Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda Page 7
And, Scott, Darlin’ don’t try so hard to convince yourself that we’re very old people who’ve lost their most precious possession. We really havent found it yet—and only weaklings like the St. Paul girl you told me about who lack courage and the power to feel they’re right when the whole world says they’re wrong, ever lose—All the fire and sweetness—the emotional strength that we’re capable of is growing—growing and just because sanity and wisdom are growing too and we’re building our love-castle on a firm foundation, nothing is lost—That first abandon couldn’t last, but the things that went to make it are tremendously alive—just like blowing bubbles—they burst, but more bubbles just as beautiful can be blown—and burst— till the soap and water is gone—and that’s the way we’ll be, I guess— so don’t mourn for a poor little forlorn, wonderful memory when we’ve got each other—Because I know I love you—and you’ll come in January to tell me that you do—and we won’t worry any more about anything—Zelda
36. TO ZELDA
[Before January 9, 1920]
Wire. Scrapbook
[New York City]
I FIND THAT I CANNOT GET A BERTH SOUTH UNTIL FRIDAY OR POSSIBLY SATURDAY NIGHT WHICH MEANS I WON’T ARRIVE UNTIL THE ELEVENTH OR TWELFTH PERIOD AS SOON AS I KNOW I WILL WIRE YOU THE SATURDAY EVENING POST HAS JUST TAKEN TWO MORE STORIES PERIOD ALL MY LOVE.
37. TO ZELDA
[January 1920]
Wire. Scrapbook
STPAUL MINN 254P 10
MISS LELDA SAYRE
6 PLEASANT AVE. MONTGOMERY ALA.
ARRIVE MONDAY
SCOTT FITZGERALD
38. TO ZELDA
Wire. Scrapbook
NEWORLEANS LA46 1213P JAN 19 1920
MISS ZELDA SAYRE
SIX PLEASANT AVE MONTGOMERY ALA
SEND MANUSCRIPT47 SPECIAL DELIVERY LOVE
SCOTT
39. TO ZELDA
Wire. Scrapbook
NEWORLEANS LA 530P JAN 29 1920
MISS ZELDA SAYRE
6 PLEASANT AVE MONTGOMERY ALA
COMING UP SATURDAY AND SUNDAY WIRE ME ONLY IF
IN-CONVENIENT
SCOTT
40. TO ZELDA
Wire. Scrapbook
NEWYORK NY FEB 24 1920
MISS LIDA SAYRE
SIX PLEASANT AVE MONTGOMERY ALA
I HAVE SOLD THE MOVIE RIGHTS OF HEAD AND SHOULDERS TO THE METRO COMPANY FOR TWENTY FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS I LOVE YOU DEAREST GIRL
SCOTT
41. TO SCOTT
[February 1920]
AL, 6 pp.48
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Darling Heart, our fairy tale is almost ended, and we’re going to marry and live happily ever afterward just like the princess in her tower who worried you so much—and made me so very cross by her constant recurrence—I’m so sorry for all the times I’ve been mean and hateful—for all the miserable minutes I’ve caused you when we could have been so happy. You deserve so much—so very much—
I think our life together will be like these last four days—and I do want to marry you—even if you do think I “dread” it—I wish you hadn’t said that—I’m not afraid of anything. To be afraid a person has either to be a coward or very great and big. I am neither. Besides, I know you can take much better care of me than I can, and I’ll always be very, very happy with you—except sometimes when we engage in our weekly debates—and even then I rather enjoy myself. I like being very calm and masterful, while you become emotional and sulky. I don’t care whether you think so or not—I do.
There are 3 more pictures I unearthed from a heap of débris under my bed. Our honored mother had disposed of ’em for reasons of her own, but personally I like the attitude of my emaciated limbs, so I solict your approval. Only I waxed artistic, and ruined one.
