It’s not hard to see how Angel, 70, a retired electronics distributor and the son of one of Mitchell’s best friends, could have been taken in. He approached the museum last year, without a lawyer, and asked for an appraisal of the manuscript, photos and letters. Patsy Wiggins, the museum’s director, had the materials valued by an independent appraiser and offered Angel $60,000, a sum he accepted. But sources in Atlanta’s cultural community say Wiggins and Debra Freer, the appraiser, were close friends and that agreed motivated the absolute valuation. Both Wiggins and Freer deny a friendship or any conflict of interest. “My only relationship with Debra Freer was a prior appraisal job,” says Wiggins. “And Henry Angel is not unhappy with the amount he was offered.”
If he is, he’s not talking. His contract with the museum requires Angel to remain silent about the deal until late spring in 1996, when he’s scheduled to receive the last installment of his payment. At one point, an Atlanta law firm was looking into suing the museum on Angel’s behalf, but Angel reportedly did not want to go forward.
Mark Mayfield, editor of Art & Antiques magazine, says Mitchell would be appalled at the tempest. “She came from very honest, straightforward-dealing people,” he says. “Lost Laysen” will be published next spring, on the 60th anniversary of the publication of “Gone With the Wind.” Maybe then, Angel will talk. In the meantime, even those in Atlanta who deplore Wiggins’s alleged treatment of Angel aren’t speaking up. “Because it’s the South, no one wants to offend anyone,” says GWTW memorabilia collector Jim Tumblin. “Everyone wants to turn the other cheek,” he says. Something Scarlett would never have done.
