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Dawn Major in Conversation with Historical Fiction Author, Donna Meredith

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Margaret Wilson Hodges, Goodwood Archives, Photo taken by Otto Sarony, Co., circa 1917

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DAWN MAJOR: Congratulations on the publication of your historical fiction novel, Margaret: The Rose of Goodwood. I consumed your novel in two days’ time. Had I not started reading it at midnight, I probably would have read it from start to finish in one sitting. I was reminded of another favorite author of mine, Nancy Mitford who in The Pursuit of Love, like yourself, also wrote about female characters navigating societal expectations on domesticity, marriage, and motherhood. Mitford’s female characters were born into the English aristocracy whereas your main character, Maragaret Wilson Hodges Hood, came from more humble beginnings. Margaret was literally catapulted from a young department store shopgirl to a Senator’s wife in record timing. One day she was a naive young woman with no family money and few prospects and the next she was marrying William Cabot Hodges a successful attorney who harkened from a prominent Florida family with old money and political ambition.

I think part of the reason the book was such a quick read and difficult to put down was because Margaret’s life was so fast paced. I felt like I was on the same frenetic but exhilarating journey she was on, and I wanted to know what was going to happen next: what country would she visit, what artwork would her and Will purchase, what rich materials would she choose for her wardrobe, or what she would serve at one of her lavish dinner parties at the Goodwood Estate. Margaret’s decadent life translated off the page and made for a sensual reading experience.

Though Margaret wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she sure collected a bunch by the end of her life! That said, she never came off as the spoiled society type. She enjoyed pleasure for pleasure, but she always wanted to ensure that everyone around her was enjoying themselves as much as she was or even more so. I stated that reading your novel was a sensual experience because you did a phenomenal job tapping into all the senses to the extent that I began to associate various smells and tastes with characters and/or settings. Obviously, cigar smoke came off the page when Will was around. With Geneva Metz, it was fried chicken and whiskey. (No kidding, I made a fried chicken run to Publix). I could both smell and taste the Coquille St. Jacques scallops prepared by her second husband, Tom Hood. Margaret was an excellent seamstress and thoroughly delighted in fine materials. I felt the lush velvet fabric of Margaret’s Christmas dress and the rich textures of Will’s tweed suits. And finally, Goodwood, Margaret’s home, which sometimes seemed like a character in itself—probably because Maragaret and Goodwood were so closely intertwined—both smelled of pine and roses.

As a writer, for me, this is the most difficult aspect of the craft—conveying the sensory experience off the page. Sometimes, I get lucky, but typically I go back with edits and add in these details. Will you talk about your process? Does it simply pour out all at once or does it trickle in here and there? Do you have a particular go-to sense that you engage with more than others and then build upon that sense? How do you work this magic?

DONNA MEREDITH: I wish sensory detail popped into my writing like magic, but no, I work hard to include it. In an early writing workshop, I participated in at Florida State, the instructor emphasized triangulating the senses in important scenes. I deliberately try to do this, but it usually happens in later revisions. But for this novel, the sensory detail just grew out of who Margaret was. As I delved into the archives at Goodwood and walked through the house and grounds and touched her dresses, I really felt Margaret’s world surround me. She’s a seamstress, so she notices fabrics and textures. She’s a woman who enjoys food and flowers, so tastes and fragrances are important.

DAWN MAJOR: Maragaret reminded me a lot of my mother’s mother, Nana. Nana fit the mold, that concept of the ideal woman. While Papa worked providing financially for the family, Nana kept up the house and took care of my mom and my uncle and they took their roles very seriously. But I never got the feeling that Nana felt unfulfilled or resented Papa for having a career. My mother claimed she wanted the same lifestyle as Nana— mother, wife, homemaker— but times had changed, and it wasn’t in her cards. She did quite well as a nurse and later as a hospital administrator. However, mom still acted out this “ideal woman” role. On top of working, she would still cook and clean and my dad fully expected that. Working women with families in the 1970s into 1990s (some even today, but I think less) couldn’t catch a break! Maragaret was very aware of what was expected of her and had a strong sense of familial duty always putting other’s happiness before her own. Both of us are of an age where we knew men and women who adhered to these gender roles that younger readers may see as outdated and oppressive.

I’m curious about younger female readers perceptions, younger females who may not have grown up with this “ideal woman” concept and the gender roles we experienced. What has their response been towards Maragaret’s character and her decisions?

DONNA MEREDITH: Oh yes, the gender roles back then were oppressive—and I felt strongly for Margaret, trapped in this loveless marriage with a hateful husband. But it would not have been easy to walk away from that marriage, not back then. I think she had a strong sense of responsibility and understood what the money and political connections in her marriage meant to her family. Even today, many wives of politicians put up with their husbands’ philandering. In Margaret’s case, I think she really felt he could do some good for the people of Florida—and her role was to help him by being a superb hostess.