Sweetheart—I miss you so—I love you so—and next time I’m going back with you—I’m absolutely nothing without you—Just the doll that I should have been born. You’re a necessity and a luxury and a darling, precious lover—and you’re going to be a husband to your wife—
42. TO SCOTT
[February 1920]
AL, 8 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
O, Scott, its so be-au-ti-ful49—and the back’s just as pretty as the front. I think maybe I like it a little better, and I’ve turned it over four hundred times to see “from Scott to Zelda.” I try to feel so rich and fine but I’m so tickled I can’t feel any way but happy—happy enough to bubble completely over and flow away into a sweet-smelling nothing. And I’ve decided, like I do every night before I go to sleep, that you’re the dearest, dearest man on earth and that I love you even more than this delicious little thing ticking on my wrist.
Mamma came in with the package, and I thought maybe it might interest her to know, so she sat on the edge of the bed while I told her we were going to marry each other pretty soon. She wants me to come to New York, because she says you’d like to do it in St. Patrick’s. Now that she knows, everything seems mighty definite and nice; and I’m not a bit scared or shaky—What I dreaded most was telling her—somehow I just didn’t think I could—Both of us are very splashy vivid pictures, those kind with the details left out, but I know our colors will blend, and I think we’ll look very well hanging beside each other in the gallery of life [This is not just another one of my “subterranean river” thoughts]50
And I love you so terribly that I’m going to read “McTeague”51—but you may have to marry a corpse when I finish. It certainly makes a miserable start—I don’t see how any girl could be pretty with her front teeth lost in action, and besides, it outrages my sense of delicacy to have him violently proposing when she’s got one of those nasty rubber things on her face. All authors who want to make things true to life make them smell bad—like McTeague’s room—and that’s my most sensitive sense. I do hope you’ll never be a realist—one of those kind that thinks being ugly is being forceful—
When my wedding’s going to be, write to me again—and if you’d rather have me come up there I will—I told Mamma I might just come and surprise you, but she said you mightn’t like to be surprised about “your own wedding”—I rather think it’s my wedding—
“Till Death do us part”
43. TO SCOTT
[March 1920]
ALS, 4 pp.
[Montgomery, Alabama]
Dearest—
I wanted to for your sake, because I know what a mess I’m making and how inconvenient it’s all going to be—but I simply can’t and won’t take those awful pills52—so I’ve thrown them away. I’d rather take carbolic acid. You see, as long as I feel that I had the right, I don’t much mind what happens—and besides, I’d rather have a whole family than sacrifice my self-respect. They just seem to place everything on the wrong basis—and I’d feel like a damned whore if I took even one, so you’ll try to understand, please Scott—and do what you think best—but don’t do anything till we know because God—or something—has always made things right, and maybe this will be.
I love you, Darling Scott, and you love me, and we can be thankful for that anyway—
Thanks for the book—I don’t like it—
Zelda Sayre
44. TO ZELDA
Wire. Scrapbook
[PRI]NCETON NJ 1117AM MAR 23 1920
MISS ZELDA SAYRE
6 PLEASANT AVE MONTGOMERY ALA
GOOD MORNING ZELDA DEAR YOU KNOW I DO
SCOTT
45. TO ZELDA
[March 1920]
Wire. Scrapbook
[Princeton, New Jersey]
MISS ZELDA SAYRE
SIX PLEASANT AVE MONTGOMERY ALA DEAR YOUR LETTER JUST CAME I HAD COUNTED ON YOUR LEAVING MONTGOMERY ON THE THIRTIETH OF THIS MONTH BUT IF YOU ARE READY TO COME EARLIER SAY ON THE TWENTIETH WIRE ME TODAY YOU KNOW I WANT YOU ALL THE TIME DEAREST GIRL YOUR PICTURE HAS NOT COME AM WRITING
46. TO ZELDA
[March 1920
]
Wire. Scrapbook
PRINCETON NJ 1042A 17
MISS TILDA SAYRE
SIX PLEASANT AVE MONTGOMERY ALA
THE PICTURE IS LOVELY AND SO ARE YOU DARLING
47. TO ZELDA
Wire. Scrapbook
PRINCETON NJ MARCH 28 1920
MISS ZELDA SAYRE
6 PLEASANT AVE MONTGOMERY ALABAMA YOUR TELEGRAM CAME TONIGHT I HAVE TAKEN ROOMS AT THE BALTIMORE [BILTMORE?] AND WILL EXPECT YOU FRIDAY OR SATURDAY WIRE ME EXACTLY WHEN WILL CALL TOOTSIE TOMORROW MORNING BOOK SELLING53 ALL MY LOVE
SCOTT
48. TO ZELDA
Wire. Scrapbook
[Princeton] NJ
NEWYORK NY MAR 30 1920
MISS TILLA SAYRE
6 PLEASANT AVE MONTGOMERY ALA TALKED WITH JOHN PALMER AND ROSALIND54 AND WE THINK BEST TO GET MARRIED SATURDAY NOON WE WILL BE AWFULLY NERVOUS UNTIL IT IS OVER AND WOULD GET NO REST BY WAITING UNTIL MONDAY FIRST EDITION OF THE BOOK IS SOLD OUT ADDRESS COTTAGE UNTIL THURSDAY AND SCRIBNERS AFTER THAT
LOVE
SCOTT
Scott and Zelda in Montgomery, March 1921. ©Bettmann/Corbis
PART II
The Years Together: 1920–1929
The things that we have done together and the awful splits that have broken us. . . .
