Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (56 page)

Not surprisingly, in the wake of Mitchell's death, some opportunists sought to profit from her memory. Marsh was appalled by an advertising agency in Georgia that featured his wife's name and photograph in a series of ad templates called “Interesting Information About Georgia and Her People.” The tidbits were designed to be used by banks, funeral homes, and other small businesses as part of their own newspaper promotions. He let his distaste be known to the Georgia Press Association, which, in turn, warned its members in a special bulletin. He also wrote sharply worded letters to the ad agency, the individual companies that sponsored the ads, and the newspapers in which they appeared, demanding the promotions be stopped. “Commercialization and exploitation of her name and picture were highly offensive to her in her lifetime,” he said, “and I do not intend to have her commercialized and exploited now.”
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He did not object, however, to his wife being remembered in tasteful ways. That fall, the
Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine
announced plans to publish a Margaret Mitchell memorial edition. Mitchell's longtime friend Medora Field Perkerson spearheaded the project and asked for Marsh's cooperation. The widower knew that his wife did not want her life dissected in the press yet also saw that her interests would not be well served by the family refusing to discuss her. He agreed to work with Perkerson in pulling together the issue. After its release that December, Marsh expressed satisfaction with the publication and thought it would serve as a useful reference about his wife's life.
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Pleased with Marsh's reaction, Perkerson proposed to Macmillan that she write a biography of the author, hinting that Marsh approved of the project. When she discussed the idea with Latham, the editor let it be known that the company was emphatically against such a book.
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He thought releasing a biography so soon after Mitchell's death would smack of commercialism, as if the publisher was cashing in on her memory. Moreover, he felt Mitchell—a “dignified, Southern lady”—would not have approved. Latham encouraged Marsh to give the idea careful consideration.

Though he knew Mitchell had been against such a project, Marsh had not ruled out authorizing a biography. As he explained to Latham, a “nagging thought” kept his mind open to the idea: “
How in the hell did she do it?
That question has never been answered. . . . When you look over the list of people who have achieved sudden fame, you mostly find suicides, scandals, catastrophes. You will have a hard time finding even one, other than Peggy, who survived the first shock and thereafter for thirteen years grew steadily in public esteem.” And, if such a project were to be done, Perkerson was Marsh's first choice. He thought the articles she had written about Mitchell over the years revealed “a grasp and an understanding” of the author that enabled her to “present Peggy's personality and career understandingly.”
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Despite Marsh's support, Perkerson's chances of being designated the official biographer evaporated the following spring. The family asked her to contribute an article about Mitchell for a special issue of the Atlanta Historical Society's monthly bulletin, and Perkerson submitted a piece she had written for the
Atlanta Journal
's magazine. Stephens Mitchell rejected the recycled article and questioned Perkerson's loyalty to his sister if she could not be bothered to write something new. According to Baugh, he got so “hot under the collar,” Perkerson told him never to speak to her again.
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If a biography were to be written, Perkerson was out of the running.

With Latham's opposition and no qualified candidate in line to tackle the project, the biography failed to gain momentum. The question remained, though, what should become of Mitchell's papers. Although it has been reported that Marsh and Baugh burned most of them, the truth is that the vast majority was spared. The bulk of her business and personal correspondence survived as did many documents related to the writing of
Gone With the Wind
. Among those that escaped the flames were assorted draft chapters of the novel, typewritten by Mitchell with corrections and changes in her handwriting; edited proof sheets containing corrections in both Mitchell's and Marsh's handwriting; several chronologies of events in the novel; notes Mitchell made while revising the manuscript, including lists of facts to be checked and the resulting answers; and some of the original manila envelopes in which she kept the book's chapters, with her handwritten notes on the outside.

