DEATH in 1949
MARGARET MITCHELL
9-20-15 - DREAM I was living in a town somewhere and decided to sell some of my jewelry I had stashed, some of which I made myself and some I had bought on e-bay and jacked up the price a bit to resell it.
I had three crystalline bead necklaces I wanted to well that a man I didn't know had made.
I got them out of a long necklace box that was silver and clipped then to a clipboard to look at them.
I didn't know who the man was who had made these beautiful necklaces or what he had done in life.
My daughter somehow found out from my mother that I was selling these necklaces and she called me on the telephone to complain about me selling things from people I didn't know.
I made a short statement, "That has nothing to do with anything" and she intimated that there might be some energies in the gemstones from him.
I got off the phone from arguing with her and went outside and just then a young woman, chubby with a round face pulled up in her car and said she wanted to buy some jewelry from me.
She seemed like a nice young woman, so I invited her into the house.
She wanted to see the necklaces I had just been arguing with my daughter about that I had just advertised.
I got the clipboard with the three beautiful necklaces and the woman asked the same question my daughter had asked. "Whose made these necklaces?" She also wanted to know how much they were.
The necklaces were hanging together on the clipboard, but I didn't know who made them.
The woman was looking at the necklaces and said to me, "I liked something you wrote in the 5th grade."
I didn't know how she knew what I wrote in 5th grade, but I blurted out, and said loudly and animatedly, "How could you die when I haven't done anything in my life yet!"
Then I said, "I still haven't done anything with my life yet." and woke up.
NOTE: I couldn't figure out what year I had been in 5th grade. I had good solid memories about 4th grade, but didn't know what year it was, just that we had 'duck and cover' drills when sirens went off outside. But, though I remember where my 5th grade classroom was on that same floor, I have no memories if that year at all.
It took me several hours to locate a school photo from 1950 and that turned out to be in 6th grade, so 5th grade was in 1949.
HERE IS MY ALL TIME FAVORITE AUTHOR. SHE DIED IN 1949. I WATCHED THE MOVIE GONE WITH THE WIND FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME LAST WEEK. I'VE READ THE BOOK SEVEN OR MORE TIMES.
IF YOU LOOK AT THE PHOTO BELOW OF MARGARET MITCHELL IN 1994 - THAT WAS THE WOMAN IN MY DREAM WHO CAME TO BUY THE NECKLACES FROM ME.
Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 1900. After a broken ankle immobilized her in 1926, Mitchell started writing a novel that would become Gone With the Wind. Published in 1936, Gone With the Windmade Mitchell an instant celebrity and earned her the Pulitzer Prize. The film version, also lauded far and wide, came out just three years later. More than 30 million copies of Mitchell’s Civil War masterpiece have been sold worldwide, and it has been translated into 27 languages. Mitchell was struck by a car and died in 1949, leaving behind Gone With the Wind as her only novel.
Margaret Mitchell was born on November 8, 1900, in Atlanta, Georgia, into an Irish-Catholic family. At an early age, even before she could write, Mitchell loved to make up stories, and she would later write her own adventure books, crafting their covers out of cardboard. She wrote hundreds of books as a child, but her literary endeavors weren’t limited to novels and stories: At the private Woodberry School, Mitchell took her creativity in new directions, directing and acting in plays she wrote.
In 1918, Mitchell enrolled at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Four months later, tragedy would strike when Mitchell’s mother died of influenza. Mitchell finished out her freshman year at Smith and then returned to Atlanta to prepare for the upcoming debutante season, during which she met Berrien Kinnard Upshaw. The couple was married in 1922, but it ended abruptly four months later when Upshaw left for the Midwest and never returned.
The same year she was married, Mitchell landed a job with the Atlanta Journal Sunday magazine, where she ended up writing nearly 130 articles. Mitchell would get married a second time during this period, wedding John Robert Marsh in 1925. As seemed to be the case in Mitchell’s life, though, yet another good thing was to come to an end too quickly, as her journalist career ended in 1926 due to complications from a broken ankle.
With her broken ankle keeping Mitchell off her feet, however, in 1926 she began writing Gone With the Wind. Perched at an old sewing table, and writing the last chapter first and the other chapters randomly, she finished most of the book by 1929. A romantic novel about the Civil War and Reconstruction, Gone With the Wind is told from a Southern point of view, informed by Mitchell’s family and steeped in the history of the South and the tragedy of the war.
In July 1935, New York publisher Macmillan offered her a $500 advance and 10 percent royalty payments. Mitchell set to finalizing the manuscript, changing characters names (Scarlett was Pansy in earlier drafts), cutting and rearranging chapters and finally naming the book Gone With the Wind, a phrase from “Cynara!, a favorite Ernest Dowson poem. Gone With the Windwas published in 1936 to huge success and took home the 1937 Pulitzer. Mitchell became an overnight celebrity, and the landmark film based on her novel came out just three years later and went on to become a classic (winning eight Oscars and two special Oscars ).
During World War II (1941-45), Mitchell had no time to write, as she worked for the American Red Cross. And on August 11, 1949, she was struck by a car while crossing a street and died five days later. Mitchell was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement in 1994 and into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000. Gone With the Wind was her only novel.
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell (November
8, 1900 – August 16, 1949) was an American author and journalist. One novel by
Mitchell
was published during her lifetime, the American
Civil War-era
novel, Gone
with the Wind,
for which she won the National
Book
Award for
Most Distinguished Novel of 1936 and
the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction in
1937. In more recent years, a collection of
Mitchell's girlhood writings and a novella she wrote as a teenager, Lost
Laysen,
have been published. A collection of articles
written by Mitchell for The
Atlanta Journal was
republished in book form.
