Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise (35 page)
Read Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise Online
Authors: Sally Cline
Zelda, now regularly accompanying the Murphys to ballet, poetry recitals and avant-garde art shows, was fascinated by the Cubist still lifes and Picasso’s massive glowing Rose Period nudes.
63
Though Zelda later wrote to Scott that Picasso’s art was more about ideas than painting, at the time she decided that of all Stein’s works the Picassos were ‘the only ones worth having’.
64
Scott presented Stein with an inscribed copy of
Gatsby
and on 22 May she replied warmly that she liked the ‘melody’ of his dedication ‘Once Again To Zelda’. It showed he had a background of ‘beauty and tenderness’. He wrote ‘naturally in sentences’, she said. ‘You are creating the contemporary world much as Thackeray did his in
Pendennis
and
Vanity
Fair
and this isn’t a bad compliment.’
65
It wasn’t.
Scott wrote back unctuously: ‘My wife and I think you a very handsome, very gallant and very kind lady.’
66
If Zelda did think any such thing she kept it to herself. Out loud she told Sara Mayfield that Stein’s conversation was ‘sententious gibberish’.
67
Three-year-old Scottie did not take to Stein either. The child, highly disciplined by her British nannies, recalled: ‘[When] Gertrude Stein came to call I made my appearance, curtsied as I’d been taught to do, and left the minute I was excused. I found her terrifying.’
68
Zelda’s friend Carl Van Vechten had become Stein’s American agent for her complex experimental plays and poems which were hard to understand and harder to place. But it was not Carl who introduced the Fitzgeralds to Stein and Toklas. It was Ernest Hemingway, the man who would become Zelda’s enemy.
Hemingway and his first wife Hadley had paid their first call on Stein in March 1922 when Gertrude discussed writing with Ernest, ‘a delightful fellow’,
69
and Alice had taken Hadley aside to chat about domestic matters. Such a close bond was forged between the couples that Alice and Gertrude became godparents to Bumby, the Hemingways’ son. Since that first meeting, to confirm his literary standing, Hemingway had already brought to Stein’s studio Ada and Archibald MacLeish, Dos Passos and Ogden Stewart. When Zelda first visited Stein, Hemingway was Stein’s favourite writer.
Hemingway had previewed the Fitzgeralds’ visit by writing to Stein and Toklas a very favourable report. He told them Zelda was ‘worth seeing’ and he planned to bring the Fitzgeralds to meet Gertrude and Alice the following Friday.
70
At that point Hemingway glowed with praise for Zelda – usually about her physical attributes, indicating that he thought of her in terms of a possible conquest. When she dealt a severe blow to his ego he rancorously rewrote his initial view of her.
Scott, who like Zelda had already met Hemingway in the Dingo bar in Montparnasse, had been immediately captivated. Hemingway, three years younger, considerably taller and more athletic, had a reputation as a war hero and acted the tough guy. Scott’s impression of Hemingway was entirely favourable. He had already read his two slim volumes,
Three
Stories
and
Ten
Poems
(1923) and the incisive vignette collection
in
our
time
(1924), and was as impressed by Hemingway’s dedication to writing, apparent openness and lack of affectation as he was by his undoubted talent.
71
Hemingway was highly conscious of Scott’s well-established commercial celebrity but felt superior and virtuous about seeking artistic accomplishment irrespective of financial rewards. Scott, aware of the younger writer’s patronizing attitude, was still ready to make a hero out of Hemingway.
Thirty-two years after their first meeting Hemingway wrote an unreliable report which describes Scott as effeminate, with a long-lipped mouth that ‘on a girl would have been the mouth of a beauty … the mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more’. He portrays him as a nuisance, a fool and a pathetic drunk.
72
It seems Scott had overpraised Hemingway’s work,
embarrassed him with personal questions (‘Did you sleep with your wife before you were married?’), then passed out.
73
In May 1925 Scott invited Hemingway to go to Lyons with him to pick up the Renault he and Zelda had abandoned. This trip has given rise to competing versions. At the time Hemingway wrote to Max Perkins a very positive account: ‘We had a great trip together … I’ve read his Great Gatsby and think it is an absolutely first rate book.’
74
In
A
Moveable
Feast,
not written until Scott had been dead nearly twenty years and Hemingway was on the edge of dementia that would end in suicide, Hemingway created a malicious semifactual account of Scott’s annoying behaviour during the drive. He reveals Fitzgerald as self-pitying, hypochondriac, unreliable, spendthrift, artistically flawed, sexually inexperienced, emasculated by Zelda and consistently drunk. He himself remains mature, manly and sober. Scott’s behaviour could well have made that trip tedious, but this later scathing report of Hemingway’s bears no resemblance to his earlier one. Similarly, at the time Hemingway told Ezra Pound that both he and Fitzgerald enjoyed an enormous consumption of wine.
75
But in his vitriolic
A
Moveable
Feast
he records only Scott’s drunkenness.
If there
were
bitter undercurrents at the time, Scott ignored them. Instead he wrote to Gertrude Stein: ‘Hemminway and I went to Lyons … to get my car and had a slick drive … He’s a peach of a fellow and absolutely first rate.’
76
Scott had already told Perkins six months before he met Hemingway that this peachy fellow had ‘a brilliant future … He’s the real thing.’
77
Zelda, after meeting Hemingway, told Gerald, who asked what she had against Hemingway: ‘He’s bogus.’
78
‘At the time,’ Gerald said later, ‘the word just didn’t seem to fit; there wasn’t anyone more real and more himself than Ernest. Bogus, Ernest? Of course, who knows how right she may prove to be?’
79
For Zelda there appeared to be proof in every action Ernest took, every word he spoke. From the moment she met Hemingway, she disliked him with an unwavering unrelenting force equalled only by his own for her. The stage was set for the battle between Zelda and Hemingway for Scott’s allegiance. None of the weapons they used were pleasant.
1
ZSF
‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’,
Collected
Writings,
p. 422.
2
ZSF
to
MP
, undated fragment,
c
. fall/winter 1924,
CO
101, Box 53, Folder Zelda Fitzgerald, 1921–1944,
PUL
.
3
ZSF
to
MP
, 11 Nov. 1924, ibid.
4
ZSF
to
FSF
, late summer/early fall 1930,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 192.
5
Honoria Murphy Donnelly to the author, series of telephone conversations and
interviews
, New York, 1998. Mayfield,
Exiles,
consistently confirms this.
6
ZSF
, ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’, p. 422.
7
Ibid.
8
MP
to
FSF
, 20 Nov. 1924,
Dear
Scott/Dear
Max,
p. 83. In October Scott had sent the novel to Perkins who responded (18 Nov.): ‘I think the novel is a wonder … it has vitality to an extraordinary degree, and
glamour,
and a great deal of underlying thought of unusual quality … as for sheer writing it’s astonishing.’
9
FSF
to
MP
,
c.
1 Dec. 1924,
Dear
Scott/Dear
Max,
p. 85.
10
FSF
to
MP
,
c
. 20 Dec. 1924, ibid., p. 89.
11
FSF
to
MP
,
c
. 1 Dec. 1924, ibid., p. 85.
12
FSF
to
MP
,
c.
20 Dec. 1924, ibid., p. 88.
13
‘The Adjuster’,
Redbook
Magazine,
Sep. 1925; ‘Not In The Guidebook’,
Woman’s
Home
Companion,
Nov. 1925.
14
‘The Adjuster’,
All
The
Sad
Young
Men,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1926, pp. 189–90.
15
Wilson,
The
Twenties,
p. 298.
16
Scottie in later years looked back on all her Christmases as decorative occasions and times of excitement.
17
Scott drew on the discarded
Gatsby
section for his romantically disposed hero, Rudolph Miller. Miller’s background was initially intended to represent Gatsby’s early life.
18
Sara Mayfield had looked after her during 1923.
19
It was published 24 July 1924. Fifteen years later, after Sara’s early death, Mencken
confessed
‘to my shame’ that he had failed to recognize its ‘solid maturity’ (Ann Henley, Introduction,
Southern
Souvenirs,
p. 9).
20
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 126. The conversation took place in 1928.
21
FSF
, Ledger, Feb. 1925.
22
FSF
to John Peale Bishop,
c
. Apr. 1925,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 104.
23
ZSF
, ‘Show Mr and Mrs F. to Number –’, p. 422.
24
Aunt Annabel had travelled to Rome for the Holy Year observances.
25
Wilson, quoting Fitzgerald, to Arthur Mizener, 10 Nov. 1949,
Letters
on L
iterature
and
Politics,
pp. 562–3; Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 229.
26
Through Mackenzie the Fitzgeralds also met Francis Brett Young, Mary Roberts Rinehart and Axel Munthe, who was working on what would become his bestselling
The
Story
of
San
Michele.
27
His biographer James Mellow pointed out that though Scott was always edgy and boorish in the company of ‘fairies’, as he disparagingly called them, he developed an
ever-increasing curiosity about their habits. Scott’s contorted complex relationship to this sexual issue was yet another of his remarkable resemblances to Zelda.
28
FSF
to
MP
, 31 Mar. 1925, Tumbull,
Letters,
p. 197.
29
James Mellow is interesting on this matter.
Invented
Lives,
p. 229.
30
FSF
to Wilson, 7 Oct. 1924.
31
FSF
to Wilson, 10 Jan. 1918; Mellow,
Invented
Lives,
p. 229.
32
Kendall Taylor,
Sometimes
Madness
Is
Wisdom.
Zelda
and
Scott
Fitzgerald:
A
Marriage,
Ballantine Books, New York, 2001, p. 143.
33
Art critic Carolyn Shafer to the author, Feb./Mar. 2001.
34
Documentation of Zelda’s artistic work in Europe is particularly lacking. Shafer holds the view that as Europe was where Zelda first began to paint, she may have taken art lessons on more than one occasion in more than one European city. She may also have had exhibitions during her frequent visits to Europe of which both Shafer and this
biographer
are unaware.
35
The painting is both unfinished and painted over.
36
Shafer, ‘To Spread a Human Aspiration: The Art of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald’, unpublished MA thesis, University of South Carolina, 1994, pp. 28, 19.
37
Jane S. Livingston is one critic who takes this view.
38
Shafer believes Picasso had a substantial influence on Zelda. Other critics disagree.
39
Sara Murphy to Mizener, 17 Jan. 1950; letter lent to this author by Honoria Murphy Donnelly.
40
Winzola McLendon, ‘Interview: Frances Scott Fitzgerald to Winzola McLendon’,
Ladies
Home
Journal,
Nov. 1974. Nasturtiums were always on the table set for the lunches
en
famille
Zelda organized during that period.
41
Shafer, ‘To Spread a Human Aspiration’, pp. 101,102.
42
Eddie Pattillo to the author, Feb./Mar. 2001 and in discussions with the author, Montgomery, 1999, 2000.
43
Shafer to the author, Feb./Mar. 2001.
44
Calvin Tomkins,
Living
Well,
p. 42.
45
Memories of Ginevra’s wedding provided Scott with details for Daisy’s marriage to Tom Buchanan.
46
FSF
,
Gatsby,
Abacus, p. 124.
47
Whereas in ‘The Sensible Thing’ George O’Kelly accepts love’s mutability: “There are all kinds of love in the world but never the same love twice’, Gatsby believes that one can recapture the past. ‘Can’t repeat the past? … Why of course you can!’:
FSF
, ‘The Sensible Thing’,
All
The
Sad
Young
Men,
pp. 237–8;
The
Great
Gatsby,
p. 104.
48
Baker may also have been based on a champion golfer called Jordan, a classmate of Ginevra, the other woman Scott considered ‘disloyal’. However Scott told Perkins that Jordan was Edith Cummings, another golfing schoolfriend of Ginevra’s.
FSF
to
MP
,
c.
20 Dec. 1924,
Dear
Scott/Dear
Max,
p. 90.
49
FSF
to Annabel Fitzgerald,
c.
1915,
Life
in
Letters,
p. 9.
50
Taylor,
Sometimes
Madness,
p. 145.
51
Ruth Hale, Brooklyn
Daily
Eagle,
reproduced in
Romantic
Egoists,
p. 125.
52
F
.
Scott
Fitzgerald
In
His
Own
Time,
p. 345.
53
Ibid., p. 347.
54
Lardner to
FSF
, Mar. 1925,
CO
187, Box 50,
PUL
.
55
Wilson to
FSF
, 11 Apr. 1925, Wilson,
Letters,
p. 121.
56
Mencken to
FSF
, 16 Apr. 1925,
Correspondence
of F.
Scott
Fitzgerald,
p. 158.
57
Seldes, ‘Spring Flight’,
The
Dial,
Aug. 1925, p. 162.
58
T. S. Eliot to
FSF
, 31 Dec. 1925,
Romantic
Egoists,
p. 135.
59
FSF
quoted in Scott Donaldson,
Hemingway
vs.
Fitzgerald:
The
Rise
and
Fall
of
a
Literary
Friendship,
John Murray, London, 2000, p. 60.
60
On the 102nd anniversary of Scott’s birth, novelist Allan Gurganus called
Gatsby
a ‘work of pure protein genius, the most disciplined and prophetic novel of its decade’. Gurganus, ‘Sacrificial Couples, the Splendor of our Failures and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’, paper commissioned by the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, delivered at the Fitzgeralds’ 1930s haunt, Grove Park Inn, Asheville, North Carolina, 24 Sep. 1998. Lent to the author by Gurganus.
61
Scott learned this in June 1925.
62
This would after many name changes become
Tender
Is
The
Night.
63
These were raw studies for his masterpiece the
Demoiselles
d’Avignon.
64
ZSF
to
FSF
, undated,
CO
187, Box 44, Folder 15,
PUL
.
65
Gertrude Stein to
FSF
, 22 May 1925,
Crack-Up,
New Directions, 1945, p. 308.
66
FSF
to Stein, June 1925,
The
Flowers
of
Friendship:
Letters
Written
to
Gertrude
Stein,
ed. Donald Gallup, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1953, p. 174;
Life
in
Letters,
p. 115.
67
Mayfield,
Exiles,
p. 220.
68
Scottie Fitzgerald Smith, Memoir.
69
As Stein reported to Sherwood Anderson, who had introduced Hemingway to her. Donaldson,
Hemingway
vs.
Fitzgerald,
p. 62.
70
James R. Mellow points out that Hemingway’s meeting with Zelda seems to have taken place before, not after, his trip to Lyons with Scott in May. It is clear from a letter to Van Vechten that Stein and Toklas left for Belley on 18 May 1925; the date of this letter to them from Hemingway should therefore be mid-May. Mellow,
Hemingway:
A
Life
Without
Consequences,
Hodder & Stoughton, London, Sydney, Auckland, 1992, p. 290.
71
He had been alerted by Edmund Wilson to Hemingway’s writings in the
Transatlantic
Review.
72
EH
,
Moveable
Feast,
p. 147.
73
It is worth noting that
Moveable
Feast
warns: ‘If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.’ Hemingway’s statements about the Fitzgeralds are often unreliable. In
Moveable
Feast
he says Fitzgerald came to the Dingo with Princetonian Duncan Chaplin, thus providing another witness to Scott’s bad behaviour, but Chaplin was not in Europe in 1925.
74
EH
to
MP
, 9 June 1925,
EH
,
Selected
Letters,
ed. Carlos Baker, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1981, pp. 162–3.
75
Scott Donaldson,
Hemingway
vs.
Fitzgerald,
p. 61.
76
FSF
to Stein, June 1925,
Flowers
of
Friendship,
p. 174;
Life
in
Letters,
p. 115.
77
FSF
to
MP
,
c.
10 Oct. 1924,
Dear
Scott/Dear
Max,
p. 78.
78
Mayfield,
Exiles,
pp. 136–7.
79
Gerald Murphy to Milford, 26 Apr 1963, Milford,
Zelda,
p. 117. Scribner’s did not publish Hemingway’s savage attack on both the Fitzgeralds and the Murphys in
Moveable
Feast
until 1964, the year Murphy died. Nearly forty years later additional research on Hemingway as the ‘real thing’ has shown just how much insight Zelda had about Hemingway and how intelligent Murphy was to remain cautious.