Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography (31 page)

Both somewhat spoiled egoists needed precisely what the other could not give—sympathy, support, love. In the mid-1920s Zelda had recovered from nearly two years of colitis, appendicitis and gynecological problems resulting from her abortions. Since then, driven by demonic intensity, she had desperately tried to make up for lost time in her ballet career. John Biggs compared her frenzied obsession, which both frustrated and tormented her, to “the dancing madness of the middle ages.” As Zelda withdrew into an unreal, hypersensitive world of her own, Scott drank more than ever. Louis Bromfield, always perceptive about the Fitzgeralds, contrasted their drinking habits and revealed that Scott’s responsibility for her alcoholism was a source of profound guilt: “Of the two Zelda drank better and had, I think, the stronger character, and I have sometimes thought that she could have given it up without any great difficulty and that she was led on to a tragic end only because he could not stop and in despair she followed him. I have sometimes suspected that Scott was aware of this and that it caused remorse which did nothing to help his situation as it grew more tragic.”
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Scott drank when Zelda was ill and when she danced away her life; he drank to stimulate his work and compensate for his idleness, to prepare for parties and keep them going, to soothe his loneliness and eradicate his guilt. And he had to pay all the penalties for getting drunk: quarrels with friends, terrible hangovers, blurred memory, poor health and inability to write. Zelda bitterly rejected his friends, who she felt had exploited her. She also ignored her family and—determined to create an independent life—cared about no one but her dance teacher. “As for my friends,” she told Scott, “first, I have none; by that I mean that all our associates have always taken me for granted, sought your stimulus and fame, eaten my dinners and invited [themselves to] ‘the Fitzgeralds’’
 place.”

They also had sexual problems, which were exacerbated by growing disaffection and hostility, by Zelda’s physical weariness and Scott’s inability to satisfy her, by her complaints about his physical inadequacy and by his wounded pride. With caustic clarity, Zelda told him: “You made no advances toward me and complained that I was un-responsive. You were literally eternally drunk the whole summer. I got so I couldn’t sleep and I had asthma again. . . . You didn’t want me. Twice you left my bed saying ‘I can’t. Don’t you understand’—I didn’t.” Fitzgerald was hurt in the same way as Saul Bellow’s fictional hero: “Herzog himself had no small amount of charm. But his sexual powers had been damaged by Madeleine. And without the ability to attract women, how was he to recover?”
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Despite domestic chaos, dissipation, frustration and compromise, Fitzgerald continued to—had to—write. Between 1924 and 1934 he worked on seven different versions of
Tender Is the Night
but, after many broken promises, had managed to send only two chapters to Max Perkins. In 1929, he had not touched his novel for a year. But he eventually abandoned the theme of matricide, which had blocked him, changed the focus to Zelda’s mental illness and finally managed to complete the novel during 1932–34. Meanwhile, to support his extravagant way of life, he turned out increasingly lucrative stories for the
Saturday Evening Post
and reached a peak payment of $4,000 per story in 1929. In this fashion, he earned nearly $30,000 in 1927, $31,500 for nine Basil Duke Lee stories about his childhood and prep school years in 1928, and $27,000 in 1929.

During this time, amidst much mediocre work, Fitzgerald wrote two first-rate stories: “The Swimmers” in 1929 and “One Trip Abroad” in 1930. These stories portray unhappy marriages and are linked, both thematically and by specific passages, to
Tender Is the Night.
The second paragraph of “The Swimmers,” which describes a series of signs in French in order to create the melancholy atmosphere of Paris and to juxtapose “Life and Death” ironically, is repeated almost verbatim on page 91 of the novel. Similarly, the symbolic invasion of locusts, which the chauffeur euphemistically calls bumblebees, the naked Ouled Naïl dancers, the vivid evocation of the noises of Algeria and the allusion to “the Sepoys at the gate” in “One Trip Abroad” all reappear—contrary to Fitzgerald’s usual practice—on pages 160–161 and 271 of the novel.