Margaret Mitchell was a Southerner and a lifelong resident and native of Atlanta, Georgia. She was born in 1900 into a wealthy and politically prominent family. Her father, Eugene Muse Mitchell, was an attorney, and her mother, Mary Isabel "May Belle" (or "Maybelle") Stephens, was a suffragist. She had two brothers, Russell Stephens Mitchell, who died in infancy in 1894, and Alexander Stephens Mitchell, born in 1896.
Mitchell's family on her father's side were descendants of Thomas Mitchell, originally of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who settled in Wilkes County, Georgia in 1777, and served in the American Revolutionary War. Her grandfather, Russell Crawford Mitchell, of Atlanta, enlisted in theConfederate States Army on June 24, 1861 and served in Hood's Texas Brigade. He was severely wounded at the Battle of Sharpsburg, demoted for 'inefficiency,' and detailed as a nurse in Atlanta. After the Civil War, he made a large fortune supplying lumber for the rapid rebuilding of Atlanta. Russell Mitchell had thirteen children from two wives; the eldest was Eugene, who graduated from the University of Georgia Law School.
Mitchell's maternal great-grandfather Philip Fitzgerald emigrated from Ireland, and eventually settled on a slaveholding plantation near Jonesboro, Georgia, where he had one son and seven daughters with his wife, Elenor. Mitchell's grandparents, married in 1863, were Annie Fitzgerald and John Stephens, who had also emigrated from Ireland and was a Captain in the Confederate States Army. John Stephens was a prosperous real estate developer after the Civil War and one of the founders of the Gate City Street Railroad (1881), a mule-drawn Atlanta trolley system. John and Annie Stephens had twelve children together; the seventh child was May Belle Stephens, who married Eugene Mitchell. May Belle Stephens had studied at the Bellevue Convent in Quebec and completed her education at the Atlanta Female Institute.
The Atlanta Constitution reported that May Belle Stephens and Eugene Mitchell were married at the Jackson Street mansion of the bride's parents on November 8, 1892:
Margaret Mitchell spent her early childhood on Jackson Hill, east of downtown Atlanta. Her family lived near her grandmother, Annie Stephens, in a Victorian house painted bright red with yellow trim. Mrs. Stephens had been a widow for several years prior to Margaret's birth; Captain John Stephens died in 1896. After his death, she inherited property on Jackson Street where Margaret's family lived.
Grandmother Annie Stephens was quite a character, both vulgar and a tyrant. After gaining control of her father Philip Fitzgerald's money after he died, she splurged on her younger daughters, including Margaret's mother, and sent them to finishing school in the north. There they learned that Irish Americans were not treated as equal to other immigrants, and that it was shameful to be a daughter of an Irishman. Margaret's relationship with her grandmother would become quarrelsome in later years as she entered adulthood. However, for Margaret, her grandmother was a great source of "eye-witness information" about the Civil War and Reconstruction in Atlanta prior to her death in 1934.
In an accident that was traumatic for her mother although she was unharmed, when little Margaret was about three years old, her dress caught fire on an iron grate. Fearing it would happen again, her mother began dressing her in boys' pants, and she was nicknamed "Jimmy", the name of a character in the comic strip, Little Jimmy. Her brother insisted she would have to be a boy named Jimmy to play with him. Having no sisters to play with, Margaret said she was a boy named Jimmy until she was fourteen.
Stephens Mitchell said his sister was a tomboy who would happily play with dolls occasionally, and she liked to ride her Texas plains pony. As a little girl, Margaret went riding every afternoon with a Confederate veteran and a young lady of "beau-age".
Margaret was raised in an era when children were "seen and not heard". She was not allowed to express her personality by running and screaming on Sunday afternoons while her family was visiting relatives. Her mother would swat her with a hairbrush or a slipper as a form of discipline.
May Belle Mitchell was "hissing blood curdling threats" to her daughter to make her behave the evening she took her to a women's suffrage rally led by Carrie Chapman Catt. Margaret sat on a platform wearing a Votes-for-Women banner blowing kisses to the gentlemen while her mother gave an impassioned speech. She was nineteen years old when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, which gave women the right to vote.
May Belle Mitchell was president of the Atlanta Woman's Suffrage League (1915), chairwoman of press publicity for the Georgia Mothers' Congress and Parent Teacher Association, a member of the Pioneer Society, the Atlanta Woman's Club, and several church and literary societies.
Margaret's father was not in favor of corporal punishment in school. During his tenure as president of the educational board (1911–1912) corporal punishment in the public schools was abolished. Reportedly, Eugene Mitchell received a whipping on the first day he attended school and the mental impression of the threshing lasted far longer than the physical marks.
Jackson Hill was an old, affluent part of the city. At the bottom of Jackson Hill was an area of African American homes and businesses called "Darktown". The mayhem of the Atlanta Race Riot occurred over four days in September 1906 when Mitchell was five years old.Local newspapers alleged that several white women had been assaulted by black men, prompting an angry mob of 10,000 to assemble in the streets.
Eugene Mitchell went to bed early the night the rioting began, but was awakened by the sounds of gunshots. The following morning he learned 16 Negroes had been killed. He wrote to his wife that rioters attempted to kill every Negro in sight. As the rioting continued, rumors ran wild Negroes would burn Jackson Hill. At Margaret's suggestion, her father, who did not own a gun, stood guard with a sword.Though she and her family were unharmed, Margaret was able to recall the terror she felt during the riot twenty years later. Mitchell grew up in a Southern culture where the threat of black on white rape incited mob violence, and in this world, white Georgians lived in fear of the "black beast rapist".
Soon after the riot, Margaret's family decided to move away from Jackson Hill.
