Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (23 page)
Read Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise Online
Authors: Sally Cline
The Fitzgeralds glossed Venice from 26 May, Florence by 3 June and Rome by the 22nd, where ‘Zelda and I had an appalling squabble’.
100
Zelda laconically took photos in each place with such labels as ‘Me and Goofo in a Gondola’ and ‘Goofo at Fiesole’, but their facial expressions show little enthusiasm for their surroundings. Italy brought some fierce words from Scott: ‘God damn the continent of Europe. It is of merely antiquarian interest.’
101
Their last European stop was a return to London on 30 June, where they drifted from a gloomy room at Claridge’s to the Cavendish. Scott wanted to see if
This
Side
of
Paradise,
published by Collins on 26 May in Britain, had been well received. He was disappointed to find most English critics dismissed it as trivial.
From London they went to Windsor, then on 4 July to Cambridge, where they sought out Rupert Brooke’s Grantchester haunts and took snapshots of each other. Scott took one of Zelda in sedate hat and long plaid skirt outside Trinity College. Zelda shot Scott in three-piece suit strolling down a leafy Grantchester path and labelled it with a Brooke quote: ‘The men observe the rules of thought’. Under her own Grantchester photograph she scribbled: ‘And is there honey yet for tea?’
102
Mencken describes how Scott had confided to him and Nathan that their
coming child deserved to be born in some historic … romantic place. Paris seemed a likely choice, but when they got there they found it dull and shabby… Algiers and Tunis turned out to be even worse … Spain and Italy also disappointing, they began a frantic chase over Europe, looking for an ideal place for the nativity. In the end Zelda approached her time without any such ideal place being found, and in a sudden panic they sailed for home.
103
Mencken depicted the Fitzgeralds’ feelings of
ennui
correctly as they scampered through Europe establishing one temporary base after another, Zelda’s restlessness increasing. As they migrated from America to Europe, and within the States from Northeast to South, then from Midwest to West, in search of Utopia, their marriage resembled nothing so much as a twenty-year odyssey. Zelda and Scott’s rootless wandering existence was a significant contribution – both a symptom and a cause – to Zelda’s later instability.
104
For Scott this relentless travelling felt familiar, for his childhood pattern had never included security. His constant moves with parents searching for improved residences led him to expect in
adulthood psychological and practical improvement with every move. But for Zelda their transitory life, albeit exciting, made her feel displaced. She came from an area where place is important, but so is standing still. As Eudora Welty and William Faulkner emphasized, Southerners move around less than Northerners, often remaining rooted to land, family and community. Faulkner said he would never live long enough to exhaust the stories that sprang from his ‘little postage stamp of native soil’. Zelda and Scott, who rarely stayed long enough in one place to till its soil, achieved their stories by obsessively mining their own lives and each other’s for material and created their fiction almost entirely from personal experience.
They travelled back to the USA in July on the
Celtic,
going first to Montgomery, where they felt a new confidence as proud parents-to-be. Scott, proud of Zelda’s new form, showed it off to Katharine Elsberry, who later told Zelda’s granddaughter the story. Zelda posed in a new handmade French slip from Paris. ‘Scott said: “Katharine, look at that.” … [I] looked and there was the bulge: Scottie was on the way.’
105
Scottie herself recalled: ‘I was supposed to be born in Montgomery, Alabama, but there was a terrible heat wave in September of 1921 … and my father – I’m sure it was my father because he seems to have made all the decisions at all times – decided to wait for the event in St Paul, Minnesota, instead.’
106
Zelda told Sara Mayfield’s mother: ‘Scott’s changed. He used to love to go to the cemetery to see the Confederate graves and say he loved the South, but now he wants to get as far away from it as he can.’
107
Scott demurred, but after less than a month in Montgomery he and Zelda moved to Minnesota. Like New York it was, as Zelda had feared, a world away, psychologically as well as geographically, from Alabama.
1
They were so financially unprepared for motor bills that Scott had to send Bunny Wilson an emergency letter asking him to wire money ahead of them.
2
ZSF
to Ludlow Fowler, 16 Aug. 1920,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 4,
PUL
.
3
In Greensboro they stayed at the O. Henry Hotel.
4
FSF
, ‘The Cruise of the Rolling Junk’,
Motor,
Feb. 1924.
5
Mayfield,
Exiles
, p. 61.
6
Eleanor Lanahan,
Scottie
…, p. 410.
7
Eleanor Lanahan,
Scottie
…, p. 411. The Montgomery friend was Julia Garland, who was with Zelda the day Scott died.
8
In Zelda’s story ‘Southern Girl’ Harriet, like her creator, sees bathing as an invitation to love. Wrapped only in a bath towel, she answers the front door to an unknown man who becomes her lover. When he eventually throws her over, again wrapped in a bath towel she throws open her front door, this time more effectively to a stranger who becomes her husband.
