The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1936-12-01
TO A CREDULoUS PUBLIC FICTION
."s OFTEN is FACT . $50
(By BRUCE CATION

Margaret Mitchell, the young SoutheIhei
who wrote that amazing popular success
Gone With the Wind" found out the
other day how effectively an author can
kid the public.
She received letter from a reader IN
South Dakota who wanted to visit Tara,
the ancestral southern home of Scarlett,
the heroine of Miss MitchelPs book.
This reader said that her sister had Wis
tied Tara a few months before. while on
trip through Georgia, and had found 1t
an unforgettable experience; would Miss
Mitchell please tell her how she, too,
might find Tara?
Miss Mitchell undoubtedly would have
been glad enough to oblige; the only trou-
bic was that there never was any such
place as Tara. The author not only had
invented it. but she had taken pains to get
a detailed map and situate it on blank
spot so that no existing plantation could
possibly be confused with It.
And vet here was at least one reader
who was sure she had actually visited the
place and another who wanted to go and
do likewise!
Miss Mitchell seems to be learning an
interesting truth-to wit, that an magma
tive writer who invents something wildly
enough can add it to the lore of the race,
so that things which never happened and
never were become as solid and substan-
tial in peoples minds as actual historical
events
How many, many visitors to Hannibal,
Mo-! for instance. have thrilled at the con-
temptation of long-imagined thing when
they went through the cave where Tom
Sawyer and Becky Thatcher spent those
fear-haunted hours, or looked on the au-
thentio. fence which Toms ingenuity en-
dowed with a painless coat of whitewash,
or visited the island where Huck Finn and
Niger jim laid low! d1.
What if these persons were figures Of
Mark Twain's matchlessN imagination?
They are as real to us, now, as Abraham
Lincoln or John d. Rockefeller. They have
given this town of Hannibal their flavor for
ever, iust as the ghosts of Dickens people
haunt the streets of London. 'i-' ..''',
Perhaps the prize example for all time
of this sort of thing is an experience which
befell the British writer, Arthur Machen,
during the World war. .., ...
In the fall of 1914 Machen wrote an
imaginative story about the British retreat
from Mons, in which he had the ghosts OF
the yeomen. archers of old England come
through the mists to the aid of the hard
pressed British army. The story took holG
with aikeyed-up British public and prompt
ly RAM away from Machen..
Before long Britain, was full OF a mystic
told-fdr-fact story about the Angels OF
Mons r supernatural beings with winged
shoulders, who materialized above the
trenches and with shafts OF 5dazzlmg light
stopped the German rush. 10 -
Newspaper correspondents dug up vet
Grams lof the retreat, who had "actually
seen" the angels. The thing was discussed
in pulpits; Machen's story was forgotten
to be replaced by one of the, great legends
of thewar. 81 ..- r.. 80 ..':"s e.
That is the sort of thing you are fooline
with when you write fiction If you once
touch peoples imaginations, you change
history for them. s". e., 60
What you invent Gas Miss Mitchell is
learnihg-can becomesmore realathanSthe
thingsl that, really ,happehed.S a 2lNSa