In 1912, they moved to the east side of Peachtree Street
just north of Seventeenth Street in Atlanta. Past the nearest neighbor's house
was forest and beyond it the Chattahoochee
River. Mitchell's former Jackson Hill home was
destroyed in the Great
Atlanta Fire of 1917.
While "the South" exists as a geographical region of the United States, it is also said to exist as "a place of the imagination" of writers. An image of "the South" was fixed in Mitchell's imagination when at six years old her mother took her on a buggy tour through ruined plantations and "Sherman's sentinels", the brick and stone chimneys that remained after William Tecumseh Sherman's "March and torch" through Georgia. Mitchell would later recall what her mother had said to her:
From an imagination cultivated in her youth, Margaret Mitchell's defensive weapon would become her writing.
Mitchell said she heard Civil War stories from her relatives when she was growing up:
On summer vacations, she visited her maternal great-aunts, Mary Ellen ("Mamie") Fitzgerald and Sarah ("Sis") Fitzgerald, who still lived at her great-grandparents' plantation home in Jonesboro. Mamie had been twenty-one years old and Sis was thirteen when the Civil War began.
An avid reader, young Margaret read "boys' stories" by G.A. Henty, the Tom Swift series, and the Rover Boys series by Edward Stratemeyer. Her mother read Mary Johnston's novels to her before she could read. They both wept reading Johnston's The Long Roll (1911) and Cease Firing (1912). Between the "scream of shells, the mighty onrush of charges, the grim and grisly aftermath of war", Cease Firing is a romance novel involving the courtship of a Confederate soldier and a Louisiana plantation belle with Civil War illustrations by N. C. Wyeth. She also read the plays of William Shakespeare, and novels by Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott.
Mitchell's two favorite children's books were by author Edith Nesbit: Five Children and It (1902) and The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904). She kept both on her bookshelf even as an adult and gave them as gifts.
An imaginative writer from a precocious age, Margaret Mitchell began with stories about animals, then progressed to fairy tales and adventure stories. She fashioned book covers for her stories, bound the tablet paper pages together and added her own artwork. At age eleven she gave a name to her publishing enterprise: "Urchin Publishing Co." Later her stories were written in notebooks. May Belle Mitchell kept her daughter's stories in white enamel bread boxes and several boxes of her stories were stored in the house by the time Margaret went off to college.
"Margaret" is a character riding a galloping pony in The Little Pioneers, and plays "Cowboys and Indians" in When We Were Shipwrecked.
Romantic love and honor emerged as themes of abiding interest for Mitchell in The Knight and the Lady (ca. 1909), in which a "good knight" and a "bad knight" duel for the hand of the lady. In The Arrow Brave and the Deer Maiden (ca. 1913), a half-white Indian brave, Jack, must withstand the pain inflicted upon him to uphold his honor and win the girl. The same themes were treated with increasing artistry in Lost Laysen, the novella Mitchell wrote as a teenager in 1916, and, with much greater sophistication, in Mitchell's last known novel, Gone with the Wind, which she began in 1926.
In her pre-teens, Mitchell also wrote stories set in foreign locations, such as The Greaser (1913), a cowboy story set in Mexico. In 1913 she wrote two stories with Civil War settings; one includes her notation that "237 pages are in this book".
Fancy Dress Masquerade
Seventy girls and boys were the guests of Miss Margaret Mitchell at a fancy dress masquerade yesterday afternoon at the home of her parents Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Mitchell on Peachtree street and the occasion was beautiful and enjoyable.
There was a prize for guessing the greatest number of identities under the masks, and another for the guest who best concealed his or her identity.
The pretty young hostess was a demure Martha Washington in flowered crepe gown over a pink silk petticoat and her powdered hair was worn high.
Mrs. Mitchell wore a ruby velvet gown.
While the Great War carried on in Europe (1914–1918), Margaret Mitchell attended Atlanta's Washington Seminary (now The Westminster Schools), a "fashionable" private girls' school with an enrollment of over 300 students. She was very active in the Drama Club. Mitchell played the male characters: Nick Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Launcelot Gobbo in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, among others. She wrote a play about snobbish college girls that she acted in as well. She also joined the Literary Club and had two stories published in the yearbook: Little Sister and Sergeant Terry. Ten-year-old "Peggy" is the heroine in Little Sister. She hears her older sister being raped and shoots the rapist:
Mitchell received encouragement from her English teacher, Mrs. Paisley, who recognized her writing talent. A demanding teacher, Paisley told her she had ability if she worked hard and would not be careless in constructing sentences. A sentence, she said, must be "complete, concise and coherent".
Mitchell read the books of Thomas Dixon, Jr., and in 1916, when the silent film, The Birth of a Nation, was showing in Atlanta, she dramatized Dixon's The Traitor: A Story of the Fall of the Invisible Empire (1907). As both playwright and actress, she took the role of Steve Hoyle. For the production, she made a Ku Klux Klan costume from a white crepe dress and wore a boy's wig.(Note: Dixon rewrote The Traitor as The Black Hood (1924) and Steve Hoyle was renamed George Wilkes.)
During her years at Washington Seminary, Mitchell's brother, Stephens, was away studying at Harvard College (1915–1917), and he left in May 1917 to enlist in the army, about a month after the U.S. declared war on Germany. He set sail for France in April 1918, participated in engagements in the Lagny and Marbache sectors, then returned to Georgia in October as a training instructor. While Margaret and her mother were in New York in September 1918 preparing for Margaret to attend college, Stephens wired his father that he was safe after his ship had been torpedoed en route to New York from France.
Stephens Mitchell thought college was the "ruination of girls". However, May Belle Mitchell placed a high value on education for women and she wanted her daughter's future accomplishments to come from using her mind. She saw education as Margaret's weapon and "the key to survival". The classical college education she desired for her daughter was one that was on par with men's colleges, and this type of education was available only at northern schools. Her mother chose Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts for Margaret because she considered it to be the best women's college in the United States.
