Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 23, 1993 TAG: 9311230029
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: HENDERSON, KY. LENGTH: Medium
"There were so many times when I was reading her [Mitchell's] letters when I couldn't tell her voice from Scarlett O'Hara's," said Marianne Walker, who has published "Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: The Love Story Behind `Gone With the Wind.'"
Consider the parallels.
Mitchell and her Scarlett were notorious coquettes who toyed with the affections of many suitors at once. Mitchell conceded as much in one of her letters.
"When a girl knows the male psychology as thoroughly as I do - when she knows the thousand and one small tricks by which a girl can `innocently' run a man wild or sweep him off his feet - when she knows these things and is small and helpless looking to boot, and she doesn't use these aforementioned tricks, well, I'd say she played fair," Mitchell wrote.
Like her heroine, Mitchell was a privileged Georgia belle. Her father was a wealthy lawyer; her mother, a socialite who led the women's suffrage movement in Atlanta.
Mitchell and Scarlett both married men they did not love. Mitchell's 10-month marriage in 1922 to Berrien "Red" Upshaw, Marsh's roommate, ended in divorce and shamed her Roman Catholic family. Court records say Upshaw, an alcoholic, sometimes beat Mitchell. "She admitted on her wedding day she was making a mistake," Walker said.
Marsh could not watch her marry Upshaw, and moved to Alabama. In July 1925, Marsh and Mitchell began a marriage that lasted until she was hit by a taxi and died 24 years later.
by CNB