book is too important to do anything to jeopardize it.”
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Latham's admonition that Mitchell take her time fell on deaf ears. The Marshes seemed to have gotten it in their heads that the book should be released in the spring, and that is what they set out to accomplish. As the editor had predicted, rushing would prove dangerous.

In their hurry to meet the self-imposed October deadline, the couple worked nonstop, seven days a week, with Marsh sometimes putting in twenty-hour days between his job at Georgia Power and his responsibilities on the manuscript.
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And there seemed to be no end in sight, especially when it came to verifying the historical references. In describing the fall of Atlanta, for example, Mitchell needed to determine when the outer fortifications were built, what time of day the news arrived of Confederate general John B. Hood's defeat at Jonesboro, what the weather was, and what hours the retreat started and ended. There also were minor details to verify, such as when hoopskirts went out of fashion and bustles became popular, and what ladies' shoes were made of during the Union blockade.
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With no Internet or centralized databases available, this meant hands-on research. The reference librarians at Atlanta's Carnegie Library were glad to help track down information for Mitchell, but not all the answers she needed could be found in books. The author took precious time away from rewriting to interview senior citizens who had lived through the conflict and to drive around the Georgia countryside searching for obscure information such as the correct planting time for certain types of cotton. On one occasion, she ran into an old farmer spreading manure on a garden. After answering her questions, he asked Mitchell about the life of a writer. She gave him a dreary report: “You sweated, and groaned and itched and broke out in rashes and then felt like you smelled bad.” The farmer thought a minute and replied, “When you come right down to it, writing a book ain't so very different from spreading manure, is it?” She was hard-pressed to disagree.
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Adding to her workload, Mitchell was determined that none of her characters have the same names as anyone living in that part of Georgia during the time period covered by her story. She did not want to embarrass anyone by making it appear as though she were writing about their relatives. To that end, she spent countless hours in county courthouses around Atlanta, combing through tax records, Confederate Army muster rolls, wills, and jury lists. In one instance, she changed the name of the Yankee overseer at a neighboring plantation a dozen times. She went to equally great lengths to place her characters' homes in imaginary locations. She put Tara, Pansy's plantation, on a long-since abandoned road she found referenced on one of General Sherman's maps. She also mixed up Atlanta geography, placing houses where they could not possibly have stood.
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Amidst the frenzied research and rewriting, Cole touched base with the Marshes and inadvertently added to the couple's stress. Operating on the assumption that Mitchell would have the revisions finished in time for a spring release, Macmillan was readying the novel for production. One of the first steps was creating a mock-up, or dummy, of the book and its dust jacket. Cole sent proposed language for the blurb, the descriptive text about the book and its author that would be used on the jacket and in marketing materials. A public relations professional, Marsh had his own ideas about how the blurb should read and took time away from the manuscript to rewrite the language. Mitchell worked on the wording as well. Among several issues, she specified that she wanted to use her maiden name on the jacket and press materials because that was how she had been known as a newspaper reporter.
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Cole also had noted that the marketing department needed a publicity portrait of the author, and Mitchell dropped everything to find a photographer, buy an outfit, have her hair styled, and sit through a photo shoot. She hated the finished product, saying that the stress of reworking the manuscript was taking a toll on her appearance. She had lost weight and developed boils on her head. Her scalp, she thought, looked “as though I had just been rescued from the Indians and not a minute too soon, either.”
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She asked for more time so as to give the photographer another try.

Mid-October 1935 came and went without a sign of a finished manuscript at Macmillan. Although late in the game to have nothing in hand, not even a title, Cole did not panic. She trusted her friend had things under control. One positive sign came toward the end of the month when Mitchell proposed that Pansy's name be replaced with Scarlett. She had come across the surname Scarlett in Irish literature and already had used it as Pansy's grandmother's maiden name.
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Cole agreed it was a good substitute. At least that matter was settled. On October 28, Cole assured the sales staffers, who were eager for work to start on the dust jacket, that sample chapters would be in New York by the middle of November.
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