Upon graduating from Washington Seminary in June 1918, Mitchell fell in love with a Harvard graduate, a young army lieutenant, Clifford West Henry, who was chief bayonet instructor at Camp Gordon from May 10 until the time he set sail for France on July 17. Henry was "slightly effeminate", "ineffectual", and "rather effete-looking" with "homosexual tendencies", according to biographer Anne Edwards. Before departing for France, he gave Mitchell an engagement ring.
On September 14, while she was enrolled at Smith College, Henry was mortally wounded in action in France and died on October 17. As Henry waited in the Verdun trenches, shortly before being wounded, he composed a poem on a leaf torn from his field notebook, found later among his effects. The last stanza of Lieutenant Clifford W. Henry's poem follows:
Mrs. Ira Henry of Sound Beach was presented the Distinguished Service medal from the War department today in honor of her son, Captain Clifford W. Henry for bravery under fire during the World war. The medal, recommended by General Pershing, was presented by Major General Edwards.
Captain Henry, who during the war was a lieutenant with Co.F, 102nd infantry, captured the town of Vignuelles, nine kilometers inside the Hindenburg line on September 13, 1918. Lieutenant Henry and 50 of his men were killed the next day by a terrific explosion in the town. Captain Henry was a graduate of Harvard University.
Henry repeatedly advanced in front of the platoon he commanded, drawing machine-gun fire so that the German nests could be located and wiped out by his men. Although wounded in the leg in this effort, his death was the result of shrapnel wounds from an air bomb dropped by a German plane. He was awarded the French Croix de guerre avec palme for his acts of heroism. From thePresident of the United States, the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, he was presented with the Distinguished Service Cross and an Oak Leaf Cluster in lieu of a second Distinguished Service Cross.
Clifford Henry was the great love of Margaret Mitchell's life, according to her brother. In a letter to a friend (A. Edee, March 26, 1920), Mitchell wrote of Clifford that she had a "memory of a love that had in it no trace of physical passion".
Mitchell had vague aspirations of a career in psychiatry, but her future was derailed by an event that killed over fifty million people worldwide, the 1918 flu pandemic. On January 25, 1919, her mother, May Belle Mitchell, succumbed to pneumonia from the "Spanish flu". Mitchell arrived home from college a day after her mother had died. Knowing her death was imminent, May Belle Mitchell wrote her daughter a brief letter and advised her:
An average student at Smith College, Mitchell did not excel in any area of academics. She held a low estimation of her writing abilities. Even though her English professor had praised her work, she felt the praise was undue. After finishing her freshman year at Smith, Mitchell returned to Atlanta to take over the household for her father and never returned to college. In October 1919, while regaining her strength after an appendectomy, she confided to a friend that giving up college and her dreams of a "journalistic career" to keep house and take her mother's place in society meant "giving up all the worthwhile things that counted for—nothing!"
Miss Mitchell, Hostess
Miss Mitchell was hostess at an informal buffet supper last evening at her home on Peachtree road, the occasion complimenting Miss Blanche Neel, of Macon, who is visiting Miss Dorothy Bates.
Spring flowers adorned the laced covered table in the dining room. Miss Neel was gowned in blue Georgette crepe. Miss Mitchell wore pink taffeta. Miss Bates was gowned in blue velvet.
Invited to meet the honor guest were Miss Bates, Miss Virginia Walker, Miss Ethel Tye, Miss Caroline Tye, Miss Helen Turman, Miss Lethea Turman, Miss Frances Ellis, Miss Janet Davis, Miss Lillian Raley, Miss Mary Woolridge, Charles DuPree, William Cantrell, Lieutenant Jack Swarthout, Lieutenant William Gooch, Stephen Mitchell, McDonald Brittain, Harry Hallman, George Northen, Frank Hooper, Walter Whiteman, Frank Stanton, Val Stanton, Charles Belleau, Henry Angel, Berrien Upshaw and Edmond Cooper.
Margaret began using the name "Peggy" at Washington Seminary, and the abbreviated form "Peg" at Smith College when she found an icon for herself in the mythological winged horse, "Pegasus", that inspires poets. Peggy made her Atlanta society debut in the 1920 winter season. In the "gin and jazz style" of the times, she did her "flapping" in the 1920s. At a 1921 Atlanta debutante charity ball, she performed an Apache dance. The dance included a kiss with her male partner that shocked Atlanta "high society".The Apache and the Tango were scandalous dances for their elements of eroticism, the latter popularized in a 1921 silent film, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that made its lead actor, Rudolph Valentino, a sex symbol for his ability to Tango.
Mitchell was, in her own words, an "unscrupulous flirt". She found herself engaged to five men, but maintained that she neither lied to or misled any of them. A local gossip columnist, who wrote under the name Polly Peachtree, described Mitchell's love life in a 1922 column:
In April 1922, Mitchell was seeing two men almost daily; one was Berrien “Red” Upshaw, whom she is thought to have met in 1917 at a dance hosted by the parents of one of her friends, and the other, Upshaw's roommate and friend, John R. Marsh, a copy editor from Kentucky who worked for the Associated Press. Upshaw was an Atlanta boy, a few months younger than Mitchell, whose family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina in 1916. In 1919 he was appointed to the United States Naval Academy, but resigned for academic deficiencies on January 5, 1920. He was readmitted in May, then 19 years old, and spent two months at sea before resigning a second time on September 1, 1920. Unsuccessful in his educational pursuits and with no job, in 1922 Upshaw earned money bootlegging alcohol out of the Georgia mountains.
