Letters From Margaret
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In his biography, Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta, written sixteen years after Miss Mitchell’s death, Finis Farr noted that "-- friends often speak of her as though she had just stepped out of the room." Fifty-two years later, the same thing is true. Margaret is one of those people who is a "presence", someone who has never gone and who will always be "here". If you knew her, when you talk about her today, and the things she did and said, it takes a moment before you realize that, no, she is not back in her apartment in Atlanta with John, that both are gone and have been for a long, long time. It is, I think, this natural humanity which shows through in Margaret’s letters. An article in The Atlanta Journal the day after Margaret’s death refers to her as "one of the rarest and dearest souls that ever looked through human eyes." The Manchester Guardian referred to her as "this woman of courtesy, generosity, and good sense". Yet another says: "She was an amiable, shy woman who had harsh words for no one ¾
not even for the thousands of readers who constantly pestered her with queries about what finally happened after Rhett walked out on Scarlett. To them she constantly replied [with typical Margaret candor], ‘I don’t know’. " Her life-long friend Lois Cole, who was on the Macmillan New York editorial staff for many years, described Margaret in a 1961 New York Times Book Review article by saying "It is difficult to put Peggy on paper, to convey her gaiety, her interest in and profound knowledge of people, her range of interests and reading, her devotion to her friends, and the verve and enchantment of her talk. Many Southerners are born storytellers, but Peggy told her tales with such fun and skill that a whole roomful would stay quiet all evening to listen to her." In addition to her conversational abilities, Margaret also had that rare ability to enjoy listening to others ¾
she was as good an audience as she was a recounter of tales. These comments are an apt summary of the Margaret Mitchell that I remember. I was only 7 when my family first met her, and I was 20 when she died. I was perhaps prejudiced by the impressionability and eagerness of youth, but Margaret seemed then and does now one of the few human beings I have encountered about whom I would be unable to find any unkind word to say or find any genuinely negative thing to report. I know my father, my mother, and my brothers shared those sentiments, as did all her friends whom we knew. My father once referred to her as "the brightest, the most scintillating, the most compassionate spirit we have ever known." Margaret was ¾
a point recognized but not really understood by many from other parts of the country ¾
a very typical Southern person, the product of an educated Southern family of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, polite yet frank and open, insightful, quiet but sometimes noisily energetic, active, and adventurous, a doer, highly intelligent, with a sense of humor, often outrageous and exaggerated for effect, not matched by many. Much that others have read into Margaret’s letters and actions is simply misinterpretation of her uniquely Southern personality, the assumption that certain Southern personality traits, particularly in the post-Civil War era, are unusual or abnormal, a feeling many from outside the region still have. While it is undeniably the case that Southern personality has facets which, to those brought up in other regions of the country, do often seem exaggerated, overly dramatic, overly polite and indirect or overly direct, stubborn, and blunt, these are not abnormal traits, but, rather, something peculiar to those parts of the country settled by the Scots-Irish in the 1700 and 1800’s. All of this is neither to endorse nor reject the Southern Personality ¾
but, rather, to point out that, for better or worse, it does exist as an inescapable reality. Such a lack of understanding of the role areal cultures and history play in determining the personalities of the people who live in those regions is, however, still widely and remarkably prevalent outside the South. As Margaret herself said in a letter to the literary critic Herschel Brickell on July 7, 1936, in response to his review of her novel: "Thank you for going on record that while my story ‘bordered on the melodramatic’ at times, the times of which I wrote were melodramatic. Well, they were but it takes a person with a Southern background to appreciate just how melodramatic they really were. I had to tone down so much, that I had taken from actual incidents, just to make them sound barely credible."
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About the Book
From even before the time of her death in 1949, Margaret Mitchell, the petite author of Gone With the Wind, like all instant celebrities, faced the scrutiny of the media. As early as 1936, when Gone With the Wind was published, the celebrity spotlight insisted on giving Miss Mitchell a notoriety she did not cherish, for she was an extremely private person. Credited with many personality characteristics she never had in life, she quickly became something of a legend. After her death, the legend grew by leaps and bounds, and some published accounts of her life so strained the actual events and truth, that Miss Mitchell has emerged as something her friends never knew and would not recognize. She is quoted as saying things to friends which she never said and doing things she never did, given deep-seated psychological motivations which never evidenced themselves in her life. It is the Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta legend which Letters from Margaret hopes to help erase. A highly personal correspondence, the letters were written to the Granberrys as her closest friends outside of Atlanta. They show a person who, as Edwin Granberry said, was "one of the brightest, the most scintillating, and most compassionate spirits we have ever known" ¾
a normal human being interacting with her family, friends, and the world around her as she was increasingly submerged in the fame surrounding Gone With the Wind. The letters reveal no new startling aspects of Margaret’s life, but, rather, open a window into the humanity and strength of her character. The letters were kept by Edwin Granberry until his death in 1988, with the instructions that it was important they should see the light of day in order to counter the Margaret Legend, but that this should not be done until Miss Mitchell had been gone for at least 50 years. Now, 52 years after Margaret’s death, the letters are being given to the reading public.
About the Author
Julian Granberry is a professional anthropologist and linguist. A son of Edwin and Mabel Granberry, to whom the letters are addressed, he knew Miss Mitchell from the time he was seven years old in 1936 until her death in 1949, when he was 20. He recalls, often vividly, the family friendship with Margaret and her husband, John Marsh, and provides the reader with ample between-letter commentary on Marsh and Granberry affairs to give them added continuity.