The road to Tara is paved with gold, the kind that falls from the wallets of tourists who, frankly my dear, give a damn. Today, some 60 years after the publication of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell's story of the U.S. Civil War and its aftermath, the quest for all things Scarlett has not abated. If anything, it grows stronger with the passing of years.
For anyone with an interest in the story, the road to Tara begins in Atlanta at Mitchell's Peachtree St. home, a modest three-room apartment in a once-fashionable neighbourhood, now the focal point of the Margaret Mitchell Museum.
A $5 million restoration of the rooms occupied by Mitchell provides an insider's view of the life of one of America's most beloved writers. But before we enter "the dump," as Mitchell called it, a guide walks us through a visitor's centre where archival photographs and a film about Mitchell's life set the scene for what's to come.
The story that unfolds is one of a feisty Southern Belle who defies the conventions of the day, not unlike Scarlett, Mitchell's fictional heroine. Growing up in a world of white-columned mansions, Mitchell lived what was considered for the times a far from genteel life. As a young woman entering society, Mitchell scandalized Atlanta's blue bloods with a demonstration of the erotic Apache dance popular in the Paris night clubs of the 1920s. Following the performance, the Junior League ladies' club blackballed her membership, citing the dance and her charity work for the city's black and poor, as reasons to exclude her from their company. Royalties from her Pulitzer Prize-winning book pay college tuition fees for black students, fund emergency clinics at a local hospital and cover the medical expenses of many nuns associated with the Sisters of Mercy.
In 1922, Mitchell married bootlegger Red Upshaw, an alcoholic who abused her. The two separated and eventually divorced. To support herself, Mitchell landed what was considered a "man's" job as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal Magazine. A few years later, she became the first woman to cover hard news for the Atlanta Journal. Mitchell remarried and, with second husband John Marsh, she set up housekeeping at the Peachtree Street apartment. It became a gathering place for the "bohemians" -- the name given to the circle of authors, poets and artists who joined the couple for Mitchell's signature martinis in mason jars. Bohemians are still dropping by for martinis on the third Wednesday of each month for museum-sponsored poetry readings and spoken word performances.
Arthritis in Mitchell's ankles and feet forced her to quit the newspaper job. To pass the time, she read. Tired of lugging library books home, Marsh arrived home one day with a second-hand typewriter, presenting it to his wife with the challenge, "Madam, I greet you on the beginning of a great new career."
Still on the mend, Mitchell took the challenge. With little expectation that a book would ever be published, she spent three years writing Gone With the Wind. Scarlett's story might have remained hidden forever if an acquaintance's catty remark that Mitchell was "not serious enough" to be a writer hadn't pushed her to prove the woman wrong.
Gone With the Wind was published in 1936. A year later, Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize. The popularity of the book changed Mitchell's life. Until her accidental death in 1949, she was hounded by fans demanding to know if Scarlett would ever get Rhett back. To this day the question remains unanswered.
To find Tara, Scarlett's beloved home in the book, one has to leave Atlanta and travel 9 km south to Jonesboro in Clayton County, Mitchell's ancestral home. Tara itself doesn't exist, and according to local historians, it never did. The Tara we know from the movie is a facade built on the back lot of a Hollywood studio.
The inspiration for Tara, and much of the book, comes from the Civil War stories told to a young Margaret by her grandfather. Some of these stories have become local legends, a mix of fact and fiction explained by local historian and master storyteller Peter Bonner. Dressed as a plantation owner, Bonner's daily walk through this charming rural town where Confederate soldiers met the Union Army in battle is not to be missed.
Mitchell's great grandfather's plantation home is a frequent stop on Bonner's tour. It's the house where green velvet drapes hung from the parlour windows, the same type of drapes Scarlett pulls down to make a new dress to impress Rhett Butler.
Built in 1825 by Phillip Fitzgerald, the plantation on Tara Road was sold in the 1960s. The barn and out buildings were torn down, but the house was saved and moved down the road to its present location on a property known as the Crawford plantation. The way Bonner tells the story, it was the Crawford ladies who, tired of wearing worn-out clothes, took down their drapes and made dresses out of them -- a tale no doubt told to Mitchell.
Sadly, neither the Fitzgerald or Crawford plantation homes are open to public tours, but a glimpse of Tara can be found at Stately Oaks Plantation, a 1839 white columned planter's home on the outskirts of Jonesboro.
Today it's a living history museum where guides in period costume introduce visitors to the life of a Southern lady. Stately Oaks is one of the 32 historic homes, businesses and public squares that form a self-guided walking/driving tour of 18th century Jonesboro. A guide map can be picked up free of charge at the 1867 train depot on Main Street. The original wooden depot was a casualty in the bloody two-day battle that pitted the 60,000 Union troops against 12,000 Confederate soldiers charged with the duty of defending the rail line to Atlanta. Yankee troops burned it in 1864. Today, the depot serves a double duty as a visitor's bureau and a museum housing Gone With the Wind movie memorabilia.
Margaret Mitchell House & Museum, 990 Peachtree St., Atlanta. Phone (404) 249-7012. Public tours daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $7 (U.S.) for adults, $6 (U.S.) for seniors and youth, children under 5 are free.
Historic Jonesboro is 20 minutes south of Atlanta. Take I-75 south to exit 76 to the Jonesboro Rd./Hwy. 54. Follow Hwy. 54 to Jonesboro. Tourist information is available by calling the Clayton County Convention & Visitors Bureau at 1-800-622-7829. Peter Bonner's Historical & Hysterical Tours run Monday to Saturday at 1 p.m. or by appointment. Meet at the Jonesboro Train Depot. The 90-minute guided tours cost $15 (U.S.). Stately Oaks Antebellum Plantation is open for tours Monday to Friday (and most Saturdays) from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Admission is $5 (U.S.) for adults, $4.50 (U.S.) for seniors and $3 (U.S.) for children.