Although her family disapproved, Peggy and Red married on September 2, 1922, and the best man at their wedding was John Marsh, who would become her second husband. The couple resided at the Mitchell home with her father. By December the marriage to Upshaw had dissolved and he left. Mitchell suffered physical and emotional abuse, the result of Upshaw's alcoholism and violent temper. Upshaw agreed to an uncontested divorce after John Marsh gave him a loan and Mitchell agreed not to press assault charges against him. Upshaw and Mitchell were divorced on October 16, 1924.
On July 4, 1925, 24-year-old Margaret Mitchell and 29-year-old John Marsh were married in the Unitarian-Universalist Church.The Marshes made their home at the Crescent Apartments in Atlanta, taking occupancy of Apt. 1, which they affectionately named "The Dump" (now the Margaret Mitchell House & Museum).
While still legally married to Upshaw and needing income for herself, Mitchell got a job writing feature articles for The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. She received almost no encouragement from her family or "society" to pursue a career in journalism, and had no prior newspaper experience.[ Medora Field Perkerson, who hired Mitchell said:
Her first story, Atlanta Girl Sees Italian Revolution, by Margaret Mitchell Upshaw, appeared on December 31, 1922. She wrote on a wide range of topics, from fashions to Confederate generals and King Tut. In an article that appeared on July 1, 1923, Valentino Declares He Isn't a Sheik, she interviewed celebrity actor Rudolph Valentino, referring to him as "Sheik" from his film role. Less thrilled by his looks than his "chief charm", his "low, husky voice with a soft, sibilant accent", she described his face as "swarthy":
Mitchell was quite thrilled when Valentino took her in his arms and carried her inside from the rooftop of the Georgian Terrace Hotel.
Many of her stories were vividly descriptive. In an article titled, Bridesmaid of Eighty-Seven Recalls Mittie Roosevelt's Wedding, she wrote of a white-columned mansion in which lived the last surviving bridesmaid at Theodore Roosevelt's mother's wedding:
In another article, Georgia's Empress and Women Soldiers, she wrote short sketches of four notable Georgia women. One was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, Rebecca Latimer Felton, a suffragist who held white supremacist views. The other women were: Nancy Hart, Lucy Mathilda Kenny (also known as Private Bill Thompson of the Confederate States Army) and Mary Musgrove. The article generated mail and controversy from her readers. Mitchell received criticism for depicting "strong women who did not fit the accepted standards of femininity."
Mitchell's journalism career, which began in 1922, came to an end less than four years later; her last article appeared on May 9, 1926. Several months after marrying John Marsh, Mitchell quit due to an ankle injury that would not heal properly and chose to become a full-time wife. During the time Mitchell worked for the Atlanta Journal, she wrote 129 feature articles, 85 news stories, and several book reviews.
Mitchell began collecting erotica from book shops in New York City while in her twenties. She and her friends were flamboyant in 1925. The newlywed Marshes and their social group were interested in "all forms of sexual expression". Mitchell discussed her interest in "dirty" book shops and sexually explicit prose in letters to a friend, Harvey Smith. Smith noted her favorite reads were Fanny Hill, The Perfumed Garden and Aphrodite.
Mitchell developed an appreciation for the works of Southern writer James Branch Cabell, and his 1919 classic, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice. She read books about sexology, and took particular interest in the case studies of Havelock Ellis, a British physician who studied human sexuality. During this period in which Mitchell was reading pornography and sexology, she was also writing Gone with the Wind.
Mitchell wrote a romance novella, Lost
Laysen, when she was fifteen years old (1916). She gave Lost
Laysen, which she had written in two notebooks, to a boyfriend, Henry Love
Angel. He died in 1945 and the novella remained undiscovered among some letters
she had written to him until 1994. The novella was
published in 1996, eighty years after it was written, and became a New
York Times Best Seller.
In Lost Laysen, Mitchell explores the dynamics of three male characters and their relationship to the only female character, "Courtenay Ross", a strong-willed American missionary to the South Pacific island of "Laysen". The narrator of the tale is "Billy Duncan", "a rough, hardened soldier of fortune", who is frequently involved in fights that leave him near death. Courtenay quickly observes Duncan's hard-muscled body as he works shirtless aboard a ship called "Caliban". Courtenay's suitor is "Douglas Steele", an athletic man who apparently believes Courtenay is helpless without him. He follows Courtenay to Laysen to protect her from perceived foreign savages. The third male character is the rich, powerful yet villainous "Juan Mardo". He leers at Courtenay and makes rude comments of a sexual nature, in Japanese nonetheless. Mardo provokes Duncan and Steele, and each feels he must defend Courtenay's honor. Ultimately Courtenay defends her own honor rather than submit to shame.
In a gender reversal, the woman writer (Mitchell) narrates Lost Laysen through a heroic male character, Billy Duncan.[134] Mitchell's half-breed[135] antagonist, Juan Mardo, lurks in the shadows of the story and has no dialogue. The reader learns of Mardo's evil intentions through Duncan:
Mardo's desires are similar to those of Rhett Butler in his ardent pursuit of Scarlett O'Hara in Mitchell's epic novel, Gone with the Wind. Rhett tells Scarlett:
The "other way" is rape. In Lost Laysen the male seducer is replaced with the male rapist.
In Mitchell's teenage years, she is known to have written a 400-page novel about girls in a boarding school, The Big Four. The novel is thought to be lost; Mitchell destroyed some of her manuscripts herself and others were destroyed after her death.
