Welcome to the blog, Marianne!
Oh, my! Margaret Mitchell would’ve
been annoyed to discover that the whole world knows exactly when she was born.
She never—ever—wanted any mention of
her age, or any questions asked about it, or any attention given to her
birthday. And now look at what we, her fans, are doing! This year, we are not
only celebrating the 75th birthday of her only “baby”–Gone With
the Wind—but also
her 111th birthday on November 8.
Like many other women of her
generation, Margaret—or Peggy, as friends called her—was extraordinarily
sensitive about telling her age. Even when she was very young, she did her
level best to conceal it. For a long time, she easily succeeded in getting
folks to think that she was younger than she was; it helped that she was
petite, youthful looking, and pretty.
Her veracity was above reproach,
except when she was questioned about her age. Yes, the truth is Margaret
Mitchell refused to state her birth date at all unless some legal reason
required her to do so and, even then, she could not let the truth be known.
For example, on June 15, 1925, she
and her sweetheart John Marsh ran to the courthouse on their lunch break to
apply for a marriage license. Right there in the clerk’s office in the Fulton
County Courthouse, the seat of the judicial system in Georgia (where truth
surely ought to prevail), she fibbed again. On the marriage application, she
stated her age as twenty-two, when in fact she was twenty-four. No doubt even
her fiancé didn’t know her correct age at the time. Later, on her driver’s
license, she again falsified her birth date, stating it as November 8, 1908. (Good grief, that’s slicing off eight years!) Other
instances provide evidence that the older she got, the younger she made
herself.
After she became famous, she had
great trouble concealing her age. She literally received thousands—no
exaggeration here—of letters from fans, many of whom believed that she had
lived through the Civil War, which they presumed was the reason she was able to
write about it so eloquently. Whew,
that notion really scorched her! But Peggy handled the matter politely—without
revealing her age.
Absolutely nothing would make her
veer from her principle: remain silent or lie! In November 1936, Mr. Sam
Doerflinger, an executive at the Macmillan Company (her publisher), happily
informed her that Gone With the Wind
had been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and that he would need some
biographical information about her to submit to the nominating committee. She bristled.
Imagine his shock when he read her
tart reply written on Thanksgiving Day, 1936: “…I’ll gladly tell you where I was born. I was born here in Atlanta, Ga.
But I am not telling when I was born.”
She went on to explain to Mr.
Doerflinger that she had “never felt that a person’s age was the concern of
anyone except herself and her family.” And, she said, “My feeling on this
matter has been considerably strengthened since Gone With the Wind was published. The day seldom passes but that
seven complete strangers either phone me or call at the door and ask point
blank, ‘Just how old are you?’ The newspapers, news services, biographical
reviews, etc. have been in a lather about the matter, too. The effect has been
to arouse my stubbornness.”
The conclusion of her letter leaves
us with no doubts about her feelings: “My age is my own private business and I
intend to keep it so—if I can. I am not so old that I am ashamed of my age, and
I am not so young that I couldn’t have written my book and that is all the
public needs to know about my age . . . the curiosity seekers have made me
stubborn on this point, and, if my reticence knocks me out of the nomination
[for the Pulitzer], then I guess that’s just too bad.” (Can’t you just hear some woman in the
background, shouting. “Good for you, girlfriend!”)
So, in Peggy’s honor, why don’t all
of us fans simply agree to say that the author of Gone With the Wind was
a child prodigy, and let it go at that?