In July 1951, Marsh decided that some of these working papers ought to be preserved in case anyone ever challenged his wife's authorship of the novel. To that end, he put a selection of drafts and notes in a large envelope, which he placed in a safe-deposit box at Citizens & Southern National Bank in Atlanta. Through a codicil to his will, he established a trust fund to cover the cost of the box rental indefinitely and left instructions that the envelope be opened only if proof were needed that Mitchell wrote
Gone With the
Wind
. Should such a challenge be raised, he directed the contents were to go to the Atlanta Historical Society or the Atlanta Public Library. If need for such proof never arose, he wanted the envelope eventually to be destroyed unopened, although he specified no end date for the trust.
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Marsh determined that the rest of Mitchell's papers, including carbon copies of her extensive correspondence related to
Gone With the Wind
, would be preserved for the time being to help the estate manage the ongoing business of the book and in case a qualified biographer came to the forefront. However, he had no plans of making them publicly available to researchers. In fact, a few months after he signed the codicil, David C. Mearns of the Library of Congress asked Marsh to place his wife's papers in the library's Rare Books and Manuscripts Division. Marsh was flattered but declined. He explained Mitchell's views on privacy and stated he was doing his best to carry out her wishes.
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In addition to preserving his wife's legacy, Marsh continued to manage the
Gone With the Wind
rights. Her death did little to diminish the seemingly endless stream of details that needed to be looked after. A perennial annoyance was the people wanting to write a sequel. One hapless man from Italy wrote about a female friend who, after learning of Mitchell's death, was told in a dream, “Continue the book!” The friend began writing a sequel, with the words pouring out as though guided by the mysterious voice. After several days, the woman found it difficult to continue working on the book because of her day job. Would it be possible, the man wondered, for Macmillan to help her financially so she could spend more time writing?
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When an Oregon woman claimed that Margaret Mitchell had encouraged her to write a
GWTW
continuation, Marsh quickly put the would-be author in her place. Quoting his wife's earlier correspondence with the woman, Marsh blasted back that Mitchell had never urged the woman to write a sequel and that “there is nothing in Mrs. Marsh's letter that might be interpreted as giving any such suggestion.”
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Requests for new editions of
Gone With the Wind
came in periodically from overseas, and as usual, there were few simple answers. In 1951, Marsh received an inquiry from a Vietnamese translator but was uncertain how to proceed because Vietnam was fighting for independence from France. Marsh did not know what the country's legal status was under the Berne Convention and had to work through the assorted legalities. As for the publishers with whom the estate already had contracts, Marsh had plenty to do tracking down royalties still overdue from the war years. Because of postwar currency restrictions in some countries, Mitchell's estate had money in limbo in various banks around the world. Doubting the funds would ever be released for export to the United States, Marsh put them to good use when he could. When two hundred dollars accumulated in a Tokyo bank, Marsh donated the money to the city's Union Church, a nondenominational congregation whose original building was destroyed by Allied bombing.
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And, at long last, Marsh resolved the Marion Saunders saga. Word of her embezzlement apparently never reached a wide audience in the publishing industry, and she had managed to stay in business. After seven years of sending regular payments, she satisfied her debt in 1951. Marsh wrote the agent expressing pleasure that the matter was settled; he promised to “try to forget about the past.”
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Marsh was less forgiving though of George Brett, against whom the widower still held various grudges. The two men maintained a cordial relationship after Mitchell's death, but Marsh remained quick to find fault with the publisher's management of
Gone With the Wind
. Their discord bubbled to the surface when Mitchell and her novel were the subject of an episode of
The Author Meets the Critics
, a television program on the fledgling American Broadcasting Company network. The show featured critics Leo Gurko and Edith Walton, as well as a writer beginning to make a name for himself, Truman Capote. The program opened with a shot of Mitchell's novel and the announcer intoning that few books in the last half-century of American literature had had a greater impact than
Gone With the Wind
. While Gurko and Capote termed Mitchell's story a readable melodrama, neither cared for her writing or the book. Capote called the novel a “triumph of amateur women's writing” but deemed it otherwise unmemorable. Only Walton praised Mitchell. She called
Gone With the Wind
“a bang-up job” that was much better than highbrow critics would admit and predicted it would continue to be widely read in the years to come.

Walton's supportive words were not enough for Marsh, who felt “our side took a beating” in the program. Who did he blame? Brett, of course. The widower reproached the publisher for not letting him know about the program in advance, as he was confident that working together they “could have arranged to get a better break” for their side. “I am not taking the attitude that Peggy's book is deathless literature and the world's greatest novel,” he said. “However, I don't think we should lose by default to this super-intellectual element.”
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Brett refused to accept any blame for Marsh's dissatisfaction and schooled him about how those types of shows operated. Publishers could not rig the content, Brett explained, because the producers wanted such shows to be controversial in order to draw an audience. In any event, it had been Macmillan who planted Walton on the show. She was a regular literary adviser for the company and a close friend of Lois Cole and Allan Taylor.
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Marsh had further cause for complaint when Brett presented him with a proposal from the Book-of-the-Month Club for a new edition of
Gone With the Wind
. According to Brett, the estate would receive a 10 percent royalty on an initial test run of the proposed edition. Marsh sensed something was not quite right with Brett's numbers. He responded by airmail letter that, although they had agreed to numerous royalty adjustments over the years, he could not find any basis for a 10 percent royalty. Marsh thought the estate was entitled to 15 percent. If Brett had a document that said otherwise, Marsh requested that he be provided a copy.
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Once again, Macmillan had to concede error: the estate was entitled to 15 percent. Latham, who responded on Brett's behalf, called it a typographical error.
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With regular incidents like this—as innocent as they may have been—Marsh felt he had to always be on his toes to prevent the company from slipping one by him. Surely adding to Marsh's discontent, the proposed edition never came to fruition. Before signing a contract with Macmillan, the book club asked its readers to rank their interest in seven titles, including
Gone With the Wind
. To the club's surprise and embarrassment, Mitchell's novel came in last. The club's president, Meredith Wood, apologized for having been “dizzy” in his conception of how the book would fare, surmising that too many of the club's subscribers had bought the book over the years.

Brett accepted that he was on Marsh's bad side and did his best to avoid conflict. That spring, Marsh moved to a house on Walker Terrace, a few doors from the Della Manta apartment. He set up a home office and notified business associates of the new address for the entity that was now his life's work: the Margaret Mitchell Marsh Estate. Upon receipt of Marsh's change-of-address notice, Brett warned his staff to make sure that all future communications with the estate were directed to the new location so as not to give Marsh any excuse for complaint. “Marsh is one of the fussiest administrators of authors' estates that we have to deal with,” he cautioned.
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Brett was not the only one on the receiving end of Marsh's sharp temper. When the widower moved, he hired a local woman to help pack and transfer his files and books. Although Marsh instructed her that she was not to publicly discuss her work for him, the woman apparently could not contain herself. She drafted a short article about her experience, comparing her brief time packing the
GWTW
files to “a trip around the world.” From what she wrote, it was clear she had leafed through the foreign editions of
Gone With the Wind
and read letters in the business files. Hoping to have the piece published, she sent copies to Marsh and to the
Atlanta Journal
. Furious, Marsh telephoned the woman to remind her that she had been told in the beginning that he “wanted to hire somebody who could keep her mouth shut.”
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The article was not published.