In the 1920s Mitchell completed a novelette, 'Ropa Carmagin, about a Southern white girl who loves a biracial man. Mitchell submitted the manuscript to Macmillan Publishers in 1935 along with her manuscript for Gone with the Wind. The novelette was rejected; Macmillan thought the story was too short for book form.
| “ | I had every detail clear in my mind before I sat down to the typewriter. | ” |
|
— Margaret Mitchell
|
||
In May 1926, after Mitchell had left her job at the Atlanta Journal and was recovering at home from her ankle injury, she wrote a society column for the Sunday Magazine, "Elizabeth Bennet's Gossip", which she continued to write until August. Meanwhile, her husband was growing weary of lugging armloads of books home from the library to keep his wife's mind occupied while she hobbled around the house; he emphatically suggested that she write her own book instead:
To aid her in her literary endeavors, John Marsh brought home a Remington Portable No. 3 typewriter (c. 1928). For the next three years Mitchell worked exclusively on writing a Civil War-era novel whose heroine was named Pansy O'Hara (prior to publication Pansy was changed to Scarlett). She used parts of the manuscript to prop up a wobbly couch.
During World War II, Margaret Mitchell was a volunteer for the American Red Cross and she raised money for the war effort by selling war bonds. She was active in Home Defense, sewed hospital gowns and put patches on trousers. Her personal attention, however, was devoted to writing letters to men in uniform—soldiers, sailors and marines, sending them humor, encouragement, and her sympathy.
The USS Atlanta (CL-51) was an anti-aircraft ship of the United States Navy sponsored by Margaret Mitchell and used in the naval Battle of Midway and the Eastern Solomons. The ship was struck and sunk in night surface action on November 13, 1942 during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.
Mitchell sponsored a second cruiser named after the city of Atlanta, USS Atlanta (CL-104). On February 6, 1944, she christened Atlanta in Camden, New Jersey. Atlanta was operating off the coast of Honshū when the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945. It was sunk during an explosive test off San Clemente Island on October 1, 1970.
Margaret Mitchell was struck by a speeding automobile as she crossed Peachtree Street at 13th Street in Atlanta with her husband, John Marsh, while on her way to see the movie A Canterbury Tale on the evening of August 11, 1949. She died at Grady Hospital five days later without fully regaining consciousness.
The driver, Hugh Gravitt, was an off-duty taxi driver who was driving his personal vehicle when he struck Mitchell. After the accident, Gravitt was arrested for drunken driving and released on a $5,450 bond until Mitchell's death.
Gravitt was originally charged with drunken driving, speeding, and driving on the wrong side of the road. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in November 1949 and sentenced to 18 months in jail. He served almost 11 months. Gravitt died in 1994 at the age of 73.
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of Gone with the Wind is that people worldwide would incorrectly think it was the true story of theOld South and how it was changed by the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The film version of the novel "amplified this effect". Scholars of the period have written in recent years about the negative effects the novel has had on race relations by its resurrection of Lost Cause mythology.
THE CRYSTALS
African Mystic Quartz: cleansing; accelerates spiritual growth; focuses healing energy - The Chakra it works on depends on the color.
Angel Aura
Quartz (aka Opal Aura, Rainbow Aura, Pearl
Aura) Angel aura is associated primarily
with the crown chakra.
Angel Aura Quartz is quartz that is permanently treated by
fusing platinum and/or silver crystals with heat and vacuum to give it its
gorgeous angelic coloring. Mystical lore counts It a stone of high spiritual
energy. It is said that it is very helpful to the aura which it can protect,
balance, and bring energetic health. In addition it has been said to assist in
raising Kundalini energy in a more gentle manner. It is used in meditation and
can help one meditate on finding the proper course of action in life. It is said
to help with angelic communication and communicating with Higher Self and inner
wisdom. It is used by mystics to help access Akashic records and past life
recall. It is said to bring peace and tranquility because of the angelic
protection it brings. Physically, mystical lore reputes that angel aura is
helpful for general health, vitality, and miraculous cure of illness.
Azeztulite -
Azeztulite is related primarily with the crown and
soulstar chakras.
Azeztulite is a stone with a very high energy vibration that is said to be from
the Angelic realm. It is an ascenscion stone that is used in psychic and
mystical work to raise one's vibration. Although Azeztulite is a type of quartz,
it has much higher energy than regular quartzes. Azeztulite is used in
meditation to expand and raise consciousness and bring great Light energy to the
meditation. This stone is also used by metaphysicians to help project positive
energy to benefit self and other. Azeztulite is also used on the third-eye to
assist in clairvoyant viewing of the future. This stone demonstrates no negative
or neutral energy, but is truly positive in energy and never needs cleansing or
reenergizing. Crystal healers consider azeztulite energies to remove energetic
blocks and snarls, allowing full flow of energy and healing dis-ease of all
types. Crystal healers also use azeztulite to assist in rapid but comfortable
cellular regeneration and rejuvenation.
Blue
Quartz (aka Dumortierite Quartz)
Blue quartz, sometimes called dumortierite or dumortierite quartz, enhances
organizational abilities, self-discipline and orderliness. This enhancement is
believed to be due to the effect it can have of balancing the throat chakra and
enhancing communication between lower chakras/physical energy and the higher
chakras/mental/spiritual energy. It highly reduces difficulties of scattered
mind and disorganization. In addition, it encourages one to see and accept
reality, and react to it in an intelligent manner in one's own behalf.
Candle quartz: aids in
accessing ancient knowledge and putting it to use. Works with all chakras.
Dumortierite (Blue Quartz)
Dumortierite (blue quartz) enhances organizational abilities, self-discipline
and orderliness. This enhancement is believed to be due to the effect it can
have of balancing the throat chakra and enhancing communication between lower
chakras/physical energy and the higher chakras/mental/spiritual energy. It
highly reduces difficulties of scattered mind and disorganization. In addition,
it encourages one to see and accept reality, and react to it in an intelligent
manner in one's own behalf.
