Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (19 page)

Wilson, formerly as sexually reticent as Scott himself, did not flirt with Zelda. He already coveted the poet Elinor Hoyt Wylie, while also in an impossible three-cornered romance with a second poet, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Bishop, his fellow editor at
Vanity
Fair.
50
However, he did fall under Zelda’s mesmeric influence and was intrigued when she told him that hotel bedrooms erotically excited
her.
51
At this point Wilson gauged Fitzgerald to be ‘neurotically jealous’ of Zelda.
52

Zelda flirted more seriously with screenwriter Townsend Martin, whose good looks and globe-trotting tales she admired. At first on the grounds that Townsend and John Bishop, who shared an apartment, had missed out on wedding kisses, Zelda playfully kissed both men whilst Scott remarked tolerantly: ‘Oh, yes, they really have kisses coming to them, because they weren’t at the wedding, and everybody at a wedding always gets a kiss.’
53
Then, going further, Zelda captured Townsend in the bathroom where she asked him to give her a bath, and walked into John’s bedroom suggesting she crawl into bed with him – though only to sleep, she reassured everyone. Wilson reported that Scott’s tolerance faded and he became worried and huffy.
54

Scott’s jealousy about Townsend Martin increased that summer when Zelda became, as she later admitted in a letter to Scott, ‘romanticly attached’.
55
Scott’s Ledger for June 1920 thankfully records ‘Townsend goes abroad’ but it also discreetly mentions the ‘Jean Bankhead fuss’. Possibly in retaliation, Scott had gone further than Zelda and had a brief affair with Gene (Eugenia) Bankhead, who was engaged to the alcoholic Morton Hoyt, a drinking buddy of Scott’s and a
Vanity
Fair
writer. This affair was close to home, as Gene of course was the elder sister of Zelda’s friend Tallulah, and Morton the brother of Wilson’s ‘poetic romance’, Elinor Hoyt Wylie.
56

Zelda later expressed her complex feelings in
Caesar’s
Things
: ‘Janno had always been jealous. Situations which had to be faced with dishonesty and endured for the sake of a code to which she did not subscribe made her sick. She couldn’t say to Jacob, “I don’t want you to go, you’re obligated to me. Anyway, she’s not as nice as I am.” She sat being … courageous … saying to herself … such was all in the game.’
57

The game intensified when Zelda’s suspicions were accurately aroused about Scott’s affair with another Montgomery Belle, actress Miriam Hopkins. That this ‘game’ appeared part of a life of freedom confused her. In both her novels Zelda’s heroines, Alabama and Janno, equate lack of restrictions with lack of security. On her wedding night Alabama lies awake, thinking that ‘no power on earth could make her do anything, she thought frightened, any more except herself’.
58
Janno says, ‘fright makes one realize [one’s] dependence on the formulas’.
59
Initially a lifestyle where she was no longer tied down by tradition or taboos was what Zelda thought she wanted. But a life without limits brings its own fears.

Zelda flirted heavily with Scott’s friends partly from habit, but also partly because attracting men seemed the only familiar talent left to her. As well as lacking girlfriends with whom to share confidences, she had no mother to spoil her, no father to rebel against. Zelda’s role as a Flapper for Scott’s writing was exhausting, but she had not yet found an alternative. Without a solid base she settled for male admiration. She had regarded flirting as harmless so long as Scott remained loyal. But when
his
explorations led to sexual relationships her world rocked. Having no other support she had to suppress any anger and lean on Scott.

Already in their first few months of marriage the Fitzgeralds were encountering problems which would intensify. But they still had one constant bond: precious talks and dreams. This intimacy allowed them to guard against intruders and remained the one safeguard they never entirely lost. Scott recalled that the lengthy conversations he and Zelda had at bedtime which sometimes lasted until dawn were crucial to their relationship. During the daytime he felt they never achieved that same intimacy.
60

After their heavy city socializing Scott felt a rural retreat would enable him to finish his second novel, promised to Perkins for September. In May 1920 Zelda’s Montgomery friend Leon Ruth, one of Scott’s early rivals, now studying at Columbia, helped them buy a second-hand Marmon sports coupé. They hoped a car would enable them to search for a house near water because, as Scott wrote to a friend, ‘If Zelda can’t swim, she’s miserable.’
61

