TLS signed “Margaret Mitchell Marsh,” three pages, 7 x 11, personal letterhead, February 23, 1939. Letter to Franklin M. Garrett, the author of a recent newspaper article regarding Gone With the Wind, in part: "I have an embarrassing matter to take up with you, and I know of no other way of handling it except to dive right in. Several days ago I noticed an item in the papers about the ‘See Atlanta First’ Tour which will take place on February 24th. I noted with distress and a great sense of weariness that, among other points of interest which were to be visited, were the sites of the homes of my characters, ‘Aunt Pittypat, Rhett and Scarlett, Ashley and Melanie.’ My distress and weariness rose from the fact that for two and a half years I have spent most of my time telling people—by word of mouth, by letter, through the newspapers and over the radio—that my characters were completely fictional and so were their homes. There were no ‘sites’ for my characters’ homes. Because I did not wish the places to be identified, I went to great pains to mix up Atlanta geography. I studied old maps to make sure that even in my own mind I was locating houses where houses could not have stood. I went to as much pains about this as I did about the names of my characters, and it was a long and wearying affair. I had excellent reasons for not wishing the public to be able to say that ‘Scarlett lived here or there.’ I knew if the rumor went about that Scarlett had lived upon a certain spot inevitably people would believe that the family who had lived on that spot in the sixties were Scarlett’s family. That would be highly embarrassing to innocent people and to me too.
One of my greatest problems since ‘Gone With the Wind’ was published has been the determination of tourists and many Atlanta people to identify such spots. I believe that, and I alone, am the only person in the world who knows the truth about this matter, and if I say I had no definite sites in mind, then I am speaking the truth and everyone else is wrong. I have made this statement to the newspapers no less than a hundred times; people who have made radio talks about my book never failed to mention it; I have written hundreds of letters; and I have no count of the number of people whom I have told personally that neither the houses nor the sites of the houses of my characters existed.
So, you can understand my indignation and my sense of defeat when I read in the papers that the Atlanta Convention Bureau, which should know better, was busy adding and spreading and giving authenticity to these errors…Franklin, I know you would not deliberately cause me any trouble, nor would you for worlds go on record with an inaccurate statement. So I am at a loss to understand why you included these nonexistent houses in a historical tour, especially in view of the two-year fight I have made in the papers on the subject. I do not doubt that to many people my feeling about this matter seems very strange. But I feel very deeply on the subject. Even as I do when people make flat-footed statements identifying characters in my book with actual people. When I went to so much trouble to keep this very thing from happening, it is disheartening to have friends make all my efforts go for nothing. I beg of you in the future if anyone should ask you about where my characters lived, please say they lived only in my mind.” On the third page, Garrett has notated and initialed the following statement: “Misunderstanding adjusted to MM’s entire satisfaction, 2/24/39 FMG.” In fine condition. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope. A passionate letter that connects Mitchell to the very characters she created in her landmark novel.
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