Faden Quartz
Faden crystals (pronounced "FAH-den") is a rare formation
of crystal in which there are inclusions of one or more white thread-like
fibrous line formations. The Faden line is visible withint the crystal structure
because it is surrounded by fluid filled or gaseous chambers or is possibly
missing a molecule of oxygen. Faden crystals enhance connections of all types,
including attunement between one and another. They are good for astral travel
and travel on alternate dimensions. Fadens help with physical, mental and
emotional stability.
Fairy Quartz
Fairy Quartz is a fledgling Spirit Quartz, showing the
milky white lazer wand point and a light coating of smaller crystals growing on
it. Fairy Quartz has a very soothing energy, which brings peace and calm to
those in its energy field, including the groups, families, and individuals. This
soothing energy is extremely beneficial for emotional pain or illness. It also
brings heightened energy even as it calms. Fairy Quartz is great for meditation.
Physically, Fairy Quartz is used for detoxifying the body and tissues, removing
pain, and overall healing.
|
Gold
Reef Quartz
|
| Golden
Healing Quartz
Golden Healer crystals are excellent for crystal
healing, and are said to be helpful when used in any healing situation.
Golden Healers also help keep contact with the spiritual worlds. It is
said by some that Golden Healers access Christ consciousness as well as
activating the solar plexus chakra to join our will with Divine will.
Golden Healers also align all the chakras and balance yin/yang energies. |
Herkimer Diamond: (Quartz) stimulates psychic abilities; soothes tension; aids sleep. Works with all chakras.
Herkimer Diamond is called the "stone of attunement". While it is not actually diamond, it is a quartz that often resembles the sparkling clarity of diamonds. It can be metaphysically programmed to attune one to an environment, a situation, a quality, or most anything. It is said to assist with balance on the mental, emotional and physical levels. It can be used effectively to clear and open any chakra. It is professed to relieve tension and thereby promote peace of mind. Psychically, it's useful for auric cleansing and dream recall. Mystical lore says that physically it can be used to heal addictions and remove toxins. Herkimer Diamond is associated with the crown chakra.
Kundalini Quartz: primal energy; raises kundalini; grounding. Works with the root chakra.
Lemurian Seed
Crystals -
They are excellent for clearing and balancing all chakras.
Lemurian Seed Crystals are crystals that are reputed to have been left by the
Lemurians, an advanced ancient civilization, to teach and guide us in this time.
These crystals are said to have been programmed with conscious connection and
love. Lemurians hold and transmit messages of unconditional love, equality, and
spiritual teachings. They are also great for dream work and dream
interpretation. Lemurians have a very Yin or feminine energy, and for all their
power are more gentle-feeling energetically than Yang/masculine crystals. They
are very powerful tools for meditation and for healing on all levels.
Lithio-Laser
Crystals
Lithio-Laser Crystals are extremely powerful crystals. They
can break down internal barriers to inner growth that may bring pre-verbal
issues to the surface to be integrated and healed. They integrate on levels of
mind, body, emotions and spirit. This can heal dis-ease of any of these aspects
of one's being, making these crystals powerful healers. If one is not ready for
the intensity of these crystals and removal of these inner barriers, the person
may feel extreme distress or emotional overload. Lithio-Laser Crystals can help
access New Direct DNA Altering as Sacred Bridge Crystals, and can assist
lightworkers with the changes that Earth is going through.
Lithium Quartz -
Lithium quartz is related to activating and balancing all
chakras and is handy to work with any individual chakra also.
Lithium Quartz is a super high energy healing and balancing
stone. It is said to be self-clearing and self-cleansing, and from my experience
with it, I'd say that's correct. Lithium quartz sends and receives energy as
well as storing it. Lithium quartz is balancing and calming, and is used in
crystal healing as a natural anti-depressant. Emotionally and other ways,
lithium quartz is said to relieve stress, anxiety, and tension, bringing
relaxation and peace. It works in a gentle and slow but steady and powerful
manner, not causing the discomfort of sudden change that some crystals might at
times. Lithium quartz is excellent for meditation and prayer. It is used to heal
repressed grief and anger, as well as emotional issues from past lives. It is
also said to purify water. Physically, lithium quartz is used in crystal healing
for stress related disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, muscular tension,
repetitive motion injuries.
Lodolite
(Lodolite Quartz, Lodelite, Lodalite, Scenic Quartz, Garden Quartz, Landscape
Quartz) -
Lodolite is associated primarily with the crown
chakra.
Lodolite (Lodalite, Lodelite) is a type of included quartz
crystal with inclusions of many possible colors and types, often having the look
of gardens, landscapes, or underwater scenes. Thus, lodolite is often called
garden quartz, landscape quartz, or scenic quartz. One of the most common
metaphysical uses of lodolite is to bring energies to effect manifestation of
one's desires. Lodolite is also said to enhance communication with beings on the
spiritual plane and heighten one's spiritual energies. It is used mystically to
increase ESP and bring knowledge from your past lives. Lodolite is said to bring
loving energies and energies of gentle strength. Mystically and in crystal
healing, lodolite is purported to be an excellent healing stone bringing strong
healing energies and energetic shifting so that healing will occur.
Phantom Quartz
Phantom quartz crystals are wonderful awareness tools. They
can give a sense of magic that most of us have lost along the course of our
lives. Phantom quartz can help us increase awareness of evolution, in ourselves
and in the world around us, showing how growth, rest, and rebirth cycle through
all existence. Psychically, phantom quartz is considered excellent for past life
work and meditation, and is valuable for the mystic or spiritual seeker.
Physically, crystal healing and folk lore say that phantom quartz crystals are
excellent for initiating healing, bringing great energy to the healing process,
and are especially helpful for hearing disorders and emotional healing.
|
Quartz: programmable stone; breaks bad
habits; relieves headaches; channeling stone; enhances life force. Works
with all chakras.