In “The Swimmers” Henry Clay Marston, who has an unfaithful French wife and is recuperating from an illness in St. Jean-de-Luz, helps rescue a drowning American girl, who teaches him how to swim. When his wife is unfaithful again, in America, they quarrel about the custody of the children. He eventually gains custody by threatening to let his wife and her lover drift out to sea in a stalled motorboat. On the ship back to Europe, he meets the young girl who had taught him to swim. Fitzgerald may have adopted the idea of regeneration through swimming from the last chapter of
The Sun Also Rises
when Jake Barnes—to cleanse himself of his friends’ sordid behavior during the bullfight festival—achieves purification and self-knowledge during a solitary swim at La Concha beach in San Sebastián. Hemingway suggestively writes: “As a roller came I dove, swam out under water, and came to the surface with all the chill gone. . . . Then I tried several dives. I dove deep once, swimming down to the bottom. I swam with my eyes open and it was green and dark.” In “The Swimmers” the unnamed but regenerative American girl swims “to get clean.” She helps Marston to find “refuge” in the water and to shed the symbolic odor of gasoline exhaust that foreshadowed the “black horror” of his nervous breakdown in Paris.

“The Swimmers,” like “One Trip Abroad,” sacrifices intensity by portraying events that occur over a period of several years. The three accidental meetings with the American girl (who may have been based on Lois Moran) and the contrived happy ending are rather implausible. Fitzgerald forfeits dramatic potential by not describing Marston’s sons, by not developing the character of the American girl (who is merely the symbol of a happier life), by not portraying the emotional confrontation when he discovers his wife’s first lover and, most importantly, by not explaining why Marston tolerates his wife’s infidelity or if he is in any way responsible for it. Despite these considerable flaws, “The Swimmers” effectively contrasts the European and American settings, describes the failing marriage and—through the metaphor of swimming—convincingly suggests the possibility of a “clean” new life.

“One Trip Abroad” has a darker mood and a different pattern. In “The Swimmers” Marston moves from breakdown to health, from an adulterous wife to a revitalized existence. “One Trip Abroad” follows a downward curve as Nelson and Nicole Kelly move from happiness and health to decline and drink. The story charts the degeneration of their marriage as the Kellys travel to Algeria, Italy, France and Switzerland. Adopting the theme of the double that had been used from Hoffmann and Poe to Dostoyevsky and Stevenson, Fitzgerald has the Kellys see their own doom reflected in another shadowy but recurrent couple. But (like the Fitzgeralds) they are powerless to avoid it. The biblical plague of locusts at the beginning of the story, and the storm at the end, are—like the odor of gasoline at the beginning of “The Swimmers”—an ominous symbol of the characters’ fate.

Fitzgerald’s brief evocations of the various locales of the story are quite brilliant: from the suggestive sounds of the Algerian oasis: “drums from Senegal, a native flute, the selfish, effeminate whine of a camel, the Arabs pattering past in shoes made of old automobile tires, the wail of Magian prayer,” to the dreary sanatoriums incongruously placed amidst the natural splendors of Switzerland: “a backdrop of mountains and waters of postcard blue, waters that are a little sinister beneath the surface with all the misery that has dragged itself here from every corner of Europe.”

Fitzgerald also portrays incisive incidents that reveal the Kellys’ differences, disappointments and dissipations. Nelson wants to watch the naked Algerian dancers, Nicole is repelled by them. He stays, she leaves, they both become anxious and angry, and “were suddenly in a quarrel.” In Sorrento they have an unpleasant encounter with General Sir Evelyne and Lady Fragelle, who object to Nelson playing the electric piano and rudely unplug it without asking his permission. In Monte Carlo they join a crowd of drunks and parasites; and when Nicole discovers Nelson kissing another woman, they fight and he gives her a black eye. In Paris their drinking increases, and they are exploited by a Hungarian count who steals Nicole’s jewel box and tries to make Nelson pay a huge bill for the count’s boat party. On Lake Geneva, where Nicole has two operations and Nelson suffers an attack of jaundice, they are finally overcome by “the unlucky destiny that had pursued their affairs.” They now need “half a dozen drinks really to open the eyes and stiffen the mouth up to normal.”
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They do not understand why they have lost peace, love and health. But they finally begin to comprehend their fate when they recognize themselves in the elusive but persistent doubles, who have followed them through Europe.

VI

In October 1929, as Zelda headed for her breakdown, Scottie, an exceptionally beautiful child, was eight years old. She had been largely raised by nurses and nannies, both English and French. She had been carried from house to house, state to state, country to country. And she had been left with family or servants, paid to take care of her, when her parents took off on their travels. The Fitzgeralds loved their child and rose to grand occasions like birthdays and Christmas, but they had very little to do with Scottie’s day-to-day life.

In Paris Scottie attended catechism classes, took dancing lessons and became fluent in French. Fitzgerald complained that during the fall and winter of 1929–30 Zelda had lost interest in the child. Zelda agreed that she hardly saw Scottie because she hated her nurse, who snored and was mean. Yet she feared that Scottie “was growing away from her before she had ever known her, that she no longer had any voice in her daughter’s life.” When asked, later on, what she thought of her mother, Scottie replied: “I didn’t know her very well.”

Though Scottie’s relations with her father were also rather “remote,” Fitzgerald supervised her schoolwork and disciplined her when necessary. After Zelda’s breakdown, he tried to protect Scottie from the effects of that illness, and became both father and mother to her. Fitzgerald’s subtle and sensitive story, “Outside the Cabinet-Maker’s” (1928), illuminates his relations with the young Scottie.

In the story, while the mother is ordering a doll’s house for the child, the father and daughter are left alone in the car. The father tells a fairy story to pass the time, to exercise his imagination, to amuse the child and, most significantly, to express his intense love for her. But the little girl is naturally more interested in the fairy tale (which she continues when he leaves off) than in her father’s feelings. When he declares his love openly instead of through the tale he invents for her, she responds dutifully rather than emotionally:

“Listen,” said the man to the little girl, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” said the little girl, smiling politely. . . .

“Oh, I love you,” he said.

“I know, Daddy,” she answered, abstractedly.
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These two brief but telling exchanges, in which the adverbs are crucial, express Fitzgerald’s fear that he could not reach his daughter’s deepest feelings, and emphasize the fragility—and possible loss—of her love.

In February 1930 the Fitzgeralds crossed the Mediterranean to Algiers and traveled 250 miles southeast to the desert oases of Bou Saada and Biskra—the setting of André Gide’s
The Immoralist
(1902). This journey, during which they saw the naked Arab dancers, provided the background for “One Trip Abroad” and was mentioned in
Tender Is the Night.
Zelda also described the Arabian Nights setting, which reminded her of Valentino’s
The Sheik,
in an essay of 1934:

The Hôtel de l’Oasis was laced together by Moorish grills; and the bar was an outpost of civilization with people accentuating their eccentricities. Beggars in white sheets were propped against the walls, and the dash of colonial uniforms gave the cafés a desperate swashbuckling air. . . . The streets crept through the town like streams of hot white lava. Arabs sold nougat and cakes of poisonous pink under the flare of open gas jets. . . . In the steep cobbled alleys we flinched at the brightness of mutton carcases swung from the butchers’ booths.

This journey was meant to help them forget the bad times and perhaps avert the impending crisis. But Zelda was seasick on the way home, and the trip merely delayed the inevitable tragedy.

Many of Fitzgerald’s friends—besides Dos Passos, Hemingway and the Murphys—had observed Zelda’s increasingly strange and disturbing behavior. Ellen Barry, a Riviera friend, said: “Zelda was thought to be outrageous, like a child, but not crazy.” Morley Callaghan noticed that she was extremely restless and had the unnerving habit of laughing to herself for no apparent reason. One evening she came down the stairs in a lovely gown, stood staring at John Biggs, stepped out of her evening slippers and “asked in indescribably ghastly tones: ‘John, aren’t you sorry you weren’t killed in the war?’” And Rebecca West, an acute observer, recalled: “There was something very appealing about her. But frightening. Not that one was frightened from one’s own point of view, only from hers.”
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Sometimes, however, she did frighten others and put their lives in danger. In September 1929, driving on the steep and curving Grand Corniche near Cannes, Zelda suddenly exclaimed: “ ‘I think I’ll turn off here,’ and had to be physically restrained from veering over a cliff.” This terrifying incident inspired one of the greatest scenes in
Tender Is the Night
when Nicole, after riding on a ferris wheel (as Zelda had done with Dos Passos), cracks up and tries to drive the car, with Dick and their children, off a high road. On another occasion, Zelda “lay down in front of a parked car and said, ‘Scott, drive over me.’ ” Fitzgerald, drunk and angry enough to call her bluff, “started the engine and had actually released the brake when someone slammed it on again.”