—SCOTT TO ZELDA, APRIL 26, 1934
Following their marriage and the triumphant publication of This Side of Paradise (the first printing of three thousand copies sold out in three days; by the end of 1921, it had gone through twelve printings, totaling more than 49,000 copies), the newlyweds found themselves celebrities at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties in the city that was at the center of the party. As Scott later wrote in “My Lost City” (1932), “To my bewilderment, I was adopted, not as a Middle Westerner, not even as a detached observer, but as the arch type of what New York wanted” (Crack-Up 26). What New York wanted was an attractive couple who drank and partied endlessly and whose escapades—diving into fountains, riding on top of taxicabs, disrobing during a performance of George White’s Sandals, and brawling with policemen—became staples of the gossip columns. “We felt,” Scott recalled in “My Lost City,” “like small children in a great bright unexplored barn.” But he also remembered in the same essay “riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again” (Crack-Up 28–29).
After living in a succession of New York hotels, from at least one of which they were expelled for disturbing other guests, the Fitzgeralds, in the spring of 1920, rented a house in Westport, Connecticut, where Scott worked on stories and began a second novel. During that summer, they drove to Montgomery in their secondhand Marmon sports coupe to visit Zelda’s family, a trip that Scott later immortalized in his comic essay “The Cruise of the Rolling Junk” (1924). In September, Scribners published his first collection of short stories, Flappers and Philosophers. Although the reviews were mixed, it sold remarkably well, probably because of the popularity of This Side of Paradise. But the Fitzgeralds were already quarreling, often after drinking heavily. The following is a fragment of a letter Zelda gave to Scott after one such episode:
Embarking on “The Cruise of the Rolling Junk.” Courtesy of Princeton University Library
49. TO SCOTT
[September 1920]
ALS, 2 pp.
[Westport, Connecticut]
I look down the tracks and see you coming—and out of every haze + mist your darling rumpled trousers are hurrying to me—Without you, dearest dearest I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think—or live—I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. It’s like begging for mercy of a storm or killing Beauty or growing old, without you. I want to kiss you so—and in the back where your dear hair starts and your chest—I love you—and I cant tell you how much—To think that I’ll die without your knowing— Goofo, you’ve got to try [to] feel how much I do—how inanimate I am when you’re gone—I can’t even hate these damnable people— nobodys got any right to live but us—and they’re dirtying up our world and I can’t hate them because I want you so—Come Quick— Come Quick to me—I could never do without you if you hated me and were covered with sores like a leper—if you ran away with another woman and starved me and beat me—I still would want you I know—
Lover, Lover, Darling—
Your Wife
Frances Scott Fitzgerald
The dramatic quarrels may have encouraged rather than discouraged the Fitzgeralds about the success of their marriage. When Scott summed up the year in his Ledger, he wrote: “Revelry and Marriage. The rewards of the year before. The happiest year since I was 18.” (Ledger 174); and he continued to work on his second novel after they moved back into New York.
In February of 1921, when Zelda discovered she was pregnant, they decided to take their first trip abroad, sailing first-class on the Acquitania on May 3 for England. Just before their departure, Scott delivered a draft of his new novel, The Beautiful and Damned, to his agent, Harold Ober, for serial publication.
In London, the Fitzgeralds dined with English novelist John Galsworthy, playwright and critic St. John Ervine, and Irish playwright Lennox Robinson, and had lunch with Lady Randolph Churchill and her son Winston. They went on to Paris, Venice, and Rome, and then went back to London before returning to America in July. This first trip to Europe had not impressed them, as Scott later emphasized in a letter to his college friend Edmund Wilson:
God damn the continent of Europe. It is of merely antiquarian interest. Rome is only a few years behind Tyre + Babylon. . . . France made me sick. It’s silly pose as the thing the world has to save. I think its a shame that England + America didn’t let Germany conquor Europe. Its the only thing that would have saved the fleet of tottering old wrecks. (Life in Letters 46–47)
Upon their return, Scott and Zelda settled in St. Paul, where Zelda met Scott’s parents for the first time. Scott spent the fall revising The Beautiful and Damned for book publication. On October 26, 1921, their daughter, Frances Scott Fitzgerald, was born; in his Ledger, Scott recorded Zelda’s comment on the birth: “I hope its beautiful and a fool—a beautiful little fool” (Ledger 176)—words he later gave to Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby.
By March 1922, the Fitzgeralds were back in New York for the publication of The Beautiful and Damned and possibly, according to Matthew J. Bruccoli in his Fitzgerald biography, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, for Zelda to have an abortion because she did not want to have a second child so soon after the first (163). Although the novel received generally lukewarm notices from reviewers who hoped for another This Side of Paradise, it sold quite well. The Fitzgeralds spent the summer at the White Bear Yacht Club outside St. Paul, where Scott put together his second collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age, which was published in September, about the same time the couple rented a small house at 6 Gateway Drive in Great Neck, Long Island. During the spring and summer of 1922, Zelda began to publish short humorous pieces in newspapers and magazines, including a tongue-in-cheek review of The Beautiful and Damned in the New York Tribune. In the fall of 1923, asked by an interviewer for the Baltimore Sun if she was ambitious, she replied, “Not especially, but I’ve plenty of hope. I don’t want to belong to clubs. No committees. I’m not a ‘joiner.’ Just be myself and enjoy living” (Milford, Zelda 101).
In Great Neck, the Fitzgeralds found themselves in a diverse community of writers, show business figures, socialites, and bootleggers, all of whom were to appear in various guises in Scott’s third novel. Among those with whom they regularly partied were comedians Ed Wynn and Eddie Cantor, socialite Herbert Bayard Swope, playwright Sidney Howard, film mogul Samuel Goldwyn, and writers Ring Lardner and John Dos Passos. Scott became particularly close friends with Lardner, whose humorous short stories he convinced Scribners to publish and with whom he drank and caroused steadily. I
n his essay “How to Live on $36,000 a Year,” Scott explained that “it became a habit with many world-weary New Yorkers to pass their week-ends at the Fitzgerald house in the country” (Afternoon of an Author 93).
Zelda and Scottie, 1922. Courtesy of Princeton University Library
For some time, Scott had been trying, although unsuccessfully, to interest Broadway producers in a play he had written, a political satire entitled The Vegetable (Scribners had published it in April 1923); it was finally taken by Sam H. Harris, but it flopped miserably in its out-of-town tryout in Atlantic City in November 1923 (in “How to Live on $36,000 a Year,” Scott ruefully observed, “After the second act I wanted to stop the show and say it was all a mistake but the actors struggled heroically on” [Afternoon of an Author 93–94]). Sobered by the play’s failure and, as he always was, seriously in debt to his publisher and his agent, Scott went on the wagon. Between the end of 1923 and the spring of 1924, he wrote ten stories, which financed a summer of work on a new novel. Despite the income from his stories—he earned over $28,000 in 1923—Scott and Zelda never seemed to have any money after they paid the expenses necessary to support their lifestyle.