9
This would become
The
Beautiful
and
Damned.
10
FSF
,
The
Beautiful
and
Damned,
Penguin, 1966, p. 155.
11
Ibid., p. 111.
12
ZSF
to Ludlow Fowler, postmarked 16 Aug. 1920,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 4,
PUL
.
13
Sara Mayfield says that the incident is portrayed in
Save
Me
The
Waltz
exactly in the way Zelda described it to her (
Exiles,
p. 57).
14
ZSF
,
Waltz,
p. 51.
15
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 59.
16
Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 100.
17
Wilson,
The
Twenties,
p. 20.
18
‘I had lost my job in a Dayton, Ohio bank’, Stewart told Zelda’s friend Sara Mayfield, ‘and that is how I became a writer instead of a banker.’ Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 65.
19
During the next few years when Scott met Ring Lardner, journalist and humorous writer, and Ernest Hemingway, he would go to even greater lengths than he had with Stewart to promote
their
talents.
20
Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 450.
21
Anderson’s stories and character sketches became
Winesburg,
Ohio
(1919), preceded by
Windy
MacPherson’s
Son
(1916),
Marching
Men
(1917) and two others. His best writing occurs in several volumes of short stories, including
Horses
and
Men
(1923).
22
At the height of his career Dreiser wrote
An
American
Tragedy
(1925), for which he was ultimately paid $90,000 for the film rights.
23
Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 183 and original sources in endnotes.
24
James Drawbell,
An
Autobiography,
Pantheon Books, New York 1964, p. 173.
25
Members sometimes also met for Saturday evening poker games. This group was known as Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club.
26
Wilson,
The
Twenties,
p. 45.
27
Marion Meade,
Dorothy
Parker:
What
Fresh
Hell
Is
This?,
Minerva, London, 1991, p. 90.
28
Wilson,
The
Twenties,
p. 45.
29
Ibid.
30
Wilson,
The
Twenties,
p. 33.
31
FSF
, Notebooks No. 314.
32
Marion Meade in correspondence with the author, Oct. 2000.
33
Dorothy Parker to Milford, 26 Aug. 1964, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 68.
34
Mayfield,
Exiles,
pp. 59–60.
35
Wilson,
The
Twenties,
pp. 79–80.
36
ZSF
, Autobiographical Sketch written 16 Mar. 1932 while in Phipps Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital.
37
Carl Van Vechten to Milford, 17 Apr. 1963, Milford,
Zelda,
pp. 98–9.
38
Carl Van Vechten,
Parties,
1930, p. 224. Arthur Mizener is useful on Zelda’s distress when Scott was lionized (
Far
Side
of
Paradise,
p. 133).
39
Van Vechten,
Parties,
p. 78. Jeffrey Meyers makes an interesting comment (
Scott
Fitzgerald,
p. 102).
40
Wilson,
The
Twenties,
p. 52.
41
McKaig, Diary, 15 Sep. 1920.
42
Mayfield,
Exiles,
pp. 62–3.
43
McKaig, Diary, 15 Sep. 1920.
44
ZSF
to
FSF
, undated
c
. 1920,
CO
187, Box 42, Folder 32,
PUL
.
45
Gloria, miserable and lonesome, writes to Anthony Patch: ‘I can almost look down the tracks
and see you going but without you, dearest, dearest, I can’t see or hear or feel or think. Being apart – whatever has happened or will happen to us – is like begging for mercy from a storm, Anthony; it’s like growing old. I want to kiss you so – in the back of your neck where your old black hair starts. Because I love you and whatever we do or say to each other, or have done, or have said, you’ve got to feel how much I do, how inanimate I am when you’re gone. I can’t even hate the damnable presence of
PEOPLE
, those people in the station who haven’t any right to live – I can’t resent them even though they’re dirtying up our world because I’m engrossed in wanting you so. If you hated me, if you were covered with sores like a leper, if you ran away with another woman or starved me or beat me – how absurd this sounds – I’d still want you, I’d still love you, I
KNOW
my darling.’
FSF
,
Beautiful
and
Damned,
p. 293.
46
ZSF
,
Caesar,
ch. V,
CO
183, Box 2A, Folder 6,
PUL
.
47
Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 113.
48
George Jean Nathan to
ZSF
: ‘Fair Zelda’, 12 July 1920; ‘Prisoner’, undated, 1920,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 18,
PUL
. Both Arthur Mizener and Kendall Taylor suggest Zelda’s
relationship
with Nathan was sexual. This author finds insufficient evidence for this.
49
Nathan to
ZSF
,
c.
Sep. 1920,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 18,
PUL
.
50
ZSF
to Ludlow Fowler, 16 Aug. 1920,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 4,
PUL
.
51
This film was so popular that six silent versions preceded the successful talkie.
52
Nathan to
ZSF
, 13 Sep. 1920,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 18,
PUL
.