Quartz - the greatest of all healing
stones. Acts as an amplifier for psychic energy and aids meditation and
visualization.
|
|
Rose Quartz
- Rose quartz is associated with the heart chakra.
Ggreat for attracting love. Promotes self-loving
and heals emotional wounds as well as promoting peace, forgiveness, and
nurturing.
Quartz, Rutilated -
Rutilated quartz is associated with the solar plexus chakra. Excellent
for birthing process; enhances communication.
Rutilated quartz is associated with the
solar plexus chakra, but works with all chakras. It is very healing.
Quartz, Smoky -
Smoky quartz is associated with the root chakra. Snow Quartz Rose
Quartz: self-assuredness; love stone; reduces weight and
wrinkles. Works with the 4th (heart) chakra. Ruby Aura (Ruby Aura
Quartz) Smoky Quartz - Smoky Quartz: relieves depression and tension; balances sexual energies. Works with the root chakra Smoky (or smokey) quartz is a grounding and stabilizing stone. It brings calm and centering, lifts depression, enhances practicality, and generally removes negative energies, bringing happiness. Smoky quartz is also a good luck stone. It can also assist in tapping subconscious wisdom. Smoky quartz is a protective stone, particularly for physical protection, protection from negativity, and psychic protection. Physically, smoky quartz is helpful for kidneys, abdomen, pancreas, reproductive organs, menstrual cramps, fertility issues, water retention.
Quartz, Tourmalated
Spirit Quartz
(Porcupine Quartz,
Cactus Quartz, Spirit Crystals) -
Spirit quartz is associated
primarily with the crown chakra, but will work to align and balance all
chakras together.
Strawberry Quartz:
aids recall of past lives; eases tension in relationships. Works with
the 4th (heart) chakra. Tangerine Quartz carries the same healing properties as your clear quartz crystal - along with their own special healing qualities. Tangerine quartz is naturally coloured (no dye is used to give it this orange shade). It is an excellent stone to use after shock or trauma and especially at the soul level. It can be used to heal after a psychic attack. This gem can also be used for past life healing. Tangerine Quartz activates and harmonizes the sacral Chakra and helps to stimulate the flow of creative energy. It can take you beyond your limited belief system into a more positive vibration Legend says that ages ago the Mountain people believed that their gods and spirits lived inside palaces made from crystal. It has been well renowned over the centuries as a popular healing stone. The word Crystal actually comes from the word "Krystallos" which means "Clear Ice" in Ancient Greek or celestial water from the heavens that the deities froze so it would never melt. Another legend is that Hercules drooped the crystal of truth from Mount Olympus and it shattered into millions of pieces that we find today as clear quartz. In the Orient, crystal quartz was regarded as the essence of the dragon and was considered to be pure Chi or life force. Quartz Crystal has an enlightening effect on all the Chakras and helps to eliminate negative energy. Often used as a “cleansing” stone to restore positive energy and used in meditations. It raises energy and aids concentration. It is the stone of the sun, of health, wealth and happiness. This stone absorbs energy from all around us and can draw down the divine light. It will store and concentrate this energy to be released in healing, magic or pure vitality. Some use this stone for divination, building psychic abilities and helping during meditations. It also amplifies any innate psychic or healing powers and is used to increase the power of prayer (especially for healing). It will also act as a channel for spirit guides. Tibetan "Black" Quartz Tibetan Scepter Quartz Tourmalated Quartz White Fairy Quartz http://dreamtime.bz/metaphysical_properties.html NOTE: Swarovski (This is not quartz crystal)Swarovski AG (/swɒrˈɒfski/ sworr-OFF-skee) is an Austrian producer of luxury cut lead glass, headquartered in Wattens, Austria. The company is split into two major industry areas, the Swarovski Kristall business unit that primarily works with luxury items and fashion design crystals.
THOSE OF US WHO REMEMBER PAST LIVES MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN READING THE WHOLE HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, NOT JUST MARGARARET MITCHELL'S EXPERIENCES IN GONE WITH THE WIND WHICH WAS BAD ENOUGH, BUT GHOSTS OF THOSE SOLDIERS AND SOME OF THEIR WIVES' GHOSTS ARE STILL WAGING THE BATTLE IN THE ASTRAL WORLD. THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW HOW TO CROSS GHOSTS OVER INTO THEIR RIGHTFUL PLACE IN HEAVEN MIGHT WANT TO WORK ON DOING THAT. THOSE GHOSTS DON'T EVEN KNOW THEY ARE DEAD AND ARE STILL FIGHTING THE BATTLE, AND THE WIVES ARE SEARCHING FOR THEIR LONG DEPARTED HUSBANDS. BESIDES THAT, WE FORGET THAT NATIVE AMERICANS WERE ALSO INVOLVED AND THERE ARE OTHER CIVIL WARS ALL AROUND THE WORLD THAT ARE HORRENDOUS AND STILL GOING ON. HERE ARE SOME OF THEM. American Civil War. America’s bloodiest clash, the sectional conflct of the Civil War (1861-65) pitted the Union against the Confederate States of America and ... Sitegen Web site generation framework ... In recognition of the sesquicentennial of the start of the American Civil War, Civil War in the American South provides a ... The American Civil War, widely known in the United States as simply the Civil War as well as other sectional names, was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 to ... A Different Kind of Horsepower "Automobile Manufacturer Henry Ford Was Born" A Final Resting Place "National Cemeteries Were Authorized by the U.S. Government" American Civil War, also called War Between the States, four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and ... Organization working to preserve Civil War battlefield sites from Texas to Maryland, including several in the Fredericksburg area. Tracks progress by assigning a ...
|
_1944.jpg)
.jpg)