Zelda played havoc with the car but managed to find a suitable house near Long Island Sound in Westport, Connecticut, fifty miles from New York, in 1920 still country not suburbia. When Westport was constructed in 1835 as a new town along the Sangatuk river with pieces from neighbouring towns Fairfield, Norwalk and Weston, river and seafront took on a new significance as wharves, warehouses, mills, factories and, later, luxurious country estates, inns and restaurants sprang up. By the time the Fitzgeralds moved there, summer visitors and New York commuters swarmed the beaches. Their house, built in 1758, was originally the home of Wakeman Couch, an early farmer who grew onions on the surrounding acres. ‘Burritt Wakeman’s place’ was a two-storey grey shingled farm cottage on Compo Road which took its name from the old Compo Tide Mill building.
62
The year before Zelda arrived, a wooden bathing pavilion opened at Compo beach, and wooden bath-houses lining the boardwalk could be rented by the hour, but Zelda ignored those facilities as their house had its own garden and
stretch of beach. From a photograph taken in May 1920 we can see the house, its imposing veranda supported by elegant pillars, was set in a spacious garden surrounded by trees. It was a house of many windows, all with an attractive rural aspect. Another photo dated July 1920 shows Zelda in a black one-piece swimsuit stepping off their landing stage into the water.

They rented Wakeman Cottage from May through to September 1920. Domestic life there was no more orderly than it had been in Manhattan hotels. Dirty laundry piled up in closets. Neither Zelda nor Scott cooked. A servant was desperately needed. Zelda wrote to Ludlow Fowler that as soon as they acquired a servant and ‘some sheets from Mama’ he would be very welcome. ‘We have a house with a room for you and a ruined automobile because I drove it over a fire-plug and completely de-intestined it.’ This incident may have been partly caused by Zelda’s poor eyesight. The Montgomery family doctor had suggested that the retina of her right eye was missing.

Believing that she was pregnant, she added anxiously: ‘Only by the time you do come I’ll probably have grown so fat like this [drawing of fat stick woman] that you wont be able to recognize me … I’ll have to wear a [measure of music with words ‘Red, red rose’ beneath] to disclose my identity – or condition … But it’s a deep secret and you
must
keep very quiet and not laugh too hard and be
very
sympathetic.’
63
In the event she was not pregnant.

They hired a houseboy, Tana, from the Japanese Reliable Employment Agency, but having a houseboy did not materially improve their domestic situation. In late June or early July Wilson visited Westport, told that ‘Zelda had decided to change her style and behave like a conventional lady, paying and receiving calls and making polite acknowledgments’.
64
Wilson wrote that Zelda’s reform was shortlived as revels restarted in their rustic retreat. The Fitzgeralds and their friends were ‘revelling nude in the orgies of Westport’.
65
Zelda’s later recollection bears this out: ‘The beach and dozens of men’.
66

At one party given by theatrical producer John Williams, their Westport neighbour, Nathan, who accompanied them, flirtatiously played several choruses of ‘Cuddle Up A Little Closer’ for Zelda on the piano.

During another party in this quiet place they upset the authorities when they reported a false fire alarm. Legend has it that when the firemen asked where the fire was, Zelda pointed dramatically to her breast and said ‘Here!’

These alcoholic weekends often ended in rows. On 13 June 1920 McKaig noted: ‘Visit Fitz at Westport … terrible party. Fitz and Zelda fighting like mad. Say themselves marriage can’t succeed’.

In Westport Scott began on a new plot for
The
Flight
of
the
Rocket
(eventually
The
Beautiful
and
Damned
),
in which Westport served as the model for Marietta, New York. The Fitzgeralds’ grey shingled house becomes the model for Gloria and Anthony Patch’s rented grey honeymoon cottage, which was established at a time when any woman who kept a cat was thought to be a witch.

Zelda told Sara Mayfield she found Westport depressing and began to persuade Scott to attend parties in Gotham to break the monotony.
67
Zelda as a restless woman did not fit easily into either of the two conflicting images prevalent during 1920 of her and Scott. One was the public image sponsored by the media of the golden couple glowing with success, happy in each other’s company. The other was the private image held by McKaig and other friends that their rows were so frequent and so embittered that their marriage seemed to be breaking up.

Scott and Zelda half-believed and lived out both images. Meanwhile Zelda, homesick for Montgomery, told Scott she hankered for Alabama peaches and biscuits for breakfast. Underneath, she wondered if her parents missed her as much as she missed them.

She hoped a return South would not only allow her to show off her new marital style and clothes, but also give her some stability and improve the elements that had unexpectedly started to go wrong. Scott suggested a trip to Montgomery in the car they had rechristened The Rolling Junk. They set off on 15 July 1920. Typically, they had not informed the Sayres of their plans.