53
‘Beginnings of coldness’ he records in his Ledger, Oct. 1920.
54
FSF
to Mr and Mrs Philip McQuillan, 28 Dec. 1920.
55
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 64.
56
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers,
Mencken
and
Sara:
A
Life
in
Letters,
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1987, p. 4.
57
One evening the Fitzgeralds drove to have dinner with Mencken and Nathan at the Plaza, but by the end of the evening were far too drunk to drive their car. Their anxious friends suggested they sleep at the hotel but Scott refused. Mencken thought they would never reach home alive. To his surprise Scott telephoned next day to report they were recovered and whole.
58
This quotation is from the ‘Sententiae’ section of
A
Mencken
Chrestomathy,
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1949, pp. 619–21, quoted in Rodgers,
Mencken
and
Sara,
p. 1.
59
Sherwood
Anderson’s
Memoirs.
A
Critical
Edition,
ed. Ray Lewis White, University of North Carolina Press, 1969, p. 369.
60
The stories in
Flappers
and
Philosophers
had all been previously published in magazines so it seemed like extra money. They were: ‘The Offshore Pirate’; ‘The Ice Palace’; ‘Head and Shoulders’; ‘The Cut Glass Bowl’; ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’; ‘Benediction’; ‘Dalyrimple Goes Wrong’; ‘The Four Fists’.
61
Reviews were a mixed bunch, some critics finding it a letdown after
This
Side
of
Paradise.
62
Six printings (total 15,325 copies) by November 1922.
63
Mencken’s review called it ‘a sandwich made up of two thick and tasteless chunks of
Kriegsbrot
with a couple of excellent sardines between’.
The
Smart
Set
XLIII, Dec. 1920.
64
H. L. Mencken to James Branch Cabell, Mar. 1922,
Between
Friends:
Letters
of James
Branch
Cabell
and
Others,
ed. Padraic Colum and Margaret Freeman Cabell, Harcourt Brace & World, New York, 1962, p. 25.
65
Metropolitan
Magazine
took ‘The Jelly Bean’, ‘His Russet Witch’, Two For a Cent’ and ‘Winter Dreams’ between 1920 and 1922.
66
To repay an advance for an unwritten story.
67
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 65.
68
They would not be due to him till January 1921.
69
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 65.
70
André Le Vot,
F
.
Scott
Fitzgerald,
Warner Books, New York, 1984, p. 90.
71
Fitzgerald, Ledger, July and Nov. 1920.
72
ZSF
to James Branch Cabell, Dec. 1920,
CO
183, Box 5, Folder 2,
PUL
.
73
McKaig, Diary, 17 and 12 Oct. 1920.
74
FSF
to Scottie Fitzgerald, 15 June 1940,
Letters,
ed. Turnbull, p. 97.
75
FSF
to Ober (received 2 Feb. 1928),
As
Ever,
Scott
Fitz-:
Letters
Between
F.
Scott
Fitzgerald
and
His
Agent
Harold
Ober,
1919–1940,
ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli, Woburn Press, London, 1973, p. 109. ‘The Jelly Bean’, written May 1920,
Metropolitan
Magazine
52, Oct. 1920.
76
‘The Lees of Happiness’, written July 1920,
Chicago
Sunday
Tribune,
12 Dec. 1920, Blue Ribbon Fiction Section.
77
FSF
,
Beautiful
and
Damned,
p. 343.
78
In his Ledger Scott summarized the year that brought him both Zelda and literary
recognition
as: ‘Revelry and Marriage. The rewards of the year before. The happiest year since I was 18.’
79
It contains what he himself called ‘a touch of disaster’.
FSF
, ‘Early Success’,
The
Crack-Up,
New Directions, New York, 1945, p. 87.
80
Lawton Campbell, ‘The Fitzgeralds Were My Friends’, unpublished Memoir.
81
McKaig, Diary, 12 Oct. 1920.
82
Zelda in
Caesar’s
Things
established Jacob as a ‘pouting’ Scott figure who says mildly: ‘I want to be totally unpredictable but I never can prevent wondering … what should be done about the suit at the cleaners.’
83
ZSF
,
Caesar,
ch. IV,
CO
183, Box 2A, Folder 5,
PUL
.
84
FSF
to Perkins, 10 Nov. 1920,
Dear
Scott/Dear
Max,
p. 32.
85
Le Vot makes this point strongly. He says McKaig fell ‘hopelessly’ in love.
F.
Scott
Fitzgerald,
p. 91.
86
McKaig, Diary, 27 Nov., 4 Dec. 1920.
87
Ibid., 4 Dec. 1920.
88
Zelda recalls the bathroom incident and hurt eye during a winter of dissipation,
probably
Nov./Dec. 1920, in a letter to Scott, late summer/early fall 1930. Scott writes up the incident in his Ledger, Jan. 1921.