DAWN MAJOR: You share geography with both Margaret and her second husband, Tom Hood. You live in Tallahassee, Florida, where the Goodwood estate is located, but like Tom, you are originally from West Virginia.

Did your shared geography lead you to travel back and forth between the two states? How did you draw upon your own roots when you wrote about Tom’s character?

DONNA MEREDITH: I understood where Tom came from, where he played as a child, and how that might have shaped him. We graduated from the same high school decades apart, so I knew what his education was like and a tendency to feel inferior because you were from a state who many view as backwards. When I found his Clarksburg address listed in the archives, I knew exactly where that street was—and knew that it was no avenue at all. It was actually a tradesman’s alley between the two main streets. So, despite having a well-off grandfather, whose ritzy address was one I also knew, I realized Tom didn’t grow up in any kind of grand home—though visiting often with his physician grandfather probably inspired him to appreciate beautiful furnishings. And a really strange coincidence occurred as I was researching the book. On my bookshelf I came across a 1939 Clarksburg City Directory I had taken from my mother’s home when she passed away. I have no idea why I kept such a thing. It was a hardback listing of all the city residents with their street addresses. On a whim, I looked up Tom Hood’s parents and learned they had moved into a better neighborhood by 1939. I knew the street quite well. When I have Margaret accompany Tom to visit his parents, I had a good idea what that home would look like.

DAWN MAJOR: Help me picture what your journey looked like while authoring this historical novel. I love the real letters you found. I wish more people would write letters. My Uncle Jeff has written an annual Christmas letter since I can remember, and I recently asked him to send me his copies. There’s so much family history in those letters.

How many letters did you read before finding the right ones you thought would move the plot? When you were conducting your research, what was the most shocking thing you discovered in the letters?

DONNA MEREDITH: I was shocked that Will Hodges had apparently proposed to another woman only a few months prior to courting Margaret. He kept a carbon copy of a letter he had typed to her, which seemed odd in itself that he would keep a copy—and stranger still that his previous letter to her had been misplaced by her host where she was a guest—and the misplaced letter contained a marriage proposal. Would she have accepted his proposal if she had received that letter as intended? By the time she receives it, he has already moved on to Margaret.

Will’s postcards were shocking in their rude depiction of what Margaret ate on their travels. It was especially horrid that he would send these insults about her to her mother, sister, and niece. I think he viewed his comments as witty, but they revealed a cruel side of his nature.

DAWN MAJOR: If you were advising a writer interested in writing historical fiction, what steps would you tell them?

DONNA MEREDITH: To immerse yourself in the period you are writing about, to create a detailed timeline of what’s going on in the world and also in your character’s personal life. You need to figure out how your character would learn about events and how she would react.

DAWN MAJOR: There’s a scene where Margaret describes her and Will’s work on the grounds and the new greenhouse that I felt described Margaret to perfection: “I devoted my energies into overseeing mass plantings of bulbs. Red Amaryllis, Golden Daffodils. Grandiflora Paperwhites. Hurricane Lillies. Crinum Lillies. Snowdrops. They were low maintenance and self-increasing.” Your prose here is reminiscent of a list poem, but I caught a metaphor as well. Margaret was much like the bulbs she planted and cherished. If we are to take this metaphor literally, it alludes to her weight and specifically her bosom, like the bulbs and “self-increasing.” But for me, it was more about leaving something of herself to future generations to enjoy. From this perspective, she perseveres in every bulb, plant, and tree that she planted and cared for at Goodwood.

You and Margaret share a love for horticulture which simply pours off the page: “She used to take my sister and me [Jimmie Ferrell] on long walks through her gardens and woods, teaching us to recognize plants. Poke berries, which we mustn’t eat. Dew berries, which we could. American Beautyberries whose frothy pink blooms would become glorious purple berries, autumn food for birds and deer. The pink powder-puffs of mimosas. The tiny white flowers of cherry laurels, azaleas and camellias and gladioli—blooms for every season. She even taught us how to suck the sugar from honeysuckle like the hummingbirds. We helped her dig up and divide amaryllis bulbs. We reset them in fresh soil, and sure enough, just like Auntie Margaret promised, the next spring they shot up with giant blood red blooms.”

How much of the love for gardening was you and how much of it was you channeling Margaret? And I was curious, did you ever get a chance to write at Goodwood?

DONNA MEREDITH: Without a doubt, Margaret and I share a love of flowers. A lot of the physical work of gardening at Goodwood in her day was done by hired help, but Margaret loved flower arranging and kept the house full of beautiful arrangements. I walked the grounds of Goodwood many times, sometimes with fellow garden club members working to restore the gardens as they were in Margaret’s day.

I never wrote while at Goodwood. I would visit for a few hours and take photographs of everything—furnishings, letters, old photographs, postcards—and then I would go home and write for a few days. Questions and the need for further detail would crop up, and back I would go to Goodwood to work with the archivists.

DAWN MAJOR: Margaret’s sunny disposition came through creating a lighter overall tone throughout your novel, but this isn’t to say she didn’t suffer personal tragedies or deal with heavy topics. She was a highly influential woman entertaining a plethora of politicians, investors, and artists, the who’s who. Within her lifetime she would witness major national and international upheaval—the Depression, World War I and II, the Civil Rights Movement, the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Robert Francis Kennedy—and would see massive technological advancements. Being married to a senator put her right in the thick of it to the extent that when Will passed, she ran for his seat.

What kind of senator would Margaret have been had she won? Can you imagine that?

DONNA MEREDITH: Margaret would have been a humble and gracious senator, one who kept ordinary people’s interests at the heart of all she did. She already knew all the important people in Florida and would have drawn on those connections to get things done. Just as she rose to the occasion when leaping from shopgirl to senator’s wife, she would have worked hard and been successful.

DAWN MAJOR: Margaret and Will’s marriage was complicated. On top of the countless affairs and the children Will fathered resulting from those affairs, he was verbally abusive to Margaret: “I would have enjoyed being left behind by indulging in my favorite foods, but for a postcard that arrived from France. Will said he hoped I wasn’t going about like a sloppy disgusting cow. This was a thinly veiled insult to the size of my breasts, the same breasts he’d once said were his favorite pillow, so soft and luscious. Recently he’d referred to them as useless udders.”  On top bullying Margaret about her weight and insulting her in front of his mother, he is making a dig at the uselessness of her breasts because she never had children and therefore would never breastfeed. Like Margaret at the beginning of their relationship, I was also charmed by his character. But I came to find his actions unforgivable, his character sordid. The irony is that everyone thought she had married up, but in actual fact her good reputation and charm propelled his political career and countered a lot of his poor behavior.

So, I’ve shared with you in the past that my sister suffered from anorexia/bulimia and the years of abuse to her body has resulted in horrible GI issues and ungodly pain; it has debilitated her. As you can imagine, Will’s treatment of Margaret infuriated me, but her response was encouraging. Perhaps Margaret compartmentalized the constant affairs and the fat-shaming as a means to survive. Sure, sometimes she internalized the abuse and would lament her weight gain; there was that one time she lived off unsweet tea for two days. Some may see her sticking it out with him as being weak, but I believe it speaks to the strength of her character and her devotion to her family’s future. She didn’t let Will crush her spirit and flourished despite his cruelty.

Margaret’s legacy survives in physical symbols such as Goodwood and public buildings in Tallahassee, but her legacy also remains in the fond memories from those close to her that you collected as part of this book. Her vivre for life and her authenticity transcends the physical vestiges and Margaret: The Rose of Goodwood celebrates these characteristics.

Finding and/or being her authentic self was a central theme in your book. Was that something you started with or was it more organic? That is, did it evolve as you came to know Margaret better through your research?

DONNA MEREDITH: I knew nothing about Margaret when I started researching this novel except that she married an older wealthy man first and a younger man from my hometown second, so finding an authentic self as a theme grew out of my research into Margaret’s life. The interviews I did with those who knew her were immensely helpful, especially with her great-nephew Thomas Atkinson. Also finding letters she had written to her mother-in-law, Florence Hood, helped me find Margaret’s voice and learn how she spoke—her grammar was quite good, and she had a somewhat folksy style of saying things. There was nothing of the stuffy aristocrat about her.

DAWN MAJOR: I must ask what it felt like to share Margaret: The Rose of Goodwood at the Goodwood Estate. That must have been a special experience!

DONNA MEREDITH: The book launch was amazing—several hundred people were there, and I sold out of books. And I got to hold it in HER house. Margaret’s house. Her dresses were on display all through the first-floor rooms and roses from the Goodwood gardens were displayed on my table. About a month later, I did a presentation in one of the cottages on how I researched and wrote the novel, explaining my process and showing photographs not included in the novel. I will be back at Goodwood in the fall when I give this presentation to my own garden circle. The staff and volunteers at Goodwood have been amazing in their support of my efforts. With their encouragement, the novel has been chosen as the Florida Humanities Council book club selection for November. After reading the novel, one of the archival librarian’s told me she thought Margaret would be pleased with the way I told her story. It makes me smile to think she would.

DAWN MAJOR: Donna, thanks for indulging me with more about Margaret: The Rose of Goodwood. I wish you the very best and I will be excited to hear about what’s next, but I do hope you thoroughly enjoy celebrating the success of this novel. I think Margaret would want you to.

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TO PURCHASE CLICK TITLE: MARGARET: THE ROSE OF